Not at all.
2019-02-26
If the idiot Modi utters so much as a syllable about this ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Balakot_airstrike?wprov=sfla1
You can be reasonably sure both it and the attack are connected to the upcoming 2019 Indian General Elections.
2019-02-25
2019-02-24
Neo-McCarthyism (i.e. current establishment brand Democratic Party election strategy) continues unabated.
or better known as 'Succumbing To Russophobia.'
The project’s advisory council includes Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security Department chief, Bill Kristol, who was a board member of the Project for the New American Century, which pushed for the invasion of Iraq, Rick Ledgett, former NSA deputy director, Mike McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Mike Morell, former acting CIA director, John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mike Rogers, former congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, James Stavridis, a former admiral who led European Command, and Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden."
Context here - https://shadowproof.com/2019/02/16/cnn-manufactured-story-about-russia-video-company-facebook-censorship/
2019-02-23
An interesting viewpoint from the Washington Department of Ecology about the recent snowfall we had.
http://ecologywa.blogspot.com/2019/02/big-gains-in-snowpack-but-still-below.html
The National Snow Analysis estimates that, as of Feb. 20, Washington’s snowpack contains about 30 million acre feet of water. Eight million acre feet of that water arrived between Feb. 5 and Feb. 20. That’s nearly as much water stored behind Grand Coulee Dam, which is Washington’s largest constructed reservoir.Why is this so important? Our snowpack is a significant water supply. In fact, it’s the largest reservoir of water in our state. For the Cascade Mountains, snowpack is responsible for about 78 percent of the runoff.
2019-02-20
One person can make a difference.
Look at today. Some jumped im front of a train and it shut down all travel leaving downtown.
I am on the 2nd of 3 buses to get home.
2019-02-19
Wow, the history of this thing is plain awful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Square_totem_pole
Did you know that members of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce stole the Pioneer Square totem pole from a Tlingit village in 1899 and gifted it to the City of Seattle?
Did you know that members of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce stole the Pioneer Square totem pole from a Tlingit village in 1899 and gifted it to the City of Seattle?
2019-02-17
While I supported Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries (which we now know via the Wikileaks emails were fixed by the DNC) ...
... I'm not sure I'd support him now as long as he chooses to run within the Democratic Party - why?
Because of shit like this -
Because of shit like this -
2019-02-16
I feel nervous about 5G - should I really be?
Hmm ... https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-you-dont-know-about-5g-but-will-find-out-when-its-too-late/5668614
"Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR poisoning:[9] nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs. Other biological effects such as tumours and dementia usually take longer to manifest, but in the case of 5G, which has never been tested for health or safety, who knows?[10]
Seemingly overnight a forest of 5G infrastructure has sprouted in Austria. In the space of three weeks one friend has gone from robust health to fleeing this country, where she has lived for 30 years. Each person experiences EMR differently. For her, it was extreme torture so she and I spent her last two nights in Austria sleeping in the woods. Interestingly, as she drove across southern Germany, she suffered torture even worse than in Austria, while in northern Germany she had no symptoms at all and felt completely normal, which suggests that there has been as yet no 5G rollout there."
"Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR poisoning:[9] nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs. Other biological effects such as tumours and dementia usually take longer to manifest, but in the case of 5G, which has never been tested for health or safety, who knows?[10]
Seemingly overnight a forest of 5G infrastructure has sprouted in Austria. In the space of three weeks one friend has gone from robust health to fleeing this country, where she has lived for 30 years. Each person experiences EMR differently. For her, it was extreme torture so she and I spent her last two nights in Austria sleeping in the woods. Interestingly, as she drove across southern Germany, she suffered torture even worse than in Austria, while in northern Germany she had no symptoms at all and felt completely normal, which suggests that there has been as yet no 5G rollout there."
2019-02-15
Next time some empathy-free individual tells you that you can't have Medicare, or that your 'entitlements' are up for grabs.
Remind yourself and them about this -
"The latest research on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has suffered a major decline.
This trend is most apparent in the United States but is revealed in the data for other countries included in research published by Zucman last month. According to his analysis, the top 1 percent in the US now owns about 40 percent of total household wealth, increasing its share by at least 10 percentage points since 1989. Over the same period “the share of wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent has collapsed in similar proportions.
The acceleration is even more marked in the highest income levels. The share of wealth owned by the top 0.00025 percent (roughly the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes Magazine data), rose from 1 percent in the early 1980s to over 3 percent in recent years. A similar tripling of wealth is seen in the top 0.01 percent."
Then heed this warning -
"Zucman’s latest findings will no doubt be used by Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Elizabeth Warren and the newly-elected Democratic Socialists of America Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they seek to give the Democratic Party a “left” face by calling for increased taxes on the wealthy.
