Novella: Land Gone

Aw, Poor Bobby Jindal...

Graphic: Gurman Bhatia/Poynter

Wait, what I am saying ?  Fuck that guy.

Left: 'Official' Portrait of Gov. Bobby Jindal/Right: Some Random Brown Dude

Chart, h/t TBogg

For the Record

Had a whole blog-post on this subject, which I may revisit, but for now, I'll just note that the chart on the left below, which they really should update with the numbers from 2015 (to the right) tells a pretty clear story about what has happened to parties in the UK over the last several decades, a pattern that is also seen in the United States and other countries.  And that my politics are largely a response to that steady shift towards more authoritarian/right policies by the mainstream parties.

That Is All

DefundPlannedParenthoodSanctuaryCitiesHillaryClintonsEmailKatesLawISISCrossingtheMexicanBorderSellingFetalBodyPartsJadeHelmObamaTakingAwayYourGunsCreepingSocialismIRSPersecutingTheTeaPartyObamaIsNevilleChamberlainWorseThanSlaveryWorseThantheHolocaustDeathPanelsAmeroDemocratsBetrayingIsraelFomentingClassWarfareDenyingAmericanExceptionalismMostDangerousPlaceforaBlackBabyisintheWombVinceFosterSecuretheBorderFirstSoonPeoplesWillBeMarryingAnimalsCriminalizingChristianityFakeBirthCertificateSolyndraAcornReverendWrightBillAyersDemocratsaretheRealRacistsEricHolderGroundZeroMosqueSecretMuslimObamaAteDogsFastandFuriousVAScandalObamaPlanningIllegalThirdTermGroverNorquistisaMuslimSpyWhiteyTapeSecretFEMAReeducationCampsBlackPanthersResetButtonCommunityOrganizerSaulAlinskyObamaBowingSurrenderingtoIranLoveChildofMalcolmXMichelleObamaRuinedMySchoolLunchRulesforRadicalsWhyDoesObamaHateAmericaForcedtoMakeGayWeddingCakeWorstPresidentEverGlobalWarmingisaHoaxSupportingCubanDictatorsChristianNationStandwithIsraelWorsethanHitlerWhichSymbolKilledMoreBlackBabiesShariaLawinAmericaBadDealBenghazi!!!!!

The Nightly Show: Hunt, Eat, or Pet...with Republican Candidates

To Clarify And/Or Confuse

Just magical.

Finally...

The inevitable stupid sellout happens.

Vomit.

Probably better for Tory Clarkson, able to provide shittier, more (for him) remunerative shows free of the constraints of the BBC, to an ever-more circumscribed audience.

...and...

better for the lefty politically-correct idiots at the BBC, who can conveniently shrink the audience for Top Gear as was, just in time for the Conservatives to push for its cancellation...much to their relief.

Ev'rybody wins !!! Except for fans of Top Gear...or the BBC.  Or civilisation generally.

Another Desperate Candidate for the GOP: Dr. Ben Carson !

Um, okay...Doctor.  And ?...


H/T Digby

Cocteau Twins: Wax and Wane

Don't know that I've ever actually seen Liz & Co. perform live before, let alone from so early on...

Calais

From the Independent, which didn't provide attribution for the foto.  It's an evocative picture, however you feel on the subject.  And I suspect, stands better on its own, aside from any, likely futile analysis or policy-proposals.

Well, If You Will Build Your Capital on Swampland...

Washington, D.C. is sinking into the sea

With Americans’ approval of Congress lingering near record lows and about half the country unsatisfied with the White House, perhaps this will come as good news: Washington, D.C. is sinking into the sea.

Is the big slide some kind of karmic comeuppance? A matter of unchecked climate change? A side effect of excessive groundwater pumping? Nope, not this time, according to the researchers who confirmed Washington’s watery destiny in a new study.

The problem is something called “forebulge collapse,” a wonderfully evocative phrase that refers to the geological ups and downs of the last ice age. Until about 20,000 years ago, there was a mile-high ice sheet that stretched as far south as Long Island. It was so heavy, scholars say, that the land under modern Washington, D.C. bulged up—and eventually we decided to start building a government on it.

“It’s a bit like sitting on one side of a water bed filled with very thick honey,” Ben DeJong, the lead author on the new study, told Science Daily. “The other side goes up. But when you stand, the bulge comes down again.”

This new waterbed-based understanding of Washington, D.C. was produced by geologists from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey and other institutions. It was published this week in GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America.

It projects that Washington will drop by six or more inches in the next century, adding to the problems of sea-level rise, and threatening a mix of military installations and national monuments.  

Whoops.  'Forebulge collapse' in addition to climate-change !  Not that half the country doesn't question or outright deny the latter.

Now as for London...

