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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
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 Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 8:17 am |
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| psiga wrote: |
A long but solid article on the current state of America's war machine. Feel free to graze; I haven't read every word of it myself. Here are some nice pullquotes though:
The amount of private military contractors deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan is rarely reported on in the US mainstream press, but a Congressional Research Service investigation into this revealed that a record high 69% active duty soldiers are in fact private mercenaries. .. each extra American soldier deployed will be at a cost of a million dollars a year, not including the added expense of training and maintaining a security force. .. “Halliburton reported $4 billion in operating profits in 2008, while KBR recently said its first quarter revenues in 2009 were up 27%, for a total of $3.2 billion. Its sales in 2008 were up 33%, and according to the Financial Times, the company had $1 billion in cash, no debt, and was looking for acquisitions.” .. As former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell explained: “Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn.” .. “Until 1999 U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official.” .. In 2000, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and several oil companies “founded the InterContinental Exchange (ICE)…. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate ‘dark pool’ trading in the commodities markets.”
A Congressional investigation into this exchange found that these companies were fraudulently inflating the price of oil by executing “round-trip” trades where one company would sell shares in oil to another company who would then sell the shares right back. This would drive the price of oil to however high they wanted it to go to. “No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.” .. DMS Energy, when investigated by Congress, admitted that 80 percent of its trades in 2001 were ’round-trip’ trades. That means 80 percent of all of their trades that year were bogus trades where no commodity changed hands, and yet the balance sheets reflect added revenue…
Plenty of citations and good research. His opinions are a shade or three darker than mine, but if you can filter out the goods you may find it as interesting/damning as I do.
It's all just the usual human nature in echo chambers of unchecked power. If we don't find a dependable way to regulate power, it'll be abused. Duh. People aren't getting any more or less honest than they ever have been in comparable situations throughout history. Ah well.
Also worth reading up on SAIC:
SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. .. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS. |
Been reading through these. Thanks for this.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:50 am |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| dracko, I'm not sure what you're trying to point out, and who to? |
That James Lovelock is an authoritarian statist who thinks you can just "put democracy on hold" while there's a war going on and then after the war return everything to normal? Which is an odd line of thought because given his credentials (scientist, general smart guy) one would think that he would have noticed from history that panicking during wartime and "putting democracy on hold for just a little bit" is exactly how authoritarian dictators sometimes come to power.
Like how Rome started as a monarchy but eventually became a republic then after a while they got into some shit and things were looking bleak so a guy stepped up and said give me total control and I'll fix everything then I'll restore the republic. Only after that guy took control he never gave it up and Rome went from republic to full blown totalitarian empire for hundreds of years after.
Granted, he comes to these kinds of conclusions from an environmentalist background but that's not as uncommon an occurrence as you'd think. It's the same net effect, they're just panicking about something other than war. |
I think that sums it up perfectly.
I'm kind of puzzled that the matter of democracy still factors into the way that we think about such problems. The mechanisms by which climate change (and amending it) and war propagate are manipulated through secrecy and outsourcing to the point that few people who actually do anything are elected, which punts that little shred of populace control of "representative" in "representative democracy" pretty far out of the ballpark.
I mean, I don't see it describing any actual method by which we distribute power or by which those with power take it. If anything, the term "democracy" might serve the interests of power more as a smoke screen over actual organizations of power. Am I being too cynical here?
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 2:22 am |
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Huh!
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Adilegian
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 3:10 pm |
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| Mr Mechanical wrote: |
| When I read stories like that I am not thinking specifically about Barack Obama but rather the kind of political ecology that he is a part of, or the ways in which institutional structures of power like the defense industry intersect with our elected representatives to legitimize lawless behavior that our elites claim they need to do their jobs or protect us or whatever. I think that stories like that are an example of a problem that is much bigger than any one person and require the kinds of solutions that can only happen when people on an individual level are able to come to some kind of understanding about the problem and their own relationship to it. |
This is so good and on the mark that I kind of want to punch you.
