Month: September 2018

The Law, in its Infinite Majesty………

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There is now a bill on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, and given his corporatist bent, he will to sign it, that passes PG&E’s liability for the wildfires onto its rate payers:

A bill requiring customers to bail out PG&E for liabilities stemming from the 2017 Northern California fires is now on the governor’s desk awaiting his signature.

SB901 passed both houses late Friday night. The controversial part of the bill addresses the wildfires, including those that burned in the North Bay.

Cal Fire investigators determined that 11 of the fires were caused by PG&E. They have turned those cases over to the corresponding District Attorney’s offices. PG&E could be on the hook for millions — even billions — in damages.

“Before we know what PG&E’s liabilities are, we’ve already given a bailout and that’s wrong,” said State Sen. Jerry Hill. “What we voted on last night was to allow PG&E, if they are negligent and can’t afford to pay that liability, we will pass that cost onto ratepayers, make them pay for it,” Hill said, referring to PG&E customers.

What a surprise:  once again PG&E has proved that bribing public officials gives a better return investments in safety and technology.

The law is only for poor people.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

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Russia will not be renewing its contract to deliver US astronauts to the International Space Satation:

Russia’s contract to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz rockets will end in April, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told reporters on Friday.

The expiration piles additional pressure on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to restore its capability to shuttle U.S. crew members back and forth to the orbiting lab. The space agency is contracting with Boeing Co. and SpaceX to develop new vehicles to transport astronauts, but the work has been plagued by delays.

NASA has relied on Russia since retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 ended U.S.-controlled access to the space station. Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration have touted the commercial program’s importance to ending that reliance, especially as diplomatic relations between the nations have deteriorated.

A Soyuz flight planned for April 2019 “will complete the fulfillment of our obligations under a contract with NASA related to the delivery of U.S. astronauts to the ISS and their return from the station,” Borisov said at the Energia Rocket and Space Corp., reported by TASS, Russia’s official news agency.

“Please give me a lift, you evil bastard,” is probably the least effective way to hitchhike into space ever.

Sympathy for the Chocolatier

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Nestle, the company that has pushed baby formula on the poor all over the world, resulting in malnutrition and death from tainted water, is now saying that it’s just too damn hard to keep track of slave labor:

One of the world’s largest food and drink companies has warned proposed legislation requiring big business to report on their efforts to combat modern slavery could hit consumers’ hip pockets.

Companies operating in Australia with an annual turnover of $100 million or more would be required to annually report on the risks of modern slavery within their business and the actions they’ve taken to address those risks under the federal government’s draft Modern Slavery Bill 2018.

The reports would have to cover issues related to human trafficking, slavery, sexual servitude and child labour within businesses’ operations and supply chains.

Nestle, owner of more than 2000 brands in 189 countries, has told a senate committee that Australia’s proposed mandatory reporting requirements could add “cost and time” to businesses and suppliers “which will need to be borne somewhere”.

Capitalism at its finest.

Linkage

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My favorite song of Paul Simon, his paean to cynicism and detachment, Kodachrome:

How It’s Supposed to be Done

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Following their successful strike, Oklahoma Teachers have decimated their opponents in the state legislature:

For nearly a decade, Republican officials have been treating ordinary Oklahomans like the colonial subjects of an extractive empire. On Governor Mary Fallin’s watch, fracking companies have turned the Sooner State into the earthquake capital of the world; (literally) dictated policy to her attorney general; and strong-armed legislators into giving them a $470 million tax break — in a year when Oklahoma faced a $1.3 billion budget shortfall.

To protect Harold Hamm’s god-given right to pay infinitesimal tax rates on his gas profits (while externalizing the environmental costs of fracking onto Oklahoma taxpayers), tea party Republicans raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and strip-mined its public-school system.

………

Mary Fallin rode a wave of fracking dollars to reelection in 2014, while her GOP allies retained large majorities in both chambers of the legislature. With no organized opposition to counter the deep pockets of extractive industry, Republican officials could reasonably conclude that working-class Sooners had no material interests that their party was bound to respect.

