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What you want to say – 28 November 2018 November 28, 2018

Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. makedoanmend - November 28, 2018

What’ca wanna say? Here’s what I wanna say: I’ll be awful fecking glad when this brexit shite is over. I’ve gotten sick and fecking tired of UK this, England that, poppy cock and the DUP’s different ways of saying no. It’s an awful reality TV show gone sour and venal.

There’s a big, bad world out there and the Left is fading into nothingness everywhere. Maybe GW can give us some info on Germany, or maybe other can give insights in other parts of Europe. Maybe some of the American based people can give us some dirt on DSA or OAC.

Is homelessness in Ireland now the norm? Will we begin to accept malnutrition as normal next? Early death because of a crap health service?

Can the EU hold together in the face of different tensions?

Is the Euro doomed due to the inability of member states to control the monetary aspect at national level and also due to there being no automatic capital transfer mechanism across nations or regions?

Will the Left end its love affair with Liberalism and reboot back to its roots as a labour based political movement?

I never thought I’d say this but I’ll be glad when the local elections take place to give us a sense of how far down the rabbit hole of neoliberalism we’ve gone. (I consider the current national arrangement to be a systemic dilution of democracy, but most people seem pretty cool with that.)

Most importantly, will any country be able to beat the fecking Dubs in football this year?

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GW - November 28, 2018

All very good questions MDAM.

I too am fed up the back molars (what’s left of them) with Brexshit. And that’s just one of the reasons it is so poisonous – it drowns out class politics and is itself only indirectly connected to that.

I will try to input more from Germany.

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makedoanmend - November 28, 2018

With due respect to our esteemed host, WBS…

Cheers GW. Yeah, let’s face – post exit – Germany becomes more prominent in the EU. And what happens after neo-liberal Mutti finally, finally leaves the stage? Further Right?

And Marcon as the major proponent of the EU’s future. Yee gotta shudder at that.

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2. makedoanmend - November 28, 2018

Make that ‘county’.

Nah, come to think of it, it might just take a country to beat the Dubs at this stage.

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GW - November 28, 2018

The Connacht rugby team?

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makedoanmend - November 28, 2018

🙂 Maybe – but how deep is the Connacht bench?

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3. Tomboktu - November 28, 2018

The local FG councillor is holding a public meeting …

… on “Social media and online games: advice for parents”.

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4. GW - November 28, 2018

Brexshit news I’m afraid, but significant.

John McDonnell seems to be coming around to the idea of a second referendum with the choice: May’s deal or remain.

So implicitly he seems to be planning on a ‘remain and revolt’ strategy against the neoliberal aspects of Maastricht, Lisbon and the fiscal pact. And that from a large EU country.

Bring on the remain vote and bring on the revolt, I say!

“We can’t have no deal on the ballot paper,” McDonnell said. “There’s an overwhelming majority in parliament against that happening, because of the damage.”

McDonnell said he had recently met leading figures from the People’s Vote campaign, including Alastair Campbell and Ed Miliband’s former adviser Tom Baldwin.

The shadow chancellor said he expected May to lose the first vote, and present a tweaked deal that he predicted would fail as well.

“All through that, we will be calling for a general election,” he said. “Whether and when we put a vote of no confidence down will be a tactical decision. We’ll want a maximum effect.”

He said the party had been meeting to discuss coordination with the Scottish National party, the Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas of the Greens. “If we can’t get a general election, people’s vote is on the table and that might be an option we seize upon,” he said.

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GW - November 28, 2018

Hammond amusingly described in his selling of May’s deal ‘like a sloth selling sloth-poison’.

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CL - November 28, 2018

And while Corbyn is still trying to make up his mind…

” Theresa May is expected to have to delay her arrival at the next EU summit if parliament votes down her Brexit plan, to allow the bloc’s 27 leaders to hold emergency talks and trigger their no-deal preparations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/28/eu-emergency-no-deal-talks-mps-vote-down-may-brexit-deal

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CL - November 28, 2018

Meanwhile in France,

“France is prey to the same “poison” that brought about Brexit, according to President Emmanuel Macron…
“The end of the world and the end of the month: we will and must manage both,” he said…
“Brexit, which took place nearly two years ago, is the same issue,” he claimed.
“These British citizens simply said ‘the world you are offering us is no longer for us, we can’t figure it out. We work hard but don’t see any prospects, we can’t build projects for our children, we live less well: it’s for the City but not for us any more.’” he said…
far-Left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said his comments would not quell what he called a “popular insurrection”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/27/france-prey-poison-caused-brexit-says-emmanuel-macron-seeks/

