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December 10, 2010
Open Thread 10-01
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Hey, if we can’t depend on people getting permanently burned-out, what can we depend on?
Glad to see you back, b. (and all the other barflies)
Posted by: Biklett | Dec 10 2010 8:16 utc | 2
Just curious what has been on the barflies minds since the doors here were shut. I was wondering what has influenced you the most since our LAST times together, what are you reading, what research has intrigued you? What conclusions have you come to?
I think many of us, (even before b shut the doors) saw through the Obomba brand.
One thing that has stood out to me is work by Naomi Oreskes. Dr. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway wrote a book entitled, ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming’ in it she shows that it isn’t always about money -though that is a welcome side benefit- but often about ideology!
The Merchants of Doubt is a new book that reports how a small group of scientists committed to an extreme free-market ideology have been employed by large corporations over several decades to cast doubt on such different environmental issues as the risks of tobacco smoke, the dangers of DDT, the effectiveness of the Strategic Defence Initiative, the regulation of CFCs, and the causes of global warming. A review in the Christian Science Monitor calls this “one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented…”
Salesmen, OR Scientists*
A presentation based off of her recent book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth about Climate Change. Naomi Oreskes, author and professor of history and science studies, University of California, San Diego.
From the University of Rhode Island’s Spring 2010 Vetlesen Lecture Series, People and Planet Global Environmental Change. March 2, 2010.
This presentation isn’t so much about Climate Change as it is about Temperament and Ideology … As well as System Justification Thoery… i.e., Think Tanks, lobbys etc..
*I would have embedded these, but I’ve forgotten how we did things at the bar here…lol
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 10 2010 9:01 utc | 3
Taking the long view, we’ll be seeing more hyphenation of Obama, as in the Bush-Obama tax policies, the Bush-Obama rendition and torture policies, the Bush-Obama foreign policies…
Posted by: Biklett | Dec 10 2010 9:24 utc | 4
Hi Uncle I tried to say gidday yesterday but I managed to lose the spiel I wrote yesterday greeting you and Lizard. So I say now great to see you again again. Hi to biklett too.
I’m about to post something in here which comes from the latest packet of WL cables but this subject isn’t addressed in the other threads and I mention it so as to publicise the subject itself rather than the method we learned of it.
As far as I am concerned this is the worst story yet. It goes to the heart of amerikan diplomats aiding large corporation to make money from exploiting at risk people in developing countries.
Today’s Guardian tells us that Pfizer the greedy drug company tested a new drug on Nigerian children who had meningitis, without telling anyone what they were doing. Medicine Sans Frontieres learned of it and reported them. The government in the sate the tests were conducted in launched a law suit which was closed down by the central government. The Nigerian Federal Attorney General decided to settle for $75 million a much lower figure.
According to the amerikan ambassador to Nigeria Pfizer flew in two lawyers to settle the deal but a bloke by the name of Enrico Liggeri whose was the Nigerian manager of Pfizer opposed paying any settlement so he hired private investigators to dig dirt on the Nigerian Attorney General, then blackmailed the AG into dismissing the lawsuit entirely or he (Liggeri) would pay media outlets to ensure they ran the stories on the AG’s corruption.
The ambassador acts as though he doesn’t support Pfizer’s act but since the WikiLeaks is the first we out here in the world have heard of it, it is safe to say he stayed silent and did nothing to bring the corporation to justice.
I thought diplomats had a duty to alert justice to corporations which are breaking laws in foreign countries.
Not to mention his obligation to the Government of Nigeria who have accredited him as a trusted representative of his country.
It gets worse. From the Guardian article:
n an earlier meeting on 2 April between two Pfizer lawyers, Joe Petrosinelli and Atiba Adams, Liggeri, the US ambassador and the economic section, it had been suggested that Pfizer owed the favourable outcome of the federal cases to former Nigerian head of state Yakubu Gowon.
He had interceded on Pfizer’s behalf with the Kano state governor, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau – who directed that the state’s settlement demand should be reduced from $150m to $75m – and with the Nigerian president. “Adams reported that Gowon met with President Yar’Adua and convinced him to drop the two federal high court cases against Pfizer,” the cable says.
But five days later Liggeri, without the lawyers present, enlarged on the covert operation against Aondoakaa.
The cable says Liggeri went on to suggest that the lawsuits against Pfizer “were wholly political in nature”.
He alleged that Médecins sans Frontières, which was in the same hospital in Kano, “administered Trovan to other children during the 1996 meningitis epidemic and the Nigerian government has taken no action”.
MSF – which was the first to raise concerns about the trial – vehemently denies this. Jean-Hervé Bradol, former president of MSF France, said: “We have never worked with this family of antibiotic. We don’t use it for meningitis. That is the reason why we were shocked to see this trial in the hospital.”
Not content with denying the Nigerians compensation by blackmailing the Nigerian government Pfizer then blacken the name of Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) for the crime of reporting Pfizer for unethical behaviour, by telling the world it was they, NOT Pfizer which was doing the illegal drug testing.
You want to boycott Visa, PayPal & MasterCard, & Amazon? Don’t forget to include Pfizer on the list of corporations whom right thinking people who care about people more than things, should not do business with.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 10 2010 9:46 utc | 5
Debs, speaking of pfizer, did anyone see this?
Pfizer ordered to pay up over ‘AIDS-like’ virus infections
In what is being hailed as a major victory for workers in the biotech and nanotech fields, a former scientist with pharmaceutical firm Pfizer has been awarded $1.37 million for being fired after raising the alarm over researchers being infected with a genetically engineered “AIDS-like” virus.
