Mahler's Prodigal Son

When decency and humanity goes AWOL

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:54:00 +0000

It comes as no surprise to anyone with any sort of commonsense, decency, humanity and intelligence, to look upon Trump and the years of his presidency - is it even accurate to describe it as such? - as an aberration and the US coming to be regarded as a joke on many levels.

What is astounding (then again, perhaps not, when one observes the GOP post the Trump era) is the absolute inhumanity of the policies pursued by the (dysfunctional) Trump administration. Witness what happened at the US-Mexico border and the conduct meted out to refugees, especially minors, even as young as below 10.

Watch this (Australian) ABC documentary, Foreign Correspondent, as a graphic and powerful indictment of Trump and the awful people he surrounded himself with - including one, actively propagating the policy of separating children from their parents. The grandson, no less, of Holocaust survivors. Shameful!

The World Wakes Up

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 30 May 2021 07:14:00 +0000

To say that Israel has wrought death and destruction on the Gazans is an oxymoron. That has been known to those who have taken an interest and followed events in the Middle East - and, in particular, Israel and the Palestinians.

All too sadly the media has been craven to following the Israel perspective on what has been happening over the years. The Palestinians have barely figured so that not only has the world not really known or understood what has been happening but what suffering the Palestinians have been going through.

The most recent events have shone light on the whole situation. And the world doesn't like what it has seen. The tide has been turned as this piece on Mondoweiss explains.

‘NYT’ puts faces of 60+ slain Palestinian children on front page, at last

"The New York Times does an unprecedented thing for a paper that has long supported Israel: puts the faces of dozens of Palestinian children slaughtered by Israel in Gaza on its front page. “Never thought I’d see the day when Palestinian victims were pictured, named, & their stories told,” says James Zogby."

View Replies (4)

bcg (@bcg)

May 28, 2021 1:23 pm

This is welcome, but I’ve become more cynical: I used to think that U.S. pressure could bring Israel to heel, but I think at some point Israel will just tell the U.S. to shove it, they can buy and sell weapons with Bolsonaro or Putin. Reading Haim Bresheeth-Zabner’s “An Army Lie No Other – How The Israel Defense Forces Made A Nation” has made me realize the extent to which the army permeates life in… Read more »

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Misterioso (@misterioso)

May 28, 2021 12:57 pm

“More than 140 Rutgers Faculty Sign Statement of Solidarity with Palestinians”

https://csrr.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ru-faculty-solidarity-with-palestinians.pdf

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Kay24 (@kay24)

May 28, 2021 12:58 pm

Well it seem they took their cue from Haaretz. That is one powerful front page.

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gamal (@gamal)

May 28, 2021 1:45 pm

Gazan Artist Speaks About a Lifetime of Trauma and War“We live in constant fear of censorship. No artist should have that fear,” says 21-year-old artist Malak Matar. “In several previous interviews with the international press, Matar has been routinely asked: “What message do you have to the world?” Admittedly, that’s a question we intended to ask her as well, as voices of artists from Gaza are rarely amplified. But before we did, Matar stated that… Read more »

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Trump thumbs his nose at climate control

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 05:47:00 +0000

The man continues to be a disgrace.

The latest New York Times Editorial "Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord" puts it all rather well.......

"Only future generations will be able to calculate the full consequences of President Trump’s incredibly shortsighted approach to climate change, since it is they who will suffer the rising seas and crippling droughts that scientists say are inevitable unless the world brings fossil fuel emissions to heel.

But this much is clear now: Mr. Trump’s policies — the latest of which was his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change — have dismayed America’s allies, defied the wishes of much of the American business community he pretends to help, threatened America’s competitiveness as well as job growth in crucial industries and squandered what was left of America’s claim to leadership on an issue of global importance.