But then, Oklahoma teachers decided to give their state a civics lesson. Inspired by their counterparts in West Virginia, Oklahoma teachers went on strike to demand long-overdue raises for themselves, more education funding for their students, and much higher taxes on the wealthy and energy companies — to ensure that those first two demands would be honored indefinitely.

They won one out of three. Despite the fact the teachers had no legal right to strike — and that the Oklahoma state legislature requires a three-fourths majority to pass tax increases of any kind — the teachers galvanized enough public support to force Fallin to give an inch. As energy billionaire (and GOP mega-donor) Harold Hamm glowered from the gallery, Oklahoma state lawmakers passed a tiny increase in the tax on fracking production (one small enough to leave Oklahoma with the lowest such tax rate in the nation), so as to fund $6,100 raises for the state’s teachers.

The strikers were pleased, but unappeased. They promised to make lawmakers pay for refusing to finance broader investments in education with larger tax hikes. “We got here by electing the wrong people to office,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told the New York Times in April. “We have the opportunity to make our voices heard at the ballot box.” Hamm and his fellow gas giants (almost certainly) made an equal and opposite vow — that those few Republicans who held the line against tax hikes of any kind would not regret their bravery.

Last night, Oklahoma’s GOP primary season came to an end — and the teachers beat the billionaires in a rout. Nineteen Republicans voted against raising taxes to increase teacher pay last spring; only four will be on the ballot this November. As Tulsa World reports:
Republican voters handed out more pink slips to House members Tuesday.

Six of 10 GOP incumbents involved in runoffs were turned out and a seventh narrowly survived, as perhaps the most extraordinary primary season in state history drew to a riotous conclusion.

Between the first round on June 26 and Tuesday’s final results, a dozen incumbents — all Republicans, and all but one of them House members — lost primary or runoff races.

Such turnover is unprecedented for any recent decade, let alone year, and seemed to mark a dramatic shift in the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Each of those defeated Tuesday had, in some manner, earned the wrath of public education supporters during last spring’s occupation of the state Capitol.

………

Oklahoma’s historic primary season was no aberration. Last year, Democrats in the Sooner State won a series of special election upsets by speaking to popular outrage over disinvestment in education. In Kentucky this past May, a public school teacher defeated the state’s Republican House Majority Leader Jonathan Snell in a GOP primary. Snell had been considered a rising star in his party, and a protegé of Mitch McConnell. But he decided to spearhead a push to slash teachers’ pensions. So Kentucky teachers expelled him from office.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is facing the toughest challenge of his tenure — from the Democratic superintendent of the state’s schools. As the Koch brothers’ favorite governor falls behind in the polls, Walker has rebranded himself as “the pro-education” candidate. Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma, Mary Fallin’s 19 percent approval rating is giving Democrats a serious chance of reclaiming the Sooner State’s governor’s mansion this fall.

………

And last night in Oklahoma, teachers left the GOP’s House caucus covered in debris.

The lesson to be learned here is that it is better to be feared than it is to be liked.

The Last Time We Did This, We Created Al Qaeda

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If this sounds familiar, this is exactly the same policy promulgated by Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski when they decided to foment a civil war in Afghanistan, which directly led to the formation of Al Qaeda, and indirectly to the 9/11 attacks:

As the Syrian tragedy lurches toward a bloody final showdown in Idlib province, the Trump administration is struggling to check Russia and the Assad regime from an assault there that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warns would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The administration’s efforts are so late in coming, and so limited, it’s hard to muster much hope they can reverse seven years of American failure. But at least the administration has stopped the dithering and indecision of the past 18 months and signaled that the United States has enduring interests in Syria, beyond killing Islamic State terrorists — and that it isn’t planning to withdraw its Special Operations forces from northeastern Syria anytime soon.

