This year’s glorious conference is about ‘Responsive & Responsible Leadership (batteries not included)’, and boy, howdy, are we working to protect the Rabble Class, because if we don’t…y’all just might revolt globally, and then where would we be? But seriously, folks: we know what’s best for you, and we’re here to show you why and how technology is the global wave of the future, including artificial intelligence and IT and universal connectivity, and the many sectors that not only require is to run efficiently, but will enhance the lives of even small farmers. Oh, I forgot: it will lead to more leisure time, as well. Win-win, we call it.
First, I want to mention that some disapproving cretin named Gerald Celente was on that goddammed Roosian-funded station actually mocking the participants who engage in a simulation of a refugee’s experience, where Davos attendees crawl on their hands and knees and pretend to flee from advancing armies.
Fuxsake, it’s one of our most popular events every year.! Then the jerk had the effrontery to say:
“Well, this is a camp for billionaires, and they are acting like they are little campers. These are the kind of people that in the US they put ‘no bullying zones’ in school, as though it is going to stop things. And it is cowardly of them, as well, because none of them talk about the cause and effect of what is causing the great refugee crisis. It couldn’t be because of the destruction of Iraq. No, that has nothing to do with it – that has killed over a million people. It has nothing to do with the destruction of Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. It has nothing to do with the US, NATO, and its coalition of the killing, slaughtering people throughout Syria and forcing them to leave their homes…”
“Why did they [refugees] flee? It couldn’t be because of President Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace of crap prize winner, decided that [Muammar] Gaddafi has to go – along with NATO and other countries. They are the ones that caused this crisis. You have these little billionaires with bad attitudes and a lot of money playing in their billionaires’ club. Let’s play! And it is according to the New York Times, one of the most notable performances of this charade.”
Well, harrrumph to detractors. Did he create the world in six days as we did?
But let’s take a look at the ways we care about fancial wealth disparity; there are hordes of ideas as to how to fix it.
(Lagarde is suggesting wealth re-distribution? others? rising tides raise all boats.) hmmmm.
as to war and peace: we care harder©…
but oy, we have your backs on the Fourth Industrial Revolution that’s afoot, and how you should respond (a snippet):
“In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.
At the same time, as the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have pointed out, the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to disrupt labor markets. As automation substitutes for labor across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labor. On the other hand, it is also possible that the displacement of workers by technology will, in aggregate, result in a net increase in safe and rewarding jobs.”
As to ‘Which technologies could most powerfully transform the lives of smallholder farmers?, read all five, and see if you don’t agree that IT connectivity isn’t a major solution to world hunger. You can also read:
How can satellite technology help African farmers?
70% of Africans make a living through agriculture, and technology could transform their world
How technology is changing farming
One great session was ‘A Basic Income for All: Dream or Delusion?’, and yes, we agree that the devil’s in the details. But as the global labour force is changing radically, one of these schemes might obviate the need for national safety nets, and you can always trust your life to the oligarchs who serve you.
A few other speeches from the Twittersphere; take your pick.
see how sensitively egalitarian we really are; we feel yer pain! (first ©, wm j. clinton)?
We dug up Henry, and asked him to speak!
my best love, kisses, and $ to you, Klaus von Schwab.
unknown blogger, alter ego of von Schwabbie here…
‘WEF 201’7 on twitter; have fun; add yer own…choices.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
no takers? oh, well; i poked around a bit more to see what the Masters of the Universe have in store for us:
‘WEF 2017: Promoting Global Financial Inclusion’
“The goal of this project is to identify and shape the highest-potential opportunities to accelerate financial inclusion through public-private collaboration at national, regional, and global levels. Through in-country work streams, the project aims to make demonstrable progress in building cash-lite ecosystems through low-cost digital payments, enabling data-driven underwriting and distribution models to deliver affordable, multi-product offerings to lower-income customers worldwide. These offerings must be centered on consumer needs to ensure adoption, and can include payments, savings, credit, and insurance, among others.
Utilizing regional and global platforms to facilitate thought leadership and knowledge exchange between public and private sector leaders will be key to the success of this project.”
see narenda modi, for instance. note the ‘partners’ on the right sidebar. and “pierre”:
““Secrets are lies; sharing is caring; privacy is theft.” So run the three Orwellian aphorisms at the heart of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle, whose film version – starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks – will arrive in cinemas this spring. Given that the story centres on an omnipotent hybrid of Google, Twitter and Facebook, and asks exacting questions about their shared vision of the future, the timing is perfect – chiming with rising angst about the digital giants’ imperial approach to information, and the sense that their power and recklessness is now having so-called real-world impacts, and huge ones at that. Such, perhaps, is the zeitgeist of early 2017: tech-fear fusing with terror about Donald Trump and Brexit, leaving millions of us in a state of twitchy anxiety.
At the heart of the novel and film is the Circle corporation, whose logo suggests a stylised panopticon, and whose leaders want to shape the world in the image of their Californian HQ. There, privacy and autonomy count for almost nothing. Under a veneer of feelgoodism, employees are complicit in their own constant monitoring and a system of endless appraisal by their peers, who feed into a system called Participation Rank – or PartiRank, for short.”
Pierre Omidyar and friend contribute $27 million to AI research (in the public interest, of course.)
“lacking a moral compass.” well, shit maybe if the world britelites at Davos would turn their helios-like gaze to the brave new world called “ethics,” they surely could continue their 3-d printing of fancy slogans & jargon laden w/buzzwords like (to quote): inclusion, public-private, collaboration, in-country work streams, cash-lite ecosystems, data-driven, platform, thought leadership. probably none that could top time-tested gems like, “first, do no harm.” or, top of the list, “thou shalt not kill.”
next year, they probably need more Ted-talk style talks on “infusing your inclusive, public-private working in country streaming thought leadership collaborative platform” w/a “‘moral compass.'” Bono will feel better if they do.
But really, who could doubt that a huge hurdle to small farmers in africa is their lack of access to PayPal? go back to Russia you amoral Luddite! next year’s Davos ethics talk will be on this moral imperative: connecting global ag workers. “Hello, my name is Pierre Omidyar. I am your friend. a friend w/a newly-minted conscience. give me your crops and i’ll give you this shiny plastic card. see how much better it is to trade thru me than directly amongst yourselves? oh, you don’t? well, let me introduce you to my friends at Africom.”
night.
great fusion; thanks. but didn’t bono write a song about that already, then off-shore the profits?
i like as part of the ‘how to adapt to the revolution: “do stuff machines can’t do, and update your ‘skillset’ every five years. i remember stick up a bill gates tweet featuring an african woman in her crop field…checking her smart phone. sure, that’s all it takes! and some micro-loans, micro-insurance, and digital currency, and…you be nice!
looks as though there wasn’t a military coup yesterday, and that (cough) herr trumpet in fact is in the white house. i guess i hadn’t realized that the women’s march is today…. a wag on twitter noted that ‘yeppers, if only ya burn enough cars and smash enough windows, it will reverse T’s inauguration’.
blizzard here, brrrrr.