The only clear winners, and we’ve looked hard to find them, are hard-core climate deniers like Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency and the presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, and various fossil fuel interests that have found in Mr. Trump another president (George W. Bush being the last) credulous enough to swallow the bogus argument that an agreement to fight climate change will destroy or at least inhibit the economy.

Mr. Trump justified his decision by saying that the Paris agreement was a bad deal for the United States, buttressing his argument with a cornucopia of dystopian, dishonest and discredited data based on numbers from industry-friendly sources. Those numbers are nonsense, as is his argument that the agreement would force the country to make enormous economic sacrifices and cause a huge redistribution of jobs and economic resources to the rest of the world."

Decency and humanity go AWOL in Trump's Budget and health (?) care Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 28 May 2017 12:50:00 +0000

The man, and his Administration, are an abomination! Just look what that imbecile in the White House has in store for Americans. The New York Times reports..

"Any doubts about the senseless cruelty underlying the health care agenda put forward by President Trump and Congress were put to rest last week by two government documents. The fantasy that Mr. Trump intends to fight for the health of long-suffering working people should be similarly interred.

One document was the administration’s budget. The other was the Congressional Budget Office’s detailed analysis of the Trumpcare bill passed by the House earlier this month. The budget proposes billions of dollars in cuts to programs that fund research into new cures, protect the country from infectious diseases and provide care to the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities. The analysis said that Trumpcare — formally the American Health Care Act — would rob 23 million people of health insurance while leaving millions of others with policies that offer little protection from major medical conditions. All of this would be done in service of huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

Consider the fate of Medicaid, a program that provides health insurance to more than 74 million people, among them 60 percent of nursing home residents and millions of people with disabilities. Trumpcare would slash Medicaid spending by $834 billion over 10 years, according to the C.B.O. The president’s budget would take a further $610 billion from the program under the pretext of reforming it. Taken together, this amounts to an estimated 45 percent reduction by 2026 compared with current law, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says."

35 psychiatrists diagnose Trump

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 22:50:00 +0000

Anyone who has even remotely followed Trump in his almost 100 days in the White House, will not be surprised by how 35 psychiatrists have diagnosed Trump. Dangerous is one word which immediately comes to mind.

"35 psychiatrists this week gathered at a conference at Yale to sound the alarm on what they believe is President Donald Trump’s “dangerous mental illness.”

Per The Independent, the psychiatrists met at Yale’s School of Medicine on Thursday to talk about Donald Trump’s mental health, which they warned was frighteningly unstable.

“We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness,” said Dr. John Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist who advised psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and who has in the past warned Trump is a “psychiatric Frankenstein monster.”

Gartner and other psychiatrists at the conference argued that Trump suffers from a particularly malignant case of pathological narcissism, which makes him a danger to the country and the world.

“Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the country the first day he was president,” Gartner explained. “If Donald Trump really believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional.”

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 07:51:00 +0000

Buckle up for a rough ride

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:28:00 +0000

Whilst Trump pulls back on anything to do with climate change - borne out of ignorance - now comes news that we can expect rougher and bumpier flights because of climate change.

"Keep that seat belt buckled ? it could be a bumpy flight. New research predicts that severe clear air turbulence in the stratosphere could increase by 149% because of climate change.

That is because global warming, driven in part by the colossal fossil fuel consumption of today’s massive global jetliner fleet, is expected to generate stronger wind shear within the stratospheric jetstreams.

Paul Williams, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in the UK, reports in the Advances in Atmospheric Sciences journal that he used supercomputer simulations to test the rise in rough rides and scary moments at altitudes of 9,000 metres across the Atlantic if carbon dioxide ratios in the atmosphere double ? as they could this century, unless drastic action is taken to reduce emissions.

Light turbulence will increase by 59%, light to moderate by 75%, moderate to severe by 127%, and the really bad jolts associated with severe turbulence go up by 149%."

Turkey. An ally one would want to have?

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 13:55:00 +0000

The West has courted Turkey mainly because, amongst many other reasons, in the case of the US, it has military bases in the country. There has been ongoing discussion about Turkey joining the EU.