Speaking of Corruption

This Country Just Made It Legal for Cops to Keep 70% of All the Traffic Fines They Collect

Officials do not foresee a rash of spurious fines being handed out as a consequence

Drivers in Cambodia have a lot to contend with: cavernous potholes, weaving motorcycles kicking up clouds of choking dust and noodle hawkers trundling down the “fast” lane. Now motorists may find their pockets as ravaged as their nerves, after officials announced a fivefold bump in traffic fines and gave permission for issuing officers to keep 70% of all cash collected.

The new rules, coming into force in January, are an attempt to curb corruption, reports the Phnom Penh Post. Currently, traffic cops keep half of much smaller penalties, meaning that many supplement their meager salaries by soliciting bribes.

The current $1.25 official penalty for not wearing a car seat belt, for example, will rise to $6.25, with the officer allowed to keep $4.38. Of the remaining 30%, some 25% will go to the station where the officer is based, with the final 5% sent to the Ministry of Finance.

I guess I understand the motivation behind this: Cops are taking bribes from drivers, who may or may not have committed an offence, which may or may not be of a significant nature, so they don't get ticketed.  There's a culture of corruption there, with both the officers, and members of the public.  And the government wants to discourage that.

Currently, he said, traffic cops are already given 50 per cent of the much smaller penalties they collect, meaning the change effectively represents a seven-fold increase in the revenue they can legitimately earn from dishing out fines.

Wait, so the government, which apparently knows its cops are underpaid, already have a system in place that encourages spurious stops...and they wonder why drivers are offering, and no doubt some officers, soliciting bribes ?

And rather than top up the base-pay of the police**, to make them less tempted by bribes, they now want to give cops, any way you cut it, an even greater motivation to stop drivers, in which they get a much bigger payout than before, whether the driver attempts to bribe them or not, though they now stand a chance at getting exponentially bigger bribes from those who can afford it ?

What could possibly go wrong ?


h/t Boing Boing

---

Back in the West, of course, we may have somewhat less corruption, but there's still far too much motivation for spurious traffic-stops (So, Officer Doe, I see you seem to be having trouble meeting our monthly departmental quota lately ?  Maybe we should have a chat in my office...), and the consequences can be far higher in the case of the gun-loving US -- sadly as we see over and over in the headlines, even fatal.

What we could really do with is some way to disincentivise over-policing of minor violations generally (but without necessarily encouraging cops to not enforce given laws across the board) combined with greater accountability for the cops.  Which yes, includes technologies like body-cameras, which we can fairly easily afford, even if Cambodia could not.

And what we could also do with is to remove entirely the financial incentives for traffic-stops & tickets.***  The motivation for stopping a driver, or a citizen generally, should have precisely zero to do with departmental budgets, zero to do with quotas, zero to do with anxieties about career-advancement, and everything to do with the nature of the offence, the severity or lack thereof of any threat to public wellbeing, and the benefits of a stop versus the risks to everyone, police-officer & civilian alike, involved.


* Apologies for the likely sloppy flow of this post.  It flipped about quite a bit, then bifurcated altogether.

** Yes, I'm aware that Cambodia's not the richest country in the world.  But there have to be better, less abuse-prone if not abuse-rife ways of funding the police than this.

*** And if a municipality in the US is unable to independently afford its own police-force, then maybe it shouldn't exist as a separate municipality at all.  Thinking of  the case of St. Louis/Ferguson et al. here, with the phenomenon of  so-called 'white flight', though there are no doubt similar examples across the US.

Everything's Bigger in Texas After All

One of the great gifts (intentional or not) to the Democratic Party in Donald Trump's bid for the nomination of the GOP is the way he's been tearing down, or attempting to tear down, one of his Republican rivals after another, in an entirely uninhibited way, often with entirely valid criticism.

Such as with blood-thirsty fan of state-sanctioned killings* of people who may or not be guilty, may or not be competent, Rick Perry -- best remembered from the last elections for his 'Oops' facepalm-moment in the debates.

Rick Perry seems to believe that wearing glasses might make him come across as more mentally competent this time around, such that he now seemingly never appears in public without them.  And of course, Trump has no problem in calling out Perry's use of the glasses to make himself seem smarter, no problem questioning his mental competence.

So, how does Rick Perry respond to Trump's criticism ?  How does he do so in a way, that demonstrates his competence and credibility as candidate for the highest office in the land ?

Why, by challenging Donald Trump to a contest to see who can perform the most pull-ups, of course.  Just about the most stupid macho pissing-contest-style response (short of proposing an actual pissing-contest of course)**, imaginable.

And thus the man who came across as an even dumber version of George W Bush last time around, proves he still has that...special touch.


* 279, baby !  Beat that if you can !

** The simile works equally well with another 'contest', but the other's just a bit too vulgar.***

*** Which didn't stop my hinting at it in the title of the post.

Maybe They Should Just Tow the Whole Island to the Caribbean

What with the United Kingdom turning into a tax-haven, foreigners buying up swathes of London as investment-property, and Cameron & Co. seemingly determined to turn Britain into a banana republic.