In the best possible sense.
| Mr Mechanical wrote: |
| I know this might make me sound crazy to you and I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable or whatever, but I don't need your pity because I'm fairly certain that I'm not actually crazy though I do occasionally have a poor way of expressing myself when discussing emotionally hot topics. |
I'm with you on this, actually, and it's made me wary of speaking out too quickly on matters that I have a pretty passionate opinion about. We stand to benefit least from our own good impulses when we let them carry us into self-righteousness, as that undercuts the real complexity of controversial matters and actually makes controversy impossible.
contro-, against
-versus, to turn
Meaning that controversy pits us against each other in a sense but also needs to remain dialectical in spirit as well as in literal practice.
Then again, I also wonder if it's really possible to remain sensible when discussing matters as enormous as these.
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Adilegian
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 6:09 am |
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Thanks for that fantastic response to what was a glib, lazy coda that I'd written, canceling out my own point that I had been trying to make in my previous post.
And thanks for those resources.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 5:10 am |
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I've got the bolt assembly for an M1891 model Mosin Nagant from various parts culled from collectors over the years. One of these days I might have a whole gun.
And with that proto-Soviet piece I will finally be a true American.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 12:58 am |
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| psiga wrote: |
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-59.htm
"Washington, D.C., April 16, 2010 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its vice presidents for defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product tied to subprime mortgages as the U.S. housing market was beginning to falter."
Hooray, the SEC gave me a birthday present. How very thoughtful of them! |
In the event that you have been literal in your use of "birthday present," happy birthday!
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 1:28 am |
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| psiga wrote: |
| Literal indeed. Thank you! Gonna see if I can be More Productive this year than in previous years. |
Ah yes, The Dream.
Also, yeah, I read that story on Huffington Post. Really hoping that something good comes out of the follow-through on this.
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Adilegian
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:19 am |
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| Dracko wrote: |
God, I remember that piece of shit.
Fucking hell.
That shit gets under my skin. |
Seriously.
FoxNews is like an overbearing, hateful parent except with better production values.
Re: the Rogers smear piece, lol @ the "what's up with kids these days" narrative. Every generation is a saint as soon as it's old enough to hog the mic because the previous, Probably Perfect generation has given it up by dying.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:29 pm |
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 wrote: |
| THEY'RE ALL COMMIES. GODLESS COMMIES. |
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 4:07 pm |
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| elvis.shrugged wrote: |
| What the fuck? |
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 12:22 am |
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Your inflamed vestigial organs say "WELCOME TO THE NO SPIN ZONE."
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:53 pm |
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"You see, even though homosexuals are just 1% of the population, if every one sent a petition to Congress it would generate a tidal wave of two or three million petitions or more."
Even within the universe of bogus thought from which this letter is a tactless emissary, this suggests a pretty confused use of numbers. The guy uses 1% to say "hey they're such a minority!" but then uses "two or three million" to say "whoa so many!"
It's as though he doesn't know whether to say that two or three million is a lot, so he uses the size of the constituency to suggest how awful their influence might be and then uses the percentage to show how two or three million doesn't deserve to matter.
EDIT: I mean is it really that "out there" to think that two or three million people (even within the propaganda's rubric) should have some attention paid to them?
Super-Double-EDIT: "Radical homosexuals will terrorize day care centers, hospitals, churches and private schools. Traditional moral values will be shattered by federal law."
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 4:49 am |
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Whoa!
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:55 am |
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| Cocaine Socialist wrote: |
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Hey! That's my Muddy Mudskipper screencap!
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 6:09 pm |
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What the hell is a "himbo?"
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 6:33 pm |
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| Dracko wrote: |
| Male bimbo. |
Oh.
Duh.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 3:41 am |
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| North Korean Humor wrote: |
Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin are having a summit meeting in Moscow.
During a break, they're bored, and they decide to take a bet to see whose bodyguards are more loyal.
Putin is on the 20th floor and calls on his bodyguard Ivan, opens the window, and says: "Ivan, jump!"
Sobbing, Ivan says: "Mr. President, how can you ask me to do that? I have a wife and child waiting for me at home"
Putin sheds a tear himself, apologises to Ivan, and sends him away.
Next, it's Kim Jong Il's turn. He calls his bodyguard Lee Myung Man and yells: "Lee Myung Man, jump!"
Not hesitating for a split second, Lee Myung Man is just about to jump out the window.
