Who You With?

Which Side Are You, Yawn

As a Dog, when I'm not reading, writing, doing art or sticking my nose into women's crotches (and it's a real plus for our species that we can get away with that, and in public, no less), I'm looking at things.We see a lot more than you think.

One item which pops up frequently on the Intertubes in These Days is a banner advertising graphic for Hillary The Inevitable !  showing a black-and-white photo of the Candydate, grinning, with her slogan-and-logo (which someone noted is very similar to a UPS ad campaign), shouting, "I'm With Her".

No. I'm not with her.  A lot of people are not "With" her.  I'm with these people, and if you'd like to post any of these in your own little slice of Blogtopia, feel free:

At the Soul Of America, another handy link to Ian Welsh recently reminded us that in the minds of some, the world is created for the wealthy and the powerful, and that you and I exist to serve their interests as chattel, as consumers of things, and to provide them with momentary amusements as they play The Great Game in pursuit of More.

A man like Obama or Bill Clinton (or, in the future a woman like Hillary Clinton) is far more likely to ruin your life than Osama bin Laden ever was. Bill Clinton pushing through Welfare “Reform” harmed millions of the poorest weakest people in America. The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed the financial crisis to happen.

Unless you are an oligarch, or a retainer who is on the gravy train, people like Clinton, Obama, Blair, Cameron, and Thatcher are your enemies. They are a direct threat to your well-being, welfare, and even life.

The first thing anyone who wants to be realistic about politics and power needs to realize is this fact. They are enemies.

And they are. We should be voting for poets, painters, musicians, performers and Populists.

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MEHR, MIT DENKMAL: It is soul-grinding beyond words to have to vote for The Lesser Of Two Evils.  It's an admission that Reagan's Shining City On A Hill, the High School civics class view of America and the world is manifestly untrue. It forces people to confront the realities of the Company Town we live in -- that we are not a nation defending the principles in our founding documents; we're the paid help for Lords and Masters whose names we'll never know and whose faces we'll never see.

We knew this already, of course, but Ya can't fight city hall, kid -- the dichotomy couldn't be acknowledged. You can live with cognitive dissonance, but you don't sleep well. You're less civil in traffic, more anxious for no apparent reason. Then, after the financial Crashes of 2000 and 2008, more people understood that dissonance both intellectually and emotionally, and that makes things even harder. The popular media reinforces cliches about wealth, corruption and power (I just finished watching True Detective, Season 2; a perfect example).  

And on this Memorial Day weekend that cognitive dissonance can be hard. After WWII, a war against militaristic fascism (and yes, let's keep Gravity's Rainbow in mind as we say that, Slothrop), we fought "other" wars. Far from bleeding and dying in a noble cause, people you actually knew, even you yourself, apparently did so less to protect American citizens from an enemy, and more to provide a better position at a bargaining table for the interests of a few megacorps, and a handful of sociopathic, hereditary-rich halfwits.

The power structures that run the planet are too powerful to change. Nothing short of a a Zombie Apocalypse, a global pandemic or thermonuclear war, will dismantle them. Their predecessors were threatened by the Reformation, the English Civil War, revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries (in particular, the American and French) -- and because democratic political structures promised an evolutionary change, TPTB believed they could be controlled and reluctantly accommodated them. 

The story of Western politics has been a struggle to maintain and expand concessions forced on the ruling elites. Since 1945, Western political leaders have been bought -- and so cheaply --  to serve long-term interests of those elites, while pretending to be guardians of Democratic Principles.

Hillary is just another Emptysuit front person for The Powers That Be, and having to vote for her is a Kulturschande. It's a visible symbol of our collective dysfunction as a nation -- whose leaders mouth platitudes in Hiroshima but kill with drone strikes, allow torture; place its citizens' communications under mass surveillance; and push trade deals which allow global capital the power to ignore any laws it finds inconvenient. 

Having to vote for Hillary is an admission that we're powerless Rubes and Sheep -- that Business as Usual is the best we can hope for. One more step towards Orwell's image of a boot, trodding on a human face, forever. 

But what makes casting that vote soul-grinding is, unlike Orwell's Winston Smith, a large number of us know history. We know that it could be different, that we could do better. It's one reason Sanders' campaign, even the promise of one from Elizabeth Warren, enlivened so many people, Left and Center (and, from a much different perspective, why Trump appears popular with the Right). 

We need a rebirth of real Democratic principles in that party, or a third political party, to represent the People in that ongoing struggle against the few who control so much. And on this holiday, if anyone were to ask what I served or fought for, it's that Americans, and others, have some kind of Puncher's Chance in that fight. 

That, and for Absent Friends.

