Category Archives: Politics

It can and will get much much worse.

Trump hires the worst person, yet again.

When it comes to this regime, it can and almost certainly will get much, much worse. Bolton has no business speaking or working in public service and shouldn’t be allowed to spell “nuclear” much less negotiate with foreign states about it. His rudimentary thinking is anachronistic. He belongs to a time when serfs and peasants did not read, check email or vote. Just look at some of his brainier statements:

“The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.”

source: Voice of America.

This quote was over a decade ago. He clearly doesn’t think Iran can be a rational actor or that negotiating with a country can be successful. This view ignores past successes such as in Libya. Yes, Libya is what success looks like! It’s not pretty, but it also isn’t a nuclear power now.

And contrary to this view he thinks Russia is a hopeful scenario (surprise!).

“I wouldn’t give up on Russia, and with oil at $90 a barrel, they can refurbish their strategic capabilities and under an authoritarian regime, those nuclear weapons are still there and in the wrong hands we might have a problem again.”

source: Human Events

We need to consider whether the 2018 elections are going to allow the American electorate to impeach the President and Vice-President fast enough to prevent an unnecessary war. I mean even Joe Biden’s former national security advisor is pretty certain Bolton forebodes trumped up grounds for conflict.

And now we see an actual conservative like George Will recognizes the ensuing danger Trump has welcomed into his administration.

Trump appears poised to replace Rosenstein and have Mueller fired. So what comes next? How should the resistance respond? Is a national strike the only way forward once the President attempts to stop the investigation?

Trump fails to condemn Putin’s nerve gas attack in Britain.

Yesterday, without even informing the press corps, or the American public, the American President called Vladimir Putin and failed to condemn Putin’s nerve gas assassination attempt in Britain or the Russian hacking of American infrastructure facilities, among a litany of recent aggressions. Instead he congratulated Putin’s sham election victory!

To be fair, the American President appears to have successfully protected his financial exposure to Russian mobsters, uh, I mean creditors.

Speaking of sham election victories: The Guardian is reporting that the board of Cambridge Analytica has failed to oust the CEO even after he was caught on tape admitting to electioneering opting instead to suspend him. Bravo, fortune favors the bold, chums.

We cannot expect other strongmen to do much of anything beyond simple flattery of this American regime’s floundering head of state, before going about their anti-democratic business of self-enrichment. What have they got to lose? America may not be a perfect country, but we have clear interest in preserving democratic processes and encouraging democratic institutions globally. As long as the GOP fails to correct their catastrophic error in party judgement in choosing to support this criminal, they do harm to themselves as Americans, and the well-being of their own families far into the future. They serve themselves alone, for the brief flash of time they maintain in office.

Yes, we are tired of the “winning”… of other despots.

The New York Times thinks Cheney should be prosecuted.

Wow, this is kind of a big deal. A great many news outlets may have said this before, and quite a few commentators, but this is the editorial board of the New York Times.

Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the christening ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford

Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the christening ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford

Peeling up some garlic for lunch Kristina is from Transcarpathia region of Ukraine, she came to Kiev at the end of November. She has bared witness to the violent dispersal of Maydan on the 30th of November that in part made her volunteer at a field kitchen on the Independence Square, serving 6k people every day. Kristina prepares traditional dishes from her region of Ukraine - Kulish, Bograch that are rich and nutritious.

Ukrainian Revolution.

Protester plays on the roof of a burned up "Berkut" bus. The barricade across Hrushevskoho str. Kiev, 10.02.2014.

Protester plays on the roof of a burned up”Berkut” bus. The barricade across Hrushevskoho str. Kiev, 10.02.2014.Peeling up some garlic for lunch Kristina is from Transcarpathia region of Ukraine, she came to Kiev at the end of November. She has bared witness to the violent dispersal of Maydan on the 30th of November that in part made her volunteer at a field kitchen on the Independence Square, serving 6k people every day. Kristina prepares traditional dishes from her region of Ukraine - Kulish, Bograch that are rich and nutritious.

