Saturday, August 30, 2014

THE LAPTOP AND THE JEALOUS DOG



LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - Police say a New Jersey family's dog turned on the stove, which caught the laptop resting on the burner on fire and sent smoke through the roof.



Here is what transpired:


I'm sick and tired of watching my owners use this laptop.

I'm supposed to be the one on their lap, not this doggone laptop.

I know I'm a bad dog.

But I have to put my foot...my paw down!

When I turn on the stove, the laptop that is sitting on top of the stove will catch fire, and then, I suppose the whole house will ignite, but that's the way the cookie...the dog biscuit crumbles!

Good riddance to Mr. Laptop!

 

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND OIL!






































Friday, August 22, 2014

"THE TYRANT HAS FALLEN, AND IRAQ IS FREE." George W. Bush


"We have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror."
George. W. Bush

"Washington’s blithe unconcern with the post-Axis world order it helped craft via the UN, which forbids unilateral wars of aggression, led to the quagmire in Iraq. Obama once campaigned on a more lawful and multilateral international policy. It is important not only that the president receive congressional authorization for a war (that is what it is) in Syria but that any action be conducted so as to strengthen, not weaken, international legality. ISIL is lawless and brutal, and can only be countered by its opposite. Joining it in lawlessness and brutality is to surrender to it, not combat it."
Juan Cole

Would a US/ NATO war in Syria be Legal in International Law?




"As for the United States, historians may one day concur with the late Gen. Bill Odom. For the lone superpower to survive that century, the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was the most disastrous blunder in its history."
'George W. Bush held out the promise of a peaceful Mesopotamian democracy as a magnet for all Arab nations. What we produced is a broken land awash in blood, a country severed by tribe and faith: a Kurdish north, Shia south and a Sunni west controlled by the savages of an “Islamic State” even al-Qaida hates and fears.'

[From "To Defeat the Islamic State"

 











NOTE:
Further (or farther?) down are some interesting opinions about what ISIS is.  I apologize for the riotous colors.

 

What the blue blazes is going on in Iraq?



Maybe Dick Cheney and George W. Bush would like to tell us. 

Correction: Only Dick Cheney (without his shotgun), because God only knows what would come out of Bush's mouth.

 


*
 

I blogged and blogged about Iraq, Dick, and Bush way back then when we weren't supposed to be critical of what they were doing IN & TO Iraq.

(In fact, I published these Letters in a book called Why Are We In Iraq?-Letters from Mad Plato. I don't think any copies were sold.).



It was all shucks and golly gee whiz...Shock and Awe...

Wow! 

 Look at and listen to those cruise missiles pound down on Baghdad...what a lovely, fiery orgy!



Our TVs were entertaining us back then.



Bush would swagger, spit, and grin...Cheney mostly just grinned.



And, now, not too much is shown.



Not enough bombs yet.



Have to have more bombs before it's good enough for prime time.



We've got to watch all those singers, dancers, and bachelors frolic, until War revs up the decibels, drones, and bombs.



Meanwhile, as if it had been planned on the strategic chessboard all along***, jihadists and terrorists are now more dangerous to the world than before:







Listen as the shiny gold falls into the coffers of the giddy Military-Industrial Complex.



Yes, just listen as gold falls into the coffers of the giddy Military-Industrial Complex...and know that Corporations are people just like you and me. 

 Right, Supreme Court?

 

Stay tuned.





IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND OIL!


 



***
ISIS: Made in USA
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a creation of the United States and its Persian Gulf allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and recently added to the list, Kuwait. The Daily Beast in an article titled, “America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS,” states:

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.

Despite the candor of the opening sentence, the article would unravel into a myriad of lies laid to obfuscate America’s role in the creation of ISIS. The article would claim:

The extremist group that is threatening the existence of the Iraqi state was built and grown for years with the help of elite donors from American supposed allies in the Persian Gulf region. There, the threat of Iran, Assad, and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian war trumps the U.S. goal of stability and moderation in the region.

However, the US goal in the region was never “stability” and surely not “moderation.” As early as 2007, sources within the Pentagon and across the US intelligence community revealed a conspiracy to drown the Middle East in sectarian war, and to do so by arming and funding extremist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda itself. Published in 2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article titled, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” stated specifically:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coƶperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

[The above is from ISIS “Made in USA”. Iraq “Geopolitical Arsonists” Seek to Burn Region by

Global Research, June 18, 2014]






Now there is a dandy, good chance for Global Terrorism---a self-fulfilling prophecy---to take off like a rocket (if it hasn't already).

The Islamic State or ISIS is not bad like the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

 
It is worse.

It is more dangerous.
 
***
The plan, from the beginning, was to raise an extremist expeditionary force to trigger a regional sectarian bloodbath – a bloodbath now raging across multiple borders and set to expand further if decisive action is not taken.”
 
