The Digger

For those here who aren't nerds: Virtually ALL motherboards [the core board] for general-purpose single-user ["personal"] and server [central storage] computers and most of the specialized peripheral boards [network controllers, video controllers, storage controllers, etc] in the world are made in the mis-named Peoples Republic of China today, mostly using parts also made there. They are made in a few factories in Shenzhen for the small number of nominal manufacturers, most of them based in Taiwan: Gigabyte, ASUS, ASRock, MSI, Tyan, Dell, Supermicro. Supermicro, headquartered in California, is the gold standard as far as servers go, though servers from Dell, headquartered in Texas, are popular in businesses. But Dell, and even Supermicro now, source their boards from those factories in the PRC. Which is how the PRC has cracked (not hacked) into the top layer of US government and industry, as disclosed by the Bloomberg article. General-purpose computers are use...

In the first part of this video, Richard Wolff presents his views on what’s going on in Canada, France, and Italy, and HR Clinton’s views on immigration. In the second part, he interviews Dr Harriet Fraad, who presents her views on the status and needs of women in the US. Lots to discuss here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1455&v=bDldTNyHfPs

This is part one of a six-part series which the author, Andrew Dittmer, presents as an interview with a man nymed Code Name Cain (CNC). CNC is actually a creation of the author, whom he constructed as an adherent to the ideas put forth in a book by Hans-Hermann Hoppe called “Democracy: The God That Failed.” Although CNC is fictional, Hoppe’s book is real, and passages from it are in red. The piece presents an extremely right-libertarian view which I would say is sociopathic. To be clear, Dittmer is referring to right-libertarianism when he uses the term libertarianism. It is a journey, all right - quite the trip - so I’ll warn you: the night I read it I had really creepy dreams. Dittmer asks, “Is is possible that libertarianism is a theory of sovereignty, and not a theory of freedom?” I ask, is this capitalism to its logical conclusion?  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work...

As if having an absurdist in the White House weren't enough of an existential threat the climate continues to degrade. With the United States' own agencies responsible for keeping track of climate change temporarily (I hope) shuttered by presidential whim the European Union's <a href ="https://climate.copernicus.eu">Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)</a>  becomes even more important. Their most recent report https://climate.copernicus.eu/last-four-years-have-been-warmest-record-and-co2-continues-rise  indicates that 2018 was the fourth warmest year on record, the others being 2015, 2016 and 2017 (I detect a pattern...). Overall, the graph speaks for itself but the significantly elevated temperatures in the Arctic, something predicted by all the major models, is particularly troublesome because of the region's impact on global climate. Trump may continue to worry about the threat of 7 year old girls from Honduras seeking shelter but my thought...

This is a Chris Floyd article on the erasure of history. It made me miss Gore Vidal who, however he may be chastised for his elitism, just never shut up about the absurdity of the US media and Amerikans' willingness to eat it. For dinner tonight we have... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Making the social media rounds at the moment is a transcription of Rachel Maddow’s “utterly terrifying” and “deeply chilling” take on one tidbit from Trump’s surreal and probably drug-addled rambling in front of his Cabinet this week. At one point, Trump said the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to fight Islamic terrorism. But Maddow assures us, in great detail, that  no one , anywhere — not even among Trump’s most rabid supporters, not even the bug-eyed goobers on Fox and Friends — has ever  advanced the notion that the Soviet incursion had anything  to do with terrorism. In fact, the only  place in the history of the world in which this notion has ever be...

For a rather lengthy article introducing the essential differences among right-libertarians and left-libertarians and socialist-libertarians, see this Karl Widerquist essay. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Libertarianism [233] [V1b-Edit] [Karl Widerquist] [] [w6728] The word “libertarian” in the sense of the combination of the word “liberty” and the suffix “-ian” literally means “of or about freedom.” It is an antonym of “authoritarian,” and the simplest dictionary definition is one who advocates liberty (Simpson and Weiner 1989). But the name “libertarianism” has been adopted by several very different political movements. Property rights advocates have popularized the association of the term with their ideology in the United States and to a lesser extent in other Englishspeaking countries. But they only began using the term in 1955 (Russell 1955). Before that, and in most of the rest of the world today, the term has been associated almost exclusively with leftists groups advocating e...

This is the reflections of Andrew Dittmer, author of a six-part satirical interview, "Journey into a Libertarian Future," published on Yves Smith's "naked capitalism" website. The last part's URL is https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/journey-libertarian-future-part-vi-certainty.html , which provides links to the first five in the beginning..  Since many of us (most? all?) like discussing each other's comments more than discussing actual articles -- in this case a series of interviews with a made-up person -- I thought that the "Readers' Response" would be an appropriate topic of discussion. Most importantly, imo, are the real world distinctions among those who think in right-libertarian ideological patterns compared and contrasted with those who think in left-libertarian ideological patterns and those who think in socialist-libertarian ideological patterns. https://www.nakedcapitalism... ----------- "Journey into a Libertar...