The Government is reviewing the Bribery Act after business leaders claimed it was making it difficult for British firms to export goods.

The Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, is inviting companies to comment on whether the tough anti-corruption measures are “a problem”.

Critics fear it is a way of weakening the law at a time when the Government should be clamping down on existing loopholes, and supporters of the Act say they are surprised by the move.

They warn that any attempt to water down the Act will seriously damage the UK’s credibility on corruption. They also claim it is undermining David Cameron’s tough personal anti-bribery message, which he reinforced during his visit to South-east Asia to drum up business for Britain.

Simply shameless.  Too difficult to do business without being able to more easily bribe people ?  In Britain ?  Oh, and what was that about a visit to South-east Asia ?

An investigation into alleged corruption worth hundreds of millions of pounds at Malaysia’s national investment company threatened to overshadow David Cameron’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur on 30 July.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, has been forced to deny allegations that he has personally benefited to the tune of $700m (£447.5m) from the investment fund that investigators have traced to what they allege are his own bank accounts.

...  

Mr Cameron, whose stop in Malaysia is part of a tour of South-east Asia, during which he hopes to open new markets for British business, said recently that “the wind of economic change is blowing east. “We still do more trade with Belgium than we do with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam combined,” he said.

The Sarawak Report, an investigative website run by the sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, Clare Rewcastle Brown, which has reported on the allegations, called on Mr Cameron to cancel his visit.

“The British Prime Minister has made the issue of rooting out global corruption one of his key platforms as a world leader,” the website said.

Doesn't sound like it to me.  Well, maybe that's why Cameron was so eager to talk up the merits of doing business with countries with problems of corruption prior to the trip.  So glad British voters voted in the grown-ups in the last election.

You...No...You Didn't....But...No...

And there I was thinking the shit with Darth Lord Walker's bald spot was over-hyped...

Really ?  Seriously ?

The Duchess of Cambridge is famed for her glossy, lustrous locks.

But she has been offered some sage advice by celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke, who fears she faces potential "disaster" by letting them go grey.

The Duchess, 33, has occasionally revealed a small patch of silver, most recently in February when she was six months pregnant with Princess Charlotte.

But Clarke has urged her never to do so again.

"Kate needs to get rid of her grey hair — it's not a good look," he told the Daily Mail.

"She does have amazing things done to her hair and it can look great, but unfortunately it's the case for women — all women — that until you're really old, you can't be seen to have any grey hairs."

Clarke, 57, who has styled Princess Diana and the Duchess of York, claimed grey hair would be "disastrous" for the Duchess.

He added: "It's different for men. Men can go grey in their mid-50s and still be considered attractive. It's the whole silver fox thing. But it's not the same for women. Kate is such a style icon that even a few strands of grey would be a disaster, so I highly recommend that she cover it up. I hate grey hair."

If I could actually resign from humanity, and there were anywhere else the fuck to actually go...I'd do it.  And don't doubt it for one moment.


*I'm almost tempted to unleash even more ABBA on the world -- Come on, when was any problem not solved with the application of more Swedish pop from the seventies & eighties ?

Lush: Untogether

I'd really have liked at least another album's worth of this before they kicked Guthrie to the kerb.

The Vaselines: Son of a Gun

Seems strangely appropriate.

Scott Walker, King of the Unfinished Cheesesteak*

Somehow, I doubt that this image of authoritarian sociopath fuck Scott Walker eating a sandwich will end up on the cover of many American tabloids.  Not that US outlets don't have their own ways of shaming candidates over their consumption of sandwiches, such as questioning their choice of cheese.

Walker said he was well aware of Kerry's faux pas.

"Oh, yeah, I heard about the Swiss cheese," Walker said. "I wouldn't be able to eat it if it wasn't with Cheez Whiz or American anyway. Maybe cheddar if they had it, but I'm not supporting Swiss cheese."

Because, Swiss surrender-monkeys ?

But apparently, that's not the real topic of discussion, regarding this picture.  No, it's...the bald spot.  Which, er, has its own page on Facebook and its own blog ?**  Might it have something to do with his bizarre claim that his bald spot was a result of an accident in the kitchen ?

As Gov. Scott Walker was wrapping up his visit Monday with the State Journal editorial board, he joked with cartoonist Phil Hands that Hands draws his ears too big — but said the cartoonist’s portrayal of his bald spot was accurate.

The governor continued.

The bald spot, he said, was the result of a repair incident in the kitchen when he banged his head on an open kitchen cabinet door while making repairs requested by his wife, Tonette.

She kept telling him to go to the doctor to get the scar on his head looked at, he said. When he finally did, the doctor said his hair would never grow back in that spot, the governor explained.

Tonette still points to the bald spot as a reminder that he should always listen to his wife, he said.