So is pfizer in the bio-warfare business now?
Let the sun shine in…
This doesn’t make me feel all safe and fuzzy, especially knowing we live 25 miles from the most dangerous biolab in the country, a level 4 bio lab in Hamilton Montana, along w/ GSK (GlaxoSmithKline)labs…
pfizer engineering viruses?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 10 2010 15:20 utc | 8
big smile here. was thinking more than once this week how great it would be to get bernhard’s perspective on wikileaks given his techy background and his proximity to the “action.” great to see you back, bernhard. hope all’s well with you. gotta go now, looks like i have a lot of reading to catch up with already.
Posted by: sharon | Dec 10 2010 15:22 utc | 9
In answer to Uncle’s query in post #3 of this thread, the major areas of my concern and research since MoA closed are:
1. Corporate misinformation campaigns re your links to Naomi Oreskes’ book, “Merchants of Doubt”. My interest here was stimulated by the effectiveness of the global warming deniers’ campaigns. I realized that otherwise intelligent and critical thinkers were falling victim to the deniers’ lies. In addition to Oreskes’s book, and pertinent to mainly climate, I would also recommend James Hoggan’s book “Climate Cover-Up” which first made me aware of Oreskes’ work. This book is important to anyone who wishes to debate the deniers as it brings to light the work, background and affiliation of most of the voices who are pushing denial.
But even of more concern to me is the ubiquitousness of the misinformation campaigns being adopted by corporate psychopaths of all colors, i.e. Pfizer campaign as discussed by DiD in #5 of this thread.
2. Second to that and also related is the plight of the honeybee. CCD (Collony Collapse Disorder) is huge. And we know the reason even though the misinformation campaign of the vested chemical companies is befuddling the issue and coercing some governments from enacting effective legislation to counter the problem. The class of insecticides, neonicitinoids, are the main culprit. They are used systemically (added to seed that then disburse the chemicals throughout the entire plant as it grows) and used in many plants that the bees forage. They have been shown to affect bees in sub-lethal concentrations of 2 to 6 PPB which is found in the pollen and nectars of the plants. France banned IMD (imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid) in 1999 and saw a recovery of the bees, but, due to persistence of the chemicals in the environment, not until 2005. For any interested in exploring this further I recommend “A Spring without Bees, How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply” by Michael Schacker.
3. The nature of the psychopathic in relation to corporate and government culture. The corporation is the perfect model of an effective psychopath, free from all sense of conscience, empathy, remorse, or guilt; able to preform assigned tasks (profit making) free from any of the constraints that would normally inhibit such behaviors in fully human humans. Now the institutions that model psychopathy so well are given the full legal status of we flesh and blood humans in the US.
4. On the positive side, I have become involved with the production and use of BioChar. BioChar is a relatively new idea in our culture, but very ancient in other cultures i.e. pre-Columbian Amazonian cultures that created the sustainable communities with the development of terra preta in the middle of the Amazonian rain forests. BioChar has the ability, as a soil amendment, to enhance soil fertility and permanently (hundreds of years as opposed to a few years for fallen trees in the forest) sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
Posted by: juannie | Dec 10 2010 19:35 utc | 12
In answer to Uncle’s question, the most interesting thing I’ve come across since the moon closed up is this book by Carroll Quigley “The Evolution of Civilizations”. It’s a really simple/elegant and empirical means to analyze society. Works equally well from the vantage of the 10 major historic civilizations, to the various societies that make up a civilization, down to the “institutional” parts that comprise a society. I’ve written up a series that outlines his theory HERE“>http://annamissed.com/?p=1190>HERE AND HERE,”>http://annamissed.com/?p=1194>HERE, AND HERE“>http://annamissed.com/?p=1213>HERE FOR STARTERS.
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 10 2010 20:13 utc | 13
I can’t seem to make the links work (just like old times) but they’re in the February 2010 archives at annamissed.com.
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 10 2010 20:42 utc | 14
Oh Yeah. And Economic Collapse as well.U.S. Military Prepares for Economic Collapse
Skeptics who continue to assert that the economic plight of the United States has been overstated need not look further than the Pentagon to find out just how wrong they are. CNBC has learned that the Pentagon is currently playing out “war games” pertinent to an American economic meltdown.
snip…
Similarly, the Army has launched an operation called “Unified Quest 2011” in which it studies the “implications of ‘large scale economic breakdown’ inside the United States that would force the Army to keep ‘domestic order amid civil unrest.’”
snip…
However, the 2011 Unified Quest lends truth to assertions that the United States is indeed not witnessing an upward economic recovery, as so many in our federal government have asserted. Soldiers are being trained in evacuation and detainment as a response to rioting, revealing the possibility that the United States military may resort to martial law in order to maintain order.
My Bold
But to be cognizant of my paranoia I have to remember that we have been considering the event of martial law and detention centers ever since Sept 2001. Guess I should just chill and concentrate on BioChar and mixing it with my own composting shit.
Posted by: juannie | Dec 10 2010 22:04 utc | 15
something a little lighter:
I reckon that even the thickest member of the Battenburg clan, Charlie must have finally understood the message delivered to him by Tory PM and royal bastard twice removed David Cameron.
