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Welcome at Peacs

We focus on improving the diagnostic value of the ECG. The ECG is the ultimate clinical tool to instantaneously access the status of the heart.

Our patented technologies involve the use of a 3D camera for ECG electrode localization as well as inverse ECG modeling to analyze cardiac activation.

Latest news on Peacs

More than 115 year after the first clinical ECG recording by Dutchman Willem Einthoven it gets time to push the ECG forward into the digital age!

May 2020 – Through our ECG Excellence initiative we are now able to support early phase detection of Myocarditis in COVID19 patients. You can find our press release here.


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CKX Technogrip 2.0 Gloves

Item # 600981

2 items left

  • Fast
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Product Details

CKX Technogrip 2.0 Gloves

Our luxury full leather gloves are a best-seller and known for his comfort, warmth and protection. Waterproof and breathable thanks to the Hipora membrane

  • Fabric: Natural lamb Leather
  • Lining: 100% Polyester brushed tricot
  • Membrane: Hipora Waterproof/Breathable
  • Insulation: Dupont Comfort Max 200g + 100g Needle insulation at back and 100g Needle + 50g Mid Loft at Palm
  • Waterproof and Breathable
  • Taffeta lining at cuff
  • Snow gater with string at cuff
  • Wrist velcro tab adjustment
  • Reflective insert at top finger
  • Wiper at left index
  • Adjustement strap at top wrist
  • Soft brushed tricot lining on hand
  • Grip palm

Orders over $200.00CAD qualify for free expedited shipping within Canada & United States. Shipping will be calculated at checkout for orders from $0CAD to $100CAD. From $100 to $199.99 we charge $10CAD as the a flat rate shipping cost. Click Here to view our complete Free Shipping Terms & Conditions.

For all US orders, items are shipped via Canada Post which transfers the parcels to USPS once in the US. Tracking number will be more accurate with USPS once it has crossed the US border.

For international Orders the shipping fees will be calculated at checkout. Parcels can be tracked via Canada Post or you local post office once it reaches your country

Most items will be shipped within 1-2 business days after the items has been ordered, however if an item requires additional processing time a message will be shown indicating such or we shall contact you.

See our full Shipping Policy for further details.

If your order arrives and it is damaged, we'll take care of it. Don't worry we know carriers aren't always kind wiht the parcels

Item doesn't fit or you aren't happy with it? You can return any new, unused and unaltered item within 30 business days of delivery receipt of your item. Once item is received we will issue a refund to your original payment method.

Please see our full Return Policy for all of the pertinent details.

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Let Prayer Be Thy Medicine…

It’s a new year, that time when everyone decides to get healthy, at least til their resolution fades into dissolution.

I wonder what your health goals are and what plans you have to accomplish them.

Science has discovered a health plan which should precede all others, and we don’t even have to change our diet (not that we shouldn’t anyway).

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But it turns out prayer can do that, too.

What better way to start the year than in prayer. But did you know praying is actually good for your health? Not just because you prayed for your health, but just because you pray.

Science has proven the power of prayer. There have been hundreds of studies revealing significant connection between prayer and health – mental and physical. Here are just a few benefits:

  • Besides helping us cope with daily circumstances, prayer offers us some quiet time, thus reducing mental stress.

  • Faith and prayer give us hope, which makes us more optimistic.

  • People who pray are usually more forgiving and therefore less negative. Praying also gives us social support and a sense of community.

Pray for one another… James 5:16

Consequently, people who pray have a much lower incident of major diseases and live longer than those who don’t.

Scientists have even noted differences in the brains of those who pray compared to those who don’t. Evidently there are physiological responses which lower stress by lowering metabolism, heart rate and blood pressure.

When the heartbeat is regulated, it is stronger and less stressed. Therefore, a person can heal better, age more efficiently and even live longer.
Other benefits of reduced stress due to prayer are less depression, hypertension, ulcers and migraines, as well as improved immunity.
It has even been proven that people of faith live longer than atheists.
When he calls to me I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble…
…with long life I will satisfy him…
Psalm 92:15-16 ESV
Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale Universities conducted separate studies, which revealed the following:
·      People who pray get sick and depressed less often, and when they do, they recover quicker.
·      Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.
·      Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in religious activities.
·      Elderly people who did not attend church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.
·      In Israel, religious people had a 40% lower death rate from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Prayer, of course, not only positively affects the pray-er, it affects the ones being prayed foreven when they don’t know they’re being prayed for.
Researchers at San Francisco General Hospital conducted a study of nearly 400 heart patients to determine the effects of prayer. Half were prayed for and half were not. None of the patients knew who was being prayed for and who was not.
The study concluded the patients who were prayed for had less need for CPR, ventilators and medications. They had less occurrences of heart failure and fewer deaths. They healed quicker and left the hospital sooner.

Doctors determined this could only be attributed to the powerful effects of prayer.

Prayer is not just a method to improve our physical health. Our spiritual health and vitality is what affects our emotional and physical health, as the studies demonstrate.

It turns out prayer can be preventative, not just anecdotal.

So, let prayer be your medicine, and medicine be your prayers.

Let’s resolve to include more prayer in our new healthy diet plan this year, and not let it dissolve.

I pray you have a happy and healthy 2017!

Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.3 John 2 ESV

Dear Friends,
While I believe with all my heart that prayer is the most powerful force in our lives, we still must be diligent in eating healthy. Sadly, most Americans are not even aware of some of the health-destroying toxins in our modern-day foods.
Since diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases a few years ago, I’ve done a lot of research about foods and and their effect on our health. We must educate ourselves for the sake of our health and our families’ health. I will be blogging about some of this in the coming weeks.
If you would like to receive a notification when I post, just click on the follow button and provide your email address. And as always, I’d love to hear your comments here and/or on social media.

Blessings and health to you, Penny

I am writing a six-week Bible study called Pursuing God in P.R.A.Y.E.R. – Six Steps to Prevailing Prayer. I would love to share the first week with you free and keep you posted of publication. Just send me an email at lifecoachpenny@yahoo.com and mention the code FREE1st.


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Make up trends for summer

Make up is a blessing for every girl as it is the easiest way to look perfect and create the new different looks every day. It can be real fun and this summer make up trends will show it to you.

Summertime is the season for bright red lips, electric blue eyes, glitter and false lashes. Classic red lips have always been on top of make up trends but now you are free to play with all the colors in palette. No matter which make up styles you like, bright open summer colors will make you look fresh and trendy.

My favorite make up secret for summer is Candy Apple as the new red for lips. It makes you look young and captivating and not too dramatic at the same time. The color is used in the looks by Céline, Nina Ricci and Oscar de la Renta.

candy apple lips by celine and oscar de la renta

Speaking of vivid summer make up trends I can not leave out the color lashes. It is my second make up secret for the most risky ones. Blue electric lashes instead of usual black for summer make up styles look extreme but amazing.

make up trands summer

I am a fan of bright lips so I adore the following make up trend which came to summer tops from winter and spring. Despite the Sun and hot weather, dramatic dark colour lips rest in my favorites. I prefer satin and matte lipstick to complete the evening looks to go out. Hot summer nights and bronze skin is a perfect combination with such make up style.

Another summer make up trend is non-touring. In the summer our skin needs to breathe more. As we spend more time outside on the Sun we tend to use lighter foundation. It looks more natural and soft than a heavy contoured look. You know you’re wearing a make up and your skin looks smooth and shiny but no one else is supposed to see it.

make up trends summer

This summer make up trends give a broad field to your imagination. Don’t be afraid to play and have fun this summer! Create new crazy unique looks as no one else can! And for more style trends for summer check this article.

Hope my little summer make up secrets will give you new ideas and inspiration to create!

1 thought on “Make up trends for summer

what do you Think?

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The new site

Well the new website debuted today (31/07/2008) and I like it. However, there is one thing that I noticed that was missing is unbundled tags – a number of other users have noticed (see here and here). Granted the improvements to have been coming for a long time now, and its just a matter of getting used to the design of the site. And I really don’t like the fact that I would need to look for stuff that I knew before the update and would spend a little while longer on the site to find things.

Though spending time on a website isn’t really a big deal for me, I just don’t like the fact of doing a “treasure hunt” for items that I could easily find on the old site. Just need to get used to the new site … in time.

