Friday, September 04, 2015

4 Sept - The View

English: budapest hungary panorama 2011English: budapest hungary panorama 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Österreichischer EuroCity in Budapest Keleti p...Österreichischer EuroCity in Budapest Keleti pu. (Ostbf), Ungarn Austrian EuroCity train in Budapest Keleti pu. (Eastern sation), Hungary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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41 mins
Some 2,200 people had joined a social media campaign in Austria by Friday afternoon to organise a convoy of private cars and vans on Sunday to help pick...
DIGITALJOURNAL.COM

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More than 10.000 families in Iceland have offered to open their homes to Syrian refugees in a bid to raise the government’s cap of just 50 asylum seekers a year.
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

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The oil ministers of Iraq, Iran and Syria Monday signed a preliminary agreement for a $10 billion natural-gas-pipeline deal, the official Iranian News Agency IRNA and other Iranian media reported.
WSJ.COM|BY HASSAN HAFIDH AND BENOIT FAUCON



link.
7 hrs
Western news services have reported that the fall of Qusair would cut the rebels off from all weapons supplies. But these claims are incorrect because only one of several smuggling routes passes through Qusair. Here, a Syrian fighter stands...
SPIEGEL.DE|BY SPIEGEL ONLINE, HAMBURG, GERMANY


The civil war in Syria is increasingly dividing the Arab world along sectarian lines. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has now charged into the fray, joining...
SPIEGEL.DE|BY SPIEGEL ONLINE, HAMBURG, GERMANY
The government will start to make a case for UK military action in Syria next week, the BBC understands.
BBC.CO.UK


A coalition of more than 70 partners,i ncluding the U.S., pledged Sunday to send millions of dollars and communications equipment to Syria's opposition groups, signalling deeper involvement in the conflict.
CBC.CA


The supply of the handsets, designed to withstand rugged environments, is part of the Foreign Office’s mission to mould militias into a coalition capable of...
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK


The ballistic missile would be launched into orbit but can be maneuvered to a target once it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
 Zinn Education Project's photo.
11 hrs
in U.S. history. It was fought over the course of five days in 1921 by 10,000 coalminers. The coalminers were rebelling against inhumane conditions in the West Virginia coalfields. Continue reading this #tdih post on the Zinn Education Project website by Brandon Nida here: http://bit.ly/1JEpA1I
Here ae lessons, books, and films for teaching outside the textbook about labor history: http://bit.ly/1zGxRyH


Michigan state senator Patrick Colbeck is using social media to critique the use of A People's History of the United States in classrooms: "Has your student received instruction in U.S. History from the textbook authored by Howard Zinn called 'A People's History of the United States'? If so, please understand that Mr. Zinn advocates against the inherent goodness of America and our system of government." Read more in "The Michigan GOP's War on 'A People's History'" on CommonDreams.org here:http://bit.ly/1Xm5Mtk
Thankfully, Michigan teachers are not deterred. To date, more than 1,000 Michigan teachers from all over the state have signed up to access people's history lessons from the Zinn Education Project website:http://zinnedproject.org/


Campaign for Liberty's photo.








I think it might be time.
Check out your local No One Is Illegal events across the country to demand justice for all migrants: https://www.facebook.com/events/1703064886579884/
By Bill Van Auken: The countries of the European Union have treated the surge in refugees as a matter of repression and deterrence, throwing up new fences, setting up concentration camps and deploying riot police in an effort to create a Fortress Europe that keeps desperate families like Alan’s at bay and condemns thousands upon thousands to death.
But what of the US? American politicians and the US media are deliberately silent on Washington’s central role in creating this unfolding tragedy on Europe’s borders.
The gut-wrenching images of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach, lying face-down in the sand, his lifeless body then cradled by a rescue worker, have brought home to people all...
GLOBALRESEARCH.CA


A statistical analysis of the Conservative government's changes to environmental laws and procedures suggests Ottawa has 'all but abandoned' attempts to...
WWW.CTVNEWS.CA

We tried to question the prime minister, but were basically told to get stuffed.
VICE.COM


 Non-GMO Project shared a link.
Rick Bayless' mastery of regional Mexican cuisine has made him one of the nation's most celebrated chefs. He also is a Good Food advocate who is greatly...
GOODFOODONEVERYTABLE.ORG


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Dick Cheney, former US vice president, will be charged Thursday by Nigerian anti-corruption police in a case against Halliburton.
CSMONITOR.COM|BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR


"Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to U.S. charges that it paid $180 million in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Niger Delta."

 
Can all this be true? The Republican National Committee supporting theUS Postal ServiceUnited NationsNational Park Service, equal rights for women, and more?
The National Republican Party has published an official policy document showing that the GOP really might be more than a gaggle of serve-the-rich plutocrats and...
JIMHIGHTOWER.COM


Until 1973, workers' wages increased as productivity went up, but in the three decades since, the fruits of Americans' labor have primarily gone to those at the top. The Economic Policy Institute investigates why.
Most Americans believe that a rising tide should lift all boats—that as the economy expands, everybody should reap the rewards. And for two-and-a-half decades beginning in the late 1940s, this was how our economy worked.
SANDERS.SENATE.GOV


As we approach Labor Day weekend, it's appropriate to ponder the rapid rise of two groups that are both inconsistent with the ideal of an American meritocracy: the working poor, and the non-working rich. The "working poor" aren't supposed to exist because no one who works full time should be in poverty. The "non-working rich" are antithetical to the American work ethic, as is their increasing power over a large portion of the U.S. economy. Neither group should exist, and yet both are growing. Which is why we need a minimum basic income, a minimum wage, income insurance, a higher estate tax, and strict limits on the political power of the wealthy to rig the economic system to their benefit.
I explore all of this in detail, and provide a path to get there in my next book, "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few," which will be out at the end of this month. If you'd like to preorder, you can do so here:http://bit.ly/1JRX29I
Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have...
ROBERTREICH.ORG|BY PETER VIDANI