Uh huh.  So, you hit your head, a part of your head (that part of your head itself quite round, note) that just so happens to correspond exactly with traditional patterns of male pattern baldness on a somehow perfectly round and absurdly wide section of a cabinet-door, and were left with a massive bald spot ?  Or maybe you got a scar at the very centre of the part of your head that just so happens to correspond exactly with traditional patterns of male pattern baldness, and the surrounding hairs all died off out of sympathy for their lost colleagues ?  That the way it works now ?  Well, gee, I'm not a scientist, so wha' the hell do I know ?

I don't want to know, don't want to even imagine what this combination of utter lunacy and limitless vanity says about Scott Walker.  Everything I already know about the man and his billionaire backers scares me quite enough already, thank you very much.


* This makes me sad: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLBT18pXAAAX27H.jpg:large***

** What, you say those are fake sites created by Walker's political opponents ?  Nooooo, surely, not.

*** Was wondering why the two images didn't match, and almost doubting my sanity.  But then: 'Walker ordered one each from Geno's and rival Pat's King of Steaks, across the street, during a brief campaign swing through the City of Brotherly Love. He's one of 16 Republicans vying for the party's presidential nomination and, true to political form, wouldn't say which cheesesteak was better.'  Okay, so I'm not mad.  Good.

Whew !

Fox News announced another change to its August 6 Republican presidential candidate forum on Tuesday, removing the requirement that candidates clear at least one percent in an average of national polls to qualify for the second-tier debate.

The change ensures that all 16 of the GOP's major declared presidential contenders will participate in one of the two primary debates Fox News is hosting next month. The top 10 candidates in an average of national polls will square off in a two-hour debate at 9 p.m. on August 6 (more than 10 candidates could qualify if there is a tie for 10th place.) The six who do not qualify for the debate will now automatically qualify for a separate one-hour event at 5 p.m.

"FOX News is expanding participation in the 5 PM/ET debate to all declared candidates whose names are consistently being offered to respondents in major national polls, as recognized by Fox News," the cable network's vice president, Michael Clemente, told Politico in a statement.

Well, that's a relief, if your name is Lindsey Graham, say.  Or, if you're a non-GOP-supporter, eager to see the Republicans beat up one another and dilute their support as much as possible.  Wonder what outlandish one-liners and would-be zingers the various candidates' teams will come up with to try to help them break out of the pack ?

The WaPo Maps Mass Shootings & Police Killings in the US

Last line of the article in the Washington Post:

What's missing from this series, of course, is a map of all of the shooting incidents that don't involve police and affected one to three people. That map, we suspect, would show an indistinguishable red blot on the United States.

Speaking of which, that last image does remind me of something...

Population-Density of the United States

Oh yeah.  Where there are people in the United States, cops are bound to be there killing them.

Bonus link for the 'guns make me safe' crowd: Gunfight or Flee: New Study Finds No Advantages to Using a Firearm in Self-Defense Situations

Feel the Bern ! Or Not

Somehow this video just sums up perfectly for me the Bernie Sanders campaign.  And is a complete 180 from the slickly produced and carefully scripted videos Hillary puts out.

Here we have the guy speaking, not in a packed stadium to thousands of supporters, but in someone's living room*, surrounded largely by overweight pasty white folk, as he dishes on the evil Koch brothers, whilst the guy to his right yawns and picks his teeth.  And in which he manages to both shush his supporters, and tell them 'you should know that'.

The old guy's got a good message, can't deny.  I predict he'll make an excellent mayor of Burlington, VT.

From a page on C&L entitled ironically enough, 'Bernie Electrifies Crowds In Louisiana With Climate Change Message'.


* Just imagine Hillary doing this.  No, no, just try.

The NSA's Long War on Encryption

How NSA and GCHQ spied on the Cold War world

American and British intelligence used a secret relationship with the founder of a Swiss encryption company to help them spy during the Cold War, newly released documents analysed by the BBC reveal.

...

Crypto AG sold its machines around the world, offering security.

But what customers did not know was that Hagelin himself had come to a secret agreement with the founding father of American code-breaking, William F Friedman.

...

The relationship, initially referred to as a "gentleman's agreement", included Hagelin keeping the NSA and GCHQ informed about the technical specifications of different machines and which countries were buying which ones.

The provision of technical details "is a revelation of the first order," says Paul Reuvers, an engineer who runs the Crypto Museum website.

"That's extremely valuable. It is something you would not normally do because the integrity and secrecy of your own customer is mandatory in this business."

...

In one document, Hagelin hints to Friedman he is going to be able "to supply certain customers" with a specific machine which, Friedman notes, is of course "easier to solve than the new models".

Previous reports of the deal suggested it may have involved some kind of backdoor in the machines, which would provide the NSA with the keys.

But there is no evidence for this in the documents (although some parts remain redacted).

Rather, it seems the detailed knowledge of the machines and their operations may have allowed code-breakers to cut the time needed to decrypt messages from the impossible to the possible.

The relationship also involved not selling machines such as the CX-52, a more advanced version of the C-52 - to certain countries.

