Making our own nightmares come true

It occurs to me, as I'm sure it must have to many people, that if the Western democracies would walk the walk instead of just talking the talk and really supported efforts at democracy in North Africa and the Middle East instead of bankrolling dictators because they provide "stability" we would have a lot less to fear from a democratic North Africa and Middle East.
Given that virtually every gun, club, tear gas bomb and armored car being deployed against the huddled masses yearning to breath free in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the region comes from the "arsenal of democracy" and given that we have been helping thugs like Mubarak maintain his stranglehold on power, is it any wonder that when the chickens come home to roost, our governments are terrified of the results? What cause to love the West have we given the people of Egypt or Tunisia or Jordan or Syria? Why shouldn't they hate us?
When Castro was still hiding in the hills of Cuba and people were still robbing banks to fund the revolution, Castro approached the United States for help. The U.S. decided to keep propping up the dictator there for the good of the fruit, sugar, rum and organized crime lobbies and so Castro turned to the Russians for help. We know how that one turned out.
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua reached out to the Ford and Carter Administrations for help getting rid of the Somoza dictatorship. Both refused, citing the Roosevelt/Truman doctrine of "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard." Central America spends 30 years plagued by right wing death squads  trained at the School of the Americas and proxy wars between "leftists" and military-backed plutocrats.
We backed the Shah's bloody kleptocracy, until Iranians finally got fed up and took to the streets and invited the Ayatollah back just to provide some leadership to the angry mob. Then, to fight the Ayatollah, the west decided to cultivate a rival power - a military strongman just next door, who did just what we wanted as long as we kept giving him arms and didn't ask too many questions about what he was doing to his own people. Of course, once Saddam Hussien slipped the leash, things got ugly for him fast.  
Now, the realpolitik braintrust in Foggy Bottom and by extention, Whitehall and Ottawa, is worried that if Mubarak falls, the wrong people might end up running Eygpt and that might be bad for Israel and U.S. interests in the region. Maybe they should have thought of that 20 or 30 years ago.
Mubarak and the other despots of the Middle East and North Africa may be "our bastards" instead of "their bastards," but the bottom line is that they are bastards and we are helping them stay in power and teaching their oppressed people to hate us. The longer we prop up dictators to keep the Islamic world in line, the bigger the potential shitrain we are going to face when those dictators inevitably fall to popular uprisings we've helped them try to suppress.

Crossposted from the Woodshed

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Perspectives . . .

"Political correctness is a doctrine,
fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition
that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd
by the clean end."

— Texas A&M

Perspectives . . .

WARNING: Not politically-correct. May cause tighty-whitey-wedgie in the hard-of-thinking.

Perspectives . . .

Remember your first e-mail? 17 years and a century ago . . .

The winds of change . . .

IN EGYPT, THE PRESSURE IS ON, for change and reform. One of the major players in the cluster-fuck is the Islamic Brotherhood. The IB is the best-organized and largest opposition movement, and a major consideration in Egypt's future.

Here in North America, the IB is virtually unknown. Well, the Brookings Institute's Saban Center for Middle East Policy has an article you should read, "Don't Fear Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood", by Bruce Riedel. The site has other articles worthy of your perusal, too.

The prospect of change in Egypt inevitably raises questions about the oldest and strongest opposition movement in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood, also known as Ikhwan. Can America work with an Egypt where the Ikhwan is part of a transition or even a new government?

The short answer is it is not our decision to make. Egyptians will decide the outcome, not Washington. We should not try to pick Egyptians' rulers. Every time we have done so, from Vietnam’s generals to Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, we have had buyer’s remorse. But our interests are very much involved so we have a great stake in the outcome. Understanding the Brotherhood is vital to understanding our options.

The Muslim Brethren was founded in 1928 by Shaykh Hassan al Banna as an Islamic alternative to weak secular nationalist parties that failed to secure Egypt’s freedom from British colonialism after World War I. Banna preached a fundamentalist Islamism and advocated the creation of an Islamic Egypt, but he was also open to importing techniques of political organization and propaganda from Europe that rapidly made the Brotherhood a fixture in Egyptian politics.

