The Evening Blues - 8-12-21
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues singer Valerie Wellington. Enjoy!
Valerie Wellington - How Blue Can You Get
"Take all the robes of all the good judges that have ever lived on the face of the earth, and they would not be large enough to cover the iniquity of one corrupt judge."
--- Henry Ward Beecher
News and Opinion
Julian Assange loses court battle to stop US expanding extradition appeal
The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has lost a high court battle to prevent the US government expanding the grounds for its appeal against an earlier refusal to allow his extradition to face charges of espionage and hacking government computers. On Wednesday, judges said the weight given to a misleading report from Assange’s psychiatric expert that was submitted at the original hearing in January could form part of Washington’s full appeal in October.
Sitting in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said he believed it was arguable that Judge Vanessa Baraitser had attached too much weight to the evidence of Prof Michael Kopelman when deciding not to allow the US’s appeal.
The expert had told the court he believed Assange would take his own life if extradited. But he did not include in his report the fact that Assange had fathered two children with his partner while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London – a fact Assange later used in support of his bail application. Clair Dobbin QC, for the US, argued the expert misled Baraitser, who presided over the January hearing. ...
Delivering the latest decision, Holroyde said it was “very unusual” for an appeal court to have to consider evidence from an expert that had been accepted by a lower court, but also found to have been misleading – even if the expert’s actions had been deemed an “understandable human response” designed to protect the privacy of Assange’s partner and children. The judge said that, in those circumstances, it was “at least arguable” that Baraitser erred in basing her conclusions on the professor’s evidence.
‘Assange in court looked old and frail’
Ryan Grim: Julian Assange Persecution By U.S. Encourages DICTATORS, Could Set DANGEROUS Precedent
US granted more grounds to appeal on Assange extradition
District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled in January that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. The U.S. government is appealing.
Clair Dobbin, a lawyer who represented U.S. authorities during a High Court hearing on Wednesday, said Assange — who she said “orchestrated one of the largest thefts of data in history” — does not meet the threshold of being “so ill” that he cannot resist harming himself.
She said a decision not to prosecute or extradite an individual would require “a mental illness of a type that the ability to resist suicide has been lost.” Assange’s condition did not come close to being of that nature, and he has not made serious attempts on his life before, she argued.
Afghans flee to Kabul as fighting escalates in provinces
Afghan government could fall to Taliban in 90 days, say US officials
US officials have warned that Afghanistan’s government could fall in 90 days, with Kabul isolated in as little as a month, as the Taliban overran the central Sarposa prison in Kandahar, the country’s second largest city, releasing almost 1,000 prisoners. The fall of Kandahar – sometimes called the capital of the south – would be a devastating blow for the Afghan government after a week in which the Taliban have swept up provincial capitals around the country in a lightning offensive.
The latest setback for Afghan government forces came as Joe Biden urged Afghan leaders to “fight for their nation” after rapid advances by the Taliban.
The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, repeated the administration line on Wednesday, saying: “They have what they need. What they need to determine is whether they have the political will to fight back, and if they have the ability to unite as leaders to fight back.” She added: “We will continue to provide close air support. We’ll continue to resupply their forces with food and equipment, and pay all their salaries.” ...
But with the Taliban claiming daily new advances, even the timescale of 90 days appears optimistic as the Afghan government – which the US has backed at a cost of $1tn over 20 years – appears to be collapsing in the face of the offensive.
The Taliban now control 65% of Afghanistan, senior EU officials say, and they have taken, or threatened to take, 11 provincial capitals.
U.S. weighing possible evacuation of Kabul embassy, sources say
Three people knowledgeable of the situation said there are internal discussions underway about shuttering the U.S. embassy in Kabul (as one option among others), with one person saying the mission could be evacuated by the end of the month. Another said there has been a continuous and fluid conversation about how many American diplomats are needed in Kabul in light of the danger.
