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Otherjones.com
This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.
The Loneliness of American Exceptionalism
It is becoming increasingly lonely in the City on a Hill.The oceans that - we said - kept us from involvement in the rest of the world's follies, also kept us isolated from the century by century give and take between global neighbors. While France endlessly adjusted its borders with Germany, Italy at times didn't know whether it was Hapsburg or Savoyan.While Russia claimed access to Mediterranean waters through the Black Sea, America remained alone and proud of it, interacting with the rest of the world only to ensure that it served our needs, bought our products and agreed with our definition of freedom. Even in our hemisphere, we remained aloof - between inter-ventions deemed necessary to our interests.
Endlessly evoking the civilizing mission of its exceptionalism after dozens of wars, America can neither recognize the new constellations abroad, nor implement urgent change at home. The French cannot accept that their language, once the civilized world's esperanto, has been replaced by English; similarly, America's first Black President cannot point out that Caucasians constitute an 'absolute minority' on the planet, and that humanity will ultimately be the color of honey in all its gradations.
Specific histories and geographies create the impression that each conflict in the world is unique. In reality, conflicts are variations on the theme of equity. In the U.S., the subject of equity is avoided, while religion is a ubiquitous subject of conversation. In Europe religion is never talked about, but ques-tions of equity underlie most serious discussions. The global religious revival is a consequence not only of the world's inability to draw back from the nuclear threat - but of America's failure to move from all-out competition to solidarity.
Historically, the struggle for a fairer distribution of wealth was taken up first by the French, then the Russians, the Chinese and the Cubans.Now the Muslims, one fourth of the world's population, are joining the fray. The reason why Wash-ington cannot fathom who it is dealing with, is that the Muslim demonstrators and fighters demanding a new order include Sunni, Shi'a, Baa'thists, and nationalists.
The British international civil servant Alastair Crooke pro-vides a detailed account of current Shi'a thinking in Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution , much of which is about equity.According to another British writer, Martin Jacques, in When China Rules the World, China's support for Iran is not only about oil: There are similitudes between a Confucian tradition of virtuous leaders and Shi'a defense of the underdog.
Alas, failing to capitalize on either intellectual contri-butions or approval from abroad, the new administration failed to meet the expectations of the world and its voters. But the cracks in America's glass ceiling are growing: lack of true ideo-logical differences between the ruling parties created the greatest income gap ever seen, bringing Blacks, Latinos and students to imagine a different narrative. In 2010, California students protested a 35% tuition hike in solidarity with rank and file workers, while young Latinos pressed for passage of The Dream Act that would enable them to attend college. A month ago Wisconsinites rose en masse over legislation to deny collective bargaining rights to government workers, and now Michiganians protest their governor's plan to take over failing city governments.
Oliver Stone's plea to the President to 'end the empire', fails to recognize the impossibility for him to defy the ruling machine. In 2008, Americans were allowed to elect a candidate who promised serious change, but he understood the rules he must follow. Obama is not weak, but supremely cognizant of America's carved-in-stone impediments to change - and the price others have paid for challenging them. Refusing to play the 'are you a socialist?' game, he tries to nudge people toward desirable outcomes.Thom Geohagan recently provided us with the German blueprint for social peace and prosperity in Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?, but the fight over the deficit suggests that Obama will not be allowed to join the rest of the developed world in converting oligarchy into social democracy.
He reluctantly admitted that European health care costs less and has better outcomes than ours, but felt compelled to agree with single payer opponents that such a system would not suit us. (One is reminded of Shylock's:"When I am wounded, do I not bleed?") Amidst warnings of a potentially fatal abandonment of self-reliance, Americans were told to hold their noses and save the financial sector, which among other things causes the inflation of health care costs. Instead of admitting that as an impartial administrator, government could provide us with the best care at an equally shared lowest cost, the right clutches its wallet amid calls for 'taking our country back' to the time of the horse and buggy.
Only Americans continue to believe that inequality is the price of freedom.Our elegant architecture of checks and balances is in fact a cobbled together system that relies on volun-teerism for services that should be the responsibility of government. And anti-government propaganda fosters a lazy attitude among its employees, reinforcing the impression that it is wasteful.Our two hundred year old constitution that has been amended only twenty-seven times has been rendered almost moot by other mechanisms, beginning with a 19th century Supreme Court clerk's stroke of the pen that granted cor-porations the advantages of personhood. (See Ted Nace's Gangs of America for the full, astonishing story.) Money and perks are used the world over to make government responsive to certain interests, but in no other country is this practice legalized.
In the nineteenth century, when journalists still spoke their minds and insults were dispensed freely, the New York Times countered with the motto 'All the News that's Fit to Print'. Gradually, the press was tamed, and a clever feedback loop was created: things foreign were branded as either inferior or threatening; Americans responded by becoming isolationist; and if anyone questioned the media about lack of international news, it retorted with finality that 'the American public is not interested in foreign affairs'.
We are shocked when legislators seek to deprive children of illegal immigrants born in the United States of citizenship, flouting centuries of Roman law known as jus sol. But fear of The Other is inscribed in the country's genes.The Pilgrims exiled religious dissidents from their colonies, and suspicion of sym-pathy for a foreign power became the object of legislation as early as 1798, with the four Aliens and Seditions Acts. In 1917, Congress passed another Sedition Act, and in 1918 it passed the Espionage and Aliens Act. In 1938, long before McCarthy's time, these documents led to the creation of the infamous House un-American Activities Committee, known as HUAC.
The Progressive movement that grew out of the fight against slavery was a victim of that trajectory. Although a member of the upper class, like Lenin, Mao and later, the Castro brothers, Roosevelt knew that robber baron capitalism was leaving too many people out in the cold. An obedient press conflated his New Deal with socialism, and socialism with 'foreign', making his reforms an uphill battle, and strengthening right-wing resistance to all things social. During the Second World War, American socialist, communist or worker's parties had been viewed as scarcely lesser evils than Nazi Germany. After the defeat of fascism, the United States was forced by the military-industrial complex to rev up for the Cold War, preventing Harry Truman from completing Roosevelt's New Deal with the creation of universal health care.
While the American press continues to confound the two, the rest of the world knows that fascism unabashedly served the few, (as is increasingly the case in the United States, with corporations essentially running the government), while socia-lism is at least intended to serve the many. Europeans know that communists and socialists were in the forefront of the fight against fascism, which explains why our warnings of an imminent Soviet takeover constituted at best an after dinner frisson.
Governments have oscillated between left and right of center, but none have questioned the welfare state. The French had pretty much got rid of God when they ousted their kings, but Louis XIV's famous quip: 'L'etat, c'est moi', remained in effect. Top level jobs in administration, finance and industry are staffed by graduates of an elite school accessed through com-petitive exams, and founded after the war by none other than the conservative Charles de Gaulle. When government run com-panies such as Renault have been privatized, the government has kept watch, as it does over banks. Gasoline is taxed at 80%, ensuring that small cars are the norm.
Although the paranoia that defines this country appeared in retreat during the rebellious sixties, it is so fundamental to the American ethos that it was rapidly 'born again' under the neo-conservatives. Bush's Patriot Act is as American as apple pie.
While much of the world argued about capitalism and communism, the Scandinavian countries extended the Protestant notion of responsibility to the political sphere, transforming themselves into social democracies that make room for the both the creativity of capitalism, and the equality sought by communism. As a bonus to the rest of the world, Scandinavia provides a number of envoys to strife-torn regions all out of proportion to its population. People educated to social democracy understand the universal aspiration for equity, whether expressed in the teachings of the Koran or those of Marx, and are thus better equipped to limit oligarchy.
During America's 400 year history, the stunning wealth available from our natural environment transformed the United States from a society concerned with equal opportunity, to one in which the notion of equity is anathema. As revolutionaries, we were 'patriots'; in the nineteenth century, the egalitarian autonomy required on the frontier fostered entrepreneurship, while the less daring became 'wage earners'. By the time we became 'citizens', the heritage of self-reliance had transformed government into a tool of capital. The words that continue to ring like a shot around this nation are Kennedy's: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!" Instead of solidarity among our citizens, nationalism in the face of an imagined Soviet threat brought us the Reagan Revolution and neo-conservatism, which anointed us as 'con-sumers'. Finally we got Wall Street Wizards who turned us into debt-ridden 'taxpayers'.
We are only 'citizens' when we vote, and if needed services are not profitable, 'we' don't get them, because they cost 'taxpayers' too much. Individualism touts individual well-being, yet the notion of each person's intrinsic worth, based on his internal authority or conscience, is ignored. Not only have we eliminated the individual's say in how her money is spent, we have accepted that we cannot afford solidarity to ourselves.
Notwithstanding the realities that have endured for fifty years across the pond, Americans continue to be told that only market capitalism is compatible with individual freedom - and that Islamists hate us because of our freedom, when in fact, it is what we do with our freedom that they reject.
Re-experiencing the American system after living in half a dozen countries, I believe that fundamental change cannot occur in the United States by the election of a Black, supremely intelligent and when necessary ruthless president. It will come only if a solid majority of voters overcome a carefully nurtured, long-standing prevention against the state. Rather than a pariah that feeds off its citizens, government must be viewed as the means by which the solidarity of the community toward the individual is implemented. Creativity is capitalism's greatest claim to superiority, but no country has achieved a fair distribution of wealth without government involvement.
Some CEOs do realize that their profits are obscene, and that they must find innovative ways to spread the wealth. Dubbed 'corporate social responsibility', this latest trend tries to increase the number of consumers while contributing to sus-tainability. Solar-powered laptops are used by African school-children and farmers, while in America new entrepreneurs grow bio-fuels and local produce on empty lots in former industrial towns. But either too little or too late, these initiatives could not prevent the market meltdown, or rising resentment in the developing countries. Obama will not be able to put Humpty-Dumpty together unless he is allowed to tell us that we must make products that can be fixed instead of junked, and back a fairer distribution of wealth worldwide.
Developmentally, the Old World was for a long time five or ten years behind the United States. But socially, America has not even caught up to 1960s Europe. There is talk of eliminating the minimum wage for teenagers but none about job-sharing. Working for a wage is not seen as alienating because action is equated with freedom. Workers have little awareness of the fact that external freedom can be limited by others, or that minds that are manipulated forget that their only real freedom is internal. Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, shows how much more vigorously Americans asserted their claims against government when they had fewer means for doing so. Today, between the newfound glorification of our founding documents, and McCarthy-inspired self cen-sorship, even the best minds dare not utter the word social-democracy. The obscene spread between the revenues of entre-preneurs and financiers and the rest of us is based on the notion that risk taking and initiative justify limitless wealth, even if that places us behind every developed country in education and health.
It is the fairy tale of American exceptionalism that has carried that illusion forward. Our fairy tale is to the renunciation of internal freedom, or authority, what suicide bombers are to Islamists. After alienating most of our internal authority to religion and nationalism, Americans have abandoned its last shred to the fairy tales spun daily to save them from the big bad world of solidarity. By making the most egregious fantasies seem real, cinematography contributed mightily to the media's ability to distort or hide reality.
By the end of the millennium, President Clinton had left the working class an easy target for conversion to born-again Republicanism and the president had become an icon who would never tamper with an election. The deliberate con-founding by conservative think-tanks of the American and European definitions of liberalism blurred the difference between liberalism and socialism and added the former to the American Index.
After experiencing 'really existing socialism' for five years, I sensed that political labels were insufficient to understand the world. Luckily, Fritjof Capra and Gary Zukav were making physics accessible to the mathematically challenged, showing that in a circular, yin/yang world, there is no life without death, no pleasure without pain - and no final victory.
As Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan describe in exquisite detail in What is Life?, all living things are systems, and just about anything humans create are systems: a motor is a sys-tem, a marriage is a system, a government is a system, and all operate on the basis of energy. In closed systems, (such as an engine) as energy is consumed, the amount available for work diminishes until the system reaches a point of entropy, also known as equilibrium, disorder, or death. Luckily, when you hook up the gas pump, you turn your closed system motor into an open system which can import new supplies of energy, (and less desirably, export its waste), maintaing a new state of order and work.
