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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Stinkpump Linkdump

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b

Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech

When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html

That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies

Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop

Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:

https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/

As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.

This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.

What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.

But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media

Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.

I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?

Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."

This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/

But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.

One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."

Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":

https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/

Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.

It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html

The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.

But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.

That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1

Stinkpump Linkdump

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freeusemuses · 4 months

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There was only one ship.

One. Are you sure?

Yes. They called it the Pillar of Autumn.

Why was it not destroyed with the rest of their fleet!?

It fled as we set fire to their planet. But I followed with all the ships in mu command.

When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty?

Blinded?

Paralyzed? Dumbstruck?

No!

Yet the humans were able to evade your ships. Land on the sacred ring. And desecrate it with their filthy footsepts!

Noble hierarchs, surely you understand once the parasite attacked...

[Angry chatter]

There will be order in this council!

You were right to focus your attention on The Flood. But this Demon. This Master Chief...

By the time I learned of the Demon's intent, there was nothing I could do.

[Furious chatter]

[Tartarus laughs]

Prophet of Truth, this has gone on long enough. Make an example of this bungler. The council demands it.

You are one of our most treasured instruments. Long have you served your fleet with honor and distinction. But your inability to safeguard Halo was a colossal failure.

Nay! It was heresy!

[Roars of agreement]

I will continue my campaign against the Humans!

No. You will not.

Soon the Great Journey will begin. But when it does, the weight of your heresy will stay your feet. And you shall be left behind.

#halo #halo 2

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thunderrabby-blog · 1 year

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Peter Hotez Vies for Power as Fauci Steps Down

As Dr. Anthony Fauci steps down from his position as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and top chief of the American bioweapons program, the scene is open for another word-wrangling science bungler to step into the limelight. Seemingly vying for the position of lead propagandist for Big Pharma and the global Deep State is Dr. Peter Hotez, dean for the…

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randyite · 4 years

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Donald J. Trump = Worst President Ever

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outofcontextcryptidcollective · 7 years

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#pic post #chief bungler #HOW DID I FORGET TO UPLOAD THIS ONE!

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ascendant-acolytes-fan · 3 years

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NSM’s TURNCOAT Past Commander....

One might anticipate that even Schoep's apparently less than cerebral Beyond Barriers , or Beyond Bunglers, "Managing Director" (& Schoep's main squeeze?) might come up with the concept of displaying the commentary of "haters" with respect to the adventures of America's would be golden boy. In the spirit of fair play, we might even be inclined to comment, concerning Schoep's sartorial splendors. To be sure Schoep's rainment is reminiscent of that draped over a bulging, over the hill, mafia torpedo. Anyone with half a brain, to assure the success of law enforcement liaison, would employ a leggy vixen- Not these people. They reached all the way to the bottom of the barrel to animate the most crusty yard ape possible. Meet the Team | Beyond Barriers USA How is anyone going to find Schoep credible as an "International Extremism Consultant", when we're speaking of the same person who is alleged to maintain that his cell phone landed in the toilet, & can't be used in the discovery process of the Charlottsville VA lawsuit ? Jeff Schoep Sheds Neo-Nazi Past but Stays Loyal With Lawyer’s Maneuvers | Southern Poverty Law Center How is anyone going to find credible NSM's alleged current "Security Chief" who is in the photograph (in above article) standing next to the person who is said to have appointed him (JEFF SCHOEP), with SS runes on his collar.

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thepineapplering · 7 years

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The missing word

Sherlock: You said your life turned on one word Faith: Yes. The name of the person my father wanted to kill.

- The Lying Detective

In Poetry or Truth II: Brecht and The Great Game @toxicsemicolon explains how S4 is “not real life for John and Sherlock. [The episodes] are the clumsy travesties of the wonderful incidents of which John was once the faithful recorder” A conclusion that comes straight from “Studies of Sherlock Holmes”, an essay written by Ronald A. Knox.

Known as “the Cornerstone of Sherlockian Literature”, Ronald A. Knox’s essay started The Great Sherlockian Game. Moffat and Gatiss not only agree with it but clearly take from it to write their series. Give the essay a read. Is short, witty and really fun.

