@ Peter AU1 at # 200 who commented
”
NemesisCalling 198 “And I just don’t think there are champions among us to focus the energy of the outrage and direct it where it belongs.”
You hit the nail on the head with that one. Anyone that has that ability and they are few, is identified and neutralized in some way before anything can form.
”
When I learned that my country (US) was using intelligence from Peace Corp volunteers to neutralize potential challengers in other countries I increased my ardor to eliminate private finance and the hurt on society it projects.
Its up to us muddling sorts to do what we can to educate the public and bring an end to this sick sort of social organization.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 25 2020 1:36 utc | 203

Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Jul 24 2020 15:29 utc | 135 Surely, Iran will fight to a nuclear death, if it has to. Once a nuke is detonated over Tehran, follow up runs will be, on Isfahan, Mashhad, and Shiraz. From there, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Beijing, and Shanghai.
Whomever advocates for this, is advocating for end times. Nuclear annihilation of the planet. Rapture, that is.
I know I shouldn’t engage trolls, but…
1) There will be no nukes detonated over Tehran. I can conceive of a tactical nukes on some Iranian underground bunker housing nuclear research. That’s about it. And that will be done as covertly as possible by declaring it was just a “bunker buster” conventional bomb. Neither the US nor Israel will risk total geopolitical condemnation by using nukes on a non-nuclear Third World (or Second World depending on how you classify Iran) country.
2) There will be no intervention by Russia, China or anyone else except Iranian proxies in the region. The most Russia and China will do is sell Iran weapons and perhaps supply some military intelligence covertly. This is precisely because neither country will risk their own country in a nuclear confrontation with the US over a Third World country, no matter how much Putin proclaims Iran an “ally”. Without a mutual defense treaty, it’s simply not going to happen.
Anyone who thinks differently is a delusional idiot.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jul 25 2020 1:46 utc | 205

psychohistorian 203 “Its up to us muddling sorts to do what we can to educate the public and bring an end to this sick sort of social organization.”
Like a bag full of cats when we all rock up to b’s watering hole. 🙂

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 25 2020 1:55 utc | 207

What a man!
“Professor William N. Brown spend 30-yrs of his life in Xiamen University in Xiamen China. He has two sons and his wife.”
“I feel truly happy and honored to receive a letter from President Xi, and also a big surprise,”
Professor Bill Brown has been teaching at XMU’s Center for Business Administration Education since 1988. He was one of the first international teachers to introduce MBA courses at a Chinese university. He was also the first foreigner to receive permanent residency in Fujian. He is a …..
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/04/WS5c576fc1a3106c65c34e8190.html
http://amoymagic.com/

Posted by: JC | Jul 25 2020 2:15 utc | 209

Iran confirmed on Thursday, that the recent explosions and fires inside the country are not related to sabotage operations or cyber attacks.
According to the Fars News Agency, who quoted the statements of the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, reported that “the country’s infrastructure is subject to thousands of cyber attacks daily and most of them are thwarted.”
However, Mousavi pointed out that these cyber attacks are not responsible for the recent rise in explosions and fires across the Islamic republic.
Mousavi continued, “The Iranian defense system is thwarting most of these attacks, and the enemies have not achieved their main goals from them,” pointing out that “the countries and entities that support, lead and carry out these attacks, most of them launched by the American administration, have been identified.”
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/mysterious-rise-in-explosions-inside-iran-not-related-to-sabotage-attacks-fm/

Posted by: Mao | Jul 25 2020 3:28 utc | 211

Yer name is Bagoom? OK.
What are you talking about?

Posted by: blues | Jul 25 2020 7:56 utc | 213

Here’s a very useful list of resources for members of the public wishing to protest against police/state brutality ———
https://lists.riseup.net/directory/antiracism/

Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 25 2020 10:19 utc | 215

NemesisCalling @198: “And I just don’t think there are champions among us to focus the energy of the outrage and direct it where it belongs.”
How can any sort of collective outrage be focused in a culture fixated on personalized artificial “identities”? Greasy and overweight purple haired femininity-hating third-wave feminists vs autistic, beige, suburban middle class incel cucks vs generic, incoherent, hyperaggressive, urban gangsta thugs, all prizing their imagined uniqueness in the “identities” they mimic from the archetypes in the mass media they consume. Few of these people are capable of rising above the fugue-like and fragmented stream of consciousness that their fake identities are pasted over to even focus on a body of text longer than a Twitter post.
No focus can last in a culture that fetishizes identity because the very act of focusing on common interests threatens the primacy of identity with cognitive dissonance mind-quakes. The current “protests” are about as focused as you can get, and that is not saying much.
A champion to show a productive way forward is an even bigger challenge, because that champion would have to overcome the identity bullshit to sell unity. Before anyone can ever hope to get there they need to take a deep look into how society works. The protesters want to change social relations, but social relations always originate from economic relations in society. Social concerns of status and privilege are necessarily and inescapably subordinate to economic relations. For their part the economic relations in a society are defined by the economic structure and organization of that society. The economic organization of American society is capitalism. The consequence of this is that any champion who continues to embrace capitalism as an economic system will necessarily fail to focus the outrage in a productive manner. That champion’s leadership will unavoidably lead right back to where we are right now, because that champion will steer the outrage away from grappling with capitalism itself. This will leave the underlying cause for the outrage intact. See Bernie Sanders, or for that matter any European “socialist”, for a case study in how this works.
The protests are exciting. If there were any being put on in my town I’d probably go and enjoy the event too, but the protests cannot lead anywhere positive or resolve anything. Even American capitalism’s biggest domestic victims are still too wedded to capitalist ideology to imagine turning their outrage to where it should be directed. This means that the outrage will continue to be generated.
One thing that we know about outraged mobs is that when they become frustrated they will change direction. I think it is pretty obvious what the new direction will become, but I think I should leave that unsaid so as to not spoil the surprise. Hint: It is the direction the mob always takes when left leadership fails to deliver.

Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 25 2020 11:56 utc | 217

@William Gruff,
a local incident last month at our protests in Missoula is exposing a fascinating media divergence in narrative control. the simplistic version told by our corporate newspaper, the Missoulian, is that a white man with a gun unlawfully detained a black teenager in an alleyway in downtown Missoula.
the nuanced version of this story is being told by an online news start-up, the Missoula Current, and that version indicates the white man with the gun was actually acting as personal security for some of the organizers because both sides were concerned with OUTSIDE AGITATORS coming to our town to stir up trouble.
before congratulating the start-up, the reason I suspect they are telling a more nuanced story is because the reporter–a bald-headed white guy–was himself harassed by protestors because of how he looked. the protestors labeled him right-wing for no good reason and interrupted his attempts to interview people, so because of the protestor paranoia, and the miffed white guy reporter, a different story is coming out that undermines the simplistic corporate one.
a post about this will be up at my blog later today.

Posted by: lizard | Jul 25 2020 12:57 utc | 219

@Mark2,
do you really believe black people should have the right to self-determination? because if you do, you should consider why a black history professor from Berkeley felt it necessary to remain anonymous when writing stuff like this:

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.
Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries.
And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam.

Posted by: lizard | Jul 25 2020 13:26 utc | 221

Meet the Steele Dossier’s ‘Primary Subsource’: Fabulist Russian at Democrat Think Tank Whose Boozy Past the FBI Ignored (RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry, July 24, 2020)

…
Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was “clueless” when Steele hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign manager.
Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists, drinking buddies (including one who’d been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI’s January 2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” — which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.”
Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.
…

Posted by: S | Jul 25 2020 14:18 utc | 223

By “out of here” I mean the US, of course. I’m not really up to trying to spit into a hurricane.

Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 25 2020 15:00 utc | 225

lizard @Jul25 13:26 #221
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis …
This is a strawman.
=
Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict.
So why are Blacks involved in more crime? The writer ignores the socio-economic causes. He ignores who defines what a crime is and the differences in sentencing between black and whites.
Furthermore, he is indirectly attacking BLM. The notion that African-Americans should seek “self-determination” is not a BLM project. It’s something that has been debated well before BLM was established (at least since Malcolm X).
As an anti-BLM strawman, it is very similar to the complaint that BLM doesn’t really care about black lives – they have nothing to say about black on black violence! This ignores that BLM was created specifically to challenge institutional racism. Saving black lives is not its mission. “Black Lives Matter (Too)” is a message to the establishment.
<> <> <> <> <>
It’s funny that Whites will readily agree that “everyone is racist” yet defend every death-in-custody of a black man at the hand of white officers as not racist!!!
This is all the more curious when combined with White prediliction to ignore that mostly white (all white?) Antifa is causing most of the violence. Violence that is used to discredit BLM and allows Trump to further the authoritarian agenda of the right.
We can surmise that White thinking is easily short-circuited by racial attitudes that allow for easy acceptance racist tropes and race baiting which amount to nothing more than the same old derision at “uppity n*ggars”.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 25 2020 16:00 utc | 227

lizard @Jul25 16:08 @228
LOL.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 25 2020 16:37 utc | 229

Jackrabbit @ 229
Ha ha that one went pop ! and chucked his dolly out the pram!
Don’t those closet racists hate the truth. Hate their tricks being exposed , loosening there credabilty.
Rispect to you jack Jackrabbit ! Truth to power always.

Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 25 2020 17:21 utc | 231

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/y3z5wx/marco-rubio-hopes-ufos-are-aliens-not-chinese-planes
The above contains a quote from Sen. Rubio that is insane. It shows how extreme and twisted the US government is.
So,evidence may exist that aliens and their highly advanced technology are real. Potentially, this may be a turning point in all human history – but he is obsessed with fighting China above that.