Last night after Cameron had gone home following a hard day’s yakka ensuring that england’s education system was once more returned back to the exclusive purview of england’s wealthy, he had that day passed a bill which had just trebled University tuition fees, Charlie and the most hated women in england, Camilla, were ‘accidentally’ delivered into the hands of an angry mob.
Protestors organised by students from my old school London University (slight exaggeration – the college I had attended was swept up into the London Uni conglomerate following some politicians “review of education” a while back) had begun gathering in Parliament Square from Mid-morning to ensure that the MP’s, especially the weaselly Lib-Dems (whose leader had repeatedly promised before the election that Lib-Dems would not support any increase in tuition being as how they played the old ‘let suck in the idealistic students and give em a lesson in politics they’ll never forget’ trick to garner the youth vote across england) couldn’t get their craven sop to the wealthy at the expense of the poorest families, through Parliament without a clatter.
The clatter was the sound of the gathering hordes preparing to return the Lib-dems to the political wilderness where they existed for most of the 20th century.
About 15,000 students gathered in Parliament Square and its environs. Any opportunity to invade the houses of parliament, as they had tory HQ a couple of weeks back, was gonna be stymied by a huge contingent of the thugs that are most usually found in the disguise of a “London Bobby”, (as opposed to our old antagonists the plainclothesmen, known colloquially as ‘Scotland Yuk’) and who have been the ruling elite’s preferred method of oppressing ordinary englanders for over 150 years.
As well as the obligatory ‘mounted police’ used to charge into crowds and inflict injury that can then be blamed on the victim for being mean to the nice ‘horsey worsey’, the thugs in blue had armoured vehicles, snipers, & gangs of roving baton wielding goons responsible for many deaths including innocent passers-by.
Once the crowd had gathered the police ‘kettled’ it up all day and into the night. The protestors were squeezed into as small an area as possible; denied access to toilets, food or drink for 12 hours and then let out only after they had submitted to personal searches, had mug shots including vid interview giving name and particulars taken. Nice freedoms bloke. So much for the right to self-expression eh.
Anyway as the protestors were being dekettled Charlie Battenburg and his former partner in infantile ‘sex romps’ Camilla, were driven into the dekettling zone. It is useful to remember that Charlie’s driver would probably have been a policeman yet somehow, the other police in the cars that accompany the no-longer supported by the elite heir to the throne, had disappeared, gone off somewhere else, must have seen a donut shop eh.
Damned odd, what!
Still there were enough cameras operated by photographers skilled enough to know how to take shots which would show Charlie’s face inside the car, when he realised that this could be it, that after all these years of hanging around like the proverbial spare prick at a wedding, he had been turned loose into a mob of extremely angry peasants. At one stage it seems the police driver helpfully lowered the back window to assist the peasants’ access into the vehicle.
Unfortunately for the elite, desperate to replace the unpopular Charlie as heir with the new “Di’ the foppish but inconveniently balding Prince Billy, preferably while he still has hair, the worst the angry mob did to Charlie was (allegedly) poke him with a stick.
Still even if Cameron didn’t get rid of the pesky prince, he has certainly succeeding in manufacturing a situation where he can pass even more repressive anti-human legislation, to prevent the disaffected from gathering in groups big enough to create a ruckus.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 10 2010 22:34 utc | 16
@ anna missed, et,al…
Here are those link in the order above…
Quigley’s Evolution of Civilizations
expansion
overview
looks fascinating thx..
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 10 2010 23:52 utc | 17
Uncle Scam,
I’ve just started reading “Journey to the End of the Night” by Louis Ferdinand Celine. So far, so good. It was written in French. It was published in 1934. It was translated into English around 1983 by Ralph Manheim. The language is very fresh. I’m laughing out loud at times. It starts out with the main character in WWI. I haven’t gotten too far yet, but it has started well. War is nuts.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Gaughan | Dec 11 2010 3:05 utc | 19
it certainly is encouraging to see the activity here. hello everybody!
as i’ve mentioned, i have been investing my limited online time at a local blog. it can be frustrating, because i got spoiled by the quality of commentary at MoA, but it’s been an interesting forum for me to write persuasively for a local audience.
before i became an official contributor, i was a regular commenter who spun a degree of pessimism these mostly local progressive democrat supporters weren’t use to. needless to say, recent events have proven my position to be unfortunately accurate, and it’s been strange to see how disillusioned people are getting.
if Obama is not primaried in 2012 from the left, there is a good chance some “independent” like Bloomberg is going to run and potentially make titanic waves.
when i get a chance to read, i’ve been chipping away at an epic poem written by Louis Zukofsky. wading through this text has reminded me what the long poem is capable of, and has inspired me to start my own. the long poem can hold anything, and i’ve surprised myself how quickly the pages have piled up. i’m nearing page 50, and there seems no end in sight.
b, the fact you have turned the lights back on seems to reinforce my feeling that wikileaks is a total game-changer. it feels like we are entering a new phase of psychotic imperial behavior from the good ol’ USofA. in the next few months we will see how far certain forces will go to silence Assange, and how capable the opposition will be to keep blackening the eye of US imperialism.
Posted by: lizard | Dec 11 2010 3:28 utc | 20
Israel’s Prisoner ‘Mr. X’ is Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Abducted by Mossad
A censored Israeli news report called him “Mr. X,” a story I broke last June. Until today, we didn’t know who he is. But through a confidential Israeli source I have exposed his identity. He is a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard general and government minister under former President Khatami named Ali-Reza Asgari. Western news outlets reported in 2007 that he either defected or was kidnapped by the Mossad, with the assistance of western intelligence agencies (either the CIA or British or German intelligence depending on the source) in Istanbul.
re. Debs’ post above:
Trovan aka trovovoflaxin, by Pfizer is an antibiotic, not, at all or particularly, effective for meningitis.
