December 23 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: It's Winter And The Western Work Ethic Aside I'm Going To Cook Good Food & Nap For The Week

"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 23 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: It's Winter... And The Western Work Ethic Aside, I'm Going To Cook Good Food And Nap For The Next Week [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128kbps MP3 8:47 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥

In The News:
Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio files.

The Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome have been attacked with a series of small bombings and no one knows if it's anti-Christian Muslims or regional Anarchists with socio-economic axes to grind.

China has called on North Korea not to be provoked by the South's sabre rattling and HUGE, accelerated-pace war games even as the US Neo-Liberal media focus solely on the North's "typical bellicose rhetoric":

"We'll be sure to deal a punishing blow if the North tries to repeat the kind of situation like the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong," Brigadier General Ju Eun-shik said in a statement.

Top news (Foreign Policy Magazine): North Korea returned to its typical bellicose rhetoric today following massive military drills by the South.

"To counter the enemy's intentional drive to push the situation to the brink of war, our revolutionary forces are making preparations to begin a sacred war at any moment necessary based on nuclear deterrent,"

said Minister of Armed Forces Kim Yong-chun. _{[Foreign Policy Magazine]}

You'll note that the quote at the top is from a Brigadier General of the SOUTH KOREAN ARMY... There's "bellicose rhetoric" to go around... yet everyone's focusing on the North's defensive stand even as the US shows no interest in restarting the six party talks.

Congress is in adjournment and the nation IS safe, until the beginning of next year when the Republicans take control of congress. As a last gesture, congress DID pass the 9/11 first responder health bill. Obstructionist Senator Coburn finally backed down after he was 'confronted' by a hundred or so sick and dying first responders in his office who may have suggested that he might be deceased before them.

President Obama has gone on his one-week-delayed vacation in Hawaii.

In OTHER News:

The US tightens the noose on Iran's finances

The US Treasury Department announced new measures on Tuesday aimed at choking finances for Iran's military and for a shipping line that Treasury says engages in illegal activity.

Treasury said it was targeting financial networks that support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its national carrier, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL).

"Both the IRGC and IRISL are major institutional participants in Iran's illegal conduct and in its attempts to evade sanctions," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence _{[Ynet, Israel News]}

...which DOES have a negative anti-American effect... in our Imperial war on the people of Afghanistan:

Iran Stops Fuel Delivery, Afghanistan Says, and Prices Are Rising

By MICHAEL KAMBER and TAIMOOR SHAH
December 22, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — Government officials expressed alarm on Wednesday about what they described as Iran’s unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan, asserting that at least 1,400 loaded tankers were parked on Iran’s side of three border crossings.

Abdul Karim Barahwe, the governor of Nimroz Province in western Afghanistan, said the Iranian authorities had started halting tankers bound for Afghanistan about 10 days ago. The effect is driving up fuel prices just as winter is setting in.

“We really don’t know the exact cause of the ban; Iran doesn’t officially say the cause of the ban,” he said. _{[The NY Times]}

And from Joe Bageant, some last words for the year on "...a pretty nasty case of existential unease":

AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?
(Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga)

Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico

If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as:

How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked?

Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.

One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing.

Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?

But a more reasonable explanation is that

(A) we don't even know we are doing it, and

(B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.

As William Edwards Deming (wikipedia entry // Razer) famously demonstrated, no system can understand itself, and why it does what it does, including the American social system.



Not knowing shit about why your society does what it makes for a pretty nasty case of existential unease. So we create institutions whose function is to pretend to know, which makes everyone feel better... _{[In Full]}

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