Link Dump (Procrastination Edition)

Well, symmetry demands that we follow up the info-graf. of toddler-initiated shootings from the last linkdump with one for dogs, also from the Washington Post.

CNN: Persian Gulf heat: It may become too hot for humans to survive, study warns.  This, given the primary cause of said warming, is what we might call irony.  Bitter irony, but nonetheless.

New Scientist: Old rat brains rejuvenated and new neurons grown by asthma drug.

Well, if you say so...Birth order 'does not affect personality'.

Telegraph: International Space Station filled with germs, Nasa warns.

It seems the bugs like their new home in the unique environment that has experienced microgravity, space radiation, elevated carbon dioxide and continuous occupation by humans for nearly 15 years.

An analysis of dust collected from the artificial satellite found that Actinobacteria - a type of bacteria associated with human skin - made up a larger proportion of the microbial community in the ISS.

Washington Post: In 1983 ‘war scare,’ Soviet leadership feared nuclear surprise attack by U.S.  One might hope, in vain, that the modern warmongering imbecilic leaders of NATO would learn from relatively recent history...

The phrase 'politically correct' is now considered a 'microagression' apparently...

Guardian: Jeremy Clarkson: Argentinian court orders Top Gear case to be reopened.  For the horrendous crime of changing a licence-plate illegally, after Argentine mobs used said licence-plate as justification for threatening and attacking the TG crew.  FFS.

Raw Story revisits the claims that George W Bush went AWOL from the National Guard, a story ignored by the US media since Dan Rather was thrown under a bus in 2004.

Guardian: Cisa amendment would allow US to jail foreigners for crimes committed abroad.  No big government here, no sireee.

In what should be the bleeding fucking obvious: Opticians warn: don't share your coloured contact lenses.

AmericaBlog: Antioxidants aid cancer cells in metastasizing, research shows.  Awesome...

Guardian: Police seek powers to access browsing history of UK computer users.  Of course they do...

LiveScience: Crocodiles Might Literally Sleep With One Eye Open.  Scary enough, but it's the potential consequences for the mechanics of the brain that are truly fascinating.

Lov-e-ly...Vice News: Indonesia's Fires Are Emitting More Carbon Pollution Than the Entire US Economy.  Intentionally set forestfires* that is...

Guardian: Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe awarded 'China's Nobel peace prize'.  And...Mugabe then rejected it, for the understandable reason that it apparently has no actual link to the Chinese (PRC) govt.

Inquisitr: Drinking Coffee While Driving: Police Pull Over Woman For Driving And Drinking Coffee.



'Love and Sex with Robots conference cancelled for fear people would have sex with robots'

TBogg/RawStory: NRA pushing new bill to legalize silencers — to protect hunters ears.  Huh, and suppressors on average cost how much versus earmuffs, one wonders...

Independent: Saudi prince arrested in Lebanon trying to smuggle two tonnes of amphetamine pills out of the country by private jet.  Nooo, never......

Breitbart: WORLD’S FIRST LESBIAN BISHOP CALLS FOR CHURCH TO REMOVE CROSSES, TO INSTALL MUSLIM PRAYER SPACE/.  All-CAPS headline, natch.

MSNBC: James O’Keefe’s Clinton sting video may backfire.  I haz a sad.

Newsweek: U.N. Overwhelmingly Votes Against U.S. Embargo of Cuba for 24th Year.  The two votes against ?  Surprise, surprise: The US & Israel...

Guardian: NHS hospital to offer food parcels to patients at risk of malnutrition.  Ah, Austerity, what cost ?

No shit...WaPo: Good design causes the brain to pay more attention to news stories.  As opposed to sites filled with those intrusive ads, fake headlines, miscellaneous clickbait, pages that take forever to load with all the third-party scripts, then crash the browser, and so forth...

Daily Beast: Ben Carson’s Stabbing Story Is Full of Holes.  And because younger Spongebrain Ben Carson is an even more effective alternative to Valium than present-day Spongebrain, here's the man who could be the future leader of the free world:

C'mon, ask yourself, has an attempted stabbing even seemed a more compelling reason to make a theocratic maniac man president ?

Donald Trump picks up a valuable endorsement...from Mike Tyson.

Boing Boing: Hawaii cop reportedly punched lesbian in face after seeing public kiss.

Guardian: US warns Britain: If you leave EU you face barriers to trading with America.  Empty threat, but I can see how the EU makes negotiating insane 'trade'-deals like TTIP easier to ram thru.

Mirror: Schoolgirl facing assault charges for throwing baby carrot at her teacher.  Don't suppose it will merit a scholarship to an A&M or an invite to visit Monsanto.