…hi wd
…Enjoyed watching Change of the Regime on Jan.20, 2017 as Mr.T became the 45th POTUS while WarCriminal Barack flew off to enjoy a luxurious, well provided for and legal/moral peril free and UnDone Justice POTUS status that USian WarCriminals evidently are entitled to based on The Rules of USian Exceptionalism. German, Japanese, Iraqi and Libyan WarCriminals plainly according to USian Empire historical conduct do not deserve or not given the same. The Big Lie conduct and hypocrisy of USian political ” leaders ” who are knowably war mongers and war criminals and first rank death dealers and USian Empire in plain sight.
…Too bad USians protesting Trump being in the WH as POTUS and wanting to now disrupt a Trump run WH are politically ignorant in ways that allow UniParty D’s and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to not feel the deserved heat for what the UniParty D’s been doing since 2012, 2008, 2006, 2004 and going back to 1992 or 1980.
…Misdirected protests being what they are as if DumShit D Party backers are not going to make the D’s change or will not what do they think they will get or gain going after Trump? Barack Obama deserved a non-stop out in front of the WH protest from mid 2009 onwards based on what his D run WH was doing and not doing. Where were all these limo burners and women protestors then?
…I got no horses rigged to Trump’s buggy being POTUS but Barack Obama by mid 2009 was a Very Big LetDown for me. Too bad so many / too many DumShit D’s hacks and zealots are so clueless. Failure to understand the fundamentals of political action and actions led to the defeat of what Hillary Clinton stood for and if her backers don’t or won’t see that being so then suffer more on the failed and failing politics they will.
…Ignorance has consequences.
..sta
yeah, it’s cynical of me to note how many folks’ inner antifascists have been released by Herr Comb-over’s election (apparent popular vote not-withstanding). i’d been slightly engaged w/ a discussion in another venue, as a friend at another site had given to all a video of jeremy scahill at revcom (i wasn’t familiar with that), but saying outright that scahill believes the whole damned system is illegitimate, and of course it is. “It’s a failed system. We have to look beyond it. Why else would he (scahill) be at a RevCom event?
revcom.us. that’s a commie revolution? #noFascistUSA, trump and pence? yeah, it’s gonna suck, but we’re told it’ll be orders of magnitude worse than now. might just be, and his cabinet picks are as big deplorable douchebags as he is (although he may be more overtly vulgar).
phooey, i fixed your typo; eee-crikey, i make ten times that many on every comment… ;-)
the D’s are injecting bucks into regrouping for the next cycle. wanna bet it will work? ;-) sorry i gotta go rest my eyes. maybe more later; be well as you can be. it’ll be a wild ride, no doubt, but T might get his choke collar jerked in ways he hasn’t yet imagined.
…hi wd
…thanx for that wordsmithing fail fix-it wd …this Jobs Apple I use to surf the net has a touchscreen keyboard which my big fat fingers seem to wander about too afar too often. Or could be Comment Demons who cause me to erase / re-compose and then only after posting a comment come across and see spelling, wording and sentence making errors. Or might be because I am doing kitchen work and meal time prep and trying to put together a comment at same time which is what happened with 11:33am I think ….🌞
…A gray foggy Saturday it is here in my neck of North America which Upper Midwest / The Great Plains somewhere east of the sun and west of the moon in the Land Of The Lakota… 🌞🌌🌛
…It is happily one day closer to Spring and being able once again to get outside and do some spring yard work, gardening and landscaping which for a old farm boy like me is as close as I now get to the old Earth swing around the sun farming the fields spring seasons I grew up with. I do miss those long ago days…seems a world now long ago and apart from where I am now…🌞
…My Companion likes it here in North America with the distinct 4 seasons and winter’s snow and cold temps. We lived in his native land for some years where I got a big taste of equatorial tropics year round weather and climate…Seemed it was always summer there which can be somewhat mesmerising …🌞
…I will give Trump six months to walk his talk and show his cards which I think is being fair…Trump has a big extended family as readily shown on Jan.20 and his wife very much reminded me of Jackie Kennedy …the Obama’s, the Clintons and both Schumer and Pelosi really need to step back, step down and just quietly go and stay away. Lots of USian militarism on display which with all the regalia and uniforms and martial music and marching is easy to like but it is essential to question and challenge virulent USian militarism as to what and why it is, does and represents.
…Chinese Jack Ma had recently remarked USian Empire militarism and warmongering is what has caused USian economy to go sideways and into a deep, long stall — not China stealing USian jobs — which seems to me to be an accurate stated viewpoint.
…I will keep hoping doing Atomic War will be kept off the agenda by Trump for which I will be thankful..🌞
…take care wd…thanx for letting me offload my political rantings and ravings here at cafe-b…only place I do so these days…I do try to behave … I do visit / read lots of comments at other sites but do not jump in …ZeroHedge is a real free fire zone for a wide range of dreadfully awful to sometimes amusing or at times informative comments any day of the week…The Saker site is always a good read for interesting and informative background comments…Naked Capitalism swings up and down it seems with lots of pro D tilting somedays and I still drop by ShadowProof now and then too.🌞
…🌞🏹
you’re in the dakotas then? why had i thought northwest, i wonder? oh, maybe your accent. j/k. i don’t even have those excuses for my typos. this crap keyboard fails to type unless i smack the keys hard, but then if i could read, i might notice, lol.
i dunno, but the guardian’s saying that herr T’s first EOs were to chop away at obamadontcare until it’s replaced, second was to announce missile shields against attacks from iran and north korea; might be the same old bombast, different nations as enemies. ‘patriot day’: no date given, but my stars. guess that’ll have some pushback. including from…me. god’s blood, that word gives me the willies. amerika first and only? fie on uber-nationalism; that’s a lot of what got us here, no? ‘exceptionalism’ in aid of a unipolar hegemony?
now he’s even makin’ friends with the intel community. did they give him the good word? ;-)
oh, jack may was at davos, but i didn’t play his talk, and saw today what the gist of it was. not that any of the MOTUs will listen. gotta scoot for now, amigo; and you’re welcome here.
I’m seeing lots of political continental blocks (in the geologic sense) in motion now. Davos overshadowed by Trump’s inauguration, the meeting of the European national party leaders in Koblenz, the black bloc action during the Inauguration festivities yesterday, the protests in US cities last night, and the massive Women’s Marches worldwide today. Also how the Senate Democrats played “Tickle me Donald” with the Mattis confirmation and the Kelly confirmation–giving Trump his Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security.
