09.05.16
Posted in Bioterrorism, Decline and Fall, Ricin Kooks at 3:14 pm by George Smith
For the last decade and a half the American media has raised the poison found in castor seeds — ricin — to mythic proportion. And I’ve spent years doing my best to dispel the mythology.
Ricin has never been “easy to make.” And the mash of castor seeds is not a weapon of mass destruction. I’ve even been furnished expert consultations in criminal/terror cases involving it.
There is, however, a chemical that’s come to America’s white population. Carfentanil, a knock-out compound, with no real practical use other than tranquilizing elephants. And it is quite potent and already doing a great deal of harm.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Hatmaker became one of more than 200 people to overdose in the Cincinnati area in the past two weeks, leaving three people dead in what the officials here called an unprecedented spike. Similar increases in overdoses have rippled recently through Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, overwhelming ambulance crews and emergency rooms and stunning some antidrug advocates …
In Cincinnati, some medical and law enforcement officials said they believed the overdoses were largely caused by a synthetic drug called carfentanil, an animal tranquilizer used on livestock and elephants with no practical uses for humans. Fentanyl can be 50 times stronger than heroin, and carfentanil is as much as 100 times more potent than fentanyl. Experts said an amount smaller than a snowflake could kill a person.
The implicated carfentanil is believed to be made in Mexico or China and put into heroin shipments, probably precisely because of its power, the manufacturers believing, perhaps, that it would lead to faster addiction and complicate forensic analysis.
But this is a clear miscalculation because he drug is so powerful.
“[Police] officers and sheriff’s deputies are so concerned about the potency of carfentanil and other synthetic opioids that they carry overdose-reversing naloxone sprays for themselves, in case they accidentally inhale or touch the tiniest flake,” reads the newspaper.
The chemical activity of carfentanil and the less powerful but more common fentanil, employed to spike heroin formulations now coming into the US, has catalyzed an exploding health crisis in rural and ex-urban America.
For the numbers, which are astonishing, read the rest of the piece.
In 2002, Russian special forces used fentanil when storming a theater in Moscow where 800 people were taken hostage by Chechnyan separatists who’d rigged themselves and the building with explosives. The results were catastrophic. One hundred and seventy people were killed due to the use of it.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Shoeshine at 1:47 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times, over the weekend:
At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.???
“I stand between you and the apocalypse,??? a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire …
But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour …
It’s easy to declare Donald Trump an unacceptable choice as President. And it’s become far too easy to think very poorly of the Democratic Party’s selection. Many say there are still orders of magnitude difference in suitability for the job. I agree there’s a difference — but not to the power of 100 or even 10.
HRC is custom-made for leadership in the Culture of Lickspittle. It’s not a virture.
From the Times today:
“He’s a racist, and she is a liar, so really what’s the difference in choosing both or choosing neither???? another young black woman from Ohio said.
Feel free to add to your collection of tracks from Old White Coot.
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09.02.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Shoeshine, The Corporate Bund at 1:22 pm by George Smith
For the past couple of years I’ve posted on the corporate dictatotship’s great tradition — publishing anti-labor opinion oieces as good cheer on Labor Day. Despite inequality so high it menaces social cohesion nationwide and has brought on an election featuring the two most unpopular candidates in my lifetime, there’s never a shortage of white male douchebags from the right or some worthless corporate-cheerleading business institute pushing opinion pieces insisting the working man and labor has it too good on Labor Day. And the great thing about them is they’re all passed off as well-wishing or defenses of the rights of the commoner.
You could hang a few of America’s CEO’s from lampposts and set them on fire with napalm and white phosphorus, viewable by streaming on the web, and these guys would still be at it, railing about socialism, the necessity for more right-to-work legislation, the need for increased tax incentives/bribes for businesses (so they’ll allegedy hire more — which somehow never happens) and the holy sacraments of America’s free market and entrepreneurialism.
So roll this year’s selection…
Here’s Idaho’s governor insisting that firing local government workers during the Great Recession was virtuous.
Even in 2009-2010, when the private sector was taking it on the chin to the tune of an actual 1.1-percent decline in Idaho jobs, our State government reduced its employment by 5.3 percent. — the governor of Idaho, C. L. Butch Otter
Here, a simple and straightforward pack of lies from Paphlygonia on Shit Creek in Arkansas.
