Author: jd
Bibi says: Iran, Iran Iran, and Stand. Down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Txrcpl49GQ
Russian propaganda and The Guardian (UK)
‘….all news is comment, all truth little more than opinion. There is the BBC view. The Fox News view. The Russia Today view. All are expressions of special interests, not so much attempts at the truth as individual perspectives and localised narratives.
[….] What Russian state spin demonstrates is that, by dispensing with what we used to be comfortable calling the truth, we are left with nothing but sheer power. In other words, relativism leads inevitably into nihilism. “What is truth?” said Pontius Pilate, trying to befuddle the issues of innocence and guilt with high-sounding Putin-like misdirection. No news organisation should be sympathetic to this strategy. For while comment is free, the facts are sacred….’
via The Guardian view on Russian propaganda: the truth is out there | Editorial | World news | The Guardian.
Rahm Emanuel’s downfall?
Rahm Emanuel always was early proof that Obama was not and never had any intention of being Liberal, let alone an authentic progressive.
‘….[Rahm Emanuel] left Clinton in 1998. With no prior experience in finance he walked into a job at a Clinton-friendly investment bank. Two and a half years later he walked out with $16 million. He had no background in housing, either, but got appointed to the board of Freddie Mac where he made even more money while watching it slip slowly into ruin.
In Congress he hewed right on economic and fiscal policy and was a hawk on defense. As Obama’s chief of staff he purged Clinton-era liberals, which resulted in a team of economic advisers more conservative than that of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland. Whether following their advice or his own instincts, Obama ditched ethics reform, aid to homeowners with bad mortgages, a minimum wage hike and the public option; a disastrous set of choices from which he never fully recovered….’
via Rahm Emanuel’s moment of reckoning: How he ended up in a fight for his political life – Salon.com.
130 years ago Europe carved up Africa
‘…The Berlin Conference led to a period of heightened colonial activity by the European powers. With the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, all the states that make up present day Africa were parceled out among the colonial powers within a few years after the meeting. Lines of longitude and latitude, rivers and mountain ranges were pressed into service as borders separating the colonies. Or one simply placed a ruler on the map and drew a straight line.
[….] In 2010 – on the 125th anniversary of the Berlin Conference, representatives from many African states in Berlin called for reparations for the colonial era. The arbitrary division of the continent among European powers, which ignored African laws, culture, sovereignty and institutions, was a crime against humanity, they said in a statement. They called for the funding of monuments at historic sites, the return of land and other resources which had been stolen, the restitution of cultural treasures and recognition that colonialism and the crimes committed under it were crimes against humanity.
But nothing has come of all this…’
via 130 years ago: carving up Africa in Berlin | Africa | DW.DE | 25.02.2015.
My only reason to go to ello.
I gave up on ello.co a long time ago – For me it was a short burst of interest in finding a desperately needed alternative to facebook, but then it just felt like another tumblr. And I could neither ‘like’ nor <3 anything. 
But there is one reason I do go back, that is Bruce Sterling. I am always interested in what he writes, or when he speaks, and what he posts is almost always some how in synch with me.
and me,
ello.co/redjade
if you wish to like me, friend me, follow me, whatever it is you do there at ello.
A non-American child’s life is worth $2,414
An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.
A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.
These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act.
via Our Condolences: How the U.S. Paid For Death and Damage in Afghanistan.
Hungary’s ‘Buda-Cash’ Brokerage Crisis: Who what Hungary’s Edward Snowden?
Böröcz, József writes
‘…the regulator–which now says the scheme may have been going on for more than a decade (!)–“fell asleep at the wheel,” [….] the case broke because somebody from the brokerage reported the irregularities to the National Bank–i.e., s/he made it impossible for the regulator “not to notice” them…’
via Global Social Change (book blog): Hungary's Brokerage Crisis: How Far Will It Reach?.
why do the children of Abraham fight so much?!
Yeah, exactly. This is also my point that I say as a (98%) atheist.
Here’s my point: if Christians don’t own God and God “owns” heaven (remember when you said, “Duh. Of course.”?), then why do so many Christians get so worked up with judging and damning other religions?
Jesus was Jewish.
If you are a follower of the Christian faith, it seems like some kind of bizarre, religiously self-inflicted wound to be anti-Semitic.
Additionally, Muslims see Jesus as one of the greatest and most powerful of God’s prophets.
Shall we take it upon ourselves to condemn an entire religion when we share a common spiritual ancestor in Abraham and a common belief of the teachings of Jesus?
via Dear Fellow Christians: We Don’t Own Heaven.
Chicago’s Black Sites
Rahm Emanuel was Obama’s right-hand man for years in the White House, today domestic ‘black sites’ exist in his city. Who will be held responsible?
