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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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Assuming, for the moment, that using bombs as exclamation points to polite debate is not a family trait, this has to be the worlds' worst choice of frivolous threat to make.
"I have people who can go over there and put a bomb on you,"
Maybe just a simple promise to wrap your house in toilet paper would be a better choice of threat, jus' sayin'.
I have been following this very closely for the last week. Iceland is in for another eruption. It is fascinating how close they were to the actual day it would erupt. Scientist have been reporting the lava as it moved under the crust. This is a bad situation for Iceland because this is subglacial and can cause a jökulhlaup which is an water ice flood. This thread will continue to update through the night.
No one I read explains money matters better than Frances Coppola. Here she begins a series on the changing nature of money.
These days, nearly all forms of money bear interest, which makes them indistinguishable from interest-bearing assets. [T]he paying of interest on bank reserves, coupled with the decline of physical currency, all but eliminates the distinction between interest-bearing safe assets such as Treasury bills and what we traditionally call “money”. All assets can be regarded as “money” to a greater or lesser extent: the extent to which assets have “moneyness” is really a matter of liquidity.
I'm hoping that this article by Amos Harel, defense correspondent for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, comes through the paywall. Harel is someone I read regularly. He has this no-nonsense straight-forward way of writing that I find refreshing, and many others might find dull. But he knows his stuff. Here's his not so positive assessment of what the future looks like for Israelis and Palestinians.
NYC Daggers will want to meet Zephyr at the Eleanor Roosevelt Statue at 2PM today (Tuesday) at 72nd and Riverside, or at 7:30 PM at the 4th Avenue Pub in Brooklyn
Some of you recall that earlier in the summer I posted something on increased anti-semitism in Europe, and it bothers me more than you might expect that at least one regular poster stopped posting after things got tense in the comment thread. I really do regret that happened, and I wish I could turn back the clock and bring back anyone who hasn't posted because of that.
I would be lying if I told you all that I don't have continued bruised feelings towards some folks on and off the masthead for what transpired over that thread. We'll see; time heals. I know some of you don't think about these things like I do. . .different strokes (imagine that).
In any event, it makes me feel less than pure to ignore what is happening to the surviving remnants of the Jewish communities of Europe, for so many reasons. Please don't take this as a sign that I don't care about what is happening to other people around the world, but what is going on in Europe hits up close and personal with me.
I never thought that in my lifetime I would read that people would chant "Jews to the Gas" in Germany. To excuse many (not all) of these folks as muslims who are angry with Israel is to excuse racism based on lowered expectations of our brothers and sisters of the Islamic faith.
Goldberg touches on something that touches me too, the removal of kosher foods from the shelves of a grocery store in London in response to protests against Israel's war with Hamas. Jews eat kosher food all over the world and it has nothing to do with Israel. People like to make fun of the arcane customs of kashrut, which is fine when in good taste. But I remember when my grandmother of blessed memory was in a rehab center, and she refused to eat until a rabbi came and told her that it was OK. That's why modern bslev tries to keep a kosher home -- really in her memory and those I never met.
I leave you with this. Next time you feel the urge to remind someone that anti-Israel is not the same as anti-Jewish, turn it around. Anti-Jewish should not be anti-Israel, but that's what's going down. As someone recently wrote, and I cannot find the cite: Careful Europe, your roots are showing.
No surprise, I'm a big fan. She is the Angelina Jolie of the Millenials
By Timothy Olanrewaju in Maiduguri, The Sun, August 24, 2014
A man who appeared like Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram insurgents in a new video released on Sunday boasted the sect has established an Islamic caliphate in Gwoza town, southeast of Borno State.
[....]
He also suggested the terrorists’ rejection of the Nigerian nation, saying: “We are in Islamic Caliphate. We have nothing to do with Nigeria. We don’t believe in this name.” He vowed to continue attacks to increase their quest for more control [....]
VOA News, Aug. 24, 2014
Libya is engulfed in new political turmoil, with an Islamist militia openly challenging the legitimacy of the country's elected parliament, after its fighters took control of Tripoli's battered international airport.
After seizing the airport in the Libyan capital, the militia from the coastal city of Misrata called Sunday for the old General National Congress to be reinstated.
It alleged the parliament elected in June was complicit in mysterious airstrikes on Misrati positions at the airport as its militiamen fought rival fighters from the mountainous region of Zintan for six weeks for control of the key facility.
The new parliament, based in Tobruk, 1,600 kilometers east of Tripoli, branded the Misratis as terrorists, along with another group, Ansar al-Sharia, which controls 80 percent of the eastern city of Benghazi [....]
By Martin Chulov, guardian.com, 23 Aug., 2014
Islamic State extremists are pushing to secure the border between Turkey and north-western Syria as the main gateway for recruits to join the caliphate they have imposed across much of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Large numbers of jihadists from Islamic State (formerly Isis) are moving this weekend towards the Turkish border area, about 60 miles north of Aleppo, in columns of armoured trucks that they looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases. The area is now one of the most active front lines in the group's attempt to redraw the borders of the Levant, a campaign that will have huge ramifications for Turkey.
