December 17, 2012

Higher Per-Capita Income than Iceland, UK, France, Japan, Italy, the whole EU...

Here's a list of countries, ranked by order of GDP income, divided up by the number of citizens.

Equatorial Guinea is number 20 on the list, "Per Capita Income"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita



So this news story caught my attention today.


[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left: 1em; border: 2px solid #6600cc; border-radius: 0.4615em; box-shadow: 6px 6px 6px #999999;"]The people of Equatorial Guinea ought to be among the world's wealthiest - but somehow the country's income from oil and timber doesn't reach them. Eight years after a failed coup, putting cash in people's pockets is not the president's priority.

Deep in the rainforest, a giant dome of steel and glass is the centrepiece of one of the most grandiose and expensive construction projects in all of Africa. The library of the new International University of Central Africa has the look of a spaceship docked in a jungle clearing...

...Earth movers, cranes and international construction crews from as far afield as Brazil, Poland and North Korea are turning the dreams of President Teodoro Obiang - Equatorial Guinea's self-styled Guarantor of Peace and Propeller of Development - into logic-defying reality.

The university is but one small part of the president's ambition to build Africa's city of the future. Oyala will be the country's new capital, a multi-billion-dollar plaything for Africa's longest-serving dictator....

Still run by a member of the same family elected to power in 1968, when Equatorial Guinea was given independence from Spain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea

The New Boss is admittedly an improvement on the Old Boss:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left: 1em; border: 2px solid #6600cc; border-radius: 0.4615em; box-shadow: 6px 6px 6px #999999;"]From the wiki page: During Macías Nguema's regime, the country had neither a development plan nor an accounting system for government funds. After killing the governor of the Central Bank, he carried everything that remained in the national treasury to his house in a rural village. During Christmas of 1975 he ordered about 150 of his opponents killed. Soldiers dressed up in Santa Claus costumes executed them by shooting at the football stadium in Malabo, while amplifiers were playing Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days".

Also:

http://theburningsplint.blogspot.com/2010/01/francisco-macias-nguema-mad-man-from.html

But this is still life in Equatorial Guinea, today:



Most of the population lives on little more than $1 a day. Average life expectancy barely reaches 55.

Since they were granted independence, you can add Equatorial Guinea to the list of African countries -- like Congo -- that are so rich in natural resources. But trail the rest of the world in just about everything else.

.........By the way -- a question -- the other day there was a great post in "Breaking News" that got shut down, with the moderator's notation that it belonged in the "Latin America" group.

There is no "Africa" group in the "International" forum so there seemed no better place to post this than the World History Group, a sub-topic of "Arts & Humanities."

Should there be a "Colonialism" group, or a "World-Wide 1% Thieves" group, or a "Global Occupy Movement" -- or some other forum for this sort of information, or discussion of issues like this?

December 9, 2012

There's such a high correlation between pulse rate/blood pressure...

...and the ability to draw breath. And those test subjects that had that ability were demonstrably far superior
in their responses to the test than those that did not.

Isn't that a standard element of any I.Q. testing methodology? (Some of the "Fox Viewers" being tested, it would seem, had previously been scared to death. But apparently, they were still included in the test group.)

But, like WOW ....Cool text box.

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left: 1em; border: 2px solid #6600cc; border-radius: 0.4615em; box-shadow: 6px 6px 6px #999999;"]Just playing around to see if I can copy the formatting. So typing and pasting.....a favorite quote:

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.” William Hazlitt

Thanks, didn't know it was possible to get that fancy on D.U.!

December 2, 2012

But more literally....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley_congressional_page_incident

From the wiki page:

December 2, 2012

Deadpan.

No smilies or colon-right parentheses.

I like that.

...Sums it up for me.

William Hazlitt
English essayist (1778 - 1830)

December 1, 2012

But ...that would make him... an "aristocrat?"

CAUTION: Incredibly vile and sick, beyond raunchy.... No, I can't even post the youtube link. But you can google Gilbert Gottfried + Aristocrats joke.

From John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:

From:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-wilmot

November 26, 2012

Hey kids, it's Mutual Assured Disinformation all over again.

Or the 47th remake of the 60's classic pastime, "Culture Wars."

So the rapidly aging demographic of Journal-Sentinel subscribers and advertisers can knock over a straw man. So the hands of the clock will start turning backwards and restore us to the 1950's.

The sports section of the Journal-Sentinel can't waste precious ink on full-size NBA box scores any more. They got rid of Stuart Carlson and Doonesbury in the Sunday Funnies a long time ago. And don't ask how long it's been since any really important editorial position they've taken has made much sense. But they're only too happy to take a big, full-color cheap shot at a perceived Culture War stereotyped nemesis.

A Big Lebowski look-alike.

The bigger the photo the better. (Apologies to Dude, whoever he is or whenever the pic was taken, under what circumstances.)

...It's like a full-color reflection of what the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board has become:



The photograph (above, from the article cited by Capper) let's us know the J-S Editorial Board wants all of us, "all you hippies out there, to lose the tie-dye t-shirts. Start wearing crisp and starchy white dress shirts. With ties. And cut your hair and stop wasting time on things we really don't understand."

So how do we Progressives respond? With the nuclear option, getting a little childish ourselves, in the process?????

Audio clip --------> (Hilarious, honest) ----------------------> http://soundcloud.com/mike-in-raleigh/skeeter-stock

Should we make fun of kids before they have a chance to unlearn what they can't help picking up?



