Me busy with family stuff …
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December 25, 2010
Open Thread
Comments
b,
I wish you and your family a most happy holiday. Tell them for me.
Warmest Regards, Joseph
Posted by: Joseph | Dec 25 2010 16:18 utc | 1
Interesting article…
The End of Men: Over the years, researchers have sometimes exaggerated these differences and described the particular talents of women in crude gender stereotypes: women as more empathetic, as better consensus-seekers and better lateral thinkers; women as bringing a superior moral sensibility to bear on a cutthroat business world. In the ’90s, this field of feminist business theory seemed to be forcing the point. But after the latest financial crisis, these ideas have more resonance. Researchers have started looking into the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk, and wondering if groups of men, in some basic hormonal way, spur each other to make reckless decisions. The picture emerging is a mirror image of the traditional gender map: men and markets on the side of the irrational and overemotional, and women on the side of the cool and levelheaded.
Posted by: Maracatu | Dec 26 2010 1:03 utc | 2
hey Uncle, did ya see who now owns our water infrastructure? the fucking Carlyle Group
this is bad.
Posted by: lizard | Dec 27 2010 4:04 utc | 4
@Maracatu. Thanks for that one. The acknowledgement that “allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete is not a recipe for a peaceful future” is a recognition perhaps of the difference between a market-driven change and a more conscious cultural shift many feminists had imagined.
Posted by: d.l.finn | Dec 27 2010 4:51 utc | 5
hey Uncle, did ya see who now owns our water infrastructure? the fucking Carlyle Group
Yeah, I read that… fucked up indeed. Thx, for the heads up though…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 27 2010 5:42 utc | 6
This recent Slate”>http://www.slate.com/id/2278923/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter>Slate piece shows that the religious right is not so pious as they would like to believe.
And when taken with the other recent poll that showed that the religious right is less informed about religion than either atheists and agnostics, the only conclusion to reach is that they essentially see themselves first through a tribal (white privilege) prism of identification, and are simply applying the religion as some kind of affirmation ritual after the fact.
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 27 2010 9:21 utc | 7
I still don’t know why my links don’t work. If you copy & paste the address it works, but the link doesn’t seem to.Any suggestions?
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 27 2010 9:33 utc | 8
@anna misssed
Slate”>try this
I have several copies of the following in my word processor MoA personal log.
<*A HREF="LINK">TITLE<*/A>
You will have to remove the “*” after both of the < symbols. I had to include it so the line wouldn’t appear as a link. Don’t leave a space by removing the “*”s. I then copy the URL from my browser page and paste it in place of LINK and whatever title I want (in the above example: try this) I paste in place of TITLE. I then hit the Preview button and try the link before posting. Hope this works for you. I has always worked for me since I started doing it.
Posted by: juannie | Dec 27 2010 11:50 utc | 9
Thanks juannie, but have been doing this for years here exactly the same way, but for some reason (maybe my new computer?new typepad format?) when I follow the same old format I now get the whole >link title< as the whole address, which fails as a working link. As in my post above shows, when you copy and paste the red link address - which should show up as the red word >link< but doesn't - the address when pasted in works. I can't figure out why the address works but not the link, aren't they the same? Anyhow...
Posted by: anna missed | Dec 27 2010 18:01 utc | 10
@anna missed – you had a double <*A href in your original comment - don't know why. Linking works for me like it always did: Copied from the "Post a comment" HTML Tags help: Link to ACLU
This literally sickens me.. Further excursions into our souls sick society…
Obama calls Eagles owner to congraulate him for signing Vick
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 27 2010 19:57 utc | 12
Uncle $cam,
Just more evidence that our Nobel Peace Prize-Winning President worships at the altar of violence and hate, making this an Orwellian nightmare come true for all of us. So for the sake of our own survival, we must sic the Dogs of War on Barry O’Bomber and his dog-killing buddy, Michael Vick.
Take it away, Pink Floyd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpTXHhMa_YQ
Posted by: Cynthia | Dec 27 2010 23:43 utc | 13
hahaha…
U.S. Can’t Account for Billions Spent in Afghanistan
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 28 2010 7:55 utc | 14
Uncle $cam#14,
Somehow that headline seems familiar….
Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 28 2010 8:25 utc | 15
AlJazeera interviews Julian Assange Link (worth the bandwidth)
UN security maps disagree with Obama’s assessment of the Afghan war Link
WikiLeaks cables: Saudis proposed Arab force to invade Lebanon Link
Saudi Arabia proposed creating an Arab force backed by US and Nato air and sea power to intervene in Lebanon two years ago and destroy Iranian-backed Hezbollah, according to a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. […]
Posted by: Juan Moment | Dec 28 2010 14:15 utc | 16
Juan M. #16 – your second link (UN security maps) is missing a url.
Posted by: Philippe | Dec 28 2010 15:22 utc | 17
Uncle $cam#14 and Rick Happ#15,
Wars are a magnet for all sorts of criminal activities, thief being just one of them. And when wars are unjust, as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan, they become an even stronger magnet for criminal activities. So if we were to put an end to our wars around the war, crimes of all sorts would taper off considerably.
Gotta say, it’s extremely hard to argue in the negative that war is blasphemous in the eyes of Christ. Given this, I can’t see how people who are all gung-ho for war, or people who willingly engage in war, particularly when war is unjust, can get away with calling themselves Christians. That’s hypocrisy no matter how you look at it!
Let me also say that if the mainstream media were doing what it’s supposed to do, which is to expose criminal activities taking place throughout all levels of government, including all areas of the military, there would be no need for an outfit like WikiLeaks to exist. If the American people would realize this, then they would see Julian Assange as a freedom fighter, not as a terrorist. But I don’t see this ever happening as long as our war profiteers have got a gun to the head of most, if not all, of our major media outlets.
Posted by: Cynthia | Dec 28 2010 17:26 utc | 18
WikiLeaks: How U.S. tried to stop Spain’s torture probe
WikiLeaks cables revealed ‘secret concerted U.S. effort to stop a crusading Spanish judge from investigating a torture complaint against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other senior Bush lawyers.’
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 29 2010 6:29 utc | 21
US Navy achieves ‘100 mile’ hypersonic railgun test shot – Electro-hypercannon could bring back the dreadnought era
Sometimes, I try to imagine what the world would be like if we spent all the capital, time and energy on the opposite of war… but then I remember, the Buddhist saying, saying that stipulates Meditation is not what you think. Wishful thinking happens when you refuse to see how painful things are.
yeah, I’m a masochist…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 29 2010 7:47 utc | 22
A nation in the ineluctable grip of bankruptcy and social unravelling can hardly save itself with super weapons. The US has shot its bolt already. Maybe Bernanke can order the printing of enough dollars to fill a dreadnought. An empire only has allies on paper, after all; and after it has exhausted itself on the dark path, all that remains for it will be to scream in a high-pitched hysterical voice about the super weapon it has up its sleeve. The Big Gun is also just too Freudian for words.
From TomDispatch in Dec. 2010:
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire:
Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025
By Alfred W. McCoy.
It is long-ish and treats the economy, military, energy, technology, space, war, etc.
In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all.
Snipped because it is what I fear the most.
“>http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175327/”Link
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 29 2010 14:47 utc | 24
wrt mccoy, against the grain recently rebroadcast one of his talks on his latest book, “Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State”
the mp3 of the hour-long program is available here: Empire Abroad, Surveillance At Home
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the US engineered its conquest of the Philippines. According to Alfred McCoy, the security and surveillance methods introduced and refined by the US in the Philippines were brought home to these shores, for use in domestic policing, intelligence, and other repressive techniques and systems that had profound consequences for civil liberties.
Posted by: b real | Dec 29 2010 23:23 utc | 28
Oh, look everybody, it’s our old friend, you know, the one with blood on her hands…
Terrorism, Money,
And Drugs
John Myers is one of an elite group of American cops trying to clean up a dangerous war zone half a world away.
By Judith Miller
It was the suicide vest that clinched it.
John C. Myers, a veteran law enforcement officer embedded in the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq’s Anbar province, was certainly familiar with the outlawed amphetamine Captagon. Since arriving in Ramadi in the summer of 2009, he’d learned that the drug’s hallucinogenic effects, similar to those of the recreational rave drug Ecstasy, made it popular with Iraqi cops looking for a jolt.
A top drug smuggler arrested in Anbar earlier that year described drug labs in Syria and warned his Iraqi interrogators that insurgents were making a fortune dealing drugs.
But Myers, 52, a tall, taut fitness fanatic who’s spent more than 20 years in law enforcement, didn’t really focus on the tiny white pills until June, when Iraqi cops found 16 of them in the vest pocket of a suicide bomber who’d attacked an American convoy in the Anbar province capital.
“That was my ‘aha’ moment,” Myers says. Drugs were paying for terrorism and terrorists were being paid in drugs.