The 'school resource officer' (aka cop) who ripped a student out of her desk and flung her across the room, has been fired.  Always somewhat conflicted when paid bullies are held accountable for acting exactly according to their insanely militaristic training.  And we need police in schools why exactly ?

Foreign Policy: Russia’s Winning the Electronic War.


* I am dedicated** to normalising the rendering of compoundwords in English, even if the rest of the English-speaking world is in denial.  You think the long words in German are funny, really ?

** Well, somewhat, vaguely, kinda.  Intently but lazily perhaps.

The Fall: Middle Mass

Huckabee Zeroes in on Government Waste

Steve Bell on Osborne's Defeat on Tax Credit Cuts

Way too early to count Gid. out, but great to see him taken down, if only temporarily.

Nena: Nur Geträumt

The twentyfirst century is such a fraud.  And the fall of the wall was such a vain promise.  But once.

Seth Meyers on Jeb Bush's Campaign Trouble

Jeb! clearly isn't cut out for this shit.  Not sure I'd want him to be my dentist tho'.  A lot of suppressed resentment bubbling under the surface there...

A Reminder from the Telegraph to Turn Back the Clocks

Gave me a chuckle.  And actually works on multiple levels really, considering Cameron's Britain.

Science Fiction

U.S. Transportation SecretaryAttorney General Anthony FoxxLoretta Lynch Announces Unmanned AircraftGun Registration Requirement

New Task Force to Develop Recommendations by November 20

WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation SecretaryAttorney General Anthony FoxxLoretta Lynch and FAA AdministratorATF Director Michael HuertaTodd Jones today announced the creation of a task force to develop recommendations for a registration process for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)Guns.

The task force will be composed of 25 to 30 diverse representatives from the UAS and manned aviationfirearms industry, the federal government, and other stakeholders.  The group will advise the Department on which aircraft should be exempt from registration due to a low safety risk, including toys and certain other small UASto limit any exemptions, as all guns are dangerous.  The task force also will explore options for a streamlined system that would make registration less burdensome for commercial UAS operatorshunters in rural areas.

The task force may make additional safety recommendations as it deems appropriate.  Secretary FoxxAG Lynch directed the group to deliver its report by Nov. 20.

“Registering unmanned aircraftguns will help build a culture of accountability and responsibility, especially with new users who have no experience operating in the U.S. aviation systemfirearms safely and responsibly,” FoxxLynch said.  “It will help protect public safety in the air and on the groundthe public and at home.”

Every day, the FAAATF receives reports of potentially unsafe UAS operationshandling of guns.  PilotPolice sightings of UASopen-carry guns doubled between 2014 and 2015.  The reports ranged from incidents at major sporting eventsschools and flights near manned aircraftmovie theaters, to interference with wildfirepolice operations.

“These reports signal a troubling trend,” HuertaJones said.  “Registration will help make sure that operatorsgun owners know the rules and remain accountable to the public for flying their unmanned aircrafthandling and maintaining their guns responsibly.  When they don’t fly safely, they’ll know there will be consequences.” 

While the task force does its work, the FAAATF will continue its aggressive education and outreach efforts, including the “Know Before You Fly”“Know Before You Shoot” campaign and “No Drone Zone”“No Gun Zone” initiatives with the nation’s busiest airportsschools.  The agency also will continue to take strong enforcement action against egregious violators. At the same time, it will continue working with stakeholders to improve safety to ensure further integration and innovation in this promising segment of aviationin the United States.

Secretary FoxxAG Lynch was joined by representatives from the following stakeholder groups:

• The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems InternationalThe National Rifle Association 
• Academy of Model AircraftCoalition of Gun Owners against the NRA
• Air Line Pilots AssociationSensible Republicans
• American Association of Airport ExecutivesSensible Democrats 
• Helicopter Association InternationalSensible Independents
• PrecisionHawkParents 
• AirMap/ Small UAV CoalitionTeachers 
• Consumer Electronics AssociationOrdinary Americans

To read statements in support of today’s announcement, please click here. 

For non-media inquiries, please email UASRegistration@faa.govGunRegistration@atf.gov.

Monday, October 19, 2015

- See more at: https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-transportation-secretary-anthony-foxx-announces-unmanned-aircraft-registration#sthash.8Jpy9SFD.dpufhttps://www.atf.gov/briefing-room/us-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-announces-gun-registration#sthash.8Jpy9SFD.dpuf


Not everything lines up of course.  Original here, and yes I do approve of the idea.

For the record, I do support Americans' right to own guns in general.  But I don't support absolutist interpretations of the second amendment, and don't think a gun-registry is a unreasonable violation of that right, anymore than background-checks, limits on the type of weaponry available*, or limits on cartridge-capacities.  Oh, and a tax on bullets.



