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Links 5/27/13 « naked capitalism
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Monday, May 27, 2013

Links 5/27/13

Goshawk flies through tiny spaces in slo-mo (video) AmericaBlog

Motorcyclist dubbed ‘Thong Cape Scooter Man’ is NOT breaking the law rule police after school’s complaint DailyMail

Future Doctors Unaware of Their Obesity Bias Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

Perspective: Casting light on sleep deficiency Nature (Lambert)

The Gut-Wrenching Science Behind the World’s Hottest Peppers Smithsonian Magazine (furzy mouse)

Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food and Nutritional Weaklings in the Supermarket New York Times

2 Million March in 52 Countries Against Monsanto George Washington

Exclusive: Facebook censors pictures of children rallying against GMOs during global March Against Monsanto Natural News (furzy mouse)

Asian Stocks Drop for Fifth Day as Yen Strengthens, Oil Declines Bloomberg

Japan Power Use Signals More Active Factories: Chart of the Day Bloomberg

Brussels probes Apple’s iPhone tactics Financial Times

Huge volumes of Bankia shares change hands for the second day running El Pais (Lambert)

Greece’s Tangled Land Ownership Is a Hurdle in Recovery New York Times. Anything putting “recovery” and “Greece” in the same sentence needs to be taken with a fistful of salt. And then treating the lack of a land registry as a first-order problem?

Cyprus’ fate ‘a path of inevitability’: the IMF’s internal views on Cyprus bailout Cyprus Mail

14 tons of water mixed with tear gas used in May Day crackdown by Istanbul police Hurriyet Daily News (Lambert)

Israel Fear for Natural Gas Fields as Syria Set to Receive Russian Missiles OilPrice

Globe investigation: The Ford family’s history with drug dealing Globe & Mail (Lambert)

Disgrace of guantanamo bay Bangkok Post (furzy mouse)

Political intelligence firms set up investor meetings at White House Washington Post. Lambert: “Oddly, or not, the story fails to mention that Liz Fowler actually wrote the Senate bill that became ObamaCare, while on secondment from her position as a VP at WellPoint to Max Baucus’s office, as chief of staff.”

In North Carolina, unimpeded GOP drives state hard to the right Washington Post (LP)

Wal-Mart Plasters Stores With Green Dots to Stay Stocked Bloomberg (Lambert)

Facebook looking to relocate in NYC, sources say Crains

How wealth of Silicon Valley’s tech elite created a world apart Guardian (mookie)

My name is Mr Market, and I’m a QE-aholic Business Spectator

Economic reality finally cracks market fervor Reuters (Lambert)

The banking crisis as a giant carry trade gone wrong VoxEU

Debt Dynamics: Track Global Debt Levels Barry Ritholtz

Reasoning by Metaphor masaccio, Firedoglake (Carol B)

Book review: Barbara Garson’s ‘Down the Up Escalator’ Daily Kos (Carol B)

The harsh reality behind Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Guardian (scraping_by)

Sex doesn’t sell Economist (Lambert)

Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):

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Topics: Links

Email This Post Email This Post Posted by Yves Smith at 1:45 am

79 Comments » Links to this post

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79 Comments:

  • Elliot says:
    May 27, 2013 at 2:11 am

    re: cow on car: Cute. Gotta be P-shopped, but cute.

    Reply
    • F. Beard says:
      May 27, 2013 at 6:56 am

      Why do you think it was photoshopped? I find it entirely plausible that a cold cow would sit on a warm car hood.

      Reply
      • Stan Musical says:
        May 27, 2013 at 8:34 am

        The front wheel wells are dipped at all. Beamers are great cars, but they’re not equipped with industrial-strength++ shocks and springs.

        Reply
      • from Mexico says:
        May 27, 2013 at 9:51 am

        Look at the shadows.

        The sun is in the background, and yet the cow it lit from the front.