Melissa's moment . . .

WHILE EGYPT IS IN TURMOIL, the American dream trudges on. According to these reports from The Smoking Gun in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free:

"Woman Utters Line Never Previously Recorded In A Police Report"

That's Melissa, over on the right. She doesn't take "No" for an answer, apparently. The West Virginia woman, 41, is facing assault and weapons charges after allegedly waving a knife at two men who declined her demands to engage in sexual conduct at a motor inn.

Meanwhile, in Florida:

"Cops Charge Nine Women In Wild Florida Brawl"

JANUARY 28--Police today issued arrest warrants for nine women involved in a wild brawl at a Florida gas station, a fracas that was caught on videotape and which included some combatants having their clothing and hair torn off during the tussle.

Life its own self, continues . . . ya gotta love it.

Big Buck Bunny . . .

Done with the Blender open-source prog. Watch to the very end. Great stuff, small budget.

Airshow augers in . . .

ACCORDING TO THE TORONTO STAR'S Allan Woods:

OTTAWA—Scrapping a plan to purchase American fighter jets risks leaving the Canadian Air Force grounded in 2020, the defence minister says.

Peter MacKay says opposition to the purchase of 65 F-35 jets, which are experiencing delays and cost overruns, could result in an “operational gap” when the current fleet of fighter jets are pulled from service because there is no guarantee a replacement could be found on time.

"because there is no guarantee a replacement could be found on time" Gee — if we offered coin of the realm to Russia, I wonder how fast we could get a bunch of Sukhois?

And the world changed . . .

JANUARY 26, 1983: Lotus begins selling its spreadsheet application for Microsoft DOS, called 1-2-3 and how business is run changed forever. The advent of 1-2-3 and cheap PC's allowed the re-organization of business world-wide.

For example, their appearance allowed all the contracting-out that started in the late 80's, because sole proprietors could now conveniently keep a set of company books. On the government side, it allowed the rise of the VAT, which would have been almost impossible to administer without PC's and 1-2-3. WIRED magazine has a commemoration of this by Dylan Tweney, "Jan. 26, 1983: Spreadsheet as Easy as 1-2-3", that's worthy of perusal.

Spreadsheet software, which seems commonplace and rather boring today, was a major breakthrough for personal computing. Sure, it made it easy to keep track of columns of numbers, such as sales receipts, paychecks, expenses or even athletic records.

But the real power of the spreadsheet was the ability it gave business people to run quick and easy “what-if” calculations. What if we lowered the price of our widgets by $10? What if mortgage rates drop to 5 percent and we refinance? What if we laid off 5,000 workers and shuttered our Kalamazoo plant, then outsourced manufacturing to a Chinese company for less than half the price?

Technology pundit John C. Dvorak has lamented the effects of the “what-if society,” saying that corporate executives have become slavish devotees of spreadsheet scenarios, failing to make decisions based on what customers actually want. But there’s no doubt that the spreadsheet has given companies, both large and small, a far better picture of their bottom lines. For better or worse, that power has transformed American business and the economy.

Fascinating . . .

STRANGE SISTERS is a curious site, owned by Ryan Richardson, devoted to the artwork found on the covers of "Lesbian" paperbacks published in the 50s and 60s. A marvelously tacky collection. Like ol' H.L. Mencken observed, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

With very few exceptions, the criteria for my collection are: two women on the cover, painted covers (as opposed to photo covers - there are hundreds), and nothing past 1969. There are some paperbacks on this site that very well may not contain a single lesbian in the text, but as long as the cover artwork SUGGESTS lesbians, they're in.

I feel no need to assign some larger historical importance or deeper social relevance to these books. I can think of no other body of visual art so varied, humorous, outrageous, sexy. That this art was the by-product of an industry pandering to our seemingly insatiable appetite for trashiness makes it all the greater in my eyes.