But the data produced by Zucman and others refute the assertion that social inequality can or will be rectified by legislative changes. This is because the concentration of wealth—though aided and abetted by successive administrations, both Democrat and Republican—in the final analysis is rooted in vast changes in the very structure of American and global capitalism, arising from its deepening historical crisis.
In other words, it is the outcome of a process of capital accumulation, based on financialisation, that has institutionalised the siphoning of wealth up the income scale.
This cannot be overcome through appeals to the financial oligarchy to change course but only by a frontal assault against its rule, that is, the development of a mass struggle for socialism by the American and international working class. The conditions for this fight are emerging as a result of the resurgence of the class struggle being driven forward by the consequences of deepening social inequality. The aim of Warren, Ocasio-Cortez et al, is try to divert this movement and bring it under the wing of the Democratic Party."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/15/zucm-f15.html
"The latest research on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has suffered a major decline.
This trend is most apparent in the United States but is revealed in the data for other countries included in research published by Zucman last month. According to his analysis, the top 1 percent in the US now owns about 40 percent of total household wealth, increasing its share by at least 10 percentage points since 1989. Over the same period “the share of wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent has collapsed in similar proportions.
The acceleration is even more marked in the highest income levels. The share of wealth owned by the top 0.00025 percent (roughly the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes Magazine data), rose from 1 percent in the early 1980s to over 3 percent in recent years. A similar tripling of wealth is seen in the top 0.01 percent."
Then heed this warning -
"Zucman’s latest findings will no doubt be used by Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Elizabeth Warren and the newly-elected Democratic Socialists of America Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they seek to give the Democratic Party a “left” face by calling for increased taxes on the wealthy.
But the data produced by Zucman and others refute the assertion that social inequality can or will be rectified by legislative changes. This is because the concentration of wealth—though aided and abetted by successive administrations, both Democrat and Republican—in the final analysis is rooted in vast changes in the very structure of American and global capitalism, arising from its deepening historical crisis.
In other words, it is the outcome of a process of capital accumulation, based on financialisation, that has institutionalised the siphoning of wealth up the income scale.
This cannot be overcome through appeals to the financial oligarchy to change course but only by a frontal assault against its rule, that is, the development of a mass struggle for socialism by the American and international working class. The conditions for this fight are emerging as a result of the resurgence of the class struggle being driven forward by the consequences of deepening social inequality. The aim of Warren, Ocasio-Cortez et al, is try to divert this movement and bring it under the wing of the Democratic Party."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/15/zucm-f15.html
2019-02-14
2019-02-12
Modern Monetary Theory - something I've got to learn about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
Otherwise corporations will continue their capture of governments and insist on their austerity bullshit.
Otherwise corporations will continue their capture of governments and insist on their austerity bullshit.
2019-02-10
Establishment Media at it again with their propaganda tricks regarding Venezuela
https://fair.org/home/western-media-fall-in-lockstep-for-cheap-trump-rubio-venezuela-aid-pr-stunt/
"The same US media outlets that have expressly fundraised and run ad campaigns on their image as anti-Trump truth-tellers have mysteriously taken at face value everything the Trump White House and its neoconservative allies have said in their campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The self-aggrandizing “factchecking” brigade that emerged to confront the Trump administration is suddenly nonexistent as it rolls out a transparent, cynical PR strategy to delegitimize a Latin American government it’s trying to overthrow."
"The same US media outlets that have expressly fundraised and run ad campaigns on their image as anti-Trump truth-tellers have mysteriously taken at face value everything the Trump White House and its neoconservative allies have said in their campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The self-aggrandizing “factchecking” brigade that emerged to confront the Trump administration is suddenly nonexistent as it rolls out a transparent, cynical PR strategy to delegitimize a Latin American government it’s trying to overthrow."
2019-02-09
Green New Deal is not far enough - why?
Hmm ...
"... political solutions, like the Green New Deal, are being trotted out by democratic socialist and neoliberal politicians that merely cloak the problem, never identifying the root of it all: Capitalism. In fact, many of these policies are weak on protecting nature and are simply designed to keep capitalism afloat. At its core this is a system that is incapable of even beginning to address climate change or biospheric degeneration. Its principles are based upon the exploitation of the environment for the material gain of the ruling class, kept alive through institutions of repression and corporate state violence. Under this rubric environmental causes may be soothed for some; but the poor and working class are continually battered and raped by industry and the corrupt governments that house and protect them. Indigenous peoples, who face the worst exploitation, continually see their lands desecrated and denuded by state policing factions at the behest of powerful corporations. And militarism, which is of course wedded to capitalism, ensures that all of this exploitation can continue and expand virtually unopposed by bourgeois society."
