The Evening Blues - 10-2-15

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist and singer Guy Davis. Enjoy!

Guy Davis - Things About Coming My Way

“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”

-- John Pilger


News and Opinion

U.S. Senators Hem and Haw on Saudi Arabia's Human Rights Abuses

Leading American politicians of both major parties appear to share an extreme reluctance to openly criticize the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally that has ramped up executions of its own citizens, led a coalition bombing effort in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, and supported Sunni extremist groups throughout war-torn Syria.

Given the news this week that Saudi-led forces bombed a wedding party in Yemen, killing scores of civilians, as well as the decision by the Saudi government to behead and then crucify Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the teenage son of a government critic, I attempted to talk about the Saudi Arabian human rights record to a number of politicians at the Washington Ideas Forum, an event hosted by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute to discuss “this year’s most pressing issues and ideas of consequence.”

Most were uninterested in commenting.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney smiled and repeatedly said, “Nice to see you,” when I asked if he had any concerns about the Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign in Yemen.

I found Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., as he was getting out of his car. “As the co-founder of the Human Rights Caucus in the Senate, I do think we need to pay attention to human rights all over the world, regardless of where human rights violations arise,” he said.

I asked if he would comment specifically on Saudi Arabia. Coons ignored me and continued walking into the building.

[More at the link, including a bizarre reply by John McCain. -js]

As Saudis Block a Human Rights Inquiry in Yemen, America Stays Quiet

A Dutch-led effort to create a human rights mission for Yemen was abandoned Wednesday amid intense Saudi opposition at the UN, but human rights experts are laying blame in part at the feet of the United States, which failed to vigorously back the Netherlands — and may have worked behind the scenes to head off the independent investigation.

A Saudi-led coalition has bombed Yemen since late March in an attempt to push back Houthi rebels and their allies and reinstate the government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The US (and UK) offers logistical support for the coalition, in addition to selling billions of dollars in weapons to its members, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. US officials say American personnel are also involved in providing targeting assistance for airstrikes, which the UN says are responsible for the majority of the more than 2,300 civilian deaths in the conflict in the past six months.

In September, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called for an independent, international inquiry into crimes committed in Yemen in the preceding year. Shortly after, the Netherlands, supported by several European countries, presented a draft resolution to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Among other elements, it called for a human rights mission, commissioned by Zeid, to be sent to Yemen, and for that team to be allowed access to all areas of the country. ...

Largely quiet on the matter was the United States. After multiple requests for comment on whether the American government supported an international, independent human rights inquiry for Yemen, US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power released an ambiguously worded statement on September 24. ... Observers in Geneva and New York say that instead of pushing for the Dutch resolution or one of its later drafts to be passed, the US simply let it die.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights run by immigrant from his UK home

Putin in Paris for talks as Russia urged to stop hitting Syrian opposition

Vladimir Putin is meeting western leaders for the first time since Russia launched airstrikes in Syria, amid a growing rift over who it is targeting.

Allies in the US-led coalition against Islamic State released a joint statement calling on Moscow to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting Isis.

The statement by France, Turkey, the United States, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Britain expressed concern that Russia’s actions would “only fuel more extremism and radicalisation”. Russia insists it is only bombing Isis and other “terror” groups.

The Russian president is in Paris for a peace summit on the Ukraine conflict, but Russia’s sudden intervention in Syria looks set to dominate as he holds talks with France’s François Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Alexei Pushkov, a top Russian foreign affairs official, told French radio he believed the air campaign could last about three or four months. He also hit out at western criticism, writing on Twitter: “The US is criticising Russia for ‘lack of selectivity in our targets’ in Syria. So what stopped them from picking the right targets over a whole year, rather than just pointlessly bombing the desert?!”

US Seeks to Cut Europeans Out of Syria Peace Talks

With the UN General Assembly setting up a growing call for international negotiations on ending the Syrian Civil War, the Obama Administration is taking a risky position, reportedly trying to keep all Western European nations from taking part in the negotiations. ...

The US is envisioning a five nation effort, led by them, and including Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The assumption from this is likely that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will back the US position, giving them a 3-2 majority at the negotiating table. ...

US officials are defending their position as believing that the talks will be easier if they restrict it to those “directly involved” in Syria, but this must inevitably raise the question of whether the US is really “involved” in any way that France, for instance, is not.

The real risk of including France, Germany, and Britain is the appeal to reasonableness they are liable to bring to the table, as the US can count on the Saudis and Turkish government to both unconditionally spurn any unity deal that keeps Assad in power in any form, while the European nations are more likely to push for some sort of compromise deal that starts a transition.

Russian Airstrikes in Syria Could Last Four Months, Officials Say

Russia's airstrikes in Syria could continue for three to four months, according to the head of the lower house of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, as controversy continues over what Moscow's attacks are actually targeting.

"There is always a risk of being bogged down but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months," Alexei Pushkov told French radio Europe 1, adding that the strikes were going to intensify.

Officials announced on Friday that airstrikes had been carried out for a third day in row and claimed that these hit 12 Islamic State (IS) targets.

Yet the US, which is leading its own air campaign against IS, says Moscow has been using its campaign as a pretext to hit other groups opposed to Russia's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Some of the groups that have been hit are supported by countries which oppose both Assad and IS, including at least one group that received training from the CIA.

Russia's air campaign in a country already being bombed by a US-led coalition of Western and Arab countries means that the Cold War superpower foes Moscow and Washington are now flying combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War II.

An excellent exposition of the propagandistic lies, distortions and obfuscations emanating from the US government and its lapdog press. It's well worth reading in full. Here's a taste to get you started:

War Party Hates Putin – Loves al-Qaeda

As Russian fighter jets target al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, the Western media is up in arms – and in denial. They deny the Russians are taking on ISIS – and they are indignant that Putin is targeting al-Qaeda, which is almost never referred to by its actual name, but is instead described as “al-Nusra,” or the more inclusive “Army of Conquest,” which are alternate names for the heirs of Osama bin Laden.

And there are no ideological lines being drawn in this information war: both the left and the right – e.g. the left-liberal Vox and the Fox News network – are utilizing a map put out by the neoconservative “Institute for the Study of War” to “prove” that Putin isn’t really attacking ISIS – he’s actually only concerned with destroying the “non-ISIS” rebels and propping up the faltering regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The premise behind this kind of propaganda is that there really is some difference between ISIS and the multitude of Islamist groups proliferating like wasps in the region: and that, furthermore, al-Qaeda is “relatively” moderate when compared to the Islamic State. Yes, incredibly, the US and British media are pushing the line that the al-Qaeda fighters in Syria, known as al-Nusra, are really the Good Guys.