Putin grabs Lee Myung Man to prevent him from jumping and says: "Are you out of your mind? If you jump out this window, you'll die! This is the 20th floor!"
Nevertheless, Lee Myung Man is still struggling, trying to escape Putin's embrace and jump out the window: "Mr. Putin, please let me go! I have a wife and child at home!"
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....
No, let me rephrase that.
....
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 1:22 am |
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I guess that I can see the angle of the woman's voice equaling conservatism as pinch hitting from the Colloquial Accent = More American approach, but the association of the man's voice with the Liberal take is confusing. I guess I'm not used to that kind of coding of non-South voice patterns as Liberal and Untrustworthy when those voice patterns aren't clearly coded Yankee.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 1:09 pm |
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| extrabastardformula wrote: |
| I am totally not looking forward to a very fast approaching hurricane season with a huge mass of oil floating in the gulf. |
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 5:31 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| a real-life concern troll |
Can you clarify what you mean here? On the face of it, nothing's coming to me.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 5:55 am |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concern_troll#Concern_troll
| Quote: |
A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user's sockpuppet claims to hold. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.[13]
An example of this occurred in 2006 when Tad Furtado, a top staffer for then-Congressman Charles Bass (R-NH), was caught posing as a "concerned" supporter of Bass's opponent, Democrat Paul Hodes, on several liberal New Hampshire blogs, using the pseudonyms "IndieNH" or "IndyNH". "IndyNH" expressed concern that Democrats might just be wasting their time or money on Hodes, because Bass was unbeatable.[14][15]
Although the term "concern troll" originated in discussions of online behavior, it now sees increasing use to describe similar behaviors that take place offline.
For example, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair accused a conservative New York Daily News columnist of "concern troll" behavior in his efforts to downplay the Mark Foley scandal. Wolcott links what he calls concern trolls to Saul Alinsky's "Do-Nothings", giving a long quote from Alinsky on the Do-Nothing's method and effects:
“ These Do-Nothings profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity, and then abstain from and discourage all effective action for change. They are known by their brand, 'I agree with your ends but not your means.'[16] ”
In a more recent example, The Hill published an op-ed piece by Markos Moulitsas of the liberal blog Daily Kos titled "Dems: Ignore 'Concern Trolls' ". Again, the concern trolls in question were not Internet participants; they were Republicans offering public advice and warnings to the Democrats. The author defines "concern trolling" as "offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice to political opponents that, if taken, would harm the recipient".[17] |
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Okay, thanks.
Been using this here internet for over a decade now, and what memes remain to be found I can only imagine.
(But this makes one less that I have to imagine. Thanks Mr. Mech!)
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 4:20 am |
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these guys
EDIT: I mean THIS is worth resigning over
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 5:47 am |
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| P1d40n3 wrote: |
I find Republican morality fascinating. Destruction of the Gulf? Hold none accountable. Fuck a woman other than your wife? GTFO. |
Exactly.
Just finished looking into the extent of the Gulf damage thus far, what's been done, what hasn't been done, and what has been done but hasn't been done well (e.g. shitty attempts at booming and how no one has the balls to stand up and say HEY THIS IS PRETTY SHITTY BOOMING HI ECOSYSTEM!)... and man.
Man.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 8:34 pm |
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The gymnastics used to pirouette around Responsibility are incredible.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 5:36 am |
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| Quote: |
| For weeks, cleanup crews hired by BP have been reporting health issues, but their complaints have largely been ignored. As recently as Tuesday, BP spokesperson Graham MacEwen told the Los Angeles Times he was unaware of any health complaints among cleanup workers. BP has refused to provide respirators to many hired fishermen, and the company has reportedly threatened to fire workers who use their own respirators on the job. |
Self-regulation lol
I guess when those Gulf rains start making their way north we can all get a nice deep quaff of Corexit.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 9:27 pm |
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| extrabastardformula wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| Quote: |
| For weeks, cleanup crews hired by BP have been reporting health issues, but their complaints have largely been ignored. As recently as Tuesday, BP spokesperson Graham MacEwen told the Los Angeles Times he was unaware of any health complaints among cleanup workers. BP has refused to provide respirators to many hired fishermen, and the company has reportedly threatened to fire workers who use their own respirators on the job. |
Self-regulation lol
I guess when those Gulf rains start making their way north we can all get a nice deep quaff of Corexit. |
I think you deserve credit for the phrase when "American Chernobyl" starts to see wide use. |
I wonder if we're going to see incredible mutations in the critters and plants living in the Gulf as appeared after Chernobyl. I suspect that instead we're just going to have a lot of carcasses.