The political systems that humans construct reflect the constant interplay between order and disorder, where 'just-far-enough-from-equilibrium' corresponds to a stable, or steady state. Change happens when a catalyst accelerates the flow of energy through the system until the system reaches a tipping point, or bifurcation, that will create a new system, order, or life. When political systems fail to implement necessary change spontaneously, catalysts arise to move things along, and bifurcations take the shape of revolt by those who produce the wealth that maintains the oligarchs. Stability does not mean immobility; it means maintaining a steady state, one "just-far-enough-from equilibrium" to avoid both entropy, and the unpre-dictable bifurcations that can result from an excessive flow of energy through the system. This means making choices that distribute wealth relatively fairly, and keeping oligarchy in check. Paul Gilding's "The Great Disruption", just out, is based on these concepts and presents a plan for surviving the climate crisis that calls for greater equity.
Altruism and egotism are yin/yang pairs. Often, Having for healthy survival becomes Having for having's sake, too closely linked to the Yang components of human nature - power, greed, selfishness, as opposed to its Yin components - non-differentiation of the Other, generosity, altruism. When that happens, instead of a natural, open-system process of alterna-tion, we get a wasteful, closed-system process of accumulation that, as Margulis and Sagan tell us, must end in entropy, known as thermo-dynamic death. At the tipping point when one system dies, bifurcation leads to the creation of another system.
It's not that politics is a dirty business, or even that power corrupts, it's that life proceeds via both competition and cooperation. And while political systems are physically open systems that undergo change, they are psychologically closed, exclusionary systems, based on the double internal/external, us/them dichotomy, which tends not to favor equity.
We need to find ways to constantly counterbalance the competing claims that societies generate. In At Home in the Universe, the biologist Stuart Kauffman describes three possible states that they can be in: one of equilibrium, one of near equilibrium - both of these being closed systems - and a far-from-equilibrium, open state that takes energy from outside and evolves toward a new dynamic regime.
Paraphrasing Kauffman's formula, from the seemingly haphazard 'edge of chaos' created by energy flows, an open system can bifurcate to a new, ordered regime, where poor compromises are found quickly (totalitarianism), or a chaotic regime where no compromise is found (revolution). In the periods during which counterbalancing enables the system to maintain a steady state, relatively good compromises can be achieved, and this is democracy. But liberal democracy is a constant oscillation between the rigidity of oligarchy and the lack of cohesion that plagues a multiparty regime. While it ensures peaceful alternations of power, it does not solve the problem of equity, because those alternations are between competing interest groups which exclude the majority of citi-zens.
For progressive change to happen, the left must be suf-ficiently united to transform widespread desire for change into an increasing flow of energy through the system that can lead to bifurcations. Because the outcome of a bifurcation cannot be known in advance, the not unreasonable fear that we could end up with either fascism or anarchy discourages risk. In Sep-tember, 2006, President Bush eviscerated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibits use of the military in domestic law enforcement, causing anti-government militias to spread like wildfire. Recently, however, Rebecca Solnit identified anarchy with direct democracy.
Because few Americans are taught that both socialism and anarchy are about individual responsibility (which I call internal authority), disruptive alternations known as revolutions are equated with both. And yet the word which means 'without a head', or leader, warned the ancient Greeks that external authority could easily become tyrannical. Greek citizens (i.e., male property owners), exercised their individual internal authority when they deposed tyrants who had abused their external authority. Unfortunately, the rediscovery of Greek civilization during the hierarchical, Church-dominated Middle Ages could scarcely assimilate the notion of responsibility, and the Western ethos has remained predicated on that failure.
What American leaders disparagingly call 'mob rule', is in reality a coming together of many individual authorities. Mobs can be manipulated by dictators, but they can also oust them. And what else are efforts in favor of decentralization and local decision making, if not recognition of the need for individual responsibility, and hence the crucial role of individual internal authority? Alastair Crook recounts that it was Hezbollah's 'flat' fighting structure that enabled them to defeat Israel in 2006, and its leader Nasrallah calls for 'flat systems and independent minds'. It would be ironic if the Lebanese Shi'a were to achieve a functioning community based on the internal authority of each individual, before the more 'advanced' American polity. Something like the communist revolution happening in under-developed Russia instead of the Kaiser's Germany. In a recent report in The Nation, Paul Amar described the aspirations of Egypt's protesters as 'anti-consumerist, anti-elite', and rejecting the marginal status of women.
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, published in the nineties and still being read today, also suggests there is more to understanding the world than ideology. Diamond describes how ancient geography, plants and fauna eventually contributed to inequalities between continents; he also brought the word kleptocracy into our vocabulary with a definition for all times: "The difference be-tween a kleptocrat and a wise statesman ... is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a per-centage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put." I would add that klep-tocracy is an inherent manifestation of closed systems, and that nationalism increases its abuse to extent that the collective manifestation of the individual authority of each citizen permits.
When Americans refuse to be intimidated by their government's ban on travel to Cuba, they are affirming their individual authority. Those whose interests qualify them for a general license discover that after fifty years of American blockade, even centrally-planned socialism offers some advan-tages over capitalism. Aside from free health care and education, Cubans can compare their government's organized response to hurricanes, with American 'aid' to Haiti. A year after the earthquake, President Clinton noted with satisfaction that 'the rubble has been cleared and we have several hotels.'
The continuing American blockade makes it difficult for observers of good faith to fault the Cuban government for prolonging (as does China), a one-party system. As Raul Castro began to implement cautious reforms, in a November, 2008 blog, I wagered that Cuba would become social democratic before the United States. On April 17th, 2011, as one-party regimes in the Middle East continued to fall, Cubans voted for far-reaching reforms, including term limits for leaders, while the Koch Brothers were instructing their 50,000 employees on how to vote in the mid-term elections...
Terrorism and revolution are regrettable ways of fulfilling the task of all life, which is to avoid thermodynamic death. But September 11th wasn't God's punishment for our sins, it was a major bifurcation that had been building after several decades of a precarious steady state. The focus on Bin Laden prevented us from seeing that he is a catalyst in a wider process that the world system is undergoing. After the fall of the Soviet bloc, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unresolved, it was inevi-table that there would be a full-blown conflict with Islam. Since its founding, Israel's refusal to grant the Palestinians a state has been the core of Middle Eastern opposition to America as successor to Britain's Imperial presence and as cultural ikon.
International leaders are members of the same club, and even when they threaten one other, they agree on the need to keep their respective subjects in line. Torture and police brutality are increasingly routine tools for dealing with bigger and denser populations, tailored to what each polity will tolerate.
European leaders know that the roots of terrorism are to be found in unequal development, and take for granted the similarities between Latin American guerillas and Middle Eas-tern militias. But Americans can't seem to get their minds around the fact that Hamas won the Palestinian election be-cause, like Lebanon's Hezbollah, it has combined the struggle for independence with the running of schools and hospitals. Like the Muslim Brotherhood that inspired them, these so-called 'terrorist organizations' gain popular support by doing the same things that Che's and Fidel's guerillas did: being scrupulously correct in their dealings with the poor, and helping to solve some of their daily problems.
Today, the Middle East domino effect constitutes a crucial bifurcation point: we can either try to transform an entire area of the world so that we can go on destroying the planet through the use of carbon emissions; or we can gradually transform our society into one that can be sustained, while assisting the majority of humanity to access sustainable development.
Our confrontation with militant Islam is nothing com-pared to the unintended consequences of travel and climate change, the natural disasters and epidemics which call urgently for the creation of an international relief and emergency structure, and a body with the power to bring CO2 under control. For that power to enhance equity while saving the planet, a reconstructed U.N. will have to be the modern equivalent of a universal umma, where decisions are made among equals, with justice and compassion.
We are in a race against the clock, nearing what may be the planet's tolerance for our bungling. When global warming begins to overwhelm the system, it will not suffice for Madison Avenue to sell us green lifestyles. We will need inde-pendent minds and local democracy rather than capitalist/nation-state democracy that serves a greedy minority.
At last the financial meltdown has paved the way for the right questions to be asked: does the use of capital have to be exploitative? What kind of economy and society could we build on the ruins of the old that would preserve the planet as fit for human habitation? Pundits ritually ask the question but cannot bring themselves to speak the fateful words of solidarity.
American progressives need to see that the ground of morality and hence of political responsibility, lies in Being with the Whole - the planetary system. We must strive for peace, all the while knowing that peace will always be threatened, since it consists in the balancing of a steady state between the extreme of disorder and death, and the order that leads to bifurcations which cannot be controlled. This suggests that the job of politics, rather than to substitute one group of rulers for another, is to enable citizens to select the least corruptible leaders and for political activists to fulfill the role of watchdog.
The Arab spring warrants a decisive American move to the left to counter-balance the Tea Party. Although attempts to create a third party from scratch, have never been successful, the very success of the Tea Party shows that one resulting from a split of one of the two major parties can change the dynamic.
The Democratic Leadership Council will try to prevent this, and yet, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Progressive Caucus and the Women's Caucus and the Greens could conceivably join the dormant Social Democratic Party. This would enable the United States to help steer a rapidly evolving climate crisis before it is too late to save the planet. Recognizing that governments will have to relinquish a part of their sovereignty to a supranational organization that can act quickly and effectively, American leaders could begin to grant the United Nations the powers of an incipient world govern-ment.
The longest serving independent in the US Congress, Senator Barney Frank, identified himself as a Social Democrat on Democracy Now, while breaking the news that Europeans have for decades been getting more than a month vacation and the publisher of The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, has become a regular on MSNBC.
Fear of others creates the conflict over Having that imperils Being. But belief in God can be transformed into recog-nition of the on-going phenomenon of order/disorder that humans can influence, but not determine. Who can say where the American Black community would be today were it not for its churches? And why condemn Muslims for believing that it is God's will that they treat each other with equity, justice and compassion?
Maybe it's because politics grew out of religion and philo-sophy, after philosophy became separated from science, that activists still tend to think exclusively in ideological terms, instead of analyzing power and its processes in systemic terms. The corporate grip on the media has kept information about how things are done elsewhere from reaching the American public, and books by American progressives are limited to small presses, concentrating activists minds on the peccadillos of state power rather than on the possibilities of individual power.
The world-as-system supersedes the concept of nations, blocs and regions. Given the disruptive capabilities of its com-ponents, until governance concerns itself with the system as a whole, we are bound to have problems of increasing size and scope. Natural disasters and terrorism will both be threats until we complete the long-term process of bringing the entire world up to the standard of living that human invention and technology permit.
Until now, behind a facade of democracy, the United States has coerced others into behaviors that increase wealth for the few. But it is the social democratic variety of liberal democracy that will be the most compatible with Confucian China, and the Muslim ideal of an egalitarian umma. America can continue to view the world as a closed system destined to experience ever-increasing violence, or it can foster a flow of energy through the system that will permit the world to reach a higher level of organization and civilization, by joining the emerging main players.
Labels: 2nd law of thermodynamics, American Exceptionalism, City on a Hill, Domestic affairs, Foreign Affairs, ideology, Israel, The Great Disruption
My Bet is on Huntsman
On May 21st, happily preserved on the site as a draft, I apparently forgot to push the 'publish' button for a blog entitle 'My bet is on Huntsman'..
In a later post (June 5, entitled 'Unwrapping Huntsman') also missing here, I noted that he was being dismissed because according to the media 'nobody knows him', then I noted that he had wisely decided to announce AFTER the Republican debate of last week.
Following is the May 21st entry, which, I believe still holds true the day after he announced:
"On February 19th, 2007, I write in this space that 'Obama would 'continue a graceful yet powerful surge to the White House'.
Today I predict that barring an Act of God, John Huntsman, the only candidate that Obama rightly fears, will represent the Republican party in the 2012 presidential election.