Give me them good ol’ Aspen Roots…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 30 2010 1:27 utc | 29
Noirette: an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all
I think that this is beyond the “conceivable” stage.
We are many, they are few.
Reginald Kaigler makes some good points that have been discussed here before.
Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 30 2010 5:41 utc | 31
Hey – you’re back! And the whole gang! I accidently hit the wrong link on my iPhone – and it’s like a time-warp. Anyone seen Billmon?
Posted by: DM | Dec 31 2010 4:46 utc | 33
Hi DM and all others!
—
Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault
A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.
The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports.
The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja’s genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys.
“We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent,” said one of the report’s authors, environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani. “We don’t know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out.”
Aaargh mateys!
I’m feeling a bit like raiding something… not in the physical sense, but there are a few things that need to be taken from Americans before they’re gonna buy a clue:
Their belief that the universe revolves around them
Their gung-ho, can-do attitude when it comes to waging wars for empire
Their sense of entitlements (like being entitled to fuck with anyone else’s country for the profit of their corporations – entitlements like that)
Their right to use George Orwell, or any other freethinker’s quotes, as a tag line for posting on economic blogs
Their Internet access… hell, all their electronics (I’d miss ’em for a couple of weeks but after that?)
What eles? Oh, yeah, the big one: the angry and vengeful god most of them worship. Get their big kuhana a Prosac prescription, or better yet, a good medical grade Colorado blunt and chill that fucker out. I’m tired of him constantly getting his peeps all fired-up and in a killing rampage. I don’t know if any of you went to the Market TickerI linked to about Muslims and Islam, but holy hell, the comments from people telling the world what hateful people the Muslims are, and how they all need to be wiped from the face of the planet… Shit, is it just me, or is such thinking kind of crazy? They think all the Muslims are evil people and should be eliminated because of what again? Oh, yeah, they’re violent and crazy… Is it any wonder American children are on so many prescription drugs for mental problems? And people wonder why I smoke so much…
America has become a larger and much more dangerous mushroom farm than the Soviets ever were… I say mushroom farm because the population is kept in the dark and fed shit. Combined with the economic upheaval (anyone remember Germany post WW I?) we’re gonna see some really scary times.
I’ve an idea! Since I can see this coming, and I’m not going to be able to fight it, maybe I could join it? I’ve already got a great plan… all those other Fascist movements were rather drab in the way they dressed, can you say, “Boring!”
No wonder they have such a bad rap, they had bad outfits. They just looked evil. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give Fascism a happier face… The Happy Hawaiian Shirts will haul all the freethinkers off to places where they won’t cause problems for the rest of us. I’m thinking we’d put all you sorts on a big barge and send you to clean-up the giant plastic islands… or maybe just send you to the plastic islands to live… anyhoo, as I was saying, wouldn’t it be much easier to sell this sort of ‘cleansing’ to the public when they see smiling happy kids dressed beach town cool? How can anyone be mad at a bunch of clean-cut, round-faced American youngsters, all dressed in colorful shirts (each unit would have their own style of shirt…) and hauling all the dirty radical types off to their plastic island in the sea.
Sounds more like a dreamy vacation doesn’t it? Hell, I’m even willing to go the extra mile and make the barges look a bit like the love boat… Hmmmm
Peace
DaveS
Posted by: DaveS | Dec 31 2010 14:02 utc | 35
@ 34
Welcome back b, I for one missed you and your blog.
re: Falluja and their health problems, I’m thinking it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Amerika the gift that keeps on giving. Makes one want to keep shouting “USA, USA, USA”. What a bunch of bullshit. Turn on the TV anymore and all you here is how great our amerikan heroes are. Sure makes me proud.
@ 35 great comment.
Posted by: cut & run, terriorist lieberal | Dec 31 2010 14:35 utc | 36
DaveS, Is it any wonder American children are on so many prescription drugs for mental problems? , I read in some article this week that 1 in 4 US children are on some sort of prescription drug.
Somewhat related:
Selling debt is like selling drugs
(I didn’t use the Bloomberg story heading for my link heading – it was too sexist for my male chauvinist personality, but the problems of debt that Yoolim Lee and Ruth David write about are significant.)
It is tempting to put a link to the US National Debt clock here, but you all have seen it before. Plus, I don’t wish to add to the media hype for the next excuse to rob what’s left of the middle class with the new Congress coming in.
Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 31 2010 14:48 utc | 37