Act I

The play opens with Estragon (Gogo) struggling to remove one of his boots, giving up, and muttering, "Nothing to be done." Vladimir (Didi) takes up the thought and muses on it. Estragon claims that he spent the night in a ditch and was beaten by unknown assailants. He finally succeeds in removing the boot, but looks inside and finds nothing; he later removes his second one. Bickering and bantering, the pair discusses whether they should repent. This leads to Vladimir’s pondering about the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus Christ, and the strange fact that only one of the Four Evangelists mentions a thief being saved. All the while, Estragon struggles to maintain sufficiently preoccupying conversation, and Vladimir heckles him for his lack of conversational skills. Estragon suddenly decides to leave but Vladimir tells him that they must stay and wait for Godot—a segment of dialogue that repeats often throughout the play. Unfortunately, the pair cannot agree on whether or not they are in the right place, or that this is the right day for their meeting with Godot. They only know that they are supposed to wait for someone named Godot at a tree and there is indeed a leafless one nearby.

Estragon soon dozes off, but, after rousing him, Vladimir is not interested in hearing about Estragon's dreams—another recurring motif. Estragon wants to hear an old joke, which Vladimir starts but cannot finish, as he is urgently compelled to rush off and urinate due to a kidney ailment that pains him whenever he laughs. Estragon next suggests that they hang themselves, but they abandon the idea when their strategy seems infeasible. Estragon asks what Godot is going to do for them once he arrives, but "Oh ... nothing very definite" is the best that Vladimir can manage. When Estragon declares that he is hungry, Vladimir provides a carrot (among a collection of turnips), at which Estragon idly gnaws, loudly reiterating their boredom.

"A terrible cry" from off-stage abruptly heralds the entrance of Lucky, a baggage-burdened, nearly-silent slave who has a rope tied around his neck. His aggressive and pompous master, Pozzo, soon appears holding the other end. The master barks orders at the slave and frequently calls him a "pig", but acts civil, though terse, towards the other two. The original pair is astounded by this arrival, and at first mistake Pozzo for Godot. Pozzo stops to rest, enjoying chicken and wine without any thought of sharing, and eventually casts the bones to the ground. Estragon jumps at the chance to have them, much to Vladimir's embarrassment, but Pozzo cautions that the bones now belong to Lucky, so Estragon will have to ask him for them personally. Estragon tries to communicate with the slave, who merely hangs his head without answering, so Estragon claims the bones. Now past his initial astonishment, Vladimir suddenly blows up at Pozzo for his mistreatment of Lucky. Pozzo ignores this and explains that he is on his way to sell Lucky, at which point the slave begins to cry. Pozzo presents a handkerchief, but, when Estragon tries to use it to wipe Lucky's tears away, Lucky kicks him in the shin. Pozzo then speaks maudlinly as though he were the victim and Lucky the abuser. When he thanks Vladimir and Estragon for their company and offers them some kind of compensation, Estragon tries to beg for money, but Vladimir quickly cuts him short. When Pozzo suggests that Lucky can "dance" and "think" for their entertainment, the other two agree. Lucky's dance, called "the Net", is clumsy and shuffling. Lucky's "thinking" is a long-winded and disjointed verbal stream of consciousness; it is the first and only time in the play that Lucky speaks. The soliloquy begins as a relatively coherent lecture on theology but quickly dissolves into mindless, agonising verbosity and only ends when Vladimir rips off Lucky's hat. Lucky collapses and, once he is revived, Pozzo has him pack up his bags and they leave at last.

Vladimir and Estragon begin to reflect on the encounter, with Vladimir suspecting that they have met Pozzo and Lucky before. Suddenly a boy arrives, purporting to be a messenger sent from Godot in order to tell the pair that Godot will not be coming that "evening but surely tomorrow." During Vladimir's interrogation of the boy, he asks if he came the day before, making it apparent that the two men have been waiting for an indefinite period and will likely continue this trend. After the boy departs, the moon finally appears and the two men decide to leave in order to find shelter for the night, yet they make no attempt to do so.

Act II

It is daytime again and Vladimir begins singing a recursive round about the death of a dog, but twice forgets the lyrics as he sings. As in the previous act, Estragon claims to have spent the night in a ditch and was beaten, despite the lack of any apparent injury. Vladimir comments that the formerly bare tree now has leaves and he tries to speak with Estragon about the proceedings of the day before, but Estragon retains only a vague recollection, hampered by his extremely unreliable memory. Vladimir triumphantly sees an opportunity to produce evidence of the previous day's events by showing Estragon the wound on his leg from when Lucky kicked him. Only then does he notice that Estragon is not wearing any boots. He discovers the pair of boots nearby, which Estragon insists are not his but nevertheless fit when he tries them on. With no carrots left, Vladimir offers Estragon the pointless choice between a turnip and a radish. He then sings Estragon to sleep with a lullaby before noticing further evidence to confirm his memory: Lucky's hat lies on the ground from the day before. This leads to his involving Estragon in a frenetic hat-swapping scene. The two wait for Godot, as they did yesterday, and in the meantime distract themselves by playfully imitating Pozzo and Lucky, firing insults at each other and then making up, and attempting some fitness routines—all of which fail miserably and end quickly.

Pozzo and Lucky unexpectedly reappear, but the rope is much shorter than yesterday, and Lucky now guides Pozzo, rather than being driven by him since Pozzo apparently cannot see in front of him. As they arrive, Pozzo trips over Lucky and they together fall into a motionless heap. Estragon sees an opportunity to exact revenge on Lucky for kicking him. The issue is debated lengthily by Estragon and Vladimir. Pozzo offers them money but soon all four end up on the ground, idly converse, and finally stand up again. Pozzo insists that he is now blind and Lucky is now mute. He claims to have lost all notion of time, and assures the others that he cannot remember meeting them the day before, but also does not expect to recall today's events when tomorrow arrives. Pozzo’s commanding arrogance from yesterday now (with his blindness) appears to have been replaced by humility and insight, though his demeanor is one of utter despair. His parting words—which Vladimir expands upon later—eloquently encapsulate the brevity of human existence: "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." Estragon has again begun snoozing by the time Lucky and Pozzo depart.

While Estragon sleeps on, Vladimir is encountered by (apparently) the same boy from yesterday, though Vladimir wonders whether he might be the other boy's brother. This time, Vladimir begins consciously realising the circular nature of his experiences and existence: he even predicts exactly what the boy will say, involving the same speech about Godot not arriving today but surely tomorrow. Vladimir particularly seems to experience a moment of revelation when he asks the boy about the colour of Godot's beard and is told that it is white. In a rush of anger, Vladimir abruptly chases the boy away, demanding that he be recognised the next time they meet. Estragon awakes and pulls his boots off again. He and Vladimir again consider hanging themselves, but they test the strength of Estragon's belt (hoping to use it as a noose) and it breaks; Estragon's trousers consequently fall down. They resolve tomorrow to bring a more suitable piece of rope and, if Godot fails to arrive, to commit suicide. Again, they decide to clear out for the night, though neither of them makes any attempt to move.

SOUNDS LIKE US AND / OR EU FOREIGN (OR EVEN DOMESTIC) POLICY...

WIKIPEDIA IS MY SOURCE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot

Beckett refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. He once recalled that when Sir Ralph Richardson "wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address and curriculum vitae, and seemed to make the forthcoming of this and similar information the condition of his condescending to illustrate the part of Vladimir ... I told him that all I knew about Pozzo was in the text, that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters."

