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café babylon 
thanks
speaking of which
“The first diamonds mined from the ancestral homeland of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen have gone on sale for Valentine’s Day, while the tribe continues to face persecution by the Botswana government, which is intent on driving them from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Botswana’s government has always denied that diamonds were the reason for the forced and illegal evictions of the Bushmen between 1997 and 2005 – one of its claims was to protect the wildlife.
But its hypocrisy has been exposed by allowing diamond mining and fracking exploration to go ahead in the reserve.”
http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10660
“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is celebrating the release of some 3,000 South Sudanese child soldiers today in what is being hailed as one of the largest ever demobilizations of children in a zone of conflict.”
http://allafrica.com/stories/201501280124.html
that was hard to read about the san bushmen, although i’ve read some of the horrid recent history earlier. torture and murder, though, coupled with the failure of the Big Wildlife Conservation Clubs to fail to understand and condemn tribal sustenance over big game hunting is morbid. but that’s par for the course in the Big organizations, as i’ve railed about in the past. if i remember correctly, the last year that the guest list for davos was available to be searched by nation, wwf and nrdc were the only two ‘conservation’ groups attending. pfffffft.
you likely remember that spencer wells’ vast study of y chromosone dna discovered that ‘adam’, to whom all other humans were related…was a san bushmen. at least last time i checked, his ‘journey of man: a genetic odyssey’ (national geographic) was on youtube. fascinating stuff, as he showed all the various migratory paths and adaptations over the millenia.
i remember that the san speak in clicks. imagine that!
one of the inks mentioned the baka pygmies, but already if i’ve forgotten if they were the amazon rain forest ones. i used to keep some of their music on my posterous site, as well as some of the ‘uncontacted tribes’ footage, as well as their imminent (then) peril. it may be that i used to get a newsletter from the group that had the san v. diamonds story.
what liars those Lords are, eh? goddam.
wow; ‘Yelli – Baka women yodellers’
whooosh; even with adequate resources to reintegrate those poor child soldiers into their families and communities, it’s nigh on to impossible to imagine a healthy outcome.
when sudan split in two, it was evident at the time that the south would become a battleground. resources, again, v. not. well, better released than not, but what they must have seen, and been forced to do in violence just has to scar a child forever.
yes, wow.
didn’t know about the first homo sapiens, going to watch that. thanks for the tip.
heh; i’d taped it back in the day, and even did a short series based on it for the local free press. ya now what an idiot i am? i thought that knowing that we really do all share a common ancestor might have an impact on local racism against first americans and hispanics.
of course, it wouldn’t have been the paper of choice for haters…
you’ve prolly found it already, but here it is; you can just click thru this small version and save the url.
Seconds before those dolphins in the Florida Straits inherited Aqua, the Schwarzenegger/Curtis true liars met their Valentines’ fate (along w US unwilling victim on Vaca Key as the nuke exploded over Bullfrog Banks
in Florida Bay)!
I’m DEM tired of sustaining nuclear strikes (Chernobyl, the above and now FukUs; not to mention all those downwind experiences from the Nevada test sites in the self-inflicted nuclear war of my youth). I meekly seek we get this Over WITH! (Or preferably, blow all the nukes into El Sol, INSTEAD).
i wonder if you might translate your comment, bruce, for simple folk like myself?
If love cannot prevail,
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/29117-our-purpose-is-to-love
I’druther end with a bang, than a whimper:
crikey; i jut got you’d been alluding to the r cobb cartoon. sorry to be thick, but still…it’s often so easy for me to miss the translation of your rather inscrutable remarks. ;)
fine poem for ♥ day, and the love shack is just too fun! the beehive hairdo brought back some memories, lol. dude looks like huey lewis of the news, eh? oops; b-52s. well, it was great, thanks.
yeah, i’ll take the bang myownself.
thanks for the youtube.
welcome, and you’re right to use ‘homo sapiens’. this may interest you; wasn’t there a Batman movie based on the same thing? ;)
‘ Spy agencies fund climate research in hunt for weather weapon, scientist fears: US expert Alan Robock raises concern over who would control climate-altering technologies if research is paid for by intelligence agencies’; it begins:
“A senior US scientist has expressed concern that the intelligence services are funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.
Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has called on secretive government agencies to be open about their interest in radical work that explores how to alter the world’s climate.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/15/spy-agencies-fund-climate-research-weather-weapon-claim
Thanks for the open comments here, wendye! I’m a tad late (as usual) but happy valentine’s day – celebrated a day earlier with the opening of world cup cricket in New Zealand, home team against Sri Lanka in Christchurch (the earthquake city) so I was happily radiosporting online – the marvels of technology. Big deal downunder with all the cricketing nations there and in Australia – some I had no idea, like Zimbabwe, who put a crimp in the South Africans’ ‘champion’ demeanor last night (even though I think pretty sure the Zims were defeated, they managed to make mincemeat of the SA’s top order. I went to bed before the second innings, so the outcome is surmise.)
But also on a sobering note, the 70th anniversary of Dresden’s destruction by allied bombs, and old calendar ‘Candlemas’ falls this Sunday as well. So, important for an Ukrainian ceasefire to hold, and my prayers are for that this day.
good you came, juliania; i’d meant to email to see whether you were okay, forgetting that the world cup is on (life is ‘a pitch’, i’ve read you say. :)
i’d forgotten which day was the anniversary of dresden, but in honor of it i posted billy pilgrim’s ‘war in reverse’ on this thread. would that we could make it so….
https://cafe-babylon.net/2015/02/12/endless-war-obama-sends-congress-expansive-anti-isis-measure-6-months-after-bombing-began/
goodness, twice at fdll when i commemorated the event as hideous, many steps to far, i got baffling questions intimating that i was a holocaust denier or something, and i was slow to pick up about what the questions…even meant. sigh. such a black and white world.
but one of the svoboda militia leaders ha said that his troops will never abde by the ceasefire, and more than likely, the shellings will be attributed to the separatists in the msm.
ah, did you read of the pod of pilot whales stranded off the coast of NZ? mr. wd said they saved 60 or so, but many died. i did just check the guardian for the story, but it’s been buried with other news by now.
No, I didn’t read that sad stranding, but it does happen frequently ’round those islands. When I was a whippersnapper, we had a very famous dolphin up north in Opononi name of ‘Opo’ (of course.) I believe she, after a number of years sporting with the locals, got herself sadly stranded as well. My first ocean voyage home (back in the day you could go from San Francisco up to Vancouver and then down, three weeks at sea…) I was joyously welcomed by a dolphin as we entered Auckland harbour. I was just standing at the rail holding my toddler, and he/she tipped her snout at me – think I was the only passenger on that huge vessel to see it, and it was like an ‘hello, mate!’ after ten years away.
