It was a busy day yesterday with physio, teaching and then a shopping run with Lucia. I managed 40 minutes of bicycling and no pain. The pain and swelling came later after walking around the grocery store with Lucia. Today is a haircut which is sorely needed . . . my hair is sticking straight out so far it is signaling a left turn.
Short Takes
Huffington Post — The growing risk of worldwide water shortages is worse than scientists previously thought, according to a new study.
More than 70 percent, which is 4 billion people, of the world's population lives without sufficient access to fresh water for at least one month of the year, according to a new paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
With such low water supplies, why are we allowing fracking which uses inordinant amounts of fresh water, mixes it with toxic chemicals, and then shoots it into the ground where it can't be used again? Desalination of sea water works so why aren't we doing more there?
Alternet — The second week of February 2016 was a banner week for racism in Israel, with shockingly racist rhetoric from Prime Minister Netanyahu, genocidal references from his backbenchers and fulsome attacks on Palestinian leaders from his entire government. These attacks appear not only to lack legitimate basis, they reveal the government's own hypocritical alliances with convicted terrorists.
5.The Genocide convention.
At the end of Arad’s report, he notes the absurd hypocrisy in the Israeli government accusing Palestinian MKs of sympathizing with terrorists. Arad recalls a shocking October 2014 conference he attended in which Deputy Minister Eli Ben Dahan and soon-to-be-Minister Miri Regev shared a stage with Temple Mount Institute head Rabbi Yisrael Ariel.
Ben Dahan and Regev are known as some of the most racist representatives of the Israeli government. Dahan has said Palestinians “are beasts, they are not human,” while Regev called African asylum seekers “a cancer in the body” of Israel.
But the man they shared a stage with, Rabbi Meir Kahane’s former deputy Yisrael Ariel, embodies another level of fanaticism altogether.
In September 2015, Ariel called upon Jews to march on the rest of the Middle East and to exterminate all men who refuse to abandon Christianity and Islam. To this day, Ariel draws a salary from the Israeli government, with Bennett’s Education Ministry paying his organization, the Temple Institute, to lectureIsraeli high school students, religious and secular.
This is the fifth of five incidences of Israeli racist rhetoric this past week. Click through for the other five. Donald Trump, eat your heart out. Israel is building a wall, not just bloviating about it. Why are ultra conservatives so damned afraid?
Mother Jones — A group of families in the United States whose relatives were killed by Mexican drug cartels filed a lawsuit against the large financial institution HSBC this week, alleging that the bank's admitted laundering of roughly $881 million for the Sinaloa, Juárez, and Los Zetas cartels played a key role in the deaths of their loved ones.
"Money laundering is the lifeblood of the Mexican drug cartels, enabling them to construct a façade of legitimacy through which they establish, continue, and grow their global enterprises," the families' lawyers wrote in the complaint filed in federal court, alleging that cartels use that money to buy the weapons, vehicles, and the public officials needed to operate. "Thus, by facilitating the laundering of billions of dollars of drug cartel proceeds through its banks, HSBC materially supported the terrorist acts of the cartels, including the terrorist acts committed against the [families]."
Whenever I see "HSBC" in the news, I know it is bad news. I take an interest in it because 1) I worked for HSBC Canada for almost 10 years; 2) I receive my pension from HSBC; and 3) it has a history of questionable acts, not the least of which was aiding clients to evade taxes. They have also had issues with securities trades, not unlike those of JP Morgan Chase that landed Jamie Dimon in hot water. HSBC has had the dubious misfortune of getting caught. It will be interesting to see how HSBC deals with this lawsuit.
My Universe —
Eau de butt!
7 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 16/02/2016”
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water issue….very sad and very dangerous……wars of the future will be fought over water as it becomes rarer and more in need
HP: Read about this morning, in my inbox, indeed, scary and frightening!!
MJ: Good for them. I hope that they get justice for their loved ones, and win the case. Though, it'll probably take years, if they do. Sad.
Cartoon: I could see my elderly dog enjoying a little of this from time to time. LOL.
Have a great day, and Thanks, Lynn.
Argentina did file criminal charges related to tax evasion against a subsidiary.