“Right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want,” says one administration official, explaining the effort to resist an Idlib onslaught. This approach involves reassuring the three key U.S. allies on Syria’s border — Israel, Turkey and Jordan — of continued American involvement.

(emphasis mine)

Note that the author of this piece, David Ignatius has been a tool of the CIA for his entire career, and the US state security apparatus in general, and the CIA in particular, has been agitating for regime change since the start of unrest in Syria, and they are unwilling to let it go.

Once again, I return to this quote about the intelligence establishment:

It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.

Here’s Hoping that He’ll Burn for This

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The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that a grand jury will be empaneled to investigate Kris Kobach’s refusal to properly rocess voter registrations as Secretary of State:

The Kansas Supreme Court is allowing a citizen-initiated investigation of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to proceed. The grand jury investigation will focus on whether Kobach, a champion for restrictive voting laws and anti-immigrant policies, mishandled voter registration information in the 2016 election, the Lawrence Journal-World reported on Friday.

Kobach narrowly defeated Jeff Colyer last month to become the Republican nominee for Kansas governor in this November’s election. He will now have to run for office while being investigated for whether his office was “grossly neglectful with respect to their election duties,” and engaged in “destroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration.” Kobach denies the allegations.

The call for the investigation of Kobach began in 2016 with a petition from Steven Davis, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for state house in 2016 and 2018. Davis alleged that Kobach intentionally failed to register voters who tried to do so online in 2014. His petition was initially rejected by a state district court due to a lack of evidence. He filed a new petition in August 2017 after the Kansas state legislature allowed people to appeal petitions that are rejected.

The district court rejected Davis’ petition again, but a Kansas appeals court reversed the district court in June by ruling that it mistakenly required “specific allegations of a crime, when only general allegations are required by the statute.” On Friday, the Supreme Court denied Kobach’s request to review the appeals court decision, meaning that a grand jury will be summoned.

This is going on while Kobach is running for Governor.

I don’t know if it will bear any fruit, but at the very least, it should make him a bit more circumspect about misusing his powers as Secretary of State to tilt the election in his favor.

Typing with 9 Fingers

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I spent this afternoon at the SCA event Trial By Fire, a competition in which cooks attempt to produce, and document, historical dishes under “Pennsic War”  (camping conditions).

You have 4 hours to do the cooking, using things like camp stoves, etc.

I have doing this competition for about 10 years, back when it was just an informal thing done in someone’s back yard.

This time, I had found recipes (see below) in 3 (Main Dish, Grain, and Dessert) of the 4 categories (also veggie).

2 of the three dishes I did with charcoal on a sheet of expanded metal on cinder blocks that is on site, and in the process, I thoughtlessly moved a brick that I was using to put my camp oven above charcoal, and ended up with a blister on my right index finger tip, which is having me type 9-fingered now.

Things did not go exactly as planned, and I arrived about 40 minutes late to the event, which meant that I had to set up my workspace, and then start cooking with about 15% of the time already gone.

Luckily, two of the dishes were quick to make, and the last one had a lot of idle time, so I managed to get all of them to the judges in the nick of time.

I was shocked when my grain dish, Lombard Rice, won the grains category, a first for me.

Then, they announced that I had won the “Grand Master”, overall award, and I was completely dumbstruck.

It appears that my main dish, Sour Lamb Stew, kicked some serious culinary ass.

I had a lot of fun, but I’m wiped, and I’ll probably feel this tomorrow

Recipes after break:


Jurjaniyya (Sour Lamb Stew)1
Ingredients

1.5 kg Lamb, something like shoulder or neck, weight after butchering . 3 Onions
4 Carrots 25g (1.1 oz) Jujubes, dried
1½ tsp Salt, Kosher 2 tsp Coriander seed
1½ tsp Cinnamon 1½ tsp Ginger
1 tsp Black pepper 30 g (1¼ Oz) Pomegranate seeds
30 g (1¼ Oz) Raisins 200 ml (⁷⁄₈ cup) Almond milk
45 ml (3 TBSP) Wine vinegar 2 tsp Sugar
15 ml (1 tbsp) Rosewater