And today, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council in a vote asked that the three camps in Cannon Ball shut down while the environmental impact statement is in process. The Indigenous Environment Network agreed that that needed to happen so as to maintain solidarity across the entire Indian coalition that was brought together for the first time. My first take is that those groups are grokking that there will shortly be yuger battles to fight and strategically solidarity is more important than perseverance in provoking the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. Have not seen Ladonna Brave-Bull Allard’s take on this yet.
Despite the different organizations participating, it is important to look at the entire response to the Trump inaugural as part of the birth pangs of strange opposition coalition against trump that is somewhat akin to the US-Russia coalition (when John McCain wasn’t looking) in Syria.
Movements are not whomped up; they appear as part of the zeitgeist and all of the existing networks and organizations try to give form and momentum to them and grow them to a critical mass of political power. (Not any great theory, but my observation over 50 years.)
Yesterday’s black bloc action in DC was the first time I intuited that a deliberate diversity of tactics strategy was implicitly being pulled off in a disciplined and massive way. A squad of 500 that holds together through many confrontations with police and does what they plan to do without escalating the damage was a very interesting thing to see appear in the tweet stream. It reminded me of how Stokely Carmichael with his turn to Black Power and Huey Newton and the rise of the Black Panthers changed the debate in DC enough to get legislation and court cases that struck down de jure segregation in the South. This played over against Martin Luther King’s more “mature” and measured actions over five or six years. It also had the effect of having King become more publicly radical in his positions on war and poverty.
Today’s Womens march was temporarily awoke enough to draw people who had never protested or marched before to go, bring their moms, bring their neighbors and overwhelm the ability of the police to do anything but balance that with the form of parade permits and all of the folderol of “official marches”. Yes, mostly disappointed Clinton voters who see the gains they thought they had made in the Second Feminist Movement slipping away in aggressive bullying and sexual assault by men, and particularly the self-proclaimed “alt-right” bunch of men. Also they see the perpetuation of discrimination in all areas of life returning to institutions under male pressure. Trump is (or became) the symbol of both of those trends. The working class part of this reaction tends not to be white but service workers and nurses and other “women’s jobs”. The geography tended to be urban across red states and blue states.
Whether these two parallel movements can be part of the same spirit of the times or will fight each other more than the systemic changes that are maintaining the status quo remains to be seen.
But this time this march was much more substantial and larger than the equivalent phase of Occupy Wall Street that on October 15, 2011, saw some 300 towns and cities across the country have some sort of Occupy Wall Street protests or set up of encampments.
This is a huge shot across the bow of the Trump juggernaut that thought that it would get in power and have all yes-men (they might eventually get the Yes Men) because of the overwhelming vote for the Republican Congress.
October 15 was the peak moment for Occupy Wall Street. It was when the media started covering it. It was also when the Police Executive Research Forum, at Rahm Emanuel’s prodding began to coordinate the Occupy city mayors and police chiefs in a strategy to take down the entire movement at once. That action of police happened and was completed before January 1, 2012.
A lot of the veterans of Occupy Wall Street were working building the turnout in the various cities across the US through networks that they had built locally since Occupy and adding in the local networks supporting #blacklivesmatter. The size of the potential turnout brought out the A-list celebrities and the usual stable of co-opters, which in turn brought out a new cohort of protesters.
It is a de facto instead of an organized coalition around removing Trump and pushing the institutions to see that duopoly solutions are not working, even if the coalition is all over the lot on what to do about it beyond their own parochial pet projects.
The issue for all involved is “What’s next?” It likely is not a repeat of this weekend’s events. There is not the draw of an Inauguration to build around. And not the global reaction to Trump to build around in other world cities of the developed world.
The Czar’s horses have not yet trampled the beggars for bread.
i really didn’t want to witness any of the inauguration spectacles, which is why i spent the day in davos. ;-)
i really need to make a warm dinner now; mr. wd has been plowing snow a ot of the day and is hungry and rrrr-d-brrrr cold. but as i’d seen your comment in an email, and knowing that you’re on facebook, i thought i’d give you this report on buldozing the camps. norell says ladonna, chase, and paula respond in the video. i can’t watch it; perhaps you can? dissent?
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2017/01/standing-rock-sioux-tribe-says-it-will.html
more later.
I couldn’t get the video to run, but sott.net had this:
https://www.sott.net/article/338808-Standing-Rock-Sioux-Tribe-Council-goes-rogue-and-votes-to-shut-down-the-Camp-of-the-Sacred-Stones
And these quotes from Ladonna Brave Bull Allard:
“This is supposed to be the time of prayer and gathering of the people to stand for the water as we fight for our water and against this billion dollar company Dakota Access Pipeline. This is the time for our nation to heal together and develop relationships with our nations and allies.
“This is not the time for betrayal, negotiation, nor compromise with a company that does not know honesty and will only destroy the world around you, destroy the future for our children and the world.” …
“By July, the call was made out for people to come help Standing Rock with the fight against Dakota Access. Thousands of people came out. The SRST tribe then started with supplies and help at the new camp. The tribe slowly removed all fund or help with Sacred Stone Camp which was okay, we paid for our own porta potties and garbage.”…
“Sacred Stone continued to develop for the long term, getting ready for winter by and getting the camp prepared as we were left out of support from the tribe and the other camps, which was ok.” …
“In the meantime, the resistance to Dakota Access Pipeline was being in the forefront in media and the news. The violence of Dakota Access and Morton County was escalating to major injuries, arrests and attacks. We watched as the world watched as Amnesty International, ACLU, United Nations all came to record what was happening on the ground. We worked with many different media groups, we sponsored Dean, Myron and Unicorn Riot for media. We worked with the youth and their runs to Omaha and Washington DC. We had the world standing with us as we fought a billion dollar company.
“Now here we are on January 5, 2016. We have SRST tribal council making decisions about the camps and the people who came to help them. One motion made by Frank White Bull and Joe Dunn to take the camp funds for the tribal debit, and then motion made by Robert Taken Alive to close Sacred Stone Camp. I object to any decision that is made without consultation with the camps.”
My comment:
That seems pretty straightforward and cosistent on Ladonna Brave Bull Allard’s part. They have created permanent structure to survive the winter; they are staying. The tribal council brings up the old health and safety argument for suppression — but the spring floods. That is a reasonable concern, but the camp knows about this risk as well and how to watch and cope with it.
What the tribal council can actually do depends on whether the land is assigned trust land or fee simple private, which would be registered by Sioux County, North Dakota. Do you see how private suddenly can cease to be private depending on who is guaranteeing ownership?