The U.S. settlement agreement contained a deferred prosecution clause requiring that they stay out of trouble for 5 yrs. or prosecution would proceed. Wish I knew related dates…
As long as your hair isn't signaling you are moving to the right, you are probably OK.
HuffPo – For God's sake don't let any oil companies see this map! They wll be even more all over the Amazon Basin, the band across Africa between the Sudan and Namibia, Masagascar, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Guinea than they already are, and more indigenous peoples will perish. And lemurs. Lots of lemurs.
AlterNet – Why are ultra conservatives so damned afraid? Good question. They claim they believe they have the moral high ground, but their fear shows otherwise, doesn't it? But, on the other hand, why are they not MORE afraid than they are? Look at the billionaires who just don't have a clue why people are unhappy with being shat upon for so long. I believe this is called "cognitive dissonance," although some claim cognitive dissonance is actually not possible for people who have no cognition.
Mother Jones – Financial advisers always aid their clients to evade taxes, although they spell it "avoid" because technically avoidance is legal but evasion is not. To me it's the same thing. In the case of more or less normal people, as opposed to the super rich, the avoided taxes may, if the client is lucky, come close to covering the adviser's fees. Personally I would rather give the money to the government. Good luck to these victims – they will need it – especially if the ALEC-written "Criminal Justive Reform" gets passed.
Wow, your hair must be really short if you want it cut every fortnight or so, Lynn. How did they manage to put a purple streak in there? Sorry you were in pain again after shopping. Physiotherapy is controlled, but the additional walking, and especially standing, seems to have done the trick.
HuPo: Scientist can't really predict the extend of the water shortage long term, as extreme droughts appear to be a side effect of the extremes of Climate Change and therefore equally unpredictable. The only thing we can count on is that it's going to be bad, really bad. The fracking you mentioned, Lynn, is a double edged sword: one side of it makes enormous amounts of precious sweet water disappear for ever deep into the earth's crust, poisoned with chemicals to toxic to even consider recuperating it, and on the other side this precious water brings up more fossil fuel which, when burnt, adds to global warming and more droughts. You'd think anyone in his right mind would see that we can only gain from banning fracking all together
You also mentioned desalinization, Lynn and you have a good point there too. The main problem is getting salt water to the plant and sweet water where it's needed, but if companies were happy to invent in pipelines like Keystone XL, then you'd think investing in a clean pipeline wouldn't be much o0f a problem. 😉
Alternet: Even though I've been called a "self-hating Jew" for my views on Israeli politics, or because of it, I'm very distraught to see that the Israeli government is spinning completely out of control and the general population, having again voted Netanyahu to be their leader, apparently agree with them. The racism of this government has been building up over the past year, from covert and denied at first to now blatantly out in the open. To the outside it may look as if Netanyahu and his ilk have lost control of their senses, but I believe it is all part of a bigger plan which is very well thought out. Appealing to the right-wing with a populist approach and at the same time evoking more and more Palestinian rebellion and attacks on Jews, Netanyahu is preparing his country to strike again when the time is right. He'll use the crisis and increasing chaos in neighboring countries Iraq and Syria and under the pretense of fighting Da'esh (or Iran) or aiding one coalition or another try to take out as many Palestinians (= terrorists) as possible and perhaps extend Israel's borders a bit further. And with any luck get away with it.
MoJo: These families have a valid point and I hope they succeed with their litigations. I hadn't heard that HSCB admitted to laundering roughly $881 million for some Mexican cartels, but that alone should bring them court, but most likely – as happens all too often – is just slapped on the wrist and ordered to pay a fine of which these families won't see a penny. Chances are that HSCB wants to keep this as quiet as possible and settle with the plaintiffs out of court. And then continue business as usual.
My Universe: LOL!
I hope you feel better. I try to avoid other strenuous tasks on PT days. Get yout buzz-cut?
Two excellent points!
Hate certainly is a symptom of fear. The Republican Party controls Israel.
Fleece the damn Banksters, but leave them enough to keep paying your pension.
Dawg Butt?!!? YUCK!!
Related to the HP article, see my posting on C2- http://www.care2.com/news/member/565542931/3956075 This is related to the warming of the planet!
Hoping HSBC gets its ass busted, big time!!!!
Do Netanyahu, and his buddies, relize how Hitlerian their words are?