As usual, use this thread to discuss matters unrelated to recent posts.
This is the map of the California power outs this weekend:
PG&E has released the first map for the power shutoff starting on Saturday. Searchable map. https://t.co/CrWcwfKYE5 pic.twitter.com/jJU0Za6w33
— YubaNet (@YubaNet) October 25, 2019
The “how to prepare” thread. (Made up of a long series of tweets from @Jzellis ). Too late for this weekend, but don’t think it can’t happen where you are.
bruce wilder
how does pg&e survive this? really, how do the political assumptions of neoliberalism survive this latest demonstration of its failure in this region of economic wealth and political dominance?
if your politics assumes that something can trigger political upheaval, this is the test case.
here we are in our “1848” – – reports of protest from many places. but, here, in Northern California — in the belly of the beast!
ven
Not being reported anywhere in our free press: Julian Assange being destroyed in plain view, and none of our brave journalists and newspapers raises a finger.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Newspapers instead organise petitions and marches against Brexit, and the Brits obligingly march in their millions. Does Homo sapiens have any saving grace?
nihil obstet
The persecution of Julian Assange is genuinely ghastly. So far, four governments have violated human rights and twisted the meaning of their own laws to torture an individual who disregarded their claims to privilege for themselves. As Stalin is reported to have said, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions a statistic.” I’ve thought the pass we give to the war criminals who run the governments was because the deaths were just statistics. But here one person is being treated the way we were told that the totalitarian Communists treat people. How do they get the police, the judges, the newspapers, the flunkies in the civil service to carry all this out?
I Hate Giving My Email
If there’s one YouTuber covering the injustice towards Julian Assange, it’s Gordon Dimmack. Here’s his channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV-ZJdwMlWHox0_TM1rC_kQ
Hugh
On a lighter note, Hillary Clinton is considering jumping into the Democratic race showing that she still has the biggest tin ear in politics. Compared to her, Bloomberg is just another deluded entitled billionaire.
Mike Barry
I’m sure she’s horrified, as we all are, that there’s a piece of filth in the white house, but just what is there about “OMIGOD! I lost the election to a piece of filth!” that she doesn’t understand?
She had to work mighty hard to do that, and unfortunately, her work ethic seems unimpaired. And there seems to be a real possibility that the Dem party would rather go extinct than run on progressive economic policy.
Tom
Rumors abounding that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was kill in a raid in Idlib. Not confirmed, but Trump will make an announcement at 9am today.
Given past reports of his death and where the hit is said to have occurred, I’m leaning on unlikely. The area the raid occurred is deep in an area hostile to ISIS and given the reports, it looks like the raid was against an Hurras al-Deen (al-Qaeda group) meeting and had TSK support as the attack helicopters clearly had TSK markings.
Well we’ll know more at 9am. Even if it was Baghdadi, it won’t be the first, second, third, or fourth time they lost their head leader.
ven
Assange has essentially provided a mechanism – Wikileaks – by which the elites can be held to account. Totally unlike our free, even supposedly left wing press, which has been co-opted by elites, and can therefore be controlled.
There is no mechanism for controlling Wikileaks, apart from destroying Assange, as an example to all of us; and demonstrating that ‘all of us’ actually don’t care. But we actually don’t care about the murders, torture and corruption that Wikileaks shone a light on; we are quite happy to be lied to, and live in the belief that this is the best of all possible worlds.
We are happily giving away whatever minimal freedoms and rights we had to become indentured feudal slaves with headphones permanently on our ears, whilst maintaining a pretence of living in a democracy. The elites have won; the majority of us are too self-absorbed, docile and brainwashed, to have an independent thought.
Ten Bears
Indeed ven, it’s A Brave New World. A populace of barely literate bare-footed rubes sprawled drunk and drooling Pavlovianly across a “couch” the back seat out of a nineteen sixty-nine Chevy Suburban on the Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and bimbo bottle-blonde crotch-shots on Fox Kool-Aid has no need of a jack-boot.
Jeff Wegerson
Lebanon.
Everything is different about Lebanon. From it’s weird constitution to Hezbollah.
So from this exposition of things, https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/10/article/lebanons-shuttered-banks-bracing-for-dollar-run/ what might be some of the paths out.
Help me understand. If …
… and …
… which actually strikes me as not at all unreasonably high, and …
…then, really it should be a fairly easy to avoid a Syria, Libya, etc. by say a 20% haircut by the rich, no?
I also love that “Capital controls” are limits on how many dollars (or dollar equivalents) may be withdrawn per period of time. Sounds very unfair to the rich to keep that enforceably in place for a long time. I mean many poor/middle class people may be able to survive quite a while on some limit that was barely high enough for them. Sounds almost reverse regressive against the rich.
Ok one final ask. Are there any MMTers (or MMT understanders) here who would care to expound on what an MMT approach to an economic macro solution might look like? I get that their pound being pegged to the dollar implies that they are not sovereign in their currency. But if so much dollar debt is really locally owned…?