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Hope you enjoyed this Father’s Day. Seems the Sanskirt ‘pitr’ is the origin of ‘papa’, ‘baba’ and ‘father’. ‘Dad’ was first recorded in the 1500s and ‘fader’, precursor to ‘father’, in the late 1500s. ‘Pops’, straight out of the USA, made its first appearance in the 1830s.
International Developments
❖ French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party has won enough seats to be an “absolute majority” in parliament.
❖ Egyptian presidential elections are occurring in a very complicated situation with the Supreme Council of Armed Forces having declared parliament “null and void” yesterday. Soldiers are now stationed around parliament, there are calls for voting boycotts, and “Pro-revolutionary groups . . . say they will stage a protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Sunday night . . ..”
❖ According to the opposition Syrian National Council, the army is tightening “its grip Sunday on Homs, assaulting the besieged central city with shelling and gunfire.” The Syrian National Council also “slammed the United Nations on Sunday for suspending its observer mission . . ., saying it is “unjustifiable and unacceptable” for the international community to fail to protect civilians from attacks.”
International Economics
❖ Waiting in the wings for the US-led military departure from Afghanistan, “predator nations [particularly, China, Iran and India] are pouring lavish praise, diplomatic agreements and buckets full of cash on Afghan leaders, trying to win access to the nation’s vast natural resources . . ..”
❖ “Norway’s Ministry of Finance announced Friday that a state fund that is Europe’s largest equity investor would no longer invest in Israeli construction company Shikun and Binui” based on findings of an ethics board “which found the company was in contravention of international law . . ..”
The War on Women
❖ A physician describes the scene between herself and an attending physician concerning a pregnant woman with “a poorly repaired heart defect” and history of heart failure during a previous pregnancy. You know where this leads: medical decision-making gets overridden by zealous politicians’ ignorance.
❖ Is this supposed to be a step forward or something: “Women Who Disagree With Catholic Church Now Accused of Radical Feminism Instead of Witchcraft”. More like a great leap sideways.
❖ MI state Rep. Lisa Brown has been barred from the House floor ever since she used the word ‘vagina’ on said floor a few days ago. Rep. Brown will, instead, perform the “Vagina Monologues” on the state capitol steps Monday night.
Politics USA
❖ “President Obama has just opened a floodgate of opportunity for young illegal immigrants in the United States, but could it squeeze the aspirations of legal Americans in the process?” Thus, the Washington Post enters the fray, raising the specter of “the new measure’s probable impact on competition for jobs at the low end of the economic scale . . .” with scant evidence offered in support of that statement.
❖ Education in Louisiana’s schools seems to have hit rock bottom, though the situation is so fluid who knows where rock bottom really is. Eternity Christian Academy, for example, has been in existence since 2010 and”applied for one hundred vouchers for the coming year”, though it isn’t licensed and some officials didn’t even know it existed.
❖ ME Senators Snowe and Collins, saying the Obama administration didn’t move fast enough, want a floor vote on the nomination of William Kayatta Jr to the First Circuit of Appeals. Kayatta was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April.
❖ The National Congress of American Indians is meeting in Lincoln, NE, bringing together “dozens of tribes and 800 or more tribal representatives” from through the USA. Climate change, violence against women and economic advance of the tribes are among topics highlighted during the 4-day event.
Heads Up!
❖ At 3:00 pm (EDT) today, civil rights, faith, labor and community groups began a silent march against the Stop-and-Frisk program in NYC.
❖ Senators may have swooned, but regular folks who attended Jamie Dimon’s appearance before the Senate Banking Committee stood up and asked him to face “the thousands of homeowners . . . that are losing their homes because of his work.”
Planet Earth News
❖ The current Rio+20 meeting is a bumpy one. On the positive side is the statement “it is crucial that we honor all previous commitments, without regression” which was aimed at US efforts to “rip up the Earth Summit agreement of 1992 . . ..” However, in terms of climate change, global inequity and unsustainable consumption, language in the agreement is weak. There’s even reluctance to agree that the earth’s peoples have a right to clean water.
❖ Also from the Rio+20 summit: “Efforts to deal with increasing acidification of the oceans will get a signal of support . . . with a U.S. announcement that it will provide $1 million over the next three years to launch a global monitoring network.” Scientists, however, estimate “a robust global ocean acidification monitoring effort will cost $50 million.”