Huntsman made his debut on mainstream TV yesterday from a New Hampshire living room, chatting with John King. It was a relaxed, yet extensive introduction to the man who until a month ago was President Obama's Ambassador to China.
Last night on Rachel Maddow's show this 'also Mormon' ex-governor of Utah got plaudits from the progressive Democratic ex-mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson. Unlike the current front-runner and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney, who, as governor of Massachusetts created the template for Obamacare, he exhibits the same brand of Ivy league intelligence as Obama, but would have voted for Representative Tom Ryan's proposal to trash anything like it. A Huntsman/Obama debate, more than any other today conceivable, will worth watching.
The only opposition candidate who is an intellectual match for Obama, Huntsman will appeal to those who have given up on the President's ability to bring change, hoping that this sophisticated Republican will tame his greedy fellows.
Unless the Chinese disavow him, his insider's view of the country that is overtaking us will be valuable to the business community. Yet he is perfectly credible in shirt-sleeves.
Huntsman will be dubbed a 'Rockefeller Republican' by the pundits. A Nation reader wrote this week that Republicans used to believe in government, convinced they could manage it better than Democrats. The 2012 election will not be over who can manage government better, but how much of it there should be. And Huntsman will argue that there is too much of it in China."
Labels: Domestic affairs, ideology
Sunday Patchwork
Rarely has one talk show furnished so much material for a comment as Fareed Zakaria's GPS today.
The progressive economist Robert Reich, whose new book is 'Aftershock', was pitted against Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, in a contentious discussion of what to do to save the country from financial collapse. When I tuned in, Stockman was warning that we risk the same fate as Europe, which is currently trying to save Greece from default and the Euro with it.
True to form, Robert Reich was saying all the right things about the U.S., but still doesn't have the nerve to say the one thing about Europe that might make people sit up and listen: Europe's financial crisis happened because its money men went along with ours.
Recent derogatory references to Europe include one from Newt Gingrich, who described Obama as 'a European-type socialist'. This is intended to counter the news that the Europeans have solid safety nets. Instead of providing moral arguments against free health care and long unemployment benefits, Gingrich warns that if we were to implement Keynesian measures, putting the unemployed to work on much-needed government projects, WE WOULD END UP LIKE EUROPE, which is facing the debacle of its currency. What an incredibly misleading short-cut!
I'm betting right here that the Euro is not going to fail, because the countries that use it have powers over their financial systems that we cannot even dream of. Notwith-standing France's reputation for frivolity - lately embodied by the man who was tipped to be the next, socialist president and known familiarly as DSK - France placed highest on a graph in this week's 'Economist' that reflects the amount of money spent on social programs - even higher than Sweden and Germany. (Tellingly, the U.S. doesn't even appear on the chart.) France's unemployment rate is also the highest among the countries listed, at 9.1%. But it was consistently around 10% during the eighties and nineties, when I was living there! At that time, Minister of Labor Martine Aubry bucked the right-wing opposition to lower the work week from 40 to 35 hours, where it has been ever since, and as 'The Economist' admits, no one goes hungry in France.
Iceland was the first country to go broke, a couple of years ago, but it quickly - and publicly - recognized that it had created a financial bubble by joining American schemes. Zakaria announced that Iceland is rewriting its constitution. Iceland's first parliament goes back to the tenth century, its first formal constitution dates from 1849. Now the people have decided to stop amending it, and to crowd-source a new one. Suggestions made on social media are discussed and voted by a constitutional council on television. Readers familiar with Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' will recall that Iceland was his prime example of a country extinguishing itself. The Islanders remember their history.
Currently, there is a campaign in the U.S. Congress to increase the number of hours high school students are allowed to work, because they can be paid less than adults, while David Stockman's opposition to government works programs was: 'The bond market won't tolerate it'. An in-your-face affirmation of the upside-down values we allow ourselves to be governed by.
Not to mention our lack of information. When Fareed Zakaria interviewed experts on Syria and Iran, we learned that the Syrian regime is likely to endure because it has a serious base of support. As usual, we were not given the explanation for that support, which is that the ruling Ba'ath Party considers itself a socialist party. Nor were we told that the oft-mentioned cozy relationship between Syria and Iran is due to the fact that the Shi'a, Iran's majority, represent the left-wing of Islam - which is why the working class by and large supports Ahmedinejad.
(When we wonder why Russia is reluctant to back military action against Libya - and why it defended Milosevic's 'socialist' Serbia - we have to see past its recent transformation into a market economy, to five hundred years of Mongol occupation, where everything belonged to the government and princes were expected to serve the Khan. Turkey also came under Mongol rule in the thirteenth century, so its cooperation with socialist-led Brazil in trying to broker a deal that would allow Iran to ship its nuclear waste abroad for reprocessing, is not surprising. Most peoples have internalized their history, Americans perhaps less than most, when you consider that we are witnessing a new McCarthyism.)
The latest wrinkle on the Iranian political scene is the rift between Ahmedinejad and the cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 'supreme leader', who condemns "deviation, liberalism, and American-influenced leftists". (A phrase to ponder at some future date.) According to Maziar Bahari, an Iranian Canadian journalist, ('And Then They Came for Me') , Ahmedinejad's latest retort to the man who is officially his superior, is that Iranians can communicate directly with the Shi'a's future savior, the Twelfth Imam, without mediation by a cleric. Will Shi'a Islam have its own Reformation?
If you think that's far-fetched, a sorry report in the latest 'Mother Jones' entitled 'Escape from Missouri' describes a growing trend among born-again American Protestants to send their wayward daughters to girls' institutions run along religious lines that practice unbelievable cruelty. I can't help comparing this with traditional Muslim treatment of women.
Finally, I need to add this, because I've known it without having any references for it: This week's 'Banyan' page in 'The Economist' looks into the origins of Chinese leader Hu Jintao's idea of a "harmonious society': the golden age of Chinese philosophy when Confucius and Lao Tse called for "Utopian visions of universal harmony". The Peking-based philosopher Zhao Tingyang admits that harmony will be out of reach for 200-300 years, when countries will opt for a system of world government. Too bad we won't be around to see it.
Labels: Ali Khamenei, Banyan, Domestic affairs, Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, ideology, Miscellanouse, Robert Reich, The Economist
Whistling Past the Graveyard of our Hubris
Just a note following my bet on Huntsman: he wisely announced before the Republican debate that he would announce his candidacy in a week.
Now to more serious issues: the question of why, as reported by Joshua Holland it today's Alternet, corporate America is hoarding tons of cash.
Could the answer be that they see they handwriting on the wall?
For all its military capabilities, resting partly on its technological superiority, the United States - like Israel, its overarmed Middle East partner - is whistling past the graveyard. The New York Times is sufficiently alarmed by the situation to have published a long piece by Helen Copper entitled the Quiet Mideast Corner (Surprise), that admits the Arab Spring is a Catch-22 for both countries.
The roiling Middle East is not Obama's only problem. The latest issue of The Nation traced a gloomy picture of the so-called reset of our relations with the Russians. Hillary Clinton travels the globe telling former and perhaps future allies how to behave, or how to deal with their obstreperous populations - in vain. The world may not know where it's headed - but neither do we, and they have the numbers on their side.
Remember Vietnam? We had all the military/technical superiority in the world - and we had to back out. At the time, the pundits warned of a domino effect if South Vietnam were 'allowed' to go Communist. It didn't happen.
But what did happen is that eventually, forty years later, the message about colonial liberation and equity has penetrated the consciousness of Muslims living under feudal Imams and self-serving 'presidents' - who constitute almost a quarter of the world's population. The (limitless) battlefield being off limits, we are reduced to devising 'internet suitcases' to help these populations overthrow their/our dictators.
'Reduced', of course is a relative term. For the money being hoarded by corporate America will, after buying a fully committed president, buy them contracts of all kinds, as we continue efforts to subdue ever-larger populations paying off the new dictators we will have engineered into power.
That is where corporate money is going to go, but it is unlikely to work better than Vietnam.
Labels: Foreign Affairs, Israel, Miscellanouse
The Best Defense is Offense
Mitt Romney must be familiar with that well-known European saying, when he accuses President Obama of being a European-type socialist. According to Romney, Obama's economic policies are imitating those of the European Union which, still according to Romney, is in dire straits.
Notwithstanding the travails of Greece, and threats of insolvency in a few other countries (the Union, with its varieties of welfare states, counts twenty-seven) the 2011 chart courtesy of the U.S> Bureau of Labor Statistics www.bls.gov/ilc intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm shows that we beat all of them when it comes to unemployment.
If only we were as well off as well-regulated Europe!
If only we could be so badly off as better-regulated Europe.
Labels: Domestic affairs, European Union, ideology, Mitt Romney, unemployment
Welcome to Otherjones!
The alternative press is replete with despair and 'hope', neither of which is helpful. 'Squawking' may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn't change the 'facts on the ground'. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.
This blog aims to prepare readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.
Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen 'foreign', countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide 'retirement benefits', so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.
By clicking on the Donate button, you will be able to contribute via Paypal or your credti card. Thanks!
My Latest Book: Russia's Americans
If you're not quite prepared to believe that the US should go to war with Russia, or even that its President, Vladimir Putin, is a thug — or even if you simply believe that they mean the US harm, check out my new book Russia's Americans, at Amazon. You will discover that there are many things you do not know about the Russia story, including the fact that thousands of Americans have chosen to live and work there. It is available in both paperback, at $22.25 and e-book, and is illustrated with many color photographs from my May 2017 trip.
Born in Philadelphia, I studied in Paris, became a French citizen by marriage, debuted at Agence France Presse in Rome, then, as Deena Boyer, followed Fellini's creative process for The Two Hundred Days of '81/2'. The proceeds from this book enabled me travel to Cuba to to interview Fidel Castro for a major French weekly, meeting with him again a week after the Kennedy assassination and several times in 1964 for a book, Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young, in which the other members of the government (including Che Guevara, Raul Castro and Celia Sanchez), tell in their own words why they made the revolution. My Cuba archive is on-line at Duke University.
In the seventies, I did graduate work in Global Survival, taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a speech writer in the Carter State Department, publishing an article on U.S.-Soviet relations in the in-house journal in 1976.
Returning to Paris in 1981, with assistance from the Centre National du Livre, I published Une autre Europe, un autre Monde, the only book that foresaw the reunification of Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union. I returned to Philadel-phia in 2000, and have been a contributor and senior editor at various on-line journals.
A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness hopes to change the way both seekers and skeptics look at good and evil - -and at the daunting problems of the 21st century. It shows that religious belief is not necessary to achieve serenity, but that awareness of the sacred as confirmed by modern science, is. It does this by viewing the world as a system and exploring what that means for the role of politics.
America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World is a primer for Americans and others who find the policies of successive US governments difficult to square with their image of the country and its founding documents. The decades I spent living on both sides of the Iron Curtain provided me with a unique awareness of America's image abroad and of the mainstream media's failure to convey news and ideas to the voters in whose name policies are carried out. References to work by other political writers illustrate little-known or forgotten features of American history that have contributed to the tragic face the country presents today.
Cuba 1964 provides the definitive answer to the question: "Was Fidel Castro a Communist before he carried out the revolution, or did he become one because of the way the United States reacted when he ousted pro-US dictator Fulgencio Batista? While following day by day events, I had extensive conversations with the men and women who had joined the Castro brothers as early as 1953 and were now members of the revolutionary government. Together with Fidel, Raul, Che and Celia Sanchez, they told me in their own words why and now they made the Revolution hat continues to inspire countries in Latin America and around the world. The text is illustrated with photographs from my black and white archive which can be seen on-line at Duke University.
Lunch with Fellini Dinner with Fidel: How did it happen that a fourteen year old American girl found herself living among the French in post-war Paris? The answer to that question also explains why I went on to live in half a dozen countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, becoming mutti-lingual, writing first about the cinema, then about 'the big picture' while raising two children, mostly on my own. A religious grandmother and a hedonistic lover accompanied me on a journal which has been both spiritual and political, and is illustrated by many photographs from my personal album.