The scandal is well known, and Nigerian victims have obtained compensation of 75 million dollars, awarded by a US court. There are other cases still pending. Afaik, the wikiped link is factually correct, it in its pedestrian way.
A new vaccine against meningitis which is effective has been developed by the WHO, the serum Institute of India and PATH.
The details from Wikileaks are killing, expose Pfizer’s MO.
As far clinical trials and the like go, this case seems one of the few (?) that could be quoted as testifying to the efficacity of international legal procedures and “proper” (in the sense of at least existing!) victim compensation.
I’m guessing Pfizer’s behavior was so gross, so blatant, so over the top, that they managed to disgust or alarm absolutely everyone, from their competitors to US judges, which is why some marginal ‘wins’ on the Nigerian side went through. “See, it works!”
The whole story also illustrates how Pharma cos. like Pfizer, financial bodies, and many others, count on the courts or other instances to mandate penalties and compensation, which are negligible to them in monetary terms, but do grant absolution, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a blanket pass for future unethical, unbridled, unexamined, behavior.
Confession, actually it is ordered reparation which by-passes confession and thus amendment or atonement, bestows clean hands, then they are free to just go on their merry murderous way.
The fines and pay-outs etc. are just part of doing business and are pencilled in somewhere in the black budget.
Trovan, wikipedia
in French:
irin news
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 11 2010 13:49 utc | 24
well well well, Bernie Madoff’s son committed suicide.
seems like the mob he got mixed up with prefers hanging to other methods of getting their point across. Roberto Calvi also committed suicide the same way. The DC madam is also copycat.
certainly this case is different and the poor man was so distraught and ashamed that he could no longer face life. only a tin foil hatter would believe that he was silenced before he named names.
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 11 2010 15:54 utc | 25
I googled a player in the story about Mark Madoff and found this tidbit
never heard of it before but it looks absolutely delicious.
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 11 2010 16:01 utc | 26
only a tin foil hatter would believe that he was silenced before he named names.
aluminum is all the rage now.
Posted by: annie | Dec 11 2010 19:00 utc | 27
dan, by ‘tidbit’ does that mean you’re seeing the paragraph prior to subscription like i am?
But one potential target has stayed out of Picard’s sights—the Securities and Exchange Commission—which conducted multiple examinations of Madoff over many years without uncovering …
i want to read the rest of it.
Posted by: annie | Dec 11 2010 19:07 utc | 28
MoA comes back unnoticed (at least to me until Xymphora linked to one of the new posts) and after reading just five days of new posts I’m an already with clear symptoms of addiction.
After MoA closed I continued trying to keep an eye on what happens on the world, but now with worse sources and analysis, and I moved mostly to economic blogs and all the craziness of the current recession/depression/day-light-robbery-by-bankers-and-their-bought-by-politicians that was supposed to ‘change capitalism’. I guess some thought or hoped the change would be on a different direction than making the poor poorer and rich richer.
Posted by: ThePaper | Dec 11 2010 20:46 utc | 29
What ThePaper said.
Also MoA is BACK!!!
Doin a little dance here.
Dont leave again, the tubes are awfully emptyheaded without MoA. Funny how much difference one little blog makes.
Posted by: holybaz | Dec 11 2010 21:19 utc | 30
Those of us who’ve been telling y’all about the need to seriously consider investing in aluminum foil… honestly, it was a whole lot more fun when it seemed like we were crazy. Now that the conspiracy theories are more than theories, it’s rather scary.
For those of you who have just begun to think a little layer of reflective metal between you and the PTB would be a wise thing I recommend you check this out:
How to build a protective hat
I can’t say I ever remember any kind of “terrorist” episode in Stocklom, maybe I’m blanking on it…
Two explosions in Stockholm: one person dead
My question is, why now? When all eyes are looking toward Sweden? Is this a message? And to whom?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 12 2010 2:00 utc | 32
we are witnessing a primal drama that goes back to our ancient tragoidia, to the goat’s song, the song of the slave the slave capable of singing of his own being & that of the world around him
the scam in sweden & it is exactly that, in both real & jurisprudential terms is as much about the envy of suffering as it is about bad behavior. there is sufficient inculpatory evidence to suggest that neither of the complainants thought anything of assange – & this is absolutely clear on their blogs & comunications – other than a certain propertorial claim in this ‘slave’. the envied slave is to be destroyed like the bull in the ring
assange is like most of us flawed, troubled, the intensity of his project no doubt exaggerate those flaws but the real truth must not be forgotten – in a time when late capitalism fell apart in 2008 – the leaking of documents revealing the day to day stupidity & recklessness of our elites has the resonance to change consciousness, fundamentally. that is to say even the thickest of us cannot hide behind a myth which suggest the elites possess a mysterious intelligence – on the contrary we have found they are more stupid than we think, more reckless than we could imagine
& at the centre of this a corrupt & cretinous media ready to play the double jeu of profiting (& filtering) the leaks while at the same time celebrating the crucifixion of assange. i cannot articuate the depth of my loathing, al jazeera english who profited directly from the iraq leaks now attempt to demonise the site that brought the leaks. really, they are loathsome
& i am reminded of malcolm x who speaking of the liberal foxes that he feared more than the wolves because of the very real threat the posed to real & qualitative change – john pilger is a very rare exception to that rule & it does not surprise me to hear him speak the clearest words outside the court today
in the same excerpt one could see the demonic john burns of the new york times acting if he was a real reporter with his notebook – the photographer weegee wouldn’t have pissed on that apologist of the immoral & illegal invasions of iraq – if he was on fire which he most probably has been for some time