Barney & Gomer Coming to Your Neighbourhood Soon . . . .

As soon as harperco "improves" their citizen's arrest legislation, we can all live like we were in Mayberry, North Carolina.



Yee haw . . . .

Perspective changes . . .

CRYSTAL METH

THE SELF-PORTRAIT MAY BE the most egotistical artistic creation, or not, but the self-portrait allows the viewer an artistic appraisal and an insight into the composition of another's psyche in a fashion that is unique. io9 has an account by Lauren Davis, "The self-portraits of an artist under the influence of meth, PCP, and other drugs" that is worthy of attention.

SHROOMS

You see, the artist, Bryan Lewis Saunders explores the effects of various drugs — legal and illegal — on his self-perception by creating self-portraits while under the influence. This is his face on drugs. I wonder what Stevie would look like?

COCAINE

Saturday Morning Cartoons.

“Chapter One: Once upon a time -- great opening, huh?”

This is one of my absolute favourites, boys and girls. Coffee?

Perspectives . . .

Very DEMOTIVATIONAL, very good.

If you aren't angry, you haven't been paying attention

Ian Welsh lays it out just about right. And David Lindorff further discusses the monsters in our midst.
The Skipper has been criticized by a few under the Godwin's Law argument, but I agree with him and with Welsh that we too often fall into the trap of reasonableness, that by going along to get along we too often normalize extremist opinion and outrageous attitudes by our tacit acceptance.

We grossly overvalue civility when we condemn people for using strong language to describe reprehensible actions and attitudes. Right-wing radio hosts and  tea party activists make horribly racist statements on a regular basis, but somehow calling them racists  is verboten. The American and Canadian government now routinely step all over basic human rights and openly embrace plutocracy, but to call them fascists is somehow considered beyond the pale. Somehow, somewhere along the line it became unacceptable in the mass media to declare the emperor is stark naked.

We, as a society, need to start calling people out and making them take responsibility for the things they say. I'm all for free speech. When someone starts casually talking about murdering people, about 'bombing them back to the stone age," I think everyone else should be free to to call them a monster without being lectured about how its impolite to do so.

Lindorff's example is a classic:

I brought my son and a friend last year to the notorious Army Experience Center, a multi-million state-of-the-art virtual war recruiting wonderland located in a mall in working-class Northeast Philadelphia. Filled with an array of very fast computers and video screens on which kids as young as 14 could blast away in realistic war scenarios, and featuring two darkened rooms that had the real bodies of an armored Humvee and a Blackhawk helicopter where kids could man the guns and operate in a 3-D video environment with surround sound so that you felt like you were moving through hostile territory and had to “take out” the “bad guys” while quickly identifying innocent civilians and avoiding shooting them. My son, his friend and I tried the Humvee out, and at the end of our “mission,” the recruiter, an Iraq vet, congratulated us, saying we were “the best gunners all day!” and that our error rate had been “only 30%.”

I asked him what “error rate” meant, and he said, “Collateral damage--civilians killed.”

“Thirty percent of the peope we just killed were civilians?” I asked, aghast.

“Oh yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. “Don’t feel bad. That’s not a bad percentage.” 

When did it become okay for soldiers to murder civilians? Why is torture, murder  and repression any more acceptable when embraced by Barak Obama than it was when it was done by George W. Bush, or for that matter Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot. How can we as a society decry the use of gangs of armed thugs and secret police to suppress dissent in Iran, while applauding the same tactics in Toronto?

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

Bravo for People for Corporate Tax Cuts

Wow, I have to say my hat is off to the people at OPSEU who put this campaign together. They are doing a marvelous job of keeping a straight faee and keeping up the gag. This was in my inbox at the newspaper this morning.