Vladimir and Estragon

When Beckett started writing he did not have a visual image of Vladimir and Estragon. They are never referred to as tramps in the text, though are often performed in such costumes on stage. Roger Blin advises: "Beckett heard their voices, but he couldn't describe his characters to me. He said: 'The only thing I'm sure of is that they're wearing bowlers.'...The bowler hat was of course de rigueur for male persons in many social contexts when Beckett was growing up in Foxrock, and his father commonly wore one."

There are no physical descriptions of either of the two characters; however, the text indicates that Vladimir is likely the heavier of the pair. The bowlers and other broadly comic aspects of their personas have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films. "The hat-passing game in Waiting For Godot and Lucky's inability to think without his hat on are two obvious Beckett derivations from Laurel and Hardy – a substitution of form for essence, covering for reality," wrote Gerald Mast in The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. 1979). Beckett also alludes to the comedy team specifically in his novel Watt (1953), when a healthy shrub is described at one point as "a hardy laurel."

Vladimir stands through most of the play whereas Estragon sits down numerous times and even dozes off. "Estragon is inert and Vladimir restless." Vladimir looks at the sky and muses on religious or philosophical matters. Estragon "belongs to the stone", preoccupied with mundane things, what he can get to eat and how to ease his physical aches and pains; he is direct, intuitive. He finds it hard to remember but can recall certain things when prompted, e.g. when Vladimir asks: "Do you remember the Gospels?" Estragon tells him about the coloured maps of the Holy Land and that he planned to honeymoon by the Dead Sea; it is his short-term memory that is poorest and points to the fact that he may, in fact, be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Al Alvarez writes: "But perhaps Estragon's forgetfulness is the cement binding their relationship together. He continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time." They have been together for fifty years but when asked – by Pozzo – they do not reveal their actual ages.

Vladimir's life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair. "Vladimir's pain is primarily mental anguish, which would thus account for his voluntary exchange of his hat for Lucky's, thus signifying Vladimir's symbolic desire for another person's thoughts."

Throughout the play the couple refer to each other by pet names, "Didi" and "Gogo" although the boy addresses Vladimir as "Mister Albert". Beckett originally intended to call Estragon "Lévy" but when Pozzo questions him he gives his name as "Magrégor, André" and also responds to "Catulle" in French or "Catullus" in the first Faber edition. This became "Adam" in the American edition. Beckett's only explanation was that he was "fed up with Catullus".

Vivian Mercier described Waiting for Godot as a play which "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956, p. 6.).

Mercier once questioned Beckett on the language used by the pair: "It seemed to me ... he made Didi and Gogo sound as if they had earned PhDs. 'How do you know they hadn't?' was his reply." They clearly have known better times, a visit to the Eiffel Tower and grape-harvesting by the Rhône; it is about all either has to say about their pasts. In the first stage production, which Beckett oversaw, both are "more shabby-genteel than ragged ... Vladimir at least is capable of being scandalised ... on a matter of etiquette when Estragon begs for chicken bones or money."

Pozzo and Lucky

Although Beckett refused to be drawn on the backgrounds of the characters, this has not stopped actors looking for their own motivation.

Jean Martin had a doctor friend called Marthe Gautier, who was working at the Salpêtrière Hospital, and he said to her: "'Listen, Marthe, what could I find that would provide some kind of physiological explanation for a voice like the one written in the text?' She said: 'Well, it might be a good idea if you went to see the people who have Parkinson's disease.' So I asked her about the disease ... She explained how it begins with a trembling, which gets more and more noticeable, until later the patient can no longer speak without the voice shaking. So I said, 'That sounds exactly what I need.'"

"Sam and Roger were not entirely convinced by my interpretation but had no objections." When he explained to Beckett that he was playing Lucky as if he were suffering from Parkinson's, Beckett said, "'Yes, of course.' He mentioned briefly that his mother had had Parkinson's, but quickly moved on to another subject."

When Beckett was asked why Lucky was so named, he replied, "I suppose he is lucky to have no more expectations..."

It has been contended that "Pozzo and Lucky are simply Didi and Gogo writ large", unbalanced as their relationship is. However, Pozzo's dominance is noted to be superficial; "upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that Lucky always possessed more influence in the relationship, for he danced, and more importantly, thought – not as a service, but in order to fill a vacant need of Pozzo: he committed all of these acts for Pozzo. As such, since the first appearance of the duo, the true slave had always been Pozzo. Pozzo credits Lucky with having given him all the culture, refinement, and ability to reason that he possesses. His rhetoric has been learned by rote. Pozzo's "party piece" on the sky is a clear example: as his memory crumbles, he finds himself unable to continue under his own steam.

Little is learned about Pozzo besides the fact that he is on his way to the fair to sell his slave, Lucky. He presents himself very much as the Ascendancy landlord, bullying and conceited. His pipe is made by Kapp and Peterson, Dublin's best-known tobacconists (their slogan was 'The thinking man's pipe') which he refers to as a "briar" but which Estragon calls a "dudeen" emphasising the differences in their social standing. He confesses to a poor memory but it is more a result of an abiding self-absorption. "Pozzo is a character who has to overcompensate. That's why he overdoes things ... and his overcompensation has to do with a deep insecurity in him. These were things Beckett said, psychological terms he used."

Pozzo controls Lucky by means of an extremely long rope which he jerks and tugs if Lucky is the least bit slow. Lucky is the absolutely subservient slave of Pozzo and he unquestioningly does his every bidding with "dog-like devotion". He struggles with a heavy suitcase without ever thinking of dropping it. Lucky speaks only once in the play and it is a result of Pozzo's order to "think" for Estragon and Vladimir. Pozzo and Lucky have been together for sixty years and, in that time, their relationship has deteriorated. Lucky has always been the intellectually superior but now, with age, he has become an object of contempt: his "think" is a caricature of intellectual thought and his "dance" is a sorry sight. Despite his horrid treatment at Pozzo's hand however, Lucky remains completely faithful to him. Even in the second act when Pozzo has inexplicably gone blind, and needs to be led by Lucky rather than driving him as he had done before, Lucky remains faithful and has not tried to run away; they are clearly bound together by more than a piece of rope in the same way that Didi and Gogo are "tied to Godot". Beckett's advice to the American director Alan Schneider was: "Pozzo is a hypomaniac and the only way to play him is to play him mad."

"In his English translation ... Beckett struggled to retain the French atmosphere as much as possible, so that he delegated all the English names and places to Lucky, whose own name, he thought, suggested such a correlation."


The Boy

The cast list specifies only one boy.

The boy in Act I, a local lad, assures Vladimir that this is the first time he has seen him. He says he was not there the previous day. He confirms he works for Mr. Godot as a goatherd. His brother, whom Godot beats, is a shepherd. Godot feeds both of them and allows them to sleep in his hayloft.

The boy in Act II also assures Vladimir that it was not he who called upon them the day before. He insists that this too is his first visit. When Vladimir asks what Godot does the boy tells him, "He does nothing, sir." We also learn he has a white beard – possibly, the boy is not certain. This boy also has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy that came in Act I or the one who came the day before that.

The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate. "When Colin Duckworth asked Beckett point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, the author replied: 'No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true.'"

"When Roger Blin asked him who or what Godot stood for, Beckett replied that it suggested itself to him by the slang word for boot in French, godillot, godasse because feet play such a prominent role in the play. This is the explanation he has given most often."

"Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise. "I also told Ralph Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly."

That said, Beckett did once concede, "It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it." (Note: the French word for 'God' is 'Dieu'.) However, "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes."