        Reply
      • Bill says:
        May 27, 2013 at 11:07 am

        Plus, no animal that bulky would negotiate getting up onto a slanted, cramped hard surface like that. She’d have to stand before sitting down — I can’t see her standing on that car hood.

        Reply
      • evodevo says:
        May 28, 2013 at 4:05 pm

        That’s a mature Holstein milk cow – neighborhood of half to three-quarters of a ton of moo there. Can’t see ANY suspension system standing up to that without sinking to the ground. That hood would be flat.
        Besides, how is she staying on there without sliding off? Suckers?

        Reply
    • optimader says:
      May 27, 2013 at 11:53 am

      Fun Pic, but yes Pshpd, per comments..lighting, car stance….no hoof prints in the snow, relative elevation: its a cow not a goat
      The physics of pshpd pics are usually the giveaway.

      Reply
    • Thor's Hammer says:
      May 27, 2013 at 8:34 pm

      Photoshopped by the same crack crew that brought us all those Osama bin Laden videos over the years. The ones where his nose grows broader, he develops the muscular shoulders of a weight lifter, and grows younger as the years pass. After dying of kidney failure in December of 2001.

      Reply
  • Chris Engel says:
    May 27, 2013 at 2:32 am

    Cows don’t belong on cars in the winter time.

    Reply
  • tongorad says:
    May 27, 2013 at 4:42 am

    Great photo. At first glance, it appeared to me to be a car with crumpled up front section.

    Reply
  • traveler says:
    May 27, 2013 at 5:50 am

    Tis the cow with the crumpled horn.

    Reply
  • dearieme says:
    May 27, 2013 at 6:12 am

    “And then treating the lack of a land registry as a first-order problem?”

    England didn’t have a Land Registry until the late 20th century.

    Reply
    • rjs says:
      May 27, 2013 at 6:58 am

      in ohio, land title doesnt matter if the frackers want it:

      State forces fracking on some owners | The Columbus Dispatch:
      A little-used state law that can force unwilling landowners to allow fracking on their property is growing more popular among drilling companies.
      Since August, drilling companies have filed 11 so-called “unitization” requests with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Each request sought access to Utica shale oil and gas buried beneath the unwilling property owners’ land.
      The new requests, three of which have been approved, involve 38 landowners, businesses and public agencies that did not sign mineral-rights leases with drilling companies.

      Reply
  • Skeptic says:
    May 27, 2013 at 7:01 am

    People go ballistic when they find out the 1% are defrauding them through the financial system. Yet, most of them go merrily to the Stupormarket and fill their carts with sparkling boxes and packages of Industrialized Matter containing little nutrition. They will even feed this stuff to their children.

    Since it is difficult to measure food nutrition, they are easy marks for the Food Fraudsters. Of course, those same mega Food Fraudsters are well connected to the Wall Street criminals.

    The solution for many people who do not want to support the 1% is to grow some of your own food, join a food coop, find a Community Supported Agriculture operation or buy your food through a non-conglomerate source. Beware of big corporations entering this business and driving out small competitors.

    A good way to find out more about this topic and how you can digestively strike back at the 1% is to attend a food/lifestyle conference. There is an excellent one, for example, in Western Massachusetts:
    http://nofasummerconference.org/
    I attended these conferences a number of times in the 1980s and it changed my life for the better. It has cost the 1% a lot of money!

    Reply
  • BattlecruiseR says:
    May 27, 2013 at 7:33 am

    Attach this: Hex, cowboys. Hex..

    Reply
  • Jim Haygood says:
    May 27, 2013 at 7:58 am

    Another post got sucked in the WordPress ether, so I’ll just put up the link. More on the Obamacare trainwreck:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/us/politics/polarized-congress-thwarts-changes-to-health-care-law.html?hp

    Reply
  • twonine says:
    May 27, 2013 at 8:18 am

    More on better lighting for improved circadian rhythms.

    http://humancentriclighting.com/?p=78

    Reply
  • diptherio says:
    May 27, 2013 at 8:36 am

    How appropriate: a bull having a rest atop (what else?) a BMDouble-Moo…[rimshot]

    Reply
  • David Lentini says:
    May 27, 2013 at 9:36 am

    Metaphors Are Like Reified Similies

    Great article on the use and abuse of metaphors in critical thinking. As I’ve often said (and written):

    simile → metaphor → delusion.