"The reason that CX-52 is so terrifying is because it can be customised," says Prof Richard Aldrich, of the University of Warwick.

"So it's a bit like defeating Enigma and then moving to the next country and then you've got to defeat Enigma again and again and again."

Some countries - including Egypt and India - were not told of the more advanced models and so bought those easier for the US and UK to break.

In some cases, customers appear to have been deceived.

One memo indicates Crypto AG was providing different customers with encryption machines of different strengths at the behest of Nato and that "the different brochures are distinguishable only by 'secret marks' printed thereon".

Historian Stephen Budiansky says: "There was a certain degree of deception going on of the customers who were buying [machines] and thinking they were getting something the same as what Hagelin was selling everywhere when in fact it was a watered-down version."

Among the customers of Hagelin listed are Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, India, Jordan and others in the developing world.

In the summer of 1958, army officers apparently sympathetic to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the regime in Iraq.

Historian David Easter, of King's College, London, says intelligence from decrypted Egyptian communications was vital in Britain being able to rapidly deploy troops to neighbouring Jordan to forestall a potential follow-up coup against a British ally.

The 1955 deal also appears to have involved the NSA itself writing "brochures", instruction manuals for the CX-52, to ensure "proper use".

One interpretation is these were written so certain countries could use the machines securely - but in others, they were set up so the number of possible permutations was small enough for the NSA to crack.

So the NSA was working to undermine encryption as late as the Second World War.  Good to know.

Welcome to Modern-Day Fascist Reality

In which Ted Rall is apparently fired by the LA Times over a question with the LAPD of jaywalking, a decade and a half ago.

A lot of folk in the US don't like Ted Rall.  The man's earned himself a lot of enemies by daring to question the establishment...on every level.  I don't agree with any of such assholes, whilst questioning the wisdom in such fascistic times as we find ourselves, of openly and repeatedly calling as a public figure, as Rall has done, for revolution again the capitalistic order of the day.

Ted knows the odds, knows the consequences, knows that he could be setting himself up here as a future martyr.  He's far braver than I would be in his shoes.

Politics aside, as if that were ever possible, the man is one of the sharpest minds of his generation, and, crude drawing-style aside, would probably be one of the pre-eminent (and perhaps even, most profitable) cartoonists of this age, were it not for the enemies he earned during the Afghan & Iraq Wars.  Think now, when it comes to voting for Auntie Hillary, Jeb, Uncle Marco, or Leader Walker, what kind of future you want for the US, and how such a leader, more democratic, or utterly un-democratic would treat such a voice as Ted's.

Ted doesn't ask for any particular action here, that I can see, and I have my own suspicions about where he's likely to end up.  I'd guess, that he'd want you to just act on your own conscience.  We're all, as we ever were, on our own in this shitty modern world.


Update:

Here's the LA Times' official statement: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oe-rall-20150728-story.html
And Ted's full statement on the matter: http://anewdomain.net/2015/07/27/ted-rall-lapd-convinced-la-times-fire-criticized-cops-exclusive/

The more I review this, I have to say, while the evidence provided, which is entirely under the control of the LAPD, doesn't prove anything, it doesn't really look good for Ted either.  Although he mentions, and then rejects, the idea of conflating different events, I do have to wonder about that, given than this incident took place a full fourteen years ago.

Not that he wouldn't likely still be canned, were that the case, given the treatment of Brian Williams, who was the news-anchor of a prominent national network, never mind a freelance cartoonist commenting on local stories.

I do also wonder about the timing, given that Ted has mentioned this story several times previously over the years.  Is it the fact that he wrote about it in the Times that finally got the LAPD's attention, or the detail of his accusations, or something else entirely ?

All this over a charge on the victimless crime of jaywalking, almost fifteen years ago...


Update (2nd):

Guess Ted was right to push for people to listen to the audio.  An 'enhanced' version he received, and posted online, seems to strengthen his version of events, with the woman in the background appearing to be protesting his treatment over jaywalking, though I still can't quite tell myself if that's the word 'handcuff' she says.  And it does sound like the cop's whistling may have been intended to obscure those sections of the recording.

Plus that sound at 5'42...And the bizarre statement at the end about not knowing any local eateries, suddenly sounding less like a question to the cop, and maybe an answer...to a question from one of the onlookers, wanting to discuss the case ?

Next step, Ted takes legal action ?  And if he wins ?  Maybe a settlement by the LA Times and/or the LAPD ?  A slap on the wrist perhaps for a certain one-time 'officer of the year' ?  And Ted's career, his reputation meanwhile ?...

Sammo Hung: A Good Parking Place

People have no taste.

Our Friends in the Near East

In fight against Islamic State, Turkey's Erdogan sees chance to battle Kurds

ISTANBUL, July 27 (Reuters) - Forced into battle against Islamic State as it presses on Turkey's borders, President Tayyip Erdogan is seizing the chance to keep another foe in check, bombing Kurdish militants he sees as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state.

Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria for the first time last week and granted the U.S.-led coalition access to its air bases after years of reluctance.

It also bombed camps in northern Iraq belonging to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the first time in at least three years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic State and PKK members have been rounded up in raids across Turkey.

Launching wars on two fronts is a high-risk strategy for the NATO member, leaving it dangerously exposed to the threat of reprisals by jihadists and at risk of reigniting a Kurdish insurgency that has cost 40,000 lives over three decades.

Turkey has been a conduit for foreign jihadists, with thousands thought to have crossed its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many concealed among the millions of tourists who flock to Turkey's shores each year.

They have often been aided by Turkish smugglers linked to the Islamist insurgents; a network Turkey has been trying to dismantle but which could retain capacity to launch attacks on Turkish soil after the fashion of last week's suicide bombing, blamed by Ankara on the militants, that killed 32 people.

Western diplomats have long feared that Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities, or Turkey's Aegean or Mediterranean coastal resorts could be soft targets. Attacks that killed dozens of foreign tourists in Tunisia earlier this year served only as a reminder of the risks.

"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the Islamic State has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.

Yet on both fronts, Erdogan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on Islamic State, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK.

I'm so glad Turkey is finally joining the fight against ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever).  The last year or so, others in the West (I suppose we sorta consider Turkey the West these days, rather than the Near East as was) have been fighting a potential existential threat to Turkey and the entire region south of Turkey's border, whilst Turkey let fighters, weapons, and money cross the border, seemingly with impunity.

And now, Turkey generously agrees to join in the fight, so long as they get to also bomb the Kurds, the only remotely stable or militarily proven ally we have on the ground, because they're so terrified of the possibility that 'their own' Kurds might not continue to be denied the statehood that the Turks have bloodily denied them for generations.

Our great ally in NATO, Turkey.  Our would-be future member of the EU.  The same Turkey that has been exploiting the economic frailty of neighbour and member of both the EU & NATO, Greece, by testing their sovereign airspace, to the point of inviting dogfights between the two countries' airforces.

The country that used to be the very model of secular western Islam, but is currently run by Islamist strongman Tayyip Erdoğan, he of Ak Saray-fame, who felt it necessary to squander vast quantities of the people's money on a massive new palatial complex for himself, one of the very largest in the world, on what was previously protected forest-land, so large in order presumably to be able to hold his incredible ego.

The West, in particular the Europeans, seem to have assumed that Turkey made the choice between the values of the liberal west, and the values of mediaeval Arabia long ago*.  But clearly, that choice is still very much up in the air.

The UK, which, still within my lifetime, was facing the bloody aftermath of the Irish partition, just last year, allowed the people of Scotland, home of the UK's sole nuclear deterrent (and now sole shipbuilder -- Thanks DC !) and North Sea oil-fields, a peaceful democratic vote on independence.  It's not surprising that such a similar opportunity would be inconceivable for the Kurds in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria.  But then there's also western-allied NATO-member and future EU-candidate Turkey, which had seemingly made a sort of peace with the PKK, but can't wait to start bombing the Kurds again, the moment it gets the chance, even when they're key allies in a fight that threatens Turkey itself.

Here's Turkey's chance and Tayyip Erdoğan's to define themselves, and what they truly stand for.  Hopefully they're aware of the significance of the moment, and, hopefully those fools in the EU are paying attention, either way.


* We made a similar assumption, multiple times as it happens, about Russia.

Britain's Top Fascist

Katie Hopkins is “super-keen on euthanasia vans” and says there are “far too many old people”.

The Sun columnist – who launches her own panel show If Katie Hopkins Ruled The World next month – said it is “ridiculous” to live in a country “where we can put dogs to sleep but not people”.

Her comments come shortly after she admitted regretting some of the extreme language she used against migrants in a column she wrote in the Sun entitled “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”.

In an interview by Michael Buerk in Radio Times magazine, Hopkins said: “We just have far too many old people.”

She added: “It’s ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.”

Asked for her solution, she said: “Easy. Euthanasia vans – just like ice-cream vans – that would come to your home.”

The former Celebrity Big Brother contestant added: “It would all be perfectly charming. They might even have a nice little tune they’d play. I mean this genuinely. I’m super-keen on euthanasia vans.

“We need to accept that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

Gee, I'm so sorry for calling migrants cockroaches;  Now let me fantasise about killing Granny...

How many minutes of fame has this reprehensible excuse for a human being enjoyed now ?  And why are we still being exposed to her disgusting bile ?  Does her career exist solely for the purpose of making even the likes of Gideon & May come across as caring & humane by comparison ?


PS, Katie, in the sort of fascistic society about which you apparently fantasise, you would likely be a target for euthanasia yourself, both as a woman exiting her prime breeding-potential, and as a likely apparent victim of mental illness.

