Posts from — November 2011

Candlelight Dining

Nom…nom…nom…

[Editor: Lucrezia chows down in the darkness caused by the clouds at twilight. A cold front moved through and things are getting brisk.

Friday Ark

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 the guns fell silent. The Great War, The War to End All Wars, was over…for a couple of decades.

The red poppies of Flanders fields became a symbol of that war and the veterans that returned from it. Known as Remembrance Day in much of the world, the poppies will be in evidence. Remembrance Day observances have more in common with the American Memorial Day as a day to honor those who have died in war.

First called Armistice Day in the United States, the name was changed to Veterans Day, and its purpose changed to honoring those who are serving, or have served in the military. The change was made to avoid a conflict with the existing Memorial Day observance that goes back to the Civil War era.

A heart felt salute to everyone who managed to survive basic training. We can hope that sooner, rather than later, there will be no need for another generation to put on uniforms.

So, while Badtux is watching the local gang of police officers beating up students at the University of California Berkeley, in Pennsylvania the police are watching students riot because a football coach was fired.

When you knock down light poles, flip and then bash a media van, throw rocks and bottles at the police, it is a riot. The police say they will look at the videos and identify the criminals for later arrest.

Protesting the destruction of the economy without violence is grounds for getting beaten with nightsticks, but wholesale destruction is to be expected when sports are involved.

I wonder how those students are going to feel about the coach when the ‘Paterno tax’ is added to their bills. That’s the extra money that Pennsylvania State University is going to need to pay the lawsuits of every child victimized after the University was made aware of the problem and did nothing about it.

Here’s some advice for college administrators – If you want to protect the institution, report crime. Not reporting crime makes you an accessory after the fact and opens the institution up to very expensive settlements.

The BBC reports that Lucas Papademos named as new Greek prime minister. He was the guy who guided Greece through the conversion from the dracma to the euro, and is a former vice president of the European Central Bank. What he isn’t is a member of parliament. I don’t know how that works without being fully aware of the Greek constitution, which I’m not. It is not exactly usual for the leader of democracy to be someone no one has voted for.

It looks like Italy is covering that problem by having the Italian president appoint the apparent choice, Mario Monti, a ‘senator for life’. Monti is an economist and former minister in the European Union.

It looks like all of the politicians are hiding from the responsibility of what they know is going to happen.

I would hope that the people decide it is time to dump all of the incumbents, and go for something new after what the politicians have done to them.

You have probably heard about the IAEA report on Iran. McClatchy reports U.N. watchdog confirms Iran tried to build nuclear bomb

WASHINGTON — Iran worked for five years to develop a nuclear warhead for a ballistic missile before abruptly halting the project in late 2003, and some aspects of a nuclear weapons program “may still be ongoing,” the U.N. nuclear watchdog reported Tuesday.

First off, this isn’t an official report yet, as it hasn’t been approved by the IAEA board, but it was selectively leaked.

Second, it confirms what was already reported by a US intelligence estimate, that Iran stopped working on a weapons program in 2003.

Third, in 2005 the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons as ‘unIslamic’.

Fourth, it has been centuries since Iran has attacked anyone.

Part of the ‘evidence’ cited is a large metal tank that is supposedly being used to develop a nuclear trigger. Jim White at Emptywheel in association with other bloggers looked at that issue and discovered that it is used to make nanodiamonds. The ‘Russian physicist’ whom the Iranians consulted, is actually the Ukrainian physicist who developed the process. The explosives are detonated in the tank to supply the heat and pressure necessary to convert carbon into its diamond form.

Anyone remember the mobile biological warfare lab that Iraq had? The one that turned out to be a mobile hydrogen generator for weather balloons after the country was laid to waste.

The Greek politicians still haven’t found a scapegoat: “The make-up of Greece’s interim government will be announced later on Wednesday, a government official said.” … or not, depending on the ability to locate a prime minister.

Having taken out the Greek prime minister, the Franco-German banksters have focused on Italy: “Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has confirmed he intends to resign after key economic reforms have been approved.”

Some better news in the US elections:

In Ohio: “A law limiting collective bargaining powers of Ohio unions has been defeated in a special referendum, according to the Associated Press.”

CNN is projecting that the Mississippi ‘Personhood’ amendment has been defeated. Maybe Mississippi should do something about its infant mortality rate. I don’t expect them to get it down to Cuba’s rate, but they ought to attempt to match Latvia.

Actually it started yesterday with a firmware update to Juniper routers which wasn’t ready for beta testing, much less deployment, and it had to be reversed. Many larger systems, like Time-Warner cable, saw it as as 30 second interruption in everything.

The wonderful part of deploying these changes via the ‘Net is that there is no single point of failure, so changes ripple through the system. Today, those who didn’t notice anything yesterday are experiencing the joy of the outage and then the reversal.

Just like kidney stones, this too will pass.

The BBC has a generalized report on the situation in Greece.

My personal view is this is political cowardice of the first water. What the political parties want to do is form a temporary ‘unity government’ to pass the ‘Enslavement of Greeks to Save German and French Banks Act’, and then call for elections in which they will all claim they didn’t want to do it, and it was all Papandreou’s fault.

They should have had the referendum, and then pulled out of the euro when the Greek voters said ‘hell no!’. Let Germany and France deal with the gambling debts of their own banks.

The basic problem is ‘religious’, not economic. The euro is a fiat currency, and the European Central Bank could solve the problems by moving numbers around on a spreadsheet. The various countries that have real problems, like Greece and Italy, can deal with them after the economy recovers. Imposing austerity now may be the only ‘correct choice’ in terms of the ‘religion’ of Germany and France, but it is an economic disaster. Europe is forcing itself into another deeper recession with its actions.