    Reply
  • Jim Haygood says:
    May 27, 2013 at 9:39 am

    From the Guardian:

    David Simon said that the war on drugs has “always proceeded along racial lines”, since the banning of opium.

    It is waged “not against dangerous substances but against the poor, the excess Americans,” he said, and with striking and subversive originality, posited the crisis in stark economic terms: “We do not need 10-12% of our population; they’ve been abandoned. They don’t have barbed wire around them, but they might as well.”

    As a result, “drugs are the only industry left in places such as Baltimore and East St Louis” ? an industry that employs “children, old people, people who’ve been shooting drugs for 20 years, it doesn’t matter. It’s the only factory that’s still open. The doors are open.”

    Simon said he had “no faith in our political leadership to ever address the problem. There is no incentive to walk away from law and order as a political currency.”

    He said change would come, if it does, from jurors simply “refusing to send husbands, sons and fathers from their communities to jail … That is how prohibition [of alcohol] ended. They couldn’t find 12 Americans who would send a 13th to jail for selling bathtub gin.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/25/the-wire-creator-us-drug-laws?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-4%20Pixies:Pixies:Position12

    Obama and Holder are the perfect stooges to front for the fedgov’s Drug War, which Nixon and Agnew explicitly designed for clearing the streets of unwanted minorities.

    But as for ‘jurors,’ Simon might as well be talking about buckboards and vacuum tubes. Justice Anthony Kennedy, noting that 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases are resolved by guilty pleas, observed that ‘Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.’

    Mass incarceration is freedom, comrades.

    Reply
  • diptherio says:
    May 27, 2013 at 10:04 am

    Boots on the Groud: Little Ax, OK clean-up ~OpOK Relief

    wow…

    Reply
  • Garrett Pace says:
    May 27, 2013 at 10:10 am

    Casting Light on Sleep Deficiency

    It was quite a shock to me to find that historically, people tend to sleep in stages, with one or two hours of activity in the middle of the night. This came to an end not just with electric light, but with the industrial revolution, where mine and factory foremen were jealous to claim that time for labors.

    The worker who collapses exhausted for eight (or seven or six) hours of sleep to rest for the next day’s work is a modern paradigm.

    http://www.amazon.com/At-Days-Close-Night-Times/dp/0393329011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369663632&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+sleep

    Reply
    • Garrett Pace says:
      May 27, 2013 at 10:13 am

      (And I should point out what an intrusion that was. Wakeful time in the middle of the night was precious, for it was one’s own – no boss, neighbors or obligations to worry about. It was time to think, read, talk and love. Losing it was a catastrophe for homo economicus.)

      Reply
    • diptherio says:
      May 27, 2013 at 11:04 am

      I heard about this a year or so ago. It seems to be a case of a practice being so common and taken for granted that few ever bothered to mention it. A few references here and there to a “second sleep” being the only written records, IIRC.

      Taking this type of shift sleeping into account, religious rituals that require prayers at midnight seem much more reasonable. Everybody was up for two hours around midnight anyway, so the monks just spent the time praying instead of making woopy.

      Reply
      • Jessica says:
        May 27, 2013 at 10:11 pm

        I like the idea of this quiet time between sleep sessions, but I am not fully convinced yet that it was all that common. If it had been, I would think its loss would have been mentioned more. The notion that it could been more or less universal, then disappeared so completely that those of us in later generations would not even know it existed, I find that hard to believe.
        But if it is true, it will make me wonder what else of ordinary life might have disappeared without mention.

