For a while I love to read Amin Maalouf http://www.aminmaalouf.net/en/ the Lebanese writer, his passion are the word and origin of them, alcohol is here http://www.aminmaalouf.net/en/2009/08/my-web-of-words-1-alcohol/
As for alchemy origin is different here: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2002/crabb/history.html than the one described in that link.

Posted by: neretva’43 | Nov 29 2013 21:14 utc | 4

Also, Proving Electoral Fraud Takes Time in Honduras.

Posted by: Maracatu | Nov 29 2013 21:46 utc | 6

China Announces That It Is Going To Stop Stockpiling U.S. Dollars
Isn’t the world getting better recently? 🙂

Posted by: Michal | Nov 29 2013 23:56 utc | 8

@ bevin + neretva’43: I didn’t want to make it easy for you, so I deliberately didn’t menion alchemy, alcohol, alcove, alfalfa, algebra, algorithm, alkali, and aubergine, all of which have their earliest occurrences in a Western language in the 12th or 13th century.

Posted by: Parviziyi | Nov 30 2013 0:34 utc | 10

do syrians support the ‘syrian revolutionaries’? not if Deir Attiyah is anything to go by:
@KeepingtheLeith 22h
The jubilant citizens of Dayr Atiyya throng onto vehicles after the #SAA liberated this town. #Syria #RifDimashq pic.twitter.com/V6eQFDUXh6
from a comment on a different thread…but relevant
Lilly Martin Sahiounie YES. Brian you have the correct details. We watched last night, late, on local Syrian TV, the testimonies of the folks in Deir Atiyah. Men, women, kids. They all said the place had been overrun with armed terrorists, who stole everything not nailed down. They could not go outside. They were all thanking the Syrian Army for making it safe enough to resume normal life. Deir Atiyah is a very large town, it sits right on the highway to Damascus (north of Damascus). But it is isolated. It sits alone, no other communities near. Right on the highway, at Deir Atiyah is a large modern hospital. It sits on a hill, so very visible. Those filthy terrorists got into the hospital and killed many nurses and doctors. Do they think freedom is achieved by wiping out medical personnel? They dead terrorists were all over the place. They were from Yemen and various Gulf places. Sickening.

Posted by: brian | Nov 30 2013 1:34 utc | 12

2001
charley reese [rip]
+What’s good for Honest Abe is good for Honest jiang, right?*
http://www.againstbombing.com/soyouwant.htm
2013
+What’s good for Honest Abe is good for Honest xi, right?+
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-251113.html
http://chinamatters.blogspot.sg/2013/11/china-adiz-you-furnish-hysterics-well.html

Posted by: denk | Nov 30 2013 2:39 utc | 14

muricuns oh muricuns….
can i sue these morons if i choke on my laughter ?
exhibit a
*China and Japanese leaders should follow president Obama’s restrain method instead of using force. Obama has many chances to get US militarily involved in Syria and Iran, but he chooses peaceful means instead*
exhibit b
*way to go abe, im all for japan, jap porn rocks !*
n …….
guess who’s the author of this gem of philosophy ?
*They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets.
They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.*
none other than us pacific fleet’s newly minted cic, hairy harris.
but he doesnt look hairy, he look asian ? turns out he is half jap !
http://schema-root.org/region/americas/north_america/usa/government/branches/executive/departments/defense/navy/personnel/admirals/harry_harris/
coincidence, coincidence im sure, just like abe posing in that 731 jet fighter hahaha !
enjoy urself folks, coming to a cinema near u…the sequel.
http://space4peace.blogspot.sg/2013/11/looking-for-trouble.html

