September 13, 2014 archive

ISIS Is the Direct Result of the War on Terror

ISIS Disaster Has Failed ‘War on Terrorism’ Blowback Written All Over it

By John Queally, Common Dreams

‘What I think we’re going to end up seeing [in Syria] is the end result of the disaster that Obama inherited, not just from Bush, but from his own first term,’ says investigative journalist

Investigation journalist Jeremy Scahill sat down with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Thursday to discuss President Obama’s announced plan to escalate the U.S. military campaign against the group known as the Islamic State and offered a damning assessment of the administration’s “strategy.”  He said that not only is the militant group (also known by the acronym ISIS) the product of failed military adventurism but that continued attempts to bomb al Qaeda-like groups out of existence simply creates a cycle of “blowback” that is self-defeating and counter-productive. [..]

“Now I think there’s the potential for huge blowback here,” Scahill said of Obama’s plan to launch airstrikes-including possible carpet bombing-against targets in Syria. “I also think that ISIS is, in part, the product of blowback from the Bush era and the Obama era.”

Scahill continued: “What I think we’re going to end up seeing [in Syria] is the end result of the disaster that Obama inherited, not just from Bush, but from his own first term.” Scahill reminded the audience that though former President Bush had bombed Yemen only once (“that we know of”), but but President Obama has dramatically increased the number of airstrikes in Yemen and Pakistan, ratcheted up the covert war in Somalia, and otherwise expanded the sphere of the U.S. so-called “counter-terrorism” operations.

“President Obama, for all the criticism he gets from Dick Cheney,” argued Scahill, “is actually far more effective at the ‘war games’-so to speak-than the neocons were, because he’s able also to sell it to the liberal base.”

Attacking terrorist organizations with military tactics is part of the reason these groups exist. Innocent civilians are killed. Property is destroyed. Hate for Americans is fueled.  

Cartnoon

The Breakfast Club (Sound of an Atom)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgAs long as we’re talking about musical forms, we might well discuss the Fugue, a Baroque development that was later supplanted by the Sonata which was the basis for the Symphony and we all remember the Symphony don’t we?

C’mon, it was just last week.  Didn’t I tell you to practice at home?

Well, maybe not.  And some actually prefer the noise these kids today make with their “electric” instruments eshewing the lute, recorder, and drum.

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

I was in my mid 30’s in 1929, do the math.

Well you thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever

But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids

And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses

How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing

Sparkling waves are calling you to touch her white laced lips

You see your girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise

And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea

And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body

Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers

You want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell

You know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands

With tales of brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured

By the sirens sweetly singing

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers

You want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter

In any event a Fugue

is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (ranging from hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.

After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, but there is typically amnesia for the fugue episode. Additionally, an episode of fugue is not characterized as attributable to a psychiatric disorder if it can be related to the ingestion of psychotropic substances, to physical trauma, to a general medical condition, or to psychiatric conditions such as delirium, dementia, bipolar disorder or depression. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode, and upon recovery there may be amnesia for the original stressor (dissociative amnesia).

Wait, where was I?  A Fugue

is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and recurs frequently in the course of the composition.



A fugue usually has three sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation containing the return of the subject in the fugue’s tonic key, though not all fugues have a recapitulation. In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint.

Most fugues open with a short main theme, the subject, which then sounds successively in each voice (after the first voice is finished stating the subject, a second voice repeats the subject at a different pitch, and other voices repeat in the same way); when each voice has entered, the exposition is complete. This is often followed by a connecting passage, or episode, developed from previously heard material; further “entries” of the subject then are heard in related keys. Episodes (if applicable) and entries are usually alternated until the “final entry” of the subject, by which point the music has returned to the opening key, or tonic, which is often followed by closing material, the coda. In this sense, a fugue is a style of composition, rather than a fixed structure.

Since we’ve discovered that the natural sound of an atom (a simulation only and not a very specific atom like gold or silver or iron or helium, hydrogen or lithium) here is Pachelbel’s Fugue in D Major.

Oblgatories and more psychotic episodes (in D Major) below.

On This Day In History September 13

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 13 is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 109 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1814, Francis Scot Key pens Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s social club in London. “The Anacreontic Song” (or “To Anacreon in Heaven”), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key’s poem and renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner“, it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth (“O thus be it ever when free men shall stand…”) added on more formal occasions. In the fourth stanza, Key urged the adoption of “In God is our Trust” as the national motto (“And this be our motto: In God is our Trust”). The United States adopted the motto “In God We Trust” by law in 1956.

The Star-Spangled Banner” was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of American officialdom. “Hail, Columbia” served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, whose melody was derived from the British national anthem, also served as a de facto anthem before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Following the War of 1812 and subsequent American wars, other songs would emerge to compete for popularity at public events, among them “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

On This Day In History September 13

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 13 is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 109 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1814, Francis Scot Key pens Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s social club in London. “The Anacreontic Song” (or “To Anacreon in Heaven”), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key’s poem and renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner“, it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth (“O thus be it ever when free men shall stand…”) added on more formal occasions. In the fourth stanza, Key urged the adoption of “In God is our Trust” as the national motto (“And this be our motto: In God is our Trust”). The United States adopted the motto “In God We Trust” by law in 1956.

The Star-Spangled Banner” was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of American officialdom. “Hail, Columbia” served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, whose melody was derived from the British national anthem, also served as a de facto anthem before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Following the War of 1812 and subsequent American wars, other songs would emerge to compete for popularity at public events, among them “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Late Night Karaoke

Random Japan

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Yahoo! Japan makes thrill-rides out of their trending search topics with “Trend Coaster”

   Master Blaster

In the month of September at limited locations in Tokyo, the nation’s perennial favorite search engine Yahoo! Japan is offering a one-of-a-kind experience. By stepping into their motion simulator and strapping on a VR headset, you can virtually yet literally ride the waves of popularity of any topic of your choosing as if it were a roller coaster.

The concept is rather simple. When you select a keyword the number of people searching it on Yahoo! Japan at any moment will correspond to an elevation of the track. In other words, a real-time line graph of the number of searches will be transformed into a roller coaster track for you to ride on.

Study estimates 24000 transgender people will be disenfranchised by Voter ID

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law has released a new study, this time concerning the affects of Voter ID.  The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters in 2014 General Election, written by Jody Herman, concludes that there could be over 24000 eligible transgender voters across ten states who will not be able to vote because of Voter ID laws.  

The Institute finds that there are approximately 84000 eligible transgender voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  All those states have photo voter ID laws except Wisconsin…which might have one come election time.  The study estimates that 28% of those eligible voters do not have valid photo ID that reflects their gender and name sufficient to the standards of the laws.  

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Lawmakers should not overlook the consequences of enacting stricter voter ID laws on transgender voters.  Election officials must consider the potential impact of these laws in the upcoming November elections.  Voter ID laws create a unique barrier for transgender people who would otherwise be eligible to vote.

–Herman