        Reply
        • Garrett Pace says:
          May 27, 2013 at 11:35 pm

          I think it’s more sensible to think that it was common, but inconsistent and probably contingent on the seasons and other factors (babies, unusual fatigue, etc.). Long winter nights + no candles = nothing to do after nightfall, so people, worn out from physical labor, would go to bed when the days labors were done. Then they would wake, quiet and somewhat refreshed, in the middle of the night.

          During a harvest moon, on the other hand, they’d be tempted to work as late as they could and maybe skip the sleep.

          I still don’t think we should underestimate how different our way of life is, though. The clock and the electric light lead us to contort our lives and very selves in a most unnatural way. We are the freakish outliers in the sweep of history.

          Reply
  • David Mills says:
    May 27, 2013 at 10:12 am

    Bankia… AGAIN. This is going to continue until someone in government develops enough stones to run them into insolvency. Wipe out subs and shareholders, insure deposits to a cap and a debt equity swap for the secured. Ridiculous, who many times can Bankia go to the well. It was formed during a bailout of seven “cajas” (regional thrifts), bailed out once after that. Utterly absurd. That said, still going to Rioja this September – Pinxos are AWESOME.

    Reply
  • Paul Tioxon says:
    May 27, 2013 at 10:17 am

    Happy Memorial Day!

    TEARS OF RAGE / JOAN BAEZ

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioV9lhiwWPM

    Yves, good job on MSNBC, they are becoming more credible with yr appearance!

    Reply
  • JTFaraday says:
    May 27, 2013 at 10:51 am

    re: The harsh reality behind Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Guardian

    “Recently, you might have seen the spate of billboard adverts featuring a piglet wearing a tiara, signalling the UK launch of an American TV channel called TLC. This network was originally founded as The Learning Channel, but is now educational only in the way that a bacon double cheeseburger can be described as part of a healthy, balanced diet.”

    tsk.

    Then again, there is “What Not To Wear.”

    Reply
  • Ep3 says:
    May 27, 2013 at 11:03 am

    That was a great article yves, on honey boo boo. But I feel it only hinted at the reasons why it’s popular and the reason it’s on the air.
    I think a show like that feeds into the vanity of Americans. The person watching can feel that they are better than the persons on the show so they are more deserving of whatever than honey boo boo.
    As the article mentions too, it helps to justify cuts to welfare and other such poor ppl aid. A filmmaker like Michael moore documents a woman working two $8 an hour jobs riding the bus 45 minutes one way and she is ineligible for welfare and this is dusted under the rug. Yet we watch honey boo boo and say these ppl are lazy, take away everyone’s welfare cuz they are all like her and her family.
    I don’t know the producers of the TLC channel but my guess is they are fanatical Christians. The channel is responsible for making the freaks known as the dugger family as an example of a hard working family. But it’s never mentioned that they are a bunch of real estate moguls who use their real estate and financial influence in their religious community to profit nicely from their situation. They pretend that dad works and mom stays home pregnant behind the stove. But they have a staff of ppl who cook, clean, and take care of all the details.

    Reply
  • direction says:
    May 27, 2013 at 11:45 am

    The Economist’s bit on sex is missing a major player: the information age.

    Now that people are able to meet via craigslist personals and other hook up sites, there is simply less need to pay for sex. Also explains why specialty workers like doms and escorts still working at capacity. You’re welcome Economist; fix’d it for ya.

    Reply
  • optimader says:
    May 27, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    RE: scooterman, if this were deemed illegal, it would be a slippery slope precedent for a Walmart shopper dresscode

    Reply
  • optimader says:
    May 27, 2013 at 12:22 pm

    cool dinosaur, the Goshawk. They chose to edit out the baby bunny rabbit downrange?

    All the makings of a natural tree skier.

    Reply
  • lambert strether says:
    May 27, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    Larry Summers has an edge in the race to head the Federal Reserve.