Residents and Syrian opposition militants in the town of Marea, close to the Turkish border, on Saturday said that Isis had advanced to within sight of the town and had sent envoys to negotiate access [....]
By Kevin Rawlinson, theguardian.com, 24 August,2014
The United Nations special representative for Iraq has called on the international community to take immediate action to avoid a massacre of civilians in town besieged by Islamic State (Isis) forces.....
The endless delays hampering the initial deliveries of the Russian humanitarian relief aid to southeastern Ukraine have become intolerable.
A lorry convoy with many hundreds of tonnes of humanitarian relief aid, urgently needed by the people in these regions, has been standing idle for a week now on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Over this period, the Russian side has made unprecedented efforts in all areas and at all levels in order to complete the required formalities. We have met all conceivable and inconceivable demands of the Ukrainian side and have submitted to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) exhaustive lists of food, drinking water, medications, essential items and diesel generators due to be delivered to Lugansk, where they are urgently needed by women, children and the elderly.
This has been all over the climate news blogs today. This research points out how the loss of Arctic Sea ice in the Fram Straight between Greenland and Svalbard can change how much heat is transported by the Gulf Stream. The white paper was just published by Alfred Wegener Institute.
For AWI geologist Juliane Müller the Fram Strait is a key region in the global oceanic circulation. "On the east side of this passage between Greenland and Svalbard warm Atlantic water flows to the north into the Arctic Ocean while on the west side cold Arctic water masses and sea ice push their way out of the Arctic into the North Atlantic. A considerable portion of the Atlantic water cools here on its way to the north and sinks to deeper layers. The circulation of the water caused in this manner drives the global band of oceanic currents like a giant pump and influences, among other things, how much heat the Gulf Stream transports towards Europe," says the scientist.
If the pulse frequency of this circulation pump changes, this gives rise to direct changes in the climate -- for instance, at the end of the past glacial period and during the transition to our present-day interglacial. "In the past 30,000 years the Gulf Stream has lost an extraordinary amount of force at least twice -- once 17,600 years ago and about 12,800 years ago. Both times the climate in Europe consequently cooled down significantly -- and now we also know why," says Juliane Müller.
It is an interesting read and the graphics show the Gulf Stream not reaching as far as it currently does.
For those who are interested in the drought, this is a good map site to book mark to refer to. Out west is in bad shape and could certainly become a desert.
One girl just suffered a heart breaking loss. The other girl is a heart breaking abstraction.
I disagree with a number of Yascha Mounk's criticisms of populist issues, and the sensationalist title is just silly, yet his essay offers a fascinating analysis of a global trend toward populism that is shaking up industrialized nations across the political spectrum.
Normally I would not post a link to a diary in Kos. This is the best reporting about the lava moment in the Iceland's fissure volcanic system. Bárðarbunga the largest of the volcanoes in Iceland could very well erupt. I copied and pasted the name because of it's spelling. They now have it at a level 4 out of 5 that makes it something to pay attention too. It could disrupt air travel and weather.
This author has written several diaries in the last few days. He lives in Iceland and all his charts are understandable but in his native language. So follow his links from his first paragraph and you can follow how this situation as it developed. Fissure eruptions can be very dangerous because they emit poisonous gas. It happened in the 18th century when Iceland had an eruption and people died in Scotland and Europe of Fluoride Gas. The magma movement is happening in a monster of a volcano but right now it is moving horizontally and the measuring that is going on tells the scientist that there is a lot of it with force. It could settle down and not erupt but they are not taking any chances.
Apparently the video of Foley's beheading is available on Youtube. I haven't seen it and don't think I could watch.
May the memory of James Foley be a blessing to his loved ones.
Listen to me discuss Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels with award winning host Leonard Lopate on WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820.
1:30pm EDT, 8/18/14
Live stream: https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/streams/wnyc-fm939
Delayed stream: http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-theodore-roosevelt-helped-create-progressive-politics/
There’s a classic case with eyeglasses. You decide you’re going to go shopping for a new pair of eyeglasses, and you go into Lenscrafters. You say, I don’t like the prices here. So you go down the road to a place called Pearl Vision, you say, no, no I’m going to go to a cheaper place. So you go to Target Optical, or maybe Sears Optical, or maybe you go to Macy’s Optical. You go to Sunglass Hut. What you don’t realize, because you’re going to all these different branded stores, is that all these stores are all owned by Luxottica, an Italian eyewear Goliath.
Obviously we're in no position to be outraged, but it does make one laugh at Merkel's previous attitude towards us spying on her. See also this article.
Courtesy of Jezebel, a look into the hearts of women besotted by Cumberbatch.
The comments, the comments!
Not that I'm not a fan of Sherlock (minus, however, the "waterfall' effect...)