September 5th is
Cheese Pizza Day
Be Late for Something Day *
Jury Rights Day *
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Two-Ingredient Cocktail Day
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U.N. International Day of Charity *
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TCS: Mad Englishman Near the Midnight Sun — Part 5
Good Morning!
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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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This week, Bertie Gregory captures the Sea Otter with his lens, and explains why these cute funny furballs are so important to the Pacific’s coastal ecosystems
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If you are just joining us, for the links to the previous episodes, click
Continue reading
Posted in Photography, Short Video, The Coffee Shop
Tagged Bertie Gregory, British Columbia, Nat Geo, Sea Otters, Vancouver Island, Wildlife Photography
4 Comments
ON THIS DAY: September 4, 2016
September 4th is
Eat an Extra Dessert Day *
Macadamia Nut Day
Newspaper Carrier Day *
∞
National Wildlife Day *
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MORE! Festivals and Holidays, Geronimo, a “Kodak moment” and Jimi Hendrix, click
Readings – Paul Craig Roberts: Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?
I admit that conspiracy theories are one of my guilty pleasures. But sometimes the outlandish tales have the ring of truth to them. And sometimes what conventional wisdom had dismissed out of hand as being CT, later turns out to have been true.
What makes something a conspiracy theory and why? Paul Craig Roberts provides some insight in a recent article excerpted below. Read the whole piece at http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/31/are-you-a-mind-controlled-cia-stooge-paul-craig-roberts/
–o-O-o–
Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?
Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge.
The term “conspiracy theory” was invented and put into public discourse by the CIA in 1964 in order to discredit the many skeptics who challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated while in police custody before he could be questioned. The CIA used its friends in the media to launch a campaign to make suspicion of the Warren Commission report a target of ridicule and hostility. This campaign was “one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”
(snip)
The CIA’s success in controlling public perception of what our Founding Fathers would have regarded as suspicious events involving the government enables those in power positions within government to orchestrate events that serve hidden agendas. The events of September 11 created the new paradigm of endless war in behalf of a Washington-dominated world. The CIA’s success in controlling public perceptions has made it impossible to investigate elite political crimes. Consequently, it is now possible for treason to be official US government policy…
Perhaps this is CT about CT 😉
Roberts’ entire article – http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/31/are-you-a-mind-controlled-cia-stooge-paul-craig-roberts/
A list of confirmed conspiracies – https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/locc
Hello Cousin
By Terry Welshans
Allow me to begin by saying first of all, this article is not about me. It is about us, all of us. I am going to relate this story from my perspective, which is really your perspective as well. Much of what I am writing about is speculation and is quite controversial as little documentation survives. There is great debate among scholars about many of the details and facts, so be warned, what I am writing may not be bound by proof that will withstand legal scrutiny. This may look like a history lesson, but there is an important point at the end.
My 29th great grandfather was a Viking named Göngu Hrólfr whose name was later Latinized as Rollo Rognvaldsson.
ON THIS DAY: September 3, 2016
September 3rd is
U.S. Bowling League Day
Cabernet Day
Penny Press Day *
Welsh Rarebit Day
World Beard Day
International Vulture Awareness Day
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MORE! World Festivals and Holidays, Frederick Douglas, the Bonneville Salt Flats and a Mutant Alligator, click
Posted in History, Holidays, On This Day, Sweden
Tagged Alligator, Bonneville Salt Flats, Crosby, Frederick Douglass, Penny Press, Richard the Lionheart, Stills and Nash, Vulture Awareness Day
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Readings – Consortium News: Belated Pushback on Saudis’ War on Yemen
In a post on Consortiumnews.com, Jonathan Marshall reports on Saudi Arabia’s continuing war on Yemen using weapons sold to it by the U.S., citing a source calling the war “arguably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” The Obama administration has supported Saudi Arabia’s actions, but now both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are pushing back.
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Belated Pushback on Saudis’ War on Yemen
Jonathan Marshall, September 2, 2016
If there were an Olympics for waging bloody wars, Saudi Arabia and its Arab coalition allies would surely win a medal for their relentless bombing of Yemen over the past year and a half to crush rebels who seized power in 2014.