The country is clearly steering toward a dictatorship. The election today is another example of the President acting more like a dictator.

Read the story of one doctor as reported in The New York Times.....

"At present, several pieces of evidence can suggest that you may be a member of FETO, including having had an account at Bank Asya, which was founded by Gulenists; running the ByLock encrypted communication app on your phone (thought to have facilitated planning for the coup attempt); possessing those F-series dollar bills; sending your children to a school associated with Gulen; working at a Gulen-affiliated institution (a university, say, or a hospital); having subscribed to the Gulen newspaper Zaman; or having Gulen’s books in your house. One action implicated the doctor: When he returned to Turkey after living abroad for three years and moved into a new house with his wife and children, he opened an account at the nearest bank up the street: Bank Asya."

A unholy triumvirate of Pepsi, United Airlines and Trump's idiot spokesman

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 13:02:00 +0000

It's not at all friendly in United's sky!

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 04:57:00 +0000

More than apt commentary in The Guardian (with video) on United Airline's outrageous conduct so widely reported around the world....

It has become apparent that America’s airlines, much like America’s president, have absolutely no shame. They seem to care only about profit and treat the people they supposedly serve like chattel, cattle or criminals.

This week’s installment of airlines reaching new lows is brought to you by United – you know, the people who spend tens of millions of dollars on fancy adverts urging you to “Fly the Friendly Skies”, while seemingly going out of their way to make the skies as unfriendly as possible.

The story has been everywhere over the last 24 hours and you’ve probably seen the graphic video. United overbooked a flight and, having only realized this after the flight had boarded, tried to force a few randomly selected passengers off. One man refused to vacate the seat he paid for and, thus, had a reasonable expectation of sitting in. Security officers dragged the 69-year-old grandfather off the plane screaming. This was all caught on video and went viral.

You’d think that United might have balked at this PR disaster and issued a groveling apology. Particularly as the incident comes hot on the heels of last month’s controversy around United denying boarding to two teenage girls because they were wearing leggings. But no.

The furore was followed by perhaps the most half-assed sorry-not-sorry in the history of corporate apologies, with United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz expressing regret for “having to re-accommodate these customers”. Yes, that’s right, they translated “dragged a man out of a plane screaming” into “re-accommodate”.

Somewhere, in the depths of United HQ, there is a team of copywriters tasked with systematically wringing any actual meaning out of the English language and transforming it into hollow, hyphenated platitudes.

Pandora's Box unrestrained

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 01:30:00 +0000

There is justifiable outrage - and also some of it confected - about what the Syrian president has done by bombing his own people with chemical weapons.

Whilst there are those who congratulate Trump for what they perceive as his decisive action, there are at least 2 aspects of America's actions missing. One, what now? More attacks on Syrian installations? Two, no introspection on what America's role has been in roiling things up in the Middle East.

Chris Hedges (former Bureau Chief of the NY Times) writing on truthdig....

"War opens a Pandora’s box of evils that once unleashed are beyond anyone’s control. The invasion of Afghanistan set out to defeat al-Qaida, and nearly 16 years later, we are embroiled in a losing fight with the Taliban. We believed we could invade Iraq and create a Western-style democracy and weaken Iran’s power in the region. The fragmentation of Iraq among warring factions has left Iran the dominant Muslim nation in the Middle East and Iraq destroyed as a unified nation. We set out to topple President Bashar Assad in Syria but then began to bomb the Islamic insurgents trying to overthrow him. We spread the “war on terror” to Yemen, Libya and Syria in a desperate effort to crush regional resistance. Instead, we created new failed states and lawless enclaves where vacuums were filled by the jihadist forces we sought to defeat. We have wasted a staggering $4.79 trillion on death, destruction and folly as our nation is increasingly impoverished and climate change threatens us with extinction. The arms manufacturers, who have a vested interest in perpetuating these debacles, will work to make a few trillion more before this act of collective imperial suicide comes to a humiliating end.