* I know, AR-15's are cool.  So, in their way, are surface-to-air missiles.  But do you really need one to defend yourself ?

Jimmy Kimmel: Hipster or Hasidic

Needed some random silliness here.  Prob'ly wouldn't pull this off outside NYC.

Real Commies Embrace Crony Capitalism Silly

The main stated reason for the students’ opposition was their conviction that it would have given the mainland too much economic power within Taiwan, which it could then use to wrest political concessions. But Lin’s participation was motivated more ideologically. She and like-minded “leftists” — her word — were convinced that cross-strait relations in general have benefited the rich on both sides to the detriment of exploited workers on both sides. The irony is that Lin came from a place where the study of Marxism is mandatory, only to find in the deeply anti-communist society of Taiwan what she called “true Marxism.”

“In China,” she said, “we learn about Marxism but nobody believes in it, but on Taiwan they really believe in it.” And, unlike on the mainland, where the last student demonstrations in 1989 took place before most current students were born, the students on Taiwan were able to organize themselves, to publicize their views, and to demonstrate.

From an article in Foreign Policy: Does Time in Taiwan Change Young Mainland Minds?  The article doesn't provide a clear answer to the question, but...here's how it ends:

“We are forced to go back. We need to work. We need to live,” Ting said. “The democratic ideology makes no sense for your daily life.”

Back, back, back we go then...

This Seems About Right

Love that Gideon haz a sad.

Link Dump (Back to the Future Edition)

American exceptionalism, yeah !: People are getting shot by toddlers on a weekly basis this year.  Well, what other countries' toddlers can claim forty-three plus shootings a year ?  Denmark ?

But, hey the UK has much to be proud about also.  Such as becoming the first country to spark an investigation by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, over possible violations of human-rights due to the Tories' vicious cuts.

IBT: Nearly 90% Of Those Killed By US Drones Were Not Intended Targets During Five-Month Span: Report.  Like the American public would care, even if the media bothered to report this shit...

“Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association,” the source told the Intercept. If “a drone strike kills more than one person, there is no guarantee that those persons deserved their fate … so it’s a phenomenal gamble.”

New York Times: For Offenders Who Can’t Pay, It’s a Pint of Blood or Jail Time.  No, literally...

So, the US apparently destroyed evidence at that hospital it bombed in Kunduz, Afghanistan.  By accident, of course...

Oh yeah, in case you didn't know, the FBI & NSA apparently have a habit of using 'Mohammed Raghead' as a placeholder for Muslim targets of surveillance.  Classy.

New York Times: What Could Raising Taxes on the 1% Do? Surprising Amounts.

Whadda shame, Jim Webb is dropping his (highly quixotic) bid for the Democratic nomination in the US.  Meanwhile, the candidate in second place for the Republican nomination, Spongebrain Ben Carson, takes his campaign so seriously, that he is suspending it for two weeks to concentrate on selling his book...

American Social Democrat Bernie Sanders to give speech on Democratic Socialism, despite apparently not understanding the term himself.  You.  Are.  Not.  Helping.  Bernie.  They're confused enough already.

Because the current greedhead leaders of the UK are completely and totally fucking insane... BBC: Xi Jinping to seal Hinkley Point nuclear power deal in UK.  In the name of, no, don't tell me...'energy security', right ?  Oh, and rate-payers are guaranteed to pay double the current rate of electricity into the bargain...  So glad UK voters didn't elect a bunch of commies and socialists in the last election...

Vox: Senate Democrats want to increase the smoking age to 21. That would save lives.  Uh, yeah, why not 42, or 84, or any other arbitrary number ?  Really think the idiotic restriction on people who in every other respect are considered adult, drinking prior to 21 has worked out that well ?  And why not prevent people from driving till their thirties, from owning a gun till they are in their forties ?  Raise the age of consent to 25 say ?  Why is a country that routinely tries children as adults in court, so insistent on telling actual adults what they can and can't do prior to a certain age ?

Daily Mail: Flossing your teeth can be a waste of time - and do more HARM than good, leading dental expert claims.

Deutsche Welle: Dutch website gains enough signatures for EU-Ukraine referendum.  A satirical website that is, threatening the ill-considered 'association agreement' between the EU & Ukraine.

Bloomberg: Insurrection Erupts at the Democratic National Committee.  DWS will get Hillary elected one way or another, and Hill's backer's on Wall Street will be sure to reward both.  The Democratic Party is just a rented vessel, whatever voters may think.  And with the GOP possibly slipping from its grasp, Wall Street is not giving the Dems their party back any time soon.

Daily Express: RHUBARB can save your life: Ingredient in plant kills half of cancer cells in 48 hours.

Vox: The case against otters: necrophiliac, serial-killing fur monsters of the sea.  Nice...