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Lives Matter

Noch Einmal

Photo: Brussels, March 22, 2016 (Charles Platiau / Reuters)

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Random Barking: Last Salute

Empire

"Gibraltar"; Artist: Charles Pears, 1930, For The Empire Marketing Board

I spotted this image on the Tom Clark blog, via The Soul Of America, and was immediately captivated.

It has everything -- balanced design elements (the Golden Mean at work), balanced and complimentary colors; images of The Family, the Power Of Worldwide Empire (Sing, "Rule, Britannia", right now. You know who you are), and being on holiday -- which suggests both financial and job security; a pleasant interlude in a sunny and pleasant life.

Sadly, when this poster was created, England had been virtually bankrupted after the excesses of the Great War (World War One to you), and was busily being kicked to the curb by the Depression ("Thanks awfully, America!  I say; we certainly didn't see that coming! Bit of a surprise!"). The Empire was fading and in the great unwinding of national self-determination that followed WW2, all the 'Pink Bits' on the map would have to be replaced by different colors.

Here in Aremica, our own Empire is slowly fading, except in the minds of persons like Herr Trumpi. The Kochbrudern don't care; they're rich. The rest of us don't care because we're too busy texting. When we're purchased by Commie Red China on eBay, no one will notice until Google is shut down for 'maintenance'.

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Master Debating

We Inter eee eeee uuurrrrp

Hill  uurrrp  -- And The Force Be Wi wi wi    eewww

Watching the Debate Democratique live from the New Hampshire. Sadly, I have digitation issues, and 98% of the debate has been frozen or interrupted, pixilated images of Hillary !, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and that other guy.  I'm fairly sure I haven't missed much.

Trumpolina was mentioned as the nightmare Rethuglican to become Prestodent. Okay; show of hands: does anyone feel that it truly matters who sits in the Obol Office and claims the Tub Of Slaw™ ? Anybody ? And, one comment I heard from Sen. Sanders clearly -- that over the past decade, $5 Trillion US in wealth has been transferred, from 99.99% of the United States' population, to the top 0.01 percent of it -- and that anything less than reversing that trend was to sell out the birthright of being an American.

I'm also sure that Mrs. Clinton hasn't mentioned that in 1999, her husband made it possible to realize a 65-year-old masturbatory fantasy of right-wing financiers -- the castration of the Glass-Stegal Act. This was one of the principal factors which made the Crash of 2007-2008 possible; ex-Pestident Clinton claims conservatives made him do it.  Thanks, Bill-o!

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I Do Not Wear Bladder-Leak Pants

And Additional Random Barking

Mongo With Outdated Technology

Things Are Going On, out there. Many of those things have no effect (or, none so immediate) on a medium-sized white Dog with an interest in current events. 

At The Bottom Of The Bag, It's All Greecy

Alex Tsipras' Syriza Party obtained a majority in Greece's Parliamentary elections, which allowed them to form a government, order take-out food, and name ministers. Greece had been scheduled for sale to Donald Trump (who has wanted his own country for so long) and a few unnamed members of the Chinese clique of Oligarchs government. They were elected because the majority of the Greek people no longer wanted to live under Austerity™.

It seemed for a time that Socialism and Democracy might win against the Forces Of Capital™, and the ECB/IMF/Eisen Kanzellerin would be forced to accept new terms in restructuring $276 billion Euros of Greek debt (owed mostly to German and French banks).  The suffering of the vast majority of Greece's people (a direct result of Austerity measures which accompanied EU bailout loans) might end.

There was an exciting game of chicken between Tsipras and the Troika, with a referendum and press hoopla -- and überall, the possibility that Greece would 'exit' the EU and the use of the common European currency which gives the Union legitimacy. There was "concern and volatility in the major markets."

Then Alex caved and Angela won and Greece will only have to sell a part of itself to Trump and the Chinese Oligarchs.  Greece will receive additional loans from the EU, but with more Austerity™! And, there's every possibility that within a year, the new loan / refinancing arrangements will collapse! So all this has actually been a Game Of Chicken, followed by a game of Kick The Can Down The Road, and the Greek people appear to have lost both times. But, Angela's happy. So.

President Visits Africa Because China

Herr Obama suddenly showed up in Africa to dine, dance, see members of his father's family, and do a little flag-waving. It's hot, and there are trees. The African governments he has visited have been polite. He has been well-received, in a Chamber-Of-Commerce Luncheon kind of way.

We should hope he has been. Given that the Chinese government has spent over $100 billion US on foreign aid in Africa since 2000, and investments by private Chinese firms (some of which have members of the Chinese Commie government as majority shareholders) total tens of billions more.

African governments, many teetering on unstable tribal politics, are happy to receive money and public works, education or infrastructure projects from anybody to stave off the next coup attempt. Of course, some of the money may end up in numbered, offshore accounts of unnamed African or Chinese persons. Well, that's business.  And, America can't afford to spend any money, anyway.