"... political solutions, like the Green New Deal, are being trotted out by democratic socialist and neoliberal politicians that merely cloak the problem, never identifying the root of it all: Capitalism. In fact, many of these policies are weak on protecting nature and are simply designed to keep capitalism afloat. At its core this is a system that is incapable of even beginning to address climate change or biospheric degeneration. Its principles are based upon the exploitation of the environment for the material gain of the ruling class, kept alive through institutions of repression and corporate state violence. Under this rubric environmental causes may be soothed for some; but the poor and working class are continually battered and raped by industry and the corrupt governments that house and protect them. Indigenous peoples, who face the worst exploitation, continually see their lands desecrated and denuded by state policing factions at the behest of powerful corporations. And militarism, which is of course wedded to capitalism, ensures that all of this exploitation can continue and expand virtually unopposed by bourgeois society."
2019-02-08
The original wave of McCarthyism started on this day 69 years ago tomorrow.
1950 – U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (pictured) accused 205 employees of the State Department of being communists, sparking a period of strong anti-communist sentiment that became known as McCarthyism.
We're living the 2nd Wave of McCarthyism now.
We're living the 2nd Wave of McCarthyism now.
Got an amusing email from Dow Constantine recently.
It said the following -
"Ralph Nader's vanity campaign in 2000 handed Florida and the White House to George W. Bush, and we got accelerated climate change and tragic, endless war in the Middle East. Jill Stein's third-party campaign, with a boost from the Kremlin, helped Trump and his band of kleptocrats grab the power to bring our nation to the brink of disaster -- and that's just what they've done. "
Oh really?
Here's part of my response -
"Seems to me in looking at the voting-eligible population data of the last few elections, I'm seeing the following -
2000 (http://www.electproject.org/2000g)
2004 (http://www.electproject.org/2004g)
2008 (http://www.electproject.org/2008g)
2012 (http://www.electproject.org/2012g)
2016 (http://www.electproject.org/2016g)
Given that the % of voter ballots turned in over the last 5 elections is consistently under 66% of the Voter Eligible Population (VEP), that tells me that neither the voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 nor Jill Stein in 2016 were decisive factors in deciding the election to either corporate brand. Your statements about these two Presidential candidates are clearly false.
If you and your staff were smart, rather than sending emails containing statements like the one above, you'd spend your time trying to figure out why a large bloc of the voter eligible population didn't vote at all. Had you done so, you wouldn't be wasting my time being forced to read stuff you appeared to have pulled out of your collective asses.
And if after reading this you are either unable or unwilling to do so, while you're free to continue pulling stuff out of your asses and sending it, don't do it in my Inbox."
"Ralph Nader's vanity campaign in 2000 handed Florida and the White House to George W. Bush, and we got accelerated climate change and tragic, endless war in the Middle East. Jill Stein's third-party campaign, with a boost from the Kremlin, helped Trump and his band of kleptocrats grab the power to bring our nation to the brink of disaster -- and that's just what they've done. "
Oh really?
Here's part of my response -
"Seems to me in looking at the voting-eligible population data of the last few elections, I'm seeing the following -
2000 (http://www.electproject.org/2000g)
| Turnout Rates | Numerators | Denominators | VEP Components (Modifications to VAP to Calculate VEP) | |||||||||||
2
| VEP Total Ballots Counted | VEP Highest Office | VAP Highest Office | Total Ballots Counted | Highest Office | Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) | Voting-Age Population (VAP) | % Non-citizen | Prison | Probation | Parole | Total Ineligible Felon | Overseas Eligible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3
| United States | 55.3% | 54.2% | 50.0% | 107,390,107 | 105,375,486 | 194,331,436 | 210,623,408 | 7.7% | 1,377,013 | 2,339,388 | 536,039 | 3,082,746 | 2,937,000 |
2004 (http://www.electproject.org/2004g)
| e | Turnout Rates | Numerators | Denominators | VEP Components (Modifications to VAP to Calculate VEP) | ||||||||||
2
| VEP Total Ballots Counted | VEP Highest Office | VAP Highest Office | Total Ballots Counted | Highest Office | Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) | Voting-Age Population (VAP) | % Non-citizen | Prison | Probation | Parole | Total Ineligible Felon | Overseas Eligible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3
| United States | 60.7% | 60.1% | 55.4% | 123,535,883 | 122,294,978 | 203,483,455 | 220,336,019 | 8.2% | 1,490,169 | 2,387,283 | 474,632 | 3,158,443 | 3,862,836 |
2008 (http://www.electproject.org/2008g)
| Turnout Rates | Numerators | Denominators | VEP Components (Modifications to VAP to Calculate VEP) | |||||||||||