Speaking of our Future Semi-Benevolent Dictator

Here's Hillary's super-duper Reality-driven plan for dealing with climate-change: More solar panels** and wind-turbines to power US homes.

That's it apparently.*  No mention of the need for more nuclear in the short term at least.  No mention of industry.  No mention of our destructive economic system that is inherently dependent on infinite growth in a world of finite resources.  No mention of globalisation & trade.  No mention of population-growth.  No mention of China, Russia, Canada, Brasil, Australia, etc., and that fact that nothing the US does will make a damn bit of difference without some sort of global agreement on action.

Just put a solar panel on your house, drive a Prius, and bye-bye climate-change.  And everybody gets a magical pony to boot.


This folksy aw-shucks shit made me want to vomit:

I'm just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain.

Uh, you're a Yale-educated lawyer, a millionaire, a former board-member of Walmart, the highly influential wife of a two-term president of the United States (who amongst other things did much to undermine existing efforts on climate change by outsourcing much of US industry to the far east and México), a former Senator of the United States, and a former Secretary of State.  This lil' ole' Gran'ma me shit is starting to grate.


* There is a line in the video that hints at a coming 'comprehensive agenda', but hey, I'm not the one who released this publicly as 'Hillary's plan to curb climate change'.  And if you seriously believe Hillary will take any bolder action than this, then I've got a bridge for sale.

** Just thought, hang on a minute, where are all these solar panels coming from, given that the PRC-subsidised manufacturers in China already put most US manufacturers out of business ?  On a heavily polluting container-ship over the Pacific Ocean ?

It Might Work Though...

Rand Paul: I Won’t Set Myself On Fire To Compete With Trump For Attention

Republican presidential candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he will not set himself on fire to compete with Donald Trump for attention.

“Yeah, I’m drawing the line at self-immolation, none of us are going to set ourselves on fire,” Paul said on Boston Herald Radio last week.

Paul destroyed the tax code in various videos he released last week in which he set it on fire, put it in a wood chipper, and used a chainsaw.

“We set the tax code on fire, but no, you’re right,” Paul said, adding that he made the various viral videos in hopes of spreading his message in a way that would resonate with people who aren’t glued to cable news.

“I mean, there is a — it is getting through,” said Paul. “But also one of the reasons, you know, we try to do things in a visual way is that, you know, I ask my kids, I said, ‘Do you ever watch news channels?’ and they’ve never watched the news channel, but if they see something interesting on the internet they’ll pass it around to their friends.”

Can't we just call the election for Hillary now, and let her get on with it ?  The next 469 days are going to be embarassing, and we already know the outcome.

ABBA: On And On And On

Only had ABBA on here twice before.  Why not ?

A Tale of Two Tours

Here's the Indy's latest daily cartoon online:

And the day before:

I don't know if this was a editorial choice or a coincidence, but it is somewhat unfortunate, and doesn't exactly put the more recent publication in a great light.  Both 'toons are themed almost identically, even to the degree of Corbyn turning to his left.  But the earlier work spares us the labels for 'Left' and 'Right', spares us the actual labelling of the bicycle as 'Labour Party', and spares us the cliché of riding off a cliff.  Instead we get the socks up over the trousers & the old-fashioned bike with the basket, versus the Blairites in their spandex.  And yes, we also get a labelled Das Kapital, not that that really hurts the piece overall.  And I'm assuming that's Prescott rooting Jezza on besides an apoplectic Blair.

To juxtapose two such similarly themed, but unequally executed works side-by-side is just cruel really.  Oh right, I just did that myself, didn't I ?  Whoops.

Washington Post: The remarkably high odds you’ll be poor at some point in your life

The remarkably high odds you’ll be poor at some point in your life

The poor in America are not a permanent class of people. Who's poor in any given year is different from who's poor a few years later.

Census data on who participates in assistance programs suggests as much. But Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University, has for several years been compiling far more comprehensive evidence of this pattern. He and colleagues have been studying the economic fortunes of several thousand families in the longest running longitudinal survey in America, going all the way back to 1968. Follow people over a really long period of time, they've found, and an incredible number of them experience economic insecurity at some point.

In fact, a vast majority do.

By the time they're 60 years old, Rank has found, nearly four in five people experience some kind of economic hardship: They've gone through a spell of unemployment, or spent time relying on a government program for the poor like food stamps, or lived at least one year in poverty or very close to it.

...

"Rather than an uncommon event," Rank says, "poverty was much more common than many people had assumed once you looked over a long period of time."

...

"The story of the American life course is marked by a surprising degree of economic movement and volatility," Rank says.

That means that the poor (or even the wealthy) are not some abstract other. The poor are, well, us — or us 10 or 15 years from now. If more people recognized this, Rank suggests, it's reasonable to think there'd be greater public support for programs that aid the poor. If you don't like food stamps because you think you'll never need them, maybe these probabilities would change your mind.