It has been terribly exciting and worrying to watch the Ukrainian revolution on TV and to read about it every morning in the newspaper. It is exciting because they seem to be so well-organized, so highly-motivated, and so well-connected with the political establishment to their West. It is almost like Ukrainians have been taking notes on the political actions of the Iranians, Egyptians, Tunisians and the Syrians and made rapid progress in organizing effective tactics and strategies. But it is also worrying, because one has to wonder how the Russians will react once the Olympics are over. It seems like history would suggest they will simply roll in with Janukowitsch’s blessing and clamp down on any and all political protests. But now that the Ukrainian Parliament has voted to return security forces to pull back from forcing out the protesters in Maidan Square, maybe things will not go so far as they would have in the days before the fall of the Soviet Empire. Still, it is hard not to see this conflict as the age-old East-West struggle of larger powers.

However, as of Thursday the Russians seem to have been relatively calm in their reactions to the vote by the Ukrainian Parliament. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was sending ombudsman Vladimir Lukin to talk to Janukowitsch, which seems like a mild reaction compared to the actions taken by the U.S. and the E.U. Have the Russians decided they aren’t in a position to make any overt actions in the Ukraine? Maybe they have come to some kind of compromise agreement with Western powers behind the scenes. We can only watch and wait to see how it all shakes out.

 

 

Photo: Ivan Bandura December 12, 2013

Where’s the traffic on the Danube?

 So I am living here in Vienna along the banks of the Danube, or the Donau, whatever you like to call it.

Danube, New Danube, Old Danube Deutsch: Donau,...

Danube, New Danube, Old Danube Deutsch: Donau, Neue Donau, Alte Donau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Topography of Europe, with Danube marked red

Topography of Europe, with Danube marked red (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Vienna is a great city, according to the recent results of the Mercer Quality of Living survey. But the Danube river is an under appreciated part of that quality of life. It has been greatly improved where it flows through Vienna. Vienna has the Danube Canal that curves through the city center and meets up with the river proper in the south east of the city. Additionally, the Austro-Hungarian government in the 19th century had the forethought to gouge a protective floodplain which would be further developed in the 80s to become the new Danube, leaving a 21 km long thread of an island, the Donauinsel, to split the old path off from the new flood stage path of the Danube. This narrow but very long island is essentially one single park which runs down the length of the city. It’s fantastic. Perfect for bike rides, swimming, concerts, running with your staghound, or anything else that requires open green space. But wait! There’s more! One section of the river is completely closed off and forms the old Danube, a man-made oxbow lake, which is also a public space but this one has private tennis courts, water slides, playgrounds, canoes, paddle boats, parks and some cute little garden houses all along it’s shores. This is where it seems most of Vienna goes when the weather gets hot. It is a big enough lake that I sometimes think it could support the entire population of the city if it chose to sunbath all at once. These are the two largest outdoor attractions within the Vienna city limits for water lovers.

English: map of the national park Donau-Auen, ...

English: map of the national park Donau-Auen, Austria Deutsch: Karte des Nationalparks Donau-Auen, Österreich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However nice these parks may be, they can’t hold a candle to the National Park that basically forms the southern border of the river where it exits the city limits. Nationalpark Donau Auen is more than 30 km long and gives one access to pristine river wilderness within 10 minutes of leaving the docks in downtown Vienna. This is the major protected wetlands for central Europe. It is situated such that between Vienna and Bratislava you have almost nothing but national park along the boat ride. It is really a fantastic amalgamation of water resources, fantastic natural features, and plain old practical navigability. You would think the Danube would be the highlight of the whole city, but you would be wrong. It seems everyone thinks of Mozart and Schönbrunn when they think of Vienna, but this is one amazing river city. You can take the Danube all the way up to the North Sea, thanks to the Danube Rhine Main canal, whose current version was only completed in 1992. Going down river one can head all the way to the Black Sea thanks to the Romanian Danube – Black Sea Canal completed in 1987.

Danube (in blue) and the Canal (in red)

Danube (in blue) and the Canal (in red) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)a thanks to the Romanian Danube – Black Sea Canal completed in 1987.

It is a wonder that one doesn’t see more traffic along this river. There are commercial ships but it is nothing like the Mississippi or the Elbe, two rivers with major ports on them. There are basically five places for docking a vessel. There is the Friedenau harbor, which is the biggest. In Friedenau they have facilities to unload cars, and load and unload containers. Friedenau can store 10,000 cars and process them for shipping via rail. So this is a big harbor, that can support a great deal of the shipping needs of a small country like Austria. Ships coming up river to this port never pass through Vienna, since Friedenau is down river on the edge of town. 