i am glad that an assange exists, that he had the intelligence & wit to create an organisation that could do what it is doing – doing what the left has failed to do – to open the windows to the absurd existence of our elites
dare to struggle
dare to win
journalism has been dead for some time but we saw its putrefaction during the cheny bush junta, the thatcher blair axis & the succession of australian prime ministers who swim in the ass of u s administrations
‘journalism’ became what it has always been since beaverbrook, the mouthpiece of the elites, they are caricatures of caricatures & are for the most part numbskulls & if there is a doctorate here or there they are just educated numbskulls
worse than that – they are the beneficiaries of power, they are the malignancy within power because the fools they are they actually believe what they say – they are unendingly stupid
the so called ‘liberal’ media is worse because as malcolm x warned us they are the foxes to watch out for & i can see in australia – you have a gaggle of them – some reactionaries of the old school, yet others like the birminhgam clown who come from some form of lifestyle writing preposterously wants australians to take his commentary seriously. you don’t have to be einstein, you don’t even have to be barry jones – to see that it is menadacious crap
ink that is shat out the bowels of buffoons
however troubled or flawed julian assange is – they are not worthy of cleaning his shoes let alone offering judgement
they need to understand that people understand what it is that they are doing
ink that is shat out the bowels of buffoons
it is no surprise that the liberal ‘foxes’ as malcolm x referred to them are deeply satisfied with the attacks on julian assange & on wikileaks
they run over themselves to offer the classic liberal positions whether it is in libération, the guardian or the fairfax newspaper in australia
they are more loathsome than their conservative colleagues who make their monstrousness a part of their character armor as wilhelm reich would have put it – the liberals run to protect their elites quicker than the conservatives, it is little surprise that liberal ‘intellectuals’ of all stripes defended the illegal & immoral wars against people of afghanistan & iraq
in france the many substantial thinkers who are dead would have torn down the edifice built by the entirety of liberal intelligentsia in france in their hatred of the arab people & the continual crimes waged against them. the supposed humanity has been greatly diminished
so i find their nod & wink demonization of julian assange & wikileaks a part of their standard operating procedure
these last years the people of many countries have needed freddom of thought & real press freedom but until wikileaks they have had exactly the opposite – a media that is in service of the elites in every possible way
if all that wikileaks had done (but it has done very much more) was to reveal the poverty of journalism, that in itself is a glorious act
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 12 2010 3:44 utc | 33
not that it is relevant to the bombing of a shopping center but Sweden has seem some high profile murders in the past.
Olof Palme and Anna Lindh
one mustn’t forget that Sweden is a monarchy and there are some pretty severe right wing authoritarians there as well.
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 12 2010 9:04 utc | 35
what is going on with Obama?
in the middle of a press conference Obama leans in while Clinton is at the podium, says he’s been keeping the first lady waiting for a half hour, so he’s “taking off”, and then leaves.
now i’ve read some gossipy, totally unsubstantiated speculation about Obama’s mental health from Wayne Madsen (i know), but i never gave it much traction.
but after watching the footage of Obama’s bizarre flight from the stage, well, who knows. i showed the footage to my wife for a reality check, and even she was a bit dumbfounded.
Posted by: lizard | Dec 12 2010 15:44 utc | 36
THIS“>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/number-of-adult-americans-living-with-their-parents_n_795185.html>THIS little tid-bit is interesting. Apparently there are record numbers of adults living at home with their parents – up 10% recently. And at the same time there is an almost equal % drop in home ownership for the under 35 year old crowd.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and claim that such a trend is exactly what the republican’s and their nutball teabag minion’s want to happen. If you look at the notion of why these people seem to vote against their interests, from the vantage that they do this because they are against modernity (&government), and for all backsliding back to the authoritarian tribal based family structure of old – then such a result makes perfect sense. Because as is the case here, young people are literally being forced back under the umbrella of family based authority, when they can no longer afford to venture out on their own as independent individuals.
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 12 2010 20:13 utc | 38
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/number-of-adult-americans-living-with-their-parents_n_795185.html
this link works — for some reason my links using the old format don’t work anymore.
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 12 2010 20:22 utc | 39
I’m still very cautious about posting too much.
I am not convinced that this entire Wikileaks debacle won’t lead to the justification of tighter “‘Net regulation,” if it wasn’t orchestrated with that very idea in mind. (I am not suggesting that those were Mr. Assange’s aims; but the archives on this very site should yield some insight into the function of the politically “useful idiot.”)
There are a handful of issues which I am waiting to see play out, and I can’t decide whether parsimony should lead me to suspect that they are related or unrelated.
Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 13 2010 1:08 utc | 42
Hiya monolycus. You could be correct but in the end does it really matter?
If the criminal conspiracy – normally refered to as the the amerikan empire, does try to turn the WL actions into an excuse for a more authoritarian grasp on the internet (me, I thought they already had that), the issue of whether or not Assange was a witting or unwitting participant is no more relevant to the larger issue, than whether we go out with a bang sharing our points of view, or a whimper, huddled into our individual foxholes.
I do know which one I prefer, even if it didn’t have any effect on the outcome.
