President Obama’s Saturday Youtube Address 11/07/09

WhiteHouse.gov—In this week’s address, President Barack Obama expressed his sadness for the tragedy at Fort Hood and praised the selfless valor of those who came to the aid of the wounded. While we mourn the heartbreaking violence, we should honor the heroism of the soldiers and civilians who rushed to help their comrades. That is the heroism which makes the U.S. military the finest in the world. .”

more about "Weekly Address: Tragedy at Fort Hood …", posted with vodpod

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
November 7, 2009

I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes today about the tragedy that took place at Ft. Hood. This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers.

It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America. It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.

The SRP is where our men and women in uniform go before getting deployed. It’s where they get their teeth checked and their medical records updated and make sure everything is in order before getting shipped out. It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation, lost their lives in a crime against our nation.

Soldiers stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world called and emailed loved ones at Ft. Hood, all expressing the same stunned reaction: I’m supposed to be the one in harm’s way, not you.

Thursday’s shooting was one of the most devastating ever committed on an American military base. And yet, even as we saw the worst of human nature on full display, we also saw the best of America. We saw soldiers and civilians alike rushing to aid fallen comrades; tearing off bullet-riddled clothes to treat the injured; using blouses as tourniquets; taking down the shooter even as they bore wounds themselves.

We saw soldiers bringing to bear on our own soil the skills they had been trained to use abroad; skills that been honed through years of determined effort for one purpose and one purpose only: to protect and defend the United States of America.

We saw the valor, selflessness, and unity of purpose that make our servicemen and women the finest fighting force on Earth; that make the United States military the best the world has ever known; and that make all of us proud to be Americans.

On Friday, I met with FBI Director Mueller, Defense Secretary Gates, and representatives of the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what led to this terrible crime. And I’ll continue to be in close contact with them as new information comes in.

We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing. But what we do know is that our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Ft. Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy. And our thoughts are with all the Americans who wear – or who’ve worn – the proud uniform of the United States of America; our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen, and the military families who love and support them.

In tribute to those who fell at Ft. Hood, I’ve ordered flags flying over the White House, and other federal buildings to be lowered to half-staff from now until Veterans Day next Wednesday. Veterans Day is our chance to honor those Americans who’ve served on battlefields from Lexington to Antietam, Normandy to Manila, Inchon to Khe Sanh, Ramadi to Kandahar.

They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to country that has been tested and proved worthy. What they share is the same unflinching courage, unblinking compassion, and uncommon camaraderie that the soldiers and civilians of Ft. Hood showed America and showed the world.

These are the men and women we honor today. These are the men and women we’ll honor on Veterans Day. And these are the men and women we shall honor every day, in times of war and times of peace, so long as our nation endures.

Obey Wallpaper

The artist Shepard Fairey, otherwise known as OBEY (the giant), is most well known for his Obama print which was the iconic image of the current president of the United States’ election campaign. Some of his more decorative work feature very intricate wallpaper style patterns. Above is his “Flower Vine” print and a wallpaper print from The Grapes coloured the same way.

Beautiful.

OBAMA DOES THRILLER

I have to agree! Fox is One Sided! Plus they dont add everything to the story~ Only includes stuff that incriminates Obama and his Administration~ I do not Watch Fox~ They are a bunch of Dirty Bastards~ They arent even news its like watching a boring Jerry Springer show! Bunch of Put on Bull shit~ Anyways this Parody is The best I have seen from anyone anywhere~ Your parodies seem to have a lot of truth to them IMO~~

Center for Immigration Studies report explains how the Sierra Club justifies more immigration

If you follow immigration issues generally, one of the most perplexing questions is how did it come about that the major environmental organizations (especially the Sierra Club) in the US don’t want to work to slow immigration when it is clear that more people means more environmental degradation.  Jerry Kammer has written a very detailed piece for the Center for Immigration Studies entitled, “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortions on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining its Environmental Legacy” that seeks to explain how this happened and tells us that some true conservationists are trying to turn that around.   Please read the report.

Mr. Kammer is just missing one key element in my opinion.

That key element is that Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s long-time Executive Director, is more a Marxist than an environmentalist.   The new communist movement in this country has coalesced around the Apollo Alliance (Pope sits on its board of directors).   Pope is more comfortable with the far left labor unions, leftwing foundations, the big corporations and the likes of revolutionary Van Jones (be sure to watch the Pope/Jones interview linked in here) then he would be with David Brower.    The powerful alliance that helped elect Obama must have poor demanding immigrants to “change” our government—the goals of the ”social justice movement” are more important to Pope and Jones than saving a little biodiversity.   