Just below the Friedenau harbor is the Albern harbor which handles commodities such as grain, steel and building materials. It has silos for storing 90,000 tons of grain, which is a lot. Once again it is also outside of town, so commodities from the east coming up river into Austria never need pass through Vienna, before getting unloaded and put onto rails.

Almost directly across the river, on the eastern shore is the Lobau oil terminal, where they receive 1,200  tankers of oil products a year. There they can process it in the refinery or load it directly onto rails. This is a big facility. It is easy to spot on Google Earth.

Further upstream, is the Donau Marina for private boats. It’s a small marina for a such a big city with only 246 berths and winter storage for 168 boats. It seems like a city of 1.7 million people sitting on one of the world’s great rivers would have a substantially larger marina that would allow the public to store their private boats. After all, you can reach 10 different countries and the Black Sea by boat from Vienna, and yet there are only 246 berths in this marina. 

Part of the reason may be that there is also a passenger terminal within the city at Reichsbrücke, so you don’t necessarily need a boat to go by boat to Hungary. But you can’t fish or ski or drop anchor and barbecue on a passenger ship.

Reichsbrücke in Vienna, Austria; view from rig...

Reichsbrücke in Vienna, Austria; view from right shore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Obviously there are other alternate methods for getting around, such as rail lines and air travel, that have become well developed. The canals have not been open nearly as long as the rail lines. It is also interesting to note that the Danube runs from West to East. No other river will take you into eastern Europe. So Austria and a number of other countries along the Danube really are well-situated to deliver goods to both the West and the East by boat. And yet, it appears they prefer trains, aircrafts and trucks for this job. Caria.org says “water transport expends 433 BTU per ton-mile versus 696 for rail.” So it seems folks should be taking advantage of the Danube, yet aren’t. As a comparison, a city of similar size, albeit poorer, is Memphis, Tennessee. It has 68 loading facilitites and capacity for 437,000 tons of grain storage silos. Even if you take into account the much larger export capabilities of that region, it would still seem that Austria is under -utilitizing the riverway. Shipping West to East may not have the tonnage that the East to West routes have but one would still expect to see healthy volume along the Danube here in Vienna. Perhaps the harbors of Friedenau, Albern and Lobau are sufficient and well enough situated that additional traffic within the city and further upstream is unnecessary. Perhaps there just isn’t enough demand for the products being produced in Germany and Austria among the 10 countries along the Danube, but I would at least expect enough demand from the countries of the Black Sea, such as the Ukraine, Russia and Turkey such that we see large container ships headed down river with German and Austrian goods and commodities.

So where’s all the traffic on the Danube? As it turns out according to the Bloomberg article listed below, some of that traffic has disappeared because of a failure to maintain the riverway to international waterway standards of 2.5 meters. Drought and variable water levels has forced automakers to ship their vehicles via alternate methods. Current volume of shipping is said to be half what it was during the Soviet Bloc era. Dredging of the lower Danube needs to be done before we will see large container vessels and auto barges heading all the way to the Black Sea. Receiving through-traffic between the North Sea and the Black Sea via the Danube and it’s canals is the big goal, and right now it appears to be out of reach until the necessary maintainance is completed. However, in the meantime, for a wealthy city like Vienna, there should be far more boaters on the water than what one usually sees in the Summer. Perhaps some people prefer to head down to the Neusiedlersee (Lake Neusiedl). I may be biased, having grown up on a lake, thinking of course you would want to get out on the water when possible. Maybe this is just a cultural difference. I’d be interested to know what folks think is contributing to the low number of boats on the Danube here in Vienna. Share your thoughts.

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Norman Mailer’s The Castle In The Forest

Did a lot of walking yesterday. Perhaps I am spending too much time walking but it is the best way to pass the time while listening to an audiobook. I just finished listening to Norman Mailer‘s “The Castle in the Forest“. “Der Waldschloss” was a term used in this fictional account, at the very least, by some of the jewish prisoners at some concentration camp during World War II. It was meant to be ironic. To say their home in the woods was not a prison but a castle was an attempt at preserving a bit of humor after having had all other luxuries taken from them.