Maybe with simplistic responses and stereotypes of our own?





NAAAAH.


Here's the bottom line --------> ......the Pharisees, the Holier-than-Thou's, all the American Exceptionalists and Dominionists don't really have anything going for them, except the delusion that Amerikkka/some-deity-of-their-own-construction is on their side. But that's how Bigots always justify their sanctimony. Did you know the word 'bigot,'according to some theories, is an archaic derivation from, "By God?" Since that's how hypocrites and religiosity-mongers always try to use religion, as a club to beat other people with. Or it's such a characteristic, common usage that it becomes defining. During World War I, similarly, Americans serving in France were said to be known as les sommobiches. Centuries earlier, other French referred to other English-speakers as Les Goddames.

Do your best to be accepting of everyone.

.....Or be hoisted on the petard of your own worst self.

In the meantime, thanks for the PayPal info. A small donation is on the way. (Why does PayPal want to know if this was a payment for a good or a service, or a gift or payment owed, or even an "other?" I checked 'gift' but that's not really the right response.)



Edit to add afterthought:

In Britain, in the aftermath of the Murdoch press scandals, a writer in The Observer suggests:

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/maybe_british_newspapers_are_so_awful_they_need_to_be_regulated_20121125/?ln

I can't help but point out that posting fulminating pro-Walker and pro-Teahadist replies in the comments section of the Journal-Sentinel -- while they were on the tax-payer's clock -- is what's gotten some of Der Wanker's staffers into court. (Can't remember if it was Wink or Ms. Beef -- "Rindfleisch," in the original German.) Makes you think those folks don't trust readers not to think for themselves, or for the printing mills they buy to stay bought.

To mount an effective response, you might not need too many laws or too much free-speech regulation. It might be enough to provide an entrepreneurial opportunity. If someone were allowed to open a mirror web site. A Bizzaro-World or Opposite-Day kind of un-J-S news site that would be able to post corrections and "equal time-in-all-fairness" type replies to the corporate b.s. that regularly appears in that paper. Without fear of libel or other reprisal or legal action from the Money Party.

November 25, 2012

I look at it this way...

...the Pharisees, the Holier-than-Thou's, all the American Exceptionalists and Dominionists -- in short, the Bigots (parenthetical side note here, did you know the word 'bigot' is an archaic derivation from, "By God?" Since that's how hypocrites and religiosity-mongers always try to use religion, as a club, to beat other people with) -- they're the ones who've given 'belief' -- of any stripe -- a bad name.

It just isn't worth it to get all bent out of shape about it.

Do your best to be accepting of everyone. The crankiest, nastiest, angriest people are the ones who are maybe as hurt and confused and hurt (but denying that they feel any pain at all) as anyone.

...Anyway, WTF am I doing up this late, anyway? Have a good one.

November 22, 2012

Not too long ago, when neo-nazis showed up in public,,,

...one of their media spokespersons was quoted as saying that that particular suburb (there were a lot of
Germans in southeastern Wisconsin, I think the name was selected before the second world war) was a
very comfortable place for her family to live. There aren't that many who actually belong to that splinter
group there, but way too many of the locals are in complete sympathy with the frame of mind:

http://expressmilwaukee.com/article-15967-nazis-set-to-converge-on-west-allis.html

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/129187398.html

It's probably no coincidence that the district is represented in the state legislature by one of the hardest-line, pro-Walker Republicans.

Not all that many of her constituents wear swastika arm bands in public, but too few of them ever seem to challenge or question ideas or attitudes they inherited from the time before humanity started taking steps forward, to erase that kind of bigotry.

Which -- to tell the truth -- isn't exclusively German in origin. Ever since this country was founded, we've always had problems accepting people who believe in equality. The trick that's made it easy for bigots to prosper has been the same -- label or define or paint those who aren't hateful as being aggressive or hostile as war-liike:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pequot-massacres-begin

November 20, 2012

How do those bozo's afford it? What tree grows all that free money?

Recent CC news reports:

June, 2012

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/06/13/struggling-clear-channel-doubles-becks-pay-with/151456

Feb. 29, 2012

http://www.thedeal.com/content/private-equity/clear-channel-moves-to-address-debt-load.php



After the attack on Sandra Fluke blew up in their fat faces, advertisers were leaving right-wing hate radio in droves.

It just makes you wonder. Maybe Rmoney was right. Corporations are people. People who like to spend money on "free speech." Somewhere, on some accountant's ledger, all these debts are magically transformed in to tax write-offs. That help offset profit gains that might otherwise have to be off-shored.

November 20, 2012

It's so hard to predict, 'what's next?' with those folks.

Painting with a very broad brush (from the end of a spectacularly long handle, since he's so high up on that mountain top), Mr. Hedges sez:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101648010

But even before any of that happens, from the Infotainment + Fabrication + P.R. + Koch Brothers Construction Co. fake news front (see, "Cain, Herman" and "Bachman, Michell and Marcus" from the most recent Leading Presidential Contenders list), I think you're right. They're going to need a fake-Populist "one of us" type that has some other talent besides yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off the lawn, and stop moochin' from the Federal Treasury.

I would have thought they'd go for a distinguished (but warm and personable) military type, but look how that's gone:

http://soundcloud.com/mike-in-raleigh/mission-incomprehensible

Hit the orange button at left to play the audio track. Very nice summary/recap of the most recent monkey business.