But in the end if updating the back end/front end of a site to make things faster, run much more smoothly and the design of the site doesn’t bother the end user to or that much … so much for the better.

Just my 2 cents….

Note: this post may be edited at some point but don’t know at this time. I intended this to be posted last night but wanted to revise this post some more before posting this before the public.


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New book chapter: An introduction to boson-sampling

Read the full article here.

Boson-sampling is a simplified model for quantum computing that may hold the key to implementing the first ever post-classical quantum computer. Boson-sampling is a non-universal quantum computer that is significantly more straightforward to build than any universal quantum computer proposed so far. We begin this chapter by motivating boson-sampling and discussing the history of linear optics quantum computing. We then summarize the boson-sampling formalism, discuss what a sampling problem is, explain why boson-sampling is easier than linear optics quantum computing, and discuss the Extended Church-Turing thesis. Next, sampling with other classes of quantum optical states is analyzed. Finally, we discuss the feasibility of building a boson-sampling device using existing technology.

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Boss Dog Freeze Dried Diet Complete Chicken Recipe

Boss Dog

These Nuggs(TM) are made with wholesome freeze dried chicken, along with other vegetables for great flavor and are a protein packed meal or snack!!
Chicken, Ground Chicken Bone, Chicken Liver, Chicken Gizzard, Cantaloupe, Carrots, Broccoli, Romaine Lettuce, Egg, Ground Flaxseed, Fish Oil*, Apple Cider Vinegar, Blueberry, Cranberry, Inulin, Dried Kelp, Potassium Chloride, Sodium Chloride, Ginger, Parsley, Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Vitamin E Supplement, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Mixed Tocopherols (as Preservative), Vitamin D Supplement, Organic Inulin, Dried Bacillus coagulans Fermentation Product. *Fish Oil- combination of Alaska Wild Caught Salmon, Pollock and Herring Oils.
Crude Protein (min.) 45.0% Crude Fat (min.) 26.0% Crude Fiber (max.) 6.0% Moisture (max.) 5%

Calorie Content (calculated)
ME = 4526 kcal ME/kg, 256.5 kcal ME/cup


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NRA Membership

NRA Membership

Do you care about your gun rights?

I’m assuming by the fact you are here on this site that you most likely do.

So tell me, what are you actually doing to support the gun rights you enjoy?

The NRA and the Media

The NRA gets alot of negative attention in the media. If your opinion of the NRA is currently negative, I understand how you probably got there. It is very likely that the only place you have heard the NRA mentioned in your normal day to day life has been in the media.

Think about it: The majority of media outlets are anti-gun. They are happy to take any opportunity they can scrounge up to make the NRA look bad. They want to make them look like a slimy organization. They don’t want people to join and support the NRA. They know that the more members the NRA has, the more successful they are at protecting our rights!

The media is a biased source. They aren’t going to highlight the good things the NRA is doing to protect gun rights. Portraying the NRA negatively works for the narrative they want to create surrounding gun culture.

Every Gun Owner Should Support the NRA

I want EVERY GUN OWNER to be an NRA Member.

I want you to understand why the NRA is EVERYTHING when it comes to protecting our gun rights.

I want you to realize that it is every gun owners duty to support the NRA.

I am a Life Member. My husband is a Life Member. All 3 of my kids are annual members. That’s 5 members in my house and 5 members stronger for gun owners at large!

What the NRA has done for me

The reality is that most of us owe the credit for our ability to concealed carry to the NRA. In the majority of states, the concealed carry laws were largely forged by work the NRA did to get those laws in place. Unless if you live in Vermont, your state previously outlawed concealed carry. (Here in my state of Ohio concealed carry was outlawed around 1860.) The NRA worked nationwide to get every state the ability to conceal carry back. The last state in the United States to get the ability back was Illinois. It took an act from the Supreme Court to force the state of Illinois through an NRA backed court case.

But it’s not just the concealed carry license that I owe to them. Since Ohio got the license, the NRA has pushed every year to improve the gun and self-defense laws. This effort is a national effort happening in every state. You probably don’t realize how much the NRA has done to pave the way for the gun rights you exercise.

Many gun owners will blame the NRA for not passing a law. The problem is that the NRA can’t pass a law. They can try to motivate legislators to pass laws, but they have no actual vote. Citizens need to also step up and motivate legislators.

How much does an NRA membership cost?

An NRA membership is very affordable!

The Regular 1 year Membership is regularly priced at $45 per year. I can offer a discounted rate of only $35 per year. Is protecting your firearm rights worth $2.92 per month to you? I sure hope so!

(My husband and I are both Life Members. The regular price of a Life Membership is $1,500 but there is a current special for a Life Membership for only $750. I’m not sure how long that price will be offered. I’ll save you from busting out the calculator: it takes 22 years to come out ahead at that price. $35/year x 22 years = $770)

What does an NRA Membership do for Me?

The tangible things you receive from the NRA with your membership are:

  • an official membership card
  • decals (you can put them on your car/laptop/gun safe or wherever you fancy)
  • a black & gold NRA shooter’s hat
  • a monthly magazine (Shooting Illustrated is my favorite. It covers the tactical lifestyle and is the one that relates most directly to the concealed carry lifestyle. There is also American Rifleman, America’s First Freedom and American Hunter. Since we have 5 members in our house, we get all 4 each month.)

Those benefits are great but the whole point of membership is more of what YOU are doing for the NRA.

The intangible benefits you receive:

A watchful eye and a powerful voice

I can’t march down to DC personally. I have a job and kids and just life in general is crazy. (It would cost me way more than $35 to do that by the way!) But the NRA is doing that on my behalf. If I call my legislator and ask him to meet for lunch to talk some things they wouldn’t give me the time of day. But the NRA is the larger-than-me force that will get the attention and time from the legislator.

The pride of knowing you are taking a stand for your gun rights.

You are DOING SOMETHING. And not just anything. You are doing something that has been proven effective. The NRA has accomplished great things. No other organization has done more for your gun rights than the NRA.

My Hubby Isn’t Perfect But I Love Him

Occasionally someone shares with me something that the NRA has done that they don’t agree with. (Hello bump stocks! Yes, that’s the unimportant-to-the-average-person thing people want to complain about to me when I’m working at an NRA recruiting booth.) Hey I kind of get it because I’m a very principals driven person.

My husband does things that frustrate me. He leave his socks under the computer desk. He doesn’t wash gunk down the bathroom sink. He doesn’t load the dishwasher right. I could write a book but I will leave it there; I’m sure you get the point. Despite all these I love him. I appreciate all that he has done for me and the part he plays in my life.

I could say similiar things about everyone in my life: children, parents, siblings, pastors, everyone! People can’t please us 100% of the time. But we don’t find a fault with them and decide to abandon them.

Don’t like something about the NRA? Voice your opinion to them. In a way that matters (not ranting to strangers any chance you get). Put you don’t abandon them.

I don’t care if you don’t agree with the bump stock ban. (Or something else about the NRA.) Look at the bigger picture. Care about protecting your gun rights? They are the ones that can make it happen. You should support them. They’re your best shot.

It is a Numbers Game

Yes, the NRA has electricity bills and staff to pay. They need money to operate. But more than money, they need people standing behind them.

Bottom Line: Without members, the NRA doesn’t have the influence to affect legislation.

Their power comes from the fact that they represent millions of Americans.

They could have all the money in the world, but if they had no members, they wouldn’t have power to accomplish anything.

Even if your husband, your brother or your dad is a member, YOU should be a member too…. and maybe even your kids! Again, it’s a numbers game! Be a number!

Be Honest With Yourself.

Have you actually done anything that matters to help protect and further the gun rights you enjoy?

Does wearing a Pro Second Amendment shirt really change anyone’s mind or help better gun laws get passed?

How about sharing a Pro Second Amendment post on Facebook or Instagram?

I’m not saying don’t do these things. (Please do!) But don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s making enough of a difference to cause real change.

It takes BIG things to really be effective. Things BIGGER than yourself.  And it doesn’t get much bigger than the NRA when it comes to gun rights. If you want to be a part of something that really makes a difference, you need to be a member of the NRA.

