... We live in an economic system where sellers only value land and commodities relative to their capacity to generate profit. Consumers are constantly being bombarded with advertising telling them to discard and replace the goods they already have because this increases sales. This practice of affluent societies produces an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash....

With two weeks left till the general election in Germany, the Washington Post is "worried" to see no evidence of a massive Russian meddling campaign. The article does not, however, consider the possibility that Russia had no intention of conducting one in the first place.

It appears to me, protest organizers have hung the gov't basket of egg --the pending malaprop, omnibus "Repeal" act-- on one shaky peg. EP resolution RC-B8-0237/2017
peoplesmarch4eu.org

The European Union has offered the UK an olive branch, a way to stop all this, a way out of this madness. Taking no-Brexit is officially on the table, offered by the EU. This is the option our Government must take to protect our future and that of generations to come.

Insanity explains all, but. Any other interpretation?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

It is official: Brexit is boring - at least on the continent. As the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, delivered his "state of the union" address on Wednesday, setting the tone for the new political year, Brexit was relegated to a brief mention at the end. And even there, it was framed as a moment of sadness and regret, not horror. In last week's TV encounter between the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and her challenger, Martin Schulz, Brexit was totally absent.

The European press is increasingly uninterested as well. Checking the online home pages of four leading European newspapers on 12 September (FAZ, Le Monde, El País, and Corriere della Sera), there were only five stories about Brexit. The shock and fear are ebbing away. Nowadays continental papers talk about Brexit only to give factual updates or express bemusement at the apparent confusion on the UK side.

Barcelona attacks: Twelve of our own kind

This portrayal of the terrorists as savages is a part of our cultural archetype, as Edward Said and Roger Pol-Droit have demonstrated: to the Christian world, the Middle East is a space of brutality. But not just any kind of brutality: a brutality that is especially cruel, sophisticated and fanaticised, and exact antonym, a worthy rival.
Ordinary citizens

This is the tale produced by the media treatment of the attacks and the previously mentioned ritualised reaction of the public. In fact, this is an inadequate portrayal of the Ripoll group. They were not savages alien to our reality, but citizens formed by our educational institutions, assisted by our health care since their youth, and who took part in leisure activities enjoyed by ordinary citizens. Moreover, they spoke two of Spain's official languages: Spanish and Catalan, the latter reportedly with a very local accent. They did not come from a sophisticated Middle-Eastern culture. Their social media profiles reflected tastes and interests typical of any average European youth. They did not even appear to be religious fanatics. They had only recently begun to pray and their knowledge of Islam was limited.

They were not savages, nor were they ultraorthodox fanatics or the devil's reincarnation: they were 12 of our own. And they chose the path that took them furthest away from us. To understand what motivated them, a strategy of demonisation is the worst option. As Javier Lesaca has demonstrated in his valuable investigation, Daesh gathers followers by creating aspirational models through western cultural codes. Amongst other resources, they employ videos showing other young men explaining why they joined Daesh, or massacre scenes clearly inspired by popular videogames and films. By contrast to Al-Qaeda and Osama Ben-Laden's archaism, whose Afghan elegance embodied the middle-eastern topic of sophisticated evil, Daech videos do not even feature their leader, Al Baghdadi, whose priest-like appearance would not gain a lot of followers.

Conservative leadership favourite Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the growing use of food banks in the UK is "rather uplifting".

The Tory MP insisted that rather than demonstrating the scale of poverty in the country, the development showed what a "good compassionate country we are."

Yesterday, Iceland's government convened for the first time after the summer break.

At midnight the next day, the government has fallen.

— Mis∀ndri (@AndriErlingsson) 15. September 2017

PM's father intervened to get a child molester pardoned. Failed at coverup.

Maj-Gen Chapman said shrapnel would have increased the toll, but that part of the device appeared to have failed, adding: "One of the things in the chain didn't work and that is a great thing, or it would have been a horrendous scene of carnage and destruction."