I only wonder that it took so long for people truly concerned about the environment to organize against open borders communists.  No, I don’t really, because they are mostly on the political left too and couldn’t begin to grasp that Far Left (communists!) had taken over the environmental movement that they began.

P.S. to all the environmentalists concerned with population growth generally, well-educated Americans have been having fewer children while the Somalis, Bosnians and other Muslims pouring into the US have no such concern—six kids and up is what they are aiming for—because they don’t give a damn about the environment!

The Afghanistan Institute of Management

The Afghanistan situation clearly doesn’t seem very pleasant. The war seems to heading to a dead end and increasingly, we are hearing voices from certain sections within the USA and elsewhere of an American pull-out from Afghanistan too. Their arguments include the fact that even 9/11 was planned and carried out from Western cities. This is fallacious as none of this would have been possible but for the ideological backing that the Arab and Middle Eastern radical fringe groups give. Pulling out, it goes without saying, would be disastrous both for the region and the world.

The new American administration realizes that this war cannot be won by military means alone. This, in spite of the all the news reports we read about increasing military action in Islamic-extremist infested regions. Drone attacks, for example, have increased. And, consecutively, so have civilian causalities.

Taliban and other outfits will continue to enjoy support from a ‘fair’ proportion of people in the region for several reasons. These include the ingrained idea of sovereignty, where certain people continue to see the USA as an outsider and they hence wrongly assume that the Taliban are the local heroes fighting the foreign evil.  Such sections prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t. At the margin, however, there exists another section that finds itself an easy prey for Afghan warlords to hire, a section that would probably not have tended to such a direction had they had they been safely employed elsewhere. (Note that this is not a generalization for all militia, but only a reference to a section at the margin)

 

Bottom-up and Top-down strategies of Education

Increasing of peaceful employment might pull such a section out of the local militias and into meaningful contribution. Education is an enabling factor that helps in this regard. However, everyone recognizes the shortcomings of an impractical goal of establishing a strong primary and secondary schooling system in a short span of time. Even if this was done, by the time a sizeable proportion of people got educated, a good 10-15 years would have passed, surely passing the political sell-by date of the war to the American public. Also, schools become easy target of militants, as to them, they represent symbols of American occupation.

An education policy which seems more practicable is the top-down strategy, as opposed to the bottom-up strategy of primary school setting discussed above. Specifically, I propose the setting up of the Afghanistan Institute of Management (I’ll refer it as AIM henceforth), in the lines of the infamous Indian Institutes of Technology. The nuances and advantages are discussed below:

1.  It is easier to build one big institution and secure it from militant strikes, rather than building several small schools in every district with relatively lesser or no security.

2. The AIM would be completely residential and anonymity of students will be maintained so that they and their families aren’t targeted by militants.

3. Finding able and excellent teachers might seem to be a big problem. However, in today’s day, it shouldn’t be. English speaking professors can be hired from universities around the world and be asked to teach as little as 2-4 hours every week from the comforts and safety of their universities in, say, New Delhi, Singapore or London, via videoconferencing facilities.

4. To compensate for the lack of quality education in their schools, an extra semester or two of basic education and English training can be imparted.

5. AIM can be funded by many countries that have a stake in a stable Afghanistan.

6. The students studying here (at least initially) shouldn’t have to pay anything, and must be selected by a merit test.

7. There would be a small and important condition for admission: After completing their education, they will be required to stay and work in Afghanistan, and hence contribute to their economy, for at least 5-7 years. If they want to leave, they’ll have to pay up, say, 150% of the cost of their education.

8. On successfully completing their education, those who wish to be entrepreneurs will be given a capital grant of, say, Rs. 1-2 crore ($210k-420k), on submitting a project report of their intended firm/industry. This ‘loan’ will not need to be paid back if certain goals are met. These could include conditions such as: the enterprise should be employing ~20 workers at the end of year 1, ~50 at the end of year 2, ~100 at the end of year 3, and so on. Of course, profitability is important. If for various reasons profits cannot be maintained, they can submit reports to governing councils of these loans for restructuring of conditions and terms.

9. Since this project is of international interest, at least temporarily, these firms should be allowed to trade without barriers with these nations. Hence even if their own markets saturate, which I presume they will, they can produce for or serve foreign markets.