And indeed, life’s a pitch! Ireland is playing the West Indies today, in Napier I believe. And tomorrow, our team, the Black Caps, play Scotland in Dunedin (where last I ‘settled’ – for 7 months). Dunedin is the Celtic name for Edinburg, so many of Scottish extraction there. Can be listened to at
radiosport.co.nz/on-demand/listen-from-overseas/
if anyone has the desire, Monday 3 p.m. on, thereabouts – don’t worry if you miss that, as the finals run into late March. (I think the hotels must be mighty happy.)
nice dolphin story, juliania. (i just watched ‘the whale rider’ again recently, oh my).
some say that military sonar messes up whales’ inner gyroscopes, but i dunno if there’s proof of that or not.
thank you for the radio hint, but i don’t even know the cricket rules, or for football, for that matter. ‘baseball’s be berry good to me.’ ;)
i’ve decided (almost, anyway) to email brian sonenstein to ask if knows if fdl will ever be coming back online, or separately, if they know why it’s been down for five days. each passing day makes me wonder about the former a bit more.
Africa is losing more than $50bn (£33bn) every year in illicit financial outflows as governments and multinational companies engage in fraudulent schemes aimed at avoiding tax payments to some of the world’s poorest countries, impeding development projects and denying poor people access to crucial services.
Illegal transfers from African countries have tripled since 2001
In total, the continent lost about $850bn between 1970 and 2008, the report said. An estimated $217.7bn was illegally transferred out of Nigeria over that period, while Egypt lost $105.2bn and South Africa more than $81.8bn.
African and non-African governments and the private sector – including oil, mining, banking, legal and accountancy firms – were all involved in schemes designed to launder money and avoid paying corporate tax, according to the (AU) study.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/feb/02/africa-tax-avoidance-money-laundering-illicit-financial-flows
we’re just there to help. …..ourselves.
the continent has been colonized and recolonized how many times? it’s hard to keep score. the west allies itself with some of the worst leaders, at least in the subcontinent. the AU itself is corrupt, as far as i’ve read. but sure, the NATO Africom desk was created to save african nations from the chaos it helped to create. gads, sorry to be a blog whore again.
http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2013/02/03/africom-keeping-africans-safe-from-chaosor-something/
so many resources to plunder, so many potential slaves to keep oppressed in poverty, and now: call terrorists, as they fight the western empire. poor, poor, africa.
very good article thanks. It is transnational businesses doing the actual dirty work, for some reason the Americans get to do the enforcing. I guess they like that job.
and it’s too bad so many informative commenters stopped posting at firedog lake.
Don Bacon still comments at empty wheel though.
I expect the AU is corrupt, but I read some articles saying that their report is a breakthrough, just admitting the problem maybe? Maybe I didn’t link to that, the AU just finished a report on this.
i know the mining sectors in sub-saharan africa are corrupt as hell, and (dare i say) *even* under the ANC in south africa. there’ve been spooky reports of miners trying to strike and being murdered for their troubles.
i’m sure it is a healthy sign that civil society groups have banded together to blow the whistle, and i hope the spokesman for this group s correct that it will be harder in the future for multinationals to siphon off capital, and send it to tax havens.
http://www.gfintegrity.org/
i’d peeked into uneca’s site to see if the report were there, but…it crashed.
i guess that what made me reflexively opine about the levels of corruption was a piece i’d read a few weeks ago at black agenda report, but i couldn’t find it when i looked. i did find a piece saying that 60% of the AU budget comes from the US; that’s pretty interestingg, and one wonders how much influence it buys.
remember when the west asked for the au’s blessing for r2p libya? they helped dig up a bare quorum of the 58 members and twisted a few arms to secure a Yes vote. and look at libya now, speaking of chaos and hell.
yes, sigh; many good folks are gone from fdl now, either by banning or their own devices. although it’s kinda/sorta up again, some parts aren’t functional, and the reader diaries are a total mess with no mods, and diarists not even using More breaks for their three-foot long posts. guess i’ll wait a bit to post my next one there, see if peeps return or not.
AU funded by USA? They throw that money around where it suits them don’t they?
This is very interesting,
“Sea slug has taken genes from algae it eats, allowing it to photosynthesize like a plant. How a brilliant-green sea slug manages to live for months at a time “feeding” on sunlight, like a plant, is clarified in a recent study published in The Biological Bulletin.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150203155925.htm
Wish I could do that.
Such symbiosis has been a feature of sessile corals for eons; and may be a “bug” mobilizing up the evolutionary chain. And we humans have the brains to have developed solar-electric film for roofs, automobile surfaces and the electric engines to power our homes and transport US around, powered thereby. Yet. we don’t use even a slug’s brain to universally employ them and save our planet. Terminally STYOOPID!
We need to find a way of neutralizing the “greed” gene. Then we need to use it. install the modification at birth.
By I have never heard of one species absorbing the genes of another species, even more amazing one in a completely different group, and then using them. I don’t know if there are other examples of this. A scientist mentioned in the article says it’s theoretically impossible.
yes to eradicating the greed gene; or is it simply learned? as i thought about greed, corruption, and africa, esp. considering the US funding of the AU, and the fact that it seems the world bank has its fingers deeply into uneca, it made me think of local first american tribes in our area.
not all, but many, had BIA ‘overseers’ for a long time. when it came time to create hierarchical structures, a couple things happened. one was that the bia totally disregarded historical clan systems and village self-rule, wanting ONE council to deal with. the other was that only too often, the BIA reps and their employees would teach corruption and profiteering to new council members, likely for kickbacks, influence in aid of entities wanting to extract especially mineral wealth, etc.
one might wonder if the stated causes of wealth maldistribution in that report were only half of the true problems, though. it did mention organized crime along with multinationals, which seemed a bit…redundant.
dunno about genetic traits/dna by ingesting other animals, though. but one sure wonders about the long term effects of transgenic foods and fish, eh? not just mono-crops, but to the human genome itself.