Good Morning -

Are you wondering how you will come up with $500 to pay your share of the Ontario government's proposed $2.4 billion a year corporate tax cut? Today, People for Corporate Tax Cuts unveiled its province-wide campaign to shares tips on how Ontarians can raise the $500 every household must contribute to pay for the corporate tax cuts. The organization will also educate Ontarians on the important role the cuts play in executive salaries and bonuses, and paying for other vital management incentives.

Examples of how Ontarians can raise $500:
– 15 year old Jimmy Palmatier sold his hockey equipment to help his parents pay their share
– Rahid Gupta vowed to give up his health care benefits so the government could put that money towards the corporate tax cuts


For more information, please visit our website.

NOTE: A press release is included below with additional information.

James Stephen
People for Corporate Tax Cuts



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


PEOPLE FOR CORPORATE TAX CUTS LAUNCHES PRO-CORPORATION CAMPAIGN

(TORONTO) January 20 – People For Corporate Tax Cuts (PFCTC) has launched a province-wide multi-media campaign in support of the Ontario government’s plan to give corporations a $2.4 billion a year tax cut.

“Giving corporations a $2.4 billion income tax cut means that every household in Ontario will have to contribute $500 to pay their share,” announced Nuella Warkworth, PFCTC President, Chair, CEO and COO, at a Niagara Falls press conference held earlier this week. “We’re here to help them do that.”

Through www.peopleforcorporatetaxcuts.ca and a media advertising campaign, PFCTC will share tips on how Ontarians can raise $500 to pay their share of the corporate tax cuts.

“The goal of the campaign is to show Ontarians that there are many ways they can come up with their $500 share of the corporate tax cuts,” said Warkworth. “Take Mrs. Muriel Flagle, for example. This 77 year old woman sold her walker to pay her share and is a proud member of PFCTC.”

The organization will also educate all Ontarians on the important role corporate tax cuts play in increasing executive salaries and bonuses, and paying for other vital management incentives.

PFCTC will be giving away $500 prizes to those who submit the best videos or photos showing how they will come up with the money they need to pay for corporate tax cuts. If they are unable to come with the money, entrants may also outline what public services they are personally prepared to give up so that the government can pass the savings on to corporations.

People For Corporate Tax Cuts also wishes to ensure that the Ontario government gets the credit it deserves. Ms Warkworth explained, “Even though Ontario already has about the lowest corporate taxes in North America, our government is proudly determined to cut corporate taxes even further. People For Corporate Tax Cuts recognizes and applauds this well-planned transfer of wealth from the people of Ontario to our corporate friends.”

Nuella Warkworth is a tireless fighter for the rights of corporations and the executives who run them. See her videos at www.peopleforcorporatetaxcuts.ca

About People for Corporate Tax Cuts – www.peopleforcorporatetaxcuts.ca:
People For Corporate Tax Cuts is a grassroots organization, founded in 2000 and led by Nuella Warkworth. Headquartered in Toronto with members throughout Ontario, PFCTC’s mission is to advocate for ever more generous corporate tax cuts. The organization has been very successful as Ontario’s corporate tax rates have fallen significantly in the last decade. A 2010 study by the KPMG consulting firm shows that Ontario has much lower business taxes than the United States and our key competitors.

“Pay Your Share” The People For Corporate Tax Cuts Anthem is available on our website.

- 30 -

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Shameless self promotion

For those who remember the Maple Syrup Revolution podcasts from earlier this year, you may want to check out this post over at The Woodshed. I'll try not to clog this blog with endless plugs for my new project, but I really can't recommend Virtually Speaking strongly enough. It is a terrific listen, whether live or in podcast form and I am thrilled to be a part of it.

Attention political strategists

This is how a new media campaign is run. This is how you make a political point in a memorable way. I don't know who the brains are behind this. I'll be amazed if it is something that the provincial NDP came up with, since it lacks their usual earnestness, but if I were in charge of any of the media stuff for any of the parties, I'd be hiring these people yesterday, if not sooner.


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The misery continues . . .