Didn’t you know that we have always been at war with Eastasia?

There is much whining, this [Thursday] morning, that a supposedly US-“vetted” group known as Tajammu al-Aaza has felt Putin’s wrath – but when we get down into the weeds, we discover that this outfit is fighting alongside al-Qaeda:

“Jamil al-Saleh, a defected Syrian army officer who is now the leader of the rebel group Tajammu al-Aaza, told AlSouria.net that the Russian airstrikes targeted his group’s base in al-Lataminah, a town in the western Syrian governorate of Hama. That area represents one of the farthest southern points of the rebel advance from the north and is therefore a crucial front line in the war. An alliance of Syrian rebel factions, including both the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front and groups considered by Washington to be more moderate, successfully drove Assad regime forces out of the northern governorate of Idlib and are now pushing south into Hama.”

‘If Russia found a cure for cancer, western media would make it look like a bad thing’

US Sending Mixed Signals on Russia’s Strikes in Syria

There’s a disconcerting lack of consistency among US comments on Russia’s launching of airstrikes against ISIS and other rebel factions in Syria and even within individual US governmental agencies there seem to be a fairly broad array of conflicting statements, with some expressing concerns about the “mixed signals” the US is sending on the matter.

Secretary of State John Kerry is perhaps the most glaring culprit, at times warning of “grave concerns” about Russian involvement and insisting that the US welcomes any Russian efforts to fight ISIS within the same speech. In another speech he accused Russia of “siding with Hezbollah” and said Putin was making Russia a target for Sunni terror. ...

US officials were mostly consistent in condemning the possibility of Russian involvement in Syria before the airstrikes began, but since then there have been many conflicting accounts, and a lot of officials who were previously condemning Russia’s calls for unity suddenly talking  up the notion of a secular unified Syria fighting against ISIS.

The Pentagon has been bashing Russia on the matter, with Ash Carter condemning Russia’s military as “unprofessional” for the way they notified the US ahead of their airstrikes, while the White House suggested they had no problem at all with it, and saw Russia’s moves as consistent with their long-standing position of backing the Assad government.

U.S. seen unlikely to defend Syrian rebels from Russian strikes

Already out-gunned and out-manned in Syria’s civil war, U.S.-backed rebels are facing a new and possibly even more serious threat to their survival: Russian air strikes that Washington appears reluctant to thwart.

The Obama administration – blindsided by the speed of Moscow’s direct intervention and a Russian target list that included CIA-trained fighters – made clear on Thursday that the it had no desire to increase the risk of an air clash between the former Cold War foes.

While Washington took pains to insist it still considered the "moderate" opposition vital to Syria’s future and was not abandoning them, withholding U.S. air cover could further jeopardise beleaguered rebel forces.

President Barack Obama has rarely launched military action in support of the opposition in four years of Syria's civil war and is hesitant to get further ensnared in the conflict. Even if he wanted to, he could face legal limitations due to the scope of his presidential war powers. ...

Russia’s deepening role, together with inconclusive talks between the U.S. and Russian militaries on air safety on Thursday, underscored the consensus in Washington that Obama has few good options for turning the situation around.

Obama does have the power to expand the arming of moderate rebels so they can better defend themselves or to set up no-fly zones, as some critics at home have demanded, but U.S. officials note that such measures would carry their own risks of escalating Washington's involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be betting that Obama, wary of seeing the United States pulled into another Middle East war, would be unlikely to respond aggressively.

Inter-Imperial Feuds and the Lost Revolution in Syria

US Unlikely to Fight Russia Over ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels

Though the Obama Administration has “warned” Russia against attacking non-ISIS rebels in Syria, the Russian government has insisted that they are following the US example and attacking a list of different terrorist factions. Some of those factions were armed by the CIA, and still nominally are supported by the US. ...

The “moderate” factions from the era when the US was supporting them have, as Russia noted, in many cases defected to ISIS, and what’s left is a very limited force. ... White House officials are threatening “diplomatic consequences” to Russia if they don’t do what the US wants, but even here the risk is pretty limited for Russia, as those long-forgotten factions aren’t worth anything more than some token statements of disapproval to the US, not worth a serious worsening of US-Russian relations, and certainly not worth a military confrontation.

Lebanon Reaps Windfall From Congress

Tiny Lebanon is seeing its fortunes surge on Capitol Hill as fear of the Islamic State (IS) supplants any lingering concerns about Hezbollah.

Congress over the past year has approved more than $1 billion in proposed arms sales for the Lebanese armed forces, including attack aircraft and helicopters. And lawmakers on Sept. 29 cemented Beirut's status as a key ally with the release of a compromise annual defense bill that puts Lebanon on equal footing with longtime partner Jordan.

The free flow of aid and weapons represents a sea change from the situation five years ago, when Congress briefly held up all military aid following an incident in which Lebanese soldiers shot and killed an Israeli officer on the border. Hezbollah's political dominance over the following three years caused further hand-wringing on Capitol Hill, but over the past few months Lebanon's military has emerged as a trusted backstop against Islamist militants of all stripes.

Abbas UN Speech: "Bombshell" or Wet Firecracker?

Police use of chemical spray on Alabama schoolchildren violated civil rights

Federal judge finds officers attached to Birmingham schools routinely used a military-grade pepper spray-teargas mixture to quell normal adolescent behavior

A federal judge in Alabama ruled on Thursday that Birmingham police department officers violated the civil rights of high school students when officers used chemical spray to subdue them for minor behavioral issues.

The suit, initially filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010, alleged that school resource officers (SROs) assigned to schools in the Birmingham public school district were routinely resorting to chemical spray to deal with “normal – and, at times, challenging – adolescent behavior”. This included what the US district court judge Abdul Kallon described as non-threatening infractions that are “universal to all teenagers – ie backtalking and challenging authority”.

According to the SPLC, police in Birmingham public schools – whose students are predominantly black – sprayed about 300 students in 110 incidents between 2006 and 2011.

