there's somebody funding the independent media that's pushing hard for public banking. the arguments they provide are largely based on historical inaccuracies, probably not accidentally, and the whole thing is consequently just a big elaborate lie. i've tried to argue against these inaccuracies, and tried to argue against the bad economics...

at the end of the day, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter. it may be a little easier for the elites to control public banks than private ones. who owns the banks, how much money is printed and all these other things aren't actually valid questions if you're actually interested in changing anything, they're just distractions from a legitimate class analysis. will public ownership of banks make it harder to manipulate stock crashes? no, it would make it easier to co-ordinate.

so, i'm shifting to ignoring it. there isn't anything more substantial underlying the public banking thing than there is underlying the abolish the fed thing. they're variations on the same theme of channeling dissent to a harmless outlet.

it is enraging, though, to read through this stuff. it's logically incoherent at it's high points.

the problem isn't who owns the currency or how much gets printed, it's the idea of basing society on a concept of market exchange. do we have to run through every possible combination of possibilities before we get it and just stop placing arbitrary values on things in order to exchange them?

obviously, the universe isn't a holographic projection.

#sheer_idiocy

http://www.nature.com/news/water-seems-to-flow-freely-on-mars-1.14343
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strategies-for-aging-vary
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=massive-aquifers-under-the-sea-could-sate-thirst

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/12/extreme-diets-can-quickly-alter-gut-bacteria
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/134
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20131211-self-repairing-running-shoes-made-from-3d-printed-protocells.html
http://mitne.ws/1kCRs9S
https://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2013/12/13/what-do-we-really-know-about-social-resistance-to-vaccines/
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20467-noam-chomsky-interview
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/02/the_kerry_doctrine
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/12/09/leaked-pussy-riot-greenpeace-activists-and-rioters-in-russia-will-be-freed-under-amnesty/

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/09/asia-d09.html

the rantings of an out of touch old man. hyperbole aside, dude might want to consider if maybe the thrust of these actions are conscious, rather than the result of some kind of "illiteracy". silly liberals...
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20511-henry-giroux-the-spectacle-of-illiteracy-and-the-crisis-of-democracy

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/09/pers-d09.html
http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/montr%C3%A9al-police-kill-donald-m%C3%A9nard/20357
http://www8.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/11/indi-d11.html

right. because india is experiencing low population growth. ugh….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/court-in-india-criminalizes-homosexuality/2013/12/11/ea7274a6-6227-11e3-a7b4-4a75ebc432ab_story.html?hpid=z5

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/10/kerry_begins_iran_sales_job
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/02/the_design_and_fall_of_civilizations
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20456-in-europe-a-repudiation-of-austerity-policies

http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/12/10/qeqchi-leaders-attacked-with-machetes-on-eve-of-megadam-construction/

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/10/adiz-d10.html

i don't mind walking to the store at all. in fact, i'm excited about how this will decrease the amount of paper wasted in flyers.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/11/canada_post_to_announce_radical_changes_to_save_itself.html

if you consider {public, private, public-private} to be an oversimplification of the possible approaches, public-private is by far the worst - it combines the exploitation of corporatism with the monopolization of mercantilism. as critical as i am of free market approaches, at least they don't enforce themselves like corporatism does
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20546-when-outsourcing-public-services-to-private-companies-goes-wrong

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11123

because focusing too much hope on leadership, and the authoritarian structures that creates, has been identified as the primary cause of the tremendous failures of 20th century revolt?
http://fpif.org/twilight-leadership/

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20567-how-wall-street-power-brokers-are-designing-the-future-of-public-education-as-a-money-making-machine

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11160
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/11/the_secret_history_of_how_cuba
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11168
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/12/11/nelson_mandela_on_how_cuba_destroyed
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/11/how-the-anc-sold-out-south-africas-poor/

india is not interested in being a tool of american colonialism's desire to contain china.

this actually presents some serious problems for india, because america has made it clear that it demands that india be their central ally - more important than australia and even japan.

questioning whether he'll be banned from america is a little naive. will he be assassinated or overthrown?

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/10/will_india_s_next_leader_be_banned_in_america

mail delivery is a shitty job that has largely been rendered obsolete by technology. fighting for jobs against progress (which in a real leftist narrative is actually reactionary) is the kind of thing that makes the left seem like it's stuck in the past.

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/12/canadians-should-demand-reversal-canada-post-decision-cupw

no. this guy is living in a pre-libya reality.

the russians are not going to bend like this again any time in the near future. they understand that appeasement has reached it's limits. they understand that if they don't put up a fight they're going to eventually be negotiating with "terrorists" on the outskirts of moscow.

the reason the united states did not invade syria was because russia would have treated it like the uk treated germany invading poland.

the calculus of a single global superpower is over now. get your head around it.

put another way, the russians put down their own red line, and the americans wisely decided against crossing it.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/11/obama_adviser_extremism_possible_key_to_ending_syrian_civil_war

exactly. ultimately, i don't care if markets work (they don't). i just don't want to live that kind of lifestyle.

we can take it a step further. i don't want to be somebody's boss. i don't want to run a business. i don't want to stress out over bills and accounting and salaries. i don't want the responsibility of having somebody else's existence dependent on whether i "succeed" or "fail". i don't even want to think about the difference.

actual freedom is taking all that bullshit and burning it, not embracing it as a type of efficient order. fuck efficiency....