Labor Day signals need for labor reform … the labor movement is now turning its back on employees. — The Mountain Mail of Upper Arkansas
From someplace in New York pretty much like the middle of Pennsylvania.
I championed cutting taxes on small businesses and manufacturers so they can have the capital they need to expand and to create good jobs … I will continue fighting to create and keep good jobs in Central New York. — Madison Cunty Courier, New York
Can’t or won’t find anything nice to say about people? Pimp for mega-corporate beer owned by foreign interest.
The Budweiser Labor Day USA Survey touts itself as “a new national study that dares to ask the toughest questions about America’s most flag-waving, beer-drinking and charcoal-grilling end-of-summer holiday. — Watertown Public Opinion
With private sector membership in labor unions at its lowest in my lifetime, thats still too much. Competitive enterprise, my foot.
With Labor Day around the corner, a traditional holiday honoring American workers, it’s an apt time to take a hard look at the value of labor unions. — Newsday, opinion contributed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute
While workers here in Michigan can now refuse to pay dues, even while working under the terms of a negotiated contract, thanks to the signing of the Right to Work law in 2012, most feel intimidated and are afraid to exercise that right to resign from the union due to implied repercussions from union bosses and union loyalist coworkers. — Two page letter to the editor by a Right-to-Work anti-labor rep in Macomb County, Michigan
Then there’s the middle-aged white guy who imitates your grandfather at Sunday dinner get together to keep himself in good stead with the local chamber of commerce or whatever.
In fact, my father worked there during the 1950s and ’60s for a whopping $1.50 per hour (around $9 in today’s money), and that was some 30 cents higher than the minimum wage at the time … In my opinion, hard work is something to which a lot of modern Americans today seem to be allergic, for lack of a better description … I come from a long line of hard workers. There was no privilege in any branch of my family ... A corporate businessman we-ate-shoe-leather-and-we-liked-it type, G. L. Deer in the Point Pleasant Register of Ohio
And the cranky old white guy from way way out in flyover country who quotes from someone you’ve never heard of from 80 years ago because America is a socialist colony of quislings sucking the lifeblood of liberty and money-making.
Clark’s talk often referenced the roots of socialism that were planted by Roosevelt, the roots that have grown in size and today threaten to replace the Founder’s “Tree of Liberty,??? the tree the Founders planted in 1776 … When Americans think of treason, betraying one’s county, they often think of Benedict Arnold. Today, America has its Benedict Arnolds. They are in the unions, in management, and in government … — old man named Conkey in the Cherokee Tribune Ledger News of Georgia
Right wing business cheerleader think tank most people have never heard of, even in Michigan.
The state took a brave step forward by passing a right-to-work law in 2012. That reform did wonders for economic growth … More of this, please. The more we can root out many of the entrenched problems associated with compulsory unionism, the better. While much has been done in private sector unions, it’s important to move serious union reforms further in the public sector. — opinion in the Detroit News, contributed by employees of the right wing anti-labor Mackinac Center for Public Policy
This one is great because it’s an uncomplicated fuck you, I’ve got mine. Shut up, get a job, because life’s hard and then you die.
Let’s stop telling young people to find their passion and start telling them to find a job … The work you do in the world is not supposed to make a fulfilled individual; it’s supposed to make you an employed individual. — “Get a job!” type in the TCPalm of Stuart, Florida
I include the next one precisely because IT IS NOT like the others. Here’s one honest man.
Can we stop with the platitudes about celebrating the workers and face the reality of America?
For starters, let’s do something about the name of this three-day weekend. Instead of Labor Day, let’s call it Plutocrat Day or maybe Oligarch Day. — Bob Franken, The Sun Prairie Star, Wisconsin
And the very last, from the Wall Street Journal, deserving of very special notice. Because IT’S ME and 10 plus or minus a couple million more!