IT'S BEEN FIFTY YEARS since Patrice Lumumba was murdered in the heart of darkness. A million murders later, the misery continues. RIP, Patrice. You can find a concise history in the NYT article by Adam Hochschild, "An Assassination’s Long Shadow". And the CIA was up to its neck in the slime:

A slight, goateed man with black, half-framed glasses, the 35-year-old Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast country, nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This treasure house of natural resources had been a colony of Belgium, which for decades had made no plans for independence. But after clashes with Congolese nationalists, the Belgians hastily arranged the first national election in 1960, and in June of that year King Baudouin arrived to formally give the territory its freedom.

“It is now up to you, gentlemen,” he arrogantly told Congolese dignitaries, “to show that you are worthy of our confidence.”

The Belgians, and their European and American fellow investors, expected to continue collecting profits from Congo’s factories, plantations and lucrative mines, which produced diamonds, gold, uranium, copper and more. But they had not planned on Lumumba.

A dramatic, angry speech he gave in reply to Baudouin brought Congolese legislators to their feet cheering, left the king startled and frowning and caught the world’s attention. Lumumba spoke forcefully of the violence and humiliations of colonialism, from the ruthless theft of African land to the way that French-speaking colonists talked to Africans as adults do to children, using the familiar “tu” instead of the formal “vous.” Political independence was not enough, he said; Africans had to also benefit from the great wealth in their soil.

With no experience of self-rule and an empty treasury, his huge country was soon in turmoil. After failing to get aid from the United States, Lumumba declared he would turn to the Soviet Union. Thousands of Belgian officials who lingered on did their best to sabotage things: their code word for Lumumba in military radio transmissions was “Satan.” Shortly after he took office as prime minister, the C.I.A., with White House approval, ordered his assassination and dispatched an undercover agent with poison.

Why don't we just sew a swastika onto the flag now?

Let's get it over with.

Stephen Harper is just plain dangerous. He has not just cowed his own MPs, senators and the civil service; he has been allowed to run free by the so-called independent media. The only reason Harper gets away with his antics is because the Fourth Estate is far too accommodating. They fear that if they hold his feet to the fire they will lose what little access they have now. Start asking tough questions and you'll be eliminated.

Better the staged photo-op than no access at all.

Bullshit.

Harper is proceeding on an incremental program of power and control which is little different than what happened in Germany in the 1930s. He has disrupted, ignored and violated the conventions and traditions of our parliamentary system like no other Canadian prime minister before him. And the Fourth Estate, upon which an obligation to question such behaviour rests, has, with few exceptions, failed.

If Harper had his way, all power would be vested in him. Head of state, head of government, ministerial decisions; all of it. Parliamentary committees would be neutered completely.

And now, Harper has taken another step outside his jurisdiction. He is setting out to politicize the Canadian system of Honours and Awards and take control of something which quite rightly belongs in the hands of the Governor General.

In the Prime Minister’s Office, under officials working with House Leader John Baird, the most publicly partisan of all ministers, a review is under way of the nation’s honours system.

The aim is to associate the Prime Minister with more national awards, perhaps at the expense of the Governor-General, with whose office so many awards are now associated. All honours and awards, up to and including (if you can believe it) the Order of Canada, are under review to see which, if any, might be more closely associated with the PMO, and which new ones might be created that are tied to that office and, by definition, to the occupant of that office.

No big deal, some will say. It has no effect on the majority of Canadians who spend more time wondering when to cash in the empty beer cans than they do about the award their neighbour received or what it's called.

Except that it is another incremental shift of power and control from outside the PMO into Harper's hands. And it's deliberate.

The political opposition? Right where Harper wants them: Useless and far too comfortable. Media scrutiny? Right where Harper wants it: Sparse, tame and far too comfortable. Public action? Crushed: The G8/G20 lockdown of Toronto proved that Harper could impose what amounted to martial law and, not just get away with it, but have people accept it.

