It seems that this cough/cold is resurging again, but mostly the cough. It certainly is making the rounds here. If it does not abate this week, it is off to the doctor's again by week's end. I hope everyone is having good weather for the weekend. While it was cold last night at about -5 C, it is currently 5 C and sunny with a bit of cloud. At least it is dry, but that is like to change tomorrow. We may even see our first snowfall tomorrow at these lower levels.
Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:58). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes
CBC — Normally, few people outside France would pay much attention, but thanks to the attacks in Paris, as well as Marine Le Pen, the upcoming elections have become a litmus test for the big questions seizing the world.
Le Pen is the leader of the National Front, the one-time fringe party created by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust-trivializing xenophobe who was such an embarrassment to the party that his daughter eventually gave him the boot.
The younger Le Pen has modernized the National Front and made it relevant in mainstream politics.
But it is still her father's party in one important sense: it is still the party of fear.
Click through for the rest of the article. The politics of fear certainly is raising its head in France right now and their next presidential elections are scheduled for March/April 2017, and regional elections in 2016. The politics of fear is rampant in the Republican Party which dominates the Congress. And the politics of fear was heavy in Harper's Conservative government in Canada, thankfully defeated by the Trudeau Liberals. Should we be more afraid of Daesh or our own fears? Personally, I think François Hollande has it right.
It is what Hollande meant when he told France that to stay "true to our values," the country must press ahead with its promise to refugees and not abandon them.
Alternet — The soi-disant Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place.
U.S. politicians rarely acknowledge this odious past — let alone acknowledge that such policies continue well into the present day. …
“Regime change” is not a phrase you hear discussed honestly much in Washington, yet it is a common practice in and defining feature of U.S. foreign policy for well over a century. For many decades, leaders from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, have pursued a bipartisan strategy of violently overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments that do not kowtow to U.S. orders.
Click through for the rest. With the exception of Guatemala, I studied these other situations either in school or through the media as a matter of interest. One that is not mentioned is Cuba. Although Cuban revolutionaries took control of Cuba, ousting Batista, the US put in place an embargo that only started to soften in 2014. This from Wikipedia :
Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[5] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts.[5][6] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people.[7][8][9] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.
As Bernie Sanders said "… these toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences."
Mother Jones — Kansas Republicans believe they have created a law that their own high court cannot review.
In the latest twist of the topsy-turvy constitutional showdown between the GOP-controlled state legislature and the state Supreme Court, the Kansas attorney general has asked the entire Kansas Supreme Court to recuse itself from hearing a key case.
The power struggle between Kansas Republicans and the state's highest court goes back to a years-long battle over education funding. The state Supreme Court has repeatedly ordered the legislature to spend more money on public education, a request that conflicts with Republicans' desire to cut taxes. In 2014, the legislature passed a bill stripping the Supreme Court of the administrative authority to appoint chief judges in Kansas' 31 judicial districts, a move Democrats saw as a power play by the legislature to intimidate the top court during the ongoing fight over school spending. Chief District Court Judge Larry Solomon challenged the constitutionality of the judicial administration law, arguing that it violates the state's separation of powers.
Click through for the rest. Republicans are making a mockery out of the separation of powers in Kansas, all to engineer their own Reich. But it could also set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the country. What's the expression . . . "by hook or by crook".
My Universe —
Ah!!! The weekend!!!
6 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 21/11/2015”
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Cross-posted in C2 at this link: http://www.care2.com/news/member/775377582/3929358
3:54 Purdy thing.
CBC and AlterNet.- You kow, if there is a resurgence of political parties of fear all over the world, as there seems to be, I suspect the US bears some responsibility for that, and not merely through "regime changes." So it's only right we should be watching, and watching carefully. As far as regime changes, I think Bernie is way too gracious when he says "unintended consequences." I think the people responsible for the regime changes knew what the consequences would be all too well and welcomed them. Unfortunately, they are the people to whom we have handed over way too much of our government. Not good.
MoJo – WTF is it with Kansas?!!!?1!? Actually, I wouldn't say "by hook or by crook," which had a respectable origin, not referring to a rwisted human. It is colorful, however, and the only replacement that comes quickly to mind is "By fair means or foul." But I imagine comeone here can think of something salty.
Universe – I guess weekends are nice. Being retired I don't see too much difference. Looks like you are enjoying it.
AlterNet: Great article, bookmarked also. Vote smart, vote Bernie!!
My Universe: I feel like this kitty right now.
Enjoy your evening, hope that you stay well. My allergies are kicking in, ugh. Take care, and Thanks, Lynn.
The politics of fear, understandably I guess, always seems to encourage the worst in too many politicians, and hurts the society, in the long run.
Brenie: Those unintended conseuences are part of what has made us so many enemes in the world. I have long maintained that this country has long acted like a personality disordered individual, going around and stabbing in the back the very people who have been where we were leading up to our own revolution. If there are multiverses, somewhere there is one in which we applauded, and supported, people who were battling oppression, and, its Earth is a much nicer place than this one.
Brownback is truning Kansas into a governmental black hole, from which no light, justice, certainly no educated electorate, can emerge.
That certainly is a nasty cough you're dealing with, Lynn. It may be my imagination, but I hear a lot of people complaining here in Holland, but in Australia too, about coughs that just won't abate or come back and sometimes turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. I've noticed it for 2-3 years now that colds seem to get more virulent and more resistant to treatment.
CBC: I've already mentioned France's Party of Fear headed by Marine le Pen, and the way it uses these terror attacks to gain even more votes, in an earlier comment. Now I wil leave you with:
Too often we suffer most sorely
and thereby feel most poorly
from dreaded aches and pains.
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
Alternet: That article brought back some memories of the many times I, a lefty but definitely not a communist, protested against America having toppled yet another democratically elected leftist government. Not much has changed, except there seem to be fewer demonstrations when it happens now and I don't go to every one of them anymore. The toppling has continued however, although the regimes may no longer be leftist or even democratically chosen. The consequences for the people in those countries still remain the same: dire.
Mother Jones: Kansas Republican politicians have gone bonkers, dangerously bonkers. This is nothing less than a coup; quoting the state's separation of powers in the Constitution, Kansas Republicans are now appointing Republican judges in their 31 districts, making sure jurisdictional and governmental powers are completely merged. If anything, all courts should be completely independent of politics.
Good one!