April 2014 archive

This year, I was invited to speak at an international women’s day event by the sisters of the Cardiff Feminist Network as part of a series of actions which included a Take Back the Night march, a pro-choice rally and then an event in a park in which there was poetry and various speakers addressing a number of topics including feminism, violence against women, the oppression of Palestinian women, and my talk on the impact of austerity on women in Britain. There was food, a wonderful audience of committed feminists taking place in a public park where in effect since there was no license or permission, the group had taken use of public land to have a celebration of International Women’s Day. My talk was kindly taped by a friend and comrade, Nick Hughes, who then posted it on facebook and on then youtube.

The talk was long, not because it was planned that way; but one person who was supposed to speak was late and the food was not ready to be served. So, since I carry around so much information with me when I am planning to speak, I was able to talk for almost a half hour.

So today’s anti-capitalist meetup will actually be like a meetup. That is, we will have a speaker (me), my talk (minus the spontaneous bad jokes and righteous anger) will be here to read. Then we can actually have a discussion on the topic, since the speaker is right here. This was supposed to go up on the 16th of March, but was preempted by the deaths of Bob Crow and Tony Benn which needed to be commemorated. The issues addressed in my piece, unfortunately, are still extremely relevant.

A scarcity of lethal injection drugs leads to botched executions, and Tennessee’s capital punishment law allows the state to hide unpleasant details from the public.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 6 is the 96th day of the year (97th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 269 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in Athens 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. At the opening of the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed athletes from 13 nations to the international competition.

The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, was a multi-sport event celebrated in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to April 15, 1896. It was the first international Olympic Games held in the Modern era. Because Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also established during this congress.

Despite many obstacles and setbacks, the 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. The Panathinaiko Stadium, the only Olympic stadium used in the 19th Century, overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event. The highlight for the Greeks was the marathon victory by their compatriot Spiridon Louis. The most successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four events.

After the Games, Coubertin and the IOC were petitioned by several prominent figures including Greece’s King George and some of the American competitors in Athens, to hold all the following Games in Athens. However, the 1900 Summer Olympics were already planned for Paris and, except for the Intercalated Games of 1906, the Olympics did not return to Greece until the 2004 Summer Olympics, some 108 years later.

Reviving the Games

During the 18th century, several small-scale sports festivals across Europe were named after the Ancient Olympic Games. The 1870 Olympics at the Panathenaic stadium, which had been refurbished for the occasion, had an audience of 30,000 people. Coubertin adopted Dr William Penny Brooke‘s idea to establish a multi-national and multi-sport event-the ancient games were in a sense international, because various Greek city-states and colonies were represented, but only free male athletes of Greek origin were allowed to participate. In 1890, Coubertin wrote an article in La Revue Athletique, which espoused the importance of Much Wenlock, a rural market town in the English county of Shropshire. It was here that, in October 1850, the local physician William Penny Brookes had founded the Wenlock Olympian Games, a festival of sports and recreations that included athletics and team sports, such as cricket, football and quoits. Coubertin also took inspiration from the earlier Greek games organized under the name of Olympics by businessman and philanthropist Evangelis Zappas in 1859, 1870 and 1875. The 1896 Athens Games was funded by the legacies of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas and by George Averoff who had been specifically requested by the Greek government, through crown prince Constantine, to sponsor the second refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium. This the Greek government did despite the fact that the cost of refurbishing the stadium in marble had already been funded in full by Evangelis Zappas forty years earlier.

On June 18, 1894, Coubertin organized a congress at the Sorbonne, in Paris, to present his plans to representatives of sports societies from 11 countries. Following his proposal’s acceptance by the congress, a date for the first modern Olympic Games needed to be chosen. Coubertin suggested that the Games be held concurrently with the 1900 Universal Exposition of Paris. Concerned that a six-year waiting period might lessen public interest, congress members opted instead to hold the inaugural Games in 1896. With a date established, members of the congress turned their attention to the selection of a host city. It remains a mystery how Athens was finally chosen to host the inaugural Games. In the following years both Coubertin and Demetrius Vikelas would offer recollections of the selection process that contradicted the official minutes of the congress. Most accounts hold that several congressmen first proposed London as the location, but Coubertin dissented. After a brief discussion with Vikelas, who represented Greece, Coubertin suggested Athens. Vikelas made the Athens proposal official on June 23, and since Greece had been the original home of the Olympics, the congress unanimously approved the decision. Vikelas was then elected the first president of the newly established International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Horrible problems with Comodo Firewall (which is even now not functioning properly after a night of work).  There are things I could tell you but- We race!