I Do My Part

I am a member. My husband is a member. Our 3 kids are members. If every member of gun households were members, I can’t imagine how awesome and how protected our gun rights would be.

Beyond my own membership, I support the NRA by trying to get as many members to join as I can!

  • We train a couple thousand students a year (through our company Armed2Defend) and we encourage all of them to join the NRA. In fact , we buy hundreds of those students the 1 year Associate Membership on our dime as a bonus when they prepay for our class.
  • I work at booths a few times a year encouraging people who pass by to support the NRA. I don’t do it because I enjoy it. I’m an introvert. I don’t necessarily like bugging strangers. I do it because it is a message I believe in spreading.
That’s me doing my part for all of us gun owners. Because at the end of the day, it’s a numbers game. The more members the NRA has, the stronger our gun rights will be.

Are You Doing Your Part?

If you went into a restaurant and had a nice meal, you tip the server for their service. You do it because you appreciate the service they provided that helped you and your family enjoy your dinner. They already rendered the services. You could leave without tipping. But it would be wrong and you know that.

The NRA has helped forge the way for the gun rights you enjoy. You could continue to enjoy those gun rights and not “tip” them the $2.92 cents a month ($35 per year). But it would be wrong and you know that. So join (or renew)!

Concealed Carry is a Lifestyle.

Affiliate Disclosure: This page may contain some affiliate links, which means I might earn a small commission if you order a product through those links. This does not change the price you pay for the items.

I love having this website but it does cost money and time (so.much.time!) to maintain. Affiliate links are one way I earn money so that I can keep providing you with tons of helpful content.

Rest assured that I would never recommend any products that I didn’t use personally and totally love! (I'm an Enneagram Type 6 y'all. Loyalty is my core value.)


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Archive for the ‘Abuse of Power’ Category

A Constitutional crisis in the making

September 26, 2020

I think this prediction by economist Jack Rasmus is all too possible.

CNN poll shows 66% of Trump supporters will vote in person on Nov. 3 but only 22% of Biden supporters vote in person. (53% Biden supports to vote by mail). Trump will appear to win on Nov. 3 based on direct in person voting. He’ll declare victory and then move quickly to have Barr and the Justice Dept. stop the counting of mail in ballots in key swing states.

His lawyers are already fanning out and filing motions for injunctions against mail in voting. They will flood swing-blue states mail in ballot vote counting to delay the counting still further. States where Republican governors (and State secretaries of state who manage those states’ vote counting) will meanwhile throw out millions of mail in ballots based on technicalities like signatures failing to dot i’s or cross t’s to ensure Trump ‘red’ states turn in pro-Trump decisions.

Examples of US post office chaos & claims of lost vote ballots, etc. will be used by Trump lawyers to make legal argument that mail in ballots cannot be used to determine the final vote count. Injunctions will be filed to require states to disregard mail ballots. Further delays in mail in ballot counting will occur.

Disputes and legal action by Dems in response will be quickly sent up by Trump federal district judges (appointed by hundreds under McConnell since 2013) to the Supreme Court, now 6-3 in Trump’s pocket. Trump’s Supreme Court will repeat its Florida 2000 decision stopping the vote count––this time counting original votes not a recount. Only swing and blue states will be targeted, not red states already pro-Trump.

Street protests will erupt after Nov. 3 protesting the legal coup d’etat in progress. Trump has already called protestors “insurrectionists” and identified all protests as ‘antifa’ or ‘communist’. His attorney general, Barr, has also already pre-labeled protestors as “treasonous” and traitors who should be forcibly repressed and jailed

The US executive branch since 2002 now has its own executive police force called the Dept. Homeland Security (DHS), with de facto military swat teams who’ve been doing ‘dry runs’ in Seattle, Chicago, Portland and elsewhere. They will be used to suppress protests, aided by pro-Trump local police departments (e.g. New York City, etc.) and perhaps even welcoming right wing radical supporters as provocateurs to attack protestors and thus allow DHS-Police to declare protests riots and directly quash protests.

Source: Jack Rasmus

When Donald Trump was elected, I scoffed at those who called him a potential dictator.  I thought he was too erratic and ignorant to be a dictator.  I thought his significance was as a kind of proof-of-concept of how someone more intelligent and purposeful might become dictator.  Maybe I underestimated him.

This potential crisis is not Trump’s doing alone.  The Republicans–and it is mainly the Republicans–have been chipping away at the integrity of the voting system for 20 years.  In 2000, the election did not go to George W. Bush merely because the Florida recount was halted.  It was because thousands of black voters were disqualified based on false claims they had been  convicted of felonies in other states.

How real is the danger of a Trump coup?

September 25, 2020

How real is the danger that Republican state governments could set aside the results of the Presidential vote and simply appoint Trump electors?

The President is chosen by members of the Electoral College, and although the Electors are chosen by the voters in all states, this is not a Constitutional requirement.  The Constitution states  that “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature shall direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress……”

Theoretically, any state could change its election law between now and Nov. 3 so as to allow the state legislature to name the electors.  Such a law would have to be passed by both houses of a state legislature and signed by the governor.

Of the states in which the outcome is in doubt, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have Democratic governors and Republican legislatures.  The governor would be sure to veto any bill changing the election law.

Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas have Republican governors and legislatures both.  But how likely is it that the governor and legislators, who all have to stand for re-election, would openly thwart the expressed will of a majority of the voters?

Anything is possible, I guess.  You never know what people are capable of.

But I’d be more worried about the Postal Service not delivering all the mailed ballots on time, a declaration of a winner before all the ballots are counted, throwing ballots out for arbitrary and trivial reasons, etc., than this particular scenario.

Could Republicans ignore the popular vote and choose their own pro-Trump electors? by Sam Levine for The Guardian.

Sanders issues stark warning on Trump and calls for election commission by David Smith for The Guatdian.

The Election That Could Break America by Jason Kottke for kottke.org. [Added Later]

Poorly Protected Postal Workers Are Catching COVID-19 by the Thousands.  It’s One More Threat to Voting by Mail by Maryam Jameel and Ryan McCarthy for ProPublica. [Added Later]

How Trump could win by cheating

September 24, 2020

A lot is being written about what happens if Trump refuses to concede defeat.  This is a bogus question.  He wins or loses when the Electoral College meets.  Whether or not he admits defeat is neither here nor there.

The big question is what happens between Nov, 3, which is Election Day, and Jan. 6, when the Electoral College announces the results.

My previous post was about what happens if Trump wins fair and square, more or less, and whether Democrats could live with it.. This post is about how Trump could cheat.

I don’t have direct access to The Atlantic, but Eric Lutz of  Vanity Fair summed up the high points:

The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing “contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Citing the president’s baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gellman.

“The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power,’” a Trump campaign legal adviser explained to the Atlantic. “‘We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state.’”

Does completely ignoring the will of the voters seem anti-democratic? Unconstitutional? Impossible? One would think. But as Gellman points out, however authoritarian this kind of end-around may seem, the Constitution doesn’t forbid such a move, and it’s something the Trump campaign could pull off. Indeed, state Republican leaders have already casually indicated that they’d be all too happy to enable this kind of power grab.

“I’ve mentioned it to them, and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” Lawrence Tabas, chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, one of the swing states on which the 2020 race could hinge, told Gellman. “It is one of the available legal options set forth in the constitution.”

Disturbing as the prospect of bypassing the popular vote in GOP-controlled battlegrounds may be, it’s but one of several vulnerabilities in the electoral system Trump and his flunkies are trying to exploit this fall, ranging from complex legal fights to declaring absentee ballots fraudulent before they’ve even been processed to the possibility — likelihood? — that the president will simply pronounce himself the winner before all votes are tallied.

While Joe Biden …… retains a strong lead over his counterpart nationally, polls suggest the two are locked in tight races in several key states like Georgia, Iowa, Florida, and Arizona. The idea that typically deep-red states like Texas and Georgia are in play for Biden would seem to reflect the president’s challenging reelection prospects—but those states all are controlled by Republican-majority legislatures, creating just the opening Trump needs to call the votes bogus and appoint electors that will decide in his favor.

Source: Vanity Fair

Julian Assange is fighting for us all

September 3, 2020

Julian Assange is being abused and prosecuted and prosecuted for the crime of making the U.S. government’s crimes known.

