@magiamma
we've pretty much seen some rain every day. Some days the stuff in the garden was pounded flat. So it goes, as they say.

All the best of luck to the strikers, in every way possible. Thanks for the two articles.

Travel safe and thanks for reading.

Have a good one.

et al

Looks like SCruz got lots of rain. Read this morning that it was ‘crazy’. Travel day today.

The next rounds of protests have begun. Big plans for the 6th in many places.

Here’s a snapshot of the beginning:

Hundreds of thousands of students join global climate strikes | School climate strikes | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/29/hundreds-of-thousand...

Edit to add another link. Something I obsess about. And just think about the environmental cost of the supply chain...

America is not the land of the free but one of monopolies so predatory they imperil the nation | Will Hutton | Opinion | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/01/america-is-not-the...

Thanks el, for all your amazing ots and insights. Have a good one...

@QMS
that you mean that the US populace should pay attention, and not the US government. Heh.

leaderless opposition movement.

is giving the military fits? Quelle dommage.

Have a good one.

Thousands of Algerians march to demand cancellation of presidential election.
41 consecutive weeks running.

https://www.rt.com/newsline/474686-algerians-march-presidential-election/

Thanks for the OT EL!

@Lookout
commentary. Indeed, slavery isn't outlawed, but merely transmuted, just as serfdom is ever with us. Prison reform and judicial reform are greatly needed, but in the meantime, we need to find a way to boycott prison made goods, which, of course, starts with a way to identify them.

Have a good one.

really in several ways...

At the end of the civil war in 1865 the 13th amendment of the US constitution was introduced. Under its terms, slavery was not abolished, it was merely reformed. Anybody convicted of a crime after 1865 could be leased out by the state to private corporations who would extract their labor for little or no pay. In some ways that created worse conditions than under the days of slavery, as private corporations were under no obligation to care for their forced laborers – they provided no healthcare, nutritious food or clothing to the individuals they were exploiting.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prisoner-speak-out...

It isn't just inmates but our young folks some of whom spend a lifetime being enslaved by debt.

Well here's hoping you all are being productive for your own profit, and have avoided the slavery machine! Y'all have a good day.

PS if you are ever in Montgomery try to visit the legacy museum adjacent to the old slave market...it is powerful. https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/

@lotlizard
are civilized, and their predations elsewhere simply prove that it is a privilege, bestowed on the few who have appropriate history and origin. Thanks.

Have a good one.

of the Netherlands inside of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau

National sovereignty — sometimes the Powers That Be consider it so important that it must be symbolically upheld where circumstances would suggest it is practically meaningless. Europe is notably scrupulous about perpetuating the separateness of several militarily quite indefensible yet politically inviolable tiny fiefdoms — Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Vatican City come to mind.

Yet strangely, in other situations — ones that often top the news and are setting the future course of history — the Powers That Be also tell us the idea of national sovereignty can and should be scoffed at as meaningless, where both common sense and rule of law would argue it is crucial.

@lotlizard
commission. It scares both the ruling class and the peons. The participation rate if we include followers and those who went along for the ride is far, far too high.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec19/truth-commission12-19.html

Even in the Netherlands, even someone as apolitical as my blind friend has only derision for what even she can “see” is an obvious official coverup regarding certain events. Her scorn is intensified by resignation to the fact that, for the public — barring an East German style revolution where ordinary citizens are actually able to enter buildings unexpectedly and seize classified documents with their own hands — the truth will never be known.

Her two examples: (1) the failure of the authorities to give a truthful account of harmful substances released by the crash of an El Al airliner into an apartment building in Bijlmermeer, and (2) the loss by the authorities of the roll of photos taken by a Dutch soldier in the UN peacekeeping unit that stood aside while Bosnian Serbs carried out the Srebrenica massacre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862

http://militarycaveats.com/21-srebrenica-aftermath-serb-guilt-dutch-liab...

In fact, one DutchBat soldier, Lieutenant (LT) J.H.A. (Ron) Rutten was so shocked and horrified at what he was witnessing in and around Potocari village on 13 July, that he took photos of a crowd of ‘terrified’ Bosniak men being interrogated by Bosnian Serb forces, and of 9 corpses of men executed by the Serbs, including one of a Dutch UN soldier positioned beside the slain Bosniak victims as proof of the UN’s presence during the genocide.[100] Rutten smuggled the film out of the enclave and back to the Netherlands on 21 July, where he hoped ‘the photos would help him to give forceful expression to his horror at and the gravity of what, in his firm conviction and according to his own observations, had happened’ within the Srebrenica safe area.[101] After handing the roll of film over to the Dutch Military Intelligence Service of the Royal Netherlands Army to be developed, however, the film was mysteriously ‘destroyed’ as a result of so-called ‘human error’ during its development on 26 July – a suspicious fact that led to multiple government ‘military cover-up’ inquiries, as well as to a range of ongoing conspiracy theories regarding the alleged deliberate destruction of the film in order to protect the image and reputation of the DutchBat battalion and the Dutch Army.[102]

@Azazello
will definitely help to get my morning rolling.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIfQipkkOqs width:500 height:300]
Have a nice day.

@Anja Geitz
point about slavery and the civil war.

Have a good one.

I've read about the Civil War was "The Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson. As a history major, I appreciated how McPherson broke down the information between financial, social, political, and the battlefront. Using primary documents, he paints a compelling picture of the south's financial reliance on slave labor at a time when the rest of the country was growing in other financial areas by leaps and bounds. His research also yielded a trail of legislators who pushed to extend slavery not only west into the American territories, but proposed, and sent armed mercenaries, outside of North America to Cuba and South America to expand the slave trade. By the time of the 1860 Election, the South's entire justification to exert their political power was predicated on preserving their most lucrative form of income. Slavery. The numbers don't lie. So anyone who attempts to argue that the Civil War was not about slavery, has not done their homework.

@Raggedy Ann
wife and I got together later in life and also acquired a house and mortgage later in life. WE scrimped mightily in order to prepay some extra principal on every mortgage payment so as to ensure that our's would be paid off before the earliest possible retirement dtes for either one. Once that load was gone life changed significantly.

Have a good one.

Slavery is alive and well in the good ol' US of A! Believe it!

I'm already looking forward to my next break - 2.5 weeks away and I'll be out for 2.5 weeks, YAY! Trying to stay true to myself and leave this institution by June 2021. Should have my house paid for by then. WHEW! I've been a slave to the mortgage company, which makes me a slave to my employer.

Have a great start to your week, folks!