“This is a great victory for students and their families in Birmingham, and it sends a strong message to school officials across the country that it’s time to stop treating schoolchildren like they’re criminals,” said Ebony Howard, the SPLC’s lead attorney in the case.

The chemical spray in question, “Freeze +P”, is a military-grade mixture of pepper spray and teargas designed to cause “strong respiratory effects” and “severe pain”, according to the product’s manufacturer. One plaintiff recalled that being sprayed felt like “needles stabbing [her] face”, and several noted significant trouble breathing after inhaling the compound.

NYPD to require officers to report every time they use force

New York City police on Thursday announced a new policy requiring officers to report nearly every time they use force, shortly after a watchdog condemned the department’s inability to track such instances and its failure to discipline officers who used excessive force.

“NYPD was living a little bit in the dark ages,” said Philip Eure, the New York police inspector general, as he released an investigative report about the department.

The report stated that the NYPD had no standardized method of reporting or tracking the use of force throughout the department. The findings detailed a litany of New York City’s bad policing practices with regard to use of force, citing problems with officer training and policies intended to de-escalate situations.

Investigators reviewed 104 substantiated allegations of unwarranted force from the past five years and found that the commissioner had failed to discipline officers in 36% of those cases.

The department has no definition for what constitutes “force”, “excessive force”, or “deadly physical force”, investigators said, calling on the NYPD to clarify its policies. The report also faulted the agency’s training for officers. Of the nearly 500 hours of coursework in the police academy, investigators said they could only identify one nine-hour course specifically on the use of force.

As Secret Trade Talks Reveal Cracks, Demonstrators Aim Death Blows at TPP

As trade ministers from around the world continued meeting in Atlanta on Thursday for final-stretch negotiations on the corporate-friendly Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), civil society groups demonstrated on the streets in a final salvo against a deal they describe as "a wholesale auction of our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy to multinational corporations who put profits over people."

"They're getting close, but we can stop them," reads the Citizens Trade Campaign's call-to-action. "If we do, and the Atlanta round fails, many believe the TPP could be knocked off track indefinitely."


High-level officials including Japan's Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key have warned that if the talks do not wrap up this week, the 12-nation trade agreement could be put on ice for years.


"The window of opportunity to complete [the] TPP is closing so you wouldn’t say it’s impossible to complete the deal if it doesn’t take place in Atlanta, but it does become more difficult," Key told the Asia Society in New York this week.

Citing such remarks, organizers of Thursday's demonstration declare: "Very rarely do protests have as much potential for immediate results as this one."

Alongside Housing Activists, Warren Blasts HUD's Collusion with Wall Street

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday took part in a Washington, D.C. rally to urge the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to quit selling home loans to hedge funds and private financial firms.

Warren joined Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) and a group of community activists at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill to protest predatory lending schemes that allow financiers to foreclose on struggling borrowers without first modifying loan terms. Warren blasted HUD and the FHFA for their role in the crisis and called on the government to make it easier for nonprofit housing groups to buy distressed mortgages at auction.

"HUD and FHFA have been lining up with the Wall Street speculators," Warren said in a speech before the march. "This should surprise absolutely nobody.... Wall Street is interested in profits, not in working out a way for people to stay in their homes."

"These Wall Street investors made money by crashing the economy, got bailed out and now they’re back to feed at the trough again, scooping up these loans at rock-bottom prices so that they profit off them a second time—and it is up to us to stop that!" Warren said to a cheering crowd.

US economy adds only 142,000 jobs, raising doubts about interest rate rise

Payrolls outside of farming rose by 142,000 last month and August figures were revised sharply lower to show only 136,000 jobs added in August, Labor Department says

The US economy added only 142,000 jobs in September, raising doubts about whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates before the year’s end.

The unemployment rate remained steady at 5.1%.

Friday’s report by the Department of Labor fell short of expectation as economist expected employers to add 206,000 jobs.

Last month, the non-farm payroll figures for June and July were revised up, causing the unemployment rate to drop to 5.1%. August’s numbers were lower than expected, although many economists pointed out that the figures for August are usually revised up. However, in Friday’s report, the figures for both July and August were revised down.

July’s figure was revised from 245,000 to 223,000, and the change for August was revised from 173,000 to 136,000, meaning that 59,000 fewer jobs were created than previously reported. ...

Janet Yellen, chair of the US Federal Reserve, said in September that continued job growth and 2% inflation would indicate that US economy was ready for a hike in interest rates.

Unemployment 5.1%? What a total load of crap!

emp-pop9-15



the horse race


'60 Minutes' used 'planted' questions, Clinton email says

CBS's "60 Minutes" used questions "planted" by the State Department in a 2011 interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a State Department aide told Hillary Clinton in a newly released email.

"I just received confirmation from 60 Minutes that a piece on Julian Assange will air Sunday night," Philip Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, wrote to Clinton in 2011. "He will be the only person featured. We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to 'balance' the piece. 60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with them during the course of the interview. We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program." ...

Crowley's email was released Thursday by the State Department as part of an ongoing release of emails from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. It is the fifth such batch of emails to be released amid the ongoing controversy over Clinton's use of a private email server.

Rock-Star Appeal of Bernie Sanders Should Make Clinton Very Worried

First came the big crowds, now comes the big money. At this point, anyone who doesn’t take Bernie Sanders seriously must not be paying attention.

Sanders’ campaign announced that it raised an eye-bugging $26 million in the third quarter—essentially matching the $28 million raised during those three months by Hillary Clinton, long considered the presumptive Democratic nominee. If that doesn’t make Clintonistas nervous, they need defibrillation. ...

Polls show Sanders leading Clinton in New Hampshire and essentially tied with her in Iowa. It is possible that Clinton could lose the first two primary states and still win the nomination, but only two Democrats have accomplished this feat—Bill Clinton, who didn’t even campaign in Iowa in 1992, and George McGovern, for whom the subsequent 1972 general election did not work out well. ...

What explains Sanders’ appeal? Much is made of his “authenticity,” and it’s certainly true that there is a refreshing lack of artifice about him. But tousled hair alone isn’t enough to explain his rock-star status in college towns and other liberal redoubts.

I believe his success to date is due to insight and ideology. Sanders was perceptive enough to frame a message that is perfect for the zeitgeist: The system is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. And having identified the problem, he offers clear and internally consistent remedies.



the evening greens


India unveils climate change plan

India, the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has pledged to source 40% of its electricity from renewable and other low-carbon sources by 2030.