We have the impression that Mr. Obama is popular in Africa. Perhaps he could be elected there after he is done with us here? But, hey; nobody really cares, because  Hillary!  Jebby!

China Buys Itself

There has recently been criticism of the Chinese Red Commie government as it artificially propped up it's stock market and selectively limited equities trading to a list of specific companies. The intent was to prevent a collapse of and panic in their internal market; the criticism centered around well now we can't accurately value Chinese equities can we?

Here in The Land Of The Brave and Home Of The Kiddie -- after allowing Phil Gramm, Larry Summers, and a whole crew of Financial BSD's to dump America over the hood of a 1956 Chevy, we were treated to "Irrational Exuberance" without the benefit of Vaseline. Then the Housing Bubble© popped, and the Little People had a sad.

Lil' Phil and Larry got theirs; so did Angelo Mozilo and the other BSD's (Their mindset? In 2010, it was reported that Jamie Dimon's daughter had asked him why the Crash had happened; he replied, It's a business cycle, honey; happens every few years." The girl thought about it, then asked, 'So why is everyone so upset?'). And, who really cares what happens to the "little people", anyway?  They're so disposable. They're only allowed to live so they can buy things -- like multiple homes with toxic mortgage terms, or H&M clothing, or iPads and SmartPhones, and everything they've ever seen in the movies or on the teevee.

But Phil and Larry, and their friends, did cause a big problem. And without intervention from the government (to prop up the BSD's and their banks and trading houses and insurers), the 2007-2008 crash would have dragged the global economy down even further. So, Lil' Boots signed off on TARP because people told him to, and Herr Obama signed the Economic Relief Act because Larry told him to.  The Banksters got plenty of free money, and so much more. Because Democracy and Freedom! Yay!   Hillary!  Jebby!

It's true that China's investment markets and economy are managed more tightly by its Red Commie Island-Creating Cybercriminal Oligarch government than any other major international player.  It's also true that China has two economies -- the one that interacts with the global financial structure, and its 'grey market' - "a loosely regulated network of state-owned commercial banks, trust companies, fund managers, and grassroots finance firms" (as noted by Reuters), which more closely mirrors traditional Asian financial networks to provide lending and investing. 

America  and the West has its analogs in a shadow economy, the derivatives markets, and a lack of regulation -- all of which made the 2007-2008 Crash a certainty, and are present in China now. The difference is their government is attempting to intervene far earlier than the U.S. government did in an attempt to forestall a larger crisis.  No matter how thin you slice it, it's all government / central bank intervention.

Have A Little Stalin With Your Turkey

Last week, Recep Tayyip "KiKi" Erdogan, President of Turkey, announced his country would work with the United States and others to rein in ISIS, which has escalated its violence in neighboring Syria to an extent that it's begun spilling north (A recent suicide bombing in a Turkish border town killed 30-plus people; two Turkish policemen were killed when ISIS attacked an outpost on the border with Syria).

Turkey opened a major base to the U.S. military as a launch point for air strikes, promised to use its own air force against ISIS and promptly launched a large number of fighter-bomber attacks against targets in northern Syria.

Here's where it gets murky:  Turkey -- even before KiKi (himself an Iranian-style 'State Islamist') came to power -- has engaged in a thirty-year guerrilla war with Kurdish separatists, in particular the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. A cease-fire was declared in 2013 -- but recently the group has made an alliance of sorts with ISIS in hopes of advancing their own cause (a bit like the Frog allowing the Scorpion to ride its back in crossing the river).

So as it turns out, the vast majority of airstrikes Turkey has made weren't aimed at ISIS at all. They've hit the PKK (the end of the truce with them was announced after the first strikes were carried out). Erdogan's claims of support for an anti-ISIS campaign are, uh, smoked Turkey and mirrors. 

KiKi and his 'Justice and Development' party came to power in Turkey over a decade ago; Erdogan became the country's Prime Minister until (per Turkey's constitution) he could no longer serve -- then, he ran for President, to extend his rule (as had Sad Vlad, The Putin, in Russia).

Erdogan accused Turkey's military (which was the ultimate power in the country since the days of Kemel Ataturk) of plotting to overthrow his Islamist government, dismissing key general officers and replacing them with those loyal to him.

Nothing new here: Erdogan has turned out to be more like an Islamic Stalin in his country than an Iranian Mullah. But not all Turks want KiKi or his politics: In a recent election, his Justice and Development party lost its large majority in Turkey's parliament. There have been (generally unsubstantiated) claims that KiKi has allowed Turkey's government to provide aid to ISIS or allow their fighters to cross its borders into Syria unopposed.


70th Anniversary Of The Big Bang

Only Color Photo Of First Atomic Bomb, 1945 (Click To Enlarge. Easy! Fun! Scary!)

 Boom. It's the gift that keeps on giving: Made In U.S.A.