Latin America
❖ In 1968, the Paiter Amazonian people first came into contact with whites. Since then their lands have been “terribly threatened by the violence of the Polonoroeste program, the corruption and omission of government agencies, and the invasion by unauthorized individuals, including lumberman and miners.” Paiter chief Almir has been working for five years with google to develop “a cultural map of [the Paiter], a digital tool that will help the Amazonian tribe share their vast knowledge of the forest and fight illegal logging.” The site has now been launched. Not all parts of it are yet in English, but it is an amazing venture.
❖ Imagine the possibilities here in the US of A. “Bolivian officials get spy pens in anti-corruption effort”
❖ With the Rio+20 conference on-going 2200 miles to the south, some 300 “indigenous and green activists occupied Friday the construction site of a huge hydro-electric dam across the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon . . . ” “We call on the world to let our river live,” said Antonia Melo of the Xingu River Forever Alive Movement.
❖ 14 drug cartel members in Mexico have been indicted in the US for money laundering.
❖ Approximately 40 politicians in Colombia will be ordered to “respond to accusations that they had ties to the local paramilitary death squad.”
Hunger & Health
❖ India’s economy may have accelerated, but “more than three-quarters of the 1.2 billion population eat less than minimum targets . . . up from two-thirds . . . in 1983.” Overall, 40% of the world’s malnourished children are Indian–”more than in all of Africa.”
❖ The “number of [Palestinian] children being treated for diarrhea has doubled in five years” and “Israel’s five-year blockade of the territory is preventing crucial sanitation equipment from getting in.” Water available in Gaza is dangerous to drink.
Mixed Bag
❖ RIP Rodney King
❖ Glenn Beck has seen the tee vee show “Glee” and he is shocked! shocked! at what he considers a “horror show”. Beck concluded “There is no way to beat this.”
Break Time
❖ Not exactly a magic carpet ride, but ‘pert near it (as my beloved Southern grandfather would have said).
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Fatster theme song……… “seven days a week” (Etta James)
your french election link took me to the thing below.
No wonder all the big shots are moving their businesses to China. American graft is small potatoes:
pity the lowly American oligarch.
“The richest 70 members of China’s legislature added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of all 535 members of the U.S. Congress, the president and his Cabinet, and the nine Supreme Court justices.
(poor things)
The net worth of the 70 richest delegates in China’s National People’s Congress, which opens its annual session on March 5, rose to 565.8 billion yuan ($89.8 billion) in 2011, a gain of $11.5 billion from 2010, according to figures from the Hurun Report, which tracks the country’s wealthy. That compares to the (me here… measly) $7.5 billion net worth of all 660 top officials in the three branches of the U.S. government.
The income gain by NPC members reflects the imbalances in economic growth in China, where per capita annual income in 2010 was $2,425, less than in Belarus.
May those leaders live in interesting times.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-26/china-s-billionaire-lawmakers-make-u-s-peers-look-like-paupers.html?cmpid=otbrn.sustain.story
thanks fatster.
Thank you, mafr!
Sorry I have nothing to pass on … I’m too busy hand wringing.
But, but, but, allan, we’re on the right track to recovery, or hadn’t you noticed?
comeon allan, don’t you get it as this commentor does?
“I wish all these “strategists” would shut the hell up. the president keeps talking about all of these things to try and get the truth out there, ”
see? Now calm down.
Here, allan, I’m sure this will make you feel better–especially when you realize it was written in 1929.
I’m beginning to understand why ‘damn commies’ hasn’t been heard around Capitol Hill in quite some time. Money has an ideology of its own.
Yes, indeed. Thnx hermit.
In case you missed it.
“BILL MOYERS: Tom, here’s the dilemma. I know a lot of good citizens who are simply giving up. Two nights ago I was with some old friends out in the Midwest, your part of the country, and one of them looked at me and said, “I don’t know what to do, so I’m just bailing out.” And she was serious.
THOMAS FRANK: Look, I have the same problem myself. I also have an answer. I have a solution for it. You want to hear what it is?
BILL MOYERS: I do.