Posted by: denk | Nov 30 2013 3:19 utc | 16

@14
Yes, the Cathar inclination and the troubador movement were likely different and related expressions of the culture that migrated into Langudoc, etc., before the time of Gothic and Merovingian kingdoms, after the fall of Rome. Northern Lombardy, Provence and the Pyrenees region would be the settled range of this migratory branch of Iranic peoples. Whether migrating in the body of the Gothic and Hunnic incursions – or driven by their advance it isn’t certain. Some may have been a part of late-Roman era migration from the steppe, as troops, etc.
What is sure is that during 4th-5th century, a neo-Scythian peoples arrive via the Balkan and Italian peninsulas – ultimately from the North Caucasus to a final diaspora across South Western Europe.
After their arrival, the native European peoples acquire characteristics and cultural forms hitherto unknown: Among them the cult of the Horse, and the social standing of the rider. With this comes mounted combat with the stirrup and lance, as technical introductions, and the notion of an associated ethic – later called “Chivalry” in French, and related to “Javanmardi” in Iranian Khorasan. A social component of this is the “relatively” high status of women, including property inheritance and occasional rulership – observed along the entire axis of the Indo-Iranic Central Asian steppe, to the Volga from the Ili, noted as early as Heroditus. The ingredients for the cult of courtly love are thus introduced to Europe – along with the strain of Mysticism and Gnostic/Noetic religion.
One can look at the contemporary Sassanian sculpture reliefs in Kermanshah, Kurdish Iran, and see the very image of the caparisoned horse, full helm and stirrup-couched lance of the Medieval knight, a full six-hundred years before this figure becomes the very image of the troubadours’ romances. It is quite startling to see the flower of Chivalry in pre-Islamic, Khosrovan Iran – opposed to Justinian and Belisarius. These were the eastern branch – moving down into the Persian country at the collapse of Parthia – and bringing their esoteric, unitarian mysticism into official Zoroastrian practice – much as their Western tribesmen did for the nascent churches on the frontiers of Rome.

Posted by: Jeremiah | Nov 30 2013 4:12 utc | 18

use em and kill em…what to do with jihadis whos use has expired…turkey shows us
http://www.islamicinvitationturkey.com/2013/11/29/special-turkish-military-forces-to-eliminate-escaped-terrorists-from-syria/

Posted by: brian | Nov 30 2013 6:24 utc | 20

john francis lee @ 19: ” All men are brothers and sisters. We’re going to have to realize that if we are going to engage and conquer our unique yet now common human social pathology : the corporation. Surely the most brutal and dangerous emperor of them all.”
A truism, if ever there was one.

Posted by: ben | Nov 30 2013 14:08 utc | 22

I want to return to a comment that bevin made a few threads back, about Iran’s nuclear program, in which he said something like: Iran has the right to enrich, but pursuing nuclear power is not a wise choice. I made a little stronger statement on another site, to wit: ‘…that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power generation is one of the stupidest acts of hubris in modern times – nuclear power generation has a negative Return On Investment everywhere it’s been tried, including France which is closest to breakeven, but still has to be subsidized with taxes. The reason no US power company has built a nuclear power plant in over 30 years is because of the extreme negative ROI…’
Then this morning someone sent me this horrifying info-
http://climateviewer.com/2013/11/24/10-most-radioactive-places-on-earth/
of which Fukushima and Chernobyl are #1 and #2, both (ex)power generating facilities.
I say ‘hubris’ because Iran obviously takes deep pride in their nuke program, but it has not a whit of practical use. They should trade the whole thing for normalized relations with the west.

Posted by: okie farmer | Nov 30 2013 17:10 utc | 24

Mr. Lee, tanks for posting the correct link.
Bevin, I see I amgoing to come inside with a high and tigt heater to knock you off the plate of altruism.
OK, I know. There may or may not be some tin foil involved in the following construction:
http://davidshurter.com/?p=3815

Either Glenn Greenwald is a gullible village idiot or he is one of many actors planted in this spy charade. Nobody in the intelligence game is allowed to be that naïve, especially when it is crystal clear from these interlocking corporate connections that Pierre Omidyar is hardly an innocent when he has every incentive to work on behalf of Booz Allen and the NSA to recover the Snowden files.
Sell-Out or Set Up?
It took $250 million for Omidyar to win the fealty of the “courageous” and “independent” journalists who surrounded Snowden and controlled his every movement. The team of Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, along with filmmaker Laura Poitras, not only kept the fugitive in the dark while mounting a clever sting operation. (“You can’t let the Chinese or Russians confiscate the files”, as if Moscow or Beijing would be that stupid while the whole world was watching.) Taking his data as a “security precaution”, the thieves thus managed to retrieve the secret documents for the spymasters in London , Langley and Fort Meade .
“We’ll be working with them and others, but we have a long way to go in terms of what the (news) organization looks like, people’s roles and responsibilities,” said Omidyar to Pacific Business News. This leaves no doubt about who’s the boss, while his other statements indicate Greenwald, Poitras and Schahill can collect the bounty money and disappear until their next Mission Impossible assignment, so long as they keep their mouths shut. Otherwise, a new team of actors will hunt them down one at a time. Accidents happen.