Ask the Japanese. Ask the residents of a large area around the original Trinity test site, where rates of cancer are stratospherically higher than among the general population, and in particular among people who lived there as children in 1945 and were exposed to fallout from the explosion of the first Plutonium atomic bomb.

Mullah Omar, He Dead 

 For over a decade, people went on and on about this guy: 'Mullah' Omar, head of the Afghan Taliban; on the wanted list of all manner of organizations. Terrorist, maniac, half-blind. And -- nobody knew where he was. Sorry to harsh everyone's buzz in the intelligence industry (and isn't that a pseudo-oxymoron), but he was right here.

Yeah, no kidding -- Omar. Short, a little skinny; beard? Horn-rimmed glasses with one frosted lens? Worked in the cubicle right next to mine.  Did some project management on the IT side; had a decent sense of humor, condo in Walnut Creek; drove a Volvo. Played a little pickup basketball at lunch. Rabid Warriors fan. Had kids but no wife, I think. He also loved the film "Office Space" -- just raved about it. He would go around quoting Milton Waddums lines... and one of his prized possessions was a red, Swingline stapler.

You didn't mess with Omar around the stapler. Once, someone made a half-assed joke about Omar and Office Space -- "What's with the stapler, man? Should we call you 'Milton'? You gonna, I dunno -- burn down the building, go 'Taliban' on us?" And Omar got really quiet and went completely immobile and just looked at them with his one, good eye. Swear to god, I don't even think the guy was breathing as he stood there. Creeped everyone out.

The next day, he was fine -- but for about thirty seconds we thought we was going to, you know, go Taliban. But from then on, no one, and I mean no one, ever said anything about Milton (an definitely not the Taliban) ever again. Before going home, Omar would lock the red Swingline in the overhead bin of his cubicle and take it out again when he came back in the morning.

Once, I screwed up my courage and asked him about the Taliban thing: I mean, Dude; is that really you? And instead of trying to behead me, he smiled and laughed, as if he were a little embarrassed ("Well, we all are doing the goofy stuff when we are young, you know").

And then, one day, he just disappeared. Poof; as if he had never been there. I ended up being assigned some of his project stuff -- oh, and I got his stapler. So, s'all good.

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You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Fast Food Chains

Greece Shows The Way

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MEHR, MIT AROOO:  Paul Krugman, one of the Smartest Humans On Earth™, explains that there's more to the Greek finance drama than meets the eye -- principally, that The Syriza Party's standing up to bullying by EU finance ministers may be the beginning of the end of Austerity programs in the Eurozone. 

From an economist's perspective, Krugman believes Greece has done well in the sort term and is positive about its future. The actors in this drama who aren't happy in the EU are the Austerians, who should just go back to Planet Buzzkill, already.

... the main issue of contention involves just one number: the size of the Greek primary surplus, the difference between government revenues and government expenditures not counting interest on the debt. The primary surplus measures the [amount of money] that Greece is actually [paying] its creditors. Everything else, including the [total amount of Greece's] debt — which is a more or less arbitrary number at this point, with little bearing on the amount anyone expects Greece to pay — matters only to the extent that it affects the primary surplus Greece is forced to run.

For Greece to run any surplus at all — given the depression-level slump that it’s in and the effect of that depression on revenues — is a remarkable achievement, the result of incredible sacrifices. Nonetheless, Syriza has always been clear that it intends to keep running a modest primary surplus. If you are angry that the negotiations didn’t make room for a full reversal of austerity ... you weren’t paying attention.

The question instead was whether Greece would be forced to impose still more austerity. ... So did the current Greek government back down and agree to aim for those economy-busting surpluses? No, it didn’t. In fact, Greece won new flexibility for this year...

And the creditors did not pull the plug. Instead, they made financing available to carry Greece through the next few months. That is, if you like, putting Greece on a short leash, and it means that the big fight over the future is yet to come. But the Greek government didn’t succumb to the bum’s rush, and that in itself is a kind of victory.

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The Walking Dread

Ruh-Roh

A Funny Parody, When You're 9,000 Miles Away.  In West Africa? Not So Much.

Where you and I are standing / At the end of the century /
Europes have sprung up everywhere / as even I can see /

There on the horizon / There's a possibility /

Some bug from out of Africa / will come for you and me/

Destroying everything in its path / from sea to shining sea /

Like the Great nations of Europe / In the 16th century

-- Randy Newman, "The Great Nations Of Europe"

El Rog The Magnificent, trapped in his own veal pen at work, as I am, made another as-usual-trenchant observation about the current health crisis in America earlier this week after the announcement that the first nurse from Dallas Presbyterian had been hospitalized.

"The government says, 'We have the finest healthcare system in the world', and, 'We're not like Africa -- it can't happen here'," El Rog says.  "Everyone goes to sleep. You want the government and people in this country to wake up and pay attention? Then you don't say 'Ebola' -- you say, 'Zombie Apocalypse'.  Then they'll pay attention."