Unlike elsewhere in Beckett's work, no bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay "The Cartesian Centaur" reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned "a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a 'stayer,' recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot." Waiting for Godot is clearly not about track cycling, but it is said that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist Roger Godeau (1920–2000; a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961), outside the velodrome in Roubaix.

Of the two boys who work for Godot only one appears safe from beatings, "Beckett said, only half-jokingly, that one of Estragon's feet was saved".

The name "Godot" is pronounced in Britain and Ireland with the emphasis on the first syllable, /ˈɡɒdoʊ/ (GOD-oh); in North America it is usually pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable, /ɡəˈdoʊ/ gə-DOH. Beckett himself said the emphasis should be on the first syllable, and that the North American pronunciation is a mistake. The T is silent.

DOUBLE-BILLED WITH HAROLD PINTER'S NO MAN'S LAND

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/theater/the-right-way-to-say-godot.html

Maybe Godot never appears because everyone is mispronouncing his name.

More than 60 years after the debut of “Waiting for Godot,” Beckett’s absurdist drama about two vagabonds anticipating a mysterious savior, there is much disagreement among directors, actors, critics and scholars on how the name of that elusive title figure should be spoken. “GOD-oh,” with the accent on the first syllable, is how “it should be pronounced,” said Sean Mathias, the British director of the latest a Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot,” opening later this month at the Cort Theater. “It has to be, really,” he said. “There’s no other way to do it.” But the theater critic John Lahr said that rendering “is too obvious” for the playwright Samuel Beckett, with its suggestion of the Almighty. “Beckett is more elusive and poetic, and he wouldn’t hit it on the head like that,” said Mr. Lahr, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, who instead advocates for “god-OH,” with the accent on the second syllable.

Georges Borchardt, a literary agent who represented Beckett and continues to represent his literary estate, suggested even a third pronunciation was possible. “I myself have always pronounced it the French way, with equal emphasis on both syllables,” Mr. Borchardt said in an email. Mr. Borchardt said he had consulted with Edward Beckett, a nephew of the author, who told him that his uncle pronounced it the same way, and that Edward Beckett could not see “why there should be a correct or incorrect way of pronouncing Godot...As the agents for the estate,” Mr. Borchardt continued, “we do not insist on any particular pronunciation.”

There seems to be nothing to be done to reconcile these competing camps, and productions of “Godot” do what they will. In a video recording, Peter Hall, who directed the first British production, in 1955, pronounces it GOD-oh. An American television production from 1961 starring Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel uses “god-OH.” Discussing his role in the 2009 Broadway production, Nathan Lane says “GOD-oh.”

“I don’t think there is a mathematical solution to this problem,” said Mark Nixon, the director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading in England. Dr. Nixon said he believed the name was correctly pronounced with a stressed first syllable. But, he said, “I don’t feel strongly in the sense that I would correct somebody who said it differently.” Still, he did not dismiss the Godot question as a trivial issue. “Nothing’s trivial when it comes to Beckett,” he said...


AN ENTIRE COLUMN ABOUT....NOTHING! MORE AT LINK

But if you wait around a bit...

Remember that ending scene out of Indiana Jones where the Ark of the Covenant is boxed up and wheeled through an endless government warehouse?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/inside-the-armys-spectacular-hidden-treasure-room

Did you know that that place actually exists?

It is located 30 minutes outside Washington, D.C., at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. The building itself is very nondescript…


GO TO THE LINK TO SEE....YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE IT, OTHERWISE.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/03/further-thoughts-on-russia-.html

Further Thoughts on Russia PETER HITCHEN'S BLOG

...I would urge readers to study an article by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, the best ambassador this country ever sent to Moscow, profoundly knowledgeable about Russia, who is also more than fluent in Russian, and the author of ‘Afgantsy’, a fine study of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, writing in yesterday’s ‘Independent on Sunday’.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ukraine-crisis-no-wonder-vladimir-putin-says-crimea-is-russian-9162734.html

Sir Rodric gives a well-informed and thoughtful explanation of the origin of the dispute, and a cool assessment of our ability to intervene in it. How refreshing this is when compared to the temperature-raising coverage by journalists who cannot even pronounce ‘Simferopol’ , and the alarmist pronouncements of various schoolboy foreign ministers, who really ought to be forced to wear short trousers when speaking in public.... Jonathan Steele in the Guardian is also interesting and a corrective to much of the shouting and screaming going on:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off

He rightly points out that public opinion polls in Ukraine have shown a consistent nationwide opposition to NATO membership, not just among Russian-speakers, but in general...I have argued unceasingly here that the World War Two myth has made serious discussion of foreign policy very difficult. So few people really understand what happened during that era, but that does not stop them from believing that they do.Thus they say idiotic things, over and over again. Worse, they think these things are clever...Now, what about Russian ‘paranoia’?

As I sometimes point out, Russia has good reason to be nervous. It has many possible threats to face. One contributor recently chided me for saying that the USSR faced a threat from Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is a forgivable error. Very few people are even aware of the undeclared war between Japan and the USSR which raged from 1938-1939. It ended (temporarily) at the widely-unknown battle of Khalkin Gol (also known as Nomonhan) in which Georgi Zhukov made his name and learned how to use tanks. Few also recall the severe tensions between the USSR and China which erupted in the 1970s, and may well erupt again, as China regards much of far eastern Russia as stolen territory, and eyes it keenly. Then of course there is the little problem with Germany, as often discussed here....Any visitor to Sevastopol will find it contains many monuments to genuinely heroic defences of that city against invasion (one of those invasions was our more or less incomprehensible incursion into the Crimea 160 years ago, which achieved a good deal less than nothing and cost a great deal of lives). The biggest memorials commemorate the 1941-44 invasion by Germany, which was resisted and eventually expelled at great human and material cost, in battles whose names and nature are unknown to most in the ‘West’...If they knew more about it, they might understand why Russians are ‘paranoid’. The country has no natural defensible borders. A street in southern Moscow, Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordinka (the street of the Great Horde) commemorates to this day the five-yearly visits to Moscow of the Great Horde, to collect tribute from that frontier city. We tend to think that the Urals, supposedly mountains but really rather unimpressive hills, form Russia’s eastern boundary. But it isn’t really true. From every direction, the heart of Russia lies open to invaders. Moscow has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, The Golden (or Great) Horde, Crimean Tatars, Napoleon, No wonder the Russian word for ‘security’ (Byezopasnost) is a negative construction (‘Byez’ means ‘without’ ; ‘Opasnost’ means ‘danger’). The natural state of things is danger. This is why Russians were alarmed and perturbed by the NATO meddling in the Balkans, the outer edge of Slavic, Orthodox influence. And several readers have rightly pointed out that the NATO intervention in Kosovo (1998-9) provides an interesting precedent for Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The province was lawfully part of Serbia. But its majority population desired independence. NATO thereupon lent its air force to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), so securing Kosovar independence from Serbia (recognised by the USA, Britain and most EU states), which will perhaps end in a merger with Albania.



One might add that states which supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attack on Libya, cannot really get very hot under the collar about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine....

A GOOD HISTORICALLY GROUNDED DISCUSSION OF CURRENT EVENTS...READ THE REST!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/opinion/kristof-whos-the-villain-here.html

Shrewd reporting about the Ukraine crisis comes from The Onion, which declared that American reaction is evenly divided — between the “wholly indifferent” and the “grossly misinformed.”...

