Open Thread - Friday, January 1, 201<del>5</del>6

Happy New Year! A couple of the recent threads got me thinking about some people's reality. Particularly the end timers and their infiltration of the religious, media and political complexes.

The road of violence and hatred does not resolve humanity's problems. And using the name of God to justify this road is blasphemy. ~ Pope Francis ~

End time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days, or eschaton) is a future time period described in the eschatologies of the dominant world religions, both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic, where world events achieve a final climax.

End Times Posts Archive

I can not understand how anybody considers these clowns credible, or sane.

Apocalypse soon: the scientists preparing for the end times

The men were too absorbed in their work to notice my arrival at first. Three walls of the conference room held whiteboards densely filled with algebra and scribbled diagrams. One man jumped up to sketch another graph, and three colleagues crowded around to examine it more closely. Their urgency surprised me, though it probably shouldn’t have. These academics were debating what they believe could be one of the greatest threats to mankind – could superintelligent computers wipe us all out?

I was visiting the Future of Humanity Institute, a research department at Oxford University founded in 2005 to study the “big-picture questions” of human life. One of its main areas of research is existential risk. The physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists, computer scientists and mathematicians of the institute are students of the apocalypse.

Oh Magog! Why End-Times Buffs Are Freaking Out About Syria

In early 2012, best-selling novelist Joel Rosenberg came to Capitol Hill for a meeting with an unidentified member of Congress to discuss the end of the world. "I thought the topic was going to be the possible coming war between Israel and Iran," Rosenberg explained on his website. "Instead, the official asked, 'What are your thoughts on Isaiah 17?'"

For the better part of an hour, Rosenberg says, the writer and the congressman went back forth on something called the "burden of Damascus," an Old Testament prophecy that posits that a war in the Middle East will leave Syria's capital city in ruins—and bring the world one step closer to Armageddon. As Rosenberg put it, "The innocent blood shed by the Assad regime is reprehensible and heart-breaking and is setting the stage for a terrible judgment."

But Rosenberg and his anonymous congressman aren't alone in viewing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's actions through a biblical lens. With Congress set to vote next week on the authorization to use military force in Syria, the Damascus prophecy has taken on a new significance among the nation's End Times industry—writers and pastors who believe the world is hurtling toward the return of Christ as forecasted in the Book of Revelation—and its adherents in the pews and in public life. On Saturday, Rosenberg will travel to Topeka, Kansas, at the invitation of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

The idea behind the prophecy is a fairly straightforward one. In Isaiah 17, the prophet explains that, in the run-up to Armageddon, "Damascus is about to be removed from being a city, and will become a fallen ruin." The implication is that it will be leveled by God on behalf of Israel as part of the last great struggle for mankind.

It must be all the guns that has made society so polite that these clowns are not mercilessly mocked and ridiculed.

Well, here we are with a brand new year to fuck up. But enough with the joviality, there are important things going on. It's Funk Friday.

Stanton Moore - Blues for Ben

Stanton Moore - Sprung Monkey

Stanton Moore - Blackbird Special

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hecate's picture

spiritual or secular, perceive, dimly, as through a glass darkly, the message of mortality embedded in their own cells, and then project it upon all the world.

electronic-freeway-sign-generator.jpg

How could they? he wondered. How could they convince themselves that in this whirling tidal pool of existence, providence was sending them a message? Seeing visions, hearing voices, their eyes awash in their own juice—living on their own and borrowed hallucinations, banners, songs, kiddie art posters, phantom worship. The lines of bayonets, the marching rhythms, incense or torches, chanting, flights of doves—it was hypnosis. And they were the vampires. The world paid in blood for their articulate delusions, but it was all right because for a while they felt better. And presently they could put their consciences on automatic. They were beyond good and evil in five easy steps—it had to be okay because it was them after all. It was good old us, Those Who Are, Those Who See, the gang. Inevitably they grew bored with being contradicted. Inevitably they discovered the fundamental act of communication, they discovered murder. Murder was salutary, it provided reinforcement when they felt impotent or unworthy. It was something real, it made them folks and the reference to death reminded everyone that time was short and there could be no crapping around. For the less forceful, the acceptance of murder was enough. Unhappy professors, hyperthyroid clerics and flower children could learn the Gauleiter’s smirk. The acceptance showed that they were realists which showed that they were real.

—Robert Stone, A Flag For Sunrise

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8md8py8yVxY]

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NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

for the second time

Puerto Rico will skip payments on some of its debt due Monday, the island's second default this year, but will remain current on its most important debt, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said on Wednesday.