But wait. Wy should I apologize for adding a bit of aluminum to a website that routinely revels in it?

Posted by: donkeytale | Nov 30 2013 18:41 utc | 26

@24 Book of Tobit most likely. From the Apocrypha.

Posted by: dh | Nov 30 2013 19:04 utc | 28

This sounds interesting:
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/assad-our-battle-saudi-open-ended

Posted by: bevin | Nov 30 2013 20:35 utc | 30

okie farmer.
A friend sends me regular updates re Fukushima. This is from today’s:
Mainichi, Nov. 27, 2013: The ruling coalition’s ramming of a controversial special state secrets bill […] through the House of Representatives on Nov. 26 has stunned the public. […] it could discourage citizens as well as journalists from seeking access to such information for fear of harsh punishment, blocking government information from circulating in society […]
Japan-based Investigative Journalist Jake Adelstein, Nov. 29, 2013: […] even politicians inside the ruling bloc are saying, “It can’t be denied that another purpose is to muzzle the press, shut up whistleblowers, and ensure that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima ceases to be an embarrassment before the Olympics.” […] And most tellingly, Masako Mori, the Minister of Justice, has declared that nuclear related information will most likely be a designated secret. For the Abe administration this would be fantastic way to deal with the issue of tons of radiated water leaking […] There seems to be no end to stopping the toxic waste leaks there but the new legislation would allow the administration to plug the information leaks permanently. As [it] continues to pour into the ocean and our food supply, it is an ominous sign that the Japanese government refuses to disclose information about the levels of pollution […]
Mainichi, Nov. 27, 2013: Under the bill, ordinary citizens who aid and abet or conspire with others in leaking information classified as special state secrets could face up to five years in prison even if the information were not actually revealed. If citizens were indicted for obtaining special secrets under the legislation, they could be convicted without the content of the information being clarified.
Mainichi, Nov. 27, 2013: One of the [Fukushima] residents angrily said, “How far are they going to go in fooling us?” […] a member of the Diet’s investigation committee on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, said, “I hope information involving the lives of residents will not be made secret.”
SOURCE: Mainichi
Bellona, Nov. 29, 2013: […] The current condition of the Fukushima Daiichi plant is precarious – arguably worse off than it was directly following the initial catastrophe […] seemingly continuous leaks of highly radioactive water […] The disposition of the fuel in the melted down reactors is unknown […] no real consensus on what on what might stop or at least diminish the leaks of some 400 metric tons a day of radioactive water into the Pacific.

Posted by: bevin | Nov 30 2013 20:53 utc | 32

bevin@32
Yikes ! Thanks for the horrible news. Someone asked me the other day if I thought it felt like 1935 world wide. I told him/her/them … and electronic correspondent, don’t know which … only when I wake up in a cold-sweat in the middle of the night. I don’t remember 1935. I was minus 12 at the time.
‘ Mainichi, Nov. 27, 2013: Under the bill, ordinary citizens who aid and abet or conspire with others in leaking information classified as special state secrets could face up to five years in prison even if the information were not actually revealed. If citizens were indicted for obtaining special secrets under the legislation, they could be convicted without the content of the information being clarified. … ‘
That is the exact functional equivalent of the lese majeste law, article 112, in Thailand … the land where ‘Field Marshal’ Plaek welcomed the Imperial Japanese forces ashore at Songkla in 1941, just hours before Pearl Harbor. Now ‘Field Marshal’ Suthep is occupying the Imperial City of Angels with more-or-less-native fascist minions of his own from Songkla and thereabout.
But maybe the TPP won’t pass. Maybe the billionaires’ minions in the US House and Senate will not accord it fast track status and won’t ratify it. I wait to be surprised.
Maybe the Mi’k Maq will succeed in keeping the Texans behind Stephan Harper from poisoning the groundwater in New Brunswick.
Strangely enough I think the latter is more likely. It’s time for us all to realize that we are all indigenes on planet earth, and that the aliens striding about in their TNC tripods, vaporizing us with their drones/heat ray, are our common enemy. That they mean to kill us all. The redshirts in Thailand don’t need to be told, they’ve known it for centuries.