The Ebola epidemic is horrifying. Not because its further spread will have an unknown effect on the politics of fragile 'African Domino' states. Not because of an effect to world financial markets; and not because of the possibility that its exponential progression will almost guarantee a wider spread into Europe, America, or Asia. It's horrifying, because human beings living in scrabbling poverty with little hope are dying, faster and faster. 

Someone Else's Problem 

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that  in west Africa, Ebola has claimed more lives. They estimate that if the disease continues to infect humans at the same exponential rate, this outbreak will produce a minimum of 5,000 new cases per week by the first of December, and (worst-case) as many as 10,000.

Before September 28, when symptoms of the first patient in the U.S. were finally recognized and he was admitted to a hospital, spokespersons for the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders had gone in front of the media and done everything but scream at the UN, EU and American governments for not organizing resources and money to contain and reverse what was happening in Africa. They warned that the epidemic was "spiraling out of control", that the window of opportunity to deal with a massive health crisis was closing.

 

Ebola In West Africa By The Numbers (Virology Down Under Blog)

For months, caregivers in the field and the epidemiologists in their labs were struggling against the perception in western Europe and America that yes, Ebola was a terrible hemorrhagic viral disease -- but a remote African disease, an African problem. Similar illnesses had popped up in single, isolated cases in the west, the media reminded us, and all were quickly contained because of a superior healthcare infrastructure.

We were also reminded that it was harder to contract the disease than flu, malaria, or half a dozen other illnesses endemic in west Africa. But through the spring and into the summer, the outbreak spread and epidemiologists knew it was different than any sporadic, rural brushfire outbreak in the past: for the first time, Ebola had found its way into urban areas.

But, the EU and United States governments were too preoccupied with their own internal politics and economic situations to listen very closely to the alarms being sounded by international public health agencies and NGO's. Not doing more to help reverse the progression of the disease almost guaranteed that, sooner or later, the danger which had come out of the forest would begin spreading beyond Africa.

It's Money That Matters 

America has emerged, superficially, from the worst effects of The 2008 Crash. Our economy is still wounded from the excesses of the Bush years: America spent a trillion dollars violently projecting itself into the world during a decade marked by a War On Terra. 

Many people have amnesia around the damage done by the excesses of an unregulated shadow banking system: the U.S. economy lost over a Trillion dollars in personal worth -- at one stage, the Dow Jones had declined by ten thousand points.  Some few made money -- the Blankfeins, the Moxilos, the Fulds; they made an aggregate hundreds of millions of dollars, personally. Meanwhile, millions lost their homes, their savings, and their jobs; lives were destroyed.  In the wake of a ten-year Forever War and the destruction of its middle class, America prefers to ignore what happens in the rest of the world as much as possible.

For its part, the European Union after the 2008 Crash has spent years teetering on the brink of dissolution. The fragile economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain were kicked to the curb by the failures and excess of  the financial crisis. There was public talk in member states of abandoning the Euro, which would effectively have meant the end of the Union.

The EU is a hard-won culmination of an old idea: to prevent future European wars and to develop economic power to compete with the West or East. To those who believe in a united continent, returning to a splintered, every-country-for-themselves Europe is unthinkable. To shore up the Union, its leaders preached a combination of forced austerity programs (the stick), and loans for EU states like Greece (the carrot), principally underwritten by Germany's banks.

It's worked so far -- but the veneer of recovery in the EU is even thinner than in America. Instead of a single integrated national economy, they have 28 separate ones. The German economy now appears to be losing power, and sudden expenditures to deal with a military or health crisis could break the delicate balance of shoring up the EU's weak economies.

As the United States retreated from Empire, a civil war broke out in Syria and has ground on for two years; America dithered for a year and a half over providing support for moderate Syrian rebels. The Arab Spring erupted; Libya destabilized, and Egypt went through two revolutions; the Israeli - Palestinian conflict exploded.

And this spring, a real wolf appeared at the door: ISIS -- violent, murderous, oppressive. America and Europe hesitated in dealing with it, and even when the Islamic fascists began seizing more territory in Syria, northern Iraq and Kurdistan, the U.S. continued to waver. Now, ISIS' gains have brought it to the doorstep of Baghdad. It's clear that bombing alone may degrade ISIS but not stop it -- however, America is not about to re-introduce troops into Iraq, or anywhere. 

Making it even more complex is the split between the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam. For generations, the west (America in particular) has supported the Sunni House Of Saud -- but since 1979 Iran has risen to dominate the Shiite world, and their intent is to eventually dominate the Islamic world -- possibly with the threat of developing nuclear weapons.

Against the background of all this Sturm und Drang, Ebola began appearing on the radar of western governments as more than just something happening, you know -- over there.