Method

  1. If you are using dried jujubes, put them in a bowl with just enough water to cover them, and leave aside to rehydrate.
  2. Cut the lamb into roughly equal sized pieces, removing any sinew (the silvery membrane you find on the edges of the meat).
  3. Put the lamb into a pot with just enough water to cover it, and the salt. Bring to the boil.
  4. Meanwhile, peel the onions and dice finely.
  5. Peel the carrots and slice into julienne strips, leaving out the core of the carrot.
  6. Finely grind the spices in a mortar or electric grinder.
  7. When the pot with the lamb is boiling, add the onion, carrot and spices. Stir well and reduce to a simmer.
  8. Meanwhile, put the pomegranate seeds and raisins in a mortar with enough water to cover them, and pound well.  This can also be done with a blender.  When the mixture has reached a smooth consistency, strain it through a fine cloth to remove any pieces of pomegranate seed.
  9. When the meat has started to soften and the liquid has reduced a little, add the raisin and pomegranate mix, vinegar and almond milk to the pot and continue to simmer.
  10. When the liquid has reduced and the meat is falling apart,  remove from the heat and add the sugar and the rose water, and mix well.  Transfer to a serving platter
  11. Drain the jujubes if necessary, and pour on top of the meat.  Serve warm.

Changes from the above recipe:
I am browning the meat before stewing, because I think that it tastes better.
Instead of using water, I am using lamb stock, and use it to deglaze the pot browning, because I all that lamb neck has too many bones to ignore.
I am not adding any salt because of the use of the stock, which contains some salt naturally.

Source:
Jurjaniyya: The way to make it is to cut up meat medium and leave it in the pot, and put water to cover on it with a little salt. Cut onions into dainty pieces, and when the pot boils, put the onions on it, and dry coriander, pepper, ginger and cinnamon, all pounded fine. If you want, add peeled carrots from which the woody interior has been removed, chopped medium. Then stir it until the ingredients are done. When it is done, take seeds of pomegranates and black raisins in equal proportion and pound them fine, macerate well in water and strain through a fine sieve. Then throw them into a pot. Let there be a little bit of vinegar with it. Beat peeled sweet almonds to liquid consistency with water, then throw them into the pot. When it boils and is nearly done, sweeten it with a little sugar, enough to make it pleasant. Throw a handful of jujubes on top of the pot and sprinkle a little rosewater on it. Then cover it until it grows quiet on a fire, and take it up.

—Kitab al Tabikh Chapter I (The Book of Dishes, trans. Charles Perry and published as A Baghdad Cookery Book).

Nuhud al-Adra (Virgin’s Breasts)2
Ingredients

200 g Finely ground Semolina flour 200 g Sugar, preferably powdered
200 g Clarified butter (Ghee) 200 g Finely ground almond meal

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 180°C. (355°F)
  2. Thoroughly mix the semolina and almond meal.
  3. Melt the ghee, and combine with sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is frothy.
  4. Slowly add the semolina and almond meal to the butter and sugar – it is better to do this by hand.
  5. Make walnut sized balls of dough and press in to breast shapes. (Nipples optional)
  6. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until pale gold.

Source
Nuhud al-Adra: Knead sugar, almonds, samid and clarified butter, equal parts, and make them like breasts, and arrange them on a brass tray. Put it in the bread oven until done, and take it out. It comes out excellently.
— Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada Chapter XI (The Description of Familiar Foods, trans. Charles Perry)
Features in Medieival Arab Cookery, ed. Maxime Rodinson.