Posted by: john francis lee | Nov 30 2013 21:49 utc | 34

Bevin, I see my bestest fastball didn’t even faze your altruism, much less brush it back.
Maybe there is nothing left to be revealed or maybe you will need to buy Glenn’s book or see Glenn’s movie to find out for sure. Maybe they’ll put the rest of the docs behind a paywall.
The one revelation I’m truly hoping to hear but not holding my breath is that Snowden will somehow gain his reward somewhere from all this libertarian cashing in of his efforts for te greater good. If I’m him my KGB legal counsel will be looking intently at this situation.

Posted by: donkeytale | Nov 30 2013 22:59 utc | 36

@30 “Assad explained that Saudi Arabia “is leading the most extensive operation of direct sabotage against all the Arab world,” Too true, one day I hope to see those fat, whorehouse inhabiting, terrorist loving drunken perverts dangling by their balls from lamp posts, the sooner the better.

Posted by: harrylaw | Nov 30 2013 23:21 utc | 38

harrylaw@29,
Can’t help but agree with your take on Iran’s independence being the crux of the problem vis-à-vis US, Israel, KSA. Your “intolerable threat to Israel” is actually another “joke” – as Jacques Chirac said, ‘even if Iran had nuclear weapons, if they launched them, before they were 300 meters in the air, the whole of Iran would be reduced to rubble’. BUT, things at this moment are different than 2003 when Iran suspended all enrichment for nearly 2 years in their deal with EU3. That was a bait-and-switch that I believe the EU powers went into in good faith, only to have US pull the rug out from under the deal. Hard lesson for Iran. However, at this moment, the US is leading the negotiations, not standing in the shadows, so if Iran were to do even what they did in 2003, much less give up their whole nuclear program, the SC5+1 would be hard pressed to not agree.
bevin@32
Got some of that same info from a friend in CA; Abe is on a roll criminalizing dissent. Up to 5 years in jail for “special offenses”, special to be defined later, or actually not at all.

Posted by: okie farmer | Dec 1 2013 3:19 utc | 40

aint muricuns charming ?
http://warontherocks.com/2013/11/airsea-battle-vs-offshore-control-which-has-a-better-theory-of-victory/
at least u cant fault them for *transparency* !

Posted by: denk | Dec 1 2013 5:11 utc | 42

elliot higgins Aka brown moses supposes…attacks Mother Agnes:
https://twitter.com/Brown_Moses/status/379936353972404224
who is Laura wells?
Laura Wells
@wellsla
Freelance reporter who’s worked for CNBC,CNBC World,ReutersTV,Ebru TV,& 6 News;contributed to Foreign Policy Mag. & CBS,
(so Higgins is leading a freelance reporter astray,uses him as her primary source o mother agnes?
Brown Moses
@Brown_Moses
@wellsla are you aware of Mother Agnes’ reputation?
Laura Wells @wellsla 17 Sep
@Brown_Moses Need to read more. Studying the photos/video is interesting,but really not sure. What do you think of her?
Brown Moses @Brown_Moses 17 Sep
@wellsla she’s a big Assad supporter and makes lots of grand, unverifiable claims about how awful the rebels are
[Higgins is saying the ‘rebels’ arent nearly as bad as we are told….weapns may be his area of expertise but people he either is clueless about or more likely is lying…even US has alnusra as a terrorist group]
Brown Moses @Brown_Moses 17 Sep
@wellsla she lacks any sort of credibility outside of Russia Today and Press.TV
[he really should stick to his weapons: shed has far more credibility than he can dredge up]
Laura Wells @wellsla 17 Sep
@Brown_Moses Gotcha, thank you. I try to read between the lines of everything I read. Was more interested in the photo/video comparisons.
[Laura has problems understanding if she reads ‘between the lines’ and comes up with Mother Agnes bad, ‘rebels’ good]
Laura Wells @wellsla 17 Sep
@Brown_Moses I see,thank you for your insight. I read/watch things from both sides. Had already gathered it was partisan,but…still,I look.
is Brown Moses just deluded or working an agenda?