The Caribbean island will pay $328.7 million in general obligation (GO) debt due on Jan. 4, the governor told reporters at a news conference. Default on GO debt would have been seen as a more serious move because those bonds have the strongest legal protections of any of the island's obligations.

However, it also keeps alive the drama surrounding its deteriorating finances as investors wait for the next shoe to drop. The governor said he is meeting with creditors in early January, though he did not give a specific date.

The island will default on a $35.9 million payment due on Monday to its Infrastructure Finance Authority (PRIFA). It will also default on $1.4 million due to its Public Finance Corp, but will make payments to most other authorities. The island was facing a bill of about $1 billion had it made all payments.

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enhydra lutris's picture

I guess ...

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

he was doing this

Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.

The legal and conceptual framework for the fast-tracking provision on pipeline permitting arose during the fight over TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. President Barack Obama initially codified that concept via Executive Order 13604 — signed the same day as he signed an Executive Order to fast-track construction of Keystone XL‘s southern leg — and this provision “builds on the permit streamlining project launched by” Obama according to corporate law firm Holland & Knight.
...
ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), American Petroleum Institute (API), Koch Industries, U.S.Chamber of Commerce and many others lobbied for the FAST Act’s passage.

The highway bill subsection formerly sat as a stand-alone bill, the Federal Permitting Improvement Act of 2015 (S.280), sponsored by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). A review of the list of those who lobbied for that piece of legislation by DeSmog reveals that ExxonMobil, Shell, Anerican Association of Oil Pipelines (AAOP), the Gas Processors Association and others all pushed for its passage.

Campaign finance data reviewed by DeSmog shows that Portman, up for re-election in 2016, has received $483,900 from the oil, gas and utility industry sectors (individuals and PACs, combined) so far in the campaign cycle. Portman’s campaign donors overlap with those who lobbied for the bill such as ExxonMobil, API, ANGA, Koch Industries and Shell.

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gulfgal98's picture

Barack Obama.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

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mimi's picture

May be good to put into a sig line:
[video:https://youtu.be/hxtGcznwQGE]
Bernie Sanders' Big Bro, Larry, Serves Up Some New Insight on His Kid Brother.

Oh well, I can relate to that life story. I just wonder how many Americans can't.

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JayRaye's picture

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

promote open dialogue

However, there is an alternate possibility. It’s common wisdom that when certain human desires are suppressed, they have the potential to express themselves in extreme or distorted ways. For instance, one of the common explanations for why there is much more binge drinking on U.S. college campuses, as compared with Europe, is that the legal and social norms around alcohol consumption by minors are much stricter in the U.S. So, when kids finally get the freedom to drink in college, they often do so excessively.

The case of Trump supporters might be analogous. What has been repressed in this case is open dialogue about some of the most challenging social and political questions of our time. Trump is able to thrive in the vacuum left by the intellectual, cultural, and political elite’s suppression of frank and open discussion of certain issues.

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American occupation

Consider the following information about the Israeli National Counter-Terrorism Seminar that one can find on the website of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

“Every year, American law enforcement executives travel to Israel with ADL to study first hand Israel’s tactics and strategies to combat terrorism. The National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS) is an intensive week long course led by senior commanders in the Israel National Police, experts from Israel’s intelligence and security services, and the Israel Defense Forces. More than 175 law enforcement executives have participated in 12 NCTS sessions since 2004, taking the lessons they learned in Israel back to the United States.”

I twice saw Israeli Defense Force (IDF) units deploy tear gas against Palestinian youth during my recent visit to Israel and Palestine. I smelled the tear gas. I felt the eye and nasal discomfort. What were the Palestinian youth doing? They were congregating on streets in their own neighborhoods protesting Israeli occupation of Palestine, just as neighbors of Michael Brown, Jr. protested that he was shot and killed, and just as they were attacked by armored police units, snipers, and tear gas while in their own neighborhood.
...
We are sending law enforcement leaders from communities across the United States to learn occupation force tactics and strategies from security operatives affiliated with the illegal occupation of Palestine. U.S. tax dollars have financed and supplied the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1967. U.S. tax dollars provide diplomatic cover for it in the United Nations. U.S. tax dollars are spent sending state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to unjustly treat us like suspected terrorists, the same way Israeli security personnel are trained to unjustly treat Palestinian men, women, and youth.

We are subsidizing tyranny and fascism by Israel against Palestinians. We are sending U.S. state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to use occupation force methods and tactics of tyranny and fascism against poor and communities of color in the United States.

Politely speaking, that is “messed up.”