Rice Lombard3

Ingredients

1 ½ Cup Rice 3 Cups Broth
¼ tsp Salt 1 Pinch Saffron
1 Pinch Cinnamon 1 Pinch Sugar

Method
Put broth, salt, and saffron into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Add rice, cover, and reduce heat. Cook for about 15 minutes, or until rice is tender. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Source
Rice Lombard: Ryse Lumbard Rynnyng. Recipe ryse & pyke þam wele, & wesh þam in .iii. or .iiij. waters, & than seth þam in clene water til þai begyn to boyle. And at þe fyrst bolyng put oute þe water & seth it in broth of flesh, & put þerto sugyre & colour it with saferon, & serof it forth.

Rise Lombard Standyng. Recipe & make þam in pe same manere, safe take perto brothe of flesh, salmon, or congyr; & cast berto powdre of canel, & make peron lyure of brede as it is aforesaide.

—Middle English culinary recipes in MS Harley, an Addition and Commentary  5401, C. Hieatt (ed.)

1 Redaction and recipe by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade (https://leobalecelad.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/jurjaniyya/ also http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/Sour-Lamb-Stw-art.html)
2 Redaction and recipe by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade. (https://leobalecelad.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/nuhud-al-adra-virgins-breasts-revisited/ also http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/Virgns-Brests-art.html.)
3 Redaction and recipe by Daniel Myers. (http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/riselombard.html)

Well, This Sucks

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The EU just passed its new Copyright Directive, and it is a complete horror show.

Cory Docterow has the skinny on this:

Today, in a vote that split almost every major EU party, Members of the European Parliament adopted every terrible proposal in the new Copyright Directive and rejected every good one, setting the stage for mass, automated surveillance and arbitrary censorship of the internet: text messages like tweets and Facebook updates; photos; videos; audio; software code — any and all media that can be copyrighted.

Three proposals passed the European Parliament, each of them catastrophic for free expression, privacy, and the arts:

1. Article 13: the Copyright Filters. All but the smallest platforms will have to defensively adopt copyright filters that examine everything you post and censor anything judged to be a copyright infringement.

2. Article 11: Linking to the news using more than one word from the article is prohibited unless you’re using a service that bought a license from the news site you want to link to. News sites can charge anything they want for the right to quote them or refuse to sell altogether, effectively giving them the right to choose who can criticise them. Member states are permitted, but not required, to create exceptions and limitations to reduce the harm done by this new right.

3. Article 12a: No posting your own photos or videos of sports matches. Only the “organisers” of sports matches will have the right to publicly post any kind of record of the match. No posting your selfies, or short videos of exciting plays. You are the audience, your job is to sit where you’re told, passively watch the game and go home.

At the same time, the EU rejected even the most modest proposals to make copyright suited to the twenty-first century:

1. No “freedom of panorama.” When we take photos or videos in public spaces, we’re apt to incidentally capture copyrighted works: from stock art in ads on the sides of buses to t-shirts worn by protestors, to building facades claimed by architects as their copyright. The EU rejected a proposal that would make it legal Europe-wide to photograph street scenes without worrying about infringing the copyright of objects in the background.

2. No “user-generated content” exemption, which would have made EU states carve out an exception to copyright for using excerpts from works for “criticism, review, illustration, caricature, parody or pastiche.”

………

The mandate to filter the Internet puts a floor on how small the pieces can be when antitrust regulators want to break up the big platforms: only the largest companies can afford to police the whole net for infringement, so the largest companies can’t be made much smaller. The latest version of the Directive has exemptions for smaller companies, but they will have to stay small or constantly anticipate the day that they will have to take the leap to being copyright police. Today, the EU voted to increase the consolidation in the tech sector, and to make it vastly more difficult to function as an independent creator. We’re seeing two major industries, both with competitiveness problems, negotiate for a deal that works for them, but will decrease competition for the independent creator caught in the middle. What we needed were solutions to tackle the consolidation of both the tech and the creative industries: instead we got a compromise that works for them, but shuts out everyone else.

This is a complete sh%$ show, and it’s driven by the coverage by newspapers in the EU who believe that the underpants gnomes will make them a profit if this abomination gets passed.