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Q: Does Stanford NER detect duplicate Entity mentions? Let's take an example of a text: "Barack Obama is an American politician serving as the 44th President of the United States. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School."
Below screenshot is how the 4 class NER model tags the entities:
Result from Stanford NER Online Demo
Does Stanford NER detect that Barack Obama in line 1 is the same entity as Obama in line 2 ?

A: It is called coreference resolution and yes,StanfordNLP has coreference resolution system.
you can refer to this
Have a look at this question to understand it clearly.
hope this helps!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Home Actualité internationale World news – Michelle Roberts becomes WA's first spokeswoman as the triumphant...
World news - Michelle Roberts becomes WA's first spokeswoman as the triumphant prime minister reshuffles the cabinet
World news – Michelle Roberts becomes WA's first spokeswoman as the triumphant prime minister reshuffles the cabinet
WA Prime Minister Mark McGowan unveiled his redesigned cabinet after a massive caucus that saw the WA Labor Party find a bigger space.
As expected, the revamped ministry included re-elected MPs Amber-Jade Sanderson, Don Punch, Reece Whitby, Tony Buti and John Carey.
You will join Deputy Prime Minister Roger Cook, Sue Ellery, Stephen Dawson, Alannah MacTiernan, David Templeman, John Quigley, Paul Papalia, Bill Johnston, Rita Saffioti , Simone McGurk and Dave Kelly join.
Peter Tinley, Minister for Housing and Fisheries in the previous McGowan administration, said he was disappointed to have been fired from cabinet to make way for « renewal » .
« But … I understand that leadership sometimes requires some very difficult decisions, and that's exactly what Mark McGowan had to do, and I accept his decision.
» I'm a Labor man in my boots traps, and I love what that party did for me, and I would never disregard it.
Michelle Roberts, the previous administration's police minister, looked forward to becoming the first speaker in the WA Legislative Assembly.
« I will definitely miss the police portfolio, but I am really excited about the new challenge of being a speaker, » she said.
« I will be the first speaker, which is a historic first. It's an added thrill for me. «
The politics, the politics and the people. We have gathered all of our campaign coverage here.
The parliamentary secretaries are Samantha Rowe, Darren West, Terry Healy, Simon Millman, Yaz Mubarakai, Jessica Shaw, Jessica Stojkovski, Sabine Winton, Kyle McGinn and Matthew Swinbourn.
With more than 70 Labor MPs eager to sit in the new parliament, the caucus had to be held in the members' dining room of Parliament.
The new Labor Caucus showed a wave of new faces, a record number of women and the first person of African descent in the history of the WA Parliament.
Did you know we have a local version of ABC Offer news homepage? See below to see how to customize your settings and get more WA stories.
He thanked MPs for their work during the campaign and said it was important that this s they worked hard for their constituencies.
« It's good to see people who have never otherwise voted for us show their support, » said McGowan.
« It means they are in all These voters will get MPs who will not take these voters for granted and who will work very hard for these voters. «
Labor claimed another seat on Monday, with former Nationals leader Terry Redman taking Warren's seat. Blackwood lost to Jane Kelsbie.
« I don't know what else I could have done to hit the tsunami in McGowan, » he said.
We recognize the Aboriginal people and the Torres Strait Islander as the first Australian and traditional administrators of the countries we live, study and work in.
This service may contain material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service, that is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced.
AES T = Australian Eastern Standard Time, 10 hours before GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
Related title :
– WA election victory ends in new cabinet as Prime Minister Mark McGowan decides on & # 39; Renewal& # 39;
– Fresh faces in McGowan&s new WA cabinet
– Labor& WA Super Majority Still Growing
– WA Premier Mark McGowan unrecognizable in the childhood photo
– Premier Mark McGowan reveals cabinet team
– Call for history in the parliament of WA
Ref: https://www.abc.net.au