It is the last major economy, following 140 other countries including China, the US and the EU, to submit a climate change plan to the UN before international talks to reach a deal on tackling global warming in Paris this December.

Campaigners welcomed the commitment to cut the “emissions intensity” of its economy – a ratio of carbon emissions per unit of GDP – by up to 35% by 2030.

India’s population of 1.2 billion, about 363 million of whom live in poverty, is projected to grow to 1.5 billion by 2030. “It is estimated that more than half of India of 2030 is yet to be built,” India’s submission claimed.

The country has previously pledged an emissions intensity cut of up to 25% by 2020.

Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister, said: “Though India is not part of the problem, it wants to be part of the solution. Our historical cumulative emission as of today is below 3%.”

In a speech in New York, he referenced the pope’s address to the UN last week and emphasised that while India was a big emitter, it was responsible for less carbon pollution than many developed countries since the industrial revolution.

India’s submission to the UN, known as its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), focuses on clean energy, including solar power, which the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has already strongly backed. It also promised to plant more forests by 2030 to absorb carbon emissions.

Modi has repeatedly said India would not accept constraints on its development as part of any climate deal. Unlike China’s submission to the UN in June, India’s does not spell out when its emissions might peak.

This Changes Everything: Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis Film Re-imagines Vast Challenge of Climate Change

VW scandal widens as France and Italy launch deception inquiries

The Volkswagen emissions-testing scandal is deepening, with authorities in France and Italy launching investigations into the embattled German carmaker.

Italy’s competition regulator is to investigate whether VW engaged in “improper commercial practices” by promoting its vehicles as meeting emissions standards which it failed to reach without a “defeat device”. ...

In France, an official from the prosecutor’s office told Reuters that an inquiry had been opened. The French magazine L’Express said this had been launched at the instigation of Pierre Serne, vice-president of the region Île-de-France responsible for transport.

It also emerged on Friday that other car manufacturers – BMW, Chrysler, General Motors, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz – are under scrutiny from the US regulator that exposed Volkswagen’s manipulation of emissions tests.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has broadened its investigation to include at least 28 diesel-powered car models made by those companies, according to the Financial Times.

To punish Volkswagen for its emissions scandal, make it build electric cars

Once the media storm around Volkswagen’s emission cheating scandal calms down, the most likely outcome is a massive recall and a huge fine. ...

A recall would be ineffective at best. Many VW car owners in the US are unlikely to voluntarily surrender cars that function properly and do not present, at the individual car level, a health risk. It is not certain that a fix can even be implemented. The best-case scenario of a recall is that some of the cars are brought in and have the emissions issue fixed at the expense of reduced gas mileage, thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The worst-case scenario is that VW sends millions of cars to the junkyard. Both outcomes are negatives for the environment.

As for a fine, $10bn seems to be the ballpark figure at this point. Some of it might help fund the Environmental Protection Agency but, if past fines to the financial industry are any indication, the money will mostly be used in areas that have little connection to the original issue. And fines, even really big ones, often fail to deter future misdeeds. Look at Wall Street, where fines have increased in both frequency and dollar amounts without ever reshaping the industry’s culture.

Here’s a better outcome: the EPA should mandate that Volkswagen exclusively produce electric vehicles within five years for the US market. This would remove the emissions from millions of cars, not only health pollutants like nitrous oxide but also more essentially the other greenhouse gases that threaten our whole planet. The company is well on its way to commercializing electric vehicles, and the $10bn fine could be put to better use by building a battery factory in the US to supply those electric models, creating jobs along the way. Add in an obligation for VW to equip US highways with electric charging stations and we’ll have changed the transportation landscape of this country for the better.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Guantánamo Speaks: Former Prisoner Given Voice and Shape in Laurie Anderson Show

Sustaining Perpetual War: The Bloodless Narrative

When Shaker Aamer is free from Guantánamo the slurs will start

Full unedited text of Vladimir Putin's interview with Charlie Rose: What CBS left out

Syria: Obama’s Bay of Pigs?


A Little Night Music

Guy Davis - Matchbox Blues

Guy Davis - That's No Way to Get Along

Guy Davis - Black Coffee

Guy Davis - Goin' Down Slow

Guy Davis - Cain't Be Satisfied

Guy Davis - Rolling In My Sweet Baby's Arms

Guy Davis - Waiting on the Cards to Fall

Guy Davis - Pay Day

Guy Davis - Step It Up and Go

Guy Davis - 61 highway

Guy Davis- You don't know my mind

Phil Wiggins & Guy Davis - Louis Collins

Guy Davis - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean



Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

hillary.PNG

It works

A Hillary Clinton staffer planted questions in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to email records released this week. At the time of the interview in early 2011, Assange had already leaked sensitive, embarrassing information from the State Department. The unclassified staff email to Clinton, released amid her ongoing email scandal, demonstrates not only that the former Secretary of State and her staff were out to discredit Assange, but that the government manipulates media and wields heavy influence over it.

In an email from January 28, 2011, Philip J. Crowley, then Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, alerted Hillary Clinton that 60 Minutes conducted an interview with Assange set to air on the 30th. As Crowley informed her, “We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to ‘balance’ the piece.” This statement alone shows the access to media that powerful government agents enjoy.

He goes on to further reveal that influence: “60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with them during the course of the interview,” Crowley said, suggesting the interview would not be embarrassing to Clinton or the State Department: “We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program.”

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

amusingly the article upstairs in the diary about this has a response from 60 minutes:

"60 Minutes" spokesman Kevin Tedesco took issue with Crowley's portrayal of the situation and accused him of trying to curry favor with Clinton.

"The idea of a 'plant' is as preposterous as this email writer's attempt to get credit from his boss," Tedesco told CNNMoney. "We spoke to many sources for this story."

preposterous, i tell you, preposterous. the spokesdroid doth protest too much, methinks.

up
0 users have voted.

link

An email sent to Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state shows that government officials tried to pressure the Washington Post into suppressing details about a WikiLeaks cable that revealed information about the US cooperating with Turkey to share intelligence about Kurdish militants.

The message, released by the State Department on Wednesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News, was forwarded to Clinton on September 9, 2011. Cheryl Mills, Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department, passed along an email that had originally been sent to 14 State Department officials, including Mills.