THE REST OF HIS ARTICLE IS UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WHEN IT IS NOT UNBEARABLY SAD...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/business/why-russia-cant-afford-another-cold-war.html

... the crisis in Ukraine this week drew comparisons to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 or that a chorus of pundits proclaimed the re-emergence of the Cold War. But there’s at least one major difference between then and now: Moscow has a stock market.

Under the autocratic grip of President Vladimir Putin, Russia may be a democracy in name only, but the gyrations of the Moscow stock exchange provided a minute-by-minute referendum on his military and diplomatic actions. On Monday, the Russian stock market index, the RTSI, fell more than 12 percent, in what a Russian official called panic selling. The plunge wiped out nearly $60 billion in asset value — more than the exorbitant cost of the Sochi Olympics. The ruble plunged on currency markets, forcing the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by one and a half percentage points to defend the currency.

Mr. Putin “seems to have stopped a potential invasion of Eastern Ukraine because the RTS index slumped by 12 percent” on Monday, said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

On Tuesday, as soon as Mr. Putin said he saw no need for further Russian military intervention, the Russian market rebounded by 6 percent. With tensions on the rise once more on Friday, the Russian market may again gyrate when it opens on Monday...

PERSONALLY, I THINK PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS ARE MUCH LESS-FIXATED ON THE MARKETS THAN OBAMA, YELLEN, LEW AND ALL....

YES, THEY'VE HUNTED THE POOR BASTARD DOWN.

http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html?piano_t=1


A SUMMARY AT http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/03/06/286833324/4-things-to-take-away-from-newsweek-s-report-on-the-founder-of-bitcoin?ft=1&f=1001

IS HE THE BITCOIN INVENTOR, OR ISN'T HE?

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_satoshi_paradox.php

Newsweek wanted a scoop for its relaunch cover story, and boy did it deliver: it uncovered the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of bitcoin. Who then promptly came out and denied everything. Which means that one of the two is wrong: either Nakamoto is lying through his teeth, or Newsweek has made what is probably the biggest and most embarrassing blunder in its 81-year history.

But before we try to work out what the answer is, it’s important to separate out the various different questions:

Is Dorian Nakamoto the inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto?
Do we, and/or Newsweek, have enough evidence to conclude, with certainty, that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?
Is it reasonable to believe that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?


My tentative answers to the three questions are “we don’t know”; no; and yes.

One way to look at this problem is to try to calculate probabilities, and do some kind of Bayesian analysis of the question, given that either Dorian is Satoshi, or he isn’t. (To make matters even more complicated, Dorian’s given name is, actually, Satoshi. But you know what I mean.) But here’s the problem: if you believe either of the two possibilities, you have to believe in a reasonably long series of improbable propositions. Call it the Satoshi Paradox: the probability that Dorian is Satoshi would seem to be very small, and the the probability that Dorian is not Satoshi would seem to be just as small — and yet, somehow, when you add the two probabilities together, the total needs to come to something close to 100%.

HE GOES ON. SEE LINK

NOW THERE'S A BUNCH OF GODOT-WAITERS...

http://news.yahoo.com/fed-officials-see-high-hurdle-changing-course-qe-214906334--business.html

The U.S. economic outlook would have to change dramatically for the Federal Reserve to alter the pace at which it is winding down its massive bond-buying program, three top U.S. central bankers said on Thursday.

And one, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, told Reuters in an interview that even a third month of below-par U.S. jobs growth would not be enough to warrant such a move.

While Fed Chair Janet Yellen has stressed that her planned wind-down of the stimulus program is not on a preset course, the comments Thursday from Fed officials spanning the policy spectrum make it clear that the hurdle for any change is high.

Weak economic data, even if it persists for a few more months, does not meet that test, all three said....


ARE THEY ROBOTS, PROGRAMMED TO HOLD TO A COURSE OF ACTION, EVEN IF THE BRIDGE BE OUT, THE ROADS WASHED AWAY, AND THE EARTH RENT BY QUAKES?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/opinion/collins-billion-dollar-babies.html?_r=0


...This week, the billionaire siblings from Kansas made the top 10 in Forbes’s list of wealthiest people on the planet. In fact, if you lump Charles and David Koch together, they’re No. 1. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid embarked on a rampage of anti-Koch speeches, denouncing the brothers as cancer-causing polluters who pour unlimited money into conservative political campaigns in an “un-American” attempt to subvert democracy...Then Charles Koch gave an interview to The Wichita Business Journal! I know, I know. But given the supreme lowness of the brothers’ low profile, it was an electric moment.

“Somebody has got to work to save the country and preserve a system of opportunity,” Koch said, explaining his late-life calling as the nation’s premier right-wing megadonor.

Senator Harry Reid, at a weekly news conference on Wednesday, accused the Koch brothers of trying to “buy America.”


My question for today is: Do you think it’s fair to call these guys oligarchs? We have been thinking about oligarchs lately since our attention has been fixed on the former Soviet Union, which is Oligarch Central. In fact, the new Ukrainian government just responded to the tensions in its eastern region by dispatching two billionaires to serve as provincial governors.

“Oligarch” sounds more interesting than “superrich person with undue political influence.” The Koch brothers have a genius for being publicly boring, while plowing vast sums of money into political action groups designed to make it difficult for anybody to make a good estimate of how much they’ve given to promote their goal of, um, saving the country. Maybe it would help focus the public mind if we started referring to them as the Wichita oligarchs. We do need to focus. The country has had very rich folks trying to influence national policy forever. But these days they seem to be getting very richer by the moment, and thanks to the Supreme Court, there’s no longer any real lid on what they can spend.

Who would you want to count as an oligarch?

I’d definitely vote for any billionaires who underwrite campaigns against environmental regulation while their company shows up as No. 14 on the list of Toxic 100 Air Polluters. We’re looking at you, Kochs. (Thank you for the information, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts.)

Michael Bloomberg? Bloomberg bought himself 12 years as New York City mayor; his final election cost him more than $100 million, or $174 per vote, which sounds pretty darn oligarchic. Although when it comes to promoting a political career, being mayor will get you a good seat at a large number of parades.

Warren Buffett? He’s richer than any individual Koch. But, I’m sorry. I do not see an oligarch running around demanding that the government raise his taxes.

I would definitely have voted for the late Harry Simmons of Texas, who donated $31 million to political action committees in the last presidential election cycle. The collapse of campaign finance laws was a big time-saver for Simmons, whose estranged daughter once said that he gave her $1,000 for each blank political contribution card she signed. But Simmons died last year, as did Bob Perry, a billionaire Texas realtor who shared Simmons’s enthusiasm for that Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry...

“The question we’re asking is: who’s going to fill the oligarch vacuum?” said Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice. “And what do you call the level right under oligarchs? We’ve got plenty of them.”

What comes below oligarchs? I guess mini-garchs. And below them, microgarchs. If you have a chance, try to refer to Donald Trump as a microgarch. It will drive him crazy...

http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-violating-state-constitution-school-funding-court-says-171117877--finance.html

Kansas is violating the state constitution in its funding of public schools, a duty that is mandatory and not to be left to the whims of state legislators, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The court has given the Kansas legislature until July 1 to fully fund its obligations for state school funding for the next year. That amounts to at least $129.1 million, according to plaintiffs in the case.



But while the court upheld part of a lower court finding in favor of a group of public school districts claiming the state should provide more money for education, the court also reversed part of that lower court ruling. Some issues were remanded back for further review by a district court panel, including whether or not the state is meeting its duty to provide an adequate public education.