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


• Due to poor resources and knowledge, communities are cutting down vast tracts of forest in order to clear fields to plant their staple crops such as maize, sorghum etc. This agriculture is both on a subsistence and commercial level (small commercial level). The trend within such communities is to move from one field to the next at very regular intervals (1-2 years) subsequently cutting large areas of forest down for the new fields.
Our feasibility study showed areas that are demarcated for this year's clearing and it became obvious the area of ground that can be lost to this practice and the speed in which this can happen. As a result of this practice, deforestation levels in the area are particularly high (1.30% per year) and agricultural encroachment is the primary driver.
• Education of techniques that will increase their productivity substantially and eliminate or greatly reduce their need to cut down more fields is essential. Each year CGA initiates training per area covering Conservation Farming, Nutritional Gardening and Beekeeping through entities who are experts in such training. Resources such as fertilizers and seeds are being made more available for the communities. If such education and provisions can double the yield of their crop, which is very realistic and sustainable, the need to encroach on further forest areas will diminish to a large extent.
• Providing alternatives for the community's source of income and staple diet is also a key activity. In the potential alternatives we must provide options that are realistic and that due to their nature require that the forests/vegetation are not cut down to such an extent. One of such projects is beekeeping. This practice which has already showed success in small pilot areas within the communities provides both a strong income and incentive not to cut into the vegetation and forest areas as the bees require as much vegetation as possible in order to yield the required honey. Once educated on how the hives are built and provided with the necessary materials, one hive can produce 20kgs of honey. Each hive when running correctly can be harvested every 3-4 months. This alternative vocation can provide both a healthy income and strong incentive to stop the deforestation.


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Spoiler alert: The truth reveals itself in the first episode of Game of Thrones Season 8
Jewellery like art, at Studio Renn's avant-garde show at Kolkata Centre for Creativity
The obsession is real and it's back to haunt us all weekly. One thing is for certain though – Game of Thrones is going to be a bittersweet ride. On till mid-May, it is sure to make fans stress over the ending of each episode. But that aside, the first episode was out last night, and at 6:00 am India time the Targaryen queen, amped up in a snow white fur coat and an ego too big to burst, entered the gates of Winterfell. And just like that, the scene is set.
Let's first talk presentation. Season 7 had a creative start with Arya Stark taking revenge on Walder Frey – an apt, but unexpected beginning to the season. Seeing the first episode of the new season in the same light, and it is evident the start is mellow. The Starks are cold, Daenerys just as willful, and Jon Snow mild and idealistic. The spark is definitely missing but as with all seasons, the plot will hit us in the gut at some point so we're on the watch. We've seen the army of dragons, the Unsullied, Jon Snow's army, Dothraki and every other Northerner at one place at the start, with no drama whatsoever. Surprise!
Finally, Urban Decay X Game of Thrones collection is out and here are the stunning pieces
There are reunions aplenty, which is mildly endearing. It was almost as if David Benioff and DB Weiss needed everyone to be accounted for. That means, a determined but plotting Cersei at Kings Landing having her wine, Tyrion hoping to stay loyal to the queen, Arya reuniting with Gendry, and spoilers… Jaime with Bran. Even smaller characters like Tormund Giantsbane and other surviving brothers of the Night's Watch meet Dolorous Edd at the castle of the Boltons.
That aside, with this episode, what you see is tension building. For that we are grateful, because you get a hint of it in conversations between Tyrion and Sansa, and Cersei and Euron – watch the equations and emotions changing.
The episode is still about keeping you on the edge of your seat while figuring out the truth. You will see the very undramatic way in which Jon Snow realises his truth; an uncharacteristic meet-cute between Arya and Gendry; and that no-drama-at-all encounter of Arya and The Hound. Some new and old characters are also given their due screen time – the vivacious Lyanna Mormont upstaging everyone, Bronn ready for his new project, and a new character from the Golden Company, the sellsword, Captain Harry Strickland (played by Marc Rissman). The Greyjoys find their moments to sparkle.
The episode also lights up with a few happy moments – there's some good dragon-riding and the Starks hugging each other in glee, from Sansa to Arya to Snow and Bran. Samwell Tarly's character is in a confused space but his loyalty stays intact. The episode ends with some disturbing albeit crazy ideas – Daenerys showcased as the egotistic queen who wants everyone to "bend the knee" – how her arc will now progress is anyone's guess. The only ones unaccounted for in this episode are the White Walkers, so expect a cruel scene to shock you between all these reunions. That alone will catapult the season into the path-breaking space it always occupied, one that made Game of Thrones a show like no other.
Who will win the Game of Thrones? These are the Season 8 predictions we are rooting for
Stay for the reunions. But watch the dialogues like a hawk because each one holds the key to the emotional path each character will now take. Bran in our mind is now the path-breaker of sorts, and there's something very unsettling about his "gifts". What's particularly attractive about the show? The female characters who take everything, including power, into their own hands – from Cersei to Sansa to Daenerys. It will be interesting to see how each of them plays the game.
Cersei
Review of Game of Thrones
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Issues: energy
FactChecking Trump's Farewell Remarks
In a video farewell address on Jan. 19 and in remarks at Joint Base Andrews before leaving for Florida on Jan. 20, outgoing President Donald Trump distorted the facts on the economy, his tax cuts, veterans, the military, drug prices and more.
Trump's Misleading Attacks on Biden Over Fracking
President Trump and his allies continue to ignore Joe Biden's written plan to only prohibit permits for new oil and gas drilling on federal land and waters. That plan would allow for extraction methods to continue under existing permits and in nonfederal areas.
Trump on the Stump
We identified 46 false and misleading claims Trump made in six stump speeches from Oct. 12 to Oct. 16.
Trump's Numbers April 2020 Update
Statistical measures of how things have changed during Trump's time in office.
FactChecking the State of the Union
The president's address included false and misleading claims on jobs, wages, energy, immigration and more.
Trump's Numbers January 2020 Update
Statistical measures of how things have changed during Trump's first three years.
FactChecking Trump's Iran Address
In an address to the nation a day after an Iranian attack on military bases housing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, President Donald Trump made some dubious, misleading and inaccurate claims.
Trump's Campaign Kickoff Claims
In launching his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump said, "Nobody's done what we have done in two and a half years." However, we found his speech was filled with familiar false, misleading and exaggerated statements about his record on jobs, military spending, veterans, energy and more.
Trump's Energy Errors
President Donald Trump clearly supports the oil and gas industry, but he made several false and misleading boasts about his impact on the energy sector.
Video: Trump's SOTU Address
For the second time, President Donald Trump delivered a State of the Union address peppered with false, misleading and exaggerated statements — many that we've heard before.