If a government can commit crimes in secret and imprison or execute those who reveal its crimes, there is no limit to tyranny.

People like Assange stand between the public and absolute power.  That is why they are considered so dangerous.

For Years, Journalists cheered Assange’s abuse | Now They’ve Paved His Way to a US Gulag by Jonathan Cook.  An important article.

The War on Journalism: The Case of Julian Assange.  An important video.

Sabotage of Postal Service can risk lives

August 21, 2020

A number of people on my neighborhood association list-serve report problems with their mail delivery, including not getting medications and pension checks in a timely way.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s recently took a lot of mail-sorting machines out of service and stopped overtime work, which he admits will slow down mail deliveries.  Delays in delivering medications can risk lives.

Some e-mails blame our local post office staff, but this is something that only happened in the past month or two and I don’t know of anything that has changed there at that time.

One of the under-reported aspects of the Trump administration is how he and his crew have undermined the normal workings of government.  We see this in Trump’s undermining of efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.  Now we see it again in his support for DeJoy’s policy.

USPS slowdown delays delivery of life-saving meds by Christina Farr for CNBC.

Postal changes delay mail-order medicine for vets by Hope Yen for the Associated Press.

It’s Very Hard to Rebuild a Bridge Once It’s Torn Down by Jason Kottke for kottke.org.

Why I Love the Post Office (And You Should, Too) by Mindy Isser for Current Affairs.

The War Nerd on silence and genocide

July 27, 2020

Racism and oppression are not perpetuated by insensitive language.  Racism and oppression are perpetuated by making some topics off limits to talk about at all.  The best PR for genocide is silence.

John Dolan, writing as “Gary Brecher,” the War Nerd, illustrated this point by pointing to the silence of the Victorians on the famines in Ireland in the 1840s and India in the 1870s.

Most of Dolan’s writings and broadcasts are behind a pay wall.  Maybe I should subscribe.

The War Nerd: Amateurs Talk Cancel, Pros Talk Silence by “Gary Brecher” for Radio War Nerd.

Thomas Piketty on corporate co-determination

June 5, 2020

I’ve written a good bit about Thomas Piketty’s new book.  Click on the Capital and Ideology tag to read my previous posts about it.  In this post, I’m going to discuss his ideas on corporate governance.

Great corporations typically begin with an individual who has a vision—a Steve Jobs, a Walt Disney, a George Eastman, a Henry Ford, a Soichiro Honda or a Jack Ma.

The drive and creativity of the individuals make the companies what they are.  Over time, though, the companies devolve into authoritarian bureaucracies, little junior watered-down versions of the Soviet Union.

Click to enlarge.  Source: Oxford Law Faculty

The goal of reform would be how to prevent corporate abuse without stifling enterprise and beneficial innovation.  Piketty’s solution is to adopt German-Scandinavian co-determination, under which corporations of a certain size have to allow employees to choose a certain number of corporate directors.

In Germany, according to Piketty,  all firms with more than 2,000 employees must reserve half the seats on their oversight committees to worker representatives.  All firms with 500 to 1,999 employees must reserve a third of their oversight committee seats to worker representatives.  There also are factory committees with union representatives who have a say one work rules and training.

However, in Germany, the oversight committees only supervise day-to-day operations of companies.  Policy is set by directorates, on which workers have no representation.

Other countries reserve one-third of seats for workers on companies of a certain size.  In Sweden, the threshold is 35 employees; in Norway, 50 employees; in Austria, 500 employees.

In April 2018, according to Wikipedia, U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren and Brian Schatz sponsored the Reward Work Act,  which would amend federal legislation to require all companies listed on national stock exchanges to have one-third board representation for workers.  Polls showed majority support among Americans for the measure.

In August 2018, Elizabeth Warren sponsored a new Accountable Capitalism Act that would require 40 percent of the board of directors be elected by employees in federal corporations with taxable incomes over $1 billion.

In Britain, the Bullock Report in 1977, during the Harold Wilson administration, called for co-determination in big businesses based on the formula 2x + y. In this, workers and stockholders would have equal representation on boards of directors, but there would be two government representatives to break a tie.  It never became reality.

In practice, even though workers have a voice, the final authority rests with the owners.  I think there still is a benefit to having worker representatives.

Employees usually know things about how companies operate that the top managers don’t.  This can be valuable in avoiding the Stupidity Paradox, in which layers of bureaucrats demand good news and truthful information doesn’t filter up.

It’s also good for employees, especially union representatives, to have access to the same information that top management has.  Of course all these desirable goals can be thwarted by a sufficiently cunning and authoritarian management.

The mysterious Minneapolis ‘man in black’

May 31, 2020

The man in black

I wondered whether this black-clad man was a police provocateur or a radical leftist provocateur.  There is a third possibility that I overlooked—that he is a right-wing provocateur.  [Added 6/4/2020]

A mysterious black-clad man, clad in black, with a respirator or gas mask, was walking around breaking windows in Minneapolis during the protest and riot there.

Some speculate that he was a police infiltrator, which, based on the history of protest, is a natural thing to think.

But by his garb, I think he is probably a member of the “black bloc,” a group of revolutionaries who been around at least since the 1999 riots protesting the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

The “black bloc” is noted for their distinctive black gear.  They join in protests and try to escalate the violence, with the idea of forcing neutrals to take sides between revolution and reaction.

While the “black bloc” movement is international, there is an overlapping American movement called “Antifa” for anti-fascist.  They are street fighters, most of them white, who go after neo-Nazis, white nationalists and sometimes Trump supporters.

Like the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, the aim of the black bloc and Antifa is to eliminate the middle ground.  They seek to bring moderates into the violence and force them to choose between revolution and fascism.

Very often, in a protest, the first ones to initiate violence are police infiltrators and informants. Initial reports identified the man in black as a Minneapolis police officer.  But the Minneapolis police say the alleged culprit was on duty elsewhere at the time the video was shot.

USA Today reported that the man in black in the video was not the only one.

MINNEAPOLIS — Drifting out of the shadows in small groups, dressed in black, carrying shields and wearing knee pads, they head toward the front lines of the protest.  Helmets and gas masks protect and obscure their faces, and they carry bottles of milk to counteract tear gas and pepper spray.

Most of them appear to be white.  They carry no signs and don’t want to speak to reporters. Trailed by designated “medics” with red crosses taped to their clothes, these groups head straight for the front lines of the conflict.

Night after night in this ravaged city, these small groups do battle with police and the National Guard, kicking away tear gas canisters and throwing back foam-rubber projects fired at them.

Around them, fires break out. Windows are smashed. Parked cars destroyed.

USA TODAY reporters have witnessed the groups on multiple nights, in multiple locations.  Sometimes they threaten those journalists who photograph them destroying property.

Source: USA Today

The lives that don’t matter

May 24, 2020

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.  (George Orwell, 1946)

The War Nerd: How Many Dead Yemeni Nobodies Does It Take to Equal One Washington Post Contributor?

Book note: Complicity by Iain Banks

May 22, 2020

The late Iain M. Banks (1954-2013) was known for a series of science fiction novels set against the background of a future society called The Culture, in which the mass of humanity lived in artificial habitats moving through interstellar space, watched over by artificial intelligences that protected and provided for them.

Members of The Culture lived indefinitely in comfort and safety and were enabled to engage in any possible activity or indulge in any possible pleasure that did not threaten the whole.

In a world where anything is possible, does anything matter?  What could members of The Culture do that would give their lives meaning or provide a plot for a readable novel?

In Banks’ novels, they engage in diplomacy, espionage and war withe the goal of bringing other sentient beings, human and non-human, into The Culture.

He wrote novels on this theme, which can be enjoyed as action-adventure stories or as portraits of a utopia (or is it a dystopia).  I read a few of them.  I thought the best was the first, Consider Phlebas (1987).  It was enjoyable both as an action-adventure yarn and also as an SF utopia—or is it a dystopia?

He also wrote non-SF novels as plain Iain Banks.  I never got around to reading them until recently, when I picked up a copy of his crime novel Complicity (1993).

The viewpoint character in Complicity is a Scottish newspaper writer named Cameron Colby, who writes a series of exposes of rich and powerful people, based on tips from an anonymous source.

