September 27, 2009 archive

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Iran to put new uranium plant under IAEA supervision

by Jay Deshmukh, AFP

Sat Sep 26, 3:53 pm ET

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran said on Saturday it will put its newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog, in a move welcomed by the United States.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said the disclosure was a “firm blow” to Western powers opposed to Tehran’s atomic work.

“This site will be under the supervision of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and will have a maximum of five percent (uranium) enrichment capacity,” Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on state television.

Sunday Train: Rapid Streetcars and Suburban Retrofit

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

crossposted to Agent Orange

The people’s choice award in the Re-Burbia “Rethinking Suburbia” design competition was the entry titled Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing The Urban Fabric.

But I want to adapt these ideas from the repair of the urban fabric to the original creation of a healthy suburban fabric. From further below:

After all, no matter how much one may love big cities – big cities have never been the be-all and end-all of settlement. Part of a healthy big city economy is a healthy network of relationships to a surrounding network of healthy smaller cities. And part of what makes them healthy is a healthy network of relationships to healthy small towns and villages.

And that is the foundation of the Suburban Town and Village design pattern, using the Rapid Streetcar as its transport infrastructure backbone: providing suburban Towns and Villages that work in their own right, replacing the two-dimensional movie-set facade of Town and Village life offered by most suburban sprawl communities.

Honduras: A Stand Off (Breaking News Update)

You will recall that the legitimate president of Honduras Manual Zelaya evaded the golpistas who wanted to arrest him and secretly returned to Honduras, where he found refuge in the Brazilian embassy.  First, there was this essay; then this. Zelaya’s still there. And this is an update on the present stand off.

Please join me in Tegucigalpa.

Café Discovery: Into the mind of the artist

I should have spent yesterday afternoon grading Java programs, or perhaps preparing some files to show my Tuesday night class how to better use the animation capabilities of Director 11.  But it was only Saturday and procrastination is what it is, so I decided to put that off until today.  So I created a graphic.  As I am wont to do, I saved often along the way, so I actually created a whole series of graphics.

Which one is best is in the eye of the beholder.

Today, in order to continue the procrastination process, I decided to provide a glimpse, perhaps, at how the artistic part of my brain functions.

“The U.S. is no longer a country, it’s a company town”

One of my daily hits on the internet is Cryptogon.   The site is run by a fellow who was lucky enough to be able to leave the country and set up a self-sustaining farm out in the middle of nowhere in New  Zealand.  Now did he pull this off?   Well, he married a woman from New Zealand.   That’s step one that not everyone can do of course.  🙂  

He has a knack for finding the out-of-the-way story, and has a unique perspective on the world.

Usually he posts articles and information with just a few comments, sometimes none, but today he has a post which is pure commentary.   And I just have to share it because it’s brilliant.


A few people seem surprised that the U.S. is a police state.

Oh the cops. Oh the poor students. Oh boo hoo, we just want to wave our signs.

The don’t taze me bro generation is obviously going to have to figure this one out the hard way.

My position has always been that people who wave signs at fascists are clinically nuts; holy roller, speaking in tongues, batshit crazy nuts.

Sign waving is not resistance. Sign waving is part of the problem in the same way that voting is part of the problem. How’s that Change working out for the Obama supporters? (Some of those bozos are already talking about how they’re going to get it right in 2012…)

In the few video clips of the G20 protests that I watched, I saw a bunch of zombies with iPhones, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the Legion of Doom tested out its new sonic weapons and tear gas lobbing skills.

WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him? Maybe a few, “Fuck the police” tweets will do the trick? Send out invites to join revolutionary sign waving groups on Facebook?!

The Twitbook aspect of this is, frankly, bizarre. Maybe I’ve been out here in the bush too long, but it looks like powerlessness is manifesting itself into a sort of flaccid, me-too technophelia, crossbred with a hamster wheel. This is more embarrassing than anything else.

The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town. If waving signs at the company’s goon squad just makes people look stupid, what does twitbooking about it amount to?

Here are some other ideas:

Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don’t need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don’t produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don’t tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it’s crossed. Don’t wave a sign about it. Don’t twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.

The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town.    That’s just stating the obvious so perfectly that I wish I’d thought of it.  