I’m not sure how to do this, but I’d like to share my very first blog entry with you. Here’s the link, but feel free on how to educate me on the how to’s.
https://ohiobarbarian.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/obamas-latest-push-for-a-shiny-new-war/
we’re honored to have you share your first shiny new blog entry here, barbarian.
this is indeed the simplest way to bring content, even one’s own. if, however, you want to post more regularly, you’ll need to register, then some cranky woman can enable you as an author.
oops; i just opened another firefox tab to grab the registration instructions, hit my.fdl by mistake, and see that you’ve posted it there. certainly it’s a vastly larger megaphone there, or might be again. i think i’ll wait until tomorrow or the next day to post there…if people return. but in any event, here are the instructions. good piece, too; i just posted a couple pieces by michael hudson; he’s not quite as sanguine as you are about war being impossible. i will hope that you’re right. ;)
https://cafe-babylon.net/category/registration-and-contact-me/
oh, and also: you should be able to sign in with your fdl screen name and avatar; this is word press, also.
On Edit: i’d meant to say that yes, the white house’s phones and email were jammed with Nay Votes on syria, but i’d figured another major factor was Parliament saying ‘No Way’.
Welcome Ohio barbarian. An Eternal Flamer, here. I believe Poppy Bush’s DingleBarry Donbass wars will be over soon:
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=11550
“What is life like in Kiev and Ukraine for LGBT people in general?
Dangerous. Now it has been becoming even more dangerous. All expected the situation after the revolution of dignity would get better, but I think that on the contrary, people have become more aggressive and radical groups gained the trust of ordinary people. Now it is fashionable to be a strong, courageous, masculine man in Ukraine.
…. The police realized that they have no power to protect the participants of the (Gay Pride )event.”
http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/07/09/kiev-activist-life-dangerous-lgbt-ukrainians
I was curious about this after I saw a short video (posted at one of the websites that explains all about how stupid the E.U. is and how wonderful Putin is,)
of some Russian speaking Ukrainian soldiers humiliating some soldiers they have captured. The insult they used repeatedly was “faggot” which I guess is the worst thing they could think of.
Things are never as simple as most people want them to be.
as far as i’ve read, putin is quite a homophobe, mark. ukrainian soldiers? not separatists? dunno, but maybe both would be equally homophobic. putin in many ways is a bastard, but with this situation and many others, he has had diplomacy and right on his side, i think.
i did laugh when someone on the front page at fdl was going on about how ‘putin is fighting the russian oligarchs’! he IS one, of course. owns some major share of gazprom, for one thing. but i bless him for his diplomacy and problem solving, and understand why he and the russian people don’t ant to be surrounded by nato nations and missile bases, contra US presidential promises over the past to decades.
nope, never as simple…
yes the video was of separatists. Our brave heroes. who knows what they do to captured soldiers. Nothing nice I expect.
I read another article, homophobia is rampant in the Balkans as well.
I agree with your comments about Putin. He certainly has been on the right side re Iran, Syria, Ukraine.
I just mean, that people always seem to want their guy, and their side, to be the white night. and the other guy never did a good thing in his life.
As evidenced at FDL over and over again. Quite a few people there have major filters going on.
It’s never that simple. People and nations are far more complicated than that.
which makes divide and conquer so much easier for people inclined to do that. we set ourselves up for it.
i believe chris floyd gets it about right; he lived in russia under putin, and excoriates him fo many things, but sees what he’s done right. and no, black and white is silly. but for commenters like Desider at fdl, i get tired of saying all of the caveats about him. sometimes i just walk away from the arguments, and even find him still trying to argue issues with me by email. ;)
(i’d call us ‘frenemies’ by now).
i just spent (pissed away) about two hours trying to write a post at My.fdl. still couldn’t get a video to embed, and every part of the process, from having to log in again, to the mixed up editing software, etc., was as slow as dial-up used to be. pfffffft. guess the front page is working just fine….
Thanks, good article. so I saved that site.
maybe have a chuckle by watching
glad you liked it; fairleft at fdl loathes his take, or at least on one of his ukraine pieces. chePasa explained that yes, he is indeed a polemicist, and to me, that is an art form in itself. railing with abandon, in aid of heading toward a greater truth (or opinion, of course).
i not only chuckled, but i believe i may have guffawed once. ;)
okay; chuckles R over. i saw this earlier at a different site, but the news is still just as hideous:
“Bomb Train” Derails and Explodes in West Virginia, Two Towns Evacuated
Despite numerous spills and explosions, Congressional Republicans call oil-by-rail “very safe.”
http://www.alternet.org/environment/train-carrying-crude-oil-derails-west-virginia-cars-explode
apparently the only other choice many people see, is pipelines.
The train explosions, which will keep happening probably, just prove to some people that we need more pipelines, cause they’re safe, and never rupture or leak.
so they think.
no other ways of producing power seem to be conceivable as far as some /many people are concerned.
meanwhile if you want I will post a link to a short interview about the methane gun or bomb. some scientists are way beyond the point of being just pessimistic.
oh, yes, do. i know how much more you know about all this than i. but pretending that renewables are more costly, not as efficient, shouldn’t have a massive government boost for jobs and tax breaks galore…is just plain ‘not right’, as our daughter would say.
to gauge one measure of fracking, say, look at the sacramento valley and it’s poisoned aquifer; not to mention that it’s lost actual altitude due to the water being over-used to grow…almonds. pipeline leaks? too many to count, but…out of sight, eh?
interesting to see some of the people at fdl wondering why (aside from technical things) nobody goes there anymore. They’ve got some destructive people there.
people who call anyone who disagrees with them “troll”, Rather than refuting it with facts, which actually takes a bit of knowledge and effort.
opposing views are unwelcome. It is now a small cheer leading squad for certain very narrowly focussed, often peculiar viewpoints.
one of the things I like about naked capitalism is the way the owner reads the comments and responds to them.
well, yes, and i’d tried to say something to that effect. and i’ve been trolled there, but it was several of my detractors who followed me around via my dashboard, and would smack the shit out of me…just because.
i’m not sure which people you’d consider destructive, unless you mean the avid anti-zionists. that’s a very hard subject for most jews, and i know that it’s what drove aitchD away. metamars…well, he was in a category of his own.
another few peeps left because they were never given posting privileges after ‘the changes’ to my.fdl, even though i’ve told them how they might easily get them restored. it must burn a bit more that newbies get posting privileges.
but crap, it’s so hard to get in there again today, and i had to submit a comment three times, as the first two it timed out before it could load. too much bother, but i wonder if it will get better, or this is it? and i wonder further if a lot of the front page commentariat just keep open tabs up, refreshing, kinda eating up the capabilities of the bandwidth. but i may not have a clue about it, eh?
thanks, i’ll watch the video after i do some chores.
the “anti Zionists”?
As far as I”m concerned many “Anti zionists” are just anti semites disguising their position with sympathy for somebody other than Jews. They probably don’t even know it, and wouldn’t admit it if they did. The people in the KKK will tell you they’re not racists.