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CL - November 28, 2018

“Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal would trigger a deep and damaging recession with worse consequences for the UK economy than the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England has warned.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2018/nov/28/markets-us-china-trade-war-trump-xi-bank-of-england-stress-tests-business-live?page=with:block-5bfec997e4b0de80e896e660#block-5bfec997e4b0de80e896e660

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5. makedoanmend - November 28, 2018

Mars “Insight” probe has sent back its first pictures of Mars and captures the horizon and daylight pretty well. Rather surprised at the intensity of daylight on Mars for some reason, and it’s good to get photos of the distant objects and landscapes that haven’t been doctored.

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cdate_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=insight

No life forms, including Elon Musk, sighted yet.

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GW - November 28, 2018

Thin atmosphere = more light? Or perhaps the sensors are tuned for low light.

Mars is about 150% of the distance from the sun so roughly there should be 1/2 the photon density per unit area.

I particularly like the patient hammering, cover with a dust-storm protector and wait approach to seismic testing. Very humanoid, that robot.

Egon Musk’s perishing from insane technological optimism is an event that should perhaps be televised. Alll mouth and trousers though I suspect.

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GW - November 28, 2018

About 600 W/m^2 on Mars compared with about 1kW/m^2 on earth taking into account earths atmospheric scattering (sun overhead).

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GW - November 28, 2018

visible light.

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6. GW - November 29, 2018

What chances that Eoin ÓBroin’s social housing bill ever making it out of committee?

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7. Paul Culloty - November 29, 2018

Pertinent article about the rise of Vox (ahead of Sunday’s Andalusian election), and how their growth has been abetted by the rhetoric of both the PP and Ciudadanos.

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GW - November 30, 2018

The Spanish and international media are doing what the MSM always does – giving the racist right most of the attention.

VOX is currently on 6% in the polls.

Podemos in Andalucía (Adelante Andalucía) is on 20%.

The right is split between Cuidadanos and the PP at somewhat under 40%, with the so-called Socialists on 30%.

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8. GW - November 30, 2018

This could possibly go in ‘Signs of Hope’ but renewables now count for more than half (112.5 Gigawatts) of Germany’s electricity production. Coal, Gas and Nuclear account for 105.1 Gigawatts.

The fossil fuel lobbyists inside and outside the government predicted massive price rises and outages from a reliance on renewables. That didn’t happen.

Imagine what a less densely populated country with huge amounts of wind (like say Ireland) could do. Just saying.

Note this is only electricity production not total energy usage (they often get confused). Heating and transport are still overwhelmingly fossil fuel based. So not much of a sign of hope, given that CO2 output is increasing world-wide.

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makedoanmend - November 30, 2018

Yeah, I often easily forget about the distinction between production and usage, especially as there needs to be a continual base load production across an entire 24 hour period. If only the push for renewable had occurred during the mid 1970s, the use of fossil fuels would have been curtailed and kept in the ground. (But we need to think of the billions created for the wealth! /s) (Also, I’m also ignoring transportation, etc, usage.)

TBH, given the requirements for base load production, I don’t see fossil fuels being eliminated entirely in the immediate future, if ever. While there seems to be some progress on battery storage, I believe there are terrible environmental and contiguous social issues associated with lithium and rare earth metals used in storage.

I kind of wonder, Germany being Germany, if they may have already reached renewable saturation and that any new inputs are going to be very marginal in nature going forward.

As for Ireland, hmm…we have only one question to answer…can renewables make the rich richer? if not…

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Paul Culloty - November 30, 2018

And of course, the growth in German renewables has been greatly aided by legislation enabling local communities to form energy co-ops, that can then sell surplus energy back to the national grid, thereby preventing the disputes that are so common here.

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Miguel62 - November 30, 2018

Just wondering what is the make-up of Germany’s renewables. I’m guessing it must be wind, it’s hardly solar or hydro. If so, that’s a serious amount of turbines. Does biomass count as renewable?