"Despite our efforts, WaPo will proceed with its story on US-Turkey intel cooperation against PKK," the message said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers' Party. "They will not make redactions we requested so expect the Wikileaks cables to be published in full."
..
"The administration's response seems quite weak to me," Clinton aide Mark Penn wrote to Clinton in an email dated November 28, 2010. He recommended offering "a bounty for the capture of those responsible," and "aggressively dealing with the problem directly."

The next day, Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal sent an email laying out a strategy for how the WikiLeaks documents "can be cast as reflecting a positive light on the US government and diplomacy."
...
Less than a week later, Blumenthal sent Clinton another email with a link to a New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen headlined: "American Diplomacy Revealed — as Good."
...
"Not bad — thx," Clinton wrote back to Blumenthal the next morning.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

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 -

joe shikspack's picture

up
0 users have voted.

link

James Parkey spent more than a decade crisscrossing the U.S. selling poor counties on a way to get rich quick. He’d help local governments issue tax-free bonds to build private prisons that would rent beds to the federal government, mainly to hold undocumented immigrants. Parkey’s model for financing lockups, which he promoted with help from a team of bond dealers, consultants, and lawyers, led to a boom in prison construction. While the jails succeeded in many places, almost two dozen defaults followed in cities and counties from Florida to Montana as the prisons struggled to fill beds amid the sudden glut. Then the IRS got involved.

As of July, eight detention center deals were being investigated over their tax-exempt financing, according to an IRS document. Several other counties in Texas and Arizona have settled with the government, paying as much as $1.9 million and refinancing their prisons with taxable debt, including at least three developed by Parkey and his network. In most cases the deals were “basically snake oil,” says Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, a nonprofit in Austin opposed to private prisons.
...
Polk County, one of the poorest in Texas, was eager to ink a deal with Parkey. In 2004 it created the IAH Public Facility Corporation to issue $49 million in tax-exempt bonds to build a jail to house immigrant detainees. Today, hundreds of the 1,054 beds in the detention center are empty. “I trusted the people, or we wouldn’t have gone forward with it,” says Tommy Overstreet, a county commissioner who voted for the facility. “At that particular time everything was go, go, go.”

The Polk facility was initially a boon for the county, generating almost $1 million a year in revenue. Then things changed. The federal government stopped sending as many inmates amid allegations of poor medical care, insufficient food, and excessive use of solitary confinement. The population dropped further after President Obama issued executive orders in 2012 and 2015 suspending detention and deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants. In May 2014 the IRS served notice that it considered the jail’s tax-exempt financing improper. The county development authority, which has settled with creditors over $49 million in outstanding bonds, agreed in September to pay the IRS $980,000 to resolve the case.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

Privatize prisons, corporations are people, money is speech, corporate prison operators $peak, more people go to prison, corporate prison operators have more $peech, ... What could go wrong?

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 -

FSA south near collapse

As Russian airstrikes on Wednesday and Thursday targeted rebel groups in central and northern Syria, many of them reportedly unaffiliated with the Islamic State, Islamist groups in the south are growing stronger, with IS fighters now operating openly near the border with Israel, an opposition spokesman said on Thursday....
Western training for moderate rebel fighters in Jordan has not taken place in five months, he added, and no ammunition or weaponry has reached the Free Syrian Army on the southern front in three months.
“The current situation is very bad,” the spokesman said. “No battles are taking place [with Assad forces] in our sector because there’s no ammunition.” While the Assad regime is maintaining its hold on the city of Daraa, near the Jordanian border, the surrounding villages are largely held by rebel forces.

In addition to the decline in ammunition, salaries have also been cut by 60 percent to Free Syrian Army fighters, the spokesman noted. An average FSA combatant earns just $70 a month, as compared to $300 earned by Islamist Nusra Front combatants or the salary of IS fighters, which can reach $500. The latter two organizations are classified as terror groups by the US and other Western states.

“The more Western states fall short in providing support to us, the more they help ISIS and Nusra,” he said. “If the donor states do not take a firm stand, within two months most fighters in the southern front will switch to Nusra or ISIS. The lack of salaries and ammunition is humiliating them, and they won’t take it much longer.”

up
0 users have voted.

some examples:

CHARLIE ROSE: The Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States welcomed your assistance in the fight against the Islamic State. Others have taken note of the fact that these are combat planes and manpad systems that are being used against the conventional army, not extremists.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: There is only one regular army there. That is the army of Syrian President al-Assad. And he is confronted with what some of our international partners interpret as an opposition. In reality, al-Assad's army is fighting against terrorist organisations. You should know better than me about the hearings that have just taken place in the United States Senate, where the military and Pentagon representatives, if I am not mistaken, reported to the senators about what the United States had done to train the combat part of the opposition forces. The initial aim was to train between 5,000 and 6,000 fighters, and then 12,000 more. It turns out that only 60 of these fighters have been properly trained, and as few as 4 or 5 people actually carry weapons, while the rest of them have deserted with the American weapons to join ISIS. That is the first point.

Secondly, in my opinion, provision of military support to illegal structures runs counter to the principles of modern international law and the United Nations Charter. We have been providing assistance to legitimate government entities only.

CHARLIE ROSE: You are worried about what might happen after al-Assad. You are worried about anarchy; you look at the threat of ISIS. Are they different? Are they unique as a terrorist organisation?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: It has become unique because it is going global. They have set a goal, which is to establish a caliphate on the territory stretching from Portugal to Pakistan. They already lay claims to the sacred Islamic sites like Mecca and Medina. Their actions and their activities reach far beyond the boundaries of the territories under their control.

As for the refugees, Syria is not their only country of origin. Who is fleeing Libya? Who is fleeing the countries of Central Africa where Islamists are in charge today? Who is fleeing Afghanistan and Iraq? Do the refugees come from Syria only? And why do you think that the Syrian refugees flee only as a result of President al-Assad's actions to protect his country? Why don't you think that the refugees flee from the atrocities of terrorists, from ISIS, who decapitate people, burn them alive, drown them alive and destroy cultural monuments? People flee from them too; they flee mainly from them. And from the war - this is clear. But there would be no war if these terrorist groups were not supplied with arms and money from the outside. It seems to me that somebody wants to use either certain units of ISIS or ISIS in general in order to overthrow al-Assad and only then think about how to get rid of ISIS. This task is difficult and, in my opinion, practically impossible.

