Depending on market-fluctuations and farm subsidies, it’s cheaper sometimes to offload surplus or defective sweets this way. Even if it’s not technically “unhealthy” for the cows, it strikes as cruel and not a treat. What do you think? I wonder how wide-spread the practise is. I feel fairly confident that this wouldn’t be permitted in Ireland but maybe it could have accounted for those flocks of sheep tagged in tie-dyed colours.
While the world was distracted with the directive to enforce a ban on Muslim travel and immigration, Dear Leader restructured the subcommittee of the National Security Council that enjoys a standing invitation for the daily briefs, to include his chief strategist and minister of disinformation and disinvite the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national intelligence director—meaning they’ll come when summoned.
Past presidents have excluded their private counsels on the basis of not wanting to taint decisions that involve putting the lives of soldiers and civilians at risk with political or business motives. Even that lovable old war-criminal Bush II had the restraint not to let Karl Rove sit at the adults’ table. What this departure foreshadows is disturbing to contemplate, as if this break with tradition is a stress-test to see the tolerance people and officials have for autonomous action without respect for the system of checks and balances or the other branches of the US government. Coups d’รtat tend to invite counter-insurgencies.
Though perhaps not at the levels of the paranoid power-holders of the Roman Empire (yet) nor of more recent lashings out by despots, depleting the ranks at the State Department of senior leadership and repudiating decades of institutional knowledge and highly specialised skills of career consuls without diplomacy or delicacy (no gold watch and pat on the back as they’re ushered out of the building) is very chilling.
While these ranking members of the corps serve at the pleasure of the sitting administration and out of respect tender their resignations, most key division chiefs remain, with many having tenures approaching four decades and beyond and serving both Republicans and Democrats alike, most remain at least until their replacements are vetted to ensure there is little underlap and disruption in the transition and many have remained to ensure continuity. For this purge, however, no one can recall seeing its like in their entire career—damning the memory and progress, it seems, of those that came before and going further to question the department’s role in process and protocol, the arrangements for the first visit by a foreign dignitary carried out (since the first invitee was compelled to stay away, don’t mention the Wall) without the involvement of State whatsoever. I imagine little consultation was sought when enacting the travel ban for Muslims. What sort of immunities and courtesies can the world be expected to reciprocate when the US is acting-out?
Guests and management of a luxury hotel and ski resort outside of the village of Turracherhรถhe that bridges the states of Styria and Carinithia recovered from its latest in a spate of ransom-ware assaults by paying a moderate but not insignificant sum of bit coins.
This was the third and final incursion against the hotel’s cyber-infrastructure and management regretted giving into extortion since (as partners in the tourist industry have pointed out, though also plagued with the problem) it only encourages the crime—sort of like the Danegeld, the tribute that the English paid to the Vikings for not raiding their villages, but the last attack was rather more off-putting and potentially dangerous for wealthy guests—this storied establishment originally only hosteled lumberjacks: the electronic key-card system was hijacked where not only could no new key-cards be issued or programmed, guests could neither enter or leave their rooms. The bit coin ransom was paid and the hotel made itself impervious to further attacks but reinstalling good old locks and keys—and not of the skeuomorph kind whose dividends maybe running low.