Otherwise, no, no particular group, except for a couple of people they all do it for everything.
I’d say if they can’t get it working after this long, they’re unlikely to get it working anytime soon. lack of money, I suppose.
sorry you brought that one up, it’s not a “hard subject for me”
your own biases are revealed by that comment I’m afraid.
if the phrase revealed my bias,, so be it, i guess. i will say that i like the growing solidarity between the palestinians and the #blacklivesmatter movement, if that’s another bias showing. living under oppression…is just that, in my book.
thanks wd
mean to say, you do a very good job with all of your articles.
mcPherson: “no humans survive either way”. dolphins and cockroaches. but this is a slightly different story on climate geoengineering than the one i posted earlier.
“The CIA asked me about controlling the climate – this is why we should worry”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/17/cia-controlling-climate-geoengineering-climate-change
Nice to see you, OhioBarbarian! Lots to read here lately – and when it all gets you down, thought you might like a quick looksee at last night’s cricket game in the Cake Tin at Wellington via Twitter:
http://www.blackcaps.co.nz/news-items/an-eight-wicket-win-as-told-by-you
‘An eight wicket win’ just means the kiwis won with eight men waiting to bat in their innings. (Eleven on a side.)Poor England hasn’t been doing so well this year. An ODI is a one day game, with two short innings only. (Test matches go four innings and five days.) New Zealand have won all their ODI matches so far. At the end of the month they play Australia in Auckland, who are having matches along with cyclones on their side of the Big Pond at present.
I think cricket is why I tend to think internationally on politics and such. It’s sort of a ‘lift up thine eyes to the hills whence cometh thy help’ sort of thingie. McCullum did that hitting seven sixes (home runs) in his 19 bashes with the bat before he got out.
wow, juliania: that’s a *Storify*! (telling the story by way of tweets and instagrams.) fantastic! fun that the kiwis rock and rolled!
i’m a gonna go try to get into fdl again. site seems kaput again for now….
you may be interested in the stein interviews; i confess i haven’t watched yet.
Just saw your post of the first one – mostly bio as he does for folk he has a series on. I hope in the next one she’ll comment on her view of the 2012 campaign. Might have a few interesting disclosures on that. The path she sketched for herself, going from one stymied activism arena to the next, would indicate she might be ready for something different this time around. She was discarding one arena after another, as she reports it, to search for one in which she could make a difference. (Aren’t we all?)
thank you for the hints as to what’s on past part I, juliania. and i’ll come back soon on your other comments on other threads.
mark mafr: given that i’d tried to access a site called ‘theRedNation.org’ in order to try to prep for a post on the american indian movement in ABQ hosting events, and seemingly needing to post a few of my bona fides past *not* being a first american, and feeling like an utter jerk that i may have needed to do so…
it occurred to me that given that it’s impossible to show that one isn’t anti-semitic, and i really didn’t care to gargle on about my early history as a zionist shiksa with czeckoslovakinan jewish godparents who’d fled nazi germany, etc., all i can say to you is: believe what you will about my bias, anti-semitism (i assume the same would hold for jewish dissenters against the current israeli govt, etc. i believe you’ve just said good-bye, and if so..okey dokey, then. it may be your bias is relevant as well.
Just have to update on the cricket – Afghanistan is playing Sri Lanka in another one of my home towns, Dunedin, right now. Here’s a comment:
“Rob: “I’m in a dilemma here, as an England supporter I want SL to crush Afghanistan to make our progress slightly less stressful. However, as a true romantic cricket lover I would love to see the Afghanis post 300 and make a game of it. On the whole I think that sentiment wins. Come on Afghanistan”
If the Southerlies hadn’t blown me back north, I’d be out there cheering for Afghanistan too. They’re 140 for three right now, 30th over (around).
my goodness, you’re right about the global flavors in cricket. :)
Well, yesterday in Dunedin again, it was a ‘duel to the death’ between Scotland and Afghanistan (England having pulled up their socks and overcome defeat). Scotland and Afghanistan are referred to as ‘minnows’, not being part of the upper upper echelon – but comments at cricinfo.com said this was the best World Cup match played so far, so there.
“…The Scottish flags are out, the Afghans are chanting. Dunedin is rumbling. The World Cup has caught fire!…”
Forgot to say – Afghanistan won this time!
i’ll bet the dueling nations’ bands produced some kind of hideous cacophony, though. :) do the scots play in kilts?
(glad you’re enjoying it all, juliania. far more enjoyable than knowing the brinksmanship that’s afoot in soooo many venues.)
Dueling nations are doomed; for the Big FOOL’S Big MidE. widening and escalating Eurasian conflagration:
https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/potus1.jpg?w=420&h=316&crop=1
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Pete+Seeger+The+Big+Muddy+lyrics
how incredibly apropos, bruce. given the history of the song, it’s surprising that it hadn’t rung a bell for me. thanks.
It’s a shame that FDL crashed today the same day that Marcia Clark stated ” He Did It” referring to DT the Boston Marathon Bomber. It would have been interesting to watch the Jarharists, Fan Girls and assorted kooks at the Boston Bombing News diary moan and rend their garments as their many theories were buried by three words. I doubt they will be down long as new theories are hatched and their fantasies grow more paranoid and demented.
I hope the prosecution will at least present the basic and damning evidence in this case or the quackery will never end.
ha; i see you enjoy a bit of schadenfreude as much as i do myself from time to time. ;) but yikes, today was the one day in a month that both my.fdl and the main page actually worked for me. a least in so far as getting in; i hadn’t tried to click into a diary yet, or to comment.
but here, there are both the versions, from both tabs; the first one is mason in blue. dunno if they’d seen that news yet, but lauraw has (i zipped to the bottom of the comments as ever).
http://firedoglake.com/2015/03/04/over-easy-opening-statements-today-in-boston-bombing-case/
http://my.firedoglake.com/blog/2015/03/01/boston-bombing-news-the-opening-statements-what-to-expect/
wait, these were in opening statements his attorney said this? i’d thought they were trying both brothers. there trials must have been separate.
Thanks, WD I got through to Masons post and only eCAN seemed to grasping onto her wild theories. I thought this statement might disrupt the trial but it is proceeding so the jury and everyone else is seeing the evidence and mayhem caused by this punk.
I think DT will be sentenced to death which may be the appropriate for the crime but I hope, after he spends years on death row, he is spared and gets LWOP.