In said essay, among other works, he quoted two books written by Gaston Leroux: “The Mystery of the Yellow Room” and “The Perfume of the Lady in Black”. Previously discussed by @green-violin-bow in this post, these books address one of the most sherlockian subjects: The locked room mysteries. If these titles sound somehow familiar, there’s a reason for that:

So I went and read both books. A locked up room mystery in each one, with Joseph Rouletabille as the smart journalist solving the cases no one could ever, and his faithful friend, the narrator in both books, a lawyer called M. Sainclair. The Holmes/Watson dynamic is obvious from the start. Worth mentioning at this point, as John Watson can be seen as a self insert of Arthur Conan Doyle, Rouletabille is clearly a self insert of Gaston Leroux.

‘The Perfume of the Lady in Black’ takes place inside a dark fort by the sea, where people run from one place to another and the bad guy plays with everyone’s perceptions. He is presumed dead, but everyone suspects he’s actually alive and has taken the identity of one of the guests staying in the fort.

Moffat and Gatiss went to great lengths to reference the books, at the opening of The Abominable Bride:

A lady in black. And the actual dialogue:

- Her perfume?

If these concrete examples are not enough to link these books to BBC Sherlock, we can see their intent for S4 in Knox’ opinion on the books:

“Leaves a whole unexplained problem” and “Long and cumbrous”. That is certainly accurate for both books (and for The Final Problem). And,

Calling Gaston Leroux “a bungler” for drawing on the “long lost relative” cliché is like our exact reaction when we learned about Eurus Holmes.

All of this is like a damn arrow pointing at those books.

The parallels between The Final Problem and this book are really obvious. The case itself is of no importance, but it does have an interesting subplot.

Disaster to you, Watson.

The subplot is what makes the books relevant for us:

- Joseph Rouletabille, the investigator/journalist, is known to be an orphan. His true identity (who is he related to) is hidden from all the secondary characters but not from the main ones and the readers. We learn at the start of the second book (most of the readers actually can deduce so at the end of the first book), that Rouletabille is actually the son of the main villain and his victim, the Lady in Black.

- Such a fact changes his life, brings him both great joy (he finally finds his mother, the woman with the exquisite perfume) and deep anguish (he’s the son of a vicious and cunning criminal as well) and influences his actions from the moment he finds out and on. The subject of his true identity becomes the real drama of the story.

- Gaston Leroux, the books’ writer, places himself in a explicit way in ‘The Perfume of the Lady in Black’. He “meets” Rouletabille as a child; and nine years later, as Editor in Chief of Le Matin, Leroux offers him a job as a journalist.

- The author also adresses Rouletabille’s identity crisis subtextually right from the start. In the first book ‘The Mystery of the Yellow Room’. Rouletabille narrates how the unnamed ‘Editor in Chief’ (a.k.a. Gaston Leroux) asked him what his name was:

“- Joseph Josephin. -That’s not a name. But since you will not be required to sign what you write, it is of no consequence.”

And so Joseph leaves behind his orphan’s last name and takes Rouletabille, a nickname his coworkers had for him, as his own. (Rouletabille means ‘roulette ball’)

Have you ever read a line more meta? A writer dismissing his own self insert as an author, denying him a real name and starting an identity crisis for his character right from the beginning…

At first readers can relate this Rouletabille character to Sherlock. Yes, he certainly behaves like an absolute nightmare and has great powers of deduction. But Rouletabille is first and foremost a journalist, a writer; and his dilemma as an orphan reminds us of the remarkable lack of information there is about John Watson’s family.

So the drama is centered around the writer’s name, the one that doesn’t make it into the published articles (therefore unknown to many), the name that “is not a name”. Who is the author in S4? John Hamish Watson. What name is being obliterated by the author himself? What name is not mentioned at all in season 4?

Hamish.

