{"id":19917,"date":"2016-02-16T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T18:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=19917"},"modified":"2016-02-16T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T18:46:09","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-16022016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/16\/squatchs-open-thread-16022016\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 16\/02\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Huffington Post<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>The growing risk of worldwide water shortages is worse than scientists previously thought, according to a new study. <\/p>\n

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<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5.The Genocide convention.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of Arad’s report<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Ben Dahan and Regev<\/a> are known as some of the most racist representatives of the Israeli government. Dahan has said<\/a> Palestinians “are beasts, they are not human,” while Regev called African asylum seekers “a cancer in the body” of Israel. <\/p>\n

But the man they shared a stage with, Rabbi Meir Kahane’s former deputy Yisrael Ariel, embodies another level of fanaticism altogether.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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<\/a>, religious and secular.<\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mother Jones<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>A group of families <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

"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]."<\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

My Universe<\/strong> — <\/span><\/p>\n

\"doggie<\/a>Eau de butt!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics","category-35-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}