They include an arms merchant, a pornographer, a judge, a corrupt newspaper publisher and an businessman whose negligence killed a thousand people in an industrial accident overseas.

Colby had written that the world would be better off without such people, and a serial killer apparently took him at his word.

The evildoers in high places are killed off one by one in appropriate ways.  The negligent businessman is killed in an explosion.  The corrupt publisher is literally “spiked” [1].  The pornographer is killed in a sexually degrading way.  And so on.

The murders are described in the second person [2] in such an involving way and in such detail that they almost like seem like manuals of instruction.  I almost feel like these chapters should come with a warning that these parts of the novel are for entertainment purposes only and the reader should not try this at home.

Colby is a weak character, addicted to tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, computer games and kinky sex with a married woman. As the murders proceed, he himself becomes a suspect.

He tries to trap the killer and instead himself becomes the killer’s prisoner.  Instead of killing him, the killer tries to justify himself.

You agree that Nazi criminals tried at Nuremberg deserved to die? the killer asks.  You agree these criminals have done more harm than any individual murderer?  You agree they are never going to be brought to justice by legal means, least of all by your journalism?

Well, then?  What have I done wrong?

The killer spares Colby and gives him a chance to turn him in before he makes his getaway.

Complicity is gruesome and sordid.  I don’t recommend it to fans of Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers.  But it is compelling and I kept reading to find out what happened next.

Senate prepares big giveaway to big business

March 23, 2020

The trillion-dollar coronavirus bailout package drawn up by Senate Republicans is a giveaway to big business that does little to avert the coming economic depression.

The main features are:

  • Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gets to dole out $500 billion to corporations without revealing who got what for six months.
  • Businesses are not required to keep workers on their payrolls.
  • There are no meaningful oversight provisions to prevent waste, fraud and abuse.

Democrats won a minor concession—to extend unemployment benefits for four months instead of just three.  This is trivial.  So are the relief checks being mailed out—$3,000 checks for a family of four.

Now it’s true that essential businesses can’t be allowed to fail because of a crisis not of their own making.  I criticize Walmart’s business practices, but a lot of people depend on Walmart for the necessities of life.

 It’s not possible to shut down economic activity on a large scale and not risk another economic crash.

On the other hand, Walmart shouldn’t be allowed to use government handouts to crush and buy up individually-owned businesses that compete with us.

I admit I don’t have a complete idea of what to do.  One possibility is for the federal government to fund unemployment insurance and apply it to the self-employed and gig workers as well as workers already in the system.  Another would be to provide Medicare benefits to coronavirus patients—better still, Medicare for all.

If you’re an American, I recommend you follow the Naked Capitalism blog’s headline service to keep in touch with breaking developments.

Later.  The giveaway bill was stopped—for now.  Of course Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is accusing the Democrats of indifference to Americans’ economic plight.

Stop the Coronavirus Corporate Coup by Matt Stoller for BIG.

Bailout Shenanigans: Making 2008 Look Good? by Yves Smith for Naked Capitalism.

Protect People, Not Financial Ledgers by Ian Welsh.

How Democrats Can Fix Their COVID Response by Brian Beutler for Crooked Media.

At Least Five U.S. Senators, Briefed on Coronavirus, Sold Stocks Before Market Crash by Democracy Now!

Legal injustice: Goliath stomps David

February 24, 2020

How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything by Sharon Lerner for The Intercept.

He Sued Chevon and Won – Now He’s Under House Arrest by Christine MacDonald for In These Times.

Remind me: What is an impeachable offense?

February 2, 2020

“Lambert Strether,” a writer and editor for the Naked Capitalism web log, had this to say about impeachment.

Working on the assumption that acts, once not impeached, are no longer not in scope for future impeachment, Pelosi, in 2006, did not impeach Bush for taking the country to war in Iraq, for his warrantless surveillance program (multiple felonies; destruction of the Fourth Amendment), or for torture (prohibited by international treaties, hence the law of the land).

The Republicans did not impeach Obama for whacking a US cititzen with a drone strike and no due process.

After 2016, the Democrats focused, laser-like, even before the inaugural, on impeaching Trump over an ever-shifting, never-proven Russia-adjacent “collusion” narrative driven by anonymous leaks from the intelligence community, which we were constantly assured would bring about Trump’s impeachment, or even his imprisonment.

When that Democrat effort ignominiously collapsed with Hero Of The Resistance™ Mueller’s damp squib of Congressional testimony, the new Ukraine narrative miraculously appeared, articles of impeachment were instantly prepared, followed by several weeks of delay in delivering them to the Senate, followed by complaints that the Republicans would not call the witnesses that the Democrats themselves should have called.

(Comic interlude: The uncalled Bolton boosting his pre-sales at Amazon.)

Utterly predictably, given both their credibility and Republican venality, the Democrats than lost the impeachment vote in the Senate, thereby cementing Trump’s “abuse of power” into precedent.

(To be fair, the Democrats may make a few 2020 Senate races more difficult for the Republicans than before.)

So, let’s review: From 2006, due primarily to sins of omission or commission by Democrats, Presidents are not accountable for: (1) fake intelligence leading to war, (2) felonies, (3) war crimes, (4) assassinating US citizens (this is down to the Republicans) and (5) abuse of power.

Oh, and (6) epic levels of personal corruption, since Democrats did not impeach Trump over the emoluments clause, setting another precedent.

Source: naked capitalism

My sentiments exactly.

How U.S. foreign policy is like 1930s Germany’s

January 10, 2020

I am careful about using the words “fascist,” “Nazi” and “Hitler,” and I do not think that what’s left of American freedom and democracy is equivalent to Nazi Germany’s totalitarianism.

But there are good reasons why other nations view the USA as the same kind of threat to international order as the Axis powers posed in the 1930s.  We Americans need to try to see ourselves as others see us.

I recommend you click on the links below.

On Rogues and Rogue States: Old, New and Improved by Fred Reed.

Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist by C.J. Hopkins for Consent Factory.

The normalization of assassination

January 10, 2020

Most of President Trump’s critics, at home and abroad, saw nothing morally wrong with  the killing of Iranian General Qasim Soleimani.  They criticized the murder on pragmatic and procedural grounds.

They said that while Soleimani was a bad person who deserved to die, killing him at this particular time until these particular circumstances without proper consultation would have dire consequences.

I don’t claim to know what happens next, but right now it looks as if the consequences might not be all that dire.  If so, the critics seem like a bunch of nervous nellies—provided you see nothing wrong with assassination in and of itself.

President Trump

Iranians fired missiles with pinpoint accuracy at two U.S. military bases, causing damage but not casualties.  Their action was a demonstration of American vulnerability and Iranian restraint.

It’s worth remembering that the United States simulated an invasion of Iran in the Millennial Challenge 2002 war games, and lost badly.  An all-out shooting war is not in the interest of either side.

Iranian and Hezbollah leaders said they will take revenge in the form of stepped-up attacks on U.S. troops.  They said they will spare American civilians.

I think Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper regard increased American military casualties as an acceptable loss.  If they cared about the lives of American troops, they would have wound down the futile Afghanistan campaign years ago.

One danger is that Trump, Pompeo and Esper will regard Iranian restraint as weakness.  Pompeo has said he hopes increased economic pressure will make the current Iranian government fall.

That’s entirely possible, but the replacement Iranian government would be more fiercely anti-American and less restrained than the current one.

For now, both sides have stepped back from the brink.  What many feared did not happen.  Trump’s procedural sins do not seem all that bad.

But a precedent has been set – that the assassination of foreign leaders is one more foreign policy option that has to be considered.  Killing leaders of foreign governments may be expedient or inexpedient, but we think about it on a case by case basis.

Here are some of that bad consequences that can flow from the new ethical normal.

  1. Our government, having decided that it is all right to commit criminal acts against foreigners, would decide it is all right to commit criminal acts against citizens.
  2. Democratic foreign governments would decide the United States is a rogue state and unite to stop it.  This would more likely come in the form of economic boycotts, divestment and sanctions rather than a military alliance..
  3. Authoritarian foreign governments would take the United States as a role model.  Assassinations would become commonplace, and some of them would be of American leaders..