We will see how this unfolds, but those who are supporting the Sacred Stone Camp need to be aware that they and their defenders are going to need funds for legal counsel for those who are again being arrested, for medical expenses for those hurt by police, and for legal counsel to fight any efforts to use the courts (tribal, state, ro federal) to push them off of Ladonna Brave Bull Allard’s land as a pretext for suppressing freedom of speech and assembly.
What is different now of course is that the tribal council might be hedging its relationship with the new Trump administration and potential changes in Indian policy (that is still what they call it in DC). Things could get very dicey very quickly for all tribal councils, given the Sagebrush Rebellion part of Trump’s base.
magical googling, and i can’t thank you enough. i tried six ways from sunday to find her reaction, including sacredstonecamp.org, on twitter, etc., but always used camps” instead of her land.
how hard to see archambault be so corrupt; it must be a grievous blow to all of them. but they’ve seen it coming, from his forked tongue on different occasions, then withholding a warehouse full of donated supplies to saying ‘we’ll only accept packages w/ individual names on them, send others back’.
she’s a force of nature, ladonna is, and her moral compass is always at true north. i suspect you’re exactly right about hedging their bets for a trump presidency, including tribal funding, but also this:
https://cafe-babylon.net/2017/01/10/congress-set-to-dump-public-lands-into-the-extractive-industry-feeding-trough-trnn/
though what i’d seen written about dave, et.al.’s reasons was more about opening the bridge… but again, bless your heart for your digging. and hers for…everything.
how poetic your final sentence is. “not whomped up” meaning not organized and funded by the usual suspects, but spontaneous, organic and wild? the women’s march dirty laundry i’d read at huffpo makes me wonder about that. but in any event, the leadership finally agreed to be more intersectional, and some of the original affinity groups who’d backed out…came back in again. yeah, more birth pangs, i expect, but also a coalition shouldn’t depend on white hetero saviors, even if they’re…women. ;-)
i hadn’t any recollection of the key Occupy dates; amazing than yu can recall them but then…your memory banks are prodigious.
i’d read a lot of the comments at strether’s water cooler about the various protests, one woman noting that the tribune had it that the black blocs were answer coalition and communist party.us, but although i looked, i only saw anwer mentioned, si i dunno. revcom’s thang seemed to be hold up #nofascismUSA signs, and no trump/pence fascists. don’t see that as so helpful in the long run. i was a bit surrised to see most of the NC commentariat a bit meh about the protests, especially given ‘how we got here’ thinking (and no, not just bernie was burned).
anyway, i still can’t find the truth of brenda norrell’s “tribe takes the money and runs, closes all camps, will keep them closed”, but i might just go ask brenda to synopsize the responses in that video.
The black blocs were essentially anonymous (little a) until arrested (the whole purpose of the black bloc tactic). Look at who the 217 arrested were to try to suss out affinities and affiliations. My comment was solely about the first time I saw an actual diversity of tactics in which the window-breakers were not shanghai’ing people who were bystanders who had not made their decision about tactics into taking the step towards trashing property.
I’m sure that the organizers of the Women’s March gave some people a heads up about that being an unhelpful tactic for their purposes, but somehow the dates and places kept the actions separately identifiable, which really works for the narrative of both sides.
It’s pretty easy to find dirty laundry of some sort or another in any large-scale organizational project. And some of the participants on stage had definite problems for other participants on stage. A coalition has to bracket those histories and agendas for the duration of the coalition. They don’t go away but they are made secondary to giving the form that allows the movement to emerge in power instead of disintegrating into mutual recriminations. A coalition does not have to be ideologically consistent; it is an exercise in providing a space for mutual attempts at co-option of the other into one’s own agenda.
Looking at the twitterings and the blog and news coverage, the handmade signs and the large number who turned out at their own expense and through pooling transportation and lodging signalled that the stage and those on it was less important than those who independently decided that this was time for the grassroots to show their power. With that huge number of moderately aligned agendas, the agendas on stage became somewhat irrelevant. The key focus throughout most of the signs is ownership of one’s own body. In light of that shift of rhetoric, the notion of “choice” seems to have become a pretty wishy-washy way of talking about women’s fundamental political issue. Why 100 years ago there was a movement for the right to vote and a prohibition movement at the same time, for example. (PTSD-afflicted drunken veterans of the Civil War who beat up on their wives were not seen in the same way then as now.) It is why the white slavery hysteria, which had some basis in truth, (Karen Abbott, Sin and the Second City documents how this played out in Chicago.)
At one of the marches, there were three young ladies decked out in suffragette dresses, period wide brim hats, sashes, and a sign that said, “100 years later — Same old shit”. Voting and marches are just tactical means to an end. Trump and his fan boys have struck a nerve that has brought out a movement. How it moves and who gives form to it are what will play out over the next few years.
i appreciate your analysis and report of what you’d seen on twitter, thd. and yes, coalitions can be built for a day, and i do hope some folks will be in this for the long haul, and will depend on the project. does it matter who or how many get into the street for a day or two? i can’t say, but it looks as though there will need to be some long-term strategies beyond voting and marches.
i guess i’m a bit weary of hearing about these two days, and wondering where the protests were against obama, for instance. but that’s the question we’re advised not to ask since trump is an even more malevolent, lying douchebag. his rule has begun, and it ain’t gonna be purdy, but he’s just continuing aloud what gifts the other guy handed him. jeff kaye says he just droned some folks in yemen. gotta go, got fambly hardships to sort out.
sorry to be a depressed crank, but…there it is.
The protests from the right against Obama or the protests from the left?
From the right was the well-financed Tea Party movement and Open Carry movements. When Obama was peddling Obamacare in the run-up to the vote in open carry states, like Arizona, the open carry folks would show up with the AR-15s and hanging out around the venue trying to draw an arrest from the Secret Service. The Secret Service, justifiably nervous, acted with more restraint that any of the police forces that viewed peaceful protest during the Obama administration. It would have been hell if lefty protesters did what right-wing protesters did. Of course the righty protests were inside-outside coordination that Democrats would never do with lefties nor would lefties trust not to be betrayed.
The protest from the left was generally slow to develop after the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. The election of George W. Bush, followed nine months later by the attack on the World Trade Center created a different political environment that required figuring out before any opposition (even Democratic opposition) crystallized. It took until Howard Dean’s campaign for Democratic Party grassroots to grasp the new political reality and to begin the departure from Clintonism. At the time, that was a leftward break at the Democratic grassroots that accelerated as political blogging brought people together beginning in 2004. Further left, A.N.S.W.E.R. conducted some mobilizations in Washington with stages and police permits and were moderately well attended, long, boring and not paced either for cable TV or liveblogging, the early form of political social media. There was a period in which the left was learning how to use new media while the right was dominating local radio and the most popular national narrowcasted channels — FoxNews, Christian Broadcasting Network, being two of the larger ones.