The lower court ruling, issued in January 2013, found Kansas was short-changing its students, and rejected as illogical a state argument that it could not afford increases in school funding at a time when the state was cutting taxes...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/krugman-the-hammock-fallacy.html

... it helps to recall something Mr. Ryan said two years ago: “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” There are actually two assertions here. First, antipoverty programs breed complacency; that is, they discourage work. Second, complacency — the failure of the poor to work as much as they should — is what perpetuates poverty.

The budget committee report is almost entirely concerned with the first assertion. It notes that there has been a large decline in labor force participation, and it claims that antipoverty programs, which reduce the incentive to work, are a major reason for this decline. Then come 200 pages of text and 683 footnotes, designed to create the impression that the scholarly research literature supports the report’s claims.

But it doesn’t. In some cases, Mr. Ryan and colleagues outright misstate what the research says, drawing outraged protests from a number of prominent scholars about the misrepresentation of their work. More often, however, the report engages in argument by innuendo. It makes an assertion about the bad effects of a program, then mentions a number of studies of that program, and thereby leaves the impression that those studies support its assertion, even though they don’t.

What does scholarly research on antipoverty programs actually say? We have quite good evidence on the effects of food stamps and Medicaid, which draw most of Mr. Ryan’s ire — and which his budgets propose slashing drastically. Food stamps, it seems, do lead to a reduction in work and working hours, but the effect is modest. Medicaid has little, if any, effect on work effort...

YEAH, THAT WILL REALLY HELP THE IMPOVERISHED AMERICANS AT HOME...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/natural-gas-as-a-diplomatic-tool.html

In response to the crisis in Ukraine, some American lawmakers and energy companies are urging the United States to export natural gas to Europe in an effort to undercut Russia’s influence over the Continent. The Obama administration should move to increase exports, which would help allies like Germany, Turkey and Britain, but the effects of such exports would likely be modest and wouldn’t be realized for several years...Increasing natural gas exports could serve American foreign-policy interests in Europe, which gets about 30 percent of its gas from Russia. Countries like Germany and Ukraine are particularly vulnerable to supply disruptions that are politically driven.

This week, for example, Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom said it would no longer sell gas at a discounted price to Ukraine, which gets 60 percent of its natural gas supply from Russia. This is hardly the first time President Vladimir Putin has used Russian gas supplies to pressure other nations.

Under American law, energy companies can freely export gas to Canada, Mexico and other countries with which the United States has a free-trade agreement. That does not include Washington’s allies in Europe. The Energy Department can approve exports to other nations if it determines such sales are in the public interest. The department has approved only six out of 21 applications for such exports, the first of which should begin next year. The department could speed up its review of export applications, and Congress could help by easing restrictions on exports to American allies. But even if the government approved more exports, setting up more facilities to liquefy and ship gas would take years and cost billions of dollars. Moreover, unlike Mr. Putin, American officials will not be able to dictate to energy companies where they sell their gas and at what price. (Energy companies would prefer to sell gas to countries like Japan, China and India because natural gas is more expensive in Asia than in Europe.) And if American companies did flood Europe with gas, Mr. Putin would not stand idly by. Russia could respond to American exports by, for instance, lowering the price of its gas to keep its customers in Europe from switching suppliers, according to Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations...American officials should use natural gas exports as one component of diplomacy that also includes assisting other nations with conservation and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. The State Department, under Hillary Rodham Clinton, set up the Bureau of Energy Resources to do just that; it has, for example, helped European nations reduce their dependence on Russian gas by, among other things, buying more gas from Africa.

The Obama administration can certainly help allies by making more natural gas available to them, but it should be realistic about what it can achieve.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/owner-32-room-43-million-mansion-stole-his-workers-tips-and-cheated-them-overtime?akid=11578.227380.O3yQ0J&rd=1&src=newsletter967447&t=10

Instead they shot him in the head, which let him off easy.

as opposed to the belief that humans are controlled by a pre-existing omnipotent being, such as God. Estragon and Vladimir have made the choice of waiting, without instruction or guidance, as Vladimir says, "He didn't say for sure he'd come" (p.14), but decides to "wait till we know exactly how we stand" (p.18).

Albert Camus, an existentialist writer, believed that boredom or waiting, which is essentially the breakdown of routine or habit, caused people to think seriously about their identity, as Estragon and Vladimir do. In The Plague, Camus suggests that boredom or inactivity causes the individual to think. This is also similar to the idea of meditation, an almost motionless activity, allowing the individual to think with clarity. Camus, and other existential writers, suggested that attempting to answer these rhetorical questions could drive someone to the point of insanity. The tramps continually attempt to prove that they exist, in order to keep their sanity:

" We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression that we exist?" (p.69).

"A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object."
Camus

(I think G. G. Patton would have argued that making the other person die instead would also reaffirm your existence, but that's another post)

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Something people read back when they were getting enlightened. Now in used books, can't even sell it.

I feel like a damned fool.

I have a passing acquaintance with autism, and Beckett's play seems to reek of it. Also codependence. A most unsettling combination.

or something

Which takes to understand mood disorders biologically and then treat using that knowledge. Freud was originally a neuroscience but neuroscience until recently treated psychanalysis as non-science and not worthy of consideration in any neuroscience. Mark Solms of Cape Town had an older brother who suffered a severe brain trauma when they were young children. It affected him greatly and he started out being a neuroscientist but the research to help people like his brother was tightly controlled, inadequate and splintered. He later trained as a psychiatrist and pioneered research into what was being ignored.

It is a small group of scientists growing every year who are making great progress and finally getting grants for research to help people become as whole as they can be.

I was looking at the flash mobs turning up in Crimea and thinking that it looked like the fall of the Soviet Union only left mean, greedy, frightened Russians. Of course that is probably not true but threatening gangs like that are scary whether or not they are crazy, mean.

into account when viewing their behavior.

Do you mean the Crimea specifically, or are you including the mobs in Kiev and the Western side as well?

Regardless, they haven't had the luxury to sit back and be on, comparatively, the top of the world like this country had, where people didn't steal things off of each others doorsteps to make it.

I think if people take a good look around, for many it is getting meaner and harder here And we are becoming more like the people we see there doing behaviors that some here (in the US) seem not to like and certainly not understand.

The future is going to be interesting and, I think, "crazy, mean" here in a few places. A lot more than today.

.

video at link, appx 3 minutes

7/18/13 Long Beach Residents Warned About Friday ‘Bash Mob’
reposting from July 19, 2013

Officials in Long Beach are warning residents about a planned ‘Bash Mob’ potentially planned for Friday afternoon.
In a ‘Bash Mob,’ an unruly but organized crowd — sometimes as many as 100 people — race through the streets committing thefts, petty crimes, assaults and property damage.
A ‘Bash Mob’ most recently occurred in the Long Beach area on July 9 in the Pike and City Place areas downtown, according to Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton. One person was arrested and several business reported property damage during the incident.
Detectives investigating the July 9 incident found out about the planning stages of another event, by the same group, scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday, Eaton said.
“The Long Beach Police Department takes this issue very seriously and will be prepared to arrest anyone whose intent is to commit criminal acts,” Eaton said. “We will continue to support everyone’s right to free speech and assembly. However, the police must also protect the safety of those victims targeted by these ‘bash mobs.”‘
Police did not know if the planned ‘Bash Mob’ was connected to a similar incident in Hollywood Tuesday evening.
Eaton says the “mobs” are apparently organized on social media site and often come up with their own names. The “mobs” also arrive and leave by Metro.
“They are able to gather quickly and commit these crimes. Most often, it appears theft is the intent and target of why they are doing this.” said Eaton.
As in Tuesday’s incident in Hollywood, innocent bystanders and businesses are most often hit.
In the July 9 incident in Long Beach, KCAL9?s Suraya Fadel said there were a few minor injuries, several businesses sustained property damage and there was one arrest and several citations.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/07/18/long-beach-residents-warned-about-friday-bash-mob/

Answer: they aren't huddled indoors in 3 layers of wool, trying to stay warm.

in Consumer Watch / on March 6, 2014 at 12:01 am /

Ben Delicious writes from London:

Here.