10. Worker training will be important, of course, given our unstated assumption that people are unskilled because of a lack of good, or any, education. Worker training should be subsidized by the international community, where the workers pay should be paid in part until they are fit to productably begin work.

 

What could potentially be achieved

Every year, hundreds of students from Afghanistan come to India to study in various universities. Clearly, there are several more who don’t qualify for the scholarships. This shows that there is more than a handful of students looking forward to quality education. Let us assume 100 students are taken in each year. Of these, only 10% end up as successful entrepreneurs at the end of their courses. Going by the conditions of worker employability given above, this would mean that there would be 700 workers working at the end of year 2, 1700 at the end of year 3, 3200 at the end of year 4, 5200 at the end of year 5, and so on and so forth. The rise in workers in such stable jobs is exponential.

The governing council will have to be careful to promote only such industries that do not cause harm on already existing local industry, or at least protect the workers if they are harmed. If they don’t do so, this can actually be counterproductive to the security scenario.

Over a period of time, worker supply would saturate (markets might not as free trade between these firms and other markets in assumed). This might raise demands for quality lower levels of education, for which the local government will have to respond, and will be more able to respond, given the growing economy.

I do not imply, not by a long shot, that these workers will be people who gave up on their fundamentalist groups to join work. However, eventually over years, this might begin to happen. I also understand that there already exist foreign universities in Afghanistan. But the model of the AIM clearly different from what already exists.

And why stop here? There can be such Institutes of Medicine, Technology, Economics, you name it.

Of course, I understand, and it is important to realize that this will not solve the problem. Hardly. Development measures such as these only contribute marginally to a direction that might eventually lead to stability. But it is important, as with such increments in peaceful development might eventually help Afghanistan reach its tipping point towards stability.

Stiglitz sticking to his guns

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1GMxUFBOhrY&pos=5

“We have this very strange situation today in America where we have given banks hundreds of billions of dollars and the president has to beg the banks to lend and they refuse,” Stiglitz said yesterday. “What we did was the wrong thing. It has weakened the economy and has increased our deficit, making it more difficult for the future.”

While the U.S. economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the first expansion in more than a year, the economist said the recession is “nowhere near” its end, citing rising unemployment and weak demand.

Me:  We can not bitch an moan about bonuses paid and shitty bank lending when there was an option available earlier this year to seize crappy, insolvent banks.  Risky pieces could have been sold off, lenders could be told to lend as we would own that bank.

We do have a surreal situation where we own pieces of banks but we have no say, they pay their yuppie employees what they want, they give the taxpayers the finger.  It’s total crap.

Bergson, Badiou, and "The Problem of Language": Fragment 12934ff.

“The Bergsonian denigration of language, as the synchronistic counterpart of pure, dynamic, diachronicity, inaugurated the postmodern stance on language as a medium at odds with phenomenal experience. Language’s quantificational (mathematical) structure seems to oppose it to what is originary or purely qualitative; however, given a brief consideration of the structure of language, this proves to be an untenable position. Language is a network of expressions which consist of free variables that become constant only when set in relation to a verificational double. This means, then, that expressions, in the form of n+x, a constant n, infintely predicable by x, a free variable, are not closed, cold, and lifeless symbols, as Bergson state in Freewill and Time, but, rather, are dynamic embodiments of qualitative multiplicity, situationally closed and temporally open.
Foundational to Bergson’s critique of language is a misunderstanding of numbers as static synthetic bodies, a notion that Badiou’s Being and Event is at pains to correct. Badiou’s correction consists in disproving the existence of the One, replacing the One with a function of consciousness he calls “the count-as-One structure,” which upon appropriation of a pure multiplicity creates the virtual “one.” However updated it may be, Badiou’s concept of the “count-as-One” structure of consciousness is merely a nuanced, slightly revised version of Bergson’s theory of consciousness. Consciousness is set in opposition to noumenality, insisting upon Postcantorian Set Theory’s implicity superiority in forming an ontology that breaks free from traditional identity theories, what Badiou bases his ontology upon, also fails to account to explain how the “one” comes into being; instead, it merely reduplicates Bergson’s mistaken ideas about number by insisting upon the ex nihilo origination of the “one” by means of an inexplicable function of consciousness. And what is at stake is nothing trivial; the affirmation or negation of the existence of the one is perhaps the only remnant of philosophical antiquity that still bears significant consequences for identity theory, irrespective of the theologico-platonic overtones of the primary “one.”"