Open Thread - Thursday - 07-02-2015

Good Morning Caucus99percent,

It's all about robots today. We had the first
assembly robot killing a worker at a Volkswagen plant in Germany. Luckily the robot didn't experience any technical defects. That's reassuring, isn't it? (grrr) Sad

Then there was first robot wedding in Japan: Kiss 3

Nothing works and develops to grow without a healthy amount of competition, right? SUIDOBASHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES! MegaBots, Inc. challenges you to a duel! You have a giant robot, we have a giant robot - we have a duty to the science fiction lovers of this world to fight them to the death.
Giant American robot wants to lay the smackdown on Japanese rival

Opera fan? Only a comical opera could come up with a singing robot. Oh well, Germans.:
Humanoid opera singer takes on touchy role.

Not to say that robots have some good functions as well:
Toshiba readies scorpion-like robot for Fukushima nuclear plant

These little monsters become more and more human (and may be more radioactive?). It's something the entertainment industry is just salivating over, I think:

Humans, and Why Robots on TV Are Just Like Us

Can a robot feel? Does that mean that intelligent robots must uphold human rights? Do robots must have ethics and morals?

That assumption probably prompted Boer Deng to write the following article in international magazine science.
Machine ethics: The robot’s dilemma - Working out how to build ethical robots is one of the thorniest challenges in artificial intelligence.

Some excerpts:

“We see more and more autonomous or automated systems in our daily life,” said panel participant Karl-Josef Kuhn, an engineer with Siemens in Munich, Germany. But, he asked, how can researchers equip a robot to react when it is “making the decision between two bad choices”?

“We need some serious progress to figure out what's relevant for artificial intelligence to reason successfully in ethical situations,” says Marcello Guarini, a philosopher at the University of Windsor in Canada.

They must address tough scientific questions, such as what kind of intelligence, and how much, is needed for ethical decision-making, and how that can be translated into instructions for a machine. Computer scientists, roboticists, ethicists and philosophers are all pitching in.
"If you had asked me five years ago whether we could make ethical robots, I would have said no,” says Alan Winfield, a roboticist at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, UK. “Now I don't think it's such a crazy idea.”

Oh, man oh man:

With support from the US defence department, Arkin is designing a program to ensure that a military robot would operate according to international laws of engagement. A set of algorithms called an ethical governor computes whether an action such as shooting a missile is permissible, and allows it to proceed only if the answer is 'yes'.

Really?

In a virtual test of the ethical governor, a simulation of an unmanned autonomous vehicle was given a mission to strike enemy targets — but was not allowed to do so if there were buildings with civilians nearby. Given scenarios that varied the location of the vehicle relative to an attack zone and civilian complexes such as hospitals and residential buildings, the algorithms decided when it would be permissible for the autonomous vehicle to accomplish its mission3.

Autonomous, militarized robots strike many people as dangerous — and there have been innumerable debates about whether they should be allowed. But Arkin argues that such machines could be better than human soldiers in some situations, if they are programmed never to break rules of combat that humans might flout.

Computer scientists working on rigorously programmed machine ethics today favour code that uses logical statements, such as 'If a statement is true, move forward; if it is false, do not move.' Logic is the ideal choice for encoding machine ethics, argues Luís Moniz Pereira, a computer scientist at the Nova Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics in Lisbon. “Logic is how we reason and come up with our ethical choices,” he says.

Ok, I am going to reason now completely illogical. It's early evening on Wednesday. I have read the whole day one more awful news article than the next, I am done for today, I am not a robot and my illogically programmed brain tells me to end this Open Thread.

Enough is enough, robots and otherwise.

Have a good day and share what is on your mind.

PS. It just came to my mind, if robots can feel, do they feel their sexual orientation? Let's say Siemens built a robot as a female, and then the robot gets angry, because she feels like a male and goes all berserk against its creator. Wacko

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

mimi's picture

for sanity. Please share what's on your mind. Mine is a little blank right now, so I hope you will fill in what is missing. Thank You.

Have all a very good day.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

said something I haven't heard before. Apparently many member states of the EU believe that the letter Tsipras wrote (last one two days ago) are not written in Athens, but have been written by the EU commission in order to "help" the Greeks.

That sounds so arrogant that it's hard to believe. But then such comment must have a basis on something. There is no reason to promote something like that as propaganda and usually isn't done in public TV news like WDR, ARD etc.

