Join merriemarie on Amplify
The Web's Social News Network.

Curate, connect & build relationships you'll learn from.

merriemarie's clog
« Amplog Home   Daily Archives: October 17, 2009

Categories

Fascism, Defined

Amplify’d from directorblue.blogspot.com
A political regime, usually totalitarian…
…ideologically based on centralized government…
…government control of business…
…a leader cult…
…and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights.
Too harsh? Too “right wing”? I just relayed the definition. Any conceptual linkages between the words and images are the responsibilities of the reader.
Other Items of Interest
• Somali Coast Cruise Brochure
• Dealergate: 40 Democrat-friendly Dealerships Become 42
• Star Trek: The Stimulus Doomsday Machine
• Rx for Disaster
• An open letter to Colin Powell
• Illustrated Results of Barack Obama’s Community Organizing
• True Life Fannie Mae Testimony
• Jamie Gorelick, Mistress of Disaster
• The Bidens: Hedge Funds, Hair Plugs and Ponzi Schemes
• Unintended Consequences
Linked by: InstaPundit. Thanks!
See more at directorblue.blogspot.com
 

Noun










Singular
fascism		 Plural
usually uncountable; plural fascisms


fascism (usually uncountable; plural fascisms)

  1. A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on centralized government, government control of business, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights. Originally only applied (usually capitalized) to Benito Mussolini’s Italy.

  2. By vague analogy, any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting and violence against largely unarmed populations.


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fascism

‘On “The Wealth of Nations”‘ P. J. O’Rourke

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Susana Raab

P. J. O’Rourke

The Wealth of Nations is, without doubt, a book that changed the world. But it has been taking its time. Two hundred thirty-one years after publication, Adam Smith’s practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. And where practical truths are most important-amid counsels of the European Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, British Parliament, and American Congress-the lessons of Adam Smith end up as often sunk as sinking in.

Adam Smith’s Simple Principles
Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.” There is no mystery. Smith took the meta out of the physics. Economics is our livelihood and just that.
The Wealth of Nations argues three basic principles and, by plain thinking and plentiful examples, proves them. Even intellectuals should have no trouble understanding Smith’s ideas.Read more at www.nytimes.com
 

Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of self-interest. That was Smith’s best insight. To a twenty-first-century reader this hardly sounds like news. Or, rather, it sounds like everything that’s in the news. These days, altruism itself is proclaimed at the top of the altruist’s lungs. Certainly it’s of interest to the self to be a celebrity. Bob Geldof has found a way to remain one. But for most of history, wisdom, beliefs, and mores demanded subjugation of ego, bridling of aspiration, and sacrifice of self (and, per Abraham with Isaac, of family members, if you could catch them).

This meekness, like Adam Smith’s production, had an end and purpose. Most people enjoyed no control over their material circumstances or even-if they were slaves or serfs-their material persons. In the doghouse of ancient and medieval existence, asceticism made us feel less like dogs.

In the chapter “Of the Wages of Labour,” in book 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Smith remarked in a tone approaching modern irony, “Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society?”

The answer is division of labor. It was an obvious answer-except to most of the scholars who had theorized about economics prior to Adam Smith. Division of labor has existed since mankind has.

The little fellow with the big ideas chips the spear points. The courageous oaf spears the mammoth. And the artistic type does a lovely cave painting of it all. One person makes a thing, and another person makes another thing, and everyone wants everything.

Hence trade. Trade may be theoretically good, or self-sufficiency may be theoretically better, but to even think about such theories is a waste of that intermittently useful specialization, thought. Trade is a fact.

Adam Smith saw that all trades, when freely conducted, are mutually beneficial by definition. A person with this got that, which he wanted more, from a person who wanted this more than that. It may have been a stupid trade. Viewing a cave painting cannot be worth three hundred pounds of mammoth ham. The mutuality may be lopsided. A starving artist gorges himself for months while a courageous oaf of a new art patron stands bemused in the Grotte de Lascaux. And what about that wily spear point chipper? He doubtless took his mammoth slice. But they didn’t ask us. It’s none of our business.

By P. J. O’ROURKE

Read full article >>>

Hammer Wants An Anvil

Amplify’d from www.julescrittenden.com

Paks, unintimidated by the past week’s attacks, have launched their assault on South Waziristan. NYT.

Meanwhile, still waiting to see whether Obama plans to wack the mole on his side of the board. The administration has denied a BBC report that Obama has told the Brits and the Afghans that he is planning to announce this week that he will meet the full McChrystal recommendation of 40,000-plus troops. 