(link apparently lost)

yeah. i tried to point this out.

people are comparing baby trudeau to his father in 1967. but, if you were 30 in 1967 you're currently probably dead or close to it. we should be thinking about trudeau in 1984; people that are 50-60 now were 20-30 then. this is where the real nostalgic voting power exists.

of course, trudeau in 1984 was the guy that lost quebec to mulroney after pissing everybody off by plowing through an unpopular constitution a few years after putting the province under martial law. he's also the person that pissed off the west with the nap.

even with all that, mulroney won precisely because he swung the boomer vote in ontario.

there was a time, under dion, when i thought the liberal party was worth supporting as a lesser evil. i don't think that's the case any more.

but it's really painful to watch them repeatedly make just flat out stupid tactical decisions. not *just* stupid tactical decisions, either. *obviously* stupid tactical decisions.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/09/trudeau_hasnt_seized_laytons_quebec_legacy_hbert.html

*sigh*.

i don't think there was a thinking person in the world who believed for one moment that the accusations the americans leveled had the slightest tinge of legitimacy. if it were possible for credibility to be measured in a comparable way, american credibility would be *negative*. they have *anti-credibility*.

rather, when the americans make a claim, thinking people require that it be corroborated by a more trustworthy international actor, like russia. or china. in the absence of such a corroboration - or in the presence of contradictory claims - the null hypothesis of american hyper-pragmatism that treats truth as a casualty of ambition must be fallen back upon.

this is how we must operate. we must assume that american officials, even at the highest levels, are looking us in the eye and lying to us through their teeth. the burden of proof to demonstrate otherwise is entirely theirs. due to history, it is heightened, and also present in situations where the benefit of the doubt should be otherwise assumed - and ought to be outside of the extraneous circumstance of the americans having negative credibility.

so, this is the reality of things. the americans can say what they want, but nobody believes them anymore.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

there's something about this article that i like.

i could say something about the demographics. doesn't the author know the 00s are over, meaning the painful return of the 80s is consequently also over, and it's now the 90s again? the article could have easily been written 20 years ago about jaded gen xers and no doubt at various other points of history as well.

so, this kind of widespread apathy isn't something that is unique to people under 35.

it walks a fine line between suggesting apathy is dangerous and acknowledging that it's a rational reaction to empirical evidence. this is the thing i like about it. i've been reading articles like this in the news for a long time. they've taken every possible approach, from arguing that APATHY IS UNCOOL (which has worked, temporarily, in fact a few times) to condemning it as evil or even idiotic. this is the first time i've seen a level of agreement, even if it is done grudgingly.

you shouldn't tell us anything, michael. if you can't agree with us outright, you should at least recognize us as evidence that the ideals underlying western civilization are deeply flawed. we're either evidence that the system isn't working very well or are evidence that humans actually aren't what you assumed we are. either way, what we provide is a challenge for the system to adjust to, rather than an opponent to be debated with.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/12/08/suppose_they_threw_an_election_and_nobody_came.html

lol.

food & retail workers are no more revolutionary than factory workers. there's a large potential for reform in organizing them, but they are ultimately not opposed to the interests of capital but aligned with it. let's fast forward slightly to malatesta for an understanding of that.

i don't want to give off the wrong idea. i think factories and retail sectors should both be run on vaguely syndicalist principles.

but, a nihilistic worker revolt with a threat of fascist overtones? any kind of worker revolt at all? hilarious...

if you're worried about rising fascism at a grassroots level, i'd be more concerned about completely co-opted organizations like moveon - and totally controlled movements like the tea party.

(fascism is always pushed down by the "ineffectual liberals" to prevent socialism, and has never been this sort of uprising of the unwashed. once again, hedges is hiding behind a wall of socialist (and now anarchist) rhetoric while he upholds wildly inaccurate liberal propaganda.)

it's basic fear-mongering. so, who is he working for?

(link apparently lost)

....and obviously somebody like degrasse-tyson isn't going to deal with as much discrimination, and if people try it will be at their competitive disadvantage, sure. the free market argument makes some sense in this exceedingly restricted context.

in the context of flipping burgers, answering phones, running cash registers, hitting switches, doing patrols, etc....90+% of the jobs that actually exist...talent isn't any kind of factor in the hiring process, or in the ability to retain employment. human capital, here, is quite honestly just an input variable. so long as there are more unemployed people than there are jobs, employers will remain free to pick and choose based on whatever arbitrary nonsense they'd like.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-discrimination-tax

game theory is powerful, but like anything else it depends on it's assumptions.

the idea that stealing something from a store is wrong follows only from the enforcement of hierarchical property rights. there's nothing organic about this. so, while they're presenting the results in terms of connection to a community, the analyses is skewed by the underlying assumption of a system of "ordered capitalism" that is enforced through violence; conversely, it could be argued that the results provide empirical data for hierarchical class relations - the closer you are to the inner circle of the bosses and property owners, the more likely you are to be a class traitor (or an owner or boss).

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-game-theory-evolution-party.html