The State Department didn’t deny an evacuation was being weighed. “Our posture has not changed,” a State official told NatSec Daily. “As we do for every diplomatic post in a challenging security environment, we will evaluate threats daily and make decisions that are in the interests of individuals serving at our Embassy about how to keep them safe,” the official said — adding that the embassy “has been on ordered departure status since April 27.”
Afghanistan Proves The US Military Needs Its Budget Slashed To Ribbons
US officials are telling the press that Kabul will fall to the Taliban within 90 days and perhaps within the month as US troops withdraw from the war-torn nation.
“One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the issue’s sensitivity, said Tuesday that the U.S. military now assesses a collapse could occur within 90 days. Others said it could happen within a month,” reports The Washington Post. “Some officials said that although they were not authorized to discuss the assessment, they see the situation in Afghanistan as more dire than it was in June, when intelligence officials assessed a fall could come as soon as six months after the withdrawal of the U.S. military.”
Meanwhile the US is still raining down explosives and murdering Afghan civilians to temporarily slow the inevitable Taliban takeover long enough for the Biden administration to have its ridiculous 9/11 “victory” party. Biden has said the US will continue providing “air support” (imperialist for bombing campaigns) to the Afghan government, for however long that government exists.
This is an unforgivable outrage that cries out to the heavens for vengeance. Not the Taliban takeover; that was always the inevitable result of letting Afghanistan be controlled by Afghans. I’m talking about the invasion and 20-year occupation of that nation by the US and its allies.
It is only by the most aggressive narrative management and journalistic malpractice that people around the world are not calling for the heads of the architects of this occupation. For twenty years the world was systematically lied to that the US coalition was building a government and military that could stand on its own, and that this goal was right around the corner and just needs a little more time. Now it’s crunch time, and we learn that what they’ve been building in Afghanistan this entire time was a fake movie set made of cardboard.
The cost of that fake movie set? More than two trillion dollars, and hundreds of thousands of human lives.
This should be an international scandal for which scores of people should be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. More than this, every military which participated in this unforgivable crime should have its budget slashed to a tiny fraction of what it is.
A military which can afford to spend trillions of dollars on a devastating 20-year war that accomplished literally nothing besides making war profiteers fabulously rich is a military which needs its budget slashed to ribbons. Clearly if Pentagon officials can waste such unfathomably vast fortunes lining the pockets of the military-industrial complex to the benefit of not one single ordinary American, they do not need anything like the obscenely bloated military budget the United States currently has.
Just thinking about the things those two trillion dollars could have been spent on instead, like fully ending both homelessness and child poverty in the United States, for example, should make Americans howl with rage. Hell, spending two trillion dollars building a useless brick mountain in the middle of the Mojave Desert would’ve been an infinitely better use of that money than murdering hundreds of thousands of people with US troops dying by the thousands and wounded by the tens of thousands. That last bit alone should have every military family member marching on Washington and Arlington today.
The US government is the single most tyrannical regime on this planet, without exception. It has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century, solely in its wars that are still currently happening, all in the name of power and profit and destroying anyone who disobeys its dictates. Anyone who cares about humanity should place the defanging of this horrific monster at the very forefront of their values.
Pentagon denies official said attack on Israel-linked ship came from Yemen
Dana Stroul, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, was asked during Senate testimony by Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana if she could confirm the attack on the MT Mercer Street was launched from Yemen with Iranian-made drones.
“Yes, I can confirm the reports,” she testified. “This was an Iran-backed, one-way drone attack on the Mercer Street.”
However, the United States Defense Department later denied Stroul was confirming the attack was carried out from Yemen.
“She referred to Friday’s G7 statement & CENTCOM investigation which clearly attributed the attack to Iran but made no mention of a direct tie to Yemen,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby tweeted.
Iran's President Raisi names anti-Western hardliner as new foreign minister
Explosion reported at Syria’s Latakia port on ship that may be Iranian
A major explosion occurred on a commercial ship docked at Syria’s Latakia port on Tuesday afternoon, according to Arabic-language media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
According to SOHR — a pro-Syrian opposition organization of uncertain funding based in the UK — the explosion “left casualties and caused considerable material damage.” Some reports said the targeted ship was Iranian.