    No doubt! If I could make $1.8 billion in cash vanish, I’d be in the running too!

    Reply
  • lambert strether says:
    May 27, 2013 at 1:13 pm

    Petitioning Diane Capehart, Chair of USVI Committee on Housing & Government Services: Conduct investigative hearings into USVI elections, system and officials.

    If USVI elections are free and fair, maybe we’ll see Warren Mosler in Congress….

    Reply
  • F. Beard says:
    May 27, 2013 at 1:41 pm

    re: Perspective: Casting light on sleep deficiency :

    I have my bedroom windows blacked out with aluminum foil and aluminum-backed tape from Squal-mart (it’s amazingly hard to block Alabama southern exposure even with!) plus I take a bunch of Benadryl and some melatonin. I usually sleep fine.

    PS. Two down pillows help too.

    Reply
    • lambert strether says:
      May 27, 2013 at 2:01 pm

      My room is too big for that. So I just wrap the tinfoil round my head! [rimshot. laughter]

      Reply
    • ambrit says:
      May 28, 2013 at 1:10 am

      Dear Beard;
      It’s tryptophan, valerian and hops for me. (Not all at once of course.)
      Whidbey Island? The Naval Hospital or the General?
      My interest is not merely casual. The DIY Boxxstore I ‘belong’ to has most of us on very mixed up work schedules. You can open on Monday: (6:00 AM to 3:00 PM.) Then mid shift for a few days: (9:00 AM to 5:00 PM or 8:00 Am to 4:00 PM.) Finally, you can close: (2:00 PM to 11:00 PM.) These hours get mixed around to suit the stores staffing needs. Any combination is possible. I’ve had to close one night, leave at 11:00 PM and turn around and return to open the next morning at 6:00 AM. Thankfully, the sub managers, (who are tasked with working out the shifts for the workers in their meta departments,) don’t do that too often. (Too many people have simply walked off the job after a few of those turnarounds in quick succession.) Complicating this is the “Corporate Schedule.” The floor worker gets two days off a week, but not the same two days two weeks in a row. The usual rotation is Wednesday and Thursday one week, then Monday and Tuesday. Next comes Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday, or sometimes Monday, and Friday finishing it up.
      Mix this h—ish brew up, and it’s a real wonder we’re not all addicted to sedatives.
      So, sleep well folks. However you have to get it done.

      Reply
  • wunsacon says:
    May 27, 2013 at 2:04 pm

    “LOL”!

    British have invaded nine out of ten countries – so look out Luxembourg

    (Britain has invaded all but 22 countries in the world in its long and colourful history, new research has found.)

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html

    Reply
  • Benedict@Large says:
    May 27, 2013 at 2:07 pm

    The lack of a land registry is a first-order problem if the selling off of state assets is your first-order solution. The buyers of those assets need absolute legal clarity as to what they have purchased for when the citizens revolt and attempt to claim these sales were illegal.

    Reply
    • vachon says:
      May 27, 2013 at 4:11 pm

      I absolutely agree. I worked as a land registry searcher for a private title insurance company for many years. The surprise encumbrances by state, federal, county and private entites, not to mention lack of legal access to a property, turn a three day closing agreement into a multi month/year, extremely expensive one.

      Regardless of the reason for the title search, the longer the surprises stay buried the (much) harder they are to fix.

      Reply
  • diane says:
    May 27, 2013 at 5:21 pm

    about that Valley?

    Yes, Silicon Valley, You Are as Exactly as Vain as They Say

    George Packer’s thesis in this week’s New Yorker is simple and sober: “After decades in which the country has become less and less equal, Silicon Valley is one of the most unequal places in America.” Yep. But it’s the hideous truth behind the gilded new information economy, and the sloppy apologias are already streaming out.