We learned about John’s middle name in ASIB, and during TSOT was not only discussed but became the key to that episode’s case. Magnussen knows John’s full name in HLV, and in TAB we saw a variation of Hamish in posters promoting a THEATER PLAY.

In TAB, the posters are not featured clearly during the episode, but they’re located in one of the scenes with more meta meaning. The Street scene.

Fortunately we saw them displayed in full during setlock. Those posters are clues for S4, waiting to be decoded. Just to give you a preview, Smith is mentioned, lots of Johns, grand illusions, wax figures, and “To Conclude, at 10 pm, With A Grand Display of FIREWORKS”

So we have a poster promoting a play, in a scene retelling the actual facts. A play within a play (within a play), where an ideal man, all smiles, is just part of an act. A fabrication. Brecht would be proud.

Hamish can be the most queer coded word in BBC Sherlock. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please read immediately these metas and also this one by @heimishtheidealhusband. They are a must to understand the importance of John Watson’s middle name.

The name is so loaded with symbolism and subtext it may be the most important word in the show. Hamish is the key to John’s mystery. And yet, we don’t hear or see the word ‘Hamish’ anywhere in S4. Not once. We just get a hint of the name in a scene where is clear we’re looking at a twisted version of the show.

He goes as far as to have people say is not his writing, is not HIS name the one behind the blog, on the episode with the most evil version of himself. (Please notice how Culverton Smith’s face is behind Nurse Cornish)

What interest could John have in hiding his name if we all know it? If the characters know it? After all there’s ASIB and TSOT where Hamish was mentioned to exhaustion. Even in HLV Magnussen knows his full name. It’s because in s4 we’re in a world where text is at subtext’s service; is not his actual name he’s hiding. Is what IT MEANS.

As heimishtheidealhusband said, Hamish is a symbol of John’s queer identity. This is why we almost don’t recognize him in s4. He’s hiding his true identity from everyone.

Is just one word, so full of meaning, a word he worked hard to conceal from everyone and only let it show when he married a woman.

One word that could turn his world upside down.

One. Word.

Where in S4 can we find a mystery around one word? A name?

Sherlock: You said your life turned on one word. Faith a.k.a. John’s most blatant stand-in in S4: Yes. The name of the person MY FATHER WANTED TO KILL.

Hamish is the part of John his father wanted to kill. This is the origin of his internalized homophobia and self loathing, which has lead him to suicidal thoughts. This.

#the perfume of the lady in black #poetry or truth #tld #tld meta #s4 #s4 meta #john's blog #tab #tab meta #what's in a name #my meta

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trmpt · 7 years

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He may not remember half of what he says, just expects it to disappear into a world of talk, unless it's one of the things that he repeats endlessly as if repetition would somehow make it true. You'd think he would get it that he's documented and that all his stupid words are circling the globe like some defunct satellite.

#trump #forgetter in chief #trump mind like a sieve #trump the bungler #president fool

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celticnoise · 4 years

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FORMER Ibrox midfielder Gavin Rae insists his old club could STILL have won this season’s title.

The ex-Scotland international reckons there was a chance Celtic could have slipped up in their quest for a ninth successive championship.

Neil Lennon’s side, of course, were leading the league by THIRTEEN points with only eight games to play and had a superior goal difference of plus 25 on their nearest challengers from Govan when football went into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Rae, who spent three years at Ibrox after joining from Dundee in January 2004, believes Steven Gerrard’s strugglers, who had dropped 13 points since returning from the mid-winter break and had lost to Hearts, Kilmarnock and Hamilton Accies and drawn with Aberdeen and St Johnstone, could have ended the Hoops’ dominance of the country.

It would have required a seismic collapse in form from Celtic – plus the Govan outfit winning their remaining nine games – to derail Scott Brown, Odsonne Edouard and Co.

SPFL chiefs are now preparing to draw a line under the Premiership campaign which has been in cold storage since mid-March.

It is inevitable the Hoops will be awarded the 51st flag in their glorious history.

Rae, though, is adamant Gerrard’s bunglers, who were also dumped out of the Scottish Cup by rock-bottom Hearts, could still have overcome Lennon’s side.