Just had to share.    

Bush/GOP already lost it when Iraq > Afghan War, No more Unvice from Idiots who are always WRONG

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Obama CAN NOT lose something that is already lost.

   Short diary, but worth discussing.

I WANT TO KILL THIS MEME NOW!

    Meme: Obama might lose Afghanistan without surge

    NEW RULE: Idiots who were wrong about Iraq DON’T GET to give any more unvise about what the military should do.

    Bush and Republicans LOST AFGHANISTAN the Minute they moved the debate to Iraq, like idiots.

Unvice = crappy advise from people who are always WRONG

.

Republicans, Joe Lieberman and the MIC want more war, and they want it bad. No strategy, no exit plan, just give us more troops and money or the Country is DOOMED, I say, DOOMED. And then the terrorists will win, they’ll get WMD’s, the Taliban will get stronger and al Qaeda will attack us again.

     Blah, Blah, Blah, I’ve heard this bullshit before.

To which my answer to the Unxperts are: Didn’t you say that about Iraq?

     More Sunday ranting below the fold

The NYCCAN March is ON!

The NYCCAN Rally at Battery Park and March for Answers is still on for this afternoon.

The weather is in the process of Going Away(tm). (Insert NYC shamanic dance here. Hoo-hah hoo-hah oy-vey hoo-hah.)

I will be one of the speakers at Battery Park. We will then march to City Hall, where there will be two more speakers as we try to raise New York City’s awareness of our efforts to put a request for a new 9/11 investigation on the November ballot.

Hope some of you can join us.

My Man Connie Tuck

I was talking to the Mohawks who come to the Harvest Festival at the Martin Van Buren house every year and thought about the names of the places around here again. Here is upstate New York. It’s really wrong to name things after lousy people who don’t deserve respect like Henry Hudson and Peter Stuyvesant.

It’s not PC: there is simply nothing good about either of these creeps. Why do I have to speak their horrid names every time I talk about where I live and the river that runs through the great state of New York? Can’t we just get rid of the residue of evil? Giving a name to a place is an honor. Hudson and Stuyvesant do not deserve the honors. One was a murderer and the other a tyrant.

Here are my alternative suggestions for names:

Hudson should be Mimancanituck (pronounced My Man Connie Tuck)

Stuyvesant should be Hodgson, in honor of the Flushing Remonstrance promoting religious freedom against Stuyvesant’s religious tyranny.

Can’t we simply rename our own town and declare, for what it’s worth, that the Hudson should be called My Man Connie Tuck from now on? I would vote yes.

More:

http://glencadia.blogspot.com/

Taibbi: Werewolf Grills Federal Reserve Stooge

Just watch the video after reading the contents of this link by Matt Taibbi.  I’ve lifted a paragraph from Mr. Taibbi so you have a better understanding of exactly what you’re watching.

I have personal experience with… well, let’s call it the unique personality of Alan Grayson. In his capacity as an attorney he once basically threatened to have me dismembered and have my body parts dumped in a tin canister and fired into the center of a burning supernova. And that’s actually underselling the real language he used. We were having a disagreement about the use of information given to me by a certain source in a story about military contracting, and in the middle of what had been a normal contentious argument between two sane adults, dude suddenly assumed this crazy monster-voice and just went medieval on me. He was roaring into the telephone about how he was going to crush me, how I was going to wish I had never messed with him, how I didn’t know who the hell I was dealing with, and so on. One phrase I remember in particular was, “I am going to strip the bark off of you!” It came totally out of the blue and it was like being on the telephone with a metamorphosing werewolf – the whole performance genuinely freaked me out. I may even have peed a little, I can’t remember.

Now, ask yourselves this: are you or are you not glad that this guy seems to be on our side?

Sunday music retrospective: Renaissance

Renaissance



Let It Grow



Mother Russia

Grand Finale

Today: Sept 27th, Gold Star Mothers Day

Gold Star Mother’s Day in United States

Gold Star Mother’s Day is observed in the United States on the last Sunday of September each year. It is a day to for people to recognize and honor those who have lost a son or daughter while serving the United States Armed Forces.

Gold Star Moms Website

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