Telegraph: Feral pig caught eating cannabis refuses to give up his stash

Washington Post: Ebola virus can linger in semen of survivors for 9 months, study shows.  Uh, good to know.

Der Spiegel: World Cup Scandal: Germany Appears to Have Bought Right to Host 2006 Tournament.  Huh.

Guardian: Number of London's 'working poor' surges 70% in 10 years.

Well, nothing could possibly go wrong with this...New Scientist: Carbon nanotubes found in children’s lungs for the first time.

Guardian: Submissions to Theresa May’s child sex abuse inquiry accidentally deleted.  Whoops...How'd that happen ?

Daily Beast: Syria Rebels Plan Suicide Attacks on Russians.  Freedom-fighters and all that.

The Homs Liberation Movement—a division of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army—seems ready to use tactics associated with ISIS. “We will conduct martyrdom operations carried out by dissident officers,” al-Hourani said, using a euphemism for suicide attacks.

Though this may not be all that surprising. The Movement is an Islamist faction known to be a close military ally of the official al Qaeda franchise in Syria known as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Speaking of said conflict, the US & Russia are coordinating their presence in the air on some level, one would hope ?...

Independent: Babies born in the summer grow up to be taller and healthier, Cambridge University study finds.

Daily Mail: Thousands of religious prisoners in China had their livers, kidneys and corneas ripped out while they were ALIVE to sell to 'transplant tourists', claims new film.

(A heavily annotated version of) Mein Kampf finally returning to sale in Deutschland.

The Sheriff in Florida angry that the federal government is recalling one of his military-surplus armored personnel-carriers.  Claims that his officers will have to go on 'suicide-missions' and 'people will die' as a result.

Washington Post: Sleep study on modern-day hunter-gatherers dispels notion that we’re wired to need 8 hours a day.

Independent: Bookmakers 'refusing to take bets from successful gamblers'.

BBC: Old yeasts used by brewers to unearth the beers of yesteryear.

The lawmaker in Missouri pushing for a memorial to aborted fetuses... to be paid for by Planned Parenthood...

That newly unearthed multimillion-dollar foto of Billy the Kid...

...Well, and friends...

'Clock Kid' Ahmed Mohamed finally got that meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama*, having recently finished a world-tour that took him to Qatar, to Mecca, and to Sudan to 
meet with possible war-criminal Omar al-Bashir.  Then promptly announced that he is moving to Qatar for study...  Hopefully the end of a sorry saga that saw a fourteen-year-old manipulated for political purposes.**

That HR-Manager from New York who sued her own twelve-year-old nephew over an apparently wrist-breaking hug...lost, you may be happy to hear.  Or not, whadda I know ?

Time: Here’s Proof That the First Modern Humans Were Chinese.

Fusion: Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA.

The Scotsman: Americans find Glasgow accent ‘Britain’s sexiest’.  To each his own, I guess.

So, there's a plan to put a monument to Martin Luther King at Stone Mountain in Georgia, and apparently...it isn't just the neo-confederates who object...

The Times: Billions are laundered in British banks (link may run into paywall).

And finally, you've probably heard that nudity is out at Playboy.***

Well, sometimes, less is more, no ?

* Though the White House kept the meeting brief, and seemed to downplay the affair.  Wonder why that might be ?

** We'll leave out by whom and to what ends perhaps...

*** Well, full nudity...in the print edition...in the United States that is.

Dave Brown on Xi Jinping's Visit to the UK*

* Sorry, make that the overseas province of the PRC formerly known as America's Bitch.  Sorry, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

O Canada Pt. 2

It's good to be wrong sometimes.*  That is all.


* Shame about the NDP's collapse tho'.

Elastica: Stutter

Some might argue they should have stopped here...

Others might say, one token album aside,...they did.*


* What, there was an album called The Menace ?  Sure you didn't imagine that ?  Perhaps whilst snorting coke with other brokers somewhere off Manhattan ?

The Dresden Dolls: Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner

O Canada

Are Canadian pollsters any better than Brits I wonder ?  And just WTF happened to the NDP ?

Canada's future PM ?  They can't believe it.

Rowson on Erdoğan the Bouncer

Far too long since I featured Martin Rowson's genius here methinks.

Salon: Putin might be right on Syria

Meant to have this up much earlier, but editing this b* down is not easy, which is a compliment.  The best option ended up being to simply lop off the latter part, which referred to the wisdom of Messrs. Gordon Adams & Stephen Walt on said crisis.  Maybe just read what they have to say and ignore anything below...

...