The 42-year-old, speaking to The Herald, said: “Celtic are so far in front at the moment and they’ve been the form team since January.

“They’ve looked like they were going to win the title. But that wasn’t mathematically definitive, they could still be caught.

HOOPY DAYS…Neil Lennon salutes the Celtic fans as the Hoops celebrate a 3-0 win over Rangers at Parkhead in January 2004.

“I can see from both sides, Rangers will be unhappy at not being given the chance to catch them.

“I think the majority of players would love to see the season played out.

“Even if you’re Rangers, a few points behind, there are still a couple of Old Firm games and a chance.

“As hard as it sounds and far away as they were, there is still a chance.

“Though, from a Celtic point of view, it would be fair because they’re so far in front.

“It’s through no fault of Celtic’s own that they’ve not been able to finish the season.”

Rae added: “Obviously, there are some fantastic players at Rangers and the squad is amazing and Steven Gerrard is a winner.

“But Celtic have been there and done it. Rangers maybe don’t have enough players who have been in that position, seasoned pros who have won loads of trophies.

“Celtic are more used to it, when times get tough just cracking on.”

Rae, of course, does not have happy memories of Celtic or Parkhead. He made his debut for Alex McLeish’s team in the east end of Glasgow on January 4 2004 only days after his arrival. The Hoops won 3-0 with goals from Stan Petrov, Stan Varga and Alan Thompson to go 11 points clear at the top and Rae limped off after 35 minutes.

https://ift.tt/2WVnXvO

#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #CelticQuickNews

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newsypeople · 5 years

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News, Top Stories, celebrity photos, latest breaking news, rumours, showbiz, sport news, top stories, viral videos

#newsypeople

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randyite · 4 years

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Worst President Ever

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outofcontextcryptidcollective · 7 years

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#pic post #chief bungler #innately a sinner #the vorester