Syrian state media reported a fire broke out on the ship that has since been brought under control and that two people were injured.
Krystal Ball: Dems BEST CASE Scenario is Still a DISASTER
The National Security Agency has awarded a secret cloud computing contract worth up to $10 billion to Amazon
The National Security Agency has awarded a secret cloud computing contract worth up to $10 billion to Amazon Web Services, Nextgov has learned. The contract is already being challenged. Tech giant Microsoft filed a bid protest on July 21 with the Government Accountability Office two weeks after being notified by the NSA that it had selected AWS for the contract.
The contract’s code name is “WildandStormy,” according to protest filings, and it represents the second multibillion-dollar cloud contract the U.S. intelligence community—made up of 17 agencies, including the NSA—has awarded in the past year.
In November, the CIA awarded its C2E contract, potentially worth tens of billions of dollars, to five companies—AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM—that will compete for specific task orders for certain intelligence needs.
Details on the NSA’s newly awarded cloud contract are sparse, but the acquisition appears to be part of the NSA’s attempt to modernize its primary classified data repository, the Intelligence Community GovCloud. ...
In 2020, intelligence officials signaled an intent to bring in a commercial cloud provider to meet demands caused by exponential data growth and massive processing and analytics requirements that are challenging the NSA’s ability to scale. The effort, called the Hybrid Compute Initiative, would effectively move the NSA’s crown jewel intelligence data from its own servers to servers operated by a commercial cloud provider.
Prison term raises pressure on Canada and US in high-stakes China standoff
Hours after a court in China sentenced Canadian Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison for espionage, Meng Wanzhou appeared in a Vancouver courtroom, as final arguments began in her fight against extradition to the United States.
The two cases, while not officially linked, are at the heart a geopolitical feud between the United States and China, which has left Canada suffering collateral damage.
Michael Spavor and a second Canadian, Michael Kovrig, were arrested by Chinese officials in December 2018, days after Canada arrested the Huawei executive on a US extradition request.
China has repeatedly demanded she be released, even though prime minister Justin Trudeau has said his government cannot interfere in the country’s judicial process.
But after Spavor was sentenced on Wednesday, Ottawa must grapple with the reality that Beijing plans to tie the fate of two jailed Canadians to Meng’s legal saga.
As Delta Variant Drives Surge in New Cases, History Shows It Could Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Wealthiest Netted Billions From Trump Tax Cut They Helped Write: Report
A ProPublica investigation published Wednesday shows how Republican lawmakers and industry groups maneuvered to secure in the 2017 GOP tax law provisions that delivered billions in tax cuts benefiting the nation's uber-wealthy, including top political donors.
"The flurry of midnight deals and last-minute insertions of language resulted in a vast redistribution of wealth into the pockets of a select set of families, siphoning away billions in tax revenue from the nation's coffers," wrote Justin Elliott and Robert Faturechi.
Formally known as The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the legislation passed at "warp speed" and was signed into law by President Donald Trump at the end of 2017, slashing the corporate tax rate and the top individual rate. The law's critics dubbed it the GOP Tax Scam—a characterization strengthened by subsequent analyses showing how the tax code revisions brought about a massive economic windfall for the rich and corporations.
Interventions cited in the new reporting include those by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a climate science-denying member of the so-called "Republican Millionaires Caucus" who tried last year to block stimulus payments from going to economically devastated Americans.
Johnson pushed for a provision to "sweeten the tax break" for what are known as pass-through businesses, reported ProPublica, citing Treasury Department officials' emails and officials' calendars. In such entities, income is "passed through" to the business's owners and taxed under the individual income tax. They make up the majority of businesses in the U.S.
The GOP was poised to let pass-through businesses deduct up to 17.4% of their profits, but Johnson, who'd threatened to vote no, pushed the deduction up to 20%—an increase that "can translate into tens of millions of dollars in extra deductions in one year alone for an ultrawealthy family," according to the reporting.