Very simply, we have one secular nation helping to defend what remains of another, by invitation, against a radical Islamist insurgency that, were it to succeed, would condemn those Syrians who cannot escape to a tyranny of disorder rooted in sectarian religious animosities. And we have the great power heretofore dominant in the region hoping that the insurgency prevails. Its policy across the region, indeed, appears to rest on leveraging these very animosities.

Now we can add the names back in.

In the past week Russia has further advanced its support of Bashar al-Assad with intensified bombing runs and cruise missiles launched from warships in the Caspian Sea. Not yet but possibly, Russian troops will deploy to back the Syrian army and its assorted allies on the ground. This has enabled government troops to begin an apparently spirited new offensive against the messy stew of Islamist militias arrayed against Damascus.

It was a big week for Washington, too. First it pulled the plug on its $500 million program to train a “moderate opposition” in Syria—admittedly a tough one given that Islamists with guns in their hands tend to be immoderate. Instantly it then begins to send weapons to the militias it failed to train, the CIA having “lightly vetted” them—as it did for a time in 2013, until that proved a self-defeating mistake.

The fiction that moderates lurk somewhere continues. Out of the blue, they are now called “the Syrian Arab Coalition,” a moniker that reeks of the corridors in Langley, Virginia, if you ask me.

In Turkey, meantime, the Pentagon’s new alliance with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government starts to play out just as the Turkish prime minister intended. All the persuasive signs are that the government was responsible for bombs that killed more than 120 people in Ankara last weekend as they protested Erdoğan’s renewed violence against Turkey’s Kurdish minority. The Middle East’s crisis has just spread into another country.

*

Since Russia reinvigorated its decades-old support for Damascus last month, the vogue among the Washington story-spinners has been to question Putin’s motives. What does Putin—not “Russia” or even “Moscow,” but Putin—want? This was never an interesting question, since the answer seemed clear, but now we have one that truly does warrant consideration.

What does the U.S. want? Why, after four years of effort on the part of the world’s most powerful military and most extensive intelligence apparatus, is Syria a catastrophe beyond anything one could imagine when anti-Assad protests egan in the spring of 2011?

After four years of war—never truly civil and now on the way to proxy—Assad’s Syria is a mangled mess, almost certainly beyond retrieval in its current form. Everyone appears to agree on this point, including Putin and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian leader’s foreign minister. There is no putting this humpty-dumpty back on any wall: The Russians readily acknowledge this, acres of groundless journalism to the contrary notwithstanding.

In the meantime, certain realities are essential to recognize. The Assad government is a sovereign entity. Damascus has the beleaguered bones of a national administration, all the things one does not readily think of as wars unfold: a transport ministry, an education ministry, embassies around the world, a seat at the U.N. In these things are the makings of postwar Syria—which, by definition, means Syria after the threat of Islamic terror is eliminated.

Anyone who doubts this is Russia’s reasoning should consider the Putin-Lavrov proposal for a negotiated transition into a post-Assad national structure. They argue for a federation of autonomous regions representing Sunni, Kurdish and Alawite-Christian populations. Putin made this plain when he met President Obama at the U.N. last month, my sources in Moscow tell me. Lavrov has made it plain during his numerous exchanges with Secretary of State Kerry.

Why would Russia’s president and senior diplomat put this on the table if they were not serious? Their proposed design for post-Assad Syria, incidentally, is a close variant of what Russia and the Europeans favor in Ukraine. In both cases it has the virtue of addressing facts on the ground. These are nations whose internal distinctions and diversity must be accommodated—not denied, not erased, but also not exacerbated—if they are to become truly modern. Russians understand the complexities of becoming truly modern: This has been the Russian project since the 18th century.

In the past week Washington has effectively elected not to support Russia’s new effort to address the Syria crisis decisively. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s latest phrase of the moment is “fatally flawed.” If he said it once he said it a dozen times: The Russian strategy is fatally flawed. We heard you the third time, Ash.

As to Obama, he rejects any notion that Washington has effectively ceded leadership on the Syria question—with potentially wider implications—to Moscow. In his much-noted interview with 60 Minutes last weekend, he found Putin foolhardy for risking the lives of Russian soldiers and “spending money he doesn’t have.”

Say what?

Whose strategy in Syria is fatally flawed, Mr. Carter? I assume there is no need to do more than pose the question. (Memo to SecDef: Get a new scriptwriter, someone who allots you more than one assigned phrase a week.)

As to Obama’s remarks, one wishes he were joking. We are $5 trillion into the mess that began with the invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, and we are counting the fatalities one side or the other of a million. There are roughly 4 million Syrian refugees by the latest count. And Putin’s at fault for risking lives and blowing money? Who puts a smart guy like you up to this, Mr. President?

...

I'm not at all convinced that the Russians really know what they are doing here, or what the endgame looks like, but as for the Americans...