The killing of General Soleimani was a crime

January 6, 2020

The killing of General Qasem Soleimani was more than a blunder.  It was a crime.

He was invited to Baghdad by the Iraqi government, a U.S. ally, with the knowledge of the U.S. government, to use his good offices to help negotiate peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

He came without protection because he thought he was on a mission of peace.  His killing was an act of treachery as well as murder.

Qasem Soleimani

We Americans find it hard to accept the criminal nature of this act because we have been incrementally brought to believe that assassination, along with waging undeclared wars, is normal behavior.

Most of President Trump’s critics say that although Soleimani was an evildoer who deserved to die, his killing was inadvisable under the circumstances, or that Trump should have consulted with Congress before he acted.

What was his crime?  Soleimani’s Quds force organized and led resistance in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen against foreign invaders – Israelis, Americans, Saudis and Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda terrorists.

He acted on behalf of Iranian interests and against U.S. (perceived) interests and was therefore an enemy.  But there was a time when honorable soldiers could respect a brave and capable enemy.

Northern generals in the U.S. Civil War respected Robert E. Lee.  Allied generals in World War Two respected Erwin Rommel.   They wouldn’t have encouraged Lee or Rommel to come to neutral ground and then killed them from ambush.

President Trump has led the United States to the brink of war with Iran.  But even if war is avoided, it is still an established principle that a President can order invasions and killings on his own personal judgment, and so more murders of foreign leaders are nearly inevitable.

What has happened, will continue to happen, unless we the people put a stop to it.  We have not seen the worst.

Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on a peace mission when assassinated, exploding Trump’s lie of “imminent attacks,” by Max Blumenthal for The Gray Zone.

Soleimani’s assassination and the muddled moralism behind it by Robert Wright for Nonzero.

How to Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda by Nathan J. Robinson for Current Affairs.

The global future of the surveillance states

December 6, 2019

Knowledge is power.  If I know everything there is to know about you, and you know nothing about me, I have power over you.

That power takes two forms.  One is the power of blackmail.  You would be highly unusual if you not only had never done anything bad, but had never done anything that could be made to look bad.

The other is the power of manipulation.  If I know everything about you, I have an idea of what psychological buttons to push to get you to do what I want.

Edward Snowden, in PERMANENT RECORD, told of how U.S. intelligence agencies are collecting information about the whole American population based on their electronic records and Internet activities.

We know that intelligence agencies use blackmail.  And we know from Shoshana Zuboff’s THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM that corporations such as Google, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica use data about individuals to help advertisers and win election campaigns.

But surveillance is not just American.  if U.S. intelligence agencies are gathering data about foreigners, foreign intelligence agencies must surely be gathering information about Americans.  And if they don’t yet have the technical capability to equal the American effort, it is only a matter of time until they do.

The government of China, for example, has financial and technological power equal to the USA, and the Chinese have an attitude that anything Americans or other Westerners can do, they can out-do.

They already carry surveillance of their own citizens to terrifying lengths, and there is no reason to think they would limit surveillance to their own citizens.

Snowden’s solution is strong encryption of electronic communication.  Individuals may or may not be able to bring their governments under control, he wrote, but they can take action to protect themselves.

There are problems with this.  One is persuading companies such as Google and Facebook to go along with it or persuading individuals to go without the convenience of using Google and Facebook.  After all, the Google and Facebook business model is based on collecting data from their users.

Another is whether they can be any encryption that is truly unbreakable.  Snowdon in his book gives examples of the Tor system of encryption and explains why it is not mathematically and technologically feasible to break it.

I don’t know enough about cryptography to contradict him.  But I do know the history of code-making and code-breaking has been a back-and-forth struggle.

Edward Snowden tells his story

December 5, 2019

In 2013, at age 29, Edward Snowden became the world’s most famous whistleblower.

He told the world that U.S. Intelligence agencies were gathering information on everyone on earth who’d ever made a phone call, text message or e-mail, used Google, Amazon, Facebook or a credit card or had electronic medical, educational or financial information on record.

His new book, PERMANENT RECORD, tells how he got the information out, and why he risked death and prison and suffered exile to do it.

I don’t think anybody, no matter how much they may question his actions, can doubt the sincerity of his motives.

He grew up in a family with a heritage of military and government service.  Both his parents had security clearances.

HIs basic values (like mine) were belief in American freedom and democracy as he was taught about them in school.  Also, like many others in the 1990s, he believed in computers and the Internet as a force for human liberation.

From a young age, he had a knack for analyzing systems for weaknesses.  He analyzed the grading criteria for his high school courses, and figured out that he could get a passing grade without doing any homework.

As a teenager, he found a hole in the security system of Los Alamos National Laboratories and pestered authorities until they acknowledged it and fixed it.

His first impulse after the 9/11 attacks was to enlist in the Army and try to qualify for the Special Forces.  But he was injured in a training accident and discharged.  He then joined the Central Intelligence Agency instead.

Organizations based on hierarchy and adherence to a chain of command do not usually welcome recruits who are given to pointing out flaws in the system.  But the CIA dealt with Snowden by giving him special permissions so they could use his talents.

As a CIA officer and later as a contractor for the National Security Agency, Snowden gained unusual access to the whole range of CIA and NSA activities.  He became aware that they were spying not just on foreign governments and suspicious characters, but virtually everyone in the USA and abroad.

Knowledge is power.  If someone knows everything about me, they have power over me.  Most people (myself included) have done things they’re ashamed of, and wouldn’t want known.  Almost everyone has done or said something that can be made to look bad.

In the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would wiretap prominent figures and read their mail, then blackmail them.  There is no guarantee that the heads of the CIA and NSA would not use their knowledge to blackmail.  There is no guarantee they are not already doing so.

Government agencies that are doing this operate in secrecy.  They have power over us, but we the people can’t set limits on them because we don’t even know what is happening.

Snowden could not discuss his qualms with anyone, not even his lover, Lindsay Mills (now his wife).  To breathe a word to anyone would have been considered a violation of the Espionage Act, which carries a maximum penalty of death.

Having reached a decision in silence, he had to make a plan silence and execute it alone.  He had to figure out exactly what the CIA and NSA were doing, how to prove it and how to disseminate that proof in a way that would have an impact.  Any error in his plan or its execution would have been fatal.

The strain must have been almost unbearable.  The temptation to confide in someone must have been almost irresistable (which was the downfall of his fellow whistleblower, Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning).

Edward Snowden on the surveillance state

December 3, 2019

The following is from Edward Snowden’s new book, Permanent Record

Algorithms analyze…[our data] for patterns of established behavior in order to extrapolate behaviors to come, a type of digital prophecy that’s only slightly more accurate than analog methods like palm reading.

Once you go digging into the actual technical mechanisms by which predictability is calculated, you come to understand the its science is, in fact, anti-scientific, and fatally misnamed: predictability is actually manipulation.

A website that tells you that because you liked this book, you might also like books by James Clapper or Michael Hayden isn’t offering an educated guess as much as a mechanism of subtle coercion.

We can’t allow ourselves to be used in this way, to be used against the future.  We can’t permit our data to be used to sell us the very things that must not be sold, such as journalism.  If we do, the journalism we get will be merely the journalism we want, or the journalism the powerful want us to have, not the honest collective conversation that’s necessary.

We can’t let the godlike surveillance we’re under to be used to “calculate” our citizenship scores, or to “predict” our criminal activity; to tell us what kind of education we can have, or what kind of education we can have, or what kind of job we can have, or whether we can have an education or job at all; to discriminate against us based on our financial, legal and medical histories, not to mention our ethnicity or race, which are constructs that data often assumes or imposes.

And as for our most intimate data, our genetic information: if we allow it to be used to identify us, it will be used to victimize us, even to modify us—to remake the very essence of our humanity in the image of the technology that seeks its control.

Of course, all of the above has already happened.

Edward Snowden on the Joe Rogan podcast

October 30, 2019

Edward Snowden was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast a week ago, but I only got around to viewing it the whole way through last night.

It’s an unusually long interview – 2 hours, 49 minutes – but I found it interesting throughout.  However, you can get an idea of Snowden’s core message if you start at 1 hour 30 minutes and watch for 15 or 30 minutes.

