Why would North Korea believe US assurances?

Much attention is being paid to the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. The one-on-one meeting with just translators present begins at 9:00am Tuesday morning Singapore time which is 9:00pm ET Monday night. Aides and national security advisors will join them later. We know for certain that whatever the outcome, the summit will be a great success. Why? Because Trump will tell everyone that it was. He will tell us that it was the biggest and greatest summit meeting ever, even if the final deal is that the US agrees to give Alaska and Manhattan to North Korea and the meeting ends with Kim mooning Trump.
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The awesome beauty and power of a tornado

This video of a tornado touching down in Laramie, Wyoming last week is awe-inspiring. I had thought that tornados start in the clouds and then touch down on the ground but in this video at the 18-second mark you see that there is also a bottom-up element, a sliver that starts on the ground and joins to the larger part coming from the top. The tightness of the funnel cloud is indicative of the massive destructive power that it can unleash for anyone and anything that has the misfortune to lie in its narrow path.

Now that’s what I call a swearing in

Many people think that before you can hold any public office, you have to swear on the Bible. Some think that any religious text will suffice. But Mariah Parker, who was elected as a county commissioner in Georgia, decided to show that this was false in the most emphatic way. She not only swore on a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X held by her beaming and clearly proud mother, her other hand was raised in a clenched fist while she did so.

Way to go, Mariah! We need more people breaking these silly traditions.

How progressive challengers help change politics even if they don’t win

The case of Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo for the governorship of the state of New York, provides a good window on two different ways of viewing primary elections in the US. The party establishment would prefer to have uncontested primaries so that their chosen candidates can focus on the general election, even if the candidates are like Cuomo who are Wall Street friendly and ideologically center-right. In fact, that is precisely the type of candidate that the Democratic party wants. They also worry that a tightly fought primary race will damage their chances of winning in the general election and so they throw their weight against the challengers, even if the challengers are more representative of the constituencies that party claims to represent.
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Why bother to give him a code name at all?

The actress Eunice Grayson died yesterday at the age of 90. It was she who cued up the moment when Sean Connery would, as James Bond in Dr No, first say his name in the iconic way that has been parodied mercilessly so many times.

What always struck me is that the only people who ever called Bond by his code name of 007 were his co-workers in British intelligence. He himself would tell everyone his real name, even when introduced to his enemies, which seemed to make having a code name utterly pointless.

As a piece of trivia, the actual voices of Grayson and many of the ‘Bond girls’ (as they were referred to) in the films made in the 1960s and 1970s were never used but instead were overdubbed by voiceover artist Nikki van der Zyl. Why, I don’t know, but it did reinforce the impression that they were largely scenery and interchangeable.

The flagrant abuse of the bail system

I have railed about the injustices perpetrated by the bail system in the US that allows wealthy and well-connected people to stay out of jail even when they have committed serious crimes, while poor people who have committed minor crimes or even no crimes at all and do not have the resources to flee are set bail amounts that they cannot afford and thus are jailed. Peter Maass says that the recent cases of accused rapist Harvey Weinstein and political influence peddler Paul Manafort are good examples of the differential treatment that is meted out to the rich and poor. (Crip Dyke has already discussed how badly accused whistleblower Reality Winner is being treated.)
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Pursuance Project initiates a Kickstarter campaign

I have mentioned before that I am involved with the Pursuance Project and serving on its Board of Directors. It is the brainchild of activist journalist Barrett Brown to try and get better information out in this age when we are swamped with bad news, fake news, and mostly trivial news, by better enabling committed people who seek common goals to find and work with each other and avoiding wasted or duplicated effort. The project is advanced enough along that a Kickstarter project has just been launched and the following press release explains what the project seeks to do.

The project is not easy to understand at first but this article in the Observer does a pretty good job.
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When Anthony Bourdain went to a Waffle House for the first time

The news today has multiple stories about chef Anthony Bourdain who committed suicide in Paris at the age of 61. I am not a foodie, never watch cooking shows, and had never heard of Bourdain until he recently appeared on a TV show (I think The Daily Show) to talk about the #MeToo movement and distance himself from his chef friends like Mario Batali for their acts of sexual abuse. He also made an apologia, not because he himself had done anything on those lines (he said that he had not tolerated such things in the kitchens he ran) but because he felt that the fact that the women he knew (even his girl friend Asia Argento) had not confided in him with their horror stories was a sign that he was not seen as an ally.
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“We have a world to run”

Donald Trump has called for Russia to be reinstated as a regular member of what is now known as the G7 group consisting of the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada. It used to be the G8 until Russia was expelled in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea.

“Why are we having the meeting without Russia being in the meeting?” Trump asked reporters on his way to the G7.

“Russia should be in the meeting, it should be a part of it. You know, whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run and the G7, which used to be the G8 – they threw Russia out – they should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”

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Excellent critique of Sam Harris

I came across this excellent and thoughtful critique of Sam Harris (and in passing the members of the so-called ‘intellectual dark web’ that he belongs to) by someone who identifies himself as T1J. The title of the video is Why I Stopped Idolizing Sam Harris and, as the author explains, “While I don’t hate Sam Harris like some other progressives, he has stopped being the intellectual hero that he once was in my eyes.” The video explains the reasons for that disenchantment. The video is 23 minutes long but is so well done that I did not notice the time passing.
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