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it's a scam

The defendants emerged as more hapless than hardened, childhood friends who believed that the DEA’s informants were going to make them rich. “They were lying to us. And we were lying to them,” Touré told me from prison. Judge Barbara Jones, who oversaw the final phases of the case, said, “There was no actual involvement by the defendants or the undercovers … in the activities of either al-Qaida or the FARC.” Another judge saw as many problems with the statute as with the merits of the case. “Congress has passed a law that attempts to bind the world,” he said to me.

The investigation continues to be cited by the DEA as an example of its national-security achievements. Since the narco-terrorism provision was passed, the DEA has pursued dozens of cases that fit the broad description of crimes under the statute. The agency has claimed victories against al-Qaida, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and the FARC and established the figure of the narco-terrorist as a preeminent threat to the United States.

With each purported success, the DEA has lobbied Congress to increase its funding. In 2012, Michael Braun, who had served as the DEA’s chief of operations, testified before Congress about the link between terrorists and drug traffickers: “Based on over 37 years in the law-­enforcement and security sectors, you can mark my word that they are most assuredly talking business and sharing lessons learned.”

That may well be true. In a number of regions, most notably Colombia and Afghanistan, there is con­vincing evidence that terrorists have worked with drug traffickers. But a close examination of the cases that the DEA has pursued reveals a disturbing number that resemble that of the Malians. When these cases were prosecuted, the only links between drug trafficking and terrorism entered into evidence were provided by the DEA, using agents or informants who were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lure the targets into staged narco-­terrorism conspiracies.

The DEA strongly defends the effectiveness of such sting operations, claiming that they are a useful way to identify criminals who pose a threat to the United States before they act. Lou Milione, a senior official at the agency, told me, “One of the things the DEA is kind of in the business of is almost all of our investigations are proactive.” But Russell Hanks, a former senior American diplomat, who got a firsthand look at some of the DEA’s narco-­terrorism targets during the time he served in West Africa, told me, “The DEA provided everything these men needed to commit a crime, then said, ‘Wow, look what they did.’” He added, “This wasn’t terrorism — this was the manipulation of weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest records.”

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mimi's picture

Hmm, this is one reason, why I can't stand reading the gos anymore. I think it has come to a point that is clearly very ugly and not at all pretty or helpful.

There is this diary from Denise Oliver Velez.
Recruit Trump supporters? Hell no.

Well, I always get the willies if I see movements from the left or parties from the left working together or reaching out to people of the populist right. I can't remember that that was ever the case in the sixties and seventies or eighties in Europe. Nowadays it seems there is something like it. I can't stand it, think it's dangerous and it insults any sane person's intelligence. That's Europe. (France, Germany, Greece, Spaign, Portugal etc. You don't mix Socialists with right-wing NPD-style of German National Socialists of the current times. There seems to be a wicked movement around undermining the leftist socialists with right-wing national socialist. Some people count on the stupidity of people who don't know historically the difference between the two. Twitter has assholes trying to mess with that.

In that sense it's the blah blah about getting cozy with Trumps right-wing followers of the working class. Trump has played his games with this issue and any sane person should just grab Trump by his frigging hair and dump him to wherever he would never be able to return and utter one more frigging word.

Now, it's possible that the movement of Trump supporters getting into rallies of Sanders and basically allowing the "racism" issue become a problem for the Sanders campaign, is done on purpose. I don't know that. But whatever it might be, a conscious move to derail his campaign, or an innocent mix-up of people, who are frustrated, it's a very dangerous thing to happen.

That said I understand Denise Oliver Velez "horror" over "recruiting Trump supporters". But she clearly points to Sanders campaign as being in the game of recruiting Trump supporters, who are dirty poor racists (in her view) and that means Sanders is a racist too and she warns, he better be prepared about the response from the Afro-Americans who won't "like that".

I found her diary really inciting the race issue in ways that is very destructive.

I was glad about JekylINHydes forceful response to her. To me the comment thread in that diary has put people on the line and the picture is ugly.

Whatever, I hope Sanders doesn't overlook this attempt to "racialize" his campaign through his "deracialized" way he relates to the white working class among which are some Trump supporter. Racializing the Sanders campaign via Trump and his followers is a very bad development and I think it can clearly be seen in Dee's diary's comment threads.

Sorry for being too tired to search for links that prove how devastating it can be, if right-wing populist, catering to the working class poor by coddling their "enemy" visions of the bad "other ethnicity" in them, get together with left-wing socialists, catering to the working poor as well out of need to "win in the elections". These coalitions, which some times come into being, are imo never healthy and never going to work because of exactly the racism issues involved. At least in Europe they have been. I would say here in the US attempts like that are even more toxic. They should be a no no.

