Day: October 2, 2017

Closing Thought–02Oct17

And The Winner Is!

We all have been witnessing the tragedies of three hurricanes…..and the president has found a unique way to bring attention to the events….

Hours after slamming “politically motivated ingrates” for criticizing the federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, President Trump attended a golf tournament—and dedicated the US win in the Presidents Cup to hurricane victims. Trump presented the trophy to US captain Steve Stricker after the US team cruised to victory for the seventh year in a row. “On behalf of all of the people of Texas, and all of the people—if you look today and see what is happening, how horrible it is, but we have it under really great control—Puerto Rico and the people of Florida who have really suffered over this last short period of time with the hurricanes, I want to just remember them,” Trump said, per the Guardian.

“We’re doing really well on Puerto Rico,” he told reporters. “Tremendous progress being made. We’re getting the roads open, we’re getting a lot of things done—really at a record clip.” (On Saturday, Trump lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz and other Puerto Rican officials who “want everything to be done for them.”)

Seriously?  WTF?

What does this “coveted” award do for the people that have suffered thanx to the hurricanes?

How much of the prize money is earmarked for Puerto Rico or Florida or Texas?

Politicizing a tragedy.  Cannot get much lower than that…..in my book.

Give the victims a few weeks and they will clean off a spot for the trophy.

If someone would like to help out…in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Florida or Texas then maybe they should visit this site…..

Source: Support UNICEF USA’s Hurricane Relief Efforts in Puerto Rico | UNICEF USA

Time to settle down for the evening…..I shall return tomorrow with a bag full of stuff…..C Ya…chuq

The Killing of History

The new documentary made by Ken Burns has cause a bit of an uproar……the Vietnam War has brought up so many memories for some and some “who cares” attitudes in others…..but these people are the ones that spent the war stateside pick their nose and getting paper cuts infected so they could use the VA for the medical.

I have been posting on the war in various ways….I like both pros and cons…..and this piece in Consortium falls into the “con” column…..it is a critique of the doc and the director……

PBS’ “The Vietnam War” may show some of the conflict’s horrors but still soft-pedals the horrific war crimes that America inflicted on Vietnam, fitting with a corporate-dependent documentary project.

One of the most hyped “events” of American television, “The Vietnam War,” has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam War in an entirely new way.”

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism,” Burns’s “entirely new” Vietnam War is presented as an “epic, historic work.” Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Source: The Killing of History – Consortiumnews

I believe that having only one side of the conflict is disingenuous…..to understand the situation we need both sides….some have never left the paddies.

The Kurds: Now What?

ISIS is facing defeat in Iraq….but a recent vote may change that optimism of a calmer future….this is a re-blog from GSFP my opinion blog…..chuq

Gulf South Free Press

The votes have been counted and the Kurds overwhelmingly voted to set up a free Kurdistan……about 92% in favor of session.

There is NO one that sees this vote as a positive thing for Iraq or the wider Middle East and that includes the Kurds biggest ally….the United States.

The PM of Iraq, Abadi, has demanded that the results of the vote be nullified……

The results of the Iraqi Kurdistan referendum on secession are in, with over 92% of the voters in favor of seceding from Iraq. Iraq’s Prime Minister Hayder Abadi has threatened military action in retaliation.

In fact, Abadi is now demanding that the Kurds totally cancel the vote, even though it’s already taken place and the results are already in, saying he will “never discuss” the results of the referendum because Iraq’s parliament didn’t give them permission for it.

Iraqi officials seem to be throwing everything…

View original post 724 more words

What Happens When War Is Outlawed?

Breaking News:  “If it bleeds it leads”!  Shooting in Las Vegas has replaced 3 million starving people in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

Don’t go crazy……we all know that war cannot be outlawed……this is a historic piece about a little known treaty of 1928……

You guys know me…if there is a chance for me to drop some history on my readers then I will damn well do it.

Did a largely forgotten peace pact transform the world we live in?

On August 27, 1928, in Paris, with due pomp and circumstance, representatives of fifteen nations signed an agreement outlawing war. The agreement was the unanticipated fruit of an attempt by the French Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, to negotiate a bilateral treaty with the United States in which each nation would renounce the use of war as an instrument of policy toward the other. The American Secretary of State, Frank Kellogg, had been unenthusiastic about Briand’s idea. He saw no prospect of going to war with France and therefore no point in promising not to, and he suspected that the proposal was a gimmick designed to commit the United States to intervening on France’s behalf if Germany attacked it (as Germany did in 1914). After some delay and in response to public pressure, Kellogg told Briand that his idea sounded great. Who wouldn’t want to renounce war? But why not make the treaty multilateral, and have it signed by “all the principal powers of the world”? Everyone would renounce the use of war as an instrument of policy.