America's Ebola Outbreak Will Be Televised

 Na Gahana Happn: AMC's The Walking Dead

In the first week of September, the WHO and Doctors Without Borders described the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as spiraling out of control . What prompted their near-panic wasn't only what was being seen on the ground, but statistical models of the outbreak's progression created in the United States and Europe showing a steep rise in the number of total cases.

It's only a guess, but when the models were presented to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers For Disease Control, it got people's attention. Worst-case scenarios predicted total case numbers at over a million infected by January of 2015 -- and with a current 70% case fatality rate, this meant deaths in the hundreds of thousands -- at which point the chance that Ebola will spread elsewhere becomes a near-certainty.  

The further it spread, the harder each outbreak would become to control. There would be a strain on the healthcare system of any country where it appeared, possible disruption of transportation and supply networks, and a rising sense of panic -- difficult to control if there was a lack of public confidence in any government's ability to deal with the disease -- political instability, civil disorder. And It wasn't the Zombie Apocalypse, but close enough.

Some probably argued that if Ebola were to appear in America, containing the disease would be difficult -- but they were overruled by those who believed that kind of talk was alarmist. We need to prevent panic! Protocols to deal with infectious disease were in place, and we have the best healthcare system in the world! 

Still, the only way to reduce risk to America and Europe was to stop the disease where it was developing, in Africa, as the WHO had been pleading for. The U.S. government was reluctant -- taking the lead to lend assistance could mean paying most of the costs, involve us in the internal politics of African states, and many other governments were tired of the U.S. leading anything larger than a lawn sale. The EU also did not want to lead any effort -- putting logistical, medical and technical resources in the field costs money -- so they hesitated as well.

Then, on September 28, a man returned to the emergency room at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital. He had been seen there days before, and despite telling the ER nurse at that time he had just returned from west Africa, he had been sent home. Now he was even more ill; this time someone finally connected the dots, and everything changed. Ebola had made its appearance in America.

In Europe, a nurse in Spain (who had helped to treat a missionary with Ebola in a Spanish hospital, after his being med-evac'd from Africa) also presented with the disease. Then, a nurse in Dallas who had helped treat the initial American patient began running a fever and tested positive. a week after that, a second nurse on the man's treatment team also ran a fever, but was allowed by CDC regulations to travel on a commercial jet before returning to Dallas and testing positive for Ebola. Five days after returning from Africa, a physician working with Doctors Without Borders also presented with a fever and other symptoms.  

The initial appearance of a man with Ebola in Dallas triggered public health officials to make soothing noises about how efficient our healthcare system is, and about modern science in a technologically advanced country like America. Then, the two nurses were hospitalized and confidence in what national officials were saying publicly about the disease and our ability to control it took a stumble.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that a man who had contact with a person infected with Ebola lied about it on a questionnaire while traveling to Dallas from Liberia. It also shouldn't be a surprise that there were apparent issues with the protocols developed with the CDC and IID for use with an infectious disease, because they had never been tested in a live-fire exercise, so to speak. That's never happened before. 

As it turns out, caregivers apparently cannot have any exposed skin when working with a person seriously ill with Ebola. There may be a higher potential for nurses and physicians to come in contact with the virus during a complicated de-gowning procedure. It may not be a good idea to allow a nurse who helped treat such a patient and then develops a low-grade fever to use public transportation (say, a jet).  

And, we may have a model healthcare system, but the majority of hospitals are not equipped to deal with this disease -- isolation in negative-pressure environments; treatment; waste disposal, or security -- and so unprepared hospitals could become centers not of treatment, but large biological hot zones that would actually help spread the virus.

A reappearance of Ebola in America or Europe or Asia will continue to be possible until the numbers of new cases in Africa declines and the outbreak burns out. There is also a relatively unprecedented effort by European and American pharmaceutical companies to test and put an Ebola vaccine into wide-scale production.

As the west has finally put resources into Africa, the concerns (and they're very real ones) are that the outbreak has already progressed past a tipping point, and that resources are too little, arriving too late.  And, the probability that vaccines being developed will be effective, produced and distributed in enough quantities to slow the progress of the disease, is unknown.

At the moment, a world-wide pandemic of Ebola, disrupting communications and supply lines, destabilizing governments and causing mass panic, is not that likely. However, if by January, 2015, worst-case scenarios are realized and 1.6 million cases have been reported -- if people begin falling ill in the massive slums of Lagos, Mumbai, Lahore; and if more cases appear in Europe and America (particularly if they are not healthcare workers, or recently arrived from abroad), then the Zombie Apocalypse, without the zombies, will have arrived, and Buckle Up for the next few years.