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

And people in this country actually believe that the U.S. is fighting ISIS instead of arming them when the troops we spend millions on for weapons and training just turn around and give the weapons to them.
I'm glad to see that Putin is at least trying to fight them, but feel sorry for the innocent civilians caught in between.
How so many people in this country believe that the U.S. is fighting terrorism instead of creating it is beyond me.

How many BILLION of our taxes now go to foreign countries while more social programs here get cut?
And I thought I've read that Russia has bombed the ISIS convoys that the U.S. can't seem to hit.
It's a shell game over there and the only people getting actual help is the defense contractors who are making huge profits.
I need a score card for help in keeping track of who's the real bad guys.
And of course, this country ignores the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia.
Good diary Joe. Do you ever post these diaries over on kos?
I'd like to see the reaction and the excuses people would give Obama for continuing pnac's wars of aggression.
Too bad that there isn't a country powerful enough to charge the U.S. with war crimes.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

it's pretty clear to me that isis is at least in part a us creation (how much of a creator depends in part on how much you think that we control the saudis) and that the us has armed them consciously and does little or nothing to stop their excesses.

the only strategy that makes sense to me from the evidence of us actions is that the us is trying to create a self-erasing jihadi force in the middle east - one that will depose leaders, cause chaos that requires a us-imposed tyrant eventually and then eventually extinguish itself by infighting.

i'm not posting this series over at the gos anymore. i still post other diaries over there (very occasionally) when i'd like some partisan eyeballs on them.

up
0 users have voted.

I don't believe it

Senior U.S. military leaders and defense officials are debating whether military force should be used to protect Washington-backed Syrian rebels who have come under attack by Russian airstrikes in recent days.

The Associated Press reported early Friday that the question was part of a broader debate within the Pentagon about the the broader dilemma of how the administration should respond to what White House press secretary Josh Earnest described as Russia's "indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition."

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are escalating over Russian airstrikes that are serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting the so-called "moderate" rebels rather than hitting Islamic State (ISIS) fighters it promised to attack.

Go to war with Russia to protect al-Qaeda? Just perfect.

up
0 users have voted.

linnk

Vladimir Putin has been able to act forcefully in Syria not because he’s bolder or more decisive than Barack Obama but because he has a clearer strategy. Putin has an ally, the Assad government. He has enemies, the opponents of the government. He supports his ally and fights those enemies. By comparison, Washington and the West are fundamentally confused.

Whom is the United States for in this struggle? We know whom it is against — the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Also, the Islamic State, which happens to be the regime’s principal opponent. Also, all the other jihadi groups fighting in Syria — including Jabhat al-Nusra (the al-Qaeda affiliate) and Ahrar al-Sham. Oh, and Hezbollah forces and Iranian forces who have been supporting the Syrian government. The West is against almost every major group fighting in Syria, which makes for moral clarity but strategic incoherence.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

We have no clear objectives unless constant turmoil in the region is an objective.

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

NCTim's picture

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 -

hecate's picture

a 1959 novel called Alas, Babylon in which World War III begins when a US fighter pilot fires on a Russian warplane diving for the airfield at Latakia and instead hits a train and an ammunition dump. But that was in that universe. Not this one.

Chinese, Russian, and American jets have been playing chicken with one another, all over the globe, for months. All these dumbasses need to leave behind their friggin' planes and go work on a farm.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

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 -

joe shikspack's picture

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

but at least according to reuters (see article above) the white house is really pretty much checkmated.

of course there could be some sort of unforeseen catalytic event...

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Some new Gulf of Tonkin incident, some new USS Maine … ?

Some catalytic event that nobody, I mean really nobody, could ever possibly have foreseen … ?

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

Post this on kos? I know you get a lot of crap when you post diaries there, but I'd love to see the comments on this.
Have you read the comments about how Obama hasn't started any new wars? I e seen one prominent diarist write how she can sleep better at night because he hasn't started any new wars and has ended two.
I find that funny since the war in Afghanistan is still going on

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

link

Given the news this week that Saudi-led forces bombed a wedding party in Yemen, killing scores of civilians, as well as the decision by the Saudi government to behead and then crucify Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the son of a government critic arrested as a teenager, I attempted to talk about the Saudi Arabian human rights record to a number of politicians at the Washington Ideas Forum, an event hosted by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute to discuss “this year’s most pressing issues and ideas of consequence.”

Most were uninterested in commenting.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney smiled and repeatedly said, “Nice to see you,” when I asked if he had any concerns about the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen.

I found Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., as he was getting out of his car. “As the co-founder of the Human Rights Caucus in the Senate, I do think we need to pay attention to human rights all over the world, regardless of where human rights violations arise,” he said.

I asked if he would comment specifically on Saudi Arabia. Coons ignored me and continued walking into the building, even though a staff member accompanying him had just informed the senator that he had “plenty of time” before his speech....

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spent the most time discussing the issue with me. But his answers were perplexing.

“They may be bombing civilians, which is actually not true,” McCain said, when asked about civilian casualties in Yemen.

“Civilians aren’t dying?” I asked.

“No, they’re not,” the senator replied. “Oh, I’m sure civilians die in war. Not nearly as many as the Houthis have executed,” McCain continued, referring to the Shiite militia waging an insurgency against the Sunni government in Yemen.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Essence: while U.S. pro-Saudi and pro-Israel Middle East policy has always displayed aspects of the evil and the absurd, lately the evilness and absurdity have reached such a depth and degree — and observable consequences have become so numerous — that certain basic truths are finally becoming evident to a wider public.

Observers who instinctively self-censor on Middle East related topics welcome the distraction of inane non-issues such as whether Trump insulted McCain's sacrosanct veteranhood.

What deserves to be insulted is McCain's willingness to spread blatant lies as demonstrated here.

Of course practically the entire U.S. elite across the board either prostitutes or censors itself regarding the Middle East, enshrining dishonesty and disinformation as the norm.

In the end, this is just another case of someone publicly playing the weasel in order to confirm that they are an insider who knows the rules.

up
0 users have voted.
MarilynW's picture

start of US policy towards the Saudis especially. It all began with Roosevelt agreeing to protect the Saudi 18th century religion, wahhabism, a cruel, extremist religion, in return for oil deals.

That religion is alive and well in the Middle East and it's the basis of the ISIS extremism.

Pro-Israel that's another story but at its roots there are deals that were made by former western leaders that are at the root of today's ME conflicts.