In war, when you attack one force you implicitly aid another. And the forces we assist by striking the Assad regime are the forces we ironically are determined to eradicate—Nusra Front, al-Qaida and other Islamic radical groups. These are the same Islamic forces we, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, largely created, armed and funded at the inception of the civil war in Syria. They are the forces that have responded to the chaos caused by our misguided military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. They are the forces that execute Western captives, slaughter religious minorities, carry out terrorism in Europe and the United States and collect billions of dollars from smuggling refugees into Europe. They are our sometime enemies and our sometime allies."

Robert Fisk on the latest in Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 09:39:00 +0000

Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent, is a veteran journalist and author on the Middle East. He writes today about what has been happening in Syria....

"So did Bashar al-Assad use gas? The Russians must know. They are in the air bases, in the ministries, in the military headquarters. And if they say the Syrians did not use gas, then they had better be sure. The Russians had advance warning of Trump’s 59 Cruise missiles. Many hours of warning – not the one hour that Washington claims – and would have ensured that Syrian jets were way out of the air base. Russians are not to be killed in the Syrian war; their presence would have meant casualties.

Did the Syrian army, a trifle arrogant, perhaps, after their capture of eastern Aleppo decide to try to bring the war to an end in a quick way? The question must be asked. In the past, villages in which army officers lived – and in which their families lived – have been gassed. The Syrians blamed the Turks for giving the gas to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and Isis. The Russians said earlier gas attacks on Damascus used chemical components shipped via Turkey to Syria from Libya.

****

The pictures seem to be decisive. Terrifying. Ghastly. But we must also remember the 250,000 civilians of eastern Aleppo, who became 150,000 and then 90,000. The Syrian war has become the most poorly reported conflict in the world. How many dead has it caused? 400,000? 450,000? Or 500,000, the latest figure. How do we complete the figures for death by gas? To believe the Syrian government? When the last gas attack in Damascus took place, the UN, in a brief paragraph in the middle of their subsequent report, said that the chemical shells had been “compromised” by being moved between different locations.

****

But then we come to the Russians. They underwrote the Syrian removal of all gas weapons. They saved Obama’s pitch after he had threatened – and then withdrew – the warning of an air attack on Syrian chemical weapons. Now the Russians have seen what Trump will do when he believes (if he does believe) the use of gas attacks. And the Russians, so I’m told, knew all about the US raid – and long before it occurred. Would they really have left any Syrian aircraft on the airbase? Would they have left any such weapons at the runway? Or in hardened bunkers?

In reality, the US attack on Syria says more about Trump-Putin relations than about America and the Middle East. That’s a problem for Rex Tillerson to work out. And Bashar al-Assad, of course. Be sure, the phone calls between Damascus and Moscow will last long into the night."

Trump...at his worst, again! From Crikey........

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 09:01:00 +0000


Donald Trump labels sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly 'a good person'

Although 23 advertisers have withdrawn their support and ads for The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News due to multiple allegations of sexual harrassment, the veteran backslapper has won support from friend Donald Trump. In an interview with The New York Times, Trump said: “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong … I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person.” Fox News and O’Reilly have settled five claims of sexual harassment against the host for a total of US$13 million (including the largest of US$9 million settled by O’Reilly himself). Trump said in the interview that O’Reilly’s only mistake was in settling the lawsuits.“I think he shouldn’t have settled, personally. I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way,” said Trump, whose was seen in last year’s election campaign on an old Access Hollywood video in which he was heard bragging about being so famous he could grab women “by the pussy” with impunity. White, college-educated women ignored those comments and voted for Trump over Hilary Clinton in the November 8 election. Several media reports pointed out that Trump’s latest comments after a White House press release last week touted Trump proclaiming April as National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. “At the heart of our country is the emphatic belief that every person has unique and infinite value,” he wrote. “We dedicate each April to raising awareness about sexual abuse and recommitting ourselves to fighting it. Women, children and men have inherent dignity that should never be violated.”