T'would seem that the Obama administration inherited from Bush & Co. the rather naïve view that if various tyrannical despots in the Middle East could be removed with the support of  Western military-aid, that the populations would immediately and unhesitatingly embrace both the West, and secular democracy, despite the historical record, in which revolutions, even well-meaning ones as often as not, if not more often, create worse outcomes than that which went before.  And despite both the existence of relatively widespread animosity towards the United States and the West generally in many of these countries, and the lack of a democratic tradition (the latter a problem for post-Soviet Russia also as we have seen).

The Arab Spring seemed liked it might be going well for a while (as perhaps did the War in Iraq early on), and having seen Qadaffi & Mubarak fall, Western leaders (who had previously sucked up to the same), decided to turn on al Assad, only...he didn't fall right away, and decided to fight instead.  Fight to the death perhaps if it came to it.  Which left the West rooting for the downfall of Assad in a civil war that involved various occasionally overlapping anti-Assad elements, some of which were explicitly Islamist, some more secular, some more or less concerned with ethnic or nationalistic factions, lining up as much against one another as against Assad.

And then the West (by which of course I mean the US) chose the amorphous opposition, not knowing into what it might morph as its champion against Assad a) assuming incorrectly as it happened that Assad would fold quickly, and b) with no awareness of whether the forces arrayed against Assad would ultimately be dominated by more Western-leaning more secular forces, or by the likes of Al Qaeda or ISIS.  Not like we have the history of living memory to look back on or anything for advice...

And so the West bet against Assad, (the now much denounced but recent ally still of the US), and by proxy for an ever amporphous coalition of groups, some of which are no doubt secular and democratic, but others of which would very much like to establish an Islamic caliphate all the way to Spain thank you very much, and if they can do it with donated US weapons, thanks that very much more.

Some of the non-ISIS-aligned & non-al-Qaeda aligned elements may still exist in the coalition against which Russia is currently fighting alongside the 'regime-forces'* & Iranians, but whom would we ask ?  Where/who/what is the leader of the Free Syrian Army ?  Where are the five or six (by most ambitious official military estimates) of the tens of thousands of US-trained opposition-forces meant to be in place by now ?

The US' official position is that Russia's involvement is prolonging the conflict unnecessarily, as if the conflict hadn't already been going on for four years with the US' involvement, and no end in sight.  I read somewhere (some beltway hackery no doubt) some speculation that the Russian involvement might in fact unite the various anti-Assad faction against the foreign 'imperialist' forces, and hasten Assad's removal.  Doubt it much, but even if that were the case, who would put money on the current conflict ending without either a) Western ground-forces having to intervene (likely to no avail in the long term), b) Assad remaining in power for the foreseeable future at least, or c) a victory for Islamist extremists ?

For our more Russophobic friends, we've seen how even the most relatively peaceful transitions from authoritarian dictatorship, can simply replace one dictator with another.  How in the absence of a concerted committed long-term international coalition dedicated to long-term liberal democratic reform, any hopes for a more progressive future may be dashed, even in historically liberal societies... Anyone think the US is willing or able to commit to a Marshall plan for Syria ?

* As in the still legitimate government of Syria under international law

** PS Fuck you any one who is still this far into the twenty-first century defending the mind-blowing incompetence of Microsoft Inc.

*** I hate the very notion of WYSIWYG, at least at it's implemented by our (consistently proven)-not betters.

AJ+: Young Swedes React To U.S. Democratic Presidential Debate

C'mon AJ+, surely you could have found a few fascists even in Sverige ?

Wonders...What reason might Al Jazeera's backers have to encourage a Sanders presidency ?...Feel the Bern !

Bors on Ben Carson & Mass Shootings

Tegan & Sara: I Bet It Stung

Interesting Times

Anyone else feel like we are sleepwalking off a precipice ?  And that our governments are utterly unprepared for the next shoe to drop, having exhausted all the tools in their toolbox during the last crisis ?*


Meanwhile, apparently this is a thing:

People's poorly remembered experiences with an unusually titled series of childrens' books**, from their childhood, at a time when they were just barely learning to read, as evidence of alternate dimensions/parallel universes, rewritten history, interference by aliens, time-travel, or the like...

As a lifelong fan of escapism (hey, I still watch Doctor Who, though I'm not sure Moffat appreciates the escapist element fully), I can't blame people for wanting to escape from reality.  Certainly not in times like these.  The present sucks, and the future looks bleak indeed.  But meanwhile our overlords in government and in the business-classes are continuing to pursue policies that are destroying our planet, and planning for the future when then need to pull up the ladders behind them, as they batten the hatches, and leave us to drown, safely ensconced (they hope) in their fortified private compounds.***  And ninety-plus percent of us aren't paying any attention whatsoever.