Oh well ... another blank sheet in my mind.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

vote is a "yes", German news report.

For those who understand German I consider the live-ticker of the German local newspaper in Berlin "Der Tagesspiegel" a quite good one.

Eurogroup-Chef Jeroen Dijsselbloem says, if the referendum vote is a "no", it would become very difficult to keep Greece in the EU.

What an ass. Can't stand that guy.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

Nice Open Thread topic and one that really bears further discussion in that many very knowledgeable people, including Bill Gates, are warning us about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Stephen Hawking was one of the first to voice concerns about artificial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking deftly framed the issue when he wrote that, in the short term, A.I.'s impact depends on who controls it; in the long term, it depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

The above referenced article contains the terrifying bit about wars being fought with robots. Our current drone program which uses a military weapon controlled from a great distance away still relies upon humans to issue the commands. But the idea of entire wars being fought by robots is not in the too distant future.

One obvious example is autonomous killing machines. More than 50 nations are developing battlefield robots. The most sought-after will be robots that make the "kill decision" -- the decision to target and kill someone -- without a human in the loop.

Elon Musk has called artificial intelligence "an existential threat to humanity."

Musk who was speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium said that in developing artificial intelligence (AI) “we are summoning the demon.”

Excellent topic. Thank you for bringing this subject to light.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

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

mimi's picture

I admit to not have the nerves yesterday to really go into some more meaningful searches, and now you did it. Thanks so much.

What got at me was the fact that "logic reasoning" was used as a justification, even that the logic coded into the decision making capabilities of a robot were supposed to be superior to the decision making of humans, whoc could "fail" or "flout" in combat situations. It's pretty obvious that humans do not make decisions just applying logic and I consider that an advantage. Computer scientists who code seem to be "sucked" into their own superiority of coding power. Scary, if you ask me...

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

I missed that one and don't think it was on the EB yesterday. May be worth listening to.

Chomsky: Greece Faces "Savage Response" For Taking on Austerity "Class War"

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

I have programmed and commissioned hundreds of industrial robots. Never trust a robot. They are powerful machines and do not always do what they are supposed to do. A wiring error or programming error is all it takes. The deceased was working on the robot, which is exponentially more dangerous than operating the robot.

up
0 users have voted.

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 -

mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

A collection of Saudi Arabian diplomatic cables have recently become available via Wikileaks.

I was reminded of that today when I visited Cal State professor Asad AbuKhalil's "Angry Arab" blog.
http://angryarab.blogspot.de/

It certainly seems U.S. and European media across the board are deliberately ignoring this opportunity to peek behind the curtain. Guess it shines too much light on the nature of our leaders' cozy relationship to these despots.

And, being as thoroughly backed up by documents as historical and political events ever can be, what these cables reveal can't be dismissed as "conspiracy theory" using the usual cheap theatrics.

up
0 users have voted.

Not that this should surprise anyone

Hillary Clinton tried to help one private-equity boss with a visa problem and encouraged another on a project in China. She apologized to the chairman of a big corporation for failing to commit to an event right away.

"So sorry I haven't responded before but I've been hip deep in the rollout of the Afghanistan strategy," Clinton wrote to Terrence Duffy, executive chairman of futures market operator CME Group and a supporter of her 2008 presidential campaign. "I hope you, your family, and the futures markets are all well!"

The 3,000 pages of e-mails that the State Department released yesterday, dating from Clinton's time as secretary of state, show another side of Clinton from the one that was on display last month in New York.

There, the Democrat kicked off her campaign for the presidency with a swipe against overpaid CEOs and hedge-fund managers, saying "democracy can't just be for billionaires and corporations." She also said the nation's 25 highest-paid hedge-fund managers make more than all of American kindergarten teachers combined.

up
0 users have voted.

One day the Governor of Puerto Rico said the debts were unpayable. The next day they were paid. What happened?
You might be tempted to believe that the debt issue was never a big deal, but here's the real story.

One key part of PREPA's deal: to issue new short-term debt to three of its monoline-insurer creditors in order to raise $128 million to put toward Wednesday's $416 million total payment.

At first glance, it appeared that PREPA had layered more debt upon its already-formidable loan burden. But someone familiar with the transaction said that, in fact, it simply replaced principal debt that was about to be retired altogether with new, equally sized debt. (In simple terms, the move could be regarded as a "recycling of money," the person said, and was not as risky as it may have appeared.)