In a letter to Rahm Emanuel, Amnesty USA’s executive director Steven Hawkins wrote: “As the mayor of Chicago, you have a responsibility under US and international law to ensure that human rights violations are not committed within the city.”
via ‘Gestapo’ tactics at US police ‘black site’ ring alarm from Chicago to Washington — The Guardian
Chomsky writes of the American decline
Noam Chomsky writes:
‘…we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out — “anything that flies on anything that moves” — a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists….’
via The hysterical American decline – Salon.com.
Another TTIP leak
Notice that, again, the only way the public can know about the truth of these ‘free-trade’ deals is from leakers — from criminal good samaritans that expose secret government negotiations. Manning, Assange, Snowden, who ever did this, etc – we all owe them an apology and a hero’s status in any real democracy.
The European Commission has also previously said TTIP would not affect how NHS services are provided, whether in Scotland or the rest of the UK. But the trade union Unite said “real risks” remained because of the dispute resolution mechanism TTIP is expected to include. The union’s Scottish regional secretary, Pat Rafferty said: “Last week Lord Livingston tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the Scottish people. “Now this leaked document has confirmed Unite’s expert legal advice, that NHS services in Scotland and the rest of the UK do fall within the scope of the TTIP. “This means that American investors in NHS services that are privatised now or in the future will be able to use TTIP to sue the government if it tries to bring them back into public hands”. via BBC News – TTIP: Transatlantic trade deal text leaked to BBC.
Banksy goes to Gaza – new video
Graffiti artist Banksy goes to Egypt and arrives in Israeli besieged Gaza Palestine via a tunnel. Banksy says more in 1:55 minutes than all CNNNBCCBSABCPBS reports in the previous 12 months, I think. Well done Mr Banksy, I hope we see more videos of yours from occupied Palestine.
The Drone assassinations will continue after Obama leaves office
Tom Engelhardt writes:
‘…Washington’s grimly named Predator and Reaper drones have been hunting their prey in the backlands of the planet 24 hours a day for more than a decade now. Thousands of people have been wiped out, including women, children, and wedding parties, as well as numerous significant and insignificant figures in terror outfits of every sort. And yet in not one of those countries has the situation improved in any significant way in terms of U.S. policy goals. In most of them it has grown worse and the drones have been a factor in such developments, alienating whole populations on the ground below. This has been obvious for years to counterinsurgency experts. But a reconsideration of these drone wars is beyond the pale in Washington. Drone assassination is now a sacrosanct act of the American state, part of a “global” war 13 years old and ongoing. No one in any position of power, now or in the immediate future, is going to consider flying them back.
The CIA has sometimes been called the president’s private army. Today, it’s running most (but not all) of Washington’s drone campaigns and so those robotic lone wolves could be considered the president’s private air force. In the process, the twenty-first-century White House has been officially and proudly turned into an assassin’s lair and don’t expect that to change in 2016 or 2020 either…’
via Tomgram: Engelhardt, Walking Back the American Twenty-First Century? | TomDispatch.
Noam Chomsky on the Ukraine crisis — Channel 4 UK
Why does the MSM refuse to use encryption?
Another reason to not trust the mainstream media, right from the start, they do not protect their sources…
‘…a survey of 65 major news organizations to see if they have implemented a common security protocol known as STARTTLS that can protect their e-mails from being intercepted as they travel across the Internet.
We found that news organizations like the Associated Press, Le Monde, LA Times, CBS News, Forbes, Baltimore Sun, and Der Spiegel are still not protecting journalists and their sources from this type of surveillance, and are putting all of the people who communicate with them at risk of being spied on. You can see the full results of our survey…’
via Why aren’t more news organizations protecting their e-mail with STARTTLS encryption? | Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Est is the best, boo for the Goo
Est.hu is still the best, Google not so much.
Recently I discovered that Google is offering yet another good service – movie listings in Budapest.
Movie listings in a country where you do not fully understand the language is more difficult than you would imagine.
For myself, the first problem is figuring out what the Hungarian title of the film is that you are looking for. ‘Amerikai mesterlövész‘ sounds like it would be a chickflick about an American girl who rides horses — Amerikai = American, mester = master, lövész = horse rider because Lö means horse in Hungarian, oh wait, fuck! That’s Lö, not Ló! gggrr!! O! the frustrations of the Hungarian language and its fucking vowels!!!
At that point you get frustrated and usually give up — and, only later, you might discover after the film had left Budapest’s cinemas that Amerikai mesterlövész was really American Sniper. Not a chickflick, at all.
The second problem is finding a non-english language film with english subtitles. Forget about it! This only rarely occurs, usually it is a bleak human rights themed documentary French film at an international film festival.
