by William Skink
It was good to take a week off blogging. And boy what an interesting week it has been. Obama took advantage of the holiday lull to quietly sign the NDAA, making it much more difficult to ever close Guantanamo and further funding “moderate rebels” in Syria and Ukraine to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, someone must have slipped something into David Cameron’s water supply because he suddenly started having hallucinations that there were 70,000 moderate fighters fighting the good fight in Syria. That’s almost as wacky as making the unsourced claim that refugees in Syria are fleeing a real genocide.
Syrians are fleeing an increasingly volatile proxy war that shifted dramatically when Russia intervened two months ago. Since this intervention it’s become increasingly difficult for the west to maintain the false narrative that for 4 years of misery America and it’s allies have been fighting ISIS. Far from fighting ISIS, it’s increasingly looking like Turkey and Israel have been buying ISIS oil on the black market.
Zerohedge has been prescient in looking at who is on the spending side of the millions of dollars ISIS pulls in every month low-balling barrels of oil on the black market. The implications are significant. And they will be ignored.
A quick side note: I just want to say that, personally, I have zero concern regarding JC’s mental stability. The “real genocide” link features a pretty disturbing personal attack depicting JC as full of rage and in need of professional help. I wonder if the other contributors over there will condone this attack with their silence? Or maybe instead they’ll invite Jonathan Hutson to do a guest post advocating for criminal charges against JC.
I commend JC for keeping his cool. I’m sure years of activism gives one a thick skin, especially when that activism is about the environmental conditions necessary to sustain life on this planet.
Oh yeah, this week also marks the start of a little discussion going on in France right now amongst world “leaders” about what humans are doing to this planet and whether or not there exists the political will to do what engineers say is actually feasible: total switch to renewable energy in 30-40 years.
So far one of the initial takeaways is this: France has successfully exploited its 9/11 to suppress protests and go after individual activists with the emergency powers rushed through, post-attack. And the media is, as usual, helping smear the protesters by blaming protests for disturbing a memorial to casualties of the terrorist attacks, and not the actual cause, which was the violent police actions.
I don’t plan on writing a lot at RD this month. I’ve got a month off work, a kick-ass new electric guitar and a story nearing 50 pages. And tomorrow I’m going to see Frank Zappa’s son get down at the Wilma!
JC
There are no renewable resources on Earth, it is a closed system that receives energy from the Sun then turns it into biomass. And, as we all know even the Sun isn’t eternal.
Gotta ask: what did you get for your new electric guitar?!
it’s a gorgeous Les Paul Epiphone, blue. I’m loving it.
Nice! Whatcha playing it through?
just a crappy used amp right now. any suggestions I can pass along to Santa?
Oh geez. That’s a tough one.
I’m a fender guy, so on the cheap side would be a Fender Mustang II or III, which are digital, have lots of presets and has USB for interfacing with a computer. Good practice/composition/recording amp. If you want the same setup but also for live stage use, and dual speakers, look at the Mustang IV.
If you want an amp that is good for both acoustic and electric, Fender Acoustasonic series can’t be beat.
Myself, if I had the $$ I’d get a ’65 Twin Reverb reissue. Love the analog tube sound!
Just heard Zappa canceled–supposedly bad roads between Seattle and here. Either that or they didn’t sell enough tickets… Bummer!
JC……. In case you missed it, I tried to give you some support on the Intelligent Discontent site this evening with the following comment:
“JC has a good point. Don can ‘dish it out”, often in a vicious petty way, but can’t “take it” when someone questions him in even the slightest way. Even James Conner noted that at times Don’s battles can stink-up the blogosphere. It’s a lot easier to throw bombs at people when you don’t have to listen to well earned criticism from your readers.”
Don then accurately corrected me by noting that Conner only commented that Pogreba:s recent attack on you was the thread stinking up the blogosphere. After a half dozen plus exchanges where Pogreba repeatedly called me a coward for using a pseudonym (I guess only commenters and bloggers who agree with him get to use pseudonyms) plus some other derogatory names, I pointed out that his rant on me was a new thread stinking up the blogosphere. He then erased my comments and his responses and blocked my comments. He only proved that he really is good at dishing it out but really “can’t take it” himself.
sorry, just found this comment and had to free it from the spam trap, Pogo.
Hi Pogo, thanks for hanging in there with me on this one. I just felt I had to hang in there as Don was unrelenting with his attack. I guess it all resulted in him banning comments on his threads. I guess if you don’t want to debate the issues, that’s one way to deal with it.
The whole issue of his rabid dislike of anonymous commenting has fueled his and my battles over the years, resulting in his tagging my email address as a spam source — which he then lied about for years to me that it wasn’t the case… until I was able to prove it.
Anyways, such be the blogosphere… sometimes so petty you don’t miss it when folks do things like indulge in their self importance to the point that they think people will read them just for the value of the “insight” on display, instead of reading to challenge malformed ideas.
I used the term “groupthink” not really understanding that it is a real concept with a clear definition, and what Popreba does over there with his site fits the definition to a tee. The same with Conner. They both feel a need to constrain and ban thoughtcrime.
That’s part of it. The other part is the inability to think outside of the fishbowl, or even to look at information outside of the fishbowl. In that sense, their obsession with groupthink is more pathologic than intentional. It is an anachronistic survival mechanism that protects them from their powerlessness in a big, bad world full of scary monsters.
Here’s how our friends in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — primary sponsors of ISIS — administer justice. http://wearechange.org/saudi-arabia-is-about-to-stone-a-sri-lankan-woman-to-death/
Liberal interventionists do not want American eyes on KSA, they have carefully selected more important things to distract us with. Western plans to redraw boundaries in the Middle East have not changed. More bombs please.
Thirty fifth anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Imagine if he had a gun.
“Imagine there’s no liberals
Its not easy but please try
No one to take your weapons
while they just get high
imagine all the babies that would be alive today
you might say I’m a dreamer
I may be the only one
I hope one day you’ll wake up
and realize you need a gun”-iothwreport.
Read more at http://iotwreport.com/35-years-ago-today-remembering-john-lennon/#VuzGbcAd3PrwiJFx.99
Meet Mark Staycer, a man who does a mean Lennon impression and even looks like him +35 years. Fake deaths are not uncommon among politician and celebrities – they are tired, want out of limelight, have done all that was asked of them, etc. Many people think this is John Lennon. For me, who can tell? (The arrows point to moles Lennon had and Staycer shares, one on the forehead removed.)
have a nice day.
Oops – no image. Look up Mark Staycer on the Google and the movie “Let Him Be.”
Just wondering. Does using nukes make you an imperialist?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-has-threatened-to-use-nuclear-weapons-against-isis-but-hopes-they-will-never-be-needed-a6766196.html
“President Putin said the new cruise missiles could also be equipped with nuclear warheads – but that he hoped they would never need them.”
Does the word “could” indicate a threat? IMO, the use of the word could doesn’t mean “has threatened.”