Or to put it more simply

(AP) -- Puerto Rico's troubled power company has been forced to sell bonds again to obtain capital and avoid defaulting on a $415 million debt payment due Wednesday amid a worsening economic crisis in the U.S. territory.

The Electric Power Authority said it paid $153 million in cash and the remainder from its debt service reserve accounts. In turn, creditors agreed to buy $128 million worth of new bonds to provide liquidity, and those bonds have to be paid in full by December.

In other words, this is can kicking. The problem has been kicked a couple months into the future.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

than most of you, but this article here helped me to understand the difference between the Greek and the Puerto Rican situation:
If You Think What the EU Is Doing to Greece Is Bad, Look at What the U.S. Is Doing to Puerto Rico

That will set up a zero-sum fight between the debtor and the creditors, just like any other default situation. But Puerto Rico’s case is different from most other debt defaults. After all, debtors generally have some protections. Most bankruptcy laws, for instance, protect debtors’ assets and incomes from being seized, at least temporarily. And in the case of sovereign nations like Greece, it’s almost impossible for any court, foreign or domestic, to force the country to pay monies it doesn’t want to pay.

Puerto Rico, by contrast, is stuck in the worst of all worlds. It has to abide by the rulings of New York courts, should bondholders file suit. And at the same time, it’s not allowed to file for — and receive the protections of — bankruptcy. (US municipalities, like Detroit, can file under Chapter 9 of the American bankruptcy code; Puerto Rico, which is a territory, cannot.) As a result, Puerto Rico is at the mercy of the courts, which will take one look at the island’s unambiguous bond contracts and declare that it has to pay its debts, in full…

This is the source article the truthdig article is based on. I haven't read it yet, but this paragraph can give you just the creeps. So much pain to understand the situation they are in.
The tragedy of Puerto Rico, America’s very own Greece

Adding insult to all of this injury is the list of “reforms” that the former IMF staffers consider the bare minimum to get Puerto Rico up and running again — what they call “a strategy for growth and confidence”. Most of them, for starters, are entirely outside Puerto Rico’s control. The Puerto Rico government can’t unilaterally suspend the Jones Act, for instance: only the US government can do that. And neither can the Puerto Rico government change American law to allow the territory to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. But unless and until that happens, there’s almost no hope for the island, which will never be able to get out from under its enormous debt burden.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

have been killing people for millennia. They're called soldiers. Or "warriors."

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

he has feelings and he is not logically reasoning and he has flouted and failed, all the things robots don't have or do. Smile

Just saying, Good Morning, hecate.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

to you, too, mimi. ; )

Most everybody has somebody in family or friends who is or has been a soldier or "warrior." Me included. That doesn't make it right. Soldiers, and "warriors," exist solely to kill people and break things. Killing people and breaking things on "orders" is, to me, robotic behavior.

Soldiers and "warriors" are all wrong, and they always have been, and they always will be. And it is not permitted for them to claim they can be absolved of blame because they acted on "orders." Then they really are robots.

The metaphysician G. I. Gurdjieff, asked during WWI what soldiers would do if they became truly awake and aware, replied: "They would drop their rifles and go home to their families." Any soldier, anywhere, any "warrior," anywhere, who does not so behave, is, if not a willing executioner, roboting.

Actually, the robot explanation is the kinder one. For, in truth:

he's the universal soldier
and he really is to blame

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A50lVLtSQik]

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

And it is not permitted for them to claim they can be absolved of blame because they acted on "orders."

Of course this is the general claim people make against all Germans in WWII. It's certainly not an excuse. But it matters what kind of orders you got and in what kind of war you had execute those orders. There are revolutionary wars, liberation wars, defensive wars and genocidal wars against civilian populations, bad, immoral, illegal "warrior" actions, often executed on orders of a "vigilante militia leader".

Let's say the German Wehrmacht had "ordered" successfully an assassination of the SS contingent and Hitler and his charges themselves. You wouldn't blame those, who acted on order, but did liberate the population from a dictator or fascist in a revolutionary military action? Or those Polish resistance fighters, who killed the Nazis, also "on orders" of their commanders, no? Or the French resistance fighters. A liberation army that defends itself against an army of a fascist regime, those "warriors" also act on "orders". They also kill. Some say for a good cause.