The travesty which is Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 06:41:00 +0000

With horrific news in the last 24 hours about the gassing atrocity seemingly perpetrated by Assad on his own people, Syria is back on the front pages of the news.

This report from Medicins Sans Frontieres puts things into context in the strife-ridden country.

"For six long years, war has waged across Syria, resulting in an unprecedented 4.8 million people becoming refugees. The responsibility to care for this refugee population falls largely to Syria’s neighbours. Inside Syria, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees have some overwhelming numbers. They report that 13.5 million people are in direct need of medical and humanitarian assistance. More than six million have been forced from their homes and are now internally displaced due to shifting battle lines, armed groups and militia; and 4.3 million people are categorised as ‘’hard to reach’’ - a humanitarian euphemism used when getting information from communities is limited and thus the likelihood of the population accessing sufficient protection, food, shelter, water or healthcare is extremely low. The effects of war have not been limited to frontlines or battle grounds. It does not only comprise of indiscriminate bombings of civilians, hospitals and cities causing catastrophic blast injuries and deaths. War has also insidiously crept into every consultation room, every hospital bed and every health post and clinic in the areas indirectly affected by the Syrian crisis over the last six years."

French politics.... a la 2017!

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 06:36:00 +0000

What some political parties won't be driven to do. What The New York Times reports, below, about the French far-right National Front party - facing an election in the next weeks - borders on the bizarre.

" For years, France’s far-right National Front was synonymous with anti-Semitism. Its founder, Jean Marie Le Pen, was notorious for anti-Semitic outbursts — including a comment that the Holocaust was just a detail of history.

But since Mr. Le Pen’s daughter Marine took over the party’s leadership in 2011, the National Front has attempted a remarkable about-face: Today, the party positions itself as a champion of French Jews.

Although Ms. Le Pen, one of the front-runners in the coming presidential election, still alludes to anti-Semitic stereotypes on the campaign trail, she now promises that her party will be the protector of French Jews.

It is a surprising twist that has resonated with some French Jews who feel abandoned by what they see as the government’s tepid response to the anti-Semitic violence that has plagued the country for years.

****

But experts say the National Front’s shift may be intended more as a message to non-Jewish voters looking for moral cover in supporting a party that vilifies their primary sources of fear and anger: Muslims and immigrants.

The National Front has long been widely viewed in France as toxic, but by declaring itself a shield for French Jews, it may have found an effective way to allow many voters to justify breaking a taboo. That reflects a concept known as “moral license.” Framing the party as a champion of one minority enables voters to justify supporting its agenda in suppressing another.

The result is not a more racially tolerant National Front, but rather a party that has found nearly unprecedented success in persuading mainstream voters — many of whom may be quietly sympathetic to its anti-immigrant agenda — to embrace far-right ideas once considered off-limits."

Not healthy money-wise

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 04:24:00 +0000

One suspects that these figures, below (from a piece in The New York Times today) of the financial situation of Americans isn't all that much different in many Western countries. It isn't any wonder that people resent the ever-increasing divide between the haves and have-nots.

"Americans are generally lackluster savers. Forty-one percent of households lack liquid savings to cover an unexpected $2,000 expense, according to research from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which also found that a lack of saving is a top financial worry, even among families with higher incomes.

One in three American families reports having no savings, including one in 10 of those with annual incomes greater than $100,000. Federal data show the overall personal savings rate in the United States is about 5 percent, and an analysis by Moody’s Analytics finds that Americans under 35 actually have a negative savings rate, meaning they are spending more than they earn."

Christos Tsiolkas on Australia's "toxic" approach to asylum seekers and refugees

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 12:19:00 +0000

Christos Tsiolkas - renowned author, writing the Forward to a new book on refugees - calls out Australia's conduct and Oz politics in relation to refugees and asylum seekers for what it is......"toxic".