Posted by: Eighthman | Jul 25 2020 19:00 utc | 233

@ 221 lizard… just catching up on the comments here…. i don’t agree with this professor you quote….
The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons
you might have recalled a month or two back where i was talking about the book i read called ‘solitary’ by albert woodfox… i would encourage you to read it… 2019… maybe it is at the library… talks about angola prison in louisiana.. it was a plantation before becoming a prison, but they kept the same basic ideology right into the 70’s… i think the facts run counter to what the prof in your quote @ 221 state..

Posted by: james | Jul 25 2020 19:24 utc | 235

Posted by: chu teh | Jul 24 2020 17:20 utc | 149
Interesting. The requirement that hospitals treat patients who can’t afford treatment perhaps originated in the 1946 Hill-Burton Act, legislation passed by the Truman administration. (I knew a younger generation Hill.) The Act attempted to increase the number of hospitals in the country and beds per capita by providing matching loans etc. to building projects. In return the hospitals were required to provide so many hours of clinic care to people who could not afford to pay. Lower-income communities had difficulty meeting the requirement to show the ability to function without going into the red and so did not benefit much; and there was no enforcement mechanism for the requirement to serve all clinic patients regardless of ability to pay until a handful of patients sued in the early 1970s.
What you describe shows how easy it was for the wealthier and for-profit hospitals to avoid their responsibility to treat patients in need under the Act; and the harmful consequences.
As a high schooler I was a “candy striper” in one of those underfunded, overrun community hospitals — in Pasadena, California. It was where poor people, many African American, went to die after not having had much if any health care all their lives, among other things. Very horrible to show up to volunteer work and find somebody dead in their bed. It happened more than several times. I was 14 and 15 years old. It was part of the service program of the Blue Bird —> Camp Fire Girl —> Horizon Club/Candy Striper girls program during the 1950s and 1960s in usa.
Physicians’ AMA opposed universal health care for so many decades. Now the entire system has been financialized (mechanism for looting) instead of universalized (mechanism for delivering public health care).
Yes, and here we are.

Posted by: suzan | Jul 25 2020 19:57 utc | 237

@james,
I didn’t say I agreed with the a quote, the point is one viewpoint is sacrosanct, and the other can’t even be expressed without fear of personal consequences.

Posted by: lizard | Jul 25 2020 20:05 utc | 239

@38 Who knows? Some people only emerge at protest time to express themselves. Could be psychopaths. Or part time vandals. Or just the kind of folk who write on toilet walls and destroy bus shelters.

Posted by: dh | Jul 25 2020 20:17 utc | 241

I think there’s an important conversation to have about race relations, authoritarianism, and international relations.
I think different viewpoints are important for that conversation.
But if the conversation is going to be worthwhile, participants have to understand what is really going on and avoid spewing what is clearly agitprop and propaganda.
!!

Posted by: ja | Jul 25 2020 20:20 utc | 243

Richard Steven Hack | Jul 25 2020 1:27 utc | 201

You will discover that the US neocons don’t care about any of that. Neither does Israel.

That is hardly a ‘discovery’! The point is though, the US Military does care. Hence the lack of attacks on Iran. They have done the war-games and they know the probable outcomes of real-world attacks.

Posted by: foolisholdman | Jul 25 2020 20:36 utc | 245

Jackrabbit | Jul 25 2020 17:10 utc | 230

I still think that Skripal was the real primary source if only because it explains what has happened to him.

What did happen to him and his daughter? Have either of them surfaced?

Posted by: foolisholdman | Jul 25 2020 21:09 utc | 247

US cops killed in the line of duty and breakdown 2019. Slightly less than 2018.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-statistics-on-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty
Some time back, there was a video of a cop shooting a twelve year old kid carrying a toy gun. All part and parcel of US rights to carry guns.
Other videos show straight out murder of unarmed suspects. At the most cops get a smack on the wrist…
Last time I looked US had the highest number per hundred thousand under incarceration in the world, apart from some tiny country I had never heard of.
A very minor crime and a person becomes a convicted felon undifferentiated with major crime that follows him or her through life.
My great Great grandfather was transported to Australia as a convict. Convicted of cattle stealing with prior convictions. He the same as most transported convicts of the time received ticket of leave shortly after arrival and several years later a pardon as did most others. Very very few of them re offended. Life was hard but it was a new start, they were given opportunity.
In the US, black culture cannot be the same as white culture because they have different histories. Poor areas where opportunity is limited will also develop there own culture no matter the skin color. In the US particularly but more and more so in the US west, you need money to get more than a basic education. Health care…
Law and order aimed at reform rather than punishment alongside opportunity is what is required. Law and order aimed at reform would separate minor offenders that stuff up when their young from those that are a menace to everyone. But the opportunity must be there.
US went into extreme capitalism in the McCarthy years, reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet Union. US cannot fix itself because that requires some socialist measures.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 25 2020 21:58 utc | 249

@221 lizard
Yes, I completely agree with that essay.
Would the content be construed as unpopular? Indeed. The prof. was smart to stay anonymous.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 25 2020 22:33 utc | 251

Foolishholdman @ 248
Wow how did I miss that ! Thanks for that link. If you missed it you need to see it.
If half of that is true its dynamite.
I repeat ———
Veterans Today is a respected site..

Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 25 2020 23:05 utc | 253

Military spokesman:
American fighter jets fly daily patrols near the base, Al-Tanf, where 150 to 200 U.S. troops train Syrian fighters, known as Maghawir al Thawra, who are fighting the Islamic State.
Captain Urban said the encounter on Thursday was conducted at “a safe distance of approximately 1,000 meters” and was done to “ensure the safety of coalition personnel.”
“Once the F-15 pilot identified the aircraft as a Mahan Air passenger plane,” Captain Urban added, “the F-15 safely opened distance from the aircraft.” He said the encounter was done “in accordance with international standards.”
International standards:
For a commercial airliner (as the question asked), separation will usually be at least 3 miles laterally, or 1,000 feet vertically. In the enroute environment — at higher operating speeds above 10,000 feet and based on the type of Radar and distance from the antennae — a 5 mile rule is applied laterally. This is true in most but not all situations. (There are exceptions — not listed in my source)
Note also the “or”: it is allowed (and in fact rather common) for two jets to cross path if they have 1,000 feet vertical separation.
For those not familiar with metric or imperial system: 1000 meters is much less than 3 miles, roughly 4900 meters.
For those searching for the meaning of “rule-based world system”: rules change daily, without notice. It is your duty to observe and obey.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 25 2020 23:08 utc | 255

I may have missed it but the Trump brownshirt enforcers being sent to Portland etc are private “military”.
My friend in Portland says this:
”
ZTI is a private company that provides armed and other security-related personnel to their clients which include Homeland Security, the Dept. of Defense, and an alphabet soup of other US government agencies. It’s on their own website (https://www.ztisolutions.com/).
So let’s be clear, these “federal” agents are basically mercenaries, paid by the government to intimidate, threaten and even attack Americans on American soil.
Armed private contractors like ZTI and Blackwater (https://www.blackwaterusa.com/) are normally hired in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Btw it’s not supposed to be “normal” to do that either because there are international laws about conflict engagement. But regardless, they are now operating here in the United States–and paid for with our own tax dollars.
We are paying them to fight us.
”
Desperation seems to be the motivation and I don’t see it being successful.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 26 2020 2:34 utc | 257

psychohistorian
I was looking at what was going on and thinking brown or blackshirts. Just been watching the video of the freedom fighters of China. No different to the freedom fighters of Chechnya, Syria, Libya ect. US needs some freedom fighters to throw in the mix. Complete with black flags, suicide vests and car bombs. Send everything home.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 26 2020 3:12 utc | 259

If any want to watch Saturday night Portland protest via twitter real time there is the Twitter feed from the high school journalist in my comment #259 and
https://twitter.com/Clypian
Empire is coming home with its bag of tricks to show Americans just who is in charge…..cue the pic of Trump with the baseball bat…..
When does the killing start…………………………………………?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 26 2020 6:39 utc | 261

Below is a link to a story about one of the leaf blower dads that was arrested by the Feds in Portland who is an attorney……
Attorney dad with leaf blower arrested by Federal officers
Tonight they tried initially to overwhelm the protesters with tear gas/pepper spray and are using blowers as well it seems….it is almost midnight and I am off to bed…..they will have to carry on w/o me.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 26 2020 6:54 utc | 263

VeteransToday is about as respectable as that clown Alex Jones
.

Posted by: Lurk | Jul 26 2020 11:45 utc | 265

next, leaf blowers will be declared weapons of terrorism.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jul 26 2020 13:04 utc | 267

@ Mark2
Time to start taking your meds again, brother. Too many incoherent postings, too little substative analysis.
BTW that veteranstoday article that you praised so much also made the claim that Portland AntiFa is Portland police provocateurs. Did you even read that or were you too busy drivelranting?

Posted by: Lurk | Jul 26 2020 15:26 utc | 269

Olivia de Havilland, the last surviving star of ‘Gone With the Wind’ star, dies at 104.
RT headline.
Another addition to the cancel movement? Be very careful what you wish for.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Jul 26 2020 16:31 utc | 271

For y’all claiming there’s no way to edit your comments, try the ‘preview’ button to the right of the ‘post’ button. It works :^)

Posted by: Curmudgeon | Jul 30 2020 20:36 utc | 273