It's late and I am not that smart anyway. Make of it what you want.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

it is not my intention to rag on your son specifically. I'm glad he was a soldier, and is not one now. If he were one still, I would do whatever I could to help get him out of whatever slaughterhouse had him on its rolls.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

we are very careful not to lay blame upon the soldiers themselves because most often they have been bamboozled into joining the military "to fight for our freedoms." The real blame lies with our system of propaganda in this country which creates and perpetuates stereotypes, starting with the evil concept of American exceptionalism. We are the greatest terrorist nation on earth and most people have no real idea of the wrongs we have committed upon people worldwide in our quest for empire.

Based upon the conversations I have personally had with veterans or their families, most who served in combat in Iraq and/or Afghanistan come back traumatized from the experience. This nation creates soldiers as killing machines. One man, in particular talked with us at length last summer. He had served three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq and was wounded in combat in Iraq. Many of his fellow soldiers did not return. He originally joined because he believed the propaganda about fighting for our freedoms. He was very outspoken and angry about his experience, saying that the US government is lying about the wars over there. He also had very negative things to say about how the VA treats returning and wounded vets.

Another man who spoke with us this spring was an attorney from SC whose father had been career military. His practice was based mainly on helping people get Social Security and Veteran's benefits. He said as bad a reputation that the Social Security Administration had for denying claims, working with them was a piece of cake compared to the VA. He said it takes years to recover legitimate claims from the VA, many of which were originally approved by the regional office only to be denied by Washington.

The whole system of military as an offensive machine is reprehensible.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

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

War is only natural to a political animal. Being a soldier is abnormal and unhealthy.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

just disagree. By far the greatest blame lies with the soldiers themselves. Because without them, there would be no killing. Politicos and MICs and der fuhrers and "revolutionary vanguards" and sun kings and gods-as-men and tribal warlords and apelings hooting around the water hole, and all the other blare-mouthed greedy grasping whatnots, could rant and rave all they wished. But if soldiers and "warriors" everywhere, if each and every individual human being, and for all time, dropped tools, that would be the end of it.

Here, in present time, among the Americans, there is no longer a draft. It is no longer compulsory to enroll as a serial killer, or face prison or exile. Thus, these people are willing agents of Thanatos. Who sign up to kill. And for money.

In my view, blaming Daddy—it's Bush's fault, it's Obama's fault, it's Putin's fault, it's Stalin's fault, it's Hitler's fault, it's Wellington's fault, it's Tojo's fault, it's the Khan's fault, it's Pol Pot's fault, it's Pericles' fault, it's the King of Qin's fault—is hogwash.

Be a human. For jeebus' sake. A free human being. Alive on this earth. And kill no one.

"I write along a single line: I never get off it. I said that you were never to kill anyone, and I meant it."

And it's just true:

but without him how would hitler
have condemned them at dachau
without him caesar would have stood alone
he's the one who gives his body
as a weapon of the war
and without him all this killing can't go on

he's the universal soldier
and he really is to blame

Which does not at all mean we cannot break, and break again, and break on all and every day, in, with them, in empathy, being there.

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

Spring comes to Kirrie, all the world’s in bloom
Winter is forgiven now, fooled by April’s broom
Kirrie, oh Kirrie, you were aye my hame
Till Napoleon’s bloody cannon hit their aim

Jeannie, oh Jeannie, I am surely done
Stricken down in battle, at the mooth o Boney’s guns
Jeannie, oh Jeannie, aye sae dear tae me
Let me hold you in my mind afore I dee

For the cold returns in autumn
When the wind rakes the trees
And the summer lies forgotten
In the cold bed of leaves
As winter begins, aye mind Boney
It wasn’t only you
Who was broken on the fields of Waterloo

Surgeon, oh surgeon, leave me to my pain
Save your knife for others, who will surely rise again
Surgeon, oh surgeon, leave my blood to pour
Let it drain into the bitter clay once more

Daughter, oh daughter, listen dear tae me
Never wed a soldier, or a widow you will be

Daughter, oh daughter, curse your lad to die
Ere he catches the recruiting sergeant’s eye

Boney, oh Boney, war was aye your game
Bloody field your table, cannon yours to aim
Boney, oh Boney, we aye lived the same
Drilling laddies not to fear the muskets’ flame

For the cold returns in autumn
When the wind rakes the trees
And the summer lies forgotten
In a cold bed of leaves
As winter begins, aye mind Boney
It wasn’t only you
Who was broken on the fields of Waterloo

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

I just think that many who sign up have no idea what it means.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

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

mimi's picture

makes them understand very fast what it means. Being in combat situations really then absolutely confirms and makes it unmistakenly clear.

up
0 users have voted.
Unabashed Liberal's picture

at DKos yesterday--here's the link.