We are cogs in a machine of violence, death, exploitation, and destruction. Is the retail clerk who rings up a cut of veal any less responsible for the cruelty of factory farming than the farm worker? What about the ad designer who finds ways to make the product palatable? How about the accountant who does the grocery books and allows it to stay in business? Or the worker in the factory that manufacturers refrigerator cases? And, of course, the high level managers of the corporations bear the greatest responsibility of all for they make the decisions which causes the destruction and waste. You don't have to own stock in a corporation or own a factory or chemical plant to be held to blame.

Clinton was hammered by both Sanders and Trump over her paid speeches to Wall Street. She admits these were a "mistake", explaining: "Just because many former government officials have been paid large fees to give speeches, I shouldn't have assumed it was okay for me to do it.

Back in 1990, Spy magazine conducted an experiment in "comparative chintziness." Its goal was to find out "Who is America's cheapest zillionaire?" Or, put another way, "how cheap are the rich?"

To determine this they sent various rich people each a check for 13 cents, and then waited to see who would actually cash such a tiny check. Two people did: Donald Trump and the Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi.

Snagged this gem before he went private. pic.twitter.com/GOupmL3psz

— Nikki Levy (@Nikki_Levy) September 13, 2017

Well, I am livid. COME TO FIND OUT, Lindsey Graham Cracker introduced the bill S.1615 -- 115th Congress (2017-2018) 20 July 2017. It boasts nine (9) co-sponsors, of which Durbin, Schumer, Feinstein, Cortez, Harris, and Bennet --six Democrats who may well claim weeks from now to have only been born 14 September 2017.

Tell me. What pleasure do these people experience from torturing one million "dreamers"?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A Connecticut town councilor was forced to resign after his profile on a website for people who like to dress up in animal costumes was posted online.

The Labor Party actually maintained the occupation for 10 whole years and didn't do anything about it.

"Don't say Mapai didn't do anything. They were the ones who established the settlements. Begin was the only righteous leader we have had. I mean it. Under his rule torture was completely forbidden. When the head of the Shin Bet came to him and asked `Sir, not even a slap?' He said: `No. Not even a slap.'

"Begin forbade demolishing houses, he forbade expulsion. He was the only righteous man in Sodom. There was not a single righteous man either before him or after him."

12 hrs ago
Harvard [KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOV'T] Withdraws Fellowship Invitation To Chelsea Manning

47 min ago
Harvard [KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOV'T] Withdraws Chelsea Manning's Fellowship After CIA Director Backlash (AUDIO DELAYED)

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

And the reason is quite unexpected:

Mariano Gómez, 23, was to have been honoured by the Internet Society (Isoc) at a ceremony in Los Angeles on 18 September for his working installing a wireless internet network in the remote community of San Martín Abasolo, which has no telephone or radio service.

But when Gómez travelled 16 hours from his home in Chiapas state for a visa appointment at the US embassy in Mexico City, he was told that he could not apply.

Gómez, a member of the Tseltal indigenous community, said was told his application was rejected because he was unable to provide a street address and because he does not have a bank account. Rural Mexican villages often have no street names, while 70% of the population of Chiapas live in poverty.

A fatberg weighing the same as 11 double decker buses and stretching the length of two football pitches is blocking a section of London's ageing sewage network.

The congealed mass of fat, wet wipes and nappies is one of the biggest ever found and would have risked raw sewage flooding on to the streets in Whitechapel, east London, had it not been discovered during a routine inspection earlier this month.

Now workmen armed with shovels and high-powered jets are working seven days a week to break it up. The grim task is expected to take three weeks.

Thames Water's head of waste networks, Matt Rimmer, said: "This fatberg is up there with the biggest we've ever seen. It's a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it's set hard.

"It's basically like trying to break up concrete. It's frustrating as these situations are totally avoidable and caused by fat, oil and grease being washed down sinks and wipes flushed down the loo."