"Johnson's last-minute maneuver" to get the provision into the bill, ProPublica reported, "benefited two families more than almost any others in the country—both worth billions and both among the senator's biggest donors." The reporting points to right-wing billionaires Dick and Liz Uihlein, owners of large packaging company Uline, and another right-wing billionaire, roofing supply giant Diane Hendricks, who together donated "$20 million to groups backing Johnson's 2016 reelection campaign."
"The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on," the investigation found. "At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life."
Other megarich households reaped the benefits as well. From ProPublica:
In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.
The investigation delved into how engineering and construction behemoth Bechtel secured in the final version of the bill a phrase to ensure that engineering was not an industry excluded from the pass-through deduction. In the lead-up to the bill's passage, ProPublica found, the company "executed a full-court press in Washington, meeting with Trump administration officials and spending more than $1 million lobbying on tax issues."
It was good return on investment. "Bechtel Corporation produced around $2.3 billion of profit in 2018 alone—the vast majority of which appears to be eligible for the 20% deduction."
Tennessee Compiled Secret Dossiers on Civil Rights Protesters
In the latest reported attempt by Tennessee officials to chill First Amendment rights in the state following last year's racial justice uprising, the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security collected personal data of dozens of civil rights protesters and held the information in a secret database.
News Channel 5 in Nashville reported Monday that a demonstrator named Justin Jones discovered a document called "People's Plaza TN Significant Personnel (more than 2 arrests)" when he filed a records request with the department.
The document included dossiers on more than 50 activists who attended protests at the People's Plaza in Nashville last summer, where civil rights advocates spent weeks camped out to demand Gov. Bill Lee speak with them about racial injustice in Tennessee.
The dossiers include names, social security numbers, addresses, social media photos, and in some cases, information about the demonstrators' personal relationships.
In several cases the demonstrators had never been arrested, but they were listed as "persons of interest" according to Channel 5.
Jones found out about the dossiers when he filed the records request in an attempt to determine whether state authorities had treated the People's Plaza demonstration differently than the so-called "Stop the Steal" protests that were attended by former President Doinald Trump's supporters after the 2020 election, where attendees repeated false claims that Trump had won a second term.
Jones wrote on social media Monday that it was "telling" that law enforcement saw racial justice advocates, but not protests that culminated in the violent attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January, as a threat.
Channel 5 reported that the Department of Safety and Homeland Security did not respond to a question about whether authorities collected personal information of activists at other kinds of protests.
Cuomo’s Legacy: Normalizing Corruption And Lawlessness
The amazing thing about Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that he is stepping down as governor of New York is not that he left office; it is that it took this long for him to resign. And among the most troubling parts of the saga is how many crimes he and New York politicians normalized in the process – because so many of these officials were complicit, too. Cuomo resigned in the wake of Attorney General Tish James’s report detailing his sexual crimes. But here’s the truth that’s hard to say aloud: if the New York governor had not been a sex pest, he likely would have gotten away with hiding thousands of people’s deaths in nursing homes and shielding his healthcare industry donors from any liability – all while profiting off a $5m book deal and being venerated by liberals and corporate media outlets as a shining star.
In fact, unless things suddenly change, he will get away with those crimes. With US attorneys so far declining to prosecute Cuomo on those matters – and with New York’s legislature refusing to begin impeachment proceedings on those issues – the federal and state political systems made sure these crimes weren’t considered transgressions at all. Same goes for many New York Democratic voters – a new poll shows that even now, a plurality of them say they approve of the way Cuomo has done his job.
To be sure, Democratic assemblyman Ron Kim’s nursing home crusade, and his allegations that Cuomo tried to bully him into silence, created a singular political earthquake that shook the New York political system and media into finally scrutinizing the gubernatorial monster that had long been rampaging through Albany. But the refusal to prosecute or impeach Cuomo over that epic scandal has further normalized that kind of unethical behavior. Indeed, presiding over the mass death of elderly people and shielding the perpetrators all to ingratiate oneself with political financiers is now just regular politics. That’s now what politicians are allowed – and even expected – to do, everywhere. While President Biden’s former top aide lobbies the White House on behalf of the nursing home industry, the Biden justice department recently said it will not open an investigation into nursing home negligence and Covid-related deaths in New York and other states. Case closed.