Whenever I’ve suggested to CEOs that their corporation should be more socially responsible, they say their first (or only) responsibility is to their shareholders. Yet those same CEOs don’t want to disclose to their shareholders how they’re spending shareholder money on politics. The majority of political spending now engulfing Washington and the 2016 election cycle is coming from corporations, and much of it is secret "dark money" whose source is never disclosed. That money legally belongs to those corporation’s shareholders. Don’t shareholders have a right to know how their money is being spent?
Earlier this week, 44 Democratic Senators sent a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White, asking for a rule requiring corporations to disclose their political spending. Republicans don’t want such a rule, for obvious reasons. In June, the House Appropriations Committee approved a financial services bill that would bar the SEC from implementing such a rule.
The SEC has it in its power to issue such a rule right now, and a majority of commissioners are Democratic appointees. So why doesn’t it?

American Mensa's photo.
9 hrs
( Spoiler Alert : Attempting to clarify this spoof for the dyslexic or non native English speaker )
The word is 'pariah' { one who is shunned } rather than 'piranha', 
a fish which travels in schools and can strip the flesh from an animal in minutes.
In school, this was called Malapropism, after a popular Victorian stage character 
- Mrs. Malaprop - who flaunted her inept use of vernacular.  Ditto deep-seeded
 for deep-seated, diffident for different, witch for which { solely a spelling error }, 
morays ( eels ) for "mōrēs  (with a line over the letter, o sounds like the name of the letter and  e as well. Before checking, I had assumed thought lack of punctuation might take a French accent mark - which sounds like 'a' ...but it is a US word  ) , sorted for sordid, Monday for mundane, set for said,
 miner era for minor error { which puns a Bostonian  accent as well } , sense for since, 
elk for ilk, tow for toe { I see that goof a lot }, irregardless { that is different - 
the ir prefix is bogus and could imply a false reversal }, upmost for utmost,
post-dramatic for post traumatic { let me think - I like that one }, whole-scale for wholesale ,
star-craving for stark raving ( I'd like to see a spoken computer program unravel that one ), 
metal for mental, feeble { weak } for foetal or fetal { unborn }
I haven't seen such a triumph of punning since the fiction of Piers Anthony { I like the Xanth series
of phantasy ok ok fantasy } 
What have I missed ? Acrologiaphobia sounds good - but is nonsense starting with the cryptic coding for crossword puzzles { acrostics } and ending with phobia { a fear, usually irrational }
A log is a type of journal Assembling that, a cryptic record of fears seems appropriately inane.
As for acyrologia itself, the author(s) had hopes
  • Ethos
    Acyrologia erodes the ethos of the speaker, for it portrays his/her ignorance. However, if it is seen as a tool used by an implied author to cleverly characterize a fictional person, it can contribute to the speaker's/author's reputation for wit, or can endear the audience through comedy.

 Robert Reich's photo.
2 hrs



What's the secret of the @berniesanders campaign, beyond Bernie himself? Today I counted another 14 groups that have sprung to life over the last several months -- all appearing in my email or phone mail, or I discover from friends or former students. And all are engaged in one way or another in building support for Bernie around the country,
I'm always wary of "astroturf" groups designed to resemble grass roots, but these are the real thing. I've spoken with several organizers who hadn't had any contact with the official campaign but felt they "had to help organize" for Bernie, as several of them told me.
I have no idea whether all this grass-roots activity will take Bernie all the way to the White House, but I do know it's real and it's important -- and it's under the radar of Washington insiders and pundits who look only at how many organizers are on a campaign's payroll or how many dollars a campaign has raised. The Sanders campaign isn't like any other campaign I've witnessed since Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam War presidential insurgency -- which didn't get McCarthy elected but gave birth to a national grass-roots movement that ultimately ended the war. Peaceful change of the magnitude we need can come about only when millions or people are organized and mobilized to demand it. Bernie's presidential run is catalyzing such a movement.
A group of software developers and designers, product managers and more have used their prowess to create apps and other tools to help the candidate.
NYTIMES.COM|BY NICK CORASANITI


Another Angry Voice's photo.
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Whose pay is outrageous again? h/t Jobs With Justice
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Real Coastal Warriors shared Amazon Watch'sphoto.
- BREAKING: CANADIAN SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH ECUADORIANS OVER CHEVRON -
The law has finally caught up with Chevron. Today’s unanimous decision from the Supreme Court of Canada opens the door for Ecuadorian indigenous and farmer communities to enforce their$9.5 billion USD verdict against Chevron and is a major victory for human rights and corporate accountability.
Chevron’s deliberate dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste water and 17 million gallons of crude into the Ecuadorian Amazon created a massive health crisis and remains one of the worst oil-related environmental crimes in history. After being found guilty of its drill and dump tactics in Ecuador, Chevron has been on the run, spending billions on retaliatory legal attacks seeking to delay justice rather than fulfilling its legal obligations to carry out a full-scale environmental clean-up and provide potable water and health care to the communities it poisoned.
Chevron’s $15 billion USD in Canadian assets are more than enough to satisfy the verdict, and the Canadian court’s decision to allow the Ecuadorian rainforest communities to pursue action to collect their verdict is a significant step towards justice long denied. The verdict should be a major wake-up call to Chevron shareholders and senior management that despite spending billions to make this issue go away, the company faces major risk to its assets and brand in Canada and beyond. Rather than spend hundreds of millions more on legal fees in Canada to delay justice further, it’s time for Chevron to finally do the right thing.