2
| VEP Total Ballots Counted | VEP Highest Office | VAP Highest Office | Total Ballots Counted | Highest Office | Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) | Voting-Age Population (VAP) | % Non-citizen | Prison | Probation | Parole | Total Ineligible Felon | Overseas Eligible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3
| United States | 62.2% | 61.6% | 56.9% | 132,609,063 | 131,304,731 | 213,313,508 | 230,872,030 | 8.4% | 1,605,448 | 2,451,085 | 627,680 | 3,144,831 | 4,972,217 |
2012 (http://www.electproject.org/2012g)
| Turnout Rates | Numerators | Denominators | VEP Components (Modifications to VAP to Calculate VEP) | ||||||||||||||||||||
2
| VEP Total Ballots Counted | VEP Highest Office | VAP Highest Office | Total Ballots Counted | Highest Office | Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) | Voting-Age Population (VAP) | % Non-citizen | Prison | Probation | Parole | Total Ineligible Felon | Overseas Eligible |
State Abv
| |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3
| United States | 58.6% | 58.0% | 53.6% | 130,292,355 | 129,070,906 | 222,474,111 | 240,957,993 | 8.4% | 1,473,412 | 2,342,582 | 637,410 | 3,352,390 | 5,127,418 | |||||||||
2016 (http://www.electproject.org/2016g)
| te | Turnout Rates | Numerators | Denominators | VEP Components (Modifications to VAP to Calculate VEP) | |||||||||||||||||||||
2
| State Results Website | Status | VEP Total Ballots Counted | VEP Highest Office | VAP Highest Office | Total Ballots Counted (Estimate) | Highest Office | Voting-Eligible Population (VEP) | Voting-Age Population (VAP) | % Non-citizen | Prison | Probation | Parole | Total Ineligible Felon | Overseas Eligible |
State Abv
| |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3
| United States | 60.1% | 59.2% | 54.7% | 138,846,571 | 136,700,729 | 230,931,921 | 250,055,734 | 8.3% | 1,416,810 | 2,198,907 | 506,297 | 3,176,484 | 4,739,596 | |||||||||||
Given that the % of voter ballots turned in over the last 5 elections is consistently under 66% of the Voter Eligible Population (VEP), that tells me that neither the voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 nor Jill Stein in 2016 were decisive factors in deciding the election to either corporate brand. Your statements about these two Presidential candidates are clearly false.
If you and your staff were smart, rather than sending emails containing statements like the one above, you'd spend your time trying to figure out why a large bloc of the voter eligible population didn't vote at all. Had you done so, you wouldn't be wasting my time being forced to read stuff you appeared to have pulled out of your collective asses.
And if after reading this you are either unable or unwilling to do so, while you're free to continue pulling stuff out of your asses and sending it, don't do it in my Inbox."
2019-02-07
Face Surveillance - we've seen how previous technology has been used once in the hands of the co-opted.
https://fair.org/home/face-surveillance-is-a-uniquely-dangerous-technology/?awt_l=Ke_9G&awt_m=hww7T8ccx2R._TQ
Even a perfectly functioning, unbiased facial recognition system is extremely dangerous. That’s because this technology gives the government unprecedented power to track people, surveil who they are, where they go and who they know, across geographies, across time.
You don’t have to drive your car, if you want to avoid license plate readers. You don’t have to bring your cellphone, if you don’t want it to be tracked. But you can’t leave your face at home. And your face print is exactly the target for these products, like Amazon‘s Rekognition, Microsoft Face, that make widespread use of facial recognition technology easy and cheap. And so that’s really the game changer we’re talking about.
In addition to that, the government doesn’t have to decide ahead of time who it’s going to follow around, because face surveillance is silent, it’s undetectable, and it can be applied after the fact to any video or still image. And we know, of course, that there’s more and more video and still imaging, such that anything you do in a public space may well get recorded, then be subject to facial recognition if the government has that tool in its toolbox.
2019-02-06
Has the weather finally gotten to me?
After living in the Pacific Northwest for about 20 years, I think it's finally affecting me.
Aches and pains in the arms, legs, neck, head ... sinus pain.
I feel lethargic ... like I want to sleep. Which could be because I haven't had a good night sleep in ~ 15 years.
Anyways, let's hope I get over it.
Aches and pains in the arms, legs, neck, head ... sinus pain.
I feel lethargic ... like I want to sleep. Which could be because I haven't had a good night sleep in ~ 15 years.
Anyways, let's hope I get over it.
2019-02-02
Howard Thurman - a man I'd like to get to learn more about.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/01/ghandi-and-the-american-civil-rights-movement/
From the article, here's something that looks interesting to watch -
https://www.tpt.org/backs-against-the-wall-the-howard-thurman-story/
From the article, here's something that looks interesting to watch -
https://www.tpt.org/backs-against-the-wall-the-howard-thurman-story/
2019-02-01
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