"We read for pleasure and we read for knowledge. And there are some books we read because we must, for in not reading them we are in danger of not understanding our world and our own place in the world.

Over the last century such books have included The Diary of Anne Frank, Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, George Orwell’s 1984, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. There are others, of course there are, from every continent on this planet but I mention those five because they were crucial in creatively and purposefully giving voice to the obscene injustice and anti-humanity of totalitarianism.

It is no accident that three of them have as their subject the Holocaust and the others that of the Stalinist purges and the murderous Soviet system of forced exile. Such books break free of their geographic, cultural and historic boundaries, and in doing so they smash the borders we humans erect to keep ourselves separate from one another. In forcing us to confront the evil we are capable of they also ask us to acknowledge our shared humanity.

I love literature, I love so many books, but I know that very few are necessary. That isn’t to somehow diminish the function of art and creativity. I’m not someone who believes criticism involves a ledger where you give a book a mark for utility. Some of the greatest works of art are purely pleasurable. But the books I mentioned above are both works of art and also works of witnessing. They are necessary.

In Australia in 2017, They Cannot Take the Sky is also necessary. For nearly two decades now, Australian politics has been corrupted by a toxic and destructive national debate about asylum seekers and refugees. Unfortunately, fought out as much across media – traditional and digital – as it has in our parliament, the issue of asylum has become inexorably entwined with our security and existential fears arising from the threats of international terrorism.

Our leaders, across the political spectrum, have failed in the democratic imperative to ensure a cogent and humane approach to the issue. In fanning the hysteria of partisanship they have betrayed our trust. That great leveller, history, will ultimately judge us on what kind of country we created for ourselves at the beginning of the 21st century. This isn’t the place for political analysis. All I want to suggest is that in all the screaming across the parliament floor or on social media, we forget that the asylum seeker and the refugee is a real person, with a real body and a real consciousness, that they are as human as we are."

The cost of Donald......

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 12:12:00 +0000

It was pretty obvious it would happen.... The antics of Trump and some of his policies (take barring certain people being barred at the border from entering the US as just one) has had its repercussions..... and likely to have more.

Like many Washington lobby groups, the US Travel Association was quick to congratulate the new president on his victory last November.

"We are encouraged that Mr Trump's extensive business and hospitality background will make him a ready and receptive ear," the trade organisation said. Upon the Republican's inauguration, the USTA's chief executive, Roger Dow, pledged the industry as a "capable, willing partner".

But almost immediately, things started to go sideways. A steady drumbeat of news and policy proclamations seemed likely to damage America's $US250 billion travel industry and its roughly 15 million US employees.

Pricking the inflated Donald balloon

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 05:08:00 +0000

It takes a Maureen Dowd - ascerbic columnist for The New York Times - in her latest column to well and truly nail Trump and prick the inflated Donald balloon......

"WASHINGTON — Dear Donald,

We’ve known each other a long time, so I think I can be blunt.

You know how you said at campaign rallies that you did not like being identified as a politician?

Don’t worry. No one will ever mistake you for a politician.

After this past week, they won’t even mistake you for a top-notch negotiator."

****

"You promised to get the best people around you in the White House, the best of the best. In fact, “best” is one of your favorite words.

Instead, you dragged that motley skeleton crew into the White House and let them create a feuding, leaking, belligerent, conspiratorial, sycophantic atmosphere. Instead of a smooth, classy operator like James Baker, you have a Manichaean anarchist in Steve Bannon."

****

"You sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.

That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.

They’re counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”

You got played.

It took W. years to smash everything. You’re way ahead of schedule.

And I can say you’re doing badly, because I’m a columnist, and you’re not. Say hello to everybody, O.K.?