But personally, I don’t think that they can do much more than they already have. Most net communicating isn’t done on blogs like this any more, anyhow. Peeps use Facebook and that Twitter thing which totally makes everything traceable straight back to the individual – and it is frequently censored.
The few ‘mainstream’ blogs that are left outside of the social network are those on news sites and I dunno about your experience, but mine is that many of those sites edit & censor comments. Even if you are one of the lucky few, allowed to express an opinion other than the prevailing neo-liberal take on the subject they have selected as being suitable for comment, the odds are great that crucial points of your argument will have been edited out (“for the sake of brevity, so everyone gets a say”).
My local fishwrap the one which used to regularly publish my columns back in the day of snail mail and typewriters, appears to have barred me from comment at the few places on their site where reader comments are permitted.
The twitter farce appears designed to ensure style (eg alliterative ambiguity)wins out over substance every time.
I suppose we could conceivably end up being forced onto the ‘black web or whatever the network outside of the approved Internet Protocol address range, is currently called, but even if we did; is it that much worse than where we currently find ourselves, pushed to a corner, well away from yahoo, google, facebook and the rest of the lowest common denominator pap?
WikiLeaks isn’t merely the best way of resisting the total spectrum dominance of information by those who seek to oppress us, WikiLeaks tactics are currently just about the the only way of resisting domination. IMO worrying about whether WikiLeaks is gonna provoke a clampdown is the equivalent of a patient dying of pnuemonia who refuses an antibiotic shot because he/she is concerned the needle may be infected with the HIV virus.
Refusal of the shot is pointless because the pnuemonia will certainly kill you long before an AIDS related condition may make you ill.
We are at that point; where many of us believed we were inevitably headed. And I don’t mean the “internet war” that the bored adolescents are ranting about. Deep down we always knew that eventually a showdown was gonna happen, no matter what we did. If Assange and co hadn’t published their stuff some other method for scaring the credulous would have been devised.
At least this way there is a fighting chance of convincing the population the baby is being tossed out with the bathwater.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 13 2010 2:55 utc | 43
that’s funny, Debs, it appears we share being banned from our local newspaper’s online forums.
what got my account axed was pointing out how the manner in which they covered “homeless” issues (specifically how they constantly emphasize the “transient” problem our little downtown business sector is supposedly suffering) was blatantly sensationalist in order to cultivate controversy to drive web traffic to bolster ad sales.
yeah, they censored those kind of comments, but allowed anonymous commenters to say things like homeless people are parasites and deserve to be put into mass graves.
that particular comment stood for over a week until i made it a topic at the local blog and brought enough attention that they took the comment down. because that what it takes.
Posted by: lizard | Dec 13 2010 3:32 utc | 44
Senator Lieberman barks orders like he was some department chief in the executive branch; and things happen to the flow of contributions to WikiLeaks, and the organization gets dumped off its US servers. You can see strange things happen in the theatre of government. Strange days indeed.
The walls are melting and oozing as they did in that film, “Barton Fink”. Welcome to the courtroom of the macabre where the empire’s functionaries would like to bring Julian Assange. Everything will be burning if they get their way, including the Bill of Rights. They are thinking it would be easier to prosecute Assange than to menace the NYT or Washington Post. And after they get the idea across that it’s illegal for anyone, who has a political point of view or agenda, to expose government lies and crimes–once they establish that–there won’t be anyone they can’t go after. The regime will defend its set of facts from all comers.
Defense Employee warned friend before the bomb
An employee at the Swedish Defence warned a friend to stay away from Drottninggatan, writes the Swedish news agency TT
An employee at the Swedish Defence warned a few hours before Saturday’s suicide bombing in Stockholm a friend that he should stay away from Drottninggatan, writes the Swedish news agency TT.
TT describes his source as ‘very credible’.
The message was heard, according to TT following:
‘If you can, avoid Drottninggatan today. A lot can happen there … just so you know it ‘
The Swedish Defence denies, however, to the newspaper Aftonbladet that they had prior knowledge of the explosions in central Stockholm on Saturday.
The article is updated …
So damn good to see everyone, Mono, r’giap evetyone… I just want to shout, Avengers Assemble! …lol
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 13 2010 4:06 utc | 46
debs, i am remiss in not mentioning before how much i drooled over your royals post and laughed hysterically over the second link.
now i am playing catch up on the thread. just wanted to get that out of the way.
it is kinda mindblowing. so many times i want to say all my individual hi hi hi’s to everyone and then decide how stupid that sounds and delete them. (oh geez my hello to dan and beq this morning was so lame i totally had to delete that)
but it’s so wonderful having you all here. liz noirette and mono, cope and mr he’s so b real, anna! and maxcrat!…r’giap m’luv..
there’s no end to my gratefulness b (whom i adore not only for your brilliance). uncle, have i told you lately how much i…..miss your links! how do i stop naming names? fauxreal , catlady where the heck are they. biklett’s back!
the bar is open again and may it last..may b miss us as much as we missed him God DAMN I’ve missed this place. thank you monolycus dear one couldn’t have said it better myself. big shout out juannie..hey sharon (conchita no more?) let’s tele talk soon sweetness. before my redundancy expires y’all i will bid you a temporary adieu.
HOORAY!!!
Posted by: annie | Dec 13 2010 4:39 utc | 47
Hello all…
Well, this is nice! I had a sort of intuition that the bar was open again, and voila! b, you’re the only host for times such as these.