Ebola's coming to Europe or America from an out-of-control epidemic in third-world countries which other governments paid little attention to until it threatened their security shouldn't really be a surprise, either -- but it does seem to have surprised a good number of people. Meanwhile, the outbreak in west Africa continues, where it is not a parody, or a joke, but a tragedy.

#Occupy Central

This is Occupy Hong Kong

 A Sea Of Umbrellas: The Police Claim 'Only A Hundred Thousand'

There is something happening on our planet.

The World Wildlife Federation released a report which stated that, since 1970, the numbers of all animal species on Earth have declined by over forty per cent. The numbers of Mountain Gorillas, Snow Leopards and Bengal Tigers, and African Elephants and Rhinos have been reduced by encroachment, climate change, and poaching. Today's children may grow up to see them all vanish.

The world is suffering through two major military conflicts (Syria / Iraq; Ukraine) which affect millions -- as refugees, and brutalized, subjected populations -- and a half-dozen smaller wars, all the result of religious intolerance, generations of hate, greed, and a high-level power game between a very few players.  And short of one side killing the other, there seems no solution.

Kurdish Refugees Escape Into Turkey (Reuters / Murad Sezer)

Across the world, in the name of ... well, somebody's god, anyway; people are subjugating, raping, stealing from, and murdering other human beings -- who, in fact, are dying in extreme pain and fear. No one seems to understand that this is wrong, and that nothing in any world could ever make it right.

Particularly in the United States, the gap between Those Who Rule and The Rest Of Us grows wider, to the point that we can't even see how well off the truly rich are. And they continue to work to create a future of inequality -- a new Gilded Age of unseen Owners, and a sea of Proles -- and to them, this is the natural order of things.

We endure the continuing weight of a rigged international financial structure, of the WTO, of Monsanto's GMO foods; we buy gasoline-powered automobiles that are unsafe, drugs that are too expensive. We take on $300,000 in debt for an education to land the perfect job that will allow us to buy overpriced suburban McTract homes full of formaldehyde fumes. We're told to want sex and power, to win the Lottery and leave the Sea Of Proles behind.

Our communications are monitored. Whichever major political party we choose, every side appears bought with the same coin. Entertainment conglomerates owned by corporations or Oligarchs tell us to sleep, always sleep, and suppress the voices which whisper in the backs of our heads that It isn't supposed to be this way. We are being lied to, and led, for someone else's benefit.

Obligatory Cute Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

Then something else happens. Something spontaneous.

People stand up -- whether in Tarhir Square, or in spitting distance of Wall Street, or in Hong Kong -- in an understanding that all oppression, lies, and exploitation is the same, no matter where it occurs and whom it effects.

The people stand in opposition. They stand with each other. And in those moments, they are examples of our best selves -- brave where we often retreat, resolute where we falter, and principled where we bend in compromise.

And if we can't physically join them, we can stand in admiration, and remember a lesson that a group of people on this continent understood a long time ago: That ideas have physical substance, weight and meaning -- and that there are ideas worth "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".

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Your Money's No Good Here, Mr. Putin

Sad Vlad Doubles Down




There's something about the tragedy playing out in Ukraine since the Fall of last year -- and in particular the attitude of Sad Vlad, The Putin (who always, to me, seems sad; he is Sad Vlad) which reminds me of Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.

A man finds a sense of belonging and place, self-justification and a measure of success, but only within a terrible illusion of evil and death -- one that ultimately consumes him: The image of Jack Torrance at the bar in the Gold Room at the Overlook Hotel, believing he's in the middle of a party and not realizing where he actually is -- or is not -- and what's coming. 
 

LLOYD:  Good evening, Mr. Putin.  (Leans forward) What'll it be?  

 PUTIN:  Hair of the bear what bit me, Lloyd!

 LLOYD:  Crimean Surprise; certainly.  How's everything going, Mr. Putin?

 

PUTIN:  Y'know, I don't understand it, Lloyd. I never laid a hand on their goddamned heads, those Ukrainian-whatevers. I love the little sons of bitches! There's not a goddamned thing I wouldn't do for 'em. And look how they treat me. 

LLOYD:  Ukrainians. You can't live with them, but you can't live without them. 

PUTIN:  Words of wisdom, Lloyd; words of wisdom.

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Friday News: Bush Fails To Save Brother

Man Falls Into Sinkhole
(As seen on CNN)

 (Cibble News Network) -- "The ground just swallowed him up."

A Florida man fell into an 'economic black hole' that opened suddenly beneath the bedroom of his suburban home, calling out to his brother for help as he fell, a fire department spokeswoman said Friday.

"I heard a loud crash, like the economy failing after almost a decade of deregulation and a lack of enforcement," the man's brother, Jeremy Jeb Bush, told CNN affiliate WFTS. "I heard my brother screaming and I ran back there and thought it was Osama bin Laden, or our mom's Beautiful Mind, or something. My old lady turned the light on and all I seen was this big hole, a real big hole, and all I saw was his mattress."