Mr Gibbs said the president had “not made a decision”.

He added: “I think that you can assume that the BBC will not be the first outlet for such a decision.”

“Obviously, the British people and those that serve there have borne an enormous price in casualties. Obviously, we’re thankful for a strengthening of the coalition,” Mr Gibbs said.

There when you need ‘em. Box up another set of classic DVDs. Welcome news all around, denials not withstanding. Maybe Obama saw this Newsweek cover: 

Newsweek
See more at www.julescrittenden.com
 

Fawning “Inconvenient Truth Teller” article inside paints him as a sort of goof savant … a bit like Chauncey Gardiner of “Being There,” he’s been in Washington DC his entire life, everyone likes him, and suddenly they think he’s a genius. The three-decade gaffe-and-reverse record requires some acrobatics, though. The Newsweek scribblers clearly like his go-lite, wack-a-mole strategy though they are big enough to admit at the end that people who actually know what they are talking about say it won’t work. It’s not exactly the Joe Biden embed that I wished out loud NYT’s Dexter Filkins would do as a counterbalance to his McChyrstal piece earlier this week,* but close.

[...] Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations—attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places—to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this “splitting the baby” and say it’ll never work. As a senior civilian Pentagon official points out, “No one has more experience with counterterrorism than McChrystal,” who ran black ops in Iraq and Afghanistan for five years. “If there was an easier, better way, he’d be pushing for it,” says this official, who would not be quoted discussing internal deliberations. [...]

Whatever Obama thinks about Afghan strategy, I don’t think he’s going with anything now popularly known as ”The Biden Plan.” News that he might actually be supporting his generals’ very considered proposal is encouraging, and hopefully he won’t, in some kind of clumsy political sop, do what I’d call “splitting the baby,” which isn’t Biden’s plan but bringing the knife down somewhere between McChrystal and Biden. Meanwhile, the Newsweek article is actually pretty informative, given that Biden is in fact “in the room,” though its effort to dress him up can’t quite get around the fact that his business attire includes a big purple and yellow polka-dotted bowtie that squirts water. Points for noting the big shoes, orange wig, big red “honk” nose, even if Newsweek has decided the clown act is more of a sage jester just telling it like it is.

* The definitive day-in-the-life Biden embed is really a job for PJ O’Rourke. Who knows, it could come to pass, if the Obamists decide they need to sideline the goof savant, they’d even allow that.

Read full post >>>

The Truth May Be … Out There

Amplify’d from www.julescrittenden.com

My local radio talk-show pal Michael Graham questions whether its a hoax. How could anyone plan anything that would fly the way that did and attract the kind of attention that did? And what kind of gain could he possibly expect? 

I dunno. The guy’s showing all the signs of being a full-throttle crackpot visionary. He claims he was trying to devise a way for commuters to fly over rush-hour traffic. Plotting a publicity grab doesn’t seem nearly as complicated.

(Gotta say I’m kind of with Balloon Dad on this one. YouTube: “Fake or Real? Is Hillary Clinton Reptillian?” Pretty strong crazy vibe, though. Sort of a psychotic stink.) 

Cops are now initiating a hoax investigation, though they insist they think the Heenes are on the up-and-up. NYT’s The Lede. Not clear to me how any sober law enforcement personnel can spend as much time in this guy’s company as any casual Internet surfer or American TV viewer has and not report back “bat-shit crazy.” Surber’s on to something. Ron Paul voter

(more…)

Read more at www.julescrittenden.com
 

Anyway, I don’t know if there was a publicity-grabbing hoax plotted, or if an opportunity was seized on the fly, or if it all innocently happened the way Balloon Dad says it did. But whatever happened yesterday, I have a sneaking suspicion the flying Jiffy Pop balloon was not originally conceived, built and being tested as an innovative commuting vehicle.

It’s not for nothing Shepard Smith and everyone else was comparing that thing to a UFO yesterday. Maybe, like the Richard Dreyfuss character in ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Richard Heene was just strangely compelled to make his experimental 3DLAV commuting device look like a traditional Roswell-inspired flying saucer hoax. There is some evidence to suggest Heene has experienced a close encounter of … some kind. But there is nothing about the 3DLAV … seating, controls … to suggest it is designed for low-altitude manned flight, or atmospheric research for that matter, and there’s a lot about it that looks more like an off-the-shelf extraterrestial photo prop. At this point I don’t want to leap to a UFO hoax genesis to this thing, which after all clearly ended up following a different, very human-oriented storyline. Published reports in any case indicate Heene firmly believes humans are descended from aliens. Which doesn’t suggest “hoax” as much as “totally wacked.”