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 7:21 utc | 44

Tore ‏@potifar66 10h
Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad leaves for Syria next week to escort cargo ships taking out CW http://mobil.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Norsk-fregatt-til-Syria-7391326.html …

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 7:38 utc | 46

useful tweeter:
Tore
@potifar66
Old man inspired by the youth of Egypt. Former journalist, shocked by MSM role in promoting wars.
Norway

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 7:54 utc | 48

@brian | 44
“Brown Moses really should stick to his weapons”
Nope, Brown Moses weapons expertise is non-existent as well (from professional point of view). By his own admission, he learned about weapons from Hollywood movies, he hasnt received any education or has any field/work experience of any kind about it. So his “weapon expertise” is no better than yours or mine, its actually worse due to heavy bias.
“is Brown Moses just deluded or working an agenda?”
IMHO its both. He started as a regular blogger with a clear bias (i.e. “West is good, whoever is against – bad”), and later picked up by “respectable media” due to having the same agenda, and was promoted and advertised as a “weapons expert.” Now he is most likely getting paid too.
Brown Moses is a lot like clothier from SOHR, with the difference clothier was planted from the get go.

Posted by: Harry | Dec 1 2013 8:03 utc | 50

Hackers should broadcast that on satellite networks all over the world.
The American “dream”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25151956
And a good read, but a voice in the desert
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/egypts-jon-stewart-on-comedy-and-politics/?_r=0

Posted by: Mina | Dec 1 2013 10:46 utc | 52

The inimitable George Galloway: “She’s Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, of the diocese of Hobs Hamar and Yabud in the Syrian Arab Republic, here on what has suddenly become a controversial tour of Britian. You’d think that British antiwar movement would be interested in hearing what a representative of Syria’s Christian communities has to say about the US-backed so-called rebels, and their BEHEADING WAYS. But alas, her scheduled appearance in today’s Stop the War Coalition International Peace Conference was scuttled by LIBERALS, who don’t much care to hear from a woman with an actual first-hand account. No, apparently they prefer to hear only from other armchair activists, who have gained their opinion from the evening news.”
John White, “the most stalwart defender of Mother Agnes Mariam’s right to be heard in Britain during her tour” said:
“This unfortunately was the doing of a couple of liberal commentators who rose to delegates in this conference who still believe, for some strange reason, that there is actually a revolution taking place in … Syria, and believe that you can have a situation where you are against Western intervention and against this present Syrian government. But who else is going to stop these barbarians, unless it’s the Syrian government? I don’t know if these liberal commentatos have 30 divisions of armed troops up their sleeves to take to the conflict, but if they don’t, then that’s a non-position, and it’s actually disgraceful, given the position of this country vis-a-vis Libya, and vis-a-vis Iraq.”
http://youtu.be/KAASm1zfFPo

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 10:52 utc | 54

strangeness in Kiev Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin
Follow
Revolutionary tractor moving closer to police barricade near presidential compound. ………………………now what sort of ‘revolutionary’ seeks to join the EU????? is it Poland Solidarity all over again?

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 12:40 utc | 56

Hoarsewhisperer 47
those gents are openly discussing how to attack china ,with different scenarios of targeting civilian facilities !
if couch potatoes like these can contemplate war crimes so cavalierly,
is it any wonder the *pros* in pentagoon have been doing exactly that as a daily routine ?
sometime i just wonder if muricuns r hardwired for dispensing destruction ?

Posted by: denk | Dec 1 2013 14:05 utc | 58

“This isn’t a case of Russia bullying Ukraine, as the media are painting it.”
It takes a lot of stupidity or courage to write this.

