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Created
Wed, 13/12/2023 - 01:17
The Entire West’s Military Is Weak

This has been lifted from comments and made into a post. It is by Altandmain.

The US hasn’t fought a serious opponent since WW2. Even then, the US vastly overstates it role and understates the USSR’s role in defeating Germany.

Likewise, the UK had this problem. The UK was not prepared for WW1. It also suffered from that problem in WW2. The reason is because it was focused on imperialist colonial wars. It’s military in early parts of WW1 and WW2 didn’t do so well at first and had to undergo a very steep learning curve.

The US has this problem now as well.

Created
Wed, 13/12/2023 - 01:00
Free speech for me, but not for thee It’s that time of year again. A nip is in the air (regionally). Christmas trees whiz by strapped to the roofs of sedan. Clauses are everywhere this time of year. Thus, Baby Jesus is battling Lucifer over the Establishment Clause. One of the battle fronts this year is in Iowa “where the Satanists have antagonized the Christians with a goat’s head wreath in the Des Moines capitol building.” See, because the Supreme Court ruled that Christians could erect Christmas displays on state property if other faiths get to erect theirs … you know where this is going. Satanists each year make a pointed point about the foolishness of it all by erecting displays honoring Lucifer. Amanda Marcotte weighs in on this less-clebrated holiday tradition: Every year, Christian conservatives discover the Satanic display and have a loud, public temper tantrum about it. In this, Satanists prove their point: Conservatives claim to respect religious plurality, but it’s a lie.
Created
Wed, 13/12/2023 - 00:31

What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that?  Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October 7th. In fact, it’s knocked Russia’s war in Ukraine, the one we were told was so essential to the future of democracy, off front pages (and their media equivalents) everywhere. And the coverage of recent protests has strikingly outpaced those of any other antiwar protests in this century. What the American news media do is, of course, only part of any story, but their recent protest focus contrasts vividly with... Read more

Source: Power, Protest, and All That’s News appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Wed, 13/12/2023 - 00:00

When my child is enraged that they can’t have a bowl of whipped cream and sprinkles in the morning, you might think I’d acknowledge the lost dream of their dessert breakfast, eulogize their very real feelings about this, verbalize their anger, and tell them I understand. But if you attempt this as anyone but late-midlife Keanu Reeves, you’ll see a syrupy waffle get tossed across the table.

I know my child, and I know gentle parenting. In the middle of a tantrum, I can see the thinking behind having the kid engage in mindfulness and in asking them to grapple beyond the meltdown to count out five things they can sense. The floor they can feel under their white-knuckled feet. The scent of blood. The dim white-hot circle they can see in front of their button noses. But they’re only going to meditate on their own tunnel of endocrine fury unless Keanu is the person doing the guiding. I say that with respect for my parenting capabilities, my child, and, most importantly, a man whom time has sanded only smoother, leaving a marble heart with dark black hair.

Created
Tue, 12/12/2023 - 20:52

‘The Palestinian people’, United Nations experts warned six weeks ago, ‘are at grave risk of genocide.’ ‘The time for action’, they pleaded, ‘is now’. But since then, far from ending the slaughter, the number of Palestinians killed has almost doubled — and Britain is deeply complicit in this atrocity.  Our government provides Israel with vital […]

Created
Tue, 12/12/2023 - 20:04

This post is a follow up on the collaboration between Drupal and other FOSS projects in response to the proposed CRA legislation in the EU. You can read our original joint letter here.

The Drupal Association has continued to participate in weekly calls with other open source projects leaders hosted by Open Forum Europe to discuss the proposed Cyber Resiliency Act (CRA) in the EU. 

The EU legislators are now reconciling several different draft versions of the regulation, and incorporating stakeholder recommendations into a new draft to be advanced through the legislative process.

For the past several months multiple constituent groups within the EU have shared draft versions of the text, soliciting feedback from a variety of stakeholders in government, industry, and the open source community. 

Created
Tue, 12/12/2023 - 19:53
The mainstream textbook concept of money multiplier assumes that banks automatically expand the credit money supply to a multiple of their aggregate reserves.  If the required currency-deposit reserve ratio is 5%, the money supply should be about twenty times larger than the aggregate reserves of banks.  In this way, the money multiplier concept assumes that […]
Created
Tue, 12/12/2023 - 13:00
What else is new? Axios reports that there’s some dissonance in the House Freedom caucus. They’re voting for new leadership and there seems to be a bit of a problem: An influential member of the House Freedom Caucus won’t run for a leadership spot, citing a recommendation by the group’s board that Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) serve as its next chairman. “I am concerned that our group often relies too much on power (available primarily due to the narrow majority) and too little on influence with and among our colleagues,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told his fellow members in a letter sent Sunday. “I ask that we consider how to best increase our influence while preserving our power to move policy in the right direction.