By the end of John Kerry’s run for President, Democrats had gotten familiar enough with blogging to make a push for “more and better Democrats”, meaning more Democrats to put butts in seats in the House of Representatives. Those folks helped the establishment Democrats break through in 2006 as W’s policies were beginning to tank, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were becoming protracted, the news about warrantless wiretapping was fresh, and people were still uneasy about torturing in the name of the American people. For a while, that sucked the energy out of more lefty actions.
With the Obama campaign, enough lefties sought to protect America from Hillary Clinton and John McCain to vote for Obama. Most sat out completely or voted third party. Enough to elect Obama but geographically concentrated, not enough to elect a powerful Congress that could not be stymied by Blue Dog Democrats, newly independents like Joe Lieberman, and a large freshman class with not a few ringers. During the 2006-2008 period the Democrat-lefty side of the blogosphere had metastasized into a much larger and diverse array of blogs. By 2008, social media, especially Facebook and later Twitter became a means of political discourse for discussing the newly transparent President and Congress. The House had unprecedented coverage of the markup of the bill that became the Affordable Care Act. And there were no protests to speak of. By late 2009, with the Tea Party appearing and the White House ignoring the groups that were supposed to “make him do it.” alternative politics began to be pushed within the Democratic Party as several candidates we positioned to primary Blue Dogs and specifically Blanche Lincoln. The White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel began the policy of hippie-punching by characterizing the primary campaigns as “retards”. Firedoglake did reporting on how NGOs had been co-opted to the extent they were “veal pens”. And Congressional votes by late 2009 had been characterized by kabuki positioning in votes so there were a string of near misses and rotating cross-over votes with Republicans so that Democrats could maintain their narrative of being an opposition.
The PATRIOT ACT seemed to hang heavy over the idea of protesting until the Tunisian and Egyptian “Arab Spring” movements had captured the political imagination of many Americans frustrated that the Tea Party was given such easy coverage. And then came the election of Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Some University of Wisconsin graduate student occupied the State Capitol rotunda and refused to leave after closing hours. It gained global attention on social media and Egyptians still occupying Tahrir Square prior to Mubarak’s ouster called in pizza from a Madison pizzaria. A positive radicalized small-d democratic social movement seemed to be erupting in the Middle East in one state in the US. Of course, it did not take long for the US intelligence community to see a disruptive asset in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Belarus even as the movement appeared in different form as Occupy Wall Street in the fall of 2011. The rather direct protest of Obama’s half-measures grew to 300 cities by October, when the collaboration among police encouraged by the PATRIOT ACT provided the means of coordinating the crushing of it. Fundamentally, it was a protest of Obama’s half measures after the financial collapse of 2007-2008 and the failure to hold anyone accountable. It also conducted some counter-foreclosure actions, especially in Atlanta.
In 2012, Occupy Chicago introduced the protest against expanded missions for NATO with the hashtag #ChicagoSpring. This was as direct protest of Obama’s beginning actions to contain Eurasia on the west (in Belarus and Ukraine) and China’s on the east (in the South China Sea and the “Pivot to Asia”). This was rightly seen as a new Cold War and assertion of US imperial power outside of the Middle East.
In 2014, Obama’s moderation in justice for black communities and coddling of police was the basis of the protest against the murder of black men in the actions in Ferguson MO and the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, created in fact during the trial of Trayvon Martin’s killer. Like Occupy Wall Street, this movement spread to many cities that had the same issues.
In the spring of 2016, the #noDAPL hashtag was for a protest critical of Obama’s environmental and energy policies that continued the exploitation of fossil fuels and building of pipelines potentially damaging even more bodies of water.
The early protests might have been trivial except the numbers in them kept growing from one protest to the next.
Obama took the stance of standing above the fray or of lecturing protesters on respect and how to do political organizing (a more subtle form of hippie punching).
Of course the critically important protests against Obama on drone killings and continuation of seemingly endless war never happened with quite the same energy.
It is the peace movement, blindsided by 9/11, that is semi-moribund in the US. There are no longer identifiable organizations nor a common agenda. And there has been an ongoing effort, mostly failing to co-opt the larger organic movement into partisan support of the Democratic Party, an effort that failed almost completely in the 2016 election.
Now the Women’s March has popped up with 3 or 4 millon nationwide. Those are huge numbers. And of course the Democratic Party will try and fail to coopt it as well. There has been more protest of Obama policies than it appears because it was not personalized on Obama like it has been on Trump. The difference between the style of Obama and the style of Trump in person is the reason it has not become as personal with Obama.
once again, i than you for the narrative history, amigo, although t’were me, i’d have to separate ‘librul democrats’ from ‘the left’, as both went to the right over the past decade or two. the radical left is quite small, even though some tried to paint sanders as that. well, a reformer, who still loved war, etc. if one could call it R2P.
i’m not sure i agree w/ this, though:
“And there has been an ongoing effort, mostly failing to co-opt the larger organic movement into partisan support of the Democratic Party, an effort that failed almost completely in the 2016 election.”
while i understand why you focus on #blacklivesmatter so keenly, i’ll submit again that it was in ABQ that the anti-police state movement was actually born. but i gotta scoot, got way more reading to do. if it doesn’t coalesce into a diary soon, i might just stick up a new open menu.
hot dinner (mexican rice w/ roasted poblano chiles) is ready to serve. i really hope to be back, but we have a sat. night date for 2 pbs mysteries at 8. but i did want to point y’all to a real clash of the titans at ian welsh’s latest algonquin roundtable..or not. che pasa, ‘peter’, reality checker and others doing battle. even if they’re incorrect about the future and contrasting ideologies, they are at least.. sure they are correct. and almost prescient. ;-)
ach, i almost tried to characterize the opposing views, but i’ll let them speak for themselves. welsh kinda slays me, to say the truth.
DAVOS’ Abysmal, intentional dearth of self-awareness :
“the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labor.”
What (Are THEIR) returns to labor?
They ARE ‘Today’s unforgiving global economy’ !
The difference to all is $imply between $hare and A $hare.