One international NGO has called the ongoing war in Yemen “arguably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” which is saying a lot considering the competition from Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan…
In March, the U.N. human rights chief accused the Saudi-led coalition of causing “twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes.” Given the regularity of bombing attacks on hospitals, clinics, schools, wedding parties and other civilian targets, he added, “we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition.”When I first wrote about the Yemen conflict in April 2015, the death toll stood at several hundred, with more than a quarter million people displaced. Today the United Nation’s human rights office estimates that more than 10,000 people have been killed and three million displaced. The World Food Programme reports that seven million people — more than a quarter of Yemen’s population — are “on the brink of famine.” ~ Continue reading on Consortiumnews.com
The Cats of Aleppo … and Their Keeper
by Nicole Plyler Fisk
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from teaching Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series to freshman composition students, it’s that — despite what presidential candidate Donald Trump would have us believe — we should not wax poetic over bombing anything. As horrible as the Capitol is, there are those within it who are working against it: people like Cinna, working subversively; or Plutarch, working undercover; or Cressida, Castor, and Pollux, waiting patiently for their opportunity to leave; or, in the end, Prim, who’s there as a medic.
I’ve written recently about the fact that we must intervene in Syria, not militarily but by stepping up our humanitarian game. Although the United States reached its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, that number — in the scheme of things — is paltry, less than a quarter of one percent … which, as Samantha Bee quips, “is ten times less than the acceptable amount of wood pulp in your parmesan cheese.” We should do (and be) better.
Posted in Cats, Countries, Heroism, KIndness, Syria, War
Tagged Cats Of Aleppo, Il gattaro D'aleppo, Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel
3 Comments
ON THIS DAY: September 2, 2016
September 2nd is
∞
Calendar Adjustment Day *
Lazy Mom’s Day
Bring Your Manners to Work Day *
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V-J Day II *
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
Marshall Islands – Dri-jerbal (Labor Day)
Spain – Ceuta: Día de Ceuta
(local public holiday in Ceuta)
Tibetan Community – Democracy Day *
Transdniestria – Independence Day *
Vietnam – National Day
United States – Brady, TX
World Championship BBQ Goat Cook-Off
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MORE! HISTORY: Our Lost Eleven Days, Teddy Roosevelt and NASA Woes, click
Posted in History, Holidays, India, On This Day
Tagged Diana Nyad Swims to Florida, Great Fire of London, Gregorian Calendar, Japanese Instrument of Surrender, Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. Treasury Department
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Word Cloud: RESISTANCE
by NONA BLYTH CLOUD
In 1895, Japan was at war with China for supremacy over Korea, which was China’s most important client state. Japan wanted access to Korea’s coal and iron, and to use it as a buffer zone to prevent Chinese or Russian incursions.
Only 42 years earlier, American Commodore Matthew Perry, aboard the frigate Susquehanna, led his squadron of two steamers and two sailing vessels into Tôkyô harbor. After 200 years of Japan’s Sokoku (closed country) policy, which limited trade with Europe to a single Dutch factory (trading post) at Dejima in Nagasaki, Perry’s version of “gunboat diplomacy” forced Japan, which had no Navy whatsoever, to make a trade agreement with the United States. Other Western nations were quick to follow.
When the First Sino-Japanese War began in 1894, China looked like an obvious winner. But Japan had been on a modernization crash-course since the arrival of Commodore Perry, and their forces were better equipped and trained. They scored decisive victories, invading Manchuria and commanding sea approaches to Beijing. By 1895, China was suing for peace. The Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to recognize Korea’s independence, and ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores, and Manchuria’s Liaodong Peninsula to Japan.
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Mitsuharu Kaneko 金子 光晴 (1895-1975), poet and painter, was born in a year of great change, just as Japan was taking its place as a world power, and still undergoing a huge cultural shift from its isolated past. He was born the third son of a failed businessman, and his original given name was Yasukazu.
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Demons and a Poet
The poet saw a pillar towering in the sky amid the fires of hell, or
A long beard flaring up into the sky filled with wild snow.
He saw the shadows of demons stretching across the sky where clouds moved hurriedly, or
Their shadows crouching.
Only the eyes of the poet can see
Tiny demons crawling in and out of nostrils,
Demons counting money, demons who like women,
But these are unworthy even of being sneezed at.
Demons like caricatures who take with tongs
The moon from a big pot,
These too are unworthy, and are
Pretentious and tiring.
I am waiting for
Demons like poppy seeds who have just leaped out of the smelting furnace.
They themselves do not know what is what.
If we were to touch them, we would blister.
We would join them, jumping around, crying,
“Make a poem! Set a fire!”
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 