Posted by: Tantalus | Dec 13 2010 9:48 utc | 48
Let me pick up on Uncle’s question re what has influenced me the most during the stretch of dry months while the bar at MoA was closed. Amongst the many shocking events transpiring, what absorbed me the most was the topic of animal cruelty, in particular the nasty and pitiless practices which have become the norm in the meat industry. Our supermarket society has no problem with meat suppliers treating fellow sentient beings as if they were dirt – out of sight out of mind. Here some thoughts by Paul Watson on this topic.
A very inconvenient truth
The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.
The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.
We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world’s sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world’s seals.
So why is it that all the world’s large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry?
Why did Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?
The Greenpeace ships serve meat and fish to their crews everyday. The World Wildlife Fund does not say a word about the threat that meat eating poses for the survival of wildlife, the habitat destroyed, the wild competitors for land eliminated, or the predators destroyed to save their precious livestock. […]
Worth reading in full.
As with the point raised by juannie above concerning the honeybees, the worlds food supply is in grave danger if we collectively don’t wake up to the writing on the wall.
Posted by: Juan Moment | Dec 13 2010 15:26 utc | 49
Re: my #46 above..
I was told that the link is from a Swedish tabloid type webpage, however, that is not confirmed, nor does it look to me to be a gossip type page, all I see is news type articles, but I can’t read Swedish either. Can any of our international contributers chime in here?
Say, Dan of steel?
Anyway, even if it were, it shouldn’t, nor doesn’t, necessarily mean there is not validity to it.
Anyway, from the same page we get:
Swedish police: The bomber is likely to have had aid
The man who Saturday killed himself in what is labelled as a terrorist attack in central Stockholm was probably not acting alone, says swedish police who also confirms his identity with ”98 percent” certainty.
Chief prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand on Monday said at a press conference that the bomber in central Stockholm probably didn’t act alone.
– We know from experience that mostly more people are involved in an act like this, Lindstrand said.
He also said that the police is now “98 percent” sure that the man that was killed by his own bombs were 28 year old Tamouir Abdulwahad, a swedish citizen of Middle East origin. He was the owner of the car that also exploded in central Stockholm on Saturday.
British authorities confirmed on Sunday that they are investigating the owner of the car that blew up in Stockholm on Saturday, the British newspaper The Guardian told DN.se just before 8 p.m. The British Cabinet Office had confirmed that the investigation was under way.
One theory by investigators is that the man found dead by a bomb on Bryggargatan is the same man who is registered as the owner of the car with the gas cylinders that exploded on Olof Palmes Street a few minutes earlier. Investigators did not want to identify the man on Sunday, saying they had not yet reached next of kin. According to information shared by The Guardian, the owner of the car used to live in Luton.
Shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, a car that was loaded with gas tubes exploded at Olof Palmes Street in central Stockholm. Ten minutes later a suicide bomber blew himself up on a busy shopping street about 220 yards away.
First on the scene, Pascal Moulas, tells DN.se how the man lying on the street was dying and had a serious injury to his abdomen, as if he had carried a bomb.
– My first thought when I arrived at his side was that it had to do with a terrorist, said Moulas to DN.se.
Several metal objects later revealed to be pipe bombs surrounded the man on the ground. According to information received by DN.se, a large bag of nails was also recovered by the Swedish police bomb squad.
Both the Swedish Security Service and the news agency TT, received an e-mail from a man threatening to kill Swedes, just 10 minutes before the blasts.
On Sunday, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt addressed the nation, urging people to stay calm. He said, “People should be able to believe in different deities or none at all” and stressed that we must be able to live side by side with one another.
The failed suicide bomber and car bombing suspect is listed at an address in Tranås, a small town in southern Sweden, but has kept residence in the U.K. for a longer period of time. On a dating web site he describes himself as deeply religious.
On Sunday evening the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT) reported that they had received information that hours before the bombings in Stockholm an employee of the Swedish Armed Forces sent a warning to an acquaintance that “something serious” could happen on Drottninggatan (Queen Street).
“The Swedish Armed Forces had no knowledge beforehand about plans or the circumstances surrounding the events. If that was the case, the Swedish Secret Service as the responsible authority in such matters would immediately have been informed,” said Erik Lagersten, Information Director of the Swedish Armed Forces.
The police on Monday said they hadn’t found anything confirming that this message was delivered as claimed..
Speaking of the British investigating the car, does anyone remember the beginning and the Iraq war and they traced the cars back to stolen cars from Texas?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 13 2010 22:31 utc | 50
so good to read all these voices again. i’ve missed you all–commondreams, counterpunch, speakeasy, and feral scholar have been my fill-ins, but not the same. i recently had a chance to perform “alabama song” at a local club, managed a few brechtian stabs against capitalism in my intro…..
Posted by: catlady | Dec 13 2010 22:31 utc | 51
Juan, (et. al, especially the paragraphs on the bees,)
There is so much that is horrendous out there right now that one is easily overwhelmed by just a few of the atrocities. The industrial food criminals and their unconscionable treatment of sentient beings is so abominable as to defy words. I thought I was up on that travesty and pretty inured but I went with my wife to see the movie “Food Inc.” thinking I already knew most everything it had to offer. But to actually witness the horrors in that media left me in dumfounded inexpressible rage. I don’t particularly recommend watching the movie. Unless you just want to get fired up more to actively participate in the front line of the fight. The link is a preview and you’ll grasp the geste.