(But, The Circle Jerk, FORE$T Gump will $urely help US see their Would fer Teh TREE$ !).
ain’t it nice they care about the rabble so much, bruce? participants seemed to get that there’s a new multipolar world on the way, too. but xi loves the market economy, they said; he said?
so there are too many ironic wrap-up tweets this mornin’, but this is right on cue:
and digitization! digitization! connectivity!
i like this a lot: “The difference to all is $imply between $hare and A $hare.”
best laid plans, and all that jazz. who’d of thunk that cell phone calls from abu dhabi would be so garbled? we’re trying to triangulate a bit w/ our daughter-in-law in c spings who skypes w/ our son. good night, you kings of new england, you princes of maine. (john irving)
Sorry WD; there’s just nothing to add to the Davos theme/meme; at least by this one…
‘s okay, v arnold. as i’d said, i stayed in davos to avoid the circus, but then i’ve covered davos for a long time, as i enjoy the hubris and superiority of the participants so much. RT has this commentary up: ‘Davos gripped by horror!!!!‘, (trump presidency). he certainly has shaken and challenged the system, but then we’ll be seeing how much of the system he’s embracing. capitalism…rawks, yanno.
but dayum, that thread at ian’s is quite the food fight, isn’t it? it’s kinda like the reactionary national debate. i may put up pepe’s new piece on here’s how it will go’ (geopolitically). i see zero hedge had grabbed it, as well.
Re Ian’s; indeed, Reality checker is a nasty little egoist, very unpleasant fellow. I stupidly broke my fast and commented. Oh well, live and lear4n…hopefully…
I’m referring to RC calling Che Pasa a “Mexican” in a pejorative sense.
given the time differential between here and your hermitage, i’ll try to answer now. yes, i kept checking in. to me ian’s is a micrcosm of the national debate, including that they all know that they are ‘right’.
i decided not to comment on: “jobs job jobs!” after ‘peter’ hadanswered me on the potential merger of monsanto and bayer, and “the lies vendana shiva tells!”. ah well, i’m not on the side of the anti-trumpeter angels at ian’s, but yes, reality checker. who use to be my comrade, and must have been one of those ‘progressives’ who got mugged. now; nationalist. me, i’m a citizen of the world, not just an anti-trumpipter.
sleep well if you can, although i kinda like it when the blue meanies hit me at 3 to remind me who i may really be.
p.s. ye, that perjorative slayed me, as both of them have been my email friends in the past.
I doubt these defenders of his LI0 will welcome BiteMe’s version of digitization ! : https://www.facebook.com/retainyourfreedom/photos/a.188355024532873.35979.183356311699411/1229369400431425/?type=3&theater
my guess is that it’s funny, but…i’m not on facebook, so i’m not allowed to enter their Hallowed Halls. but as you seem to be allowed in, coud i ask a favor? would you be willing to check out this video if it’s not too long, and let me/us know what ladonna allard, chase iron eyes, and paula antoine (iirc) said to the tribal council about closing all of the camps, not allowing any to remain, and using the $3 million that was given to the water protectors to pay tribal bills? wth? if it’s 2 long, or if it’s a burden, please say it’s 2 much 2 ask, and i’ll understand.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10154237143263297&id=510623296
bruce, it may not even be necessary; at telesur i found this: “There was some disagreement with the decision to close the camps, namely from Standing Rock Sioux tribal member, Edward Black Cloud, who criticized the council’s financial priorities.
“I know how much money is involved, what’s in the pocket of the council,” said Black Cloud, according to ICMN. “You guys are wrong for sending these guys home. They gave their heart to you.”
and some borrowed coverage at indian country today. ladonna had to be reached by phone, and replied enigmatically, never mentioning the $$$.
forget all your twitter feeds & facebook posts, i was there. there when the shit went down. like at kaysong, and long doc and hill 254. the shit got real.
women marchin’ on the mall.
yeah, i went. got sucked into a little corner & got trapped there for 4 hours on 7th & independence ave. michael moore & madonna & scarlet johanssen and blah blah blah. mercifully, i couldn’t hear most of what they said. had a nice long talk w/a forensic psychologist working for a city contractor (hey kids! guess who privatizes social services just as rapidly as any scary old republican? that’s right: democratic mayors!) working w/the homeless & their court cases. She was all anti-Trump and all that, but she had shed some of her illusions about Mayor Muriel Bowser. (if it’s 33 degrees F out but the windchill feels like 25, they won’t send the hypothermia van out. it must be 32 degrees or below.) another in our little brace, our gaggle, our, uh murder, that huddled together was a hedge-fund manager, another was some NY boojie art dude jet setting off to Paris & Bali whenev (“sometimes i just need to leave this country & get some perspective.” yeah, life’s hard.)
but all, all of us: people of conscience.
from the amount of russo-phobic BS being spewed, the tittering, snickering puerile interest in Trump’s sexcapades…yeah, this ain’t the revolution i’m looking for.
and i spent my sunday p.m. in a business meeting w/some of these marchers. the global 1% is happy to march. and come back & shit on employees, incl. their sisters, (“she’s just an employee!!!” oh god.) it was a great chance to play “buzzword bingo” (google it). but what did i win for the number of times i had to hear the words: process, communication, procedure, business-model, best practices, run (a religious non-profit) like a business? i won an invitation to a day long “diversity seminar” to be conducted by this same global 1%, who happen to be african-american women. whoo hoo! haven’t heard a peep from any of these people about Mayor Bowser’s proposals for the homeless in the city, but hey: “this pussy grabs back.”
i’m not going to lie: it was an extraordinarily depressing weekend. getting hordes of people to participate in empty rituals is not a problem in this country. (200,000 people went to an NFL game yesterday and another 30 million watched.) managing & massaging people’s activist impulses is part of the business of empire. among a lot of other reasons to be unimpressed by this event, is the focus on a single person: Trump. and, by contrast, the ceaseless fellating of Obama. Rachel Maddow/Joe Scarborough types will get fat & rich from that gravy train as long as they can.
“who created the rift b/n Trump & the CIA?!?!?!?” asks the NYT breathlessly. sorry, i’m done w/this trump charade.
whooosh; thank you, jason, did i need this. michael moore, it seems, did a cheerleader’s routine: “we have to take over the democratic party!!!”; naomi klein is on democracy now: “trump’s inauguration was a corporate coup d’etat!” (or close).
i’d belatedly looked at some of those hashtags and had seen russophobic signs…again. and bob avakian’s revolution was to hold up #nofascist USA, and his hashtag featured plenty of obama love, iirc.
mr. wd spoke to a friend in cortez, next town west, who reported that their sat. march had 504, i tell ya, 504 people marching in a blizzard, no less. but hell, it’s all about no-trump, sadly not about ‘tear down this rotten system, create a government that’s an actual democracy, not inverted totalitarianism in which the rabble are tossed crumbs once in awhile…to keep us groveling at our rulers’ feet. buffy sainte-marie: “we’re dying of their gravy spills…”
i got to musing later about thd’s depiction of the many “our bodies” signs, and recalled a black woman stating emphatically that her right to own her own body trumped any anti-war efforts. whut? but that comment got reified up the wazoo w/ some dedicated libruls. lightbulb! that was the other group that was shut out early on with the march organizers: the right to lifers.