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noicon · 6 years

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ENUMA ELISH, THE FOURTH TABLET. THE FOURTH TABLET They set up a throne for Marduk and he sat down facing his forefathers to receive the government. 'One god is greater than all great gods,a fairer fame, the word of command,the word from heaven, O Marduk,greater than all great gods, the honorand the fame, the will of Anu, greatcommand, unaltering and eternal word! Where there is action the first to act,where there is government the first to govern;to glorify some, to humiliate some,that is the gift of the god,Truth absolute, unbounded will;which god dares question it?In their beautiful places a placeis kept for you, Marduk, our avenger. 😌'We have called you here to receive the scepter, to make you king of the whole universe. When you sit down in the Synod you are the arbiter; in the battle your weapon crushes the enemy. 'Lord, save the life of any god who turns to you; but as for the one who grasped evil, from that one let his life drain out.' The conjured then a kind of apparition and made it appear in front of him, and they said to Marduk, the first-born son, 'Lord, your word among the gods arbitrates, destroys, creates: then speak and this apparition will disappear. Speak again, again it will appear.' He spoke and the apparition disappeared. Again he spoke and it appeared again. When the gods had proved his word they blessed him and cried, 'MARDUK IS KING!' They robed him in robes of a king, the scepter and the throne they gave him, and matchless war-weapons as a shield against the adversary. 😌'Be off. Slit life from Tiamat, and may the winds carry her blood to the world's secret ends.' The old gods had assigned to Bel what he would be and what he should do, always conquering, always succeeding; Then Marduk made a bow and strung it to be his own weapon, he set the arrow against the bow-string, in his right hand he grasped the mace and lifted it up, bow and quiver hung at his side, lightnings played in front of him, he was altogether an incandescence 😌[Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation] He netted a net, a snare for Tiamat; the winds from their quarters held it, south wind, north, east wind, west, and no part of Tiamat could escape. With the net, the gift of Anu, held close to his side, he himself raised up IMHULLU the atrocious wind, the tempest, the whirlwind, the hurricane, the wind of four and the wind of seven, the tumid wind worst of all. All seven winds were created and released to savage the guts of Tiamat, they towered behind him. Then the tornado ABUBA his last great ally, the signal for assault, he lifted up. He mounted the storm, his terrible chariot, reins hitched to the side, yoked four in hand the appalling team, sharp poisoned teeth, the Killer, the Pitiless, Trampler, Haste, they knew arts of plunder, skills of murder. 😌He posted on his right the Batterer, best in the mêlée; on his left the Battle-fury that blasts the bravest, lapped in this armor, a leaping terror, a ghastly aureole; with a 😌magic word clenched between his lips, a healing plant pressed in his palm, this lord struck out. He took his route towards the rising sound of Tiamat's rage, and all the gods besides, the fathers of the gods pressed in around him, and the lord approached Tiamat. He surveyed her scanning the Deep, he sounded the plan of Kingu her consort; but so soon as Kingu sees him he falters, flusters, and the friendly gods who filled the ranks beside him- when they saw the brave hero, their eyes suddenly blurred, 😌But Tiamat without turning her neck roared, spitting defiance from bitter lips,'Upstart, do you think yourself too great? Are they scurrying now from their holes to yours?' Then the lord raised the hurricane, the great weapon he flung his words at the termagant fury, 'Why are you rising, your pride vaulting, your heart set on faction, so that sons reject fathers? Mother of all, why did you have to mother war? '😌You made that bungler your husband, Kingu! You gave him the rank, not his by right, of Anu. You have abused the gods my ancestors, in bitter malevolence you threaten Anshar, the king of all the gods.'You have marshaled forces for battle, prepared the war-tackle. Stand up alone and we will fight it you, you and I alone in battle.' When Tiamat heard him her wits scattered, she was possessed and shrieked aloud, her legs shook from the crotch down, she gabbled spells, muttered maledictions, while the gods of war sharpened their weapons. Then they met: Marduk, that cleverest of gods, and Tiamat grappled alone in singled fight. The lord shot his net to entangle Tiamat, and the pursuing tumid wind, Imhullu, came from behind and beat in her face. When the mouth gaped open to suck him down he drove Imhullu in, so that the mouth would not shut but wind raged through her belly; her c arcass blown up, tumescent,. She gaped- And now he shot the arrow that split the belly, that pierced the gut and cut the womb. Now that the Lord had conquered Tiamat he ended her life, he flung her down and straddled the carcass; the leader was killed, Tiamat was dead her rout was shattered, her band dispersed. Those gods who had marched beside her now quaked in terror, and to save their own lives, if they could, they turned their backs on danger But they were surrounded, held in a tight circle, and there was no way out. He smashed their weapons and tossed them into the net; they found themselves inside the snare, they wept in holes and hid in corners suffering the wrath of god. When they resisted he put in chains the 😌eleven monsters, Tiamat's unholy brood, and all their murderous armament. The demoniac band that has marched in front of her he trampled in the ground; But Kingu the usurper, he chief of them, he bound and made death's god. He took the Tables of Fate, usurped without right, and sealed them with his seal to wear on his own breast. When it was accomplished, the adversary vanquished, the haughty enemy humiliated; when the triumph of Anshar was accomplished on the enemy, and the will of Nudimmud was fulfilled, the brave Marduk tightened the ropes of the prisoners. He turned back to where Tiamat lay bound, he straddled the legs and smashed her skull ( for the mace was merciless), he severed the arteries and the blood streamed down the north wind to the unknown ends of the world. When the gods saw all this they laughed out loud, and they sent him presents. They sent him their thankful tributes. 😌The lord rested; he gazed at the huge body, pondering how to use it, 😌what to create from the dead carcass. He split it apart like a cockle-shell; with the upper half he constructed the arc of sky, 😌he pulled down the bar and set a watch on the waters, so they should never escape. He crossed the sky to survey the infinite distance; he station himself above apsu, that apsu built by Nudimmud over the old abyss which now he surveyed, measuring out and marking in. He stretched the immensity of the firmament, he made Esharra, the Great Palace, to be its earthly image, and Anu and Enlil and Ea had each their right stations. https://goo.gl/7XTcby

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