Che: Fidel, will we ever have diplomatic relations with the Yanks again?
Fidel: Yes, when the U.S. President is black and the Pope is Argentine like you.
Desclasifican conversación inédita entre el Ché y Fidel.
Scutage: $738.8 billion
Buried in the Magna Carta is the forgotten word scutage, a feudal tax to pay for war. With America in decline because more than half its taxes are thrown away on military expenditures, scutage should be revived. It has the perfect onomatopoeic ring to it.
The president draws a red line in the silicon
"Obama Vows a Response to Cyberattack on Sony" -- New York Times headline
Diary
21 Democrats plus Sen. Sanders (and 18 Republicans) tried to stop the giveback to the banksters and other bad stuff in the budget bill. Here they are:
Blumenthal (D-CT)You will note that Feinstein and Schumer are not among them.
Booker (D-NJ)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hirono (D-HI)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Levin (D-MI)
Manchin (D-WV)
Markey (D-MA)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Reed (D-RI)
Sanders (I-VT)
Tester (D-MT)
Warren (D-MA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
"Oh, what fun!"
Really, Starbucks?
That's the best you can do? You paid big bucks for that?
Every Starbucks on the planet is packed with writers.
Any one of them would have come up gladly -- merrily -- with a more compelling slogan at no more cost to you than a free cup of coffee.
Washington is trying to drive down oil prices by flooding the market with crude but risks collateral damage to its own shale industry
The Long War: "U.S. powerbrokers have put the country at risk of another financial crisis to intensify their economic war on Moscow and to move ahead with their plan to 'pivot to Asia'....Washington has persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with oil to push down prices, decimate Russia’s economy, and reduce Moscow’s resistance to further NATO encirclement and the spreading of US military bases across Central Asia. The US-Saudi scheme has slashed oil prices by nearly a half since they hit their peak in June. The sharp decline in prices has burst the bubble in high-yield debt which has increased the turbulence in the credit markets while pushing global equities into a tailspin. Even so, the roiled markets and spreading contagion have not deterred Washington from pursuing its reckless plan, a plan which uses Riyadh’s stooge-regime to prosecute Washington’s global resource war."
The rest of the story:
The Oil Coup: US-Saudi Subterfuge Send Stocks and Credit Reeling by Mike Whitney (CounterPunch)
Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia by Larry Elliott (Guardian)
Won't be fooled again?
According to Gallup, 60% of Americans want a third party candidate for 2016. Even so, in the fall of 2016, we will be warned once again (by The Nation, Daily Kos and their ilk) that -- once again -- we must must must vote for the Lesser-of-Two-Evils -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Democrat -- or face Catastrophe -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Republican.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result isn't really the definition of insanity. But it is the definition of stupidity.
See, In U.S., Perceived Need for Third Party Reaches New High: Twenty-six percent believe Democratic and Republican parties do adequate job (Gallup).
The Duopoly
A provision "Congress snuck into the spending the bill will be more galling to some, because it amounts to a pay raise for the two unpopular political parties: It raises the $32,400 maximum that donors could give the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee to a whopping $324,000 per year, gutting what’s left of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The Washington Post says this was inserted on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill."
The rest of the story: Sneak Attack? Congress Slips Controversial Measures Into Spending Bill (PopularResistance)
The rest of the story: Sneak Attack? Congress Slips Controversial Measures Into Spending Bill (PopularResistance)
The United States of America is at moral crossroads
The CIA should be shut down.
The spy work, if there was any, can be carried on gamely by the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Air Force Intelligence, the FBI's National Security Branch, the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence, the Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (sic), the National Reconnaissance Office, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to say nothing of all the state and local police spooks.
Military operations should have been handled by the Department of Defense all along.
But it will be a further crime if all that happens now is that a few relatively-low level functionaries, however blood-soaked their uniforms, are scape-goated, Abu Graib-style. This fish was rotting from the head. The only way that these and other crimes can be prevented from happening in the future is to hold the perpetrators accountable. If this were some failing garrison in the Third World, instead of the failing Leader of the World, the State Department would be piously scolding them to clean-house. The United States needs to be live up to its ideals. If we can't clean our house, if we can't prosecute the criminals ourselves, as domestic and international law requires, then we should turn Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators over to the International Criminal Court and let the world community help us out.
More:
CIA tortured, misled, U.S. report finds, drawing calls for action by Mark Hosenball (Reuters)
Return of the CIA's 'Rogue Elephants': The Senate's report on torture shows U.S. intelligence agencies need to be reined in again by Peter Fenn (US News)
There Is Something Worse Than Torture in the Senate Torture Report: It's not the torture—it's the CIA lying by David Corn (Mother Jones)
U.S. under fire over Senate's report on CIA torture by Bill Trott (Reuters UK)
The Bush administration's response to the torture report is straightforward:
The CIA's actions were fully authorized. And we didn't know anything about them.
Every important movement faces significant push-back
That doesn’t mean it won’t succeed.
One of the hardest things for activists to hold in mind is that they are not alone. Most people, however well-intentioned, will wait for what Martin Luther King called a "more convenient season" to move to action. So the activist must not only organize but represent.
One of the hardest things for activists to hold in mind is that they are not alone. Most people, however well-intentioned, will wait for what Martin Luther King called a "more convenient season" to move to action. So the activist must not only organize but represent.
'It’s worth remembering that the civil rights protesters of the 1950s and ’60s faced as much derision then as the Ferguson and New York protesters do today … probably more. In 1964, the American National Election Studies, as part of its biennial survey, began asking Americans whether they thought civil rights leaders “are trying to push too fast, are going too slowly, or are … moving about the right speed.” The responses are most telling. Among whites, 84 percent of Southerners, and 64 percent of non-Southerners, said that civil rights leaders were pushing too fast."The rest of the story: For most, there's never a right time to protest by Seth Masket (Pacific-Standard)
Rectal feeding and rehydration...
Something new to think about.
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
Supply and Demand
'Lord o Lord, not
again,' sighed
the printer who set
Henry David
Thoreau's Walden, and kept
running out
of the letter
'I'...
-- Mark Ford
Just read, at Bartleby.com,
that "The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus," in preparation for a screening tonight of the new Hollywood version, just called "Exodus" in deference to Tinseltown's love of one-word titles. I'm above all looking forward to digitally rendered plagues. I'm wondering, though, should it have happened, as is likely, that the filmmakers have taken liberties with the story and characters, whether the Writers Guild will be forced to negotiate between God and the screenwriters over credits. Also wondering, if "Exodus" the movie is a hit and there are x-rated spin-offs, will one be entitled "Aaron's Rod"?
High note
New Hampshire license plates instruct you to "Live Free or Die."
You aren't allowed to do both things at once, however: It's illegal in the Granite State to inhale bus fumes with the intent to induce euphoria.
You aren't allowed to do both things at once, however: It's illegal in the Granite State to inhale bus fumes with the intent to induce euphoria.
Do your job
Challenges facing the next do-nothing Congress: “Absent congressional action, a host of business and personal tax breaks expires on Jan. 1. The government’s borrowing limit is reinstated on March 16, although the government might not actually hit the ceiling until August. On March 28, unless lawmakers act, physician reimbursements from Medicare drop off a cliff. On May 31, the highway trust fund runs out of money. In June, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance overseas purchases of American exports, might shut in the face of conservative opposition to its mission. Then on Sept. 30, the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program faces its expiration. A few days later, across-the-board spending cuts loom once again.” -- The New York Times
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