anyhoo, say more when you can; you were indeed at the heart of march in the belly of the beast; my stars. yeah, not my revolution, either.
how many millions at the inauguration and marches? who’ lyin’? who’s not?
piffffle.
i assume that metro, the public transport authority in the DC metroplex, has no real reason to lie about the numbers. 250k for the inaugural & 750k for the march? based on extrapolations from their ridership. i’m going w/that. i noted to our little gang that Bill & Hill sure as hell didn’t miss Trump’s main big inaugural ball. “But boy did you see how angry she looked?” yes, while Bill was beaver-hunting (sorry), yes, she *looked* angry. good for her. probably disappointed, chagrined, chafed, raw, exasperated, too. grasp at straws much? she, they, chose to humiliate themselves. am i supposed to feel sorry for them? someone ran up to me before church to exclaim how the Russkies know that Trump is really impotent, that’s the real reason other liquids were flowing in the Obamas’ Moscow love nest, Moscow knows about it, and boing!!!!!! blackmail. His hands really are small. She (yes) was sort of joking, but i’ve lost all patience w/this National Enquirer nonsense. if you want sex crimes, follow Bill Clinton around for a day. or shut the hell up.
anyway, guess what was by far the most common description of the “protest” (yes, “protest”) i heard after? “Everyone was so nice.” yes, so nice. not talking about war, poverty, the environment but chanting, “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!!!” so nice. and nice is important. lovely, too. lovely & nice.
you can gauge how serious & weighty the protest was by the staggering volume of trash produced. it’s not a movement if it doesn’t generate another Staten Island sized garbage landfill (of 10% post recyclable waste, cuz, hey, we’re liberals and we care.) i didn’t hear any whiny do-goodie true believer types say so snootily, “you need to recycle that” and then stomp off in a huff to their liberal safe space. nope, just dump it on the ground. that’s what god put the ground there for when i’m too busy righteously bewailing Trump’s vulgarity. (bitter much, jason?) and we all know there are plenty of capitalists at Starbucks, Greyhound, etc., etc., who are licking their fingers as they count off their millions in revenue from their favorite kind of consumer, i mean protestor: the middle class kind.
anyway, sometimes i do try to see a glimmer, a spark. there are people who care about, e.g., abortion rights who might get more fired up & active & maybe even effective than the dreary median sample of bright-eyed smiley know-nothings at the fake protest.
as we used to sing in bible camp: it only takes a spark. right?
thanks, sir killed by a gravy spill. yeah, there might be a spark, and i checked, and the women’s marchers are calling to ten actions in the first 100 days. but wasn’t the bible camp about lettin’ our lights shine?
ditto on just follow bill around; someone at naked capitalism put this video up, lip-lickin’ and all. but remember: she suffered staying married to a lying sex addict horndog only so she could serve us a leader of the free world©.
gadzukes, though on the trash mountains. i thought that what rivers and oceans were for, not the ground. wonder if the organizers stayed around to pick up the trash. big props were given to nrdc for funding; wonder who else? maybe the nrdc stayed to police the rubbish? kennedy’s group, isn’t it?
what was the diversity training in aid of; just gender issues, or more across the various societal divisions? gonna go? do you need some training you can think of?
but as for: “nothing about war, poverty, the environment”, that was just the chatting; perhaps on the stage? well, i reckon the speeches are out there, but i won’t go goodwill hunting.
do i need training? yes, but maybe more in the friedmanian “education & the new economy” sense than anything else. oh, you mean diversity training? well, let’s see: the people promoting this in my little knitting circle are in the global, and perhaps US, 1%. nah, not w/this crowd i don’t need no training. unless i can go wearing my “fuck the police” t-shirt. and we get designated pot-ty breaks. (it’s barely legal here, so why not?)
i almost felt sorry for HRC watching that video. not quite, though.
nrd who? oh, right. nrdc. i saw robert redford’s name all over their home page & clicked no further. protesting as a jobs program? for sanitation engineers? oh, and cops. and, you know, nrdc.
oh, fer the love of holy money; my comment failed. i’ll try again later; it was a long un w/ loads of links.
thought you might have a bit of fun w/ diversity training. for a number of years the ndrc and wwwf fund were the only ‘eco’ groups at davos. this year, nah. the why nots? were kinda silly. “Organizers may have created a low-carbon, green zone for the occasion of the 40th annual global gabfest in the Swiss mountain two on Davos, but it may no longer be the best environment for high-profile chatter on climate change.”
but kennedy is simply the lead attorney for the org, climate change dude is jake schmidt who’d retweeted, ha ha ha…:
the i’d written a bunch on someone noting over yonder that there might be a color revolution here under Hair T, and how many believe that the color revs were cia + gene sharp of the albert einstein institute, funded by the usual suspects, though it’s hotly contested by…the other usual suspects. too bad the counterpunch link fails.
oh, and the Counts i only mentioned since that’s a shiny bauble brought by the msm and various websites fight over it while…rome fiddles and all that jazz. b is elated at what mr. T did during that distraction; me? i don’t get the jollies, but we’ll see.
almost sorry for hillary? ooof. if look couldda killed, he’d be dead. but that was a ‘public’ reaction, not a ‘private’ one.
me, i’m seein’ that tillerson’s already called for regime change in VZ (he was confirmed, this time: hooooray! all Ds voted against him! as thd had noted, the Big Name Ds voted yes for the earlier confirmations. warren, sanders, i forget the third Biggie ‘Lefty’.
wow. they are not toxifying, toxicizing, “militarizing” if you will, non-violent resistance too, are they? (re the albert einstein institute; the voltaire article doesn’t that institution’s corruption of einstein’s commitment to socialism in its very name.) ah yes, non-violent demonstrators in the square, w/snipers on the roof to shoot down into the crowd…mix, stir, rinse, repeat…dammit, haven’t checked in w/b lately. see you later.
postscript to gravy spills: someone over yonder said maid madonna was callin’ to blow up the white house. no link, but i i did find her thought crime video. but RT reported that ‘‘Madonna shaves Nike swoosh into her pubic hair to protest Trump in stupidest way possible’. stoopid? a nike swoosh?
where was bill gates lovin’ beyonce?
but added to this, and no, i hadn’t watched the videos (just RT clickbait?):
‘CNN personal vendetta or providing prescription to kill Trump?’
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/374355-trump-cnn-scenario-inauguration/
where’s lady gaga in her meat dress when we need her???