Posted by: neretva’43 | Dec 1 2013 15:51 utc | 60

I can’t help thinking that the name Brown Moses is some kind of joke. It invites speculation (from me) on whom it is, precisely, that Brown Moses has been brown nosing? In Oz (and I suspect elsewhere) brown nosing means jettisoning one’s self-esteem to beg for favours from people with more influence than oneself / eagerness to become a lackey.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 1 2013 16:59 utc | 62

The UK MSM tone has changed drastically since the US finally pushes for Geneva 2 and a deal with Iran
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10485970/Syria-dispatch-from-band-of-brothers-to-princes-of-war.html

Posted by: Mina | Dec 1 2013 18:56 utc | 64

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 1, 2013 11:59:52 AM | 62
brown moses …to the tune of Moses Supposes that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxWkUkUsQA
“Moses supposes his toeses are Roses,
But Moses supposes Erroneously,
Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses,
As Moses supposes his toeses to be!
Moses supposes his toeses are Roses,
But Moses supposes Erroneously,
A mose is a mose!

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 20:42 utc | 66

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Dec 1, 2013 9:51:24 AM | 59
this is usuallyu called : CORRUPTION… its usually asserted corruption is a feature of the third world when its epidemic in the 1st

Posted by: brian | Dec 1 2013 20:45 utc | 68

Hanford, Fukushima, Sellafield………
Tic toc, tic toc, tic toc…….
Sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost.
But what the fuck do our “leaders” care? Rich, arrogant, out of touch…..
Spend 5 minutes watching these despicable assholes in DC, Boehner, Biden, Santorum, Clinton, Paul….and you realize what deep shit this country is in, never mind the global community. Saw Feinstien this morning on CNN’s “State of the Union”, and she and some other DC piece of shit were busy telling John Q. Public that we are less safe than ever from those nasty Islamic boogie men that lurk under all our beds, so hey, lets let NSA do its thing.
Truth is, we are less safe because of the fact that these pieces of shit have long since abandoned the concept of “Representative Government”, and huge emergencies like Fukushima or Hanford are ignored and hidden. We are less safe because corporations are allowed to poison us and our environment, with no actual people being held accountable. We are less safe because corporate wealth trumps actual science. We are less safe because we are a murderous imperialistic cancer on the global community, earning the hatred that these pieces of shit foster and nurture with their military adventures. We are less safe because the Fifth Estate is owned and operated by the very entities it should be monitoring and holding in check through exposing the truth, instead of fabricating “news” to justify policy.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Dec 2 2013 0:00 utc | 70

POA@70
You become more poetic and erudite with each post.

Posted by: okie farmer | Dec 2 2013 3:23 utc | 72

Ever wonder why this country political system is in such a malaise ?
The Huffington Post reports the following about our esteemed Congress
” The 2014 calendar for the House, released in October by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), shows members will only work only 113 days. That’s down from 2013, when House lawmakers were scheduled to meet for 126 days. Only 107 days were scheduled in 2012. ”
These are the same guys that tell us that the working people have it too soft and that we should work harder. They do seem to have enough time to make sure they vote themselves their regular pay raises. Lest we forget, we the US taxpayer is paying their salaries

Posted by: curious | Dec 2 2013 15:47 utc | 74

Armenia needs DIRECT Russian involvement, if only to balance out and eventually rid the country of its twenty year old Western poisons, infectious diseases such as American pop music, American film, religious cults, English language, Western propaganda, Democracy peddling, multiculturalism, multiracialism, atheism, individualism, substance abuse, Holocaust worship, consumerism and ultra-liberalism, to name only a few…

Amen is what i say, read rest of this fine article here

Posted by: hans | Dec 2 2013 20:25 utc | 76

Here’s a (valid) link for those wanting
more detail on the “innovation” mentioned above.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 2 2013 21:47 utc | 78