It got so redundant, it was absolutely ridiculous.

I still don't know what to make of the dude, who is/was a major FP'er (I believe). Is he a PUMA?

Fourth Of July ] photo: fourth of july animatedfireworks.gif
[Fourth Of July, Uploaded By Ran87dle, Photobucket]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here's the link to the 'meltdown.' Whew!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/02/1398496/-If-this-is-a-Democrati...

Whoah! Just saw a 'clock'--does that mean he's received a 'time out?' (Which some folks suggested last evening.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Got a couple of links to share, later. Apparently, FSC met with De Blasio regarding his so-called 'plan'--before he released it.

(They probably decided, together, to not have him endorse her, until much later in the process--so as to not add to the "coronation' aspect of her run. Not that we'll ever know for certain. And, maybe/I hope that I'm wrong.)

May have accidentally indented this comment. Sorry! Too lazy to re-do it.

Wink


Mollie

"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller


Visit Us At Caucus99Percent.Com

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

hecate's picture

Armando. The meth-caked wife-beater.

Once upon a time, an interesting letter circulated, among some in the lefty tubosphere, about said meth-caked wife-beating. Written by the wife. Around the time Armando decided to transfer the allegiance of his Clenis, from his then-wife, to dKos' McJoan.

Armando, in those days, liked to ram vast quantities of meth up all available nostrils, and then inscribe 367 posts per second to dKos. Most of these posts consisted of him illiterately screaming. But he was, to site management, Useful. For he strapped on his pee-pee gun, and went after all the site's strongest women, sweeping them off the board: Marisacat, hrh, Miss Devore. Etc.

As the 2008 primaries approached, Armando bellowed everywhere that he was supporting Chris Dodd, the banksters' best friend. He was immediately slavishly followed in this endorsement by Turkana—the man who has never had an original thought, and who is now known as Laurence Lewis, and whose mouth has permanently encircled Armando's cock for nearly a decade.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Armando was banned from dKos when he conceived a CT—which he rashly took public, and there on dKos itself—that various different-one FPers were Plotting To Do Him Wrong. He shortly thereafter got in Trouble with the Law people (he's a lawyer), because it developed that he had been posting 367 comments per second to dKos at the same time he was billing law clients Big Dollars for allegedly performing Really Important law work.

His ass kicked off the site, Armando gravitated over to the Clinton II dead-ender last-throes site Talk Left—sealing a deal with site-owner Jeralyn, in which he promised there not to foam at the mouth—where he was quickly joined by Turkana/Lewis, who had flounced off dKos in a screaming huff when the site sided towards Obama. Turk next setting up shop on the dead-ender Clinton II true-believer site Left Coaster.

There at Talk Left, Turkana/Lewis, and Armando, and the third member of their menage, andgarden, would stay up nights, there in their dead threads, slagging all things dKos, and fellating mightily Clinton II, their new White Wonder.

When Obama was elected president, Turkana/Lewis waited I think maybe two weeks, after Obama was sworn in, before he sidled back onto the site to begin savagely stabbing every knife available into Obama's back—the Bad Black Man who had Stolen The Nomination from the White Woman. Turkana/Lewis played absolutely all of his cards right, and was rewarded ultimately with elevation to the front page—his life's goal for on to a decade. Once upon a time I occupied a back-channel site where Turk used to demand that people go in and HR those he Didn't Like. He there freely expressed his Great Lust to be a dKos FPer. When, one year, Meteor Blades publicly suggested smintheus, rather than Turkana, for the FP, Turkana nearly had to be restrained from plunging a knife into his throat. Not to mention the throats of smintheus, and MB.

Armando's ass arose out of the ashes when the site switched to dKos4. This is because, after peeder walked off the place in disgust—peeder the guy who had designed the scoop version of dKos—Markos has never been able to hire any IT-anyone who knows the law from a leachfield. In the switchover to dKos 4, all the many banned, were inadvertently born again alive. One of them was Armando. He had cut, it developed, a deal with Markos, wherein he would agree to no longer, this time, as previously, foam at the mouth and projectile vomit and lead legions of HR soldiers around the site (the very first HR-packs on dKos were Armando's.) Turk was already there, snuggled up on the FP. Armando re-emerged. And slow-pokey andgarden arrived shortly thereafter. And the sadsack dead-thread menage, was together again.