Aw, what the hell ?  No-one cares.  Interview with a/the Vampire, Fruit/Froot Loops, Nelson Mandela dying in prison, Sex in/and the City, 52 states in the US, New Zealand changing location, Henry VIII with a turkey-leg in his hand****, Magic mirror on the wall...have at it.

We're all gonna die !  Possibly imminently if the conflict with Russia goes nuclear.  But...isn't this just the cutest likkle doggie you ever did see ?!!

* Mixing metaphors all over the place.  And no, I don't fully understand the significance in the drop-off of the PRC and others purchasing US debt.  Nor am I sure I want to...

** Always thought the spelling was weird; Never imagined it would be inspiring conspiracy-theories in multiple generations of adults.

*** Mixing metaphors with abandon now.  Whee !

**** Wouldn't chicken be more likely ?

The New Statesman on Robots & Capitalism

Laurie Penny:

Do androids dream of a three-day week? This week, Professor Stephen Hawking weighed in on the topic that’s obsessing technologists, economists and social scientists around the world: whether a dawning age of robotics is going to spell mass unemployment. “If machines produce everything we need,” Hawking wrote in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, “everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared – or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”

As technology advances, the question is no longer whether or not robots are coming for your job. The question is whether or not you should let them take it. 

...

We’ve seen this pattern before. In successive waves of technological innovation from the industrial revolution to the automative leaps of the 1950s, millions of working people found themselves replaced by machines that would never inconvenience their owners by getting sick or going on strike. This time, however, it’s not just working class jobs that are threatened. It seems that Robespierre was right – it’s the prospect of angry unemployed lawyers and doctors that really prompts the elite to panic, or at least to produce urgent hardbacks and suggest to major news outlets that wealth redistribution might not be such a bad idea after all.

There is little to argue with in Kaplan and Ford’s basic predictions. Whatever happens, it seems that by the time most of us reach retirement, machines will be doing far more of the jobs that nobody really wanted to do in the first place. In any sane economic system, this would be good news. No longer will millions of men and women be stuck doing boring, repetitive, often degrading work for the majority of their adult lives. That’s fantastic. Or it should be. Did you really want the job those thieving android scabs are about to take from you? Wouldn’t you rather be writing a symphony, or spending time with your kids, or plucking your nose-hair? All else being equal, don’t you have better things to do than spending most of your life marking time at work to afford the dignity of not starving?

All else, however, is very far from equal – and that’s the problem. Technology is not the problem. The only reason that the automation of routine, predictable jobs is not an unmitigated social good is that the majority of the human race depends on routine, predictable jobs, and the wages we get for them. The rioting textile workers who smashed their weaving machines in the eighteenth century did not do so because they simply loved working twelve-hour days in dangerous, dirty conditions. They did it because they had been given a stark choice between drudge work and starvation. Two hundred years after the Luddite rebellions, most of us, when you get down to it, would not work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for forty years if we had a choice – but the necessity of earning a wage gives us no other option. In fact, advanced automation should for some time have made it unnecessary for any of us to work more than a handful of hours a week, as originally foreseen generations ago by thinkers like John Maynard Keynes – but somehow, most of us are working longer hours for lower wages than our grandparents.

The problem is not technology. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we’ve created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single parent, an unemployed veteran or an unpaid intern – the logic of late capitalism grants you no right to live unless you are making money for someone else. If our economic system defines the basis of human worth as the capacity to do drudge work for someone else’s profit then the question that has troubled science fiction writers for a century is solved: not only are robots human, they may soon be more human than us. ...

No comment needed here really.  I had some shit written for another recent post from the New Statesman (regarding the absurd Tory policies on housing as it happens), but in this case, I don't disagree with enough of anything in this piece to even attempt a commentary.  Just read it if you haven't already.*


* Steph's take here, since I featured her cartoon: http://skewednews.net/index.php/2015/08/31/robots-step-aside-gravediggers-capitalism-still-flesh-blood-workers/

Link Dump (Columbus Day Edition*)

Jeremy Corbyn stripped of 'Right Honourable' title after his 'snub' of the Privy Council.  He's devastated, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, here's some less humorous 'news' from the Telegraph regarding Corbyn and the IRA.

SF Weekly: Local Journalist Could Face 25 Year Prison Sentence for Defacing LA Times Website.  'Cos in today's world, if you fuck with corporations, you're a 'terrorist', and we have to make an example of you.

Politifact: Were more preschoolers shot and killed in 2013 than police officers?  Do you really need to ask ?

Guardian: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax despite £35m staff bonuses.

EFF: The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared.  Basically, good news for multinational corporations, bad news for everyone else.  But, hey we dodged that 120-year copyright...