Snowden is a great hero of our time, along with Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.  They’ve all been charged with violating the Espionage Act for revealing wrongdoing by the U.S.government.

Assange is in prison in Britain facing extradition to the USA.  Manning served a prison term, and is in prison again for refusing to testify against Assange.  Snowden is in exile in Russia, but he said he’ll return to the USA if he can get a fair trial.

By “fair trial,” he means the right to tell a jury the reason why he did what he did,  Someone on trial for murder would have this right, but an accused whistleblower does not.

Snowden worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency and learned that they monitor and store virtually every electronic communication by every citizen.

Everyone has done something in their lives that is shameful or can be made to look shameful.  If the FBI, CIA and NSA can know everything about you and me, and their activities are invisible to us, that comes close to having absolute power.

One interesting sidelight is that Snowden, who has a deep understanding both of the technology and of the political, legal and moral issues at stake, is a college dropout.  Educational credentials are not a measure of the intellect, let alone character.

Joe Rogan also lacks credentials.  He is a stand-up comedian with a love of the martial arts.  But his podcasts are more illuminating than most network news shows because of his open-mindedness, intellectual curiosity and willingness to let his guests have their say.  A lot of them are with guests or about topics I don’t care about, but so what?

The deeper problem concerning Julian Assange

October 25, 2019

Julian Assange, who faces extradition from the UK to the USA on charges based on his publication of American government secrets, is being denied the right to a fair hearing.  He is being abused and tormented.

But the deeper problem is that even if his legal rights were respected, he might well be convicted under existing U.S. law.

And this would establish the precedent that the U.S. government can commit crimes, classify those crimes as secret and imprison anyone who makes these crimes known.

This would break the uneasy truce between the government and the U.S. press, in which whistleblowers reveal secrets at their peril, but the press is allowed to publish them with impunity.

Such a distinction does not make logical or legal sense.  In the law of libel, for example, the writer and the publisher are both liable for damages.  But in practice, it has allowed some abuses of power to come to light that otherwise would have been hidden.

The U.S. government has already claimed the legal right to wage undeclared wars, to commit assassinations, to engage in warrantless arrests and warrantless surveillance and to torture people to get information—all in the name of national security.

The most important remaining restriction on abuse of these powers is the force of public opinion.  But the public can’t have an opinion on what it isn’t allowed to know.

Among the Presidential candidates, the prosecution of Assange is opposed by Democrats Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard,, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson and Republican Joe Walsh.

Sanders said that, if elected President, he would not prosecute whistleblowers.  I believe Sanders, but I remember President Obama also promised that, and Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than any previous President.

Even if Sanders or one of the other candidates is elected, and even if they follow through on their promises, this would be just a matter of policy that could be reversed  by the next administration.

What’s needed is a law that allows people charged with revealing classified information to rebut the charge by showing they acted in the public interest by revealing crimes, wrongdoing or mismanagement and that the national interest was not harmed.

The same purpose could be achieved by judicial decision—that the use of the Espionage Act to protect the guilty or the incompetent is unconstitutional.

U.S. treats Assange as Soviets treated dissidents

October 23, 2019

Americans and Britons have historically prided ourselves on the rule of law—the no-one is above being subject to the law and no-one is below being protected by the law.

Col. Rudolph Abel, the Soviet master spy who was apprehended in 1957, was defended in his trial by a top lawyer, James Donovan.  The accused Nazi war criminals tried at Nuremberg were given the opportunity to defend themselves and some actually got off.  All of them were treated humanely while awaiting trial.

The dissident publisher Julian Assange, who is accused of publishing secret information about U.S. war crimes, is being treated worse than any accused Nazi.  He has been kept in solitary confinement, denied needed medical care and restricted in the ability to conduct his own defense.

He appeared in Westminster Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday in a proceeding to schedule the hearing on whether he should be extradited from Britain to the United States on charges of spying.

Spectators saw that his physical and mental health is broken.  Of course it will be highly convenient to the U.S. national security establishment if he is unable to speak in his own defense and better still if he dies in prison.

He was barely able to understand what was going on.  He was like some Soviet dissident of the 1970s and 1980s who’d been subjected to psychiatric, or rather anti-psychiatric, drugs.

Here is what his friend Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, saw:

I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.

But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both.  [snip]

[H]aving attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that … … Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness. [snip]

Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable.

Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later.

The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern.  [snip]

Whistleblowers, leakers and spies

October 7, 2019

A spy is someone who provides information of military, diplomatic or political significance to a hostile foreign power.

A whistleblower is someone who reveals secret information about crimes and bungling to the general public.

A leaker is someone who reveals selected secret information to the general public in order to further some goal of the organization he or she works for.

In general, governments pursue whistleblowers with much greater ferocity than they go spies, while leakers are rewarded.

President Trump’s confidential conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky was revealed by a leaker, not a whistleblower.  Unlike with a whistleblower such as Chelsea Manning, there is no attempt by the CIA to track down and punish the leaker.  That shows it was an authorized leak.

Just as one of the benefits of red tape is to give power and prestige to those who can cut it, one of the benefits of classified information is to give power and prestige to those empowered to reveal it.

What would be the motive of the CIA is trying to promote impeachment of President Trump?  No doubt one is that CIA officials, like many members of the American public, regard Trump as a dangerous and unpredictable loose cannon.

But there also is the possibility that Trump just might wind down the wars in the Middle East and end the new cold war with Russia.  From the CIA’s perspective, that would be a great threat.  Much better, from their standpoint, to have Mike Pence in the White House.

If a future President Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or some libertarian Republican tried to make peace, that also would be regarded as a great threat, and no doubt would be met with a CIA attempt to undermine them.

The Ukrainegate Whistleblower Isn’t a Real Whistleblower by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone.  As usual, Taibbi hits the nail on the head.  Highly recommended.

A Weak Whistleblower, a Ridiculous Impeachment by Peter Van Buren for The American Conservative.  Van Buren, a former career State Department employee, lost his job and was threatened with prosecution for writing a book about the bungling of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Onward, Christian Soldier: Imagining a Pence Presidency by Barbara Boland for The American Conservative.

Trump, Biden and Ukraine

September 25, 2019

I wrote a week ago that impeachment of President Donald Trump is a mirage, and now Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called for an impeachment investigation of the President.  Such are the perils of commenting on breaking news.

The circumstantial  information already available to the public indicates that President Trump has abused the powers of his office.

President Trump

He acknowledged holding back $250 million in military aid that Congress had appropriated for Ukraine.

He acknowledged talking to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine about reopening an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, $50,000 a month to serve on its board of directors.  The younger Biden resigned from the board earlier this year.

The House Judiciary Committee wants the transcript of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, but even if nothing was said that connects the aid package to the investigation, the implication is clear.

The House has a duty to investigate.  I don’t think it is a good idea to call it an impeachment investigation just yet because calling it that means the investigation will be considered a failure if it does not result in impeachment recommendations.

Impeachment by the House may or may not be justified.  Conviction by the Senate would be next to impossible because it would require unanimity among the 47 Democratic Senators plus support by at least 20 Republicans.

Joe and Hunter Biden

What Republicans will point out is that Vice President Joe Biden threatened to hold up $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine unless the government fired Viktor Shotkin, the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma.

Biden claims that Shotkin was corrupt, and his threat had nothing to do with his son.

I know of no evidence that either Joe Biden or his ne’er-do-well son, Hunter, broke the law.  But it’s obvious that Hunter would not have gotten his position if his father had not been Vice President.

It was a conflict of interest for Biden to be President Obama’s point man for Ukraine after his son took the job.

Biden may suffer more political damage than Trump.  The Trump Organization’s worldwide operations involve more extensive potential conflicts of interest.  But Biden has a reputation to lose and Trump doesn’t.

The greatest reputational damage of all in the whole affair is to the reputation of the United States of America as a whole.  It shows that American political leaders do not respect the sovereignty of allies.  It shows they use American power to advance their personal family and political interests.

So far as political strategy goes, I think that so long as public attention is focused on personalities, Trump benefits, and that Democrats can win only if they focus on policy and governance.  Trump may win if the 2020 election hinges on impeachment, and impeachment fails.

Protest and dissent in Putin’s Russia

August 27, 2019

In Russia, the Fight Is Alive by Ilya Matveev for Jacobin.