I also think that it may be best that EF Beale died before this confession and was spared the embarrassment of the facts, I liked the old fool.
good-o, then. lauraw signed off to go and grieve, so…you may be right. i dunno what that meant, really. i’d sorta thought both brothers wee on trial, but apparently the D one was now. and i liked ef beall, too, when he wasn’t drivin’ me crazy. ;)
but fancy dedicating some major portion of your life to following one case, ignoring so much else. on this i’ll claim apatheism, given that the one piece of evidence, the ‘treatise’ in a boat, seemed just too silly to imagine. but then, i’m an apatheist about the twin towers 9/11 being an inside job; seems like that’d take extreme devotion to parse, study, compare, believe or not believe ‘experts’, tra la la…then come to some definite conclusion. i just don’t think it’s worth it, at least for myownself. too many other things happening on the ground to second- or third-hand report on.
anyhoo, hope you’re well.(i’ve spent my laptop time with the most odious not-so-reverend franklin graham and his anti-muslim bilge-spewing for the past two days.) cranky as hell, i be.
DT is on trial, TT was killed in the Watertown shootout and you can’t try a dead man but the defense is trying to resurrect him as the monster that is responsible for the bombing. Its a desperate attempt to save DT’s life and I doubt the jury will buy it but that’s their job and duty as the defense.
I avoid dwelling on zealots such as Franklin Graham. I have a number of family members coming to town this month who are just as noxious so I understand your odious sentiment.
‘ya can’t try a dead man’. that reminds me that with most all of the ‘killed by police’ cases, the po po kindly provide information as to why the dead deserved to die. they are then tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion, which adds to the fact that *if* cops are ever tried, or *if* the doj ever investigates, they are deemed to have done the right thing in dispatching said worthless ____ (fill in the blank).
ack; i wouldn’t have spent a minute with graham save for the fact that he may have contributed to the murder of the students killed at chapel hill. perhaps ‘seems to have’ would be more accurate.
i’m just writing it up in hopes that it will alleviate some of my rage, is all.
I’m sure you can make a convincing connection to intolerance being spread by Graham and his ilk but this killer was an atheist so that connection may be tenuous at best.
I would recommend looking at Jerry Falwell the Islamophobe and his BFF John Kiriakou the CIA killer and kidnapper extraordinaire but making that connection would probably get you burned and banned from FDL.
Thanks for those links to Boston stuff, wendye, and apologies for too many posts in a row here. The Chechen links with CIA aspect have always fascinated me, plus FBI nastinesses – I wonder how much of that will be brought out. Government push on poor Ukraine, all of that murk. So much more there that will take long to know perhaps.
I wish you and all dedicated news providers strength in these upheavals. Have your shipmates tie you to the mast. . .
you may be right, peter, in that the killer was an atheist. i suppose it depends on whose version of what he posted on his facebook page, and what the younger sister took from her encounters with him, etc. for now, i’ll add’ location, location, location!’ and timing as strengthening the counterpunch author’s take on it, and check out his secondary sources as well.
gonna have to breeze by your ‘fallwell and kiriakou’ references, although i will say that a newbie at fdl asked a few questions on one kiriakou thread, and was trounced for his questions, called troll, etc. i don’t care for that much, as where we learn and *can* sharpen our knowledge and argument is in the discussion of issues/icons/sacred cows, imo.
juliania: welcome. you’ll likely find my.fdl down still, but i was confused that DT’s attorney said that he’d done it in her opening statement. it would have seemed very strange, unless she were trying to say that his brother led him to do it (if i’m getting what wayoutwest said).
i collected a lot of the back and forth conversations between ctuttle and other peeps on threads, save a lot, but this sorta epitomized the most (ahem) surprising (sorta) news:
CTuttle
In response to cmaukonen @ 31 (show text)
It’s still being worked out, but, we’ll be paring down most, if not all the subsidary sites like News and possibly myFDL.! It’s not set in stone yet tho.!
Juliania,
I read your comment at Over Easy and wondered if you read the defense team and DT’s statement a few weeks ago about how this kind of conspiracy theories could damage their ability to save DT’s life?
If you read the opening statement by Judy Clarke, which can be taken as DT’s words, he and his brother are responsible for the bombing, no one else was involved.
I do agree that there was sordid behavior but most of it came from some of the commenters at Boston Bombing News and other Jarharist sites, trying to discredit victims and disappear victims and a dead child is certainly sordid.
WD, I’ll look forward to your Graham piece it has important free speech implications just as the Charlie Hebdo tragedy did. We do have to be tolerant, without supporting, these opportunists and countering them is very difficult.
I didn’t really think you would take on the Celebrity Cult and groupthink at FDL even if free speech and facts are discouraged there.
i expect you will be mightily disappointed then, peter. i have and had an entirely different perspective than you, it seems. the discussion went fairly well at my.fdl, but there indeed were a few dissenters to my position, as so very often occurs here at café babylon.
otoh, i seem to do a good job at pissing off most authors and commenters here. ;) as kurt vonnegut was wont to say: “…and so it goes…” i blog my own honesty, and it’s not very…popular, let’s say.
https://cafe-babylon.net/2015/02/06/abu-ghraib-and-the-hebdo-cartoons/
dunno about the graham piece; life has thrown me a few curves just now. but perhaps.
I’m not sure what discussion at FDL you refer to and I was only referring to the Kiriakou Cult. To bad about the Graham piece, I hope you get to it later.
please forgive me for misinterpreting, wayoutwest. as you’d mentioned “… free speech implications just as the Charlie Hebdo tragedy did”, i’d assumed you’d meant that for you, that was all a free speech issue, as so very many did. and i wanted to show you what my take on it was, clearly believing that you would dissent. sorry to be so reflexive. what i meant by the discussion on it at fdl was: i reckoned i would get quite an ass-kickin’, but it wasn’t altogether so; i was relieved, i guess.
as for kiriakou, just before he went to prison, i stuck up amy goodman’s interview with him on a post at my.fdl. several of the commentariat (esp. MSPB watch, did their best to set me straight. among other points was that he’d never actually apologized, but several others i’m fuzzy about.
but when i saw the newbie get trounced on the piece of kevin’s i’d mentioned, i didn’t weigh in (once again) on calling questioners or dissenters ‘trolls’. partially cuz i’m tired of doing so, and partially because i’ve been moderated by kevin and the other mods plenty for my pains. and you’re right: i don’t want to get booted out of there; it’s a major megaphone for my signal boosting all the direct actions going on now, and of course other issues important to me as well. if they do close the readers diaries, i really may have to look at Kos again (shudder). salon doesn’t even seem to have a soap box any longer. who knew?
lol on rejecting cult celebrities, though. yes, from the big greens, and especially bill mckibben, to more recently gg and snowden, my disenchantment has caused some stress to readers here.
the biggest real life curve got pretty much sorted by last night, so i may keep workin’ on the graham piece on my breaks today, but it of course jousts with all the other things to write about: especially in the killed by police category. :) you’d laugh at all the links i grab and store for…later.