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Starting to Think Manchin's Side Deal is in Real Trouble
Congressman Khanna, in a wide-ranging interview, predicts a 'progressive mutiny' if leaders try to jam through the oil favors
California Congressman Ro Khanna
It's starting to become clear that the "side deal" to permit pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that was put forth by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as an accessory to the Inflation Reduction Act (aka the 'climate bill') faces tougher-than-expected sledding in the Congress. Some of us started lobbying against the giveaways it proposed to the oil industry even before the IRA was signed, but now it appears that the agitation is growing—growing enough that what activists are calling a "dirty deal" may in fact be in danger.
I talked at length this afternoon with Ro Khanna, who chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, and he was quite blunt. He called the side deal a gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and said "that's not going to happen. You're not going to get progressive support for that." In fact, he promised a September 15 hearing of his subcommittee to explore whether or not the fossil fuel industry actually wrote the language of the deal: an early draft circulating on Capitol Hill literally bore a watermark from the American Petroleum Institute.
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He pointed out that Raul Grijalva, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, had written a letter to Speaker Pelosi saying such a deal was unacceptable. "I'm on that letter, many progressives will get on." Manchin has said he was promised his deal would be attached to must-pass legislation, presumably the omnibus budget bill. "If that happened, you'd really have a mutiny among my progressive colleagues," Khanna said.
If the deal—which among other things could explicitly greenlight Appalachia's Mountain Valley Pipeline boondoggle—did get added to the budget bill, and if Khanna was right that progressives objected, it might still pass if Republicans came on board to back it (that's how big defense bills get passed each year over progressive objections). But Khanna said it would be "pretty unprecedented" to "come up with an omnibus budget bill that excluded a key caucus. It would split the party before a crucial midterm election," creating a "media outcry." It would be "a very divisive move. I'm not saying it's impossible—we have to guard against it, and that's why we're mobilizing now."
"If this passes," says Khanna, "it runs roughshod over these communities that have been fighting for five or ten years. There's no way we can allow that kind of wholesale gutting to happen."
Opposition to the side deal has come from those vulnerable communities who have used NEPA challenges in the past to try and head off the siting of fossil fuel projects that are almost inevitably dumped on the communities with the least political influence. Representatives of these frontline groups are gathering September 8 in DC for a rally against the deal after a day of lobbying--and they're clearly beginning to worry Manchin, who took to the pages of the rightwing Washington Examiner today to voice vague threats against the "hard left" if they prevail.
But Manchin's leverage, Khanna suggested, has seen its zenith—no one expects any more big legislation this year, and after the elections the chances that the Democrats will control the House and the Senate will stay balanced precisely fifty fifty seem slim. But that's the math that's given Manchin his edge, and as Khanna said (with the professional admiration of one politican for another), "I think he should be proud of what he got. He got a lot of his version. He got deficit reduction, he got carrots without sticks on the energy pieces. Many of us wanted more sticks, a much bigger spend on infrastructure for EVs, more public transportation, the civilian conservative corps. So he got a lot of what he wanted already."
Progressives should be happy with the IRA as well, says Khanna. He noted that it's much smaller than what he and others would have wanted, and was stripped of provisions that would have expanded dental and vision coverage, child care, and other crucial points. "But Sunrise, 350.org, other environmental activists deserve credit for the $370 billion funding on the climate. That number would have been at least five times smaller if it weren't for the sit-ins at the Speaker's office, the mobilization behind the Green New Deal, the organizing that allowed Bernie to win Iowa and New Hampshire and do as well as he did. And Bernie's success—the fact that in 2020 he centered climate as equal pillar to Medicare for All in his campaign—that influenced Biden's agenda and the Democrat's agenda."
In fact, said Khanna, as he and other progressives met with Manchin over the last 18 months, we "made it clear that one thing you can't cut and expect progressive support is climate funding, and it can't be window dressing. It has to be north of $300 billion. The fact that that became the highest progressive priority, the red line—that became obvious to the White House, to Manchin. And that was all to the credit of the activists. They made it the number one priority in the president's bill."
Khanna also said, however, that some changes in permitting laws may eventually be necessary for the rapid buildout of renewable energy. "Thoughtful people at Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental organizations are open to that, as long as it's done in a way that isn't going to just gut NEPA." He'd read, he said, Ezra Klein's New York Times column insisting that we're going to need to build in this country as we haven't in a century just to start catching up with the physics of climate change.
In fact, everyone's read that column, and understands at some gut level that we can't endlessly block renewable energy projects on spurious grounds. I've been writing about this since at least 2005, urging construction of sun and wind projects literally in my backyard. Readers of this newsletter will recall my dismay earlier this year when Vermont rejected a small solar farm solely on aesthetic grounds. In a rational world, such permitting reform would focus on stopping hydrocarbons while promoting wind and sun. It might, in fact, look a lot like the "climate test" that Barack Obama enunciated when he stopped the Keystone XL pipeline.
Much of that work is actually underway; the Biden administration has been reading Ezra Klein too, or anticipating him—the White House earlier this year unveiled a new plan to speed infrastructure permitting, setting up an interagency Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPICS) that, as the NRDC pointed out, "will improve coordination among agencies and resolve issues consistent with climate, economic and equity goals," and the IRA allocates more money to pay the staffers to make the process work. Veteran climate campaigner Jamie Henn: "Manchin's bill is taking a bulldozer to a process that's already getting the makeover it needs."
In fact, the whole episode demonstrates the ongoing Democratic weakness in talking about the things that the administration has accomplished. We progressives, in particular, excel at critique—but as Khanna said, the new bill was in many ways an ideological watershed. "After 40 years of neoliberalism, we're finally legislating about making things in the U.S."
"You had, since Reagan, this consensus on globalization. And globalization did help lift people out of poverty, and it did make for some close ties around the world. But it also had a huge miss: the loss of local production that led to people losing a sense of pride, dignity, hope. It led to right wing populism, not just in the U.S., but in Britain, in France, in Belgium. I think Biden came in recognizing that and wanting to reverse that." The GOP caricatured the Green New Deal as being about an end to hamburgers, but really "there's the enormous $9 trillion new energy market, and the U.S. can lead in that. You have to go back to LBJ to see someone defending the role of government in making change like this, and that's why it's so important."
Speaking of which, just yesterday Hyundai announced plans to speed up construction of a new EV factory in the U.S., spurred by the IRA's tax credits for domestically produced cars. It's starting to work.
This is a fighting newsletter. Please pay for a subscription if you can afford it; if you can't, no worries
Other news from around the world of climate and energy
+Scary account in the Financial Times of what scientists are figuring out about recent surges in atmospheric methane
Unravelling the mystery will reveal whether or not the world might face the worst-case scenario of a "methane bomb" — a feedback loop where a warmer planet emits more of the gas naturally, driving temperatures up further. It's a terrifying prospect, one that scientists studying this topic tend to tiptoe around, particularly in interviews. "We can have a gut feeling that the climate feedback might be happening," says Lan. "But it can be difficult to separate the signals from the noise." Others are more direct. "If you think of fossil fuel emissions as putting the world on a slow boil, methane is a blow torch that is cooking us today," says Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, and an advocate of stricter policies to reduce methane emissions. "The fear is that this is a self-reinforcing feedback loop . . . If we let the earth warm enough to start warming itself, we are going to lose this battle."
+Wind turbine blades can be recycled into…gummy bears
+Speaking of things that need permits, Sammy Roth with a great piece on Wyoming wind—and how to get it to LA
+Another great element of the IRA climate bill: it officially amends the Clean Air law to make clear, contra this summer's Supreme Court decision, to make clear it covers greenhouse gas pollution
"The language, we think, makes pretty clear that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act," said Senator Tom Carper, the Delaware Democrat who led the movement to revise the law. With the new law, he added, there are "no ifs, ands or buts" that Congress has told federal agencies to tackle carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.
Elaine Cimino
THE COST OF A IRA COMPROMISE:
The bill includes tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) that could extend the life of dirty coal plants, which would make it harder to reach critical targets for clean power while exposing residents to toxic coal pollution.
It mandates the federal government to offer up parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Cook Inlet for oil and gas development. It also requires additional oil and gas leasing in order for new wind and solar projects to be approved.
There is a side deal to move a separate bill in September for so-called "permitting reform" that could weaken core protections under the National Environmental Policy Act, the federal law that gives communities a voice in what happens to the environment around them.
They have not dealt with the Ugly, of the good, the bad, and ugly of the IRA
Christopher Meesto Erato
Writes Sto's Newsletter
Great essay/interview! Very informative about how it takes an army of concerned caring activist citizens and the progressive Bernie movement to make things like IRA legislation happen at grass roots level by holding DC feet to the fire of healthy change - to cleaner energy sources! Bravo - and the work/battle continues!
We the People! The intelligent majority of all parties want a better future with no more Global Warming & plastics (Big Oil), better gun control control laws, Trust/Monopoly Break ups for real free market place, Less meat eating & Big Agra reforms from dirty and immoral factory farming & less contributions to global warming, rights returned to 100% body agency, Universal health care & Higher Education as a right with no profit incentives like the rest of the modern world! Let's DO this Citizens of USA!