It is well-known that Harper is not content with democratically defeating his political opposition; he is intent on destroying it. All of it. If he ever achieves a parliamentary majority that destruction will include those who support his political opponents. He will polarize politics and demonize anyone who opposes him. He has already proven that he is willing to engage in orchestrated smears of anyone who criticizes him.

Canadians won't allow it?

The Germans didn't allow it either. German voters consistently denied Hitler a democratic majority. While leading a minority government he grabbed power in places which the average German thought inconsequential. They allowed him to nibble away at the prerogatives of the head of state until the head of state was folded into the same office as the head of government.

Think Harper isn't attempting the same thing? The evidence says otherwise.

Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Good morning, darlings -- after the last few weeks, I think this is exactly what everyone needs.

Fraud as a business model . . .

WASHINGTON'S BLOG is a relatively new blog, wherein contributors anonymously post articles of some probity without being flamed personally. Probably a Good Idea. Why? Well, the article, "Government Says No to Helping States and Main Street, While Continuing to Throw Trillions at the Giant Banks" is a ghastly lay-out of the Great Rip-Off. I knew it was bad, but this is appalling. Well worth the read. An amazingly detailed article with all manner of links, just have a bottle of Scotch or something to take the pain away. H/T to Helmut, who sometimes uses this sage piece of advice as an e-mail signature:

If you see a game going on
and you cannot figure out
who the patsy is,
you are it.

Homeland insecurity . . .

Homeland Security has forced WalMart to run in store ads asking Americans to report suspicious activity of other Americans.

Really.

Two minutes for interference and a game misconduct for being a dick

This piece in the Toronto Star lifts up a rock and shines a light on the worst aspects of kids' sports. Briefly, asshole hockey dad decides that the his son's competitive peewee hockey team is having any fun because they aren't winning often enough, so he decides that the kid he thinks is the least talented player should either be kicked off the team or at least be given less ice time and -without the coach's approval-goes ahead and calls a meeting of the team's parents to discuss this.
I have no idea whether the player in question was the worst player on the team or not, but since this is a competitive team, the player did have to try out to make the team, so they can't be that much worse than the other kids on the squad. Looking at the case in this light, the dad is just plain being a dick, right?
Well, let me add one more piece of information. The player in question was the only girl on the team.
So in addition to being a major dick, I suspect there may be more than a little sexism at play here.
As for the headline on the Toronto Star article: "Should hockey dad be 'ashamed' after girl's humiliating departure?" I would argue that he should have been ashamed well before she left and that the league should ban this clown from ever entering the arena again just on general "for the good of the sport" and "no assholes allowed" grounds. I think the coach, while not wanting to hold the asshole's son responsible for his asshole father's assholery, should at least ban said asshole from the dressing room and any other team affairs, simply on the grounds that deciding who to put on the ice and when is the decision of the coach and only the coach.

Politically-correct BS . . .

ACCORDING TO THE GLOBE & MAIL, Dire Straits' smash hit "Money for Nothing" has been BANNED on Canuck airwaves. Why? Because of the word "faggot". Really.

The 1980s song Money for Nothing by the British rock band Dire Straits has been deemed unacceptable for play on Canadian radio.

In a ruling released Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says the song contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.

The panel noted that Money for Nothing would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.

Well, here's a great version, with ol' Slowhand to help Mark out. Aw, that ain't workin', you play yer guitar on the MTV . . .

Seriously, folks . . .

Medicine for melancholy.

The future comes closer . . .

Nano loom: Carbon-nanotube webs are pulled and twisted to make yarns. The four webs here are 5.5 centimeters wide.
Credit: Science/AAAS

MIT'S TECHNOLOGY REVIEW has an important report by Katherine Bourzac, "Spinning Nano Yarns", which highlights several important advances in nano-material fabrication. Up til now, nano-fibers have been laboratory exotics, "unobtainium" expensive. It seems there are going to be changes:

Many important technologies—from battery electrodes and superconducting wires to the catalysts in fuel cells—rely on materials containing powdered particles, which can be tricky to manage. Now, in a feat that could simplify the production of many such technologies and might point the way toward some radical new ones, researchers at the University of Texas have demonstrated a way to spin yarn out of nanotubes infused with useful powdered materials.