Regarding the honeybees, my wife is a passionate bee keeper. She is in it for the bees and has no thought of taking from them unless they are well taken care of first. She has mentored about a dozen new local bee keepers over the last several years. Yesterday held a gathering of local bee keepers to tell stories and share their experiences. Several have been in it for decades and have been instrumental in developing new ways to steward and protect and propagate them. One has written the first organic bee book and another was a predominate personality in “Queen of the Sun” (I would recommend this movie to everyone of the regulars here and I believe you will be moved and informed. Rgiap, view the trailer and you will meet French beekeeper Yvon Achard who lives in Grenoble France. We love him. You will too.) My wife shared one of her stories about beeing called by the bees in the middle of the night several years ago. She got up and went out to one of her hives on our land and just sat with them for an extended period. This was before the major awareness about CCD and she got a clear psychic message from them. (I’m a past confirmed atheist and still a hard core skeptic and don’t easily accept other’s psychic messages.) What she claims the bees told her was that one of the major problems that was stressing and killing them was a poison that was being used on crops they foraged and was now infused into the corn syrup that the commercial beekeepers were feeding them.
Since then my research has confirmed this. The neonicitinoids that are the class of insecticide use ubiquitously now are systemic and when applied to the seeds end up infusing the entire plant in small concentrations. The bees have been found to be susceptible to sub-lethal concentrations of these insecticides at 2 to 6 PPB which is found in the nectar and pollens and grain (in the instance of corn). While I have seen no research or data indicating what concentrations of these chemicals pollute corn syrup, there has to be some there. My wife is quite distraught because she is convinced and no one pays her any heed because it comes from her psychic communications and she doesn’t know where to take this. I’m connecting the dots and believe she is really onto something. Yesterday some of the beekeepers at her gathering got it. Hopefully it will move forward now and some research will be done to confirm or not her hypothesis. What we do know from the available non industry sponsored research is that the bees are being adversely affected by the neonicitinoids they are carrying back to the hive in sub lethal doses that disrupt their nervous systems.
Posted by: juannie | Dec 13 2010 23:47 utc | 52
And now I just found this:”Leaked Memo Sheds Light on Mysterious Bee Die-Offs and Who’s to Blame”
Both imidacloprid and clothianidin are “neonicotinoids,” a class of pesticides that has risen in popularity in the last fifteen years. Imidacloprid, the first of the neonicotinoids to be commercialized, was registered in the U.S. in 1994. Neonicotinoids attack the nervous system of insects. They are frequently used by treating seeds prior to planting. Then, once the plant grows, the pesticide spreads to all parts of the plant — including the pollen. The hope is that only pests who try to feed on the plant will be killed, and beneficial insects will not be affected. Sadly, it appears that the bees never got that memo.
my bold
snip…
While corn does not require bees for pollination, it produces large amounts of pollen when it tassels — a bee feast! Corn pollen is no doubt a major source of food for bees across the entire U.S., as more acres are devoted to corn than to any other crop. And beginning in 2004, corn seed companies began selling seeds with five times the previously used dose of neonicotinoids.
I am sure that the pollution of pollen by neonicotinoids is one vector of these poisons to the bees but I am also inclined to believe that others have yet to connect the dots that my wife has and realize that the corn syrup made from the polluted corn is also a major vector. Commercial beekeepers feed their bees huge amounts of corn syrup on a regular basis. I really don’t definitively know but the logic is compelling.
Posted by: juannie | Dec 14 2010 1:21 utc | 54
@$cam
RE: Your post #50
Ekstra Bladet isn’t Swedish; it’s Danish. It’s also a far cry from a reliable news outlet.
Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 14 2010 5:35 utc | 56
Neruda (translated by William O’Daly) from Find de Mundo
I am no longer sure of the sea
in this presumptuous day:
perhaps the fish dressed
themselves in nuclear scales,
and within the infinite water
instead of the original cold
grow the fires of death.
They commit to colonizing with fear,
the sudden tides of the world,
and no tower can protect us
from so many enemy waves.
They are not content with the earth.
They need to murder the ocean.
Posted by: lizard | Dec 14 2010 5:51 utc | 57
“If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.”
(Richard Holbrooke dies…)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 14 2010 15:27 utc | 58
Ah, the smell of feces from washington has become such a reek it’s flowing back west and the stench is making me ill.
Economic hard times are bringing out the best in people as this story of another angry man shooting-up a place attest to:The shooting
And why…
it is not at all surprising that the cables confirm everything b wrote on georgia, that we have confirmation of the interdference in the affairs of both venezuela & iran
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 16 2010 21:07 utc | 61
… plutocracy. We mean not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others. As the introductory essay to this issue shows, this influence may be exercised in four basic ways: lobbying to shift regulatory costs and other burdens away from corporations and onto the public at large; lobbying to affect the tax code so that the wealthy pay less; lobbying to allow the fullest possible use of corporate money in political campaigns; and, above all, lobbying to enable lobbying to go on with the fewest restrictions. Of these, the second has perhaps the deepest historical legacy.
Scandalous as it may sound to the ears of Republicans schooled in Reaganomics, one critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is its ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites. The most dysfunctional societies in the developing world are those whose elites succeed either in legally exempting themselves from taxation, or in taking advantage of lax enforcement to evade them, thereby shifting the burden of public expenditure onto the rest of society.
wait did fuckimama* have a “Road to Damascus” moment?
No degredation intended on the name, however, fuck, Francis…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2010 5:07 utc | 62