What do unworking men do with their free time? Sadly, not much that’s constructive. About a tenth are students trying to improve their circumstances. But the overwhelming majority are what the British call NEET: “neither employed nor in education or training.??? Time-use surveys suggest they are almost entirely idle—helping out around the house less than unemployed men; caring for others less than employed women; volunteering and engaging in religious activities less than working men and women or unemployed men. For the NEETs, “socializing, relaxing and leisure??? is a full-time occupation, accounting for 3,000 hours a year, much of this time in front of television or computer screens.
Clearly big changes in the U.S. economy, including the decline of manufacturing and the Big Slowdown since the start of the century, have played a role. But something else is at work, too …
Regardless of its cause, this new normal is inimical to America’s national interests … In short, the American male’s postwar flight from work is a grave social ill. — The Wall Strret Journal, contributed by the American Enterprise Institute, corporate policy and ideology of which, over the decades, have contributed to the condition described
I fully intend to devote the remainder of my life to living up to the reputation of being a grave social ill.
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09.01.16
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 2:48 pm by George Smith
Just in, digital copy of Chuck Eddy’s “Terminated for Reasons of Taste,” published by Duke University Press.
I am entertained by the story of Eddy in the Army in Germany in 1983, where as a 2LT he’s commended by his reviewing officer for having whipped his unit into fine shape. Just in time for Able Danger Able Archer, a NATO exercise the Soviet Union thought was going to be a first strike, mostly due to Ronald Reagan’s brainless yack about “the evil empire” and the deployment of the Pershing missile to Europe. So far, fine lunchtime reading.
I’ve know Chuck Eddy for quite some time. He was the first rock critic to review my “Arrogance” record for Creem magazine way back in the mid-Eighties. And much later, he was one of my editors when I free-lanced for the Village Voice from 2000-2006.
The title is taken from the reason given for his firing by the Village Voice when new ownership took over in 2006.
I’m enjoying it and will have more to say later. But, yes, I do review books.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, Shoeshine at 1:59 pm by George Smith
From the Guardian, an opinion page piece on HRC’s hard-to-ignore outreach to those who should be shunned:
he Clinton campaign has now spent months trying to convince relatively obscure former Republican officials to endorse her campaign while also adopting many Republican slogans and arguments in her quest for the presidency …
Clinton gave a speech in Ohio on Wednesday with yet another former Bush official, James Clad. The speech was billed as touting “American exceptionalism???, one of the more repellent nationalistic concepts that Republicans have used to shame progressives in the past. She spoke mostly about foreign policy, a subject in which Clinton – with her penchant for supporting foreign wars and beefed up US military presence everywhere – seemingly has more in common with mainstream Republicans than the Obama administration.
To paraphrase Julian Assange: Cholera or gonorrhea?
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 1:15 pm by George Smith
For the past six months the press and Democratic Party have been trying to fit Julian Assange as a Putin/Russian intelligence service sock puppet. Not buying it.
Assange has always been quixotic, sometimes erratic, but no one manipulates him. Animosity on his part toward the US government is understandable. It’s always been my impression he was and is inimically opposed to the American empire.
Assange wound up seemingly forever stuck in the Ecuador embassy in London when HRC was Sec’y of State after it was her department that was hashed by Chelsea Manning’s Wikileaks Cablegate release. By definition, Clinton’s position at the virtual apex of our empire has made her a natural target for Wikileks spills. Why this would be considered shocking or unusual is a mystery to me.
Paradoxically, at one time the NYT and others were all too happy to work with Julian Assange. In truth, his relationship with the domestic and western press has always been fraught.
A long long time ago and before Wikileaks, Assange was a hacker and he subscribed to my old electronic newsletter.
Suelette Dreyfus, an Australian journalist whose book, Underground, I reviewed for it featured Assange as one of that country’s notable hackers. On Assange and Wikileaks, Dreyfus had this to say to the New York Times this week:
“This is not an East-West fight …[though] it is being presented as such by people with an agenda.”
The Clinton campaign is behind a great part of the effort to paint Assange as a tool of Russia. Not really a surprise, considering how Wikileaks has fed into the perpetual aggravation of Hillary Clinton and her private server e-mails. However, thinking that Assange and Wikileaks might tilt the election with an “October surprise” of some kind is a bridge way too far.
In sort of related news from the left, the idea that journalist Michael Isikoff would know how hackers might/could sway the election in a swing state is just laughable.
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