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GW - December 2, 2018

Miguel – here’s a link to the excellent Fraunhofer Institute’s graphs of Solar (the orange/pink bits) for this last week:

https://www.energy-charts.de/power_de.htm?source=solar-wind&year=2018&week=48

… and for a week in high summer when there wasn’t that much wind:

https://www.energy-charts.de/power_de.htm?source=solar-wind&year=2018&week=26

As you can see solar (astoundingly) only contributes during the day and the wind input varies with the wind.

But I’d guess wind contributes about 10 times the solar.

The solar infrastructure could be much greater if we only build solar panels on flat roofs as standard.

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9. Starkadder - December 1, 2018

With “Feminists” like these, who needs male supremacists?

Leila Khaled just needed to exfoliate more.

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yourcousin - December 1, 2018

It’s not for us to say. I know plenty of “woke” females who still want engage in traditionally feminine things. That’s their choice. I know it can be complicated, but truly, not our place to call them out.

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Tomboktu - December 1, 2018

Spot on.

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Starkadder - December 1, 2018

“It’s not for us to say. I know plenty of “woke” females who still want engage in traditionally feminine things.”

I’m aware of that, and also how there are few things more irritating then a man telling women “You’re doing feminism wrong!”

A woman writing about her make-up routine wouldn’t normally be objectionable. But it is trivialising in the extreme
to stick a left-wing term into a piece promoting consumerism
of cosmetics (nine different brands of cosmetics are named-checked).

It’s like a men’s website doing a piece called
“Proletarian internationalism thru chugging beers”.

It’s the sort of thing “Broad City” would make fun of.

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yourcousin - December 1, 2018

No real arguments from my quarter, truly, but just not for us to say.

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yourcousin - December 1, 2018

And normally talking shit about goofy white people is well and truly my bag.

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Starkadder - December 1, 2018

I should point out that Katie Herzog is a left-wing feminist
herself, so she’s taking issue with what she sees as an
absurd piece claiming to be articulating a feminist position.

” Decolonization through exfoliation “. I eagerly await the
multi-million dollar ad campaign featuring b/w footage of
Kendall Jenner.

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yourcousin - December 2, 2018

And Katie Herzog can and should critique to her hearts content. I’m not defending the ad. I’m simply stating in the most polite way I can think of that it’s not for a site made up of 99% dudes to venture down that path.

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10. Starkadder - December 1, 2018

I see George H. W. Bush is gone.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/former-us-president-george-hw-bush-dies-aged-94-1.3717242

Wonder will the obituaries mention how he nixed a promising plan to reduce carbon emissions during his term.

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CL - December 1, 2018

The obits will probably not mention this either:

“US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

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yourcousin - December 2, 2018

Yes but he did fight in the war, so not like he was a sympathizer.

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CL - December 2, 2018

True, the Bushes are not fascist, just capitalist.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-12925591

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11. Joe - December 2, 2018

Can’t find the Tóibín party thread so I’ll put this here. Breda O’Brien is clearly on board.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/a-new-political-movement-in-ireland-is-long-overdue-1.3715906

A meeting in Monkstown no less ….

“Although there had been no posters or leaflets advertising it, there were about 150 people there. There seemed to be a couple of distinct groupings. The majority were there because of feeling that they had no one to vote for in relation to the right to life.
There was a tiny group there who were hoping Tóibín would have an anti-immigration platform. They were given a polite hearing and an equally polite and firm assurance that this would not be part of the policy platform.”

Can’t really see much of a future for Tóibín’s party based on the take in the full article.

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WorldbyStorm - December 2, 2018

Agreed, got a few thoughts on her overall piece which I’ll post up tomorrow.

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CL - December 2, 2018

Its greatly to be welcomed that the anti-immigrant strain does not seem to be taking hold in Ireland. But there’s a piece in Counterpunch by Kerron Ó Luain offering some support to Angela Nagle’s ‘ The Left Case against Open Borders’

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/the-left-case-against-open-borders/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/30/creeping-neo-fascism-in-ireland-and-the-open-borders-question/

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12. Starkadder - December 3, 2018

Tablet Magazine publishes a piece by anti-feminist, anti-immigration
writer Alexander Zubatov arguing “Cultural Marxism” is a real and active force.

Worth noting Zubatov misidentifies Edward Said as a Marxist.

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