THOMAS FRANK: We need third parties in this country. And by that I don’t mean another third party supported by billionaires, that centrist, you know, in the sort of Ross Perot manner. I mean parties that represent different opinions on the spectrum in the manner of the populist party in the 1890s which was really the last time we saw a third party movement, you know, that contested the ballot from the bottom all the way to the top, you know, and they were a real political party. Unfortunately the techniques that the populists used are against the law in most states. If we were to repeal those laws you might have a vibrant third party scene again.”
Frank did give an explanation of Obama that I think is correct: “THOMAS FRANK: No, he’s not (referencing a ‘man of the people’). And he also, he’s a man of academia. He’s a man who believes in experts and expertise as we’ve seen in many, many, many, all the different sort of arenas of his presidency whether you’re talking about the war in Afghanistan or whether you’re talking about the financial crisis.
Anyway, the Daily Cartoon.
Awww, that’s kind of a sad toon, ubetchaiam, or is the piggy usually a bad piggy?
Interesting observations by Frank, of course. Consulting with experts is fine, of course, but you gotta be careful about which experts. You know (probably better than I)–Volcker or Geithner, etc.
Many thnx.
Anyone know a member of the British Parliament? A journalist at Guardian has pointed to the strategic importance of sports (I’d say, “and entertainment”) media in the whole Murdoch matter. He and others knowledgeable should be asked before the Leveson Committee or other appropriate panel, and soon.
From March 28, a footnote (and that is here in the U.S., in case it’s not clear):
By the way, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, appeared before the Levison Committee last week just as the Guardian was serializing excerpts from his newly published diaries from the Blair years.
Alastair Campbell diary excerpt, in which Murdoch/Blair and Bush [Administration]/Blair phone calls related to the looming Iraq War choreograph interestingly. (“Milonga a Trés,” anyone?)
The murky tale running through the diaries about Murdoch’s interactions with Blair during 2002 and early 2003 do indeed contractict Murdoch’s earlier testimony, in which he asserted that he don’t know nothin’ ’bout askin’ no prime minister for things. However, they also come close to contradicting at least the spirit of their own author’s testimony, as Campbell tried to minimize the significance of Murdoch’s phone calls.
Alastair Campbell live blog, beginning at 3:06pm.
Do you think, prostratedragon, that the Levison Committee is just one more step in a long drawn-out process, or will something come of it? Thnx for keeping us updated on this.
The rat is usually just a SOB.
Oh, OK. Thnx so much, alan1tx. I live a sheltered life.
That statistic about hunger in India is almost unbelievable. With the green revolution in agriculture and that nation’s rapid economic development, how could the percentage of hungry citizens be increasing?
India is a vile corrupt country, one of the worst on the planet.
This world is headed in a very bad direction.
Here’s what we have in Canada these days. Things like this are typical, at the national level.
“Health care workers are planning to hold demonstrations across the country today to protests planned cuts to medical services currently provided to refugees.
The workers are angry that the federal government is planning to end free dental, vision and prescription drugs offered to most refugee claimants through the Interim Federal Health (IFH), Canada’s health insurance program for refugees.
With less than two weeks to go until the federal cuts kick in, the health workers are planning protests outside federal government offices in 10 Canadian cities Monday, from St. John’s to Vancouver.
Ottawa has said it can save about $20 million a year with the cuts.
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120617/refugee-health-care-cuts-protests-120618/#ixzz1y9dqgqno
I saw another similar state a couple of weeks ago. Top 3 members of Chinese polit bureau are richer than U.S. congress, prez, Scotus put together.
Well, that sounds like the good old capitalist spirit.
Oh, wait . . .
Stat not state.
The prescription drugs one is very interesting. When refugees come in, through pre-admission examinations and testing, any ill-health conditions they bring can be identified and promptly treated. Extremely important in terms of infectious and contagious diseases which, of course, will spread into the general population if unaddressed (e.g., TB, STDs, etc.). Surely they aren’t going to withhold prescription drugs in those instances.
Absolutely appalling, caleb36, yes.
What predator nations are missing from this list? Oh, that’s right: Russia, Pakistan, the US, and European nations. Wonder why?
Love the framing as “predator nations”. Classy SFGate, really classy.
The number of citizens is increasing faster than the productivity of agriculture, and then there’s the whole income inequality thing. Plus, the Green Revolution creates a situation in which yields start to diminish without large infusions of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.