If I was a Greek voter I would never vote for anyone in the current parliament ever again. Let the politicians find out what life is like for the unemployed.

Update: Duncan on French austerity. It is a downward spiral, like the threads on a screw.

There is a major discussion going on at Corrente on the Black Bloc and Occupy Oakland, and Badtux thinks that the evidence seems point toward the Bloc being a COINTELPRO organization.

It has been shown that at the Canadian G20 summit many of those who seemed to be associated with the Black Bloc were definitely police officers as they were wearing the department issued boots. This may also explain why even relatively effective police departments don’t gather up the Black Bloc before trouble happens. It isn’t as if they are worried about civil rights.

My objection to the tactics of the Black Bloc is that they aren’t effective. If the goal is to change behaviors, then notes pasted to large plate glass windows saying ‘Nice windows. It would be a shame if something happened to them. Have you considered moving your money out of large banks into locally owned smaller banks, and not voting to put morons in office? Just a thought…”

The only message sent by random destruction is that the person doing it is a jerk. Further, the trespass and other bogus charges used by the police are violations, like traffic tickets, not crimes. Destruction of property is a crime with an identifiable victim, which prosecutors and judges are unlikely to overlook. There is no right to trash other people stuff in the Constitution.

Remember: A rising tide lifts all boats … but only the 1% can afford boats, so it’s sink or swim for the 99%.

Update: I forgot to include Sara Robinson’s advice from an old hippie about dealing with troublemakers when you are attempting to change attitudes and be inclusive.

So, I heard a clip in the car of Mitt Romney talking about how he was going to ‘fix’ Medicare. You already know the answer – privatization.

Medicare spends 97% of its money on health care, while private insurances companies spend 80% or less.

The Medicare Part B premium will generally stay the same next year, while private insurance is going up by 10% or more.

Increasing premiums on health insurance is a major factor in health care costs, so how will moving people from the more efficient and stable Medicare system to a less efficient and ever higher priced private system solve anything?

Medicare-for-all would save the country hundred of billions of dollars in health care costs and level the playing field for American workers.

The California gang known as the Oakland Police Department is attempting to start a war with veterans. If it happens, they will lose, badly.

Naturally the M$M don’t report on the activities of the “gang” so you have to read the UK’s Guardian – Occupy Oakland: second Iraq war veteran injured after police clashes

A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries after clashes between police and Occupy movement protesters in Oakland.

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

There is more information from Reuters

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

“He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him,” Kelly said. “They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours.”

Sabeghi is an Iranian-American, and given his pub ownership, I’m going to guess that he is among the large group of Ba’hai in the California Iranian community and not a Shi’ia Muslim. If his family still spoke Farsi at home, he would have been invaluable during his Afghan tour as Dari and Farsi are very close, and Dari is the most common language in Afghanistan.

As Badtux notes, if Sabeghi had decided to get hostile, there would be ‘gang’ members in the hospital with him. Army Rangers could go Rambo in a confrontation with the OPD and wouldn’t care about the outcome.

When you see pictures of violence and destruction at protests in the M$M these days you will note that the people involved are either dressed all in black with their faces covered [Anarchists, the remora of protests], wearing police footwear [agent provocateurs], or wearing their ‘gang colors’ [police uniforms].

Daylight Savings Time ends in the US Sunday morning, November 6^th at 2AM. It becomes 1AM and you get an extra hour of sleep, unless you work the “graveyard shift”.

Most devices make the change automatically, although many, like my clock radio, change under the old system and have to be ignored for a couple of weeks.

“Fall back – Spring ahead”

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.

The British are celebrating the anniversary of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot.

A group of English Catholic conspirators including an explosives expert, Guy Fawkes, stashed 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the Parliament building with the intent of blowing up the members of Parliament and King James I during the official opening of Parliament on November 5^th, 1605.

Bonfire Night is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. Effigies of Guy Fawkes, and occasionally the Pope, are traditionally thrown on the fires. Effigies of modern politicians have made their appearances at the celebration.

As Robert Cecil was involved, I doubt anyone will ever know the truth about the plot.

Over here some people have dedicated this day to dumping the ‘too big to fail’ banks with the Move Your Money Project.

David Atkins at Digby had a post about the conversion of Wall Street to a Ponzi scheme [a point he missed] that included this Reagan quote:

“Roughly 94 percent of the people in capitalist America make their living from wage or salary. Only 6 percent are true capitalists in the sense of deriving income from ownership of the means of production…We can win the argument once and for all by simply making more of our people Capitalists.”

Owning stock doesn’t make you a capitalist, it makes you an investor. Reagan should have used the original form of “means of production”, Produktionsmittel, a German word, because Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in German.

The really interesting quote on the page is before the Reagan quote in italics:

“Critics raised questions about what would happen when employees had a choice between benefits and capital investment, and whether they would prefer higher salaries in the present to the possibility of larger salaries from long-term investment.”

This was in reference to employee ownership of corporations, and it is interesting that the objection to employees being stockholders, is the exact behavior that we see currently from the MBA CEOs that lead corporations, i.e. the future of the corporations is ignored in the pursuit of short term profits.

I called the stock market a Ponzi scheme because, while it once was a rather staid and conservative investment institution, it was reconfigured to so that it can only survived with massive infusions of new money. If you look at the way the Dow has leaped up, it is obvious that the rate is only sustainable if new ‘suckers’ can be found to throw their money into the pit. It has become a casino, and the house always wins in casinos.

The Occupy movement doesn’t object to capitalism, they object to the government helping the plutocrats steal and not arresting those who commit blatant fraud. It is a matter of justice, not economics.