A few links from today’s Information Clearing House
You don’t have to agree with this British right wing Daily’s narrative of the Syrian situation to understand the significance of this sort of story seeing the light of day.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10485970/Syria-dispatch-from-band-of-brothers-to-princes-of-war.html
“Democratic” Japan’s new secrecy law:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/30/national/japan-the-new-uzbekistan-of-press-freedom-in-asia/#.
These protests against an Obama installed government will be all over the MSM. But just in case you didn’t get to page 96:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/12/thousands-protest-election-result-honduras-201312244438811583.html
Here’s another from an EU monitor:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4584-the-results-of-the-elections-in-honduras-were-changed-says-european-union-observer-
And this is about neo-liberalism in Mexico. Again, with tens of thousands involved and just over the US border my guess is that CNN and Fox will be carrying live updates. But in case you’ve been busy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25180472

Posted by: bevin | Dec 3 2013 1:40 utc | 80

Thanks to Bevin and others for useful links.
This item may be a useful supplement to Bevin’s link regarding neo-liberalism in Mexico.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 3 2013 9:01 utc | 82

bill mitchell:
The fiscal role of the KfW – Part 1
Posted on Tuesday, December 3, 2013 by bill
This is the first part in what might be several blogs. I will see where my curiosity takes me. Today I want to invoke that well-known piece of inductive reasoning the – Duck Test. We all should know how that goes. But consider this reasoning. We have an institution that is 100 per cent government owned. It borrows millions and its liabilities are 100 per cent guaranteed by the federal government. It spends, I mean lends millions each year at very low rates to all manner of firms, organisations and even builds infrastructure. It also takes equity positions (provides capital) to a range of enterprises. It pays no tax having the same status as the central bank. It is not a duck but looks very much like a government fiscal entity. Welcome to the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction Credit Institute) or as it is now known the – KfW. This bank was created in 1948 as a German vehicle to faciliate the infrastructure rebuilding under the Marshall Plan. It has since grown (and diversified) into one of the largest banks in Germany (taken its main business units into account) and pumps millions of Euros in the domestic economy and the export sector (via IPEX, its 100 per cent owned subsidiary). It is a major reason why the public debt ratio in Germany is 80 per cent rather than close to 100 per cent. It is a major reason why the federal deficit has been reduced without scorching the German economy. It is a story about smoke-and-mirrors accounting, German-style.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by: c | Dec 4 2013 22:09 utc | 84

Another take on Russell Brand: http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2013/13_12_05.mp3

Posted by: guest77 | Dec 6 2013 5:53 utc | 86

I love this comment, Mina, it’s a real formulaic mini rant:

How can as Muslims accept a constitution that doesn’t allow Muslims to form political parties based on Islam but allows political parties to be formed according to Communism, atheism, Homosexuality and satanism? Is this man a Muslim oe is he drunk?

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Dec 6 2013 17:13 utc | 88

Employees of the US military contracting group Academi (formerly Xe, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide) are seen in new leaked video shooting their machine guns at random while driving through the streets of Baghdad, crashing into other cars and even running over a pedestrian without hesitation. Academi received a $250 million contract by the Obama administration to provide military services in Afghanistan. If a government wanted to hire these guns, would it want to get blanket immunity for them from the host nation and would the host nation be sane enough to grant it? http://www.minds.com/blog/view/49692/video-shows-us-contractors-killing-civilians

Posted by: brian | Dec 6 2013 23:50 utc | 90

Mina: Omidyar defense here in HuffPost, Dec 3, but I don’t think much of his argument. It revolves around concepts of democracy and free media which are completely ideological, ie the democracy and media freedom he takes as a ground from which to criticise Anonymous is ideological, it does not exist and never has done, it is just a rhetoric to be used by the powerful to obscure their own power. I do not support Anonymous, because it does not have a coherent political program, it just sprawls around hardly doing more than provoke futile DDoS attacks which achieve nothing. Like Occupy, it is a ‘protest’ mentality, and there is no sense in ‘protesting’ unless you still believe that the power structure is open to dissuasion from its goals. But Omidyar’s critique of it is not made from my perspective, obviously. You mention ‘mywantiwar.org’, by which I assume you mean Myantiwar.org, which is just an aggregator for antiwar.com. The only interview with Omidyar I could find on it is a NYT one, from Oct 20. It isn’t really of much interest.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Dec 7 2013 8:42 utc | 92