The researchers have used the method to make strips of yarn that function as a battery electrode, others with superconducting properties, and self-cleaning yarns.

Now, why should you care? The advent of nano-materials is going to be as revolutionary as the transistor and will affect every aspect of life in 2020 and beyond. How so? For starters, cars will weigh 50%, maybe even less than what they weigh now. Then there's medicine, electronics — you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Skunked . . .

Pépé Le Pew under your porch and they blow you away as you answer the door. Seriously, folks, according to the CBC:

A Gatineau, Que., man is demanding an apology from police after his home was raided at gunpoint Thursday.

Oliver MacQuat said around 7:30 p.m. Thursday a team of armed police officers entered his rural home on Montée Paiement with guns drawn, on the assumption they were busting a marijuana grow-op.

Thankfully, it wasn't the RCMP, they would have tasered him and the skunk, and the skunk would've gone ballistic, if they missed it.

WikiLeaks . . .

ACCORDING TO THE NYT, in a report by Kim Severson and Robbie Brown, "WikiLeaks Cables Make Appearance in a Tale of Sunken Treasure and Nazi Theft". Like Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler, but this is real. Sumbitch. The US gov't. seems mendacious. It appears Spain wants a big chunk of a treasure galleon found by some Americans off the coast of Portugal, and State is against the Americans. Then there's the Nazi swag . . .

Consult your schedule . . .

Now, you know.

Is there some kind of intelligence test you have to fail to be on FOX?

Shorter Bill O'Reilly:
"Fucking magnets - how do they work?" (for the meme-challenged, go read this)

One of my father's favorite jokes goes something like this:

"The Thermos is one of the greatest inventions of modern man and also one of the world's great mysteries. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but how does it know?"

To you and me and my dad - and anyone else who managed to pass science class in elementary school - this is a funny joke. I suspect it might be the kind of conundrum that would keep Bill O'Reilly up all night.

I know, I know - someone on FOX News saying something stupid is so rare it only happens on days that end in a 'Y' - but big bad Bill outdid himself this week, further proving that the Enlightenment of the 17th century hasn't quite caught on in some segments of North America.



Leaving aside O'Reilly's usual abrasiveness and tendency to ask a question and then refuse to allow the guest to answer it, and his boneheaded, reducto ad absurdum insistence on blaming the victims of every con artist in history, and his eagerness to take offense at a campaign by a group of atheists that is obviously intended to provoke controversy and encourage people to admit the emperor is stark naked, let's look at his oh-so-clever dismissal of atheism.

Quoth the Billo:

"I'll tell you why [religion is] not a scam. In my opinion -- alright? Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that. You can't explain why the tide goes in."

 To quote a prominent political figure "Yes, we can" - I guess Bill's unfamiliar with the old adage that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. This is shooting fish in a barrel with a grenade launcher. I can't believe I have to point this out, but we've known how and why tides work since Newton laid it all out in 1682. Maybe this a result of Bill's antipathy toward Islam - he just doesn't trust math because it is all done with arabic numerals - or maybe he thinks gravity, like evolution is just a theory. And yet, Billo makes an obscene amount of money talking on the TV and is considered by millions to be a smarter than those pinhead liberal eggheads.

Hat tip to the Booman Tribune . 


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The original war on terror . . .

REASON.COM has a great book review by Brian Doherty, "The First War on Terror", which is a review of "The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents", by Alex Butterworth, Pantheon Books.

It's worthy of your attention, as the efforts of the Anarchists of the 19th century are compared and contrasted with those of today's radical Muslims.