The third problem is finding an english language film in english. say what?! Yeah, well, Hungarians love their Hollywood films dubbed. Strangely, this means that the best time to see an english language film in english is immediately after its Budapest release, because these films tend to quickly disappear and leave the dubbed version of the film lingering on in the cinemas for months.
But let’s go back to the beginning. Google now offers movie listings, but this is useless to me. Yes, you can click around and see the listings by cinema and by film title — but not by language or dubbed vs not dubbed.
So, Mr. Google, take my suggestion and change this. Est.hu has been offering this on their website for years.
Est.hu is still the best, Google not so much.
Yes, Syriza did sell out – for up to 4 months
‘Eurozone finance ministers agreed to consider extending financial assistance to Greece, which is formally known as the Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement, for up to 4 months….’
via Eurogroup Summery Statement 20/02/2015
and read…
‘…The Greek authorities reiterate their unequivocal commitment to honour their financial obligations to all their creditors fully and timely.
The Greek authorities have also committed to ensure the appropriate primary fiscal surpluses or financing proceeds required to guarantee debt sustainability in line with the November 2012 Eurogroup statement. The institutions will, for the 2015 primary surplus target, take the economic circumstances in 2015 into account.
In light of these commitments, we welcome that in a number of areas the Greek policy priorities can contribute to a strengthening and better implementation of the current arrangement. The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions….’
via Eurogroup statement on Greece – Consilium.
Bombing non-Muslims.
Tedd Rall asks
‘When’s the last time the United States bombed a non-Muslim country?’
via In the Propaganda War Against ISIS, US Flails.
The Syriza backdown
The always informative euro|topics website offers a synopsis (greek word!) from four different european newspaper of the Syriza back down in the face of the German economic strangulation of Greece…
‘The left-wing Syriza alliance and the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party have forged a coalition in record time. What these unequal partners have in common is their rejection of austerity. Can Prime Minister Tsipras convince the EU to ease the pressure on Greece?…’
via Athens rebels against austerity dictates
— EuroTopics.
Can Virtual Reality change racist reality? — video
This short video from EuroNews is interesting, but I do not think this can end racism. The reasons for racism are more complex than simply not liking or not being able to identify with someone else’s skin colour.
Could they, for example, do an identical experiment for poor and homeless people? How could this be used to combat Islamophobia? This experiment does nothing to help people understand the economic structural system needs to create an ‘Other’ and divide society so the elites can rule.
‘…Their new study shows that by using illusion techniques, it is surprisingly easy to trick people into thinking they have a body part with a different skin colour than their own, or even a different body…’
via Could virtual body swapping reduce racism? | euronews, science.
Yes, Freedom is Slavery. No irony implied this time.
‘In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”…’
via The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle.
remember this quote the next time you read the phrase: ‘Smart Cities’
‘…There are only two ways to keep people out of any space – prices and policing. In other words, the prices will automatically be higher in such cities – the notion that they will be low cost is flawed. Even if possible from a cost provision perspective, they cannot be low cost from a demand supply perspective.
Even with high prices, the conventional laws in India will not enable us to exclude millions of poor Indians from enjoying the privileges of such great infrastructure. Hence the police will need to physically exclude people from such cities, and they will need a different set of laws from those operating in the rest of India for them to be able to do so. Creating special enclaves is the only method of doing so….’
via Smart cities or cleverly-disguised corporate colonies? – Intellectual Anarchy!.
Podemos’ Pablo Iglesias likes ‘The Wire’
AMY GOODMAN: And do you have any words of advice for President Obama, now in his second term? He can’t run again. Whether he will be a lame-duck president or a legacy president remains to be seen.
PABLO IGLESIAS: I don’t know. I don’t know what could I say to President Obama. There is something that I like. We both love The Wire, the HBO series. And I like Omar, too. And I read that Obama like this character, this character Omar. And I don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you like The Wire?
PABLO IGLESIAS: I think it’s probably the best TV series in order to explain how the power works, how the power works in politics, in media, in the organization of the work. I think it’s a masterpiece. I used to teach political geography in my faculty, and all the time I was saying to my students, “You have to see this TV series, because it’s great in order to understand how the power works.”
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have anything like that in Spain?
PABLO IGLESIAS: Not in that level. I think that The Wire is the best series.
Poland pays reparations to Guantánamo victims
Poland is a country with Rule of Law, America not so much
‘Poland will comply with a court order to pay $262,000 to two Guantánamo Bay inmates, foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna said on Wednesday, as reparations for the country’s role in hosting a CIA black site where the men were tortured. “We have to do it,” Schetyna said in an interview on Trójka Polish Radio, “because we are a country that abides laws.” He said the money would be paid out within a month…’
via Poland agrees to pay reparations to Guantánamo detainees | World news | The Guardian.