Published at 08:23 on 12 December 2014
That’s long been my estimate (even before I made that linked post) of how much the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement boondoggle is going to end up costing. And it’s an open question as to whether or not there will be a usable tunnel after pouring all that money down that rat hole.
The latest in the saga of foibles is that the access tunnel is that the access pit they are digging to repair the damaged tunnel boring machine is causing a whole neighborhood to start subsidng. That’s going to be a healthy chunk of change just to compensate all the affected property owners right there.
Remember, this is a unique and never-before-attempted project. Nobody has ever used a tunnel boring machine this large. Nobody has ever dug a tunnel this deeply through saturated soil. So nobody really knows how difficult it actually will be.
Anyone who said it would cost $1 billion, tops, was either a liar or a rank idiot. Or both.
Published at 15:03 on 8 December 2014
In addition to being morally reprehensible, torture actually makes the USA less, not more, secure.
Published at 10:38 on 25 November 2014
I think not. Cops who kill are almost always exonerated.
I cannot offhand readily think of any counterexamples to the above fact. I’m sure they exist, but they are rare. Very rare.
Unfortunately, rioting tends to be very little deterrent to such things happening. In fact, it’s a common outcome, yet the killing persists, decade after decade.
Again, this is not a surprise. Rioting is not rebellion. It is unfocused, unplanned, rage. It typically takes the form of the downtrodden destroying their own neighborhoods.
If the reaction took the form of more organized actions, and groups like the Black Panthers of old formed and persisted as part of the reaction, then one might expect the Establishment to take such things seriously, because the reaction to them is posing a more serious risk to that same Establishment.
But already pretty tatty neighborhoods becoming even more rundown (as a result of rioting-induced damage) is of little or no threat to the Establishment. So don’t expect things to change until the rage matures into a more focused effort to challenge the overall system as a whole.
Published at 07:48 on 15 October 2014
It’s happened a second time in Dallas.
Now the line is starting to shift to “Well, there must be something wrong with that hospital’s (as opposed to just that nurse’s) protocol, but it’s still not super-contagious, trust us.”
Wonder how long that revised version of the lie is going to last.
Published at 21:25 on 13 October 2014
One thing seems clear: it’s obviously significantly more contagious than the Establishment media claims it to be. The fact that health care workers contact it so readily despite being aware of the dangers and taking precautions proves that. Now that that has happened here in the USA, such indidents can’t all be waved off due to inadequate conditions and resources in Third World hospitals.
We’re obviously being lied to by the Establishment in order to maintain the façade that they have everything under control. They don’t, and the pressures of capitalism ensure that it’s very hard for them to do so (because effective precautions would probably take hundreds of billions of dollars).
It may not end up being a horrible global pandemic, but the combination of a globalized economy, rampant inequality, and health care being a privilege instead of a right is needlessly putting all of humanity at risk.
Published at 09:06 on 4 September 2014
Recently, those involved in the campaign for higher wages for fast-food workers have started employing the rhetoric “whatever it takes”.
It’s a sentiment that’s been sadly absent for too long on the Left in the USA.
Because, really, those in the ruling elite are always doing whatever it takes to continue their rule. That includes often ignoring the same rules that they themselves wrote to their advantage in the first place.
If you’re not willing to use whatever it takes to get the sort of world you want, then you’re a sellout and a fraud who places more priority on obeying the ruling elite than on your own principles.
Published at 08:45 on 1 September 2014
By “civil unions for all” I mean the idea, floated by some, of getting the government out of the marriage business entirely and only issuing “civil unions” to couples. Existing state marriages would be converted to civil unions, and all rights granted to the married under the law would be transferred to those in civil unions.
“Marriage” would become a term used exclusively to refer to religious and other non-state ceremonies, which the private organizations conducting the ceremonies would be free to define the parameters of. Its advocates promote it as a way of defusing the Right’s concerns about “marriage being redefined.”
It almost certainly wouldn’t work. The Right is not interested in compromises here. They want existing privileges and injustices to continue, and one of those injustices they want to preserve is the oppression of non-straight people.
I can see hear Sean Hannity now: “So, am I correct that you actually support the proposals currently being advocated by militant homosexuals to remove all recognition of marriage from our law books?” At this point, the guest will either try and rephrase what’s being proposed with a more complete and accurate description (at which point Sean will shout at him for not answering his “simple question” with a “yes” or a “no”), or the guest will say “yes” (at which point Sean will launch on a long tirade of how evil and un-American the Left is). Or something very much like that.
What won’t happen is the proposal being received as a potentially reasonable compromise on the marriage debate.
Published at 08:59 on 29 August 2014
I’ve long known about things like the King David Hotel bombing, which proves that the Zionist side in the Israel/Palestine conflict is itself no stranger to the use of terrorist tactics.
But until recently, I never realized how creepy the roots of the Israeli Right — which has held power in that country for basically the past quarter century — really are. It’s far worse than your garden-variety greed-based conservative movement.
The Stern Gang actually saw a natural affinity between its values and those of the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists (at least initially, before the full magnitude of the Final Solution became known), and tried to ally itself with the Axis powers circa 1940.
And Menachem Begin, the founder of the modern Likud Bloc, was the leader of a right-wing party called Herut or Tnuat Haherut, whose methods were so fascistic that in 1948 Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and about two dozen other prominent Jewish intellectuals wrote a letter to the New York Times denouncing Begin and encouraging him and his movement to be shunned.
It’s pretty shocking stuff that’s detailed in the letter, and well worth a read. And it probably all helps explain why the present-day right-wing Israeli government acts like it does.
Published at 08:23 on 31 July 2014
So, this is now the sixth time that Israel has targeted refugees in Gaza. Can all such incidents be waved off as either accidents or because Hamas was using the refugees as human shields by putting missile launchers in those same refugee centers? Highly unlikely, particularly when UN officials themselves have typically reported otherwise.
Over 1,200 have now been killed in Gaza. Due to the nature of the Palestinian armed struggle, which is not organized into a formal army with formal military bases, it’s impossible to say how many of those 1,200 are civilians in the true sense of the world (i.e. not combatants). But let’s be very generous to Israel and assume 50% of those dead were in fact fighting for Hamas.
That leaves 600 civilian deaths. Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 had less than half that number aboard when it went down over the Ukraine. The West’s reaction to Russia’s arming of the separatists, accused of firing a missile that downed that plane, has been to order Russia to stop arming the rebels and impose sanctions until Russia complies.
The response to the deaths in Gaza is quite different. While there has been a measure of hand-wringing in public about all the killing, arms shipments are being made to Israel so that it can continue its murderous actions. Actions, as the old saw goes, speak louder than words.
There is no moral high ground to be found in the ruling elite of West when it comes to any objection to the destruction of innocent life. None whatsoever. Any assertions otherwise are an insult to the intelligence of any thinking person.
Published at 14:14 on 21 July 2014
Really, how can anyone believe the hogwash about destroying the infiltration tunnels being the reason for Israel’s attacks on Gaza? Those tunnels have been being built for years. I’m sure the tunnels are being destroyed by Israel as part of its current military operations, but it wasn’t existence of the tunnels that prompted this latest round of attacks: it was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers last month.
So, it’s effectively a form of blunt retaliation, whereby over 500 Palestinians — none of whom have been proven guilty of the crime being retaliated for, mind you — have been murdered in return for the murder of the three Israelis. Collective punishment at its worst.