David Sirota EXPOSES Obama's DIRE Climate Failures
Water on Chesapeake Bay military bases contains toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’
Groundwater on military bases along the Chesapeake Bay is contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” at levels many times above the level some regulators say is safe for drinking, and they are probably ending up in blue crabs, oysters and other marine life that are consumed by humans.
The Chesapeake Bay holds a diverse ecosystem that stretches about 200 miles from northern Maryland to southern Virginia, and is among the world’s most productive estuaries. Its brackish saltwater is renowned for shellfish like oysters and blue crabs, the latter of which largely drives the state’s $600m seafood industry, which sends its catch across the globe.
But the Chesapeake is also home to the US Naval Academy and more than a dozen other military installations, and public health advocates suspect the PFAS contamination largely stems from firefighting foam used to extinguish fires or during training exercises.
The Environmental Working Group analysis compiled Department of Defense data from nine bases along the bay, revealing levels as high as 2.25 million parts per trillion (ppt). Some states have set safe drinking water levels for individual PFAS compounds as low as 1 ppt. The contamination presents an “extremely troubling” health threat in the nation’s largest estuary, said Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs. “We’ve seen higher levels in water, but not many … and it strikes at the heart and, perhaps more importantly, the stomach of everyone who comes from this part of the world,” Faber said.
EWG identified groundwater contamination at every base that has tested for the chemicals, and frequently at levels that are considered extremely high. The groundwater is hydrologically connected to the bay, and state studies of Hog Point oysters harvested from near Maryland’s Patuxent River Naval Air Station found PFAS levels in the meat as high as 1.1m ppt. A 2020 study conducted in the same area by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) found PFAS levels in striped bass at more than 23,000 ppt, crab meat at about 6,000 ppt and oysters at more than 2,000 ppt.
Welcome to the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea
Plastic bottles dominate waste in the ocean, with an estimated 1m of them reaching the sea every minute. The biggest culprit is polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) bottles. Last month, a study found two bacteria capable of breaking down Pet – or, as the headlines put it, “eating plastic”. Known as Thioclava sp. BHET1 and Bacillus sp. BHET2, the bacteria were isolated in a laboratory – but they were discovered in the ocean.
The bacteria are the latest example of new organisms that appear to be growing in a unique environment: the vast amounts of plastic at sea.
Like the atmosphere, magnetosphere and hydrosphere, the plastisphere is a region. But it is also an ecosystem, like the Siberian steppe or coral reefs – a plasticised marine environment. The best-known concentration of seaborne plastic waste is the Great Pacific garbage patch, a sort of plastic soup spread over an area roughly twice the size of France, but plastic is everywhere.
First described in a 2013 study to refer to a collective of plastic-colonising organisms, including bacteria and fungi, the term has since expanded. It now loosely encompasses larger organisms, from crabs to jellyfish, which raft across oceans on marine plastics. ...
Another unique feature of the plastisphere is that humans invented it. Every other ecosystem has evolved over millions of years. The meaning of that is not yet clear.
Oregon declares state of emergency as another ‘extreme heatwave’ looms
Oregon declared a state of emergency as the Pacific north-west prepared for triple-digit temperatures mere weeks after a deadly heatwave clobbered the region. People streamed into cooling centers and misting stations on Wednesday amid sweltering heat.
Governor Kate Brown said: “Oregon is facing yet another extreme heatwave, and it is critical that every level of government has the resources they need to help keep Oregonians safe and healthy.”
The declaration went into effect on Tuesday, amid concerns over the safety of residents, some of whom do not have air conditioning, and the impact the soaring temperatures could have on critical infrastructure. The order is expected to remain in place until 20 August.