Sincerely, Maureen"

Reality check for Richard Gere

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 01:34:00 +0000

There were reports recently of Richard Gere, the actor, hesitating about whether he ought visit Israel as part of promoting his new movie. In the end he decided to go.

Mondoweiss reports on what happened in Hebron.....

"While Richard Gere was in Israel and the occupied West Bank promoting his film “Norman,” he was recorded in an unguarded moment wandering the desolate streets of Hebron’s Old City. A dumbfounded Gere is near at a loss for words in the clip, which aired on Israel’s Channel 2 network.

Not a Palestinian in sight. Soldiers and settlers roam comparatively carefree. The roads are too quiet. All of the shops are shuttered. Gere is stunned:

“This is the thing that’s flipping me out right now,” Gere stammers to his Hebron guides, activists with the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence, former soldiers that now advocate against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory, “Of everything we’ve seen for two days, the people we’ve talked to, it’s…I mean…I’m…I’m touched by that, I know that story. But this is really bizarre.”

“This is genuinely strange,” Gere adds, before telling his guides, Hebron is like the Jim Crow South:

“It’s the dead city, but who owns the city? And their [the settlers] feeling of ‘I’m protected, I can do whatever I want,’ and that sense of where the boundaries are. I mean it’s like…it’s exactly like what the what the Old South was in America. Blacks knew where they could go, they could drink from that fountain, they couldn’t go over there, they couldn’t eat in that place. It was well understood. You didn’t cross it or you’d get your head beat in or lynched,” Gere said.

Continue reading here.

Do we just sit on our hands?...while 20 million people starve

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:57:00 +0000

When will the conscience of what are mainly Western nations come to life. Here is a humanitarian crisis looming - much of it brought about by the actions of Western nations - and nothing is done to alleviate it. The New York Times republishes a report by Reuters.

"The world has only three to four months to save millions of people in Yemen and Somalia from starvation, as war and drought wreck crops and block deliveries of food and medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday.

The aid agency still needs $300 million to deliver emergency assistance to a total of five million people in Yemen, Somalia and northeast Nigeria as well as areas of South Sudan, where famine has already been declared.

“We have probably a window of three to four months to avoid a worst-case scenario,” Dominik Stillhart, the Red Cross’s director of operations worldwide, said at a news briefing in Geneva. “We have kind of a perfect storm now where protracted conflict is overlapped or exacerbated by natural hazard, drought in particular, in the Horn of Africa, which is leading to the situation we are facing now,” he said.

More than 20 million people are facing famine in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and northeast Nigeria, aid agencies say. Cholera is on the rise in Somalia, where drought is driving people to flee in search of water, said Bruce Orina, the Red Cross’s deputy regional director for Africa. At least 300,000 malnourished children are trapped by fighting in Nigeria.

The Red Cross has received $100 million toward the $400 million needed for its operations in the four countries this year. The United Nations has appealed for about $5.6 billion, bringing total funding needs to $6 billion, Mr. Stillhart said.

The United States, whose average contribution funds about a quarter of Red Cross field operations, has yet to donate, he said. “In 2011 the response was too slow and too late, leading to the starvation of 260,000 people in Somalia alone,” he warned."

The Barrier Reef.....as long as it still lasts

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 04:58:00 +0000

No additional commentary is needed for this more than relevant Editorial in The New York Times about the Barrier Reef and climate change. Are you listening Donald Trump?

"Reports that the Great Barrier Reef is dying come ever more frequently, ever more urgently. There is no mystery about the reason — it’s global warming, caused by the fossil fuels we burn. If we stopped heating the oceans, parts of the great reef off Australia’s north coast and other spectacular coral reefs around the world could still recover. The alternative is to weep at the loss of one of the most spectacular sights on earth, as the author of the latest report and his students did on examining charts of the damage.