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

Shahryar's picture

Debbie's plan is working. Keep Bernie out of the news as much as possible, keep Democratic voters in the dark. I expect things will change a little after the first debate but not all that much since I believe it will be held at 2:30 am with no working lights or microphones.

Meanwhile, did Firefox decide Adobe Flash is bad again?

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

i expect that little debbie and her happy henchmen will do whatever it takes to deliver the party nomination to a party hack with deep 1% credentials.

i haven't been having problems with flash lately. usually when i do, updating manually to the most recent version seems to do the trick.

up
0 users have voted.

If a map can speak a thousand words, then this one is well worth studying:

http://трымава.рф/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B0.jpg

Keep in mind that thousands of the Islamists now fighting in Syria are Chechens and at least hundreds are Uighurs. A goodly number of these Russian and Chinese fighters are surely among the 10,000+ CIA-trained, -armed, -funded, and -backed "anti-Assad" forces who are becoming "battle-hardened" in Syria.

The article below (from which the map is taken) on current events in the Middle East from a Russian perspective, explains why Syria is Russia's Stalingrad in this brave new world of WW3:

http://fortruss.blogspot.com.ar/2015/09/why-syria-is-russias-stalingrad....

"Do you realize what you have done?" - Vladimir Putin, Speech before the United Nations General Assembly, September, 29, 2015

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

I don't know why my first, crucial link
above is not appearing properly.

I'm on my cell phone. Can anyone
provide a proper, click-able map link
for me (and us all)?

Thanks!

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

joe shikspack's picture

dr map

up
0 users have voted.

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

link

In a note seeking to "explain" why the US labor participation rate just crashed to a nearly 40 year low earlier today as another half a million Americans decided to exit the labor force bringing the total to 94.6 million people..... this is what the Atlanta Fed has to say about the most dramatic aberration to the US labor force in history: "Generally speaking, people in the 25–54 age group are the most likely to participate in the labor market. These so-called prime-age individuals are less likely to be making retirement decisions than older individuals and less likely to be enrolled in schooling or training than younger individuals."
However, as the chart below shows, when it comes to participation rates within the age cohort, while the 25-54 group should be stable and/or rising to indicate economic strength while the 55-69 participation rate dropping due to so-called accelerated retirement of baby booners, we see precisely the opposite. The Fed, to its credit, admits this: "participation among the prime-age group declined considerably between 2008 and 2013."
And this is where the wheels fall off the Atlanta Fed narative. Because the regional Fed's very next sentence shows why the world is doomed when you task economists to centrally-plan it:
The decrease in labor force participation among prime-age individuals has been driven mostly by the share who say they currently don't want a job. As of December 2014, prime-age labor force participation was 2.4 percentage points below its prerecession average. Of that, 0.5 percentage point is accounted for by a higher share who indicate they currently want a job; 2 percentage points can be attributed to a higher share who say they currently don't want a job.

Where have I heard this before?

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

Where have I heard this before?

isn't that part of the republican catechism?

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

some companies it's even not possible to sign a six month rental contract because people are not sure if they can keep their jobs for six months. May be that's an exception, but there are jobs and companies that just are that bad. How many people walk away from a bad job because it's just doesn't make sense to continue.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

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 -

The DHS just seized without a warrant the Stockton mayor's computer at SFO and would not let him leave until he gave up the password.

http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stockton-mayor-was-briefly-detained-...

Wasn't it not that very long ago that we watched British authorities similarly detain Greenwald's partner David Miranda at Heathrow until he likewise
gave up the passwords to his electronics?

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

joe shikspack's picture

Stockton mayor was briefly detained on return flight from China

The mayor of Stockton (Mayor Anthony R. Silva) was briefly detained and had two of his laptops and a cell phone confiscated by homeland security agents at the San Francisco International Airport earlier this week after returning from a trip to China. ...

Upon his return home on Monday, Silva was briefly detained by Department of Homeland Security agents and had his belongings searched, he said. “A few minutes later, DHS agents confiscated all my electronic devices including my personal cell phone. Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property. In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices,” Silva said.

Silva was not allowed to leave the airport until he gave his passwords to the agents, which the mayor’s personal attorney, Mark Reichel, claimed is illegal. ... Silva was also told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a U.S. citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought.”

some interesting further reading:

66 Percent of Americans Now Live in a Constitution-Free Zone

The Government's 100-Mile "Border" Zone - Map

up
0 users have voted.
Shahryar's picture

When the boss hires both the employee and his replacement you can be sure that they'll either both be good or both be bad...because what's really happening is that the boss' ideas are implemented. He hires someone to do what he wants done.

So Arne Duncan is leaving, to be replaced by John King.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/02/445285920/meet-the-next-secret...

In this article we get the first sign of trouble...

Despite being kicked out of a prestigious prep school, King managed to get into Harvard.

We're talking about someone to be in charge of public schools.

Problem #2

King became a leader in the charter school movement when, still in law school, he co-founded Boston's Roxbury Preparatory Charter School.

Problem #3

King responded by holding public forums, which became so raucous that he briefly suspended them. Deborah Brooks, a parent from Port Washington who attended one forum, said the crowd complained about implementing new standards and tests at the same time, but she said it didn't seem like King cared.

here's #4

Upon learning of his appointment as U.S. education secretary, New York State United Teachers issued a statement calling King an "ideologue with whom we disagreed sharply on many issues" and called on its members to complain to the White House switchboard.

Boy, will Obama be steamed when he finds out who he's nomninated! Because Obama's a good man and doesn't make decisions lightly.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

is for lefties to start their own charter schools with a leftist curriculum in large numbers.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

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 -

lotlizard's picture

Let's start Corbyn this school privatization trend.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

ISIS , al-Nusra, or Army of Conquest, who cares what they call them. We are meddling and creating more enemies. Isn't it strange that the same crowd that advocates state's rights wants to butt into conflicts all around the globe. They are always picking sides and do not understand that our enemies, enemy is not our ally. They both hate us.

Krauthamer was especially smarmy and bullshitty today. He is such a putz.

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 -

joe shikspack's picture

krauthammer is almost always smarmy, even when he (only very occasionally) has a point worth making.

xenophobia mixed with homicidal aggression seems to be what drives the rethugs these days. i keep waiting for trump to advocate exterminating most of the world as a "buffer zone" to "keep 'merka safe."