For reasons passeth my particular understanding, Armando needed to have an explosion in the diary referenced above. Who knows. Maybe some kick-ass meth came in. It's an explosion pretty much meek and mild, compared to his historic efforts. But proof positive that, in this presidential cycle, as in the last, he, and his organ-grinder-monkey Turkana/Lewis, are all in, for the screaming-meemie Clinton II.

This just for those who might be interested in history . . . .

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

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

Unabashed Liberal's picture

(gossip) columnist Hedda Hopper--William Hopper's Mom. Anyhoo, you could have given her a run for the money with that account of DKos and its staff writers. Wink

And, you may recall that William Hopper played Perry Mason's sidekick--Paul Drake. Those reruns were amongst my favorite TV (mystery) series.

Hey, thanks for the education. I thought that he might be a PUMA, 'cause I believed that I had seen his diaries at the now defunct Talk Left Blog. I wasn't positive, though.

(I didn't blog during the 2008 election cycle--just lurked.)


Mollie

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

mimi's picture

I wonder if I can decipher your writing style and attach it to a handle from way back, but I can't... Smile

Your knowledge seems to be in depth. All I remember is that Armando was the "heh" guy and that he wouldn't reveal his identity and therefore didn't show up on the early Yearly Dailykos Meeting. I don't remember how they called it at that time. I really didn't read that much back then, but remember Armando well. And I think he was a lousy writer when it came to explain legal stuff. I am a little anti-lawyer when it comes to the two lawyers on dailykos. They didn't fulfill their responsibility to educate the readers as they should, imo.

Your style is "prickly". Smile

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

to read all your comments. Smile

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

I don't exist.

I'm just the hum in the wires.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPckuAS3BFM]

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

I do believe that there are MANY young men in the US, who don't see any other chance to earn their living and their education than by going into the military. There are even quite some women, who are in similar situations. And if those young men are so desperate, I think it's a bit unfair to blame them for their decision. Some of your words I find over the top and offensive. Nobody intends to become a serial killer.

In my view, blaming Daddy—it's Bush's fault, it's Obama's fault, it's Putin's fault, it's Stalin's fault, it's Hitler's fault, it's Wellington's fault, it's Tojo's fault, it's the Khan's fault, it's Pol Pot's fault, it's Pericles' fault, it's the King of Qin's fault—is hogwash.

Oh yes, they are to blame and big time at that. It's politicians and commanders in chief, who decide about wars, not the soldiers. Sorry, your demand that all 'warriors' should drop "tools" is just so "out of reality", why don't you ask that all Americans drop their beloved handguns? Nobody forces them to carry them around and use them.

You have no idea how much into despair you can put a returning combat veteran with that kind of "blame yourself, soldier" kind of talk. Now I am serious and not kidding.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

there were "MANY young men in [in Pericles' Athens, in Wellington's England, in Tojo's Japan, in Hitler's Germany, in the Khan's Mongolia, in the King of Qin's China] who don't see any other chance to earn their living and their education than by going into the military."

So what? They get a pass? For willingly signing up to kill? To kill for money?

And I am absolutely not, as you claim, "out of reality." In truth, "out of reality" is where human beings kill one another. Because they "don't see any other chance to earn their living and their education than by going into the military." That's "reality"? No. That's screaming gibbering insanity. Or cold hard deliberate willful intentional serial-killing.

It is—without sacrasm—a pity, that serial killers, experience afterwards, as you say, "despair." It is, however, and without doubt, a greater pity, that those they killed, can experience nothing at all. Because they're dead. Killed for no reason at all.

Except, maybe, as "reason," the "reason" that their serial killers "don't see any other chance to earn their living and their education than by going into the military."

And—so sorry—it's pure horseshit that "it's politicians and commanders in chief, who decide about wars, not the soldiers."

Because the soldiers are the ones who decide to go out there and bomb and shoot and strafe and slit.

If the soldiers all just said: sayonara: no wars at all: that would be the end of it.

he's the universal soldier
and he really is to blame

That's just the way it is.