I understand that you have to pick your fights and maintain your access to a forum to discuss them. It was a mistake to think that most internet blogs were not authoritarian private businesses and were communitarian forums.
I also think we are seeing the beginning of the end of what was a truly freeform platform for expression with all its glaring faults and wonderful freedom.
What I see now is a clannish almost tribal division and not just at FDL, where dissent, even fact based dissent, is rejected using the lowest forms of online behavior.
As I said before we need to exercise tolerance even when dealing with those who are zealots and attack their ideas not their persons. I fail often to maintain this ideal but continue to try to do better.
It’s sad looking back at comment threads from six or eight years ago at FDL and seeing the many user-names that no longer contribute, where did they go?
well, i at least *believe* i have to pick my fights, partly because blogging is one thing i can still do for various movements, but as my short term memory gets weaker and..shorter, purdy soon they’ll laugh me off the tubez in any event. ;)
oy do i hear you on exercising more care not to attack persons, but ideas: i’ve gotten a bit snippy with a couple folks recently, and in the blue meanie times kinda regret it. like the woman who continually claims: ‘occupy, blackLivesMatter, protests, are just distractions! they have no demands’, yada yada. it gets silly responding over and over…
yes, these are businesses, a fact some tend to forget. i remember welsh terrier, perhaps, saying about someone’s banning or something: “wait, isn’t this supposed to be a democracy?” ha ha.
but cripes, when i go to access a few of mine from even a couple o three years ago, most would have say, 200 or so comments, and when i spin down the list i so often ask myself that question: ‘where did they go?’ some i know, were banned, some left in disgust, some in boredom, i reckon, seeing that blogging hadn’t change the world in the right ways.
parenthetically, i’ve stopped commenting at ian welsh’s place, seeing that he hates anyone disagreeing with him, and i often do. i dunno, peter, all of fdl is down today now, though my.fdl was up for a little bit. one has to wonder if or when they do get it working, how many will go back past the front-page commentariat who live for it, seemingly. i’m especially frustrated as i’d been an emissary from a talented techie who’d volunteered to help them figure out what’s going on, and he was summarily refused. ah, well, there may be reasons for that i haven’t thought through, but jeez.
anyhoo, mr. wd had to leave for the day, so our 2-person tasks are on hold. i’m trying to write up the Rev Frank stuff.
Thanks for your comment, wayoutwest – I’m still having trouble going to the myfdl portions of fdl, so I can’t research my comment at overeasy – was it when I questioned whether Djokhar knew the extent of his brother’s plan – I was still thinking he may have thought it part of a faked terror exercise. I did get into the Boston thread briefly this morning, and now no longer consider that likely. Unable to comment or read comments other than whoever’s (Jane’s?) diary that was, and then the link to the opening statement for the defense, which indeed goes to your conclusions.
I am casting back to the first bombing of the twin towers – that was a comparable case, it seems to me, but I will have to go look up the details. Wasn’t life imprisonment the result of that, even with a conviction?
I’m a bit puzzled why any sort of speculation on what happened would harm the case. The stupid protests are another matter entirely. I don’t think anyone who has been offering theories about it, even if the theories are incorrect, are responsible for the behavior of others. The hope has always been for a fair trial, presumption of innocence, and avoidance of that death penalty charge.
Sorry to clutter you up here, wendye, if you don’t want this matter pursued. I can’t comment at fdl, or I would have done so there.
no, no; this is an open menu, so ‘clutter’ is welcome. in fact, just today i was musing about how you may drop a comment or four off, then not come back for answers to them. have you checked your mailbox lately, or had your sons check it? ;)
wendye, thanks for your info on fdl as per CTuttle. That’s what seemed to happen to me this morning, was able to log in and post a brief comment at the ‘Putin eats your children’ then access the Boston thread (rats, should have read comments before linking to defense statement.) After that blooey except for front page. So, if they are paring down, very sad indeed.
On a lighter front, still cricket occupying my followthrough somewhat as nations clashing in the sports arena is a relief from bombs dropping. Selma’s 50th – my brotherinlaw was at the original with MLK, and I remember his fresh-from-the-event narration. Still tingles my spine. Obama’s appearance – that man has no shame.
Gardens!
ha! that was one of my comments to you that i’d hoped you would see: once you’re logged in here, check the ‘remember me’ box. recently at fdl logging in is difficult to impossible, but usually trying on a front page diary is a bit more successful. really, it’s all very absurd that it isn’t fixed after 5 weeks.
nope, obama has no shame, and i was glad that lambert strether tasked him for his crap verbiage. just another bag of wind from the bloviator, i reckon. i stuck in a couple of BAR links to show why his passivity was utter rubbish; he could be saving lies, especially black, reducing the prison population, creating good jobs, and offering reparations to many people in many categories if he prosecuted wall street criminals. bah.
glad the cricket is fun; me, i’m spending the day mending and patching, now that i unearthed the sewing machine from its piles of wampeters, foma, and granfalloons.
Juliania
I could enjoy a little schadenfreude after this fourth and very public confession to the bombing but there are no winners in this tragedy only losers. Being proven correct on this first day of the trial may provide me with some personal satisfaction but I doubt anyone will be offering apologies to me and much more importantly to the victims that were neglected and even attacked by the True Believers at the BBN diaries.
Judy Clark’s statement ” It was him” should end the fantasies but it won’t, she didn’t say “it was him, but or it was him, and”, grasping at straws is understandable after a year of believing in a false narrative. There have been security drills at every Boston Marathon since 9/11 and probably before that but there is no evidence that any involved planting actual bombs as you suggest or even fake bombs.
DT and his defense team made it very clear they did not want to be associated with any of the Jarharist cults that appeared on the web after the bombing including the one at FDL There are good reasons for this shunning of fantasies and evidence free speculation. The jury pool was exposed to and possibly enraged but this parade of nonsense and disrespect for the victims.
In the US a fair trial is mostly about money and lawyers which DT has the most and best possible. The presumption of innocence is a procedural and institutional protection of the innocent, The prosecution certainly doesn’t presume innocence in a trial and the defense in this case obviously knew their client was guilty. The jury can think almost anything they want but must agree to follow the evidence in making their decision.