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

Heh, no tuition, free education ... hmm...may be one should think it over twice...
Eight reasons not to study in Germany

As you might imagine, when I moved to Germany to study for a Double Master's Program at the University of Cologne, I was more than excited. Having been in Cologne for almost a year now, I am willing to admit, I love the city: the open atmosphere, the Karneval, the beautiful riverside, the salad buffet at the student cafeteria, the fact I can bike anywhere in ten minutes, grilling in the park on a warm day, buying beer at a kiosk after midnight, the people. Being a student, however, the largest part of my time here goes into studies. And in Cologne, it sucks balls.Let me tell you why.

Smile okay, sounds awful to me today, but back then, when I was young and a student (now I don't know what this guy studied, but it's a bit better if you study sciences and engineering) it was not that much different.

I really want to stress this one: You are copying your assistant's handwritten notes, by hand, and a few months later you try to decipher the hieroglyphs.

Yeah, you better take real good notes. But I wonder which teaching assistant would give his handwritten notes to the students to copy, but teaching assistants are there to explain everything what the real prof expect you to understand on the fly of his bravado lectures. I am telling the truth here, I was such a teaching assistant and that's how it was. (I had a chemistry prof who wrote the biggest chemical formulas on the blackboard by hand faster that a stenographer a text and that several times during a one hour lecture, so he had to erase all his beautifully handwritten formulas constantly to refill the blackboard with new ones ... boy I was so scared to flunk his exams, every Monday morning, organic chemistry, absolute horror. But he was good, just hard to learn from him).

Yes, we didn't have home works at the University. When I came to the US and took my first classes in Biostatistics, I couldn't believe the amount of homework they gave us. It felt like I was in highschool. I guess the Germans are so "mean" to say, at University level a student is supposed to know how to learn the material on his own without be guided by home works to pass the exam. Free thinkers etc. ha.ha. Free taking short cuts too, if you could pass the exams, nobody cared how you did it.

But I heard also that much has changed these days.

So, in case Sanders as President would give the Americans tuition free college, don't dream anymore to study in Germany... it may not be worth it. Especially don't study something like sociology or any humanities. That is blah, blah. Engineering might be ok:-)

That was a little trip down memory lane. Sorry for that. But better than reading about war all the time.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

so what you're saying is that you have to work hard and really want to learn if you're going to accept germany's free education? heh, as regards chemistry, my inorganic chemistry textbook was an incredible sleep aid. 10 minutes of reading in it and i would be snoring away. i don't know how i managed to pass that class, but i knew by the middle of the semester that it would be my last chemistry class.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

it's a bit different in Germany, if you want to become a chemist, you have to study it at least 10-12 semester, which means five to six years, chemistry and nothing but chemistry. I never wanted to become a Chemist, but a medical doctor, a physician, but couldn't get in into Medical School right away and had to be on a waiting list. So I started out to do all the chemistry and biology and physics classes that were required in the Chemistry department. That meant I had to take inorganic chemistry for two years, ie four classes and then later advanced inorganic chemistry again. I didn't mind the lab work (which was A LOT), but the lectures were awful and I really was barely passing. When I finally was accepted to Medical School, I had already three and a half years of a full Chemistry program behind me and I just had to finish it, because I was too tired to have done it all in vain.

And on top of all it, I basically just "had chosen" to become a Medical doctor, because the man I fell in love with, thought it would be great if we were a couple, him an engineer and me a medical doctor, like me a female Albert Schweitzer and he a high level political guy in his home country. Well... love makes you blind, doesn't it, at least when you are nineteen. Smile

I would never study Chemistry again in my life, never, ever. That I actually found a job as a Chemist was a miracle back in the days. The only thing the diploma got me was for me to defend myself, when people wanted to put me down as a dumb girl who goes with a negro and must be "a little not so serious". They did shut up when they found out, what I did and who I was. But other than that, it was the most useless field a woman in the sixties could have chosen in Germany. All the years I was the only woman, just the first two years we were three. The other girls were definitely smarter than me. One married away after the second year and didn't finish her studies, the other one, a girl from Greece, married her Chemistry Assistant Prof and graduated with honors. Definitely a smart way to get where you need to go. Smile

Later on I did regret to never had read and studied history and/or law and then I just wanted my own bookstore to read everything I missed reading in my twenties and thirties. Sigh. Now I am mid sixties and still haven't read what I wanted and my mind is getting tired.

Good Night.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

You know "The Thoughts are Free" song, right? I like this video and put it in my sigline at the kos for a while.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54HIGk_AEI]
Here is a line from the lyrics:

Thoughts are free, who can guess them,
they flee past like nightime shadows.
No one can know them, no hunter can kill it
/shoot it dead
It remains: The thoughts are free!

I think I have found out now, what are my problems I have with comments on the gos and some authors, that lead me to ban myself.

The thoughts expressed online in comments they "don't flee past like nighttime shadows" anymore. (BTW I think I would translate the German version of "fliehen vorbei" with "fly by" or "pass by" and not with "flee past", but that's just me).

The thoughts are not free anymore on the internet, that's what it is. They are stuck there for very long time. And they can be shot or killed or manipulated. So, the great internet isn't the paradise of "free expression". It's a delusion.

That's why I will do my little bit to make that comment above as invisible as I can, though I really don't mind having said what I said, as it will hurt nobody but myself, if at all.

Expect the comment to be edited into nothingness.

Good morning. It's a new day.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

Can you tell?

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 -

joe shikspack's picture

i hear that a lot of those energy formulas are pretty hard on the heart.

up
0 users have voted.
NCTim's picture

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

they heal themselves with lots of scars and somehow one always lives with some kind of pain being reminded now and then of the scars. When the mind breaks too that's when it gets ... dark as in getting nowhere where is still hope and some light.

Great song.

up
0 users have voted.
MarilynW's picture

about the movie based on her book This Changes Everything made by her husband Avi Lewis, who is the son of Stephen Lewis, a great Canadian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Lewis

I can't wait to see the film.

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

i'm very much looking forward to the film as well. i appreciate the idea that it might be uplifting as opposed to depressing.

up
0 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

up
0 users have voted.

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 --

joe shikspack's picture

up
0 users have voted.

Just popping in, Joe, to say I am still reading The Evening Blues (and a few other diaries here that don't appear at DKos).

up
0 users have voted.