Glad that sort of stuff only happens in other places.

They charged less interest than credit card lenders or payday loan scammers today.

And it seems that their collection methods aren't that dissimilar anymore.

"Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and political and religious interpretation" wrote Normand Berlin in a tribute to the play in Autumn 1999, "with Beckett himself placed in different schools of thought, different movements and 'ism's. The attempts to pin him down have not been successful, but the desire to do so is natural when we encounter a writer whose minimalist art reaches for bedrock reality. 'Less' forces us to look for 'more,' and the need to talk about Godot and about Beckett has resulted in a steady outpouring of books and articles.

Throughout Waiting for Godot, the audience may encounter religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical and biographical – especially wartime – references. There are ritualistic aspects and elements taken directly from vaudeville and there is a danger in making more of these than what they are: that is, merely structural conveniences, avatars into which the writer places his fictional characters. The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos." Beckett makes this point emphatically clear in the opening notes to Film: "No truth value attaches to the above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience." He made another important remark to Laurence Harvey, saying that his "work does not depend on experience – it is not a record of experience. Of course you use it."

Beckett tired quickly of "the endless misunderstanding". As far back as 1955, he remarked, "Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can't make out."[56] He was not forthcoming with anything more than cryptic clues, however: "Peter Woodthrope [who played Estragon] remembered asking him one day in a taxi what the play was really about: 'It's all symbiosis, Peter; it's symbiosis,' answered Beckett."[57]

Beckett directed the play for the Schiller-Theatre in 1975. Although he had overseen many productions, this was the first time that he had taken complete control. Walter Asmus was his conscientious young assistant director. The production was not naturalistic. Beckett explained,

It is a game, everything is a game. When all four of them are lying on the ground, that cannot be handled naturalistically. That has got to be done artificially, balletically. Otherwise everything becomes an imitation, an imitation of reality [...]. It should become clear and transparent, not dry. It is a game in order to survive."[58]

Over the years, Beckett clearly realised that the greater part of Godot's success came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of readings and that this was not necessarily a bad thing. Beckett himself sanctioned "one of the most famous mixed-race productions of Godot, performed at the Baxter Theatre in the University of Cape Town, directed by Donald Howarth, with [...] two black actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, playing Didi and Gogo; Pozzo, dressed in checked shirt and gumboots reminiscent of an Afrikaner landlord, and Lucky ('a shanty town piece of white trash'[59]) were played by two white actors, Bill Flynn and Peter Piccolo [...]. The Baxter production has often been portrayed as if it were an explicitly political production, when in fact it received very little emphasis. What such a reaction showed, however, was that, although the play can in no way be taken as a political allegory, there are elements that are relevant to any local situation in which one man is being exploited or oppressed by another."[60]
Political

"It was seen as an allegory of the cold war"[61] or of French resistance to the Germans. Graham Hassell writes, "[T]he intrusion of Pozzo and Lucky [...] seems like nothing more than a metaphor for Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where society has ever been blighted by a greedy ruling élite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means."[62]

The roles of Vladimir and Estragon are often played with Irish accents, as in the Beckett on Film project. This, some feel, is an inevitable consequence of Beckett's rhythms and phraseology, but it is not stipulated in the text. At any rate, they are not of English stock: at one point early in the play, Estragon mocks the English pronunciation of "calm" and has fun with "the story of the Englishman in the brothel".[63]
Freudian

"Bernard Dukore develops a triadic theory in Didi, Gogo and the absent Godot, based on Sigmund Freud's trinitarian description of the psyche in The Ego and the Id (1923) and the usage of onomastic techniques. Dukore defines the characters by what they lack: the rational Go-go embodies the incomplete ego, the missing pleasure principle: (e)go-(e)go. Di-di (id-id) – who is more instinctual and irrational – is seen as the backward id or subversion of the rational principle. Godot fulfils the function of the superego or moral standards. Pozzo and Lucky are just re-iterations of the main protagonists. Dukore finally sees Beckett's play as a metaphor for the futility of man's existence when salvation is expected from an external entity, and the self is denied introspection."[64]
Jungian (Carl Jung, personality studies/behaviorist)

"The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in Act I appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to "think" for his master. Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon: "estragon" is a cognate of oestrogen, the female hormone (Carter, 130). This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul. It explains Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods. Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type."[65]

The Weight by The Band:

Is that kosher? Good music, though.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_TRADE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-08-00-18-14

BEIJING (AP) -- China's exports plunged by an unexpectedly large 18 percent in February, possibly denting hopes trade will help drive the slowing economy while communist leaders push ambitious promised reforms.

Exports declined to $114.1 billion while imports rose a stronger-than-expected 10.1 percent to $137.1 billion, customs data showed Saturday.

Weakness in key European and U.S. export markets could raise the risk of politically dangerous job losses in trade-reliant industries that employ millions of workers at a time when communist leaders want to focus on restructuring China's economy.

China's official 2014 economic growth target of 7.5 percent, announced this week by Premier Li Keqiang, assumes trade also will grow by 7.5 percent. But customs data show combined imports and exports so far this year have shrunk by 4.8 percent.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BANK_OF_AMERICA_EXECUTIVE_COMPENSATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-07-18-28-55

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan saw his compensation jump 77 percent last year as the company's fortunes improved.

Moynihan's total compensation was $13.1 million, according to an Associated Press calculation based on a filing made by the company on Friday.

The bulk of his pay was $11.1 million worth of stock awards granted in February 2013. He also had a base salary of almost $1.5 million. Company perks totaled $497,751, most of which was for personal use of the company plane.

Bank of America's finances have been improving. Last year its profit more than tripled to $10.08 billion, and it has been cutting staff and focusing on its core businesses. Its balance sheet has been improving as well.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_NUCLEAR_DECOMMISSIONING_INC?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-08-02-28-39

TOKYO (AP) -- There is something surprising in the radioactive wreck that is the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: opportunity. To clean it up, Japan will have to develop technology and expertise that any nation with a nuclear reactor will one day need.

Eyeing dozens of aging reactors at home and hundreds of others worldwide that eventually need to be retired, Japanese industry sees a profitable market for decommissioning expertise.

It may sound surprising, given all the ongoing problems with the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, including massive leaks of contaminated water and other mishaps that followed its devastation by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

But many experts and industry officials say the experience and technology such as robotics being developed can be used in any decommissioning in the future. That could represent new opportunities for Japan Inc., which has lost some of its global clout to competitors from countries such as South Korea, China and the U.S.

That's not even a silver lining to the nuclear cloud. Still, I am sure the cockroaches will appreciate it, when they inherit the earth.

It is, as is so much, biblical:

From the book of Matthew:

23"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. 24"You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! 25"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.…

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/07/uk-greece-bailout-talks-idUKBREA261SN20140307

(Reuters) - Greece and its international lenders will miss a self-imposed March 10 deadline to clinch a deal that will release the next tranche of the country's rescue loans, three senior Greek government sources said late on Friday.

Greece and representatives of the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had hoped to conclude the latest review of the country's reform progress under the terms of its international bailout by Monday, when euro zone finance ministers meet in Brussels.