The death of coral reefs is a tragedy on many levels. There is the sheer beauty of the forests of brightly colored corals and the equally kaleidoscopic fish they harbor, a panorama that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. There’s their extraordinary variety and value: Coral reefs are found in shallow waters in only 0.2 percent of the oceans, yet they support a quarter of all marine life and provide protein for millions of people. Finally, there is the role of the coral reefs as the alarm system of the oceans: Highly sensitive to the temperature of water, the reefs can die from an increase of only two or three degrees Fahrenheit. The vast stretches of bleached coral speak to oceans in deep trouble.

Last year was particularly disastrous for the Great Barrier Reef. The periodic heating of the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño, combined with the continuing warming of the seas from climate change, caused mass bleaching along vast stretches of the 1,400-mile-long reef. In theory, the return of cooler waters could restore them, but that’s not what’s happening.

Researchers led by Prof. Terry Hughes of James Cook University in Australia, the lead author of a report on the reef in the current issue of the journal Nature, were surprised at the extent of the damage. “We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” he told The Times. In the north, he said, two-thirds of the reefs are dead. And Australian government efforts to curtail dredging and pollution were not helping. “The reefs in dirty water were just as fried as those in pristine water,” he said.

To the scientists, there is no mystery as to what needs to be done. There never was. Decades ago they warned that with global warming, coral reefs would not be able to survive natural temperature spikes, like the one brought on by El Niño. Surveys of the Great Barrier Reef conducted by Professor Hughes from low-flying aircraft showed that extensive patches of reef may be beyond saving. These are the surveys that brought him and his students to tears.

There is really only one way to save coral reefs, and by extension the oceans and the world, and that is to fight climate change. At this juncture, that means defending the 2015 Paris agreement to limit the increase in global temperatures. The Obama administration played a major role in fashioning the agreement, which 194 countries have signed. Backsliding now would guarantee more bleached reefs, and worse."

The photo (with the woman wearing a hajib) may not tell the whole story......

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 23:21:00 +0000

It all depends on your perspective of and on things....

A photo published showing a woman, wearing a hajib, walking past a injured person from the said-to-be terrorist incident in London yesterday has caused more than interesting responses.

Read the full story here.

Even the Wall Street Journal calls out Trump

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 11:51:00 +0000

One could hardly call the WSJ as anything but conservative, and with the Sun King - aka Rupert Murdoch- the owner, a supporter of Trump. But, today's Editorial pulls no punches about what the WSJ sees as Trump's manifest failings....

"If President Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? Would the rest of the world? We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods.

The latest example is Mr. Trump’s refusal to back off his Saturday morning tweet of three weeks ago that he had “found out that [Barack] Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” on Election Day. He has offered no evidence for his claim, and a parade of intelligence officials, senior Republicans and Democrats have since said they have seen no such evidence.

Yet the President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims. Sean Spicer—who doesn’t deserve this treatment—was dispatched last week to repeat an assertion by a Fox News commentator that perhaps the Obama Administration had subcontracted the wiretap to British intelligence."

***

"Two months into his Presidency, Gallup has Mr. Trump’s approval rating at 39%. No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he’s a fake President."

So, what is Donald hiding?

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 11:09:00 +0000

Hedrick Smith is a former Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, author of “Who Stole the American Dream?” and executive editor of the website Reclaim the American Dream.

He writes in "So, What Is He Hiding?" in today's New York Times....

"In his short White House tenure, President Trump has already set a record for histrionic tantrums against the media — whether attacking CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times or MSNBC for revealing his 2005 tax return, as he did last week. He’s actually pursuing a well-worn path of American presidents blaming the press for their problems.

Five decades of reporting have taught me that whenever a president starts screeching about the media, it’s a sure sign he’s in hot water and fearing revelations about some policy disaster, damaging mendacity or political villainy. Even popular presidents with reputations for charming the press occasionally stoop to blaming the press for quagmires of their own making."

****

"No matter how much the president seeks to demonize the press, these and other crucial questions will not go away because today’s journalists are just as committed as those who covered past presidents to pursue them to the end."