Obsidian Wings

a post Black Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

This is the year that Japanese started to take to the idea of Black Friday, though, as is usual with the Japanese, they don't quite understand it. This article from 2016 suggested that it was being considered:

We are now approaching the end of the nenmatsu shosen (year-end sales war), arguably Japan’s most tumultuous period of consumer activity. The question arises: Is there room in the calendar for another slice of commerce?

Maybe. An article in the Shukan Shincho magazine of 1 December looks enviously at the popularity of Black Friday in the United States. Taking place the day after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas shopping season begins in earnest, the term “black” is said to refer to the fact that many US retailers operate at a deficit for much of the year, and so count on the frenzy of year-end shopping to move them out of the red and into the black.

The red ink/black ink explanation seems to be a just-so story, Wikipedia has it as actually arising from police complaints about shoppers in Philadelphia.

It has apparently been floating around here in Japan, and primarily for online shopping, but this year, it seems to have become actual rather than virtual. However, as Japanese are wont to do, they haven't really gotten the concept, as my local grocery store had items like chesnuts and mochi (Japanese rice cakes) marked with Black Friday stickers.

Anyway, an open post black Friday thread.

Just an old-fashioned open thread

by liberal japonicus

Been a bit, so here you go. Altman and OpenAI, possible ceasefire in Gaza, right wing rising in the Netherlands and Argentina, Have at it.

This is Sparta!!

by liberal japonicus

Yes, I know that the Battle of Marathon was the Athenians versus the Persians, but it is hard not to hear that phrase in my mind when I read this article from A. Wess Mitchell, "a principal at The Marathon Initiative and a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia during the Trump administration". A quick jump to the Marathon Initiative, their webpage has a 4 photo slideshow which are

1. The 1814 Congress of Vienna
2. Teddy Roosevelt posing with Russian and Japanese negotiators
3. The 1943 Casablanca conference with Churchill, FDR, De Gaulle and Henri Giraud where Roosevelt unveiled the requirement of 'unconditional surrender' by the Axis
4. and 1957 Paris summit of the heads of state of NATO

Ahh, the good ole days...

While one might ponder why anyone who worked in the Trump Administration might be worthy of paying attention to, an amuse-bouche from the piece:

The United States is a heartbeat away from a world war that it could lose. There are serious conflicts requiring U.S. attention in two of the world’s three most strategically important regions. Should China decide to launch an attack on Taiwan, the situation could quickly escalate into a global war on three fronts, directly or indirectly involving the United States. The hour is late, and while there are options for improving the U.S. position, they all require serious effort and inevitable trade-offs. It’s time to move with real urgency to mobilize the United States, its defenses, and its allies for what could become the world crisis of our time.

Did I say amuse-bouche? Not sure what the French is for 'making one throw up a little in the back of their throat'. I left the link in, which is to a WSJ op-ed which riffs off of Jack Nicolson's line in 'A Few Good Men'. Not the one that was Jack Nicolson's threat against Tom Cruise when he gets arrested, but it might was well be. A couple other gems:

As Russia mobilizes for a long war in Ukraine and a new front opens in the Levant, the temptation will grow for a rapidly arming China to make a move on Taiwan. Already, Beijing is testing Washington in East Asia, knowing full well that the United States would struggle to deal with a third geopolitical crisis. If war does come, the United States would find some very important factors suddenly working against it.

"The Levant" is a keeper. Someone must have played too many games of Risk as a teen. Again, I leave the links in for folks to click, but the first one is to the Moscow Times, which has this:

The record defense spending shows that the Kremlin has no intention of ending its war against Ukraine anytime soon: on the contrary. Even if the fighting becomes less intense or the conflict becomes frozen, the money will go toward replenishing Russia’s depleted military arsenals. Likewise, it has enough cash to fund an escalation such as the imposition of martial law or full mobilization.

Yes, I, like everyone else of my ilk, thought that Russia was just going to toss in the towel and turn all their munitions into plowshares.

This is not to claim that there is nothing to worry about with Taiwan, but tying it into some sort of three front conflict is not going to help keep things tamped down. But hey, defending Western Civilization from the barbarians doesn't need nuance. Anyway, a thread for musings about global stuff.