Source: What Happens When War Is Outlawed | The New Yorker

The years after World War One was a time when so much of the world we know today could have been change and for the better…..and little changed (pertaining to war that is)

The old path “Not Taken” scenario.

Class Dismissed!

Terrorism Returns!

For about a year now the old enemy of humanity has been pushed from the headlines by a number of situation….investigation, storms, etc….during that lull the blog posts on the subject have been almost non-existent….but as of 2008 hrs on 01 Dec that all changed….

Las Vegas police say one suspect is “down” after a mass shooting at a country music festival that has left at least two people dead and dozens wounded. University Medical Center spokeswoman Danita Cohen says 26 people were admitted to the hospital, the AP reports. Authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip after receiving reports of an active shooter near the Mandalay Bay Casino late Sunday. The shooter or shooters apparently fired on the Route 91 Harvest music festival from upper levels of the Mandalay Bay across the street, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

On a live feed of a police scanner, officers could be heard saying that a suspect was down on the 32nd floor of the hotel and that they were investigating reports of shots fired at other casinos, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Witnesses say country singer Jason Aldean was playing near the end of the concert when gunfire rang out. “The band ran off stage and it was pandemonium,” witness Jon Bessette tells NBC. “Everyone was running, people were getting trampled.” Dozens of patrol vehicles descended on the Strip after the incident and some flights destined for the McCarran International Airport were diverted.

Will this return the focus on domestic terrorism?

Probably not!  It will all depend if the case can be made that he.she is some sort of religious zealot…..

I want to see how this horrific attack is used by the MSM and others.

Turn The Page!

Anti-Russian Bias

Oh My God!  It is Monday morn and I awoke to check the news and the breaking news at this hour is….OJ is a free man!

Seriously?  Basically….who gives a f*ck?

Got that off my chest…..

Have you noticed that there are some out there that feel like there is a Russia Bias in our media?  That they do stories that only make Russia look bad on the tiny screens every night.

How do you feel about it?

The U.S. mainstream media (MSM} presents itself as the arbiter of truth-telling and journalistic professionalism – the global gold standard – but its deep-seated biases, especially on Russia, belie that self-image.

The anti-Russian/anti-Soviet bias in the American media appears to have no limit. You would think that they would have enough self-awareness and enough journalistic integrity -– just enough -– to be concerned about their image. But it keeps on coming, piled higher and deeper.

One of the latest cases in point is a review of a new biography of Mikhail Gorbachev in the New York Times Book Review (September 10). The review says that Gorbachev “was no hero to his own people” because he was “the destroyer of their empire.”

This is how the New York Times avoids having to say anything positive about life in the Soviet Union or about socialism. They would have readers believe that it was the loss of the likes of Czechoslovakia or Hungary et al. that upset the Russian people, not the loss, under Gorbachev’s perestroika, of a decent standard of living for all, a loss affecting people’s rent, employment, vacations, medical care, education, and many other aspects of the Soviet welfare state.

Source: The MSM’s Anti-Russia Bias – Consortiumnews

There are times when I think the the MSM is just too fixated on the Russia thing…..times when I feel that a step back would be beneficial……a time out until more info is learned and passed on….

Does the MSM have a anti-Russia bias?

Let’s say some of the accusations are true….where does that lead us?

For lone the amount of “think tanks” has increased sharply….everyone looking for the “study” or “research” that will

Some of their so-called “findings” has added to the hysteria that engulfs the country….well at least in the bubble of DC….put them on the map.

As the U.S. government doles out tens of millions of dollars to “combat Russian propaganda,” one result is a slew of new “studies” by “scholars” and “researchers” auditioning for the loot,

And, if you think the pillars of the U.S. mainstream media – The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others – will apply some quality controls, you haven’t been paying attention for the past year or so. The MSM is just as unethical as the NGOs are.

Source: The Slimy Business of Russia-gate – Consortiumnews

I have been writing that I think that there is something to all this Russia stuff….however we need to step back and let the investigations proceed until the answers are uncovered.  Hourly speculation is doing nothing to move the search for knowledge forward.