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Mindfulness post over at www.biblical.edu

The faculty blog at Biblical Seminary has posted one of mine about mindfulness from a Christian perspective. Actually, it is a call to develop a theology of mindfulness–or what I prefer to call watchfulness. While you are there, check out some of the other postings by my colleagues.

Filed under "phil monroe", biblical counseling, Biblical Seminary, christian counseling, christian psychology, Psychology

2 responses to “Mindfulness post over at www.biblical.edu

  1. Great article. Thanks for sharing. I am about to start a mindfulness practice (taught by a Christian therapist) so this is an interesting framework too consider. I think many ideas in mindfulness such as the focus in the present can be found in the bible. Once again modern science proving what God told us years ago.

  2. debbie

    Having learned a boat-load of anxiety-producing thinking growing up, I attended an 8 week mindfulness course about a year ago as a 53 year old adult. Though I did not agree with the Buddhist philosophy, I came away with great skills to cope in my day-to-day life. I saw these techniques harmonious with Biblical teaching as I sought to reinforce what I had learned in Scripture. I wish that someday someone would teach these things from a Christian perspective. Meditation is spoken of quite frequently in the Bible and, I believe, a lost art in today’s world.

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Complete Asus ROG Phone 3 rumors

This complete Asus ROG Phone 3 rumors will be updated when there’s newer information on the phone.

Known best as a gaming phone, the Asus ROG Phone series usually comes with special features which will help mobile gamers improve their gaming experience.

Rumours from SparrowNews suggest that the next flagship gaming phone by Asus will have a 6.59-inch FHD+ OLED panel with 144Hz refresh rate.  It is said to have a thickness of 9.85mm, and will weight 240g.

In May 2020, GSM Arena reported that the upcoming ROG Phone 3 had received WiFi certification with the site claiming that this is ‘final stages of the development phase’.

According to render leaks by Digital Chat Station in June 2020, the ROG Phone 3 will look similar to its predecessor.  He also showed images below in his Weibo post.

Asus ROG Phone III

As you can see, there’s really nothing special for the front, with the back having a triple camera set-up.

The camera bump is also quite obvious when seen from the side of the phone, and the location is on the upper left of the rear.

A video was later released today, claimed as a leaked Asus ROG Phone 3.  In the video, a full working phone can be seen.  Based on the video, I noted that there’s no teardrop or dot selfie camera on the top bezel, but I also noted the top bezel is slightly bigger than the side bezel.  This is likely where the selfie camera is located.  There doesn’t seem to be much difference in size between the top and lower bezels nonetheless.

On the rear of the phone, the ROD logo illuminates when turned on. The video can be seen below.

The gaming phone is rumored to be powered by a Snapdragon 865 chipset which is paired with 16GB of RAM.

It is highly anticipated that the storage space will differ according to variant.

It is strongly rumored that the Asus ROG Phone 3 will enjoy a triple camera set-up although there’s no word on what type of camera will be fitted into the top gaming phone by asus.

Sparrow News claims that the camera set-up will come with a 64-megapixel main camera.

A massive 6,000 mAh battery capable of 30W fast charging is rumored to juice up this flagship gaming smartphone.  If it’s true, this is one of the biggest batteries ever fitted into a flagship smartphone by a major smartphone making brand.

I am expecting the ROG Phone 3 to be exclusively black.  As renders above suggest, the phone will likely not have much color options and may just have slight additions of colour to the black body.

GSM Arena reports that the ROG Phone 3 is expected to be launched in July.

So far there’s no mention of pricing in the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Plus rumors-ville, but older versions of the phone are sold from RM800 on both Lazada and Shopee.


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Corpse of Discovery was reviewed by Kill Screen! It was given a 69/100. Here’s the full review:

When we say something is Kafkaesque—beyond the obvious tautology of Kafka or his books—we generally mean that a particular something captures a spirit of bizarre mundanity. The Oxford English Dictionaryoffers things like “oppressive” or “nightmarish” in its definition of the word, but there is a core of quotidian horror to the experience: Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a scarab beetle and his first concern is being late for work; Josef K. is accused of some great and nebulous crime, and the narrator assumes that malicious gossip is at the root of the charge. Part of the our enduring fascination with these two examples is the way in which a commonplace life slurs into oppression and the bizarre; yes, freaky shit happens behind closed doors in the bank that employs Josef, but it’s not unfamiliar to those who have watched The Wolf of Wall Street or followed the allegations surrounding, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s parties.

But, in a sign of how familiar the conventions of science fiction are becoming, Corpse of Discovery takes Kafka’s strain of worldly alienation to an alien world. The game’s story is relatively simple: you play a disappeared astronaut who must explore a desolate, Mars-like planet (which demands a more powerful computer than mine to do the draw distance justice). You hop along to five different points in the belief that, once you complete your mission, you will be rescued. But despite the assurances of your bureaucratically optimistic AI companion, this relief does not happen: left alone on a desolate world of red rock, dust storms, and voracious solar radiation, you quickly die. And then you wake up the next day, in the same bed, in the same base, to try the same thing again—only with a different background, a different script, a different set of items to collect.

Accompanying you throughout this banal exercise is your AVA unit, a relentlessly cheerful inversion of Douglas Adams’ saturnine Marvin: she’s brimming with good advice for your career, your retirement, or the current mission status. At one point, she reminds you that the success of this mission will allow you to retire and enjoy a quiet family life; at another, she advises you to cryogenically freeze yourself until your dream career becomes a legitimate possibility, sometime in the distant future. By relentlessly parodying the message of a particularly extreme Human Resources department, the videogame makes the beautiful vistas banal: running around a brave new world is just another day at the office; climb a massive hill, enjoy the heretofore unknown view, and receive an email from HR about a new innovation to your company’s retirement strategy. As though Cortez, silent on a peak in Darien, thought the Pacific Ocean was a water cooler around which to chat.

This repetition—again, a variation on a fetch-quest with a few mix-and-match mechanics—helps to blend the humdrum and the unfamiliar together: some maps feature inhospitable solar radiation, making it essential that you keep to the shadows of unknown spires and mountains; others require a limited-use jetpack to sail from one crag to the next; still others combine these various elements in order to provide the illusion of variety. When combined further with various surreal touches—silver portals that take you into kitchens, the accidental discovery of plates of cakes and burgers—the fantastic is made depressingly professional. It’s all one day at the office—here’s today’s memo, just mind that you avoid the lava fields.

But if Corpse of Discovery were just a chimera of corporate parody and rote sci-fi, it would be a forgettable project. But the emotional core of the entire experience is the regular messages from the protagonist’s family: the nuclear wife and daughters. The first message is a cliché farewell: the wife is worried but proud while the youngest daughter is so sweet your back teeth hurt. But as the missions continue, your family moves on without you: the oldest daughter grows distant, and moves from the shared space of all young children into a room of her own; the youngest heartbreakingly recites Goodnight Moon. Your wife now believes you are dead. The real world turns without you as you are trapped on this brave new one.

You are no Gregor Samza, abandoned to your strange beetledom by a retreating family; you are taken into a surreal, shifting world—named Tellurus, by the by, from a Latin word meaning “earth”—and removed from any real action of consequence. The chipper and corporate AVA reminds you of various employment benefit programs and how monumentally significant the work you are doing is, but the words ring hollow when you are given these doses of real life: a view of your family’s kitchen, or the way ice cream reminds you of your character’s sweet tooth. These touches of pathos add a third dimension and invite all manner of comparisons: it’s the videogame version of “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Or it’s a metaphor for how the corporate life can eat away at your own. Or it’s an exploration of the surprisingly small gulf between the familiar and the foreign. Like Kafka’s own novels, these comparisons fit the work, but the work always surpasses the resemblance: Corpse of Discovery is all of the above suggestions, and more.

But to talk about Kafka is to talk about fables. The Trial is an allegory for the impersonal and arcane law; The Metamorphosis is an almost unaccountable fable for, perhaps, the life of the writer or the way in which our family lives fall apart. Corpse of Discovery works as a fable for a life spent at work, for the way in which the alien and unfamiliar fall into tedium, or for our own lonely approach to death. The ending is vague (and, to be fair, the point