I commend JekkylINHyde. He/she could have needed some support in that diary. What comes out of this diary thread is "Dreck" and that is a word Denise has once used for the EB. What goes around comes around. What else can I say.

May be I haven't understood what's going on, but you can always teach me a lesson. I am listening.

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Not all Trump supporters are racists in white sheets - some are just anarchist. Some are just those "entitled white people" DO talks so much about, who think income equality is a much bigger issue than color, gender, abortion, and sexual preference. JH does deserve credit for standing up to her racist rant.

I understand that Europe has a much longer and different history than the US, but nobody is talking about joining with Trump or the fascist right. They are talking about giving some of his supporters a productive alternative/path. If it was Hillary's strategy, DO and gang would be cheering it. I also believe in the enemy of my enemy is friend. Trump will not hesitate to savage the Clintons on issues others would do much more delicately if they did it at all -such as Bill's history with women. It could backfire like his impeachment, but Trump wouldn't hesitate to counter her gender campaign with her husband's past. Salon is running a three part article by a feminist (Paglia?) that compares Bill Clinton to Cosby.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

mimi's picture

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this one.

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mimi's picture

From here

The erasure of motherhood from feminist rhetoric has led us to this current politicization of sex talk, which doesn’t allow women to recognize their immense power vis-à-vis men.

Agree with that statement. There is lots of stuff in there I agree with, because I have witnessed it up close. I am not much in the mood to try to talk about it.

Wherever I go to speak, whether it’s Brazil or Italy or Norway, I find that upper-middle-class professional women are very unhappy. This is a global problem!

Women are blaming men for a genuine problem that I say is systemic. It has to do with the transition from the old, agrarian culture to this urban professional culture, where women don’t have that big support network that they had in the countryside. All four of my grandparents and my mother were born in Italy. In the small country towns they came from, the extended family was the rule, and the women were a force unto themselves. Women had a chatty group solidarity as they did chores all day and took care of children and the elderly. Men and women never had that much to do with each other over history! There was the world of men and the world of women. Now we’re working side-by-side in offices at the same job. Women want to leave at the end of the day and have a happy marriage at home, but then they put all this pressure on men because they expect them to be exactly like their female friends. If they feel restlessness or misery or malaise, they automatically blame it on men.

This paragraph for example is talking about a fact that a Western feminist can't usually grasp. These "oppressed" women in the Third world (thinking mostly about sub-saharan Africa - muslim or otherwise-), as much as they are for a fact oppressed and lack equal civil rights more often than not, have methods to cope with them that Western feminists have not. Pretty surprisingly to many Western feminists out of those "oppressed" women in Third world countries, arise very strong female leaders and politicians, who are by no means conservatives.

Oh well, what the heck. I have no appetite to talk about it. But the article series is one that should be read. The series promises to be a good read. Thanks, JtC and dkmich.

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GOS is so obsessed with race that it has become a caricature of itself.
To be honest, I don't trust anything anyone on GOS says about race anymore because of it.

As for Trump supporters, yes, there are some racists. But I bet the majority don't care about race, and that's not a bad thing.

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Big Al's picture

more than the majority, just about all of them. Doesn't mean they're racist per se. But one way or another, they're dumb shits. And I know some of them. One was my brother although I think I've talked him out of it. But if not, even he is a dumb shit.

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That makes Bernie's strategy just like Dean's strategy when he went after the guys with confederate flags and guns strapped to their trucks. One thing about people, they all have a common need to eat, shit and pee. (Sorry for being so vulgar.)

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Big Al's picture

We're all susceptible to being dumb shits in one way or another. Racists are another story. But then again, much of the racism is manufactured by the ruling class with their propaganda system such as with Muslims and Mexicans.

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mimi's picture

and compulsively. That's shameful, imo. Or off-putting. Or miserably cheap. Or politely said ... not helpful.

Race is not something you care about, it's something you have in your dna. That's why it impacts everyone equally. And it's abused by everyone equally, when they see it being convenient for their purposes. No exceptions.

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gulfgal98's picture

1) Mocking Republicans
2) Outrage Porn (race falls into this category)

It is all very simplistic and avoids addressing policy issues. That is not to say that racism should be ignored, but the context in which it is discussed at dkos does not address the underlying and often structural issues of racism. Instead, it becomes a way to fire up outrage without looking for real solutions.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Big Al's picture

Bernie Sanders running with the Democratic party. There are parallels.

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