... The continuous block mining cycle incentivizes people all over the world to mine Bitcoin. As mining can provide a solid stream of revenue, people are very willing to run power-hungry machines to get a piece of it. Over the years this has caused the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network to grow to epic proportions, as the price of the currency reached new highs. The entire Bitcoin network now consumes more energy than a number of countries, based on a report published by the International Energy Agency. If Bitcoin was a country, it would rank as shown below ...

archived: Always read the footnotes

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Statistics Canada stopped collecting data on temp agency workers a decade ago, making it difficult to paint a picture of the workforce here. To fill that gap, the Star filed multiple Freedom of Information requests with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and obtained custom data from the Association of Workers Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC).
While temp agencies are traditionally associated with casual office work, statistics from the WSIB show the majority of temps are now being placed in other sectors -- including non-clerical, construction, restaurant and driving jobs.

archived: Canada demands U.S. end `right to work' laws as part of NAFTA talks

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Figure 1 below shows the increase in employment rates (the percentage of people over age 16 who are employed) for whites, blacks, and Hispanics over the last two years.[1]

References (abridged)
Why Do Unemployment Rates Vary by Race and Ethnicity?

For starters, on average, the unemployment rate for blacks is:
34 percent greater than that of Hispanics
93 percent higher than that of whites
104 percent greater than that of Asians

What's more, the rate for black Americans has never been less than 66 percent higher than that for whites -- and since January 1974, it has been at least twice the rate for whites 80 percent of the time.

His work involved investigating various infectious diseases, and he even hoped one day to discover a cure for the leukaemia that had killed his mother. Unfortunately, Patrick quickly realised that the work he loved was imperilled by a vicious culture of competition, back-stabbing and more sabotage. He wrote a letter to a leading international newspaper expressing his concern over the competition that drove some scientists to hoard valuable research materials, for which he was attacked. But much of the bad behaviour came from a place he least expected it: his own mentor.

While I am not a scientist, I understand the incidents he told me about with enough clarity to realise that these things should never have happened in a professional environment. According to Patrick, his boss regularly reduced graduate students and postdocs to tears in front of the entire department. Lab members were required to account every week for what they had found and those with no new results to show were often threatened with dismissal - threats that were sometimes carried through. In Patrick's case, his supervisor also refused to fund further investigation of one of his successful results because the process would take "too long".

This continual stream of pressure and intimidation took its toll. One of Patrick's fellow postdocs nearly suffered a miscarriage and was hospitalised, while another signed himself into a psychiatric ward. These should have been red flags to any responsible manager, but when Patrick sought assistance from the departmental chair and then the dean, he was rebuffed, and no one investigated what was going on in his supervisor's lab.

A man who had survived the loss of his mother, overcome a childhood of neglect and loneliness, and used his brilliant mind to propel himself to the heights of academic achievement was now so plagued by the stress of never knowing from one day to the next whether he would have a job that he sought counselling. However, the antidepressant he was prescribed caused him so much distress that he ended up in a psychiatric ward himself.

During his 10-day observation, the university counsellor from whom Patrick had sought help repeatedly called him to ask if he would participate in an experiment she was conducting for her own research. She persisted despite Patrick repeatedly telling her that he needed to focus on his own health and well-being.

While in the hospital, he was put on five different psychoactive medications. These exacerbated his previously undiagnosed ADHD and led to impulsivity and a lapse of judgement that would ruin his career. Desperate to get the recommendation letter from his supervisor that he would need to move to another lab, Patrick decided to take his good data and manufacture the replications that he needed.

My daughter received her Maryland Medical Care Program Card one month ago. At that time we agreed, it would be prudent for her to purchase medical coverage for herself from her college -- in another state. US states' "medical care program" insurance typically ends at the border where issued.

< pick teeth, suck vigorously >
My understanding is, that is not the agreement between states of the EU. To what extent is my understanding of this citizens' right true?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.