Temperatures soared to 95F (35C) by early afternoon in Portland on Wednesday. In a “worst-case scenario”, the temperature could reach 111F (44C) in some parts of western Oregon by Friday before a weekend cooldown, the National Weather Service warned. But temperatures are more likely to rise to 100F or above for three consecutive days, peaking around 105F on Thursday.
Sizzling weather also was expected in other parts of the country. The NWS said heat advisories and warnings would be in effect from the midwest to the north-east and mid-Atlantic through at least Friday.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown
Biden Must Call Off the B-52s Bombing Afghan Cities
Efforts to pardon Chileans imprisoned during mass protests gathers pace
Jailing of a British Blogger Should Worry Journalists on Both Sides of the Atlantic
‘They rake in profits – everyone else suffers’: US workers lose out as big chicken gets bigger
Highest recorded temperature of 48.8C in Europe apparently logged in Sicily
Olbermann Calls For Censoring Jimmy Dore Across All Platforms
Emily Jashinsky: Republicans SCARED To Oppose Child Tax Credit, Rubio Declares 'Precursor To UBI'
Assemblyman Kim: Biden MUST Prosecute Cuomo For Nursing Home COVERUP, Hid Data To SNAG $5M Book Deal
Kim Iversen: Big Tech OVERLORDS Attack On Free Speech Emboldened By U.S. Government
A Little Night Music
Valerie Wellington - Let The Good Times Roll
Valerie Wellington - Cold, Cold Feeling
Valerie Wellington - Independent Blues
Valerie Wellington - Steal Away
Valerie Wellington - Wasted Life Blues
Valerie Wellington - Million Dollar $ecret
Valerie Wellington - Voodoo Blues
Valerie Wellington - A Fool For You
Valerie Wellington - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
Comments
I just found this...
https://quillette.com/2019/10/26/its-time-for-lgb-and-t-to-go-their-sepa...
Few people understand "morphic liberationism" as personally as I do, and I have sympathy for many of the more radical ideas as well - but what began as a liberation movement has become a humorless authoritarian cult. I have more credentials here than I even wish to post; if they've lost ME, then they've lost their way - and 'they' is a frigging plural. I was advocating for a unisex pronoun before it was cool, but I just cannot ratify "singular 'they'". I cannot do it. Americans should be learning MORE languages, not getting deliberately worse at English (similar goes for "ebonics/AAVE", which I realized was bullshit when I caught myself thinking 'wait, which side of this am I SUPPOSED to be on?'). You shouldn't NEED to change language just to exist, and you certainly have no right to reach into the mouths of everyone else and FORCE THEM to speak the way they want you to. 'Gender' is just mind-control; it shouldn't exist as a concept separate from 'sex'. We are all unique individuals, and that's all we NEED to be.
Ironically (but only superficially so), my ultimatum for this cult is very same one I originally formulated for use against the Religious Right: If "being who you are" MUST come at the expense of others being who THEY are, then that's the limit; you're SOL.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I have a few quibbles, but I'll start with just one.
Ok, English teachers and grammarians have fucked things up since time began. They have consistently made up rules out of thin air "don't end a sentence with a proposition", "don't use ain't", etc. They once was singular, or had a singular form, until the doofi beat it out of people who better used the language than they did.
https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/677177
In the original German, English being bastardized low German, Sie, the formal They (plural)is also the formal You (singular) while lower case sie (them, plural) is also she (singluar)
Beyond that, in colloquial speech, they has long been used for a singular human of unknown sex or gender. "Somebody left cane on a table in the rec room, they can pick it up in the lost and found before 6". "I dunno officer, they had a balaclava on the whole time." etc
be well and have a good one
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 --
How 'bout xe/xem/xyr ?
From the link:
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
It's better...
...but why not "it" - or dare I say, "unisex 'he'" (and why 'he'? It's shorter and easier than 'she', that's all)? "Hi/hir" could also work. I experimented for some time with one I liked: "Ith".
This is not the first time people have experimented with adding such a pronoun to the English language; it has never worked before (and I'm not saying it never could/should, I'm just saying it's been tried): https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/third-person-gender-neutra...