Huffington Post: New Blood Test Helps ER Docs Rule Out A Heart Attack.

Daily Mail: Megyn Kelly's bloody tampon, a 'sexy Ebola victim' and a marijuana suit for your BABY: Femail reveals the most offensive costumes set to give you the creeps this Halloween.  No costume involving Syrian migrants though ?  Really ?  Well, there is always this tastelessness...

Mindblowing...New York Times: 2 Outside Reviews Say Cleveland Officer Acted Reasonably in Shooting Tamir Rice, 12.  Zooming right up to the kid and shooting him dead two seconds later, yeah, that's reasonable alright...

Related ?  Raw Story: Perception of time slows down for some white people when viewing a black face, study finds.

Meanwhile...in Florida...Orlando Weekly: Florida could pay you $200,000 for shooting someone and claiming self-defense.  So, the prosecution would have the burden of proof that you weren't threatened if you murder someone, and if they can't do so, they may have to cough up on your behalf big time.  Who's betting this bill won't pass in the legislature ?

Politico: Gallup gives up the horse race.  Might be a tad obvious, but kudos for the headline regardless.

RT: Micro-satellite to inspect if Americans did land on Moon.  Want to answer the debate once and for all, apparently.**  Umm, they could've just asked Mitchell and Webb...

Speaking of conspiracy-theories...Politico: Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up.

The new Cold War marches on apace: Michael Fallon: UK to send troops to Baltic region.

Gizmodo: A Massive Bleaching Event is Threatening the World’s Coral Reefs.  World: <shrug>.

Of course we shrug off this much like we shrug off shooting-deaths in America, out of a sense of futility, of impotence.  Would that we'd known about climate-change earlier, huh ?

Oh, yeah: Exxon’s Own Scientists Confirmed Climate Change—In the 70s.  Nineteen-fuckin'-seventy-seven...

BBC: Manchester raids see more than a million cigarettes seized.  People buying and selling cigarettes illegally, huh ?

BBC: Tobacco tax increase urged by parliamentary group.  No comment.

The Dems' sure are having some fun with the Repubs' difficulty finding a Speaker to replace John Boehner:

New Scientist: Drug could kill harmful bacteria but leave benign ones untouched.  Genetically engineered phage viruses, specifically.

Scientific American: First Ancient African Genome Reveals Vast Eurasian Migration.

BBC: The creature with the key to immortality?  It's sea-anemones.


Oh yeah, and 'Spongebrain'*** Ben Carson said a whole bunch of stupid things regarding guns, victim-blaming, Popeyes, and the Holocaust.  Anything I link to here today will be outdone by whatever he says tomorrow.

Hell, let's end on a lighter note with a 'toon instead...So, here's humanity's future courtesy Arend van Dam:

* Or 'Indigenous Persons' Day', or what have you...

** As if any evidence would dissuade the conspiracy-theorists...

*** http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-sponge-brain.  Far as I'm concerned, that's his new nickname going forward.

bis: Silver Spoon

SNL Nails It

Still have their moments after all these years

NTNON on the Conservatives

These seem oddly topical still today...

Brookes on Corbyn & the Privy Council

Don't like to run cartoons back-to-back too much, and often ideologically disagree with The Times, but the choice of 'reading-material' sells me here on this genius from Brookes.

Bors on 'The Secret Marxist Pope'

Don't think I've actually featured the work of Matt Bors here hitherto...'Bout time.

Culprit 1: Amoh

QOTD*: Hillary Clinton on Trade Deals

Updated the last post to reflect Hillary's belated opposition to the TPP deal, but I think this quote from her interview with Judy Woodruff merits highlighting.

...We've learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years.  Sometimes they look great on paper.  I know when President Obama came into office, he inherited a trade-agreement with South Korea.  I, along with other members of the cabinet, pushed hard to get a better agreement -- We think we made improvements -- Now, looking back on it, it doesn't have the results we thought it would have, in terms of access to the markets, more exports, et cetera.

And here I thought, listening to her at first, that she was just referring to the insane trade-deals her husband pushed through as president, but no, she's indicting her own competence & record as well.

She then goes on with some nonsense about how 'in order for us to have a competitive economy in the global marketplace', the US needs to 'raise wages' 'at home' (which the Republican meanies have blocked).  So, in other words, she doesn't get the fundamental complaint ordinary workers in the West have against these deals, nor why they are so favoured by the corporate elites, at all.  I sure am filled with confidence in Hill' as the Dem's candidate right now.


* Should really be QOYD for 'Quote of Yesterday', but I suppose that's not 'a thing.'**

** More and more, I feel like commas should be placed outside of quotation-marks, but it just doesn't feel right for the full stop/period.  I'm 'evolving' on the issue.