But yes I am dreading apocalyptic consequences of this.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 11:04 pm |
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Surprise!
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 7:03 am |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| So it sounds like as long as it's deep enough when it's exploded the impact on the surrounding environment can be fairly minimal. So if they do decide to go and nuke the leak some interesting figures to watch out for would be the yield of the device and the depth at which they're going to bury it before setting it off. |
I imagine that this will be a ways off yet, barring the federal government deciding what most of us have likely already decided about BP -- that they do what they care about doing badly and do what they don't care about doing even worse -- and stepping in to solve a thing or two.
Unless BP's got ownership of a factory somewhere that develops nuclear bombs (they own the company that makes Corexit iirc), I doubt they'll have access to that kind of solution -- and the only decent plan of theirs that can be affected seems to have to wait until August.
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Adilegian
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 2:04 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Dracko American evangelicals hate Jews and love Israel, it's very complicated. |
The rationale actually resembles the religious goal of any monoreligion in a jRPG: they need Israel in place so that the prophecies can come true so that Jesus can return to scowl at the damned and bring about New Earth.
The particularly perverse part (from within the religion's own ontology) is the implication that prophecy needs to be coaxed into occurring, meaning that God's presumed omnipotence doesn't work without human manipulation of what belongs to Caesar, which is deeply cynical re: faith even presuming that one finds value in end-times prophecy. It's doctrinal Doublespeak.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 2:06 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:02 pm |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:04 pm |
Missed it by *this* much. [/Maxwell Smart]
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 3:47 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| The particularly perverse part (from within the religion's own ontology) is the implication that prophecy needs to be coaxed into occurring, meaning that God's presumed omnipotence doesn't work without human manipulation of what belongs to Caesar, which is deeply cynical re: faith even presuming that one finds value in end-times prophecy. It's doctrinal Doublespeak. |
Isn't this the same doublespeak applied to every promise from an omnipotence in a world of free will? Why bad things happen to good people, and all that. |
The difference that I see between the more common moral issues re: reconciling God's activity with human activity -- why do bad things happen to good people, and, as members of the early Church grumbled about re: the acceptance of others, why good things happen to people perceived as bad -- is that the older problems focus on God's self-initiated participation in history. The current attempt to coax Jesus into coming back by setting up the state of Israel in control of Jerusalem suggests that God can, in fact, be baited into self-insertion and implies some human control over God. Wagging the dog and all that.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 6:46 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| I don't see how that's analytically different from a god who can redeem your soul if only you reach out and ask for it. If he's so loving and so omnipotent, why shouldn't he just redeem me anyway? |
I'm not an Evangelical, so I'm not in a position to defend the idea. I find the idea untenable myself which is why, theologically, I think it's more valuable to emphasise divine grace and God's love as the foundation of redemption rather than penitence. I also don't think that the saved/not-saved binary works, which is an idea that an emphasis on penitence really can't work without.
But, yeah, I've written plenty on the matter in the atheism thread so I'll leave it at that in this one.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 1:52 am |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
Simultaneously amazing and depressing.
I really like how Noam Chomsky keeps his cool throughout this clip. I wish I could do that.
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18:35 is the moment of commentary on the nature of the interview.
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 1:59 am |
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| extrabastardformula wrote: |
Adilegian, it helps if you think of these pro-Israel types not as trying to cajole God into doing their bidding, but rather as them seeing prophecy as a contract. Since a contract places an obligation upon them, it also makes the failure of any prophecy to be realized into a failure on the part of the flock, and the failures do not inspire doubt, but a fear that they are not faithful enough and must redouble their efforts.
The prophecies can never fail, but we can fail the prophecies. |
Thanks for this clarification EBF! This is interesting for many reasons.
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Adilegian
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Adilegian
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| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 3:15 am |
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| Cocaine Socialist wrote: |
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What is this?
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