 

 

 

Grief

by JanieM

Report from my neighborhood, nineteen days later –

Flags are still flying at half-staff in Maine. I see them everywhere as I drive around the countryside, and I try not to cry. Twice a week I drive through the town where Robert Card shot his last victim – himself; it's not hard to imagine that he, like so many people, had to struggle with mental illness in a harsh, uncaring culture that would rather worship billionaires than take care of the ill and unlucky among us.

Similarly with every news article about the massacre, its antecedents, and its aftermath. I still cry. I don’t know when this will stop, and it makes me wonder how the families and friends of the victims of an event like this ever … I won’t say get over it, because I don’t see how they can … but at least pick up their lives and start moving forward again.

News articles are full of blather. Are there enough mental health resources? Did the police, or the army, or social services, screw up the handling of Card in the months before the shootings? Is Maine’s “yellow flag” law flawed? (Duh.) Was the manhunt mishandled?

On and on and on. It’s like we (the collective American “we”) have built a huge Rube Goldberg machine to avoid having to deal with the one part of this mess that's relatively straightforward, if not easily solvable, human nature being what it is. That part is the fact that this country allows private citizens to own weapons of mass murder, which apparently no one can stop them from taking to schools, bowling alleys, and places of worship to gun people down by the dozen.

I have a friend who works with a lot of gun owners, who, to a man (yes) say that they don’t care how many kindergartners are murdered, they will never give up their guns, or support any tighter restrictions on the private ownership of weapons of war.

...

Policing identity

by liberal japonicus

The question of identity is always one on my mind, so the CBC report of Buffy Saint-Marie's identity caught my attention. To summarise, Saint-Marie said that she was adopted by a white couple and was part of what is known as the Sixties Scoop, where First Nation children were taken from their parents and forcibly adopted by white middle class parents, the CBC report casts doubt on that. The Guardian article points out how the accusations and claims are not quite so cut and dry.

The fact that Saint-Marie was adopted into the tribe as an adult is not in question, the questions raised are dealing with her birth and youth. The CBC has published what they say are the questions that have to be answered affirmatively before they publish about so called 'pretendarian' claims. They are

• Is this a person of significant influence?
• Has this person benefited from their claims of Indigenous identity?
• Has this person shaped public perceptions of what it means to be Indigenous in Canada?
• Has this person taken space or opportunities away from others who might rightly deserve them?

I myself have a bit of difficulty seeing how the CBC was able to confidently answer yes to all those questions.

As often happens, a different article I read seems connected to this. This Guardian article discusses a case of harassment of an Australian doctor of aboriginal descent by another doctor, who was punished with a 1 year license renewal suspension. A few key grafs:

On 19 July 2022, the GP emailed Rallah-Baker’s ophthalmology practice, Sunshine Coast Ophthalmologists, with comments that had an “immediate, profound emotional toll” on the First Nations man, tribunal documents show.

According to the statement of facts agreed by both parties, the email read: “You are not full blood are you? Half? Quarter? One eight? Like a watered down bottle of Grange. Not the real thing. I have attached two photos of what real aboriginals look like just to remind you.”

The GP also went on to express his disaffection towards the Closing the Gap (CTG) pharmaceutical benefit scheme (PBS) co-payment program.

“To obtain a PBS subsidy for simple modified release paracetamol a patient MUST be aboriginal. This is not means tested. So rich dudes like you … could get your Panadol Osteo for absolutely NO CHARGE under the CTG legislation but my struggling old age pensioners with their osteoarthritis have to buy it at full cost.”

This paper by Ive Goddard, deals with Red Thunder Cloud, a famous pretendarian and this line from his last paragraph seems like a good line to end with. "Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West's life as Red Thunder Cloud confronts us with basic questions of race and identity that are emblematic of our age."

The Road to Somewhere

by JanieM

The picture is a blatantly obvious metaphor for the road ahead, with a wish that "we" (in the broadest possible sense) could turn a corner into sunshine. I have no hope, but it would be nice.

Open thread.

*****

The picture was taken almost exactly a year ago along Baldwin Hill Road in Fayette, Maine, near the entrance to the Baldwin Hill Conservation Cemetery.

Bigger version here.