I do agree with you about the death penalty but we have the death penalty and DT is the pretty-boy cold blooded killer most deserving of that penalty. I think it is best that he is sentenced to death and then after years on death row his sentence is commuted to LWOP. This will somewhat satisfy both sides of the divide over this form of punishment.
Well, wendye, to immediately enlighten from the unenlightened (as most assuredly I am on many issues, not least your recent comment about checking mail) – today I trekked, and it’s a lucky thing I did as once opened our local package boxes down at the town hall cleverly refuse to retract – nothing for it but my trundler to take on double duty – John Henry has nothing on me! It all fit, or I should say stacked – fortunately I went light on groceries this time around, but where is Samson when you need him? (or something). You shouldna, and snail mail shall follow when I catch my breath. My oh my oh my good gracious me. . .
wayoutwest, to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting with my question that a drill was prepared in such a manner, but only that the younger brother might have thought it was a drill. That was before he through his attorney acknowledged the writing in the boat to be his, so that new fact did change my mind on that query. You seem very eager to lump such questions in with the very sordid suggestions about fake injuries, which I agree are precisely that – sordid and hokey.
I would never expect a prosecuting attorney to assume innocence – that too is hokey. But presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law used to be a marker for the press, and it has been woefully lacking in this case.
Nobody’s right in such a tragedy; but if schadenfreude is your bailiwick, that’s fine.
oh, goodness; i’d forgotten to consider that sending usps ‘book rate’ (almost affordable) would mean that you’d need to carry the box. i hadn’t realized it was such a far trek, but at least it was trek day. :) enjoy; it’s just some bits and bobs i thought you might enjoy. love to you.
Hey, wendye – the force was with me! They are simply beautiful, and I will write. This morning on my computer trek I came across the following link at a counterpunch article on Obama channelling Reagan- thought you might find it an interesting refresher. The link is a short* (heh) account of the 2002 attempted coup. (I loved the ‘insult to the devil’ remark.)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/venezuelas-election-provides-opportunity-for-washington-to-change-course/#U.S.%20Support%20for%20the%20Coup
*Oops, my link is almost longer than the piece! Hope it works.
feel free to email if writing is as hard for you as it is for me now; i have to practice for a bit on scratch paper ahead of time. :) ooh, yes; mark weisbrot has done some fine reporting on VZ, even for the guardian, believe it or not, but just lately he’s been busy with greece and other areas. thank you. i’m just about to post my VZ piece; i think it needs an editor, though. as ever.
Just stumbled on this in twitter
#WeRiseIL
Jan Rodolfo, RN @NurseJanIAm · 30m30 minutes ago
Fighting against Gov Rauner in Springfield, IL! #weriseil
(IL recently elected a gazillionaire R governor who is naturally proposing austerity for non-gazillionaires – this is about that, seems like a variety of groups represented among the protestors, state Dems tweeted approval, but this may just be an opportunistic moment. Don’t know more about it)
slow here; i’m just now getting that this wasn’t a police brutality protest.
i guess i didn’t even know the gov’s name…but i will now. Gazillionaire Rauner. thanks, marym. how do you get into fdl so often? magic or diligence?
Paging nonquixote: This rotunda protest thing seems to be catching on.
Charlie Albanetti @calbanetti · 5h5 hours ago
Banners listing how much $ every school district in NY is owed. #WeCantWait #WeRise #Parade4Ed
marym,
sunny afternoon and the kids/adults have taken to marching, this afternoon to the “governor’s ” mansion going on now. I’m three hours north so they are in shirtsleeves today. All the best.
WI Unions suing the state over Right to repress worker legislation which passed last week.
Walker’s budget cuts all senior health and home care services to replace them in 2-3 years with one large national insurance program that has not even begun to be detailed. Elderly won’t live that long to see it in many cases and are p-oed and saying so as loud as they can
https://twitter.com/bluecheddar1
Hope I didn’t screw up with linking the picture of the student with the sign. Younger than my daughter. Proud of these HS students who took to the streets today and stopped traffic and have a clearly defined goal, which is enough is enough.
not a bit; that’s one of the tweaks i paid for an upgrade for. as i said, they made me cry. fifth day of protests for tony robinson, eh? so many lovely pictures of him surfacing on his hashtag.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/tonyrobinson?src=hash
another recent killing by police was in atlanta, or at least georgia. a mentally ill young man was runnin’ around naked in the streets, and they…shot him dead. of course, they say ‘he advanced on police’ or some such bullshit, but clearly he wasn’t armed, and hadn’t been hoping for ‘suicide by cop’
it’s gotta stop. ABQ anti-police brutality activists will hold a ‘peoples’ tribunal’ soon. wanna bet the wonderful bgrothu will be there?
Was trying to figure out how to link to this picture, duh, I think i have it. Old dog syndrome here. ;)
FDL running on all four cylinders for the moment and the clothing sales spammer is on the board, so back to normal maybe?
pffft. maybe, but that no one has removed the spams indicates…something. Oh! that my.fdl has no mods. well, today just for kicks i tried getting in via chrome, not that a browser ever changed much. but there i was! my.fdl! trouble was, nothing was accessible. pfffft.
i reckon it to be just a waste of time posting there until…it’s been viable for a bit. imagine being a slave to tryin’ to get in *just in case* folks could access the place to comment. dunno how to be polite about it really. sorry. ;)
Yes sad at FDL really, was sort of joking with the spammer on the list. FDL had their hay-day before we got usable internet connections out in the sticks here.
They’re being horribly hacked via NSA; links:
‘Which brings us to the laughing stock State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki became yesterday when she claimed [VIDEO] in response to Maduro’s accusations: ‘
Video link brings this:
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/04/02/watch-15-year-old-bull-city-residents-video-of-church-members-opposing-amendment-one/
then, ‘The Associated Press reporter, Matt Lee, immediately jumped in with quite reasonable incredulity saying “I’m sorry. Whoah, whoah, whoah. The US has a long-standing practice of not promoting [coups] – how long-standing would you say?” ‘
Matt Lee link brings this: http://firedoglake.com/APDiploWriter
All of which if switched to, bring up FULL-PAGERoyall Caribbean Cruise and Jeter Gin Pop-up advertisements!
SNAFUBAR!!
ah, so you ballast the ‘hacked by the nsa’ theory, too? interesting.
I’m beginning to wonder if the FDL fiasco is not an intentional ploy to cleanse the site of inconvenient voices and prepare the way for the Democrat operatives to press the coming, ‘We Love Hillary’ even with her warts election cycle tripe.
Comments are down to near zero and the pop-up ads are obviously designed to harass readers, it’s interesting that they started with pleas for money at the beginning of this so called attack.