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Nitrite is a reducing agent and will reduce iron oxide to magnetite.
In collecting a sample for nitrite testing, it is important that air not be introduced into the sample. The sample collection bottle should be filled completely to the top and then cooled prior to testing. Once the sample is opened the nitrite level should be tested immediately. If the sample is left open oxygen in the air will combine with the nitrite and result in a lower reading than is actually in the boiler or closed system.
Nitrite may be expressed as nitrite (NO3) or as sodium nitrite (Na2NO3). 1 ppm nitrite (NO3) equals 1.74 ppm of sodium nitrite (Na2NO3).
Nitrite may be removed from water by aeration.


Returned to Moremi today after a fun 3 days of socializing. It took Rio a while to get used to being around kids again and he needed 2 hours to warm up and start to interact. In my over-analytical way I realize that this year will be a constant round of adapting for him. As he gets used to the solitude of the bush he is thrust into a mad social whirl of Maun, and as he starts getting used to this he is whisked away to the bush again. And, just as he starts coming to terms with this dual existence we will probably move elsewhere…. I hope it ultimately makes him stronger and doesn't have any lasting negative implications.
The kids are getting used to the drive, or maybe Frannette and I are getting used to it and are wrangling them better, knowing which parts of the drive go quickly, which parts will be interesting and so on.
We saw 2 cobras between the vet fence and the gate. One at least 8 foot and the second one about 4 foot. We stopped the car about 2 metres from the smaller one as it was crossing the road and it looked at us and raised it's hood briefly. It was on the side of the car where Rio and I were, and he was leaning out the back window in anticipation. As soon as the cobra stopped and looked threatening, instinct took over and I yelled at Rio to "get in the car quickly". To his credit he acted like lightning and ducked down below the level of the window. A tad melodramatic but it did create much opportunity for Rio to regale us for the next hour about how he had to take evasive action from the vicious creature, and how he did so with the reflexes of a superhero.
Adventures are starting to become the norm on these drives and Frannette and I are starting to feel like Thelma and Louise. This time I elect the wrong route around an enormous puddle (all the time vaguely knowing that it could be a bad decision) and we get bogged down to the axles in thick mud. After years of living and working in the bush with Brad and having been stuck numerous times in every conceivable thing that can make a car stick, I know the drill. We leap out to go and find logs to place under the tyres to gain some traction and immediately get sucked knee deep into revolting mud. On pulling my foot out my Croc remains behind and it takes me 5 minutes just to extricate it from under all the goo. We tell Rio to stay put and to look after Keita (who is asleep in her baby chair) and head off into the bush to find logs. I look back to see little Rio, fingers clutched onto the rolled-down window, wide eyes peering out, and I realize what a big adventure it is for him. Luckily we find suitable logs close by and return within 5 minutes. We do what I have helped Brad do on numerous occasions (only this time with the added pressure of directing the operation) and we soon work ourselves free. The instant we are on solid ground I leap out to do a victory dance and I hear a small voice saying "I always knew you could do it Mom" and see Rio, grinning from ear to ear, clearly very relieved, and clearly having had massive doubts about my ability to do it at all. In the effort to get us unstuck I had largely forgotten about him sitting quietly (and I now realize, somewhat terrified) on the back seat. The relief and glee on his face probably matched my own. I had no desire to have Brad rescue us once again!
In good spirits after that we chatted and sang for the remainder of the trip. We officially christened our trusty Prado "Lightning The Queen" courtesy of Rio and arrived in camp in the late afternoon.
As I was walking back from taking a load of bags from "Lightning The Queen" to the tent I saw a small brown snake slithering around the play tent and eventually vanish into the grass. Jason told me that earlier that day he had seen a black mamba in our marula tree in camp. It had gone into the hole where our resident mice live and had emerged with a mouse baby in its mouth.
Four snakes in one day. Hmmmm.


We aim to provide expertise for highly talented and enthusiastic games players, as well as for those who are less naturally at home on the games field but whom, nonetheless, will benefit from taking exercise and developing skills.
Every pupil takes part in the formal sports programme three afternoons a week. Fixtures against other similar schools take place once a week, enabling our enthusiastic players to represent Edge Grove regularly in competition.
Our facilities for sport are excellent and include a 20-meter heated swimming pool; vast playing fields with ten junior football fields; a 3-court badminton Sports Hall; four tennis/netball courts and six outdoor/four indoor cricket nets.
Coaching is generally provided by our own teaching staff, many of whom have themselves been or remain accomplished and enthusiastic games players.


The conference championships have yet to be played but bettors can already bet on the matchup and early odds for Super Bowl 52.
With four teams left in the running for the Super Bowl, that means there are four possible matchups for the big game. We do the tough math so you don't have to. The favorite on the matchup prop is the New England Patriots vs the Minnesota Vikings at -110. That should come as no surprise as both are favored in their conference championship matchups. New England is a 9-point home favorite versus the Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota is a 3.5-point road favorite versus the Philadelphia Eagles.
Next on the Super Bowl matchup prop odds is New England vs Philadelphia at +210. That would be a rematch of Super Bowl 39 which the Patriots won 24-21 as a 7-point favorite. Despite the fact the Eagles are the underdog against Minnesota this week, recent trends back this matchup. In the last eight conference championship games, the home team is 8-0 straight up. Full disclosure, though: We should probably also point out that the favorite is 7-1 SU in the last eight conference championship games.
The other two matchups are Jacksonville vs Minnesota at +550 and the long shot, Jacksonville vs Philadelphia at +950. Both the Jaguars and Eagles won their divisional round matchups as underdogs. If they can both do it again this week, a bet on their Super Bowl matchup prop would pay a nice profit.
The other Super Bowl prop the sportsbooks are offering right now is an early line on the game. Right now they're listing the AFC as a 2.5-point favorite with +130 odds. The NFC is a +2.5 underdog at even money odds.
If you think New England is destined to roll past Jacksonville this weekend en route to another Super Bowl title, taking those odds might be worth it. If the Patriots do end up facing Minnesota or Philadelphia in Super Bowl 52, they could be favored by more than 2.5 points. So by taking the early odds, not only might you get a better and easier-to-win spread, the +130 would also provide a better payout. Even a 3-point spread could end up costing you as during the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era, three of their five Super Bowls have come by only three points.
The AFC representative has won the last three Super Bowls and in all three wins would have covered a 2.5-point spread. The Super Bowl hasn't been decided by less than 2.5 points since Super Bowl 25 when Scott Norwood was wide right and the New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills 20-19 as a 6.5-point underdog.


P.F.I. Magazine: There are two artistic mediums you use to produce your works. One is a pop art, no holds barred, tell all acrylic style ; the other, is oil based through which you create more insightful and subtle works. Is there a point where these two POV's meet? Does the vertex represent who Penelope Fox is?
Simone of Authentic Collective does it again with a pre cursor to the most anticipated art battle event this year!! Come out this Thursday to the Walnut Room and partake in Breaking the Brushes an official kickoff to Battle of The Canvas launching August 2011. Come and enjoy discounted drink specials, admission, and a live art battle in which the work will go on sale!