Perhaps rather than "gender"-based divisions in the 3rd-person singular, we should have one such pronoun for people, and another for objects...or not!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
No, xe/xem/xyr is not better. It's silly.
Languages develop over thousands of years.
How can some "activist" demand that we change, right now, words and concepts that have been in use forever ?
Most Spanish nouns are gendered and here is no such thing as "latinx" in the Spanish language. Russian surnames are gendered. Must all common usage be banned, must every language all over the world change because "trans-activists" demand it ?
This shit is nuts.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
You know what? You're right.
I understand the motivation behind it, but talk about 1st-World Problems, right?!? Oppression/mental illness/victimhood/suffering have all become Barbie fashion-accessories for the Forbidden-City set. "Privilege" (a term which has no business in American English in the first place) has become like flatulence: You smelt it? You probably dealt it.
Thanks for the anchor.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I'm pretty sure that those x based things
are neologisms, and as such will live or die according to public taste. When they become common enough to wind up an the average dictionary, they war well on their way. When they make it to the OED they are in. They lack the historical cachet of "They", however. One of the first ones I ever saw was hir, which I sort of liked. The problem might be that English didn't go far enough. Eddie Izzard has a great bit about how efficient and cool English is because it isn't obsessively gendered.
"Is it masculine, feminine or neuter, the apple?"
"It's a fuckin' apple. Stop fucking around"
in another skit he talks of how we got rid of one of the two versions of "you"
be well and have a good one
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 --
Counterquibbles
Let's start with: Who/what are/is "doofi"?
"Nonbinary" aside (and aren't we ALL? This shit just STRENGTHENS what it claims to be trying to free us from; I never had "gender-identity issues" until everyone else started talking about it - these arrogant assholes insist they're the Gods of Inclusion, I'm exactly the sort of person they think they're advocating for, yet I feel more invisible than ever before because of them), this is indeed nothing new; but new (mis)uses are spreading in ways I've never seen before.
Beyond that:
- The fact that wrong was done in the past DOESN'T make it okay now; history is a warning, not an invitation.
- How does "This idea is wrong because it's newer/from a particular time-period we've decided to shit on now" justify ANYTHING?
- Setting aside the question of whether Middle English can justify changes to Contemporary English in the first place, That poem line conforms to the same pattern I've seen in every other example defending the supposed pedigree of "singular they": It doesn't, unless you want it to and squint just right. This mostly-forgotten poet is talking about A GROUP of people, and the line simply doesn't agree with itself. Who the hell made this poem (again, which NOBODY outside the inner circles of Medieval English Literature had ever heard of before now) the basis for "canonical" English? Maybe he was just a sloppy writer; it's like treating everything Anthony Burgess or William Faulkner ever wrote as officially correct English.
- Singular/plural "you" is a smashing example of why having the same word for singular and plural is a bad idea - are you telling me you've never run into a frustrating misunderstanding, even a small one, caused by that?
Like I said, I was advocating for (and practicing with!) unisex pronouns before anyone else told me to do so; it just shouldn't be "they". The way I see it, it just begs the question of why we have gendered pronouns in the first place - why can't we all be "it"? Let's face it, "they" only became popular because most English-speakers are lazy and have no inherent respect for language or those who teach it, the education system sucks, and anti-intellectualism has always been a hugely popular American vice (which has spread to the rest of the Anglophone world via the Internet). English teachers the world over deserve FAR more respect than this.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Ok. First,
doofi is obviously the plural of doofus, like octopi is to octopus. Heh.
I do get what you mean about the poem, but there is still the completely common usage in contemporary speech and writing of using they when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or needs to be concealed for some reason so I don't find it at all objectionable because it is already used in that fashion "they were about 5'6" and wore a green hoodie" "they had their back to me at all times" "they threw a brick at that car and ran down the street"; such usage is all really far too common to declare that it must have a plural antecedent.
be well and have a good one
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 --
another thing I don't understand
on this topic, why wear a badge that says she/her?