70% of Japan polluted with radiation-
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2013/12/03/professor-it’s-true-that-about-70-of-japan’s-territory-is-polluted-with-radioactivity-tokyo-is-contaminated-with-highly-toxic-radiation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfiniteUnknown+%28Infinite+Unknown%29

Posted by: brian | Dec 7 2013 10:29 utc | 94

I stumbled on this interview. It is a very different narrative about Iraq, and I find it very interesting.
Perhaps people will disagree with parts of it but I think it is a very interesting and largely ignored narrative:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATz6GcA1a7U

Posted by: Pirouz_2 | Dec 11 2013 22:01 utc | 96

96) I think it is worth looking at how the Ottomans ran their empire into the Early 20th century – and what British and French colonialists continued – and the US inherited
Forced population transfer in Ottoman imperial strategy
Sur les manipulations de la population en Algérie :
un bref survol historique

A Alger, par exemple, les ottomans distinguaient 2 groupes de personnes : les baldis (gens de la ville) et les berranis( étrangers dans la ville , venant de l’intérieur du pays) ;ces derniers étaient ,ensuite, groupés en corporations étanches et cadenassées
pour mieux les manipuler, les contrôler, les surveiller et les exploiter : gens de Jijel, Biskris ,Kabyles , Laghouatis, Mozabites… Chaque corporation avait son chef particulier ,appelé Amin, nommé par le Bey et devait exercer activité bien précise .A l’intérieur du pays , les populations étaient segmentées en 2 types de tribus distinctes
-tribus rayât c’est – à -dire des sujets donc la majorité des habitants, taillables et corvéables à souhait
-tribus ahl el makhzen (ou gens du ” gouvernement “) qui représentaient une minorité agissant comme des exploiteurs vivant aux dépens des autres , chargées de mener des razzia et de la rentrée des impôts les armes à la main .Ces razzia en terre étaient l’exacte réplique des actes de piraterie en mer .Comme quoi ,la politique extérieure est le miroir de la politique intérieure.
Dans le parler populaire d’alors , cette division se traduisait par le mot de ” mangeurs et mangés “.Cette organisation féodale et criminelle, inconnue jusqu’alors dans notre pays , entre exploiteurs (minorité)et exploités ( la majorité écrasante) des populations algériennes représente la seule ” structure politique ” ,si tant est que cela ait un sens ,de la politique des deys en Algérie ; cette tyrannie , longue de 3 siècles ,a laissé de profondes traces dans la conscience collective et continue d’avoir des effets jusqu’à nos jours .Le personnel d’exécution de cette tyrannie féodale était représenté par le kaïd,le cadi, le bachaga , l’agha ,le spahi, le mekhazni, le janissaire …Toute cette faune de parasites vénéneux achetaient leurs ” fonctions ” au prix fort et se récupéraient et s’enrichissaient ,ensuite, sur le dos des malheureux habitants par la terreur ,le meurtre et une multitude d’impôts. Les Beys ,c’est- à- dire l’autorité suprême , étaient ” élus ” ou désignés par les chefs miliciens et beaucoup d’entre eux furent assassinés. Parmi les moyens de cette ” gouvernance ” figuraient aussi le refoulement ,la dépossession des terres (pratiqués à grande échelle dans la Kabylie , l’Oranie et le Constantinois en particulier) et l’attribution de ces terres à des tribus clientes déplacées ,appelées zemalas et douairs(pluriel de douars)pour former le makhzen et générant ,par la même , la division et la haine entre les habitants du même pays .C’est dans ce but ,par exemple, que furent construits des bordjs (ex Sour -el-Ghozlan, Bordj- menail pour isoler la Kabylie de la plaine des Issers, Bordj-Boghni, Bordj bou- Arreridj….) ou forteresses servant d’abri aux janissaires chargés de surveiller les tribus récalcitrantes à cette domination et servant aussi comme base de départ de razzias meurtrières exécutées par des makhzen transplantés et manipulés .

Posted by: somebody | Dec 12 2013 9:56 utc | 98

Apologies if this NSA-Santa Claus link has been posted elsewhere here at MOA, or seems inappropriate. One might note that it’s been clicked on more than 750,000 times already.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 16 2013 10:05 utc | 100