But the talks will not be over by then because the two sides are still at odds over a range of issues, mainly on structural measures to boost the economy's competitiveness and over Greek lenders' capital needs.

"The distance between us has narrowed but we will still have work to do next week," one Greek senior government official told reporters after a new round of talks with lenders.

STAY TUNED FOR DEVELOPMENTS IN THIS FAST-BREAKING STORY!

BY THE SAME TOKEN, WOULDN'T "SEINFELD" ALSO QUALIFY AS A MODERN DAY "GODOT"? AND PERHAPS SEVERAL OTHER SITCOMS OF RECENT VINTAGE....

AND THEY AREN'T KIDDING...US NEVER LEARNED FROM CASTRO, OR CHAVEZ, OR....

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-warns-could-reduce-zero-economic-dependency-us-083926261.html

Russia could reduce to zero its economic dependency on the United States if Washington agreed sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine, a Kremlin aide said on Tuesday, warning that the American financial system faced a "crash" if this happened.

"We would find a way not just to reduce our dependency on the United States to zero but to emerge from those sanctions with great benefits for ourselves," said Kremlin economic aide Sergei Glazyev.

He told the RIA Novosti news agency Russia could stop using dollars for international transactions and create its own payment system using its "wonderful trade and economic relations with our partners in the East and South." Russian firms and banks would also not return loans from American financial institutions, he said.

"An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system," he added.

He said that economic sanctions imposed by the European Union would be a "catastrophe" for Europe, saying that Russia could halt gas supplies "which would be beneficial for the Americans" and give the Russian economy a useful "impulse"...Glazyev has long been seen as among the most hawkish of the advisors to President Vladimir Putin but many observers have seen his hand in the apparent radicalisation of policy on Ukraine since the overthrow of president Viktor Yanukovych. Economists have long mocked his apocalyptic and confrontational vision of global economics but also expressed concern that he appears to have grown in authority in recent months.

A high ranking Kremlin source told RIA Novosti that Glazyev was speaking in the capacity of an "academic" and his personal opinion did not reflect the official Kremlin policy...Glazyev described the new Ukrainian authorities as "illegitimate and Russophobic", saying some members of the government were on lists of "terrorist organisations, they are criminals".

"If the authorities remain criminal then I think the people of Ukraine will get rid of them soon," he added.

The mega-bankers thought this whole Ukraine coup would just be an unmitigated cash cow for them. With a Harvard educated technocrat replacing the democratically elected, and less than cooperative, Yanukovich, they knew the Ukraine would be a gold mine for vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney's "Baine Capital." Added to that, they imagined, would be the boost to their World-wide "austerity" strategy which would accompany a U.S. installed "interim government" agreeing to the IMF's radical budget cutting demands.

Instead they now may face non-repayment of their sizable loans to Russia and her allies, as well as the loss of any future profits from those sources. This is why Business Administration majors at U. S. Universities should be required to take a few hours of World History before receiving their degrees.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024628775

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26492053

MORE DETAIL AND EXCELLENT MAPS AT LINK

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/obama-putin-playing-chicken-liars-poker.html

Obama and Putin Are Both Bending the Truth

Obama has certainly lied about the Ukraine crisis. As Yves Smith notes:


Obama has also pretended that the Ukrainian protests which led to the ouster of the old president were peaceful, and comprised solely of everyday Ukrainians. But even the BBC is now admitting that the leading spear of the protests were neo-Nazi fascists:



But Putin has now been caught lying, as well. As Martin Armstrong notes:



Putin also said that he was withdrawing all of the Russian troops in Crimea back to their bunkers. But today, Russians troops allegedly tried to storm a Ukrainian air force base in Crimea. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, and will prevent war. And Russia is supposedly enacting a law labeling journalists as terrorists. (Even if true, Russia would simply be joining Japan, U.S. and Britain.) In reality, it’s hard to know what’s really going, because there is so much propaganda flying on both sides …

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/03/07/inenglish/1394215483_860578.html

Some of the most powerful people in Europe were there. But neither Angela Merkel, José Manuel Durão Barroso, Herman Van Rompuy or Mariano Rajoy was the star of the European People’s Party congress in Dublin. That honor went to Irish rock musician Bono, who had been invited to speak and used the occasion to make the longest, most applauded speech of the day.

The U2 singer spoke about capitalism, the European Union, the troika, Ireland’s bailout and racism against Roma and Africans, as well as Merkel and Rajoy, who were seated in the audience.

And he also spoke about Spain. Bono argued that Europe still had much more to do to get out of the crisis, not just in economic terms, but also in terms of its feelings of unity. “You’ve got Prime Minister Rajoy just this week urging the EU to make structural reforms that will create liquidity in the Spanish economy,” he said.

“Maybe you will. But beyond that, where is the family’s response?” he asked, after comparing the EU with a family in which everyone should help each other. “Where is our Europe-wide campaign to spotlight Spain, to encourage others to take their holidays there, to buy Spanish goods, listen to Spanish music?”

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/03/07/inenglish/1394209008_358257.html

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Friday joined other leaders of Europe's center-right alliance to pick a top candidate for the EU ballot later this year.

Following his penchant for mystery, the Spanish leader left his choice up in the air until the eleventh hour, when he ordered his delegates to vote for Jean-Claude Juncker, the former head of Luxembourg, who is also German Chancellor Angela Merkel's preferred candidate.

Unity was the key word at the European People's Party (EPP) convention in Dublin, where Rajoy made no mention of Spain's battles with Germany over austerity measures, despite the fact that Merkel was also in attendence.

Speaking to the assembled EPP members, which also included Polish leader Donald Tusk, Rajoy asserted that if Europe is pulling out of the crisis "it is because of the EPP's policy."

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/03/07/inenglish/1394211792_628372.html

A marathon meeting of the Organization of American States over Venezuela ended in a deadlock early Friday when the permanent council could not agree whether to send a mission to investigate rights abuse allegations or empanel regional foreign ministers to discuss the unrest and protests in the South American nation.

After eight hours, the Venezuelan government was able to muster enough support to block a petition by Panama calling for emergency measures to address the ongoing protests and unrest aimed at President Nicolás Maduro.

On Friday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elías Jaua called it “a victory” for his country’s sovereignty.

Maduro broke off diplomatic ties with Panama, accusing the government of President Ricardo Martinelli of trying to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/03/06/inenglish/1394119222_386672.html

The panel of experts selected by Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro to draw up proposals for an overhaul of the tax system has suggested that the government impose a so-called fiscal devaluation that would consist of higher indirect tax rates to offset a cut in Social Security contributions made by employers with a view to boosting competitiveness, sources close to the panel said.

This formula would drive exports by lowering the cost of producing goods in Spain because of the cut in social contributions, given that overseas shipments are exempt from value-added tax. At the same time they would make imports more expensive because of the increase in VAT, thereby helping to improve the country's trade balance. This also would have a positive impact on employment but would have little effect on overall GDP.

The report the panel -- which is headed by university professor Manuel Lagares -- is due to deliver on Friday is expected to be along the lines of recommendations by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, which tend to be broad with few concrete details. It will not, for example, suggest specifically that the standard VAT rate of 21 percent be raised.