Essential tool for any map maker, Pakrat allow to include your custom content into any .bsp file.
My favorite GUI replacement for Valve's Bspzip application. You will need java.
Srcds Manager for Windows. Update and Monitor multiple instance of srcds game server.


wood chopper machine will be the effective alternative for you. There are plenty of people look for the many in one item. It is since they can find the all-inclusive goods in 1 deal. Finding the best merchandise for your wood appliances is not easy. You may need a few recommendations for that. Which exactly are best products for the wood? So, here are some top products you may choose.
lots of folks really like to shop in homedepot because this shop regularly offers huge discount. The infamous Super cost savings app has been back while offering great offers for wood machine. Here are a few of the greatest products you are unable to miss. Samsung Ice Box RF220. Samsung always gets to be the best selling new in homedepot. With this particular remarkable reduction program, it's time to buy this complex 21,6 cu.ft icebox. It features the most recent version of French doors using ample storage and gorgeous stainless steel case.
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The issue is now resolved and the phone lines are working. Apologies for the inconvenience caused.
We are currently experiencing issues with our Phone support system. Our engineers are working on restoring full functionality as soon as possible. In the meantime feel free to contact us via live chat or ticket support.


text:
Firefighters extinguish fire at Kapalama Canal
UPDATE 6:35 p.m.
According to HFD, the fire originated in a "makeshift living area" within a tunnel along the Kapalama Canal, but its cause is undetermined.
Total damage from the fire is estimated at $5,000, including $4,000 to the tunnel and $1,000 to its contents.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE
Honolulu firefighters this morning extinguished a fire at Kapalama Canal in Kalihi.
The Honolulu Fire Department said it received a 911 call at 8:49 a.m. about a fire at 1819 Houghtailing St. in Kalihi. Thirteen units and 51 personnel were initially dispatched.
The first unit that arrived on the scene five minutes later found black smoke, which firefighters later determined was due to burning furniture at the canal where homeless have been seen.
After securing a water supply and attacking the blaze from the North School Street side of the canal, the fire was extinguished at 9:52 a.m., HFD said.
No injuries were reported, and no nearby homes were threatened.
An HFD fire investigator arrived on the scene to determine the origin and cause of the fire, and the Honolulu Police Department has been notified of the case.
Robinhood hit by data breach exposing users' emails, names
VIDEO: Former UH Warrior and CFL great Chad Owens hosts Star-Advertiser sports show 'The CO2 RUN DWN'
Sony Open: Hideki Matsuyama hits a shot he 'didn't see' to win in a playoff
Woman seriously injured after she falls 100 feet from Olomana trail
WATCH LIVE: Former UH Warrior and CFL great Chad Owens hosts Star-Advertiser sports show 'The CO2 RUN DWN'


text:
João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition)
Select ratingGive João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition) 1/5Give João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition) 2/5Give João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition) 3/5Give João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition) 4/5Give João Nisa: First Impressions Of A Landscape (Exhibition) 5/5Cancel rating
View of the exhibition 'First Impressions of a Landscape', by João Nisa | Photo: Bruno Lopes
Galeria Zé dos Bois presents Primeiras Impressões de uma Paisagem [First Impressions of a Landscape], a solo exhibition by João Nisa, curated by Natxo Checa, consisting of an video installation based on material filmed inside the Águas Livres Aqueduct, on the outskirts of Lisbon, through the use of one of its segments as a series of camera obscura devices.
Working over some of the small windows that, at regular intervals, allow light to penetrate the darkened space of the aqueduct, João Nisa directly films large-scale projections of the outside landscape onto the rough stone walls, with which they merge until the two are almost indistinguishable. Created through an intricate technical process that reproduces the original framings of the projections as determined by the aqueduct's architecture, the images obtained acquire a surprising character, resulting from their almost ethereal nature, the superimposition of layers, and the permanent undecidability between fixity and movement. The shots filmed by Nisa work as experiences of duration, since the recorded landscape – mostly rural but with significant signs of human intervention – is crossed by small events that establish a very specific rhythm and musicality, which is reinforced by the accompanying sound, also recorded inside the aqueduct.
The exhibition at ZDB offers a journey through a set of projections, presented across the various rooms of the gallery. This creates the conditions for each of them to be grasped in its unique complexity, but also as an integral part of a chain, in which the sounds establish a contamination effect that reinforces the immersive nature of the installation.
Based on images of images, projections of projections that deliberately hide the method by which they were produced, First Impressions of a Landscape dialogues with the tradition of landscape painting and with a whole strand of so-called experimental cinema, providing an intense perceptual and sensory experience.
"When all is said and done, it is striking that these images remain as surprising after one has been let in on the process used to create them as when one knew nothing of it. A true perceptual anomaly is presented: a succession of quasi-impossible images unfurling by means of a procedure that exploits the architectural singularity of the monument." (Raymond Bellour, text about the installation)
First Impressions of a Landscape
João Nisa
Video installation, 6 HD projections, 16:9, colour, sound
8'29'' / 7'26'' / 11'18'' / 11'07'' / 10'56'' / 3'41'', loop
Financial support: Direcção-Geral das Artes, Centre national des arts plastiques (Image/mouvement), Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Support: Museu da Água da EPAL, Residency Atelier 105 – Light Cone (Paris)
The exhibition's parallel programme includes a film cycle, consisting of a small selection of films chosen by João Nisa to dialogue with his work, mainly from the field of the so-called experimental cinema. The first session will take place at the Portuguese Cinematheque and the others at ZDB. There will also be conversations between João Nisa, Natxo Checa and invited critics and theorists, such as Sérgio Mah, Erika Balsom and Olivier Schefer.
6th October to 7th January 2023
Monday to Saturday, 6pm – 10pm
Zé dos Bois Gallery (ZDB)
Rua da Barroca, nº 59
Entrance: 3€
https://zedosbois.org/en/programa/primeiras-impressoes-de-uma-paisagem/
https://zedosbois.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/FS_JN_EN_Digital.pdf
Galeria Zé dos Bois - Lisboa, Portugal
Thursday, October 6, 2022 (All day) to Saturday, January 7, 2023 (All day)
Zé dos Bois
Galeria Zé dos Bois
R. da Barroca 59
38° 42' 42.4296" N, 9° 8' 40.542" W
"Frozen" - Video art screenings by Video Art Miden
04/02/2023 - 18:00 (Screenings)
Xcèntric: Sea, walks, streams of thought
IN SITU: Yousra Benziane, Alexandre Larose & Danji Buck-Moore


Length: 25 cm. Height: 30 cm.
Our newly designed moon mobile brings a dreamy touch to your children's room.
The mobile is handmade with love and comes with one felted moon with gold stars attached with transparent thread.
Although you feel like walking on the moon, this is not a toy, its for decorative use only.


text:
Q: Git push Existing Repo to New Remote: Connection to github.com closed by remote host I have an existing repo I want to push to new url. I tried the following.
$ git remote set-url origin git@github.com:user/new-repo.git
$ git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
$ git config --global ssh.postBuffer 1048576000
$ git push --verbose
Pushing to github.com:user/new-repo.git
Enumerating objects: 2729, done.
Counting objects: 100% (2729/2729), done.
Delta compression using up to 24 threads
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly
Connection to github.com closed by remote host.
error: pack-objects died of signal 2)
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly

$ git repack
Enumerating objects: 2999, done.
Counting objects: 100% (2732/2732), done.
Delta compression using up to 24 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (2548/2548), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2732/2732), done.
Total 2732 (delta 1716), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0

$ git push --verbose
Pushing to github.com:user/new-repo.git
Enumerating objects: 2729, done.
Counting objects: 100% (2729/2729), done.
Delta compression using up to 24 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (1115/1115), done.
remote: fatal: pack exceeds maximum allowed size
fatal: sha1 file '<stdout>' write error: Broken pipe
error: remote unpack failed: index-pack abnormal exit
To github.com:user/new-repo.git
! [remote rejected] master -> master (failed)
error: failed to push some refs to 'github.com:user/new-repo.git'

In a separate copy of repo:
$ git remote set-url origin https://github.com/user/new-repo.git
$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/user/new-repo.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/user/new-repo.git (push)

$ git push
Enumerating objects: 2729, done.
Counting objects: 100% (2729/2729), done.
Delta compression using up to 24 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (2106/2106), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2729/2729), 2.50 GiB | 3.01 MiB/s, done.
Total 2729 (delta 1723), reused 706 (delta 395), pack-reused 0
error: RPC failed; curl 18 transfer closed with outstanding read data remaining
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly
Everything up-to-date

The original repo is hosted on gitlab. Using github's import feature also fails, without a descriptive message. Gitlab shows the repo is 3.7GB and there no really large individual files.
Any debugging ideas? Thanks.

A: Check if the issue persists:

*

*using the latest Git 2.28

*using an https URL (for testing): git remote set-url origin https://github.com/user/new-repo.git

*using a small content in the new repository (again, for testing: a first commit with only a few small files)

The last point seems pertinent:
remote: fatal: pack exceeds maximum allowed size

Try and make sure your first commit is not "too big" for a GitHub push to handle.