Despite an open conspiracy to drown the region in sectarian strife, the US now poses as a stakeholder in Iraq’s stability. Having armed, funded, and assisted ISIS into existence and into northern Iraq itself, the idea of America “intervening” to stop ISIS is comparable to an arsonist extinguishing his fire with more gasoline.”
 
These are the worst people on earth. They openly, proudly crucify enemies, enslave women, and murder men en masse. These are not the usual bad guys out for land, plunder or power. These are primitive cultists who celebrate slaughter, glory in bloodlust and slit the throats of innocents as a kind of sacrament.”
[ From “ Stopping the worst people on Earth” By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, August 21, 2014]
 
The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement. The U.S. did not do so because these countries were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on occasion purchased, influential members of the American political establishment. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a population of 180 million and a military with close links to the Pentagon.
[From the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising]











Tuesday, August 19, 2014

OLIVE OIL HELIUM NEANDERTHALS RICHARD THE THIRD AND THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION




 


In a nutshell:

The price of olive oil is going to go through the roof.

The world is running out of helium.

(But Lady Gaga is not running out of outfits to wear.)

Richard III was drunk a lot (which is not why he was found beneath a parking lot).

The horses...I mean donkeys and elephants... are starting to line up for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Below are references to some of the aforementioned.



A drought in the world's number one producer of olive oil has prompted fears of widespread shortages that could send the market spiraling upward.


Spain is the world's largest producer of olives, accounting for 50 percent of total global output followed by Italy at 15 percent, Greece 13 percent and Turkey 5 percent, IOC data show. Harvests in other major producers are expected to come in at average levels this year, but they're unlikely to be able to fill in for the Spanish shortages as dismal harvests in previous years mean stockpiles are low.

 
http://money.msn.com/investing/post--now-theres-an-olive-oil-shortage


*

You may not realize, but helium is a highly necessary commodity in the modern world. Everything from MRI magnets to fiber optics and LCD screens needs the element (which has the lowest boiling point of any other material on Earth) to function, so without it, pretty much everything we've grown to depend on gets hit hard.

But that doesn't make any sense, you might say, how can helium stock be diminishing when I can still go pick up a bundle of helium-filled balloons for ten bucks? Well, you'd be right, it doesn't make any sense—but not for the reasons you might think. While we are indeed running out of the noble gas, that hasn't stopped the United States from continuing to sell the stuff by the barrel full, dirt cheap. And according to Cornell scientists Robert Richardson, we want it that way:

The US government established a national helium reserve in 1925, and today a billion cubic metres of the gas are stored in a facility near Amarillo, Texas. In 1996 Congress passed an act requiring that this strategic reserve, which represents half the Earth's helium stocks, be sold off by 2015. As a result, helium is far too cheap and is not treated as a precious resource.”

And when we do eventually run out of our current store, our only other option is to recover helium from the air—which will cost 10,000 times what it does today. So yeah, try not to dwell on all the thousands of dollars balloons you've watched float away into nothingness.


http://gizmodo.com/7-things-you-had-no-idea-the-world-is-running-out-of-1467868161


*

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2726951/King-Richard-III-drunk-say-researchers-claim-drank-three-litres-alcohol-day.html






IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!




Friday, August 15, 2014

LAUGHTER IS THE CLOSEST THING TO THE GRACE OF GOD (Karl Barth)



 


 








I would not be a party to that last and meanest unkindness, treachery to a would-be suicide. My sympathies have been with the suicides for many, many years. I am always glad when the suicide succeeds in his undertaking. I always feel a genuine pain in my heart, a genuine grief, a genuine pity, when some scoundrel stays the suicide's hand and compels him to continue his life.
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 45-46




Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.
Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898




But we are all insane, anyway...The suicides seem to be the only sane people.
Mark Twain's Notebook, #40, (Jan. 1897-July 1900)





I have been thinking a lot about the suicide of Robin Williams.


I have been thinking about what he was feeling, and more macabre than this, I have been thinking about how it felt to die by hanging.


It makes me sad and sick.


People are now spinning their wheels about why Robin Williams took his own life.

Was it the onset of Parkinson's disease?

Was it because the TV show he was on got cancelled?

Was it because of money problems?


Of all of the above quotes, the one that fits Robin Williams is by Bill Maher when he says, “Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me...I quit.”


It even sounds like something Robin Williams would have said.


Only Buddy Hackett got me belly laughing as hard as Robin Williams did.


Unfortunately, his last act wasn't a bit funny.





IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!



















Monday, August 04, 2014

IT'S STILL A JUNKYARD UP THERE




 



UPDATE:
August 4, 2014:
 


 
 
FETA:
Where are we?

GRETA:
The Astromap says Earth.