The main problem facing the government in implementing fiscal devaluation is the scant room it currently has to cut social contributions despite the fact that these in Spain are among the highest in Europe, at 35.35 percent of gross salary between employers and employees. This is due to high unemployment and wage devaluation as a result of the crisis causing an imbalance in the state pension system, which is currently paying out more than it is taking in. A cut in Social Security contributions would further exacerbate the shortfall.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178742/why-americans-should-take-august

By now you have definitely seen it: the Cadillac ad for its first hybrid car that has a hard on for America’s work ethic. “Other countries,” actor Neal McDonough says while strutting through his perfectly landscaped yard alongside his in-ground pool, “they work, they stroll home, they stop by the café, they take August off. Off.” Quelle horreur! And he explains that Americans, from Bill Gates to Ali, aren’t like that. “We’re crazy, driven, hard-working believers,” he says. And he implies we do it for the glory, but also for the stuff, like a luxury car: the latter is “the upside of only taking two weeks off in August.”

But McDonough, or this hyper-capitalist alter ego, is dead wrong. Americans should absolutely take August off. It will, in fact, lead to more stuff—among other things.

Americans don’t take August off, but most people probably don’t even take two weeks during that month. Twenty rich countries have a national guarantee that workers can get some vacation time. Thirteen also make sure workers get at least a few paid holidays off. The United States, on the other hand, is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t have either requirement. About a quarter of Americans don’t have any paid vacation or holidays at all, a share that is growing—although I would guess that the luxury-product-buying, power-suit-wearing character McDonough plays in the commercial does get paid vacation time, as these benefits are disproportionately the purview of the rich. The average American worker gets about ten days of paid vacation and six paid holidays a year—that’s just over two weeks every year—which is less than the minimum required in nearly every other country. And of those who get paid vacation, they leave more than three days, on average, unused.

We also don’t ensure that workers can take other kinds of paid time off, like sick days or family leave or even a weekend. And we certainly aren’t slacking in the hours we work each week, either: we’re number eleven out of thirty-three developed countries for weekly hours worked.

If I take a "vacation", it is totally unpaid. Such is the life of those not of the Borg...


Demeter, UN-Assimilated and Proud (rejected, even)

Like Novembrrrr, Decembrrrr, Januarrrrr, Februarrr, And Marrrr......

The Waiting by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/uk-britain-boe-idUKBREA280B020140309

(Reuters) - Mark Carney faces probably his toughest questioning so far as Bank of England governor next week when lawmakers will seize on a foreign exchange scandal to press their demands for tighter oversight of the central bank.

Carney arrived from Canada last July as an outsider with a mandate to shake up the 320 year-old institution, from monetary policy to its relationship with the powerful banks of the City of London.

A group of influential members of parliament wants Carney to change the way the Bank polices itself too.

Their long-standing frustrations with what they say is the Bank's outdated governance system broke out again last week when the Bank suspended an official amid an internal review into whether Bank staff turned a blind eye to possible manipulation of key rates by foreign exchange traders.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/uk-china-strikes-idUKBREA2804N20140309

(Reuters) - A wildcat strike at an IBM factory in southern China illustrates how tectonic shifts under way in the country's labour market are emboldening workers to take matters into their own hands, raising risks for multinationals.

More than 1,000 workers walked off the job last week at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on March 3 announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd.

Lenovo agreed in January to pay $2.3 billion for International Business Machine's low-end server business.

The strike, which continued into Sunday, fits a growing pattern of industrial activism that has emerged as China's economy has slowed. A worsening labour shortage has shifted the balance of power in labour relations, while smartphones and social media have helped workers organise and made them more aware than ever of the changing environment, experts say.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_INFLATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-08-22-24-13

BEIJING (AP) -- China's inflation rate eased in February to 2 percent year-on-year amid signs the world's second-largest economy might be cooling.

The consumer price rise reported Sunday by the National Bureau of Statistics was down from January's 2.5 percent. The rise in politically sensitive food costs decelerated to 2.7 percent from January's 3.7 percent.

Lower inflation could ease pressure on Chinese leaders as they try to focus on promised reforms aimed at making the economy more productive and keeping growth strong.

Producer prices, measured as goods leave the factory, declined by 2 percent from a year earlier. Producer price inflation has been negative for two years, reflecting excess production capacity in many industries that has led to price-cutting wars.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/we-cant-escape-our-groundhog-day-recovery/284301/

I'm never going to forgive Punxsutawney Phil for the last six weeks of wintry weather, but the economy will.

The past five years have been a Groundhog Day recovery. Every day, we wake up hoping that this will be the day that the economy finally picks up. And every day, we wake up to hear Sonny and Cher playing find out that it hasn't. Jobs growth just keeps chugging along at 2 percent pretty much no matter what.



Except when it's cold outside—maybe. Job growth stalled below even this good-but-not-good-enough level in December and January when we were finding out what a burst of arctic air feels like. Instead of the 180,000 jobs a month we've gotten used to during the recovery, we got an average of 94,000. It was even more jarring, because it had, once again, looked like the economy was maybe, possibly speeding up right before the polar vortexes hit.

So the question is whether this slower growth was just the unseasonably cold winter hurting the economy for now or something bigger hurting it for longer.

Well, the February jobs report tells us that the slowdown probably happened because the weather outside was frightful. The economy added 175,000 jobs in February, and 25,000 more than we originally thought in December and January. Unemployment did edge up to 6.7 percent, but that was partly for the good reason that more people were looking for jobs, and weren't giving up. Now, people didn't shop or go out quite as much because of the cold, but that will change when the weather does. And it's already starting to. In other words, the economy is pretty much the same now as it's been ever since the recovery began.

presumably to get advice on what to do when a significant portion of your country despises you, thinks every law you pass is fascism, and would that anyone else was ruler except you.

Coming here for training on how to get along, perhaps?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014749766

That strikes me as ironic somehow.

And it's coming up on Insanity...soon to be heading into Surreal.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22277-obamas-economic-significance

President Obama's proven reliability as outsider president extraordinaire - putting a disarming smiley face on capitalism's depredations - is his administration's economic significance.

Enough time has elapsed in Obama's presidency to assess its economic meanings. His administration's actions and omissions tell a clear story. On one hand, Obama continued the economic program imposed on all presidents since World War II. On the other, Obama had the hardest time doing so and is likely the last to do it in the manner of those other presidents. History provides our context for assessing Obama's economic significance.

The US economy's defining moment across the past century was the 1930s eruption of an organized, self-conscious working class into politics. Massive union organizing drives by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) allied with massive popular mobilizations by socialist and communist parties. That labor-radical coalition forced huge concessions - the New Deal - from business and the wealthy. They were taxed and regulated to enable major gains for middle- and lower-income citizens. Those gains included establishing Social Security, unemployment compensation, minimum wage, and millions of federal jobs.

Labor-radical explosion from below reversed income and wealth inequalities deepened by capitalism's development after the Civil War to the 1929 crash. Haunting the historic changes across the 1930s were plausible intimations (by socialists) and occasional threats (by communists) of revolution. Labor-radical pressures generated President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous 1944 proposals for a 100 percent top income tax rate and for a Second Bill of Rights.

When war ended and FDR died, reactionaries mobilized to roll back the New Deal and all it represented. Business, the rich and other right-wing social forces organized a conservative coalition to cut regulations, cut taxes or shift them to others, and reduce government services (other than military). Economic history since 1945 charts the reversal of the New Deal domestically alongside developing a global pax Americana.

that FDR negotiated between the classes, they are going to have to get the full measure of Revolution, and its "haircut" ala mode Français.

I'm exhausted by my Ice Capades performance this early morning. But you can post here (at least, until Tansy starts the Monday thread...) People come by all the time, even me.

Have a Safe week, everyone! Mars is retrograde and will stay that way for weeks. Expect mechanical failures until mid-May.