And I know all about combat veterans. My father was a combat veteran. Whose best friend's head was blown right off his neck, and into my father's mouth. I have held combat veterans in my arms and in my mind never do they leave my mind never do they leave my mind never do they leave my mind never do they leave my mind never do they leave my mind. And for more than 45 years. And to them, and to all and every, I say this:

take your sunken eyes
learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting
for this moment to be free

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be3OkvBZaIY]

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

emotions in your response. It's hard for me to walk in your shoes or know where those feelings are coming from. So, if I have triggered those feeling and caused you pain with my opinion, please forgive me. I am having difficulties to understand the songs you are posting and some of your thoughts. You cite many wars about I don't know anything. I will think and read your comments over to see if I will be able to follow them after carefully consider their meaning again.

Neither my father, who was sent to war pretty much directly after highschool to go to war (drafted like all of the Germans in 1939 - not sent to Poland - thank God - and he was by no means a gang-ho Hitler supporter). His younger brother died in "combat" - friendly fire - a fact never told my grandmother. My mother's father was a wwI veteran and she had two wwII fallen brother-in-laws, both her sisters were wwII widows. My son enlisted before 9/11 and before we had a chance to evaluate G.W.Bush policies. It was January 2001 and Bush was just inaugurated. I remember very well thatI at that time had no idea who G.W.Bush was, nor his whole gang at that time. My son was seduced by a "savvy recruiter". He did all "the research" by himself (about GI bill and all the benefits) and decided to enlist. And yes, I would say, my son saw no future in living of hourly part time jobs in retail, live guarding and other such nonsense. I would never have allowed him to enlist after 9/11 for all the "patriotic reasons" many Americans did. By summer 2002 it was clear that they would be sent to Iraq. If you really believe they were gang-ho and up to "serial-killing" Iraqis, I leave that choice up to you. And contrary to what many Americans believe there were soldiers, not many, who understood from the very beginning that this war was the wrong war, unjust and and a horrible idea. My son even voiced his opinion about it in writing to his commander.

I have no real understanding about the horrors Vietnam Veterans went through, I know their trauma is life-long. But I can't get over myself to blame them for their service, though I was in Germany as young woman demonstrating with other left leaning people against the Vietnam War. I have no mercy for soldiers who engage in torture of prisoners. None. They are sadists and torturers and eventually killers. Not all soldiers are involved in such acts. So, I am not going to blame "soldiers" en masse. I also have no mercy with vigilante mercenaries, who bastardize the civilian population all over the world. None. They are killers.

BTW the poem you posted, my son had learned about it in the little bit he learned in college, after he left the military. So, in a way it's not new. It's always posted when it comes to these issues.

I hope I have expressed myself in way that are acceptable to the readers here. So sorry this comment exchange has happened. I am ready to forget about it.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

itch ... to play "dirty" with you...bad me ... Sorry 2

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

my meat space duties keep nagging me. See you later or in the EB. And thanks for commenting.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

From Germany, I supposedly am not allowed to view this New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi campus commencement video
http://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news-events/commencement.html
due to "privacy settings". But the Angry Arab blog reports the president of NYU said this:

"Eight years ago, an extraordinary leader, a person who approaches the ideal of Plato's philosopher king, sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, he and I shared a dream of this day, of you, of who you are, of what you've done, of what you'll do in the years ahead to repair a broken world and to create a united human kind, a community of communities." (John Sexton, president of NYU)

I suspect this is part of the explanation how America and the rest of the capitalist world got to where we are today, with the bankers and the winner-take-all economy and such.

Our financial, political, social, and in the case of NYU, educational elite came to enjoy hobnobbing with ultra-rich plutocrats like the oil sheikhs, using their money (and being used by their money) to get things done.

So as time went by, members of this elite and their offspring quietly took our country and society's democratic ideals to the vet, so to speak—and had them "put to sleep."

In place of democratic philosophy, the folks we allow to lead us around by the nose sold their souls and loyalties to an ideology of "enlightened" feudalism and despotism by the 1% of the 1% of the 1%—having convinced themselves that, hey, Plato envisioned something like that, so it's not a betrayal, just going back to an earlier Western notion of civilization.

up
0 users have voted.

I added this at the GOS.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

Opinion: If You’re Against Coal Mining, Walk In and Stop It -
By Dorothee Haussermann and Martin Weis

It’s a late June evening in the German town of Mayence and about 40 people are gathered to discuss a coal phase-out and degrowth.