Read more >>>

Hungarian French Artist Victor Vasarely Museum Under Threat of Closure

Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk
Grosses Kristall seriograph on paper
©Galerie am Dom)

Familial intrigue and encroaching damp may mean the Vasarely Foundation Museum in Aix-en-Provence will have to close. A look at the unique building and some of the artist’s work on display in Galerie am Dom in Frankfurt until 5 November

Read more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk
The organisation founded in 1976 to promote and protect Victor Vasarely‘s work has been left penniless
©paulamoya/ Flickr)
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk

Louisiana IV

Louisiana IV
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk

Idom 3

Idom 3
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk

Paintings at the museum

Paintings at the museum
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk
Vasarely began a degree in medicine in Budapest before abandoning his studies to pursue his passion for art.
Permanent exhibition faces closure
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk
Since the artist’s death in Paris in 1997, his estate has been mired in successive controversies
Fille Fleur seriograph on paper 1982
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk

Grosses kristall 1970

Grosses kristall 1970
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk
Visitors to the museum have long been noticing the damp and collapsing ceilings that threaten the spectacular building with closure. The petition can be signed here
©watz/Flickr)
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
Amplify’d from www.cafebabel.co.uk

Meanwhile, an exhibition of Vasarely’s work is being shown from 26 September to 5 November 2009 at the Galerie am Dom in Frankfurt, Germany. For more information visit this link

Tu Pa II 1970
See more at www.cafebabel.co.uk
 

Unique architecture suffering from neglect


A petition has been set up to ask the French government to step in and save the landmark building from total decline

Vasarely was born in Hungary in 1906 and died in Paris in 1997. During his lifetime, his works were honoured with a number of awards including the Guggenheim prize, the French Legion of Honor, the art critics prize at Brussels and the gold medal at the Milan triennale

Vasarely’s identity in the art world was based on his experimentations with optical illusion and the use of line, colour toning and size variation

Permanent exhibition faces closure


Vasarely began a degree in medicine in Budapest before abandoning his studies to pursue his passion for art. He went on to design the official spiral-shaped logo of the Munich Olympic games


Since the artist’s death in Paris in 1997, his estate has been mired in successive controversies dubbed the Vasarely affair (‘l’affaire Vasarely’) and now the new Vasarely affair (‘la nouvelle affaire Vasarely’) by the French press


Relatives have made various attempts to acquire personal possession of his art-works. Vasarely’s step-mother was arrested for theft in Chicago in 2008 after she was caught moving hundreds of Vasarely’s works from one clandestine storage space to another

Securing the Web

Amplify’d from web.mit.edu
A new MIT programming tool would automatically plug holes that hackers exploit.
Programmers try to identify those holes in advance and plug them with code that performs security checks; but if they find a hundred holes and miss one, their programs are still insecure.
At next week’s ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, however, MIT researchers will present a new system called Resin, which automatically calls up security checks whenever they’re required, even in unforeseen circumstances.
Graphic: Christine Daniloff
Typically, web programmers will associate security checks with particular application functions. If you belonged to a social-networking site, for instance, you might be able to e-mail your friends, or post remarks on their pages, or comment on their own posts, or tag their pictures, and so on. Each of these operations executes its own chunk of code, and the developer will usually attach a security check to each chunk, to ensure that the user is authorized to invoke it.Read more at web.mit.edu
 

(These types of security checks operate in the background: they don’t require you, for instance, to reenter your user name and password.)

Many web applications also “sanitize” data posted by their subscribers: if a friend posts something to your social-network page, the application probably won’t show you the post without inspecting it for malicious code.

“We’ve looked at a lot of these web applications, and there’s literally hundreds of places where these checks happen,” says Nickolai Zeldovich, an assistant professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Indeed, Zeldovich and his colleagues identified one popular web application that sanitized data in more than 1,400 places (but still had about 60 security holes).

They also, however, identified a feature that web application security checks usually had in common: “Namely,” Zeldovich says, “it’s that the same data is being handled in all these hundreds of places.”

So Zeldovich, grad students Alexander Yip and Xi Wang, and Professor Frans Kaashoek developed a system that associates security checks with particular chunks of data rather than with particular chunks of code. Any attempt to access the data, by any imaginable route, invokes the check.