Here's the fucked-up thing though, regardless how how high someone may score on those EQ tests, their empathy tends to drop away to zero when it's someone they've never met.  (Understandably in part, as we'd go mad if we had to face up to all the suffering in this world)  And people, especially religious people, tend to have a rather distorted sense of what they face in their life/what they are likely to experience, and what is the norm. for others.

Hence: Others suffer economically, and need assistance, and they're all lazy moochers who deserve it because of their poor life-choices and sinful lifestyle.  I succeed in life, and it's just a result purely of my hard work and a reward of my inherent virtues, no luck involved, no external factors acknowledged.  I fall on hard times, and it's all a result of external factors that conspired against me, despite my hard work, and I deserve to be helped dammit 'cos I paid into the system with my hard-earned tax-dollars.

Most of those who never have fallen on hard times will likely simply assume it will never happen, and that those to whom it does happen deserve it somehow.  And many of those who have, still manage to look down on the economically less privileged, once they personally are back on their feet.

Basically, we're all delusional selfish assholes, who see ourselves as somehow inherently more moral and deserving than we really are.  We're kinda designed that way.  And if we weren't, how else to explain our elections ?

So, to answer the WaPo's question in that last sentence, no, it won't change people's minds.  Not a bit.



PS, if you were wondering about how this breaks down by 'racial privilege' as it were, well here you go:

Guess whites just work that much harder than everyone else, right ?

France Gall: N'écoute pas les idoles

Faces to Numbers

Damn !  Their story here.

Huckabee

Mike Huckabee is a religious extremist.  In the runup to his last bid for the presidency, he tried to soften his image, and moderate his message.  And did so quite convincingly -- I almost fell for it myself at times.  He then nabbed a show on Fox News, and immediately reverted to type, spouting religious fanatacism, hatred and intolerance day in, day out, all of it on tape.

He knows that he has no chance of winning over moderates a second time around, and thus, no chance at the presidency.  He is 'running' for the Republican nomination in order to raise money, and to raise his profile in conservative circles.

Tell Congress to do their constitutional duty & reject the Obama-Kerry #IranDeal --> http://t.co/SaIyuq4w01 pic.twitter.com/2rFJgdDHhV

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 26, 2015

And so, if cynically invoking the Shoah in reference to the Nuclear deal with Iran, and implicitly linking Obama & Kerry to Nazism, provokes outage, then job done !  The more outrage the better form Huckabee's point of view.  The man is a shameless self-aggrandising huckster, and unworthy of any serious consideration or attention.

Eilen Jewell: Sea Of Tears

What's the Size of Your Vocabulary Got to Do with It ?

Via a piece in the Telegraph, which they headlined 'Kanye and Eminem have wider vocabularies than Bob Dylan'*, this interactive study on musixmatch is, if nothing else, a nice way to waste a little time, even if it largely underscores the obvious, such as that certain genres (i.e. hip-hop and rap) are far more lyrically intensive than others (such as mass-market pop).

Just a screenshot, obvs.  Click thru for the interactive stuff & analysis.

* Though 'Em had a considerably higher word-count than Kanye.

The Empathising-Systemising Split in Musical Tastes

Well, I guess this answers my previous question...

Your taste in music says a lot about how you think, according to new study

Whether you prefer Jeff Buckley or Metallica, Vivaldi or Queen reveals a lot about the way you think, according to a new University of Cambridge study.

Over the past decade, researchers have examined how musical preferences reflect age and personality. For example, studies have shown that fans of the blues, jazz, classical and folk tend to be open to new experiences, while those who prefer pop, soul, funk and electronic music are more likely to be extraverted and "agreeable".

This latest study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, looked at how "cognitive style" – classified as scoring highly on "empathy" (the ability to recognise and react to others' thoughts and feelings) or "systemising" (an interest in understanding the rules that underpin systems like car engines, music or the weather) - influences musical taste.
...

Strong empathisers tended to prefer "mellow" music like R&B/soul, soft rock and adult contemporary, while strong systemisers favoured "intense" genres like punk, heavy metal and hard rock, the researchers discovered.

Norah Jones.  Photo: Frank W. Ockenfels

Cognitive style influenced musical preferences even within genres, according to the findings. For example, empathisers preferred mellow, unpretentious jazz; systemisers preferred intense, complex and avant-garde jazz.

The study also found also that strong empathisers preferred music that was sad and depressing (as opposed to animated and fun), had emotional depth (relaxing and thoughtful, as opposed to cerebral or complex) and low energy (gentle and sensual, as opposed to tense and thrilling).

Systemisers preferred the opposite, that is, music that was high energy, complex and animated.

Probably a lot of truth in that actually.  And to think, all this time, I assumed that the type of people who listened to the likes of Norah Jones just weren't into music all that much, and so, listened to safe boring stuff.

Note: There is also a male/female dimension to this split, as the study goes into, though this article doesn't touch on it for some reason.

Wolf Alice: Moaning Lisa Smile

How is this sort of shit not the mainstream ?