“It’s possible,” continues the speaker. “You just walk up to the excavator and it will stop – at least temporarily. So, if you take the threat of climate change seriously, what keeps you from stopping the destruction right on the spot?”

To keep coal in the ground and not burn it in order to avert catastrophic climate change, we now know that we cannot rely on the German government. Yesterday, Jul. 1, the partners of the ruling coalition scrapped a proposed climate levy, an instrument that had been proposed by energy minister Sigmar Gabriel to still reach the national climate goals for 2020, an overall emissions reduction of 40 percent.

The measure was backed by climate scientists and economic experts. It also enjoyed huge public support, with the overwhelming majority of Germans in favour of a coal phase-out.

Four of Europe’s five largest emitters are German lignite power plants and coal accounts for one-third of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Two points are particularly infuriating and in fact quite worrying. There seems to be an absolute disconnect between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s earlier rhetoric of the ‘decarbonisation of the worldwide economy’ at the Jun. 7-8 G7 Summit in Elmau, and the actions of her government at home only a few days later.

This summer, the German and European anti-coal movement will take the fight to a new level. A coalition of grassroots groups and NGOs have called for a mass act of civil disobedience that is intended to bring operations in the Rhineland coalfields – the biggest source of Europe’s CO2 emissions – to a halt.

I am all for it. Walking into the coal mines and just play dirty with the excavator.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

My great grandfather and my grandfather were both in management of the Rochester and PIttsburgh Coal Co., now part of Consol Energy. My great grandfather started out as a boiler maker with the company. My grandfather worked in the mines ini his youth during the summers when he was not in school. I have seen the company towns and the ravages to the countryside in western Pennsylvania as a result of strip mining. Coal was dirty back then and it is still dirty. Even my grandfather who spent a relatively short part of his career in the mines himself, suffered from some black lung. Coal is a form of energy that needs to stay in the ground forever. There is no such thing as "clean coal."

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

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

mimi's picture

I still accept coal mining to use for direct heating purposes. The reason why I think like that is that it is (or at least was in German during wwII) a form of heating material that was available locally and available in a decentralized manner (no middle man, no grid), you could buy the coal briquets like you by charcoal in bags in the grocery stores etc. Without those supplies people like in Berlin wouldn't have survived the winter 1944/45. The coal was transported via trains (or flown in - I think even by Americans) and civilians used them in their homes' coal-burning stoves for heating and cooking. The survival of the civilians in cities would not have been successful if they had to rely on wood, which was used everywhere outside of cities in the countryside.

That has obviously nothing to do with today's electricity generation through coal and is another issue. And I am really ignorant about how coal was used in the US way back. Today it's all about electricity generation and that's the crux. I have never seen dealers who deliver you coal briquets to your homes in the US.

My parents house I grew up in heated with coal briquets. Some dealers in our small town delivered them in big bags and they were thrown into a specific cellar room for that purpose through a chute. Worked nicely. I think my parent by the 1960ies changed to oil, later to gas.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

I can attest to it ...

Digital amnesia: Mobile phones deprive users of memory skills
Published time: July 02, 2015

Kaspersky lab surveyed 6,000 users aged 16 and older in eight European countries. The results showed that 49 percent of UK respondents do not remember their parents’ telephone numbers, 57 percent haven’t memorized the number for their place of work, 71 percent of parents can’t dial their children off the top of their head, and 87 percent don’t know the number of their children’s schools by heart. On the other hand, 47 percent can recite the phone numbers they had when they were between age 10 and 15, likely before devices had such large memories.

The study also reveals that some groups become more distressed than others when information on their devices is lost, with 44 percent of women and 40 percent of users between the ages of 16 and 24 becoming “overwhelmed by sadness.” Moreover, 25 percent of females and 38 percent of younger users would become totally frantic in such an event, given that their phones or tablets are the only place their images and contacts are saved.

Oh yes, so true. Totally frantic ... I have seen that.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

Markos Moulitsas: A bad week for the GOP
Why not for his own site? Oh well, I don't care what kind of week the Republicans had anyway.

up
0 users have voted.
Big Al's picture

The opposition if that's too much for some. He's part of the problem, a royal sympathizer, a charter member of the
establishment.
It's only when you truly make that division that you become free.
Because it has to be done.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Some people think DKos, like Facebook, was a CIA experiment and investment.

I don't know of any results-based evidence that would solidly refute them.

up
0 users have voted.

and he knows it.

up
0 users have voted.