One of America’s Wealthiest Men Charged With Insider Trading

Amplify’d from www.examiner.com

 Raj Rajaratnam and five others have been arrested and charged in an insider-trading scheme totaling $20 million.  Raj Rajaratnam is the Galleon Group founder and portfolio manager for the Galleon Technology Funds.

Raj Rajaratnam has been charged with 4 counts of conspiracy and 8 counts of securities fraud.  Let’s just say Raj Rajaratnam has not been having a very good day.  Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading case is the largest hedge fund insider-trading case ever charged criminally.  Raj Rajaratnam’s case was the first time that authorities used a wiretap in an insider-trading case.

Insider trading is where a stockbroker or investor uses inside information to make money on stocks. The premise of insider trading is that it creates an unfair investing platform.

Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading case involved information on companies such as Hilton Hotels, Google, and Polycom.

SEC : http://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce/insider.htm

Read more at www.examiner.com
 

Raj Rajaratnam will appear in court later on today (Friday).

Raj Rajaratnam will face both civil and criminal charges. He will face hefty fines and most likely jail time.

Raj Rajaratnam Charged With Insider Trading



NEW YORK — One of America’s wealthiest men was among six hedge fund managers and corporate executives arrested Friday in a hedge fund insider trading case that authorities say generated more than $25 million in illegal profits and was a wake-up call for Wall Street.

Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager for Galleon Group, a hedge fund with up to $7 billion in assets under management, was accused of conspiring with others to use insider information to trade securities in several publicly traded companies, including Google Inc.

Oversight Democrats Run Away From Countrywide Bribe Program Vote

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com
See more at www.youtube.com
Amplify’d from www.washingtonexaminer.com

Faced with a promised vote to subpoena documents on Countrywide Financial’s “Friends of Angelo” program, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee fled a scheduled 2 p.m. markup today.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the Ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee, had promised to call for a vote at today’s markup on whether to subpoena documents involved in the program that gave sweetheart mortgages to at least four Democratic government officials, including two senators. According to the Wall Street Journal, the program might have also benefitted the chairman of House Oversight, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.

Even if it had been ruled out of Order, Issa’s motion would have received a vote.

Read more at www.washingtonexaminer.com
 

The committee’s Democrats simply failed to appear. Republican staffers say they caught them on tape leaving by a back door at 2:35.

By: David Freddoso
Commentary Staff Writer
10/15/09

Amnesty Now!

Amplify’d from newsrealblog.com

Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Illinois), who made a name for himself back in 1999 by pressuring former President Bill Clinton into freeing 16 convicted FALN terrorists, is back in the news. As Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! program reports, Gutierrez, a vociferous advocate of blanket amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegal aliens currently in the country, led a rally on immigration reform on Capital Hill Wednesday before “thousands of people,” calling immigration reform “the civil rights struggle of our time.”

FishbobMicroFilms-MarchForImmigrationReform638

America’s current immigration policies have been deemed unacceptable to Gutierrez, and he makes it quite clear who is to blame for the current state of affairs:

We are here to say that we will not rest until the raids stop and our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are no longer torn apart by the government of the United States of America.

See more at newsrealblog.com
 

Let’s play a hypothetical game.

Let us assume that Gutierrez’s bill passes, and he achieves his major goal of a general amnesty. The 12 million aliens currently residing in the country illegally suddenly find themselves free to stay, become card-carrying members of the Democratic Party, and live happily ever after.

What happens to the next person who steals across the border?

History has shown us that, after an amnesty, the rate of illegal border crossings increases. After the last amnesty bill in 1986, the US experienced a flood of new illegal aliens crossing the border. In the twenty-year period between 1985 and 2005, the number of illegal residents soared from an estimated 2-3 million to about 11 million. It is only human nature that, upon hearing of an amnesty, people would, predictably, risk all to come to the US by any means and simply wait out their chance in the hopes of catching the next one.

The question then arises: are we really solving the problem by granting another amnesty only to find ourselves in the same situation twenty years from now?

by Claude Cartaginese

Obama Dances With Thalia at Fiesta Latina, Michelle Look Pissed ?

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com
See more at www.youtube.com
 

October 13, 2009: President Obama was called up to show off his dance moves with Mexican pop singer Thalia at Tuesday’s Fiesta Latina event at the White House.Thalia - Fiesta Latina en la Casa Blanca - Grande Final da Festa