Teh facebook feed seemed to have been the typical inconclusive city (tribal) council with no potlatch. Very indigenously polite discussion of the “necessary” inconvenient costs to the village communities : family time, reservation traffic detouring, surveillance/harassment of school-bused children and safety of the current camp (although strategic, come the spring thaw, certain to be flooded/ice-leveled); therefore should be moved. But, then the usual “poor-mouthing” : council budgets strained even from their casino profits; no, the Corps’ not trying to flood you out; we’re not mis-spending tribal funds, etc. No mention of teh $3M, indeed. (Also, sorry for the deferment; USn’s ducking tornadic global-warming storms from Albany to Lakeland)
oh, my; thank you for undertaking such a boring assignment, bruce. i thank you profusely. now you stay safe, there. ocean’s dying and rising; mebbe those climate marchers can get mr. T to fix it! oh, no: i forgot: some folks at davos had some tech cures, one for coal smoke (didn’t watch the video)…. i should start moderating my own comments for cynicism. i almost did on my ‘douchebags’ one, lol. thought it might look pretty funny:
Please don’t engage in ad hominem attacks; criticize the ideas, not the person.
not much by way of a gift, but this is what i’ve got, bruce. i’ve been whingeing that no owls would come close to me to get their portraits taken, and one finally did two nights ago. the wee one sat on the stair railing for over an hour, never minding that the porch light was on, nor my opening and closing the door and trying to take a photo portrait. but cripes, as it turned out, in my dotage i had totally forgotten how to set the camera so it would record the wee one’s visit and beauty.
but after 32 tries, i captured one well enough to identify her…a northern saw whet babby owl. this is she; ain’t she a peach?
Lovely
I do very much love your wee owl, the saw whet, wendye, more than I can tell. A saw whet sojourned with me and my just-beginning family back in the day. His name was Hoo Hoo DeWitt, after an owl (not a saw whet I think) in a children’s book we had at the time. Our fella was just slightly larger than this little dear but gazed at us from the cabin rafters (or the deer antlers over the fireplace) all one winter – my better half had found him dazed from a traffic encounter but not otherwise visibly hurt one night as he drove home.
I fed him hamburger laced with calcium powder on the end of a long stick, and he roamed our abode silently at night, never coming down from the rafters during the day, so we went in and out and he never attempted to leave, though he would rather glare down at my mother in law’s unsuspecting Ethiopian mini poodle Tolabel whenever she visited, slicking
tight his feathers and enlarging those moon eyes to the point of but never quite a spectacular kamikaze dive to destroy her. He did keep the mice down, that’s for sure.
So now, I’m encouraged to tentatively say, but but …on topic but au contraire a la matters presidential. I will indeed be very troubled at the drone strike in Yemen. But hey, I enjoyed the inaugural. (Hated ABC, NBC, CBS for coverage snippy remarks all through a very modest parade that warmed my heart with even some code talkers participating – loved Obama’s reddening face as Trump read the riot act in rough but honorable phrases.) I know, I’m in my dotage, really have lost it a hundred ways from Sunday, but that’s the thing. He did mean what he was saying, the press was dissing him all the way through and talking over that dear little parade, (while PBS didn’t even carry it – hah, they are going to lose their shirts all of them – what’s not to like?)
John Key resigned right after Trump won. The TPP is toast. Megacorporations might be as well. Trump didn’t kowtow to the CIA; he bearded them in their den of iniquity. It’s all in how you look at things.
But as I say, no need to pay me much account. I’m in my dotage. Was it Jason who said Melania reminded him of Jackie? She didn’t ever smile, but she looked gorgeous in that suit and I didn’t see Mrs. Obama getting too close for a comparison.
Yes, I watched as much as I could, flipping channels when I couldn’t stand this or that sleazy commentator.
Very stupidly last night kept running through my head “Better than…better than…” I was chagrined to say the least when I realized it was that idiotic Tiger Woods phrase from tv, not something from “The Tempest” (in which my granddaughter is currently playing Prospero – woo hoo deWitt!). But it fits:
Better than most.
i’ve spent the morning familiarizing myself w/ the confirmed peeps on herr trump’s cabinet, his EOs, and recent doings, so…i’m kinda later here. i’d been wondering about what to write next, and few things on twitter were interesting, if a bit dated, esp. re: my favorite part of the DOD: africom.
anyway, briefly: thanks for the wee vignette, juliania; i’m envious. when i went searching for images to bring here, many of the babby saw whets were in human hands. was yours that familiar w/ you? i did feel as though i might have been able to reach out and touch him/her, or feed some tidbit, but we didn’t have anything very owlish. ;-)
yes, i remember your ‘key resigns’ link, and while mr. T. is right to formally bow out, as assange says:
@wikileaks 15h15 hours ago “Trump admin announced today US withdrawal from #TPP but its big brother #TiSA marches on with no comment so far from @realDonaldTrump.”
the various reports on big union bosses loving their meeting w/ him might be fine, but for instance, trumka was on O’s job council, hardly an endoresement of big unions working for their membership. he’s also touted obamadontcare, and then union members got rolled, lol.
better thee than me on watching the inaugural festivities, ish.but it was arrow that mentioned she was a bit like jackie O; under the video comment i stuck in from NC a woman said “oooooh, i read that her gorgeous dress was cashmere!” that tickled me. i know how proud of your granddaughter you must be; that’s a good thing.
He was very shy, stayed up in the rafters mostly. But if he was hungry and I held out the meat on a long stick, he would fly down to a lower beam and delicately take it. We knew he ate mice at night because he would leave the familiar owl-pellots of the inedible portions, and he stayed healthy the six months we had him. Never heard a peep from him, though. And his flight was completely soundless. One night I came out to the kitchen for sustenance, felt his eyes upon me, and there he was, one claw grabbing a wee mouse from under the fridge.
We went travelling at the end of that time, so gave him to a relative, who passed him on to the Salt Lake City Aviary. They kept him in an outside large cage, until as they reported, a friendly saw whet was paying visits from the outside, so they freed him. I was so happy to hear that, a perfect conclusion to our co-habitation. (This was when my oldest son, now in his fifties, was a toddler.) We still have one black and white photo of him perched on the antlers.
” We still have one black and white photo of him perched on the antlers.”
The owl, that is, not my son! ;)
ha ha; thanks for clarifying. for a sec i’d imagined that you had one of them that ‘climbers’ that parents can flip out over, as in: nothing is safe up high, it takes locks on cupboards!
what a wonder ending it is to picture him winging away with a friend or even mate; i love it. i had forgotten to ask if he spoke, cuz their names were given them on accountta their vocalizations i keep forgetting to check at cornell bird labs to listen to their calls.
holy smoke, though. we’re getting bombed w/ snow! and it’s still coming down. perhaps another five inches since mr. wd plowed us out a couple hours ago. snowing there?
As is my granddaughter.