Ensuring international financial support remains the #1 priority of the Liberian government. So dysfunctional. UPDATE 1-Liberia has upper hand over Ebola but support must continue-president | Reuters: "Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Wednesday that her government has the upper hand in the fight against Ebola, but warned against complacency or any reduction in international support...
The sustaining of anti-Ebola measures over the last two months has meant that in Liberia we now have the upper hand," Sirleaf said in a statement. "But our government remains concerned that progress in this battle will lead to complacency on the part of the international community," she added."
"You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and took their land. That's what conquering nations do. That's what Caesar did, and he's not goin' around saying, 'I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.' The history of the world isn't people making friends. You had better weapons and you massacred them. End of story." - Spike, BTVS
Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion by Mark Ames: "The idea that spree shooters aren’t simply deranged wackos is a little more acceptable now today than when Going Postal was originally published back in 2005, but it’s still largely anathema to both sides of the political spectrum. The left wants to pretend that banning guns will somehow solve the problem; never mind that as Ames demonstrates, workplace and school shootings were essentially nonexistent before the 1980’s. The right thinks that violent video games and death metal are driving kids to ventilate their own classmates, as if teenagers are brain-dead automatons who can be turned into murderers with the flip of a switch...
Ames’ thesis in Going Postal is that workplace and school shootings are a modern form of slave revolts, every spree killer a Nat Turner for the Information Age. That mere sentence is enough to generate a kneejerk reaction from even the most limp-wristed peacenik liberal: “America’s standard of living is the greatest in human history! You work a cushy office job, live in an apartment with central AC and can afford to spend your free time jacking off and playing video games! Your ancestors had to shovel shit for fourteen hours a day just to put food on the table, so quit bitching, you pussy!”
...Ames contends that the reason why the U.S. had so few slave revolts compared to other countries in Latin America or the Caribbean is because American slave owners developed foolproof psychological techniques for making their slaves docile and obedient. Their methods of psychological control are virtually identical to the ways that modern corporations condition their workers, including making slaves believe that their masters’ interests are the same as their own...
But if spree shootings are the same thing as slave revolts, why the sudden uptick in the past three decades? The answer: Ronald Reagan. When Reagan became president in 1981, his administration transformed the American workplace—and to a lesser extent, public schools—into a cutthroat competition, where workers are forced to work longer hours for less pay, all to make the rich richer. He crushed unions (literally in the case of PATCO), supported outsourcing and downsizing, and encouraged corporations and employers to slash their workers’ pay and benefits. And as it turns out, there was absolutely no rational basis for this, as the conservative/libertarian claim that the economy was ailing under Jimmy Carter was a complete and utter lie.
…The truth of the matter is that on a macroeconomic level, the difference between the Carter era and the Reagan era was minimal. For instance, economic growth during the Carter administration averaged 2.8 percent annually, while under Reagan, from 1982 to 1989, growth average 3.2 percent. Was it really worth killing ourselves over that extra .4 percent of growth? For a lucky few, yes. On the other key economic gauge, unemployment, the Carter years were actually better than Reagan’s, averaging 6.7 percent annually during his “malaise-stricken” term as compared to an average 7.3 percent unemployment rate during the glorious eight-year reign of Ronald Reagan. Under Carter, people worked less, got far more benefits, had greater job security, and the country grew almost the same annual average rate as under Reagan. On the other hand, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1996, under Reagan life got worse for those who had it worse: the number of people below the poverty level increased in almost every year from 1981 (31.8 million) to 1992 (39.3 million). As it turns out, the only people who were suffering during Carter’s presidency were the rich.
The indignity of only being able to afford two summer homes instead of three was too much for them to bear, so they pushed for the election of a president who would let them rape and loot as much as they wanted. And we’re living in the world they created, a world in which 90 percent of college grads are forced to move back home, where health insurance is increasingly impossible to obtain, and where sociopaths like Donald Trump and Jack Welch are regarded as folk heroes for humiliating their employees and firing them in mass layoffs. The spree shooters are the people who’ve decided that they’re not going to take it anymore. Workplace shootings began among Postal Service employees (hence the phrase “going postal”) because the USPS was the first victim of Reagan-style slash-and-burn economics. Under Richard Nixon, the Postal Service was forced to become profitable (a requirement never imposed on any other government agency), which resulted in a series of employee benefit cuts and a new crop of sociopathic managers seizing control. Post office shootings were blithely dismissed by the public until 1989, when Louisville, Kentucky-based Standard Gravure employee Joseph Wesbecker became the poster boy for workplace rage..."
…The truth of the matter is that on a macroeconomic level, the difference between the Carter era and the Reagan era was minimal. For instance, economic growth during the Carter administration averaged 2.8 percent annually, while under Reagan, from 1982 to 1989, growth average 3.2 percent. Was it really worth killing ourselves over that extra .4 percent of growth? For a lucky few, yes. On the other key economic gauge, unemployment, the Carter years were actually better than Reagan’s, averaging 6.7 percent annually during his “malaise-stricken” term as compared to an average 7.3 percent unemployment rate during the glorious eight-year reign of Ronald Reagan. Under Carter, people worked less, got far more benefits, had greater job security, and the country grew almost the same annual average rate as under Reagan. On the other hand, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1996, under Reagan life got worse for those who had it worse: the number of people below the poverty level increased in almost every year from 1981 (31.8 million) to 1992 (39.3 million). As it turns out, the only people who were suffering during Carter’s presidency were the rich.
The indignity of only being able to afford two summer homes instead of three was too much for them to bear, so they pushed for the election of a president who would let them rape and loot as much as they wanted. And we’re living in the world they created, a world in which 90 percent of college grads are forced to move back home, where health insurance is increasingly impossible to obtain, and where sociopaths like Donald Trump and Jack Welch are regarded as folk heroes for humiliating their employees and firing them in mass layoffs. The spree shooters are the people who’ve decided that they’re not going to take it anymore. Workplace shootings began among Postal Service employees (hence the phrase “going postal”) because the USPS was the first victim of Reagan-style slash-and-burn economics. Under Richard Nixon, the Postal Service was forced to become profitable (a requirement never imposed on any other government agency), which resulted in a series of employee benefit cuts and a new crop of sociopathic managers seizing control. Post office shootings were blithely dismissed by the public until 1989, when Louisville, Kentucky-based Standard Gravure employee Joseph Wesbecker became the poster boy for workplace rage..."
This is, in fact, false advertising. Far from "Super" and much more "Oh god, oh god, this place is horrible." Two notes, 1 - not my pic, but it's weird what you come across in random internets places & 2 - the places you'll go into to appease visitors in Thailand, I swear.
Pretty adorable. Bane Grimm:
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