FETA:
Well, this planet has plenty of water.

GRETA:
True, but its atmosphere is a big junkyard of debris.

FETA:
When you deploy cloaking, also deploy debris shields so we don’t get penetrated by any of this junk.

GRETA:
O.K. Ooh, that was a close one.

FETA:
Deploy debris shields!

(Explosion)
United States Strategic Command:
Stand down lasers. ET vehicle has been destroyed by space junk.
 
 
IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!

***


Published: February 18, 2009

NYTimes.com


SPACE is becoming an increasingly perilous place.
It is dangerous, of course, because more and more countries are venturing into orbit.
But it is also dangerous because there are precious few international agreements governing national actions in space. No rules of the road forced Russia to de-orbit its long-defunct Cosmos 2251 spacecraft, which would have prevented its collision last week with Iridium’s communications satellite. Yet this event probably left at least 2,000 pieces of hazardous debris in orbit around the earth; all of this debris will have to be tracked and avoided by other spacecraft for decades.
Instead of continuing to cling to the theory of “freedom of action” in space, all space-faring countries would be well advised to sit down and talk about mutual restraint and coordination. The alternative is unacceptable: we will lose our ability to operate in some of the most useful regions of orbital space, particularly those closest to the earth (60 to 1,000 miles up).
In many respects, our level of sophistication in dealing with space “traffic management” — the active and dead satellites and orbital debris that whiz around the earth at speeds of 18,000 miles per hour — is reminiscent of the early days of car travel, when a lack of rules resulted in frequent accidents.
The difference in space, of course, is that the fragments from past collisions remain in orbit, at least until they are eventually dragged down by gravity and burn up in the atmosphere. The February 2008 shoot down of a military satellite by the United States created a large amount of debris, but, at an altitude of 150 miles, it fell out of orbit in two months’ time. At 500 miles up, by contrast, debris will orbit for decades. Much above that, it will persist for centuries.
Recently, an effort led in part by the United States succeeded in gaining United Nations passage of a set of voluntary international debris-control guidelines. These useful but very general protocols urge countries to limit their debris, to refrain from blowing things up in space and to place dead spacecraft in “parking” orbits or, if at lower altitudes, in relatively rapid de-orbiting modes.
The problem is that not enough countries are observing these guidelines because they’re just that — guidelines. They don’t have the force of international law, they offer too many loopholes and violators face no sanctions. The Iridium-Cosmos collision is the clearest sign yet that we need to devise cooperative solutions to our common problems in space — before it is too late.
United States Strategic Command tracks more than 18,000 orbiting space objects, but it lacks the manpower to provide warnings of possible collisions to all except manned spacecraft and the most crucial United States military satellites.
Setting up an international warning network, paid for by the users of space, should therefore be treated as a priority. Such an entity could be run by a consortium of national militaries or space agencies, possibly under United Nations auspices. (The United Nations already oversees a space registration convention, which requires countries to list launches, orbits and the purpose of missions. But it stops tracking spacecraft once they’ve been launched.)
While there are security concerns associated with such a proposal — we don’t want the world to know the location and number of our military satellites — it’s important to remember that many sensitive satellites are large and easily found, even by amateur astronomers. It’s also worth remembering that in the thick of the cold war we signed an Incidents at Sea Treaty with the Soviet Union, which put in place measures to reduce the chance of accidents between American and Soviet ships and planes.
Other steps should be taken too. We should ban the intentional destruction of satellites in orbits above 150 miles (and possibly below as well). We should also create a legally binding code of conduct for space (laying out specific sanctions for violators) and embark on new efforts to bring about international coordination of radar systems. All these ventures could reasonably be undertaken by meetings of space-faring states or at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
Until now, the debate about space has focused largely on the question of who is up there. Now two new questions have come to the fore: What is up there, and where is it?
James Clay Moltz, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, is the author of “The Politics of Space Security.”

Saturday, August 02, 2014

VISIT TO A SMALL COMET


 
 
 
 
 
 




It's fun going places.


It's fun even if you go alone, and it's fun even if there are no people where you're going.


But it isn't you, anyway, it's a spacecraft.


*
While men are fighting wars on earth, other men and machines are exploring outer space.


Maybe to find peace.


*

How did the Earth become Earth?


(How did I become me and you you?)


Perhaps visiting a comet (or asteroid) will provide some answers.


*

I only go to a store or mall when I intend to find something that I need.


I'm not a window-shopper.


The less I possess, the more free I feel.


More IS Less.


Why, then, are scientists interested in going to a comet (instead of a mall?).


*






ALSO:

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2797931/the-million-year-flypast-mars-nasa-prepares-observe-close-encounter-dawn-man-comet-passes-just-87-000-miles-red-planet-sunday.html











IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!