I doubt that any IT team could be this incompetent, and still be employed or that there would be no real explanation of the actual attacks the site is experiencing.
interesting theory, peter. i hadn’t seen any pleas for money this time, but last time, yes indeed.
it would be a serious disconnect for me if in the upcoming election cycle that the front page were a dem veal pen again, given some of the posts over the past year. i do remember arguing with someone a few months ago that the sole ‘third-party’ candidate kevin g seemed to have been ‘allowed’ to interview was jill stein, though.
if i were the nsa, i’d target counterpunch, myself. and/or BAR, a few other dissident sites, even wsws.org. oh! like dissidentvoice.org, and others far more radically leftist. hell’s bells: RT, for that matter. or TRNN and Telesur.
i got to wondering if you had i n mind *whose* voices might be silenced, wayoutwest? i just looked into the mothership page and saw that (as ever) the late night chat room has 115 comments. is it somewhat of a *klewe* that peeps can get in and comment at night?
at the moment, my.fdl appears functional, although hilariously the six duncan spams are still extant. ;)
but boy, howdy, on the need for expert IT help. i keep seeing messages that they are switching servers; dunno that it would necessarily help from what i’ve heard.
When I read a comment at FDL that an experienced IT person had offered free help with their problems and was rejected I began to wonder. Not much of a theory but that incident along with your mention that many old diarists were no longer allowed to post was fuel for more speculation.
There is a small group of people at FDL who attack the Democrat operatives whenever they try to sell their snake oil and they could be a target but that idea is just speculation. The late night chat group seems to be some of the chosen ones who are hanging on while the others are fading away.
er…can you remember who’d said that about free help being rejected? i ask because i have a keen interest in that remark. srsly.
Sorry I don’t recall who but it was during a discussion with CTut about the problems with the FDL systems.
if he’d been the one who’d said it, i *might* understand that the problem is larger than i’d thought. i’ll email when i have some breathing space, and if anyone else wants in, let me know. i’m hesitant to talk about it here.
and cuz i can, and i need to lighten the mood.
DK ’bout the Thunderbirds; but for your Coyote angel, Ola! Your avatar’s Sombrero Galaxy into the infrared:
it is indeed the colorized sombero. about a third of the photo montages in our house came from the hubble; i kept a lot of cosmic images on my posterous site. but along with them, i kept what mr. wd and i always had reckoned my own angel would look like: just like amarante’s. ;) “i don’t do miracles”, he said, “i just give advice.” ;)
Robert Redford does (Milagro Beanfield) WAR! Things ARES Getting desperate:
http://www.sott.net/article/293356-William-Shatner-steals-space-shuttle-Enterprise-to-look-for-reborn-Leonard-Nimoy
But there’s hope in the streets for those of US who can make it to DC on the 21st :
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/calls-to-action/8667-on-march-21-be-in-washington-be-in-the-street
Take a left at the equinox and straight on to the American SPRING –
that was a fun shatner piece; thanks for the smile. here’s hoping for washington war protest; looks like they could use more sustainers’. medea benjamin has been writin’ up a storm lately, my goodness.
yes, the seeds have been planted, only needing rain and more light, more people listening for the music in the air to ring their inner chimes, get them dancin’. spring!
Well, I’ve also beat up on International A.N.S.W.E.R. and UFPJ to again coalesce on DC:
no comprende ‘beat up’, bruce.
do i long in vain for the day when you can contribute to ‘a conversation’, bruce? *if* my.fdl will be jettisoned soon in the shuffle, i’ll hope for that even more.
Had to threaten ANSWER and UFPJ with non-attendance back in 9/05 to stop feuding between the groups and get together on the 24th of that month in D.C., in order to intimidate W’s jack-booted palace guard surrounding his Whitey House that day. May they ‘band’ back together with WorldCan’tWait again this coming 3/21 to confront BS (Bush Shadow) 0bummer.
Maybe this goes a bit with your sombrero, wendye, and a fitting comment on the angel aspect – my youngest son loves this group (closest I can get to the music of the age, but I’m learning.)
thanks for fleshing out your thinking, bruce. they did mention ‘create your own event’, but holy hell. it would be so much better if a dozen cities minimum had already been organized. cripes, given the economy, how many would even be *able* to travel even a few hundred miles, let alone to deecee? (i had to look up ufpj, oy.)
oooooh, i like them, too, juliania. and the graphics in that are downright wonderful! your son has good taste. is he still playing the dij? whenever i play xavier rudd i think of him. (chosen arbitrarily)
Box Turtle the science lady at FDL is trying to sell Monsanto GMOs as not so bad and really somewhat good and useful. Apples that don’t spoil and veggies that can be shipped to Mars without spoilage, how wonderful and profitable.
She even brings up the golden rain of Golden Rice that will save the poor rubes of the world from their failure to compete in the Capitalist marketplace.
I especially like how she talks down to those who don’t swallow the corporate science hogwash, they just don’t understand and need educating.
lol. i’d started reading that when i finally got in at about ten. isn’t boxturtle a dude? no matter; something about ‘good gmo’s’, broke me up. er…i have a whole category here with some of the things i’ve written over the years.
https://cafe-babylon.net/category/gmos-genetically-modified-organisms/page/2/
the french study *may* have been debunked, but there’s plenty of other info that’s solid. funny, though, i was just working on a new Open Menu, although i always include a link to the last ones.
you made me think of the npr program ‘ask doctor science. he’s not a real doctor’. ;) ;) ;)
okay, i got into fdl long enough to read box turtle’s OP, and yes, he’s male, as evidenced by his ‘men and women are different’ examples. i found them hilarious for certain, but among other things he is a very binary thinker. ‘the left’, ‘the right’, male v. female (“we’re wired differently”), making me wonder if he believes the crap science ‘this is how a republican brain works v. a democrat’s” horsehocky. (fMRIs don’t prove causality, in any event.
there are more funny things, but no one on the thread seemed to grasp the difference (and it’s major) between genetically modified crops or fish, for instance, and hybrids (in which no seeds can be replanted either, thus are dangerous long-term) which entail allowing species to cross-pollinate. that is what norman borlog did for africa: created a short-stemmed wheat which didn’t blow over in the wind, but at who knows what long-term costs to farmers? i really don’t know how it played out.
this explains a bit of it. but both cargill and monsanto have invested heavily in ukraine, and as i understand it, partly to create hybrid crops, non-gmo’s, since many euro nations simply won’t allow gmo imports. but they definitely are not the same thing, and no one objected to that bullshit for a minute.
http://aquaponicfun.com/general/gmo-vs-hybrids/