Since my wife has fallen in with the rainbow crew I
am being vaunted with new colloquiums which mean
almost nothing but confusion. No need to respond.
Perhaps the definitions have become too tight?
Long story short:
It's become a cult. It's everything it claims to oppose. It's an abominable hybrid of incompatible ideas, 'roided up by social media and now weaponized by Morgoth. Do whatever it takes to get your wife out of it would be my sincere advice.
Put very simply, circa the 1950s, art/literature critics tried to justify the existence of their profession (every true artist knows there is none - any legitimacy the profession of art critic ever held died with Roger Ebert, and frankly, good riddance), and conjured up a pseudoscience ("critical theory") to do so; I believe Cassiodorus mentioned something about it being used by fine arts/humanities departments to generate something that would placate the philistines in charge of funding, even though they supposedly know it's bogus. it has since become malignant, and a fulfillment/violation of Popper's Paradox.
Check out newdiscourses.com if you haven't already; it gets dismal pretty quickly (and there aren't really any "new discourses"), but it's nothing if not a thorough resource.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
evening moonbat...
a lot of the time it seems to me that the world has just gotten too easily offended. i understand that all people want to be respected, valued and loved for what they are, but sometimes it just seems like i can't keep up with all of the different flavors.
if it were up to me, i would reduce the number of available personal pronouns to a list like this one:
dude
honey
honey chile
sugarpie honeybunchkins
ya'll
babe
bacon
I wonder how hard the world's most famous sugarpie
would kick you and where if you called her honeybunchkins.
I'm quite cool with dude and babe, but having something of a quasi nautical background just can't get behind
be well and have a good one
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 --
heh...
yawl... that's just a bunch of ship.
if you'uns got a problem with it, we can move up the monongahela a piece and replace it with "yinz."
Well once again thanks for the Blues Joe! The news, meh
The real canary in the coalmine might just be the Polar Bear in the Artic and that's not good at all
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/vanishing-ice-and-threat-of-...
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
evening ggersh...
yeah, it's really sad. over the past couple of years i've read stories about polar bears drowning because they wound up too far from solid ice or land and also stories of polar bears moving south in alaska and competing with grizzlies and kodiak bears for food.
i suspect that the polar bears are largely goners.
Worse and worse, Joe
The News, I mean. Not your reporting.
First an out-loud groan of pain and dismay. Julian is being tortured and I can't see how he survives.
Second, prepare the helos. Saigon, 1975. Kabul, 2021. No. We will not change or learn. The current path yields billions of dollars for the Chosen and death to vast numbers of human fodder in countries we target and in our own country from neglect.
I had to smirk as I read the reports from Kabul. One said that Kabul will fall in 30 days and another said 90 days. I give it a week or two. Another American tragedy brought to you with our tax dollars and the corrupted assassin agencies which call themselves, hilariously, "Intelligence Agencies."
NYCVG
evening nycvg...
i keep wondering whether the uk supreme court is as much a bunch of lapdogs as barraitser was. my hopes are not too high considering this most recent ruling.
i am expecting kabul to fall closer to the 30 day timeframe than the 90 day one given the speed with which the taliban has been moving. i guess ashraf ghani might want to either sharpen up his diplomatic skills or make a strategic exit soon.
German public TV can’t criticize the gov’t or NATO directly, but
last night the French-German tax-supported Arte channel showed the last two installments of Ken Burns’ Vietnam documentary series, including the fall of Saigon scenes, all of which I took to be a pointed commentary on the prospective end of America and her NATO allies’ excellent Afghanistan adventure.
Evening all ...
That Dore clip is worth watching.
Good to see Jimmy doing live shows again.
Medea Benjamin - Biden Must Call Off the B-52s Bombing Afghan Cities
That Hunter is such a scamp. - Daily Mail
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
evening azazello...
thanks for the links!
it looks like jimmy's touring again, though nowhere near either you or me in the near future.
i guess hunter is hoping to bring in the big bucks with his "art," so maybe he won't have to reshoot all of those porn films that the "russians took" from him.