[Peace-discuss] Obama's lies are now officially crazy

Mon Jul 29 23:35:45 UTC 2013

Chinese language associations of wealth
are mostly centered around gold, silver, jade,
cowrie shells (ancient medium of exchange)
rather than the accumulation of livestock.

Characters incorporating the cow ideograph
mostly have to do with some biological, pastoral,
physical, or temperament characteristic of bovines,
such as strength of an ox, stubborn as an ox, etc.

The pig and dog and sheep ideographs mostly reflect
similar notions when used as part of a character.

Some are understandable although not readily arrived at,
such as sheep 羊 plus big 大 == 美 beautiful.

I have pointed out some humourous interpretations of
Chinese characters like 木樨地 Muxidi (Camelia gardens, a place in Beijing)
as having the pictorial meaning of "cows urinating in the woods", at
which I am accused of intentionally desecrating the language for irreverent
purposes.  Actually it's an unfortunate consequence of crowding in the 
character
that the ideograph for "pointy-ness" looks like that of "water".
Not my fault.

Historically the Chinese have tended against slavery
for the past 2000 years.  Slavery was illegal in many
old Chinese dynasties and discouraged in others,
but there were persons made into slaves and persons
castrated and made into slaves for punishment in
several of the Chinese dynasties.  There was illegal
slave trading in remote parts of China during some
dynasties that forbade it.

The Chinese language mostly evolved pictorially but
there are quite a few Chinese words that use a character
to give the sound, and some of those have no intrinsic
pictographic meaning other than to represent a commonly used
sound.

Mind you that my Chinese is not all that hot.

On 07/29/13 20:19, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Cf. Latin pecus/pecunia. Does Chinese do something similar?
>
> Ciao*, Carl
>
> ________________
> * From the Venetian word for 'slave,' as in 'yr. obdt. servt.'
>
>
>
> On Jul 28, 2013, at 9:15 PM, E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森 <ewj at pigsqq.org 
> <mailto:ewj at pigsqq.org>> wrote:
>
>> cattle
>> 1175–1225; Middle English /catel/ < Old North French: (personal) 
>> property < Medieval Latin /capitāle/ wealth; see capital 
>> <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/capital>^1
>>
>>
>> chat·tel
>> 1. Law. a movable article of personal property.
>> 2. any article of tangible property other than land, buildings, and 
>> other things annexed to land.
>> 3. a slave.
>>
>> Origin:
>> 1175–1225; Middle English chatel < Old French.  See cattle
>>
>> Synonyms
>> 1. See property.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 07/29/13 9:47, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" wrote:
>>> Amerikans, just like most subservient people throughout history,
>>> want to be ruled by a king.
>>>
>>> It could be argued that the willingness to be ruled by a king
>>> is genetic, and has a natural selection advantage for the subservient.
>>>
>>> Cattle-like, they are willing to trod the same paths from the
>>> shade to the water hole to the barn over and over and over
>>> again, invariantly.   Habituation is in ROM chips if you are
>>> cattle.
>>>
>>> Cattle-like people are allowed to eat, and mate, and give
>>> birth to more cattle-like offspring.  They ascribe to the
>>> herd mentality.  Those who are disobedient to the herd
>>> mentality are treated poorly and are not likely to be
>>> allowed to reproduce but will be culled.
>>>
>>> The constitution apparently was written to provide clear barriers
>>> to the king-like power in the executive.  Successive
>>> executive administrations invest more and more kingly authority
>>> in the office.  Of course the "friends" of the executive support
>>> the increase in authority and those who speak against the accretion
>>> of power often do so out of partisan jealously rather than out
>>> of a genuine concern for the consequences.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the cattle keep their heads down.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 07/29/13 9:21, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> ProPublica  |  By Cora Currier
>>>> Posted: 07/26/2013 12:35 pm EDT  |  Updated: 07/26/2013 10:09 pm EDT
>>>>
>>>> In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama 
>>>> said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the 
>>>> Taliban, and their associated forces.”
>>>>
>>>> So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
>>>>
>>>> At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense 
>>>> Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
>>>>
>>>> The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they 
>>>> aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, 
>>>> would say only that the department’s “answer included the 
>>>> information requested.”
>>>>
>>>> A Pentagon spokesman told ProPublica that revealing such a list 
>>>> could cause “serious damage to national security.”
>>>>
>>>> “Because elements that might be considered ‘associated forces’ can 
>>>> build credibility by being listed as such by the United States, we 
>>>> have classified the list,” said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim 
>>>> Gregory. “We cannot afford to inflate these organizations that rely 
>>>> on violent extremist ideology to strengthen their ranks.”
>>>>
>>>> It’s not an abstract question: U.S. drone strikes and other actions 
>>>> frequently target “associated forces,” as has been the case with 
>>>> dozens of strikes against an Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen.
>>>>
>>>> During the May hearing, Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of 
>>>> Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said he 
>>>> was “not sure there is a list per se.” Describing terrorist groups 
>>>> as “murky” and “shifting,” he said, “it would be difficult for the 
>>>> Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of 
>>>> which are the affiliate forces” of Al Qaeda.
>>>>
>>>> Sheehan said that by the Pentagon’s standard, “sympathy is not 
>>>> enough…. it has to be an organized group and that group has to be 
>>>> in co-belligerent status with Al Qaeda operating against the United 
>>>> States.”
>>>>
>>>> The White House tied Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and 
>>>> “elements” of Al Shabaab in Somalia to Al Qaeda in a recent report 
>>>> to Congress on military actions. But the report also included a 
>>>> classified annex.
>>>>
>>>> Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law who served as a legal 
>>>> counsel during the Bush administration and has written on this 
>>>> question at length, told ProPublica that the Pentagon’s reasoning 
>>>> for keeping the affiliates secret seems weak. “If the organizations 
>>>> are ‘inflated’ enough to be targeted with military force, why 
>>>> cannot they be mentioned publicly?” Goldsmith said. He added that 
>>>> there is “a countervailing very important interest in the public 
>>>> knowing who the government is fighting against in its name."
>>>>
>>>> The law underpinning the U.S. war against Al Qaeda is known as the 
>>>> Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, and it was passed 
>>>> one week after the 9/11 attacks. It doesn’t actually include the 
>>>> words “associated forces,” though courts and Congress have endorsed 
>>>> the phrase.
>>>>
>>>> As we explained earlier this year, the emergence of new or more 
>>>> loosely-aligned terrorist groups has legal scholars wondering how 
>>>> effectively the U.S. will be able to “shoehorn” them into the AUMF. 
>>>> During the May hearing, many lawmakers expressed concern about the 
>>>> Pentagon’s capacious reading of the law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 
>>>> described it as a “carte blanche.”
>>>>
>>>> Obama, in his May speech, said he looked forward “to engaging 
>>>> Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and 
>>>> ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.” But he didn’t give a 
>>>> timeframe. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., introduced an 
>>>> amendment that would sunset the law at the end of 2014, to coincide 
>>>> with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was voted down the 
>>>> same day, 185 to 236.
>>>>
>>>> The AUMF isn’t the only thing the government relies on to take 
>>>> military action. In speeches and interviews Obama administration 
>>>> officials also bring up the president’s constitutional power to 
>>>> defend the country, even without congressional authorization.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/pentagon-war-classified_n_3659353.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular 
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>

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