    It takes only a zap of criticism to irritate the egos of Big Tech. The investors, founders, and engineers all live in a vacuum of negativity, where unbridled optimism is the neutral state, and food delivery via iPhone is tantamount to Nobel physics. When these fantasies are disturbed, the hive reacts in one coordinated throb―like lifting a log off a mass of Stanford-educated worms. So when Packer accuses Silicon Valley of presiding over a massive, violent shift in values, wealth, and politics, it notices―and cheerily, it tries to disrupt right back.

    “Yes, the Valley can be vacuous ? but it’s more complicated than the New Yorker would have us believe” ― PandoDaily, which has to issue an investor disclosure within its first two paragraphs.

    closing in:

    … This is the entire basis of the growing silicon money gap, not its antidote. It’s these Google engineers and Facebook designers who are pricing out working class families and cruising in Wi-Fi-enabled buses past bread lines. There’s an income explosion in California, but it’s a laser-focused one, favoring, largely, the fair-skinned employees of lucrative haute tech firms.

    I would have replaced, favoring, largely, the fair-skinned employees of lucrative haute tech firms, with:

    favoring, largely, the fair-skinned All Alpha Male/FeeMale VC Capitalist Investors and CEOS/COOS, Etcetera, of lucrative haute tech firms.

    though.

    Reply
    • anon y'mouse says:
      May 27, 2013 at 6:20 pm

      this was true of N. Cal for the last 15 years or more, and people are just figuring it out now? it’s no place for “normal” people, and the prices for a craphole 1bedroom in an up-and-coming ghetto is over $1k per month. a place where you’re reminded monthly not to hang something up on the wall by so much as a pushpin or you’ll be surrendering your double-rent security “deposit”. a place where they tell you that plants on the balcony are unsightly signs of life.

      the not-so-funny attitude (“hey, we’re changing the WORLD with our cab apps”) has always been there, just was slightly more modest before. most of the earlier waves came from the same background as the people that the new crowd is peeing on, and perhaps they remembered what it was like. still didn’t stop them from offering 10x the median income for their house, though.

      all of that Wire guy’s comments about Baltimore are also true of much of the Bay Area’s reservations for the downtrodden (read: not smart enough to bootstrap their way into a life strapped to the desk eating stale pizza). Richmond and Oakland have been full of “excess Americans” for nigh on 20 years or more now, but since they are almost entirely minorities, the techheads just quickly learn how to bypass these zones on the freeway with barely a tsktsk.

      Reply
    • Klassy! says:
      May 27, 2013 at 8:41 pm

      Glad you commented on that. One of the most chilling articles I’ve read in ages.

      Reply
      • diane says:
        May 27, 2013 at 8:54 pm

        I’m really glad that you’re glad, dear. I could not resist commenting, as I live in the gut of the monster and keep seeing people fall through the cracks for no humane reason,

        And no one who has the power to, wants to change a thing, it is pretty nasty bleak, and it has been going on for decades (at least).

        Reply
    • JTFaraday says:
      May 27, 2013 at 9:21 pm

      re: Pando Daily

      Yes, shame on Packer for missing the opportunity to extol the silicon valley bonanza that is Obamacare because someone convinced him that the valley boyz are libertardian antigovernment venture capitalists and not the big government neoliberal rent seekers– and tech savvy Democrats– Stephen Johnson knows them to be.

      Reply
      • diane says:
        May 27, 2013 at 9:42 pm

        honestly, living in the midst of it, it’s pretty hard to determine who is the worst of the Sly Con Valley Bloodsuckers: Libertarians, or NeoLiberals, they both seem the same Rapacious Monsters at the end of the day, to anyone who can no longer can afford a roof over their head, despite making every effort to follow the rules, yet be humane at the same time.

        May both groups Rot in the Living ‘Hell’ they’ve imposed on so many, right along with with the ReThuglicans.

        Reply
    • bob says:
      May 27, 2013 at 11:24 pm

      Pando is rotten. It’s been interesting watching paul carr and sarah lacy go in different directions.