Cover of

Cover of The Castle in the Forest: A Novel

The book transports you to pre-World War Imperial Austria. I found myself listening to the narrator wondering what of the story was dredged up from Mailer’s own meandering mind and what came from his research of Adolph Hitler‘s actual forebears and childhood. His main character, a demon, inhabits the minds of some variously perverse old world Austrian ancestors to Hitler. While doing so the demon describes their inner thoughts and weaknesses and his role in promoting and engendering their perversions in the run up to his final product, a young Hitler. How much of this is coming from the author’s own psyche and how much is he fabricating from whole cloth? Is this a window into the mind of an old Jew from Brooklyn? Does it give us some sense of how an old Jew might have demonized Hitler? After all, for Mailer Hitler was a figure that was a contemporary popular culture figure at a formative time of the author’s life. It is surprising to hear the detailed extent of this exploration of various demon-harangued minds. Mailer himself is so far removed from these people in geography and lifestyle that he must have been quite some time in the research phase of this book to understand the equipment, and daily chores that would have made up the lifestyle for these people. Understanding what would a late 19th century teenage Austrian boy really treasure, and how would he speak too his mother and father is really about understanding what could they have even *owned* and had as possibilities in their lives back then. Mailer makes some believable characters, but they still appear to be presented at arms length as a result of being only periodically inhabited by the narrating demon, as opposed to the author himself doing the inhabiting of the characters, and narrating the story from their perspective. So one never really see the world *as* Hitler, but receives reports from the demon as he is sometimes the internal viewer of the events and sometimes the external viewer in young Adi’s life. 

So we learn a great deal about the feelings and stresses of being a mid-level demon. This part Mailer certainly *has* made up whole cloth and I think he has done a wonderful job. Mailer’s creativity is a force of detailed exposition. The intricate methods of ‘The Maestro’ and his henchmen are the kind of ingenuity that make for great fantasy or science fiction. Demons are henchmen forced to do the bidding of ‘The Maestro’ and are required to inhabit the minds of their ‘clients’. The idea that performing the Devil’s work has a certain fiscal consequence that has to be accounted for is hilarious. But they are capable of a few other interesting tricks. They can inhabit food, such as honey. They can etch new dreams for their clients as well as review past events witnessed by fellow demons as if they themselves were there. Some of the temptations and abilities of the demons have analogues with modern living. We are certainly still struggling with some of the same temptations as we always have been. But the non-local awareness aspects of the demon’s abilities does remind one of the voyeuristic capabilities of modern communications and social networks. We can all now monitor to a greater or lesser degree various people from within and without or own social circles. Who influences who and to what purpose is always debatable.

English: Norman Mailer, Miami Book Fair Intern...

English: Norman Mailer, Miami Book Fair International, 1988 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The book gives the Hitler family a long history of perversion as if to make the boy Hitler an unwitting sum of families poor breeding. As if to say he is so evil, he cannot be a normal man, he must have required great preparation, such that the end result was almost inevitable. It makes a great story. And to be honest, listening to the audiobook on Halloween, riding Strassenbahn 1 from the 5th district in Vienna through the Ringstrasse to the Hundertwasserhaus was wonderfully creepy. It made me suspicious of who might be inhabiting the various characters on the tram with me that night. Isn’t this what a good book is supposed to do? It makes you look at the world around you and wonder if its not quite another world than what you thought it was before you started the book. If you are a fan of this period of history already, Mailer’s The Castle In The Forest is great for that purpose. Here’s a link to a sample from the audiobook

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Vote-flipping: Romney primary election fraud anomaly.

ESO publication statistics compared to other o...

ESO publication statistics compared to other observatories (Photo credit: European Southern Observatory)

So I woke up this morning to find this article sitting in my queue purporting to have raw data indicating that as the population of a county increased so did the percentage of votes in the primary GOP election that were directed to Mitt Romney. The authors of the article are basically pointing out that this anomalous behavior favoring a single candidate is characteristic of a form of voter fraud called vote-flipping. Please send feedback if you have some insight into this kind of statistical analysis or voter fraud.

Additionally, if this shows prior voter fraud for the primary, we should be even more concerned about the potential for more voter fraud in Ohio. Votes will be counted in Ohio electronically, and without a paper trail to back them up by a company which Romney’s family, former coworkers and supporters have investment ties to according to this Salon.com article. 

 

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