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I know it’s Sunday morning and you all are probably just prying your eyes open. so the last thing you want to do is read something educational. Well this is important and I have your attention. It’s about how to save a life, most possibly someone you know. It’s about sudden onset cardiac arrest

According the statistics from the American Heart Association, sudden cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death among adults over the age of 40 in the United States and other countries and 90% of them will die. The good news is that with early intervention and CPR four out of 10 victims survive.

   Four out of five cardiac arrests happen at home.

   Statistically speaking, if called on to administer CPR in an emergency, the life you save is likely to be someone at home: a child, a spouse, a parent or a friend.

   African-Americans are almost twice as likely to experience cardiac arrest at home, work or in another public location than Caucasians, and their survival rates are twice as poor as for Caucasians.

Most everyone feels helpless in this situation but that is going to be corrected today, because this morning you’re going to learn CPR and how to save a life. And more than that, you’re going to share this with people you know. Pay it forward.

Ugh, you say, “I don’t think I could do mouth to mouth.” You don’t have to any more. By-stander CPR is now chest compressions only, two hands on the mid-chest, on the hard bony part (the sternum) between the nipples, 100 times a minute, about 2 inches in depth. It’s going to feel and sound weird the first couple of compressions. You may feel and hear cracking. Ignore it. It’s OK. You most likely are not breaking anything. It’s basically like cracking your knuckles. Don’t be afraid, you can only make it better.

You are going to call 911 and push hard and fast.

It takes less than a minute to learn how to do this. So, here’s the video on how you can save a life.

Now that you’ve learned how to save a life. Here’s today’s history lesson

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on thus Sunday’s “This Week” are:  Rep. John Carter (R-TX);  former Army Vice Chief of Staff Ret. Gen. Peter Chiarelli and  Sen. Claire McCaskill (D_MO).

At the roundtable: ABC News contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; former House Speaker and CNN “Crossfire” co-host Newt Gingrich; ABC News contributor and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol;, and Fusion’s “AM Tonight” host Alicia Menendez.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX); White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Thomas Friedman of The New York Times; and Heidi Cullen of Climate Central.

His panel guests are Politico‘s Todd Purdum; CBS News Political Director John Dickerson and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The guests on MTP are Admiral Michael Mullen, Fmr. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; author of Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, Michael Lewis; the man who brought the case to the court, Shaun McCutcheon; and president of Public Citizen Robert Weissman.

At the roundtable are: Kathleen Parker, Washington Post; former Sen. John E. Sununu (R-NH); John E. Sununu, Fmr. New Hampshire Senator (R); former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN); and Steve Case, former Chairman & CEO of America Online.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are: House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); House Intelligence Committee Republican Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI); Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD);  Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA).

Her panel guests are Penny Lee, Corey Dade and Ross Douthat.

MH370: Plane search signal ‘important lead’

 6 April 2014 Last updated at 06:46

  The BBC

Australian co-ordinators in the search for a missing Malaysian plane say a Chinese ship has detected a pulse signal for a second time, within hours of it being heard earlier on Saturday.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston called the discovery in the southern Indian Ocean an “important and encouraging lead”.

He warned that the data were still unverified.

British naval ship HMS Echo is sailing to the area to investigate further.

It is expected to arrive in the early hours of Monday.

Australian aircraft were also on their way, Air Chief Marshal Houston told reporters. Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield would be heading to the latest search area once it had investigated a third acoustic detection elsewhere.

Both HMS Echo and ADV Ocean Shield have technology able to detect underwater signals emitted by data recorders.