      She’s a perfect little moralizer. I think she’s trying for the ‘lean in’ corporate sponsored media buck. Tech apologist for hire, with ‘credentials’. Blantanly crooked, but is says so on the label….

      This was a bit of icing on the cake, in that oh so hip, not very ‘ironic’ SF tory way…

      https://twitter.com/sarahcuda/status/339159277992300544

      WITN: Sarah has raised more money, while Paul turns to panhandling http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/27/witn-sarah-has-raised-more-money-while-paul-turns-to-panhandling/ … via @pandodaily

      Reply
      • diane says:
        May 27, 2013 at 11:43 pm

        Thank you for that, Bob. Pando sure seemed rotten (and certainly bought)- if not, at the least, stunningly clueless to other humanity outside of its creepy little incubator – to me too.

        Reply
  • diane says:
    May 27, 2013 at 5:45 pm

    welp, I guess, so far today in the U$, we’re still free from some EMERGENCY ALERT … to further contravert a day sold to us as a sweet rememberance of those we mourn … as in how May Day, a day for those who labored to live, all of a sudden became the day the U$ supposedly murdered O[U$]Sama son of Laden, …. with absolutely no Rule of Law, let alone anything resembling the morality any self respecting human almost always follows when they are not pushed to the brink, which is, thou shalt not kill off our own species, let alone other species.

    Reply
    • diane says:
      May 27, 2013 at 6:26 pm

      In other words (In re: O$ama bin (son of) Laden (sp?), the U$ nurtured, then turned on/created a fake enemy, and then Fake murdered (may as well have) that enemy of their$, … on a day, May Day, known to be one where people proclaim a right to at least be able to survive for their labors, to let us all know that we shouldn’t trust one another, even though, we are the only ones we can trust.

      there are surely murderers and life suckers amongst us, they are a teeny tiny few … we can overcome them. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have never witnessed any one of my next door neighbors who was a blatant, sociopathic murderer.

      (well, okay some of them did seem to be assholes, but certainly not murderers.)

      Reply
    • diane says:
      May 27, 2013 at 6:46 pm

      two (near duplicates), in spam.

      Reply
    • ambrit says:
      May 28, 2013 at 12:39 am

      I can remember when Saddam Hussein was “Our Man in Baghdad.”
      Anyone here remember when Trujillo was “Our Man in Santo Domingo?” How about Mubarak, and before him, Sadat in Egypt? Ian Smith or Pieter Botha? Both thrown under the bus when their political negatives outweighed their positives. Now, Ngo Dinh Diem, there was a real “Our Man in Saigon.” Until he wasn’t. Then there’s Manuel Noriega, who kept Panama safe for the Spook Express. When he tried to go out on his own, why, he ended up a ‘guest of the state,’ in Florida. The list is very long and eventually, depressing.

      Reply
  • KFritz says:
    May 27, 2013 at 6:23 pm

    Re: Sex Workers

    The fortunes of sex workers can easily be cross-referenced with condom and contraceptive sales, activity at “social exchange” websites, numbers of abortions, and the birthrate to see if the sex workers’ market is proportionate to sexual activity, or the the workers’ market share has changed.

    Reply
    • diane says:
      May 27, 2013 at 7:53 pm

      thanks for that info, I’m sure that was the first thing on the minds of those so ground into the ground, they could no longer sell their worn down bodies, even if they had no issue with doing that.

      and what was that you said, I really couldn’t tell …. was it that those thinking about selling their bodies …. they had better glue themselves to the InterNet Market Figure$ … as if they have so many options at all in staying alive in this monster?