To the powers of the time, the anarchist threat was not to be downplayed or doubted. After the anarchist-linked Leon Czolgosz assassinated U.S. President William McKinley, McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, issued a pronouncement that presaged George W. Bush’s rhetoric about the post-9/11 threat of radical Islam: “When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.” Collaborations of national secret police agencies created an ad hoc global force to fight the nonexistent global anarchist conspiracy, and the very advocacy of anarchist ideas was outlawed in most of the West.

As history has shown, Roosevelt was wrong about the significance of the anarchist threat. So was George W. Bush when he used the jihadist threat as an excuse for policies that may have done far more to damage America and elsewhere than they did to prevent attacks.

Trash talk . . .

THE ECONOMIST has an article about ocean trash, "A New Year’s wish for less trash". I've posted about this before, but the latest news needs dissemination:

The almost unbelievable reality, says a new charity Science and Technology against Ocean Plastics (STOP), is that large areas of our oceans now contain more plastic than plankton. The plastic graveyard in the North Pacific is well known, covering an area twice the size of the continental United States, and stretches from about 800km (500 miles) off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. It is all held on one place by swirling underwater currents and is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or “trash vortex”.

The news, however, gets worse. Oliver Harris, a co-founder of STOP (which launches on January 1st), says that the researchers they are working with have also recently proven that trash vortices are also found in the South Pacific, North and South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

More plastic than plankton? Yikes!

The pet experience . . .

The PooTrap®. Do you think it will fly in Canada? I don't think my ol' Bull Terrier would have been happy.

This isn't her. Great beak.

Nature abhors a vacuum . . .

ACCORDING TO THE ECONOMIST, "A mercenary solution to Somali piracy" is being considered by people involved with shipping. It's not a new idea, but A.J. says it might fly this time because of the dimensions of the problem, which just doesn't seem to go away:

In 2010 alone Somali pirates have attacked 208 vessels, hijacking 44 of them. It is easy to understand the rage of ship owners as each successful seizure of a vessel costs an average of $9m in ransom payments and lost earnings.
An even higher price is paid by the the crews of hijacked ships in terms of their physical and emotional stress. Currently, 567 people are still held hostage by the pirates.

Mercenaries on water. Privateers? Or does that require a charter of some kind?

Swimming with polar bears

It was a balmy 12 C with intermittent rain in Hamilton today-- perfect swimming weather--and so your intrepid correspondent sallies forth!

(That is not fat. What looks to the casual observer like a beer gut is actually layer upon layer of thermal padding and floatation modules - safety first! That's my story and I'm sticking to it)

Going,

going,

gone!

In the immortal words of George Castanza: "There was shrinkage"

In all honesty, while it was chilly and the water bracing, it was not, as Tom Waits describes it "colder than a gut-shot bitch wolf dog with nine sucking pups pulling a number-four trap up a hill in the dead of winter in the middle of a snowstorm with a mouth full of porcupine quills" but it was definitely in banker's smile/witch's tit/welldigger's ass territory once you got wet, though not as cold as the year in the early 90s I did it in Picton harbour through a hole in the ice in a January snowstorm.


Apologies to my wife, son and daughter who, when I said "let's go to the polar bear swim this morning," we honestly-to-god expecting this:



My daughter, who is seven, was quite concerned when I said I was going to take part in the polar bear swim on New Year's Day because she thought I might get eaten by bears.

crossposted from the Woodshed

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Bummer bulletin . . .

WHY I DON'T BUY JAPANESE ANYTHING: according to the Washington Post, the Japanese have sent a fleet to Antarctica to kill 1,000 whales, if they can. Their fleet has been found and is being harassed by The Sea Shepherd Society.

Japan's whaling fleet set out for Antarctic waters in December. Sea Shepherd has been searching for them since, and spotted the first whaling vessel on Friday, Watson said. By Saturday, the group had tracked down three of the fleet's ships in an area about 1,700 nautical miles (3,200 kilometers) southeast of New Zealand, he said.

"We got them before they started whaling and now that we're on them, we're hoping to make sure they don't kill any whales for this season," Watson said.

Brave people. Why can't the Japanese make whale-flavored Tofu or something?