Bush frantically tried to rescue his brother Bush, standing in the hole and digging at the rubble with a "Chang, The 3,000-Year-Old Warrior" lunch box, until police arrived and pulled him out, saying the floor was still collapsing.

"I thought I heard him holler that he'd been lied to by his friend Dick, and that I should help him by runnin' for President in 2016," Bush tearfully told  reporters.

But rescuers can't go into the hole to check -- it's too dangerous. Authorities say they worry the hole is still spreading and the economy house could collapse at any time.

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Disney Buys LucasFilm

Not Really A Great Surprise, But...

Oy.

LOS ANGELES (New York Times) — The Walt Disney Company, in a move that gives it a commanding position in the world of fantasy movies, said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire Lucasfilm from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in stock and cash... Mr. Lucas, who is 68 years old, had already announced he would step down from day-to-day operation of the company.

Combined with the purchase of Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion ... and of Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion ... strengthens the legacy of Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, who has become known for his aggressive expansion of the company since taking charge in 2005.
 ...

Like the Marvel acquisition, the Lucasfilm purchase caught Hollywood and Wall Street by surprise... In a hastily convened conference call with investors ... Mr. Iger said Disney planned to revive the Star Wars franchise and release a seventh feature film in the series in 2015, with new films coming every two or three years thereafter.  Mr. Lucas will be a consultant on the film projects, Mr. Iger said.

After Disney bought Pixar in 2006 (and after the company had earlier said it would resist being absorbed), and the original features its founders had wanted to do were complete -- Toy Story (Toy Story 2 and 3 were afterthoughts); Finding Nemo; Monsters, Inc.; The Incredibles (Which needed a sequel but didn't get one); Ratatouille, and Wall-E -- Pixar's work fell off.

It was less edgy, less spontaneously creative. It was less about the ideas of four guys who remembered what it was like to be a child (something Disney forgot about decades ago) and built a company to capture that magic in Computer-Generated, animated images.

Their work was different than almost any previously-created animated features, whether in classic 2D cell animation or computer graphics. The shadow of Disney was omnipresent  -- they had been the gold standard of American commercial animation for generations. But Pixar's characters were being designed by animators who had grown up with a completely different perspective on art and design.

Rather than taking Disney's classic animations, or Warner Brothers' cartoons as their model and building on it, Pixar's influences were things like Ghost In The Shell, or 'Manga' and Marvel; online computer games; Sin City and 'Sandman' and The Watchmen; Miyazaki's Swept Away, "My Friend Totoro"; or music videos on MTV.  Their work was original -- and while animators can't help but acknowledge a debt to Disney's influence in creating an art form, what they were doing was so clearly not influenced by The Big Mouse.

Pixar had so far outclassed Disney's animation efforts of 1980 -2000 that, when the acquisition was announced, I wasn't surprised -- Da Mickey acted predictably and absorbed the competition (What was disappointing was that Pixar's founders had done it). But instead of allowing Pixar's original vision to energize Disney, they forced Pixar to modify it's character design, timing and art into Disney's corporatized look-and-feel.

LucasFilm and ILM started out the same way -- a bunch of film-school geeks who had cutting-edge ideas about advancing the technology of making films, of introducing computer-assisted filming and refining it until it became an industry standard. Lucas and company made a good deal of money from creating software packages for the film industry, and things like their THX sound system for theaters.

Just those two ideas showcased part of Lucas' business acumen. There was more money in changing the standard of how films were made, or presented to audiences, than just in making the films themselves.  Industrial Light and Magic's workshops and CG teams spun off an entire industry that eliminated the need for fully-dressed sets and ushered in the era of greenscreens.

Lucas and his collaborators came of age in the early-to-mid 1960's, and had a hit with "American Graffiti", but really took off with a classic, episodic sci-fi tale; a mildly campy Star Wars: Episode Four -- A New Hope.  And every two years or so, we lined up around the block to see The Empire Strikes Back and The Return Of The Jedi.  Kids bought the toys, the lunchboxes, and grew up to take their own kids to see Episode One.

But the "prequel" episodes weren't as fun as the originals; they seemed to take themselves too seriously. And Lucas' company, which began as a way cool thing in 1972, had ended up taking itself way too seriously.  It had become more about being a business, pushing a 'product' that tied in to so much more marketing: The Greedo and Clone War action figures, the Anakin Skywalker Burger King Glasses, than the real creative magic that was the impetus for getting into film making in the first place.

So, Disney.  It almost seems like a natural progression -- and, aber natürlich, George gets a really tidy sum. I'm not totally surprised, but won't be lining up to see Episode Seven.

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(An earlier version identified the first Star Wars film as "Episode Six", and the first Disney effort to revive the series as Episode Nine. Shame on me.)