      Reply
  • Klassy! says:
    May 27, 2013 at 8:48 pm

    Ugh. Citibike. Really?
    http://gothamist.com/2013/05/27/citi_bike_art.php

    Reply
  • alex morfesis says:
    May 28, 2013 at 12:48 am

    ah yes greece and the mythical ownership records. sad to see the new york times get so much wrong, but what’s to be expected, it is the times…

    obviously someone placed the story that is gunning to get that mystery 1.5 billion dollars….wow…more like 15 million dollars would do the trick and it is nonsense to suggest the records are incomplete or can not be figured out…serious nonsense…the bigger problem is that greece has never dealt with the greek civil war, where you still have relatives fighting over ideology and are willing to die than let things be settled. Partition suits are hard to get a court order from and most greeks do not make wills, even today…some foolish medieval notion that talking about death will bring it on…

    when land documents are made there is a special apostile type stamp that is in the hands of only certain lawyers who have passed some tests and have shown over the years they can be trusted to take bribes, i mean…take responsibility to make sure that what they place their stamp on IS a valid and viable transaction…but no one is watching…

    and it seems that greece, like the US, has a hard time taking lawyers to task who cut corners or like in the US, have their staff sign phony documents like foreclosure affidavits…ah detail details…

    and it is actually 10 years of use not 20(and use can be convincing some innocent person to give you a 10 year lease…and then poof, you file an adverse possesion suit as a tenant) and all you need is three drunken clowns who are willing to sign phony affidavits that they noticed you regularly trespassing on the property to be stolen, on an almost daily basis, a miracle really when you consider most of the phony affiants on the island of my grandfather hardly ever get off the seat in the cafenio, spending most of their time watching soccer games or greek soap operas, but they have magic eyes that can see around mountains and behind trees…

    yup, know the problem first hand…have a few million dollars in property tied up among ten branches of a family where 80+ year old brothers and sisters have promissed to be discooperative and are waiting for the other one to die first…would make for some interesting cable tv fodder…

    my big fat greek relatives gone wild…

    have a pair who regularly disrupt each others siesta in the summer on a home that was literally split in two, with one banging the locked door that seperates the house and the other one blasting a radio at three in the morning…

    discooperation…

    but the real problem is the usual problem in greece, which is basically a third world country, a mix of honduras, zimbabwe and lebanon, where there are 400 families that run the show and they don’t want competition, so by keeping the land records a mess, small families can not sell off their properties and basically the octopus rascals are grandfathered in. Driving around greece you will find many half built properties, most of them slowed down due to some mystery person showing up in court claiming they are some long lost relative who did not consent to the construction…

    the problem could be fixed in six months for 15 million dollars, the US has the complete german and italian archives from world war 2 with overhead photos, put there by Gen Patton and his thrid army. the problem of looking back to see what land was like in those old deeds is quite easy…

    but…there is just no reason for the 400 families to allow their serfs to have any economic freedom, they have their material assets safely outside the reach of lady merkel, or queen legrand….

    while athens burned…

    Reply
  • Craig says:
    May 28, 2013 at 1:35 am

    What ever happened to the union activists plans to go into MalWart and load up shopping carts and then just walk out leaving them at the checkout counter after the items had begun to be scanned?

    “Oops…forgot my wallet…I’ll be right back~”

    Reply
  • jrs says:
    May 28, 2013 at 8:48 pm

    Re: the Kos discussion on ‘Up the Down Elevator’, debt Jubilee is advocated as a solution, so a guy remarks on how this will hurt the middle class with bonds. Fair enough (although of course it may be in such middle classes fully understood class interest to have debt jubilee). And that could be pointed out and it would be a decent point, but it’s not.

    What’s funny is how he is just attacked instead for having his middle class stake in the system, might as well be a 1%er since the situation for so many is so bad that full fledged expropriation of anyone with anything is popular (but what any non-stupid politically aware middle class personal realizes is they aren’t a 1%er, of course. There’s just no comparison between them and the true owner class). So having the kind of minimal middle class stake in the system that used to be MAINSTREAM, used to be being non-poor in America, is now so hard to come by (due to decades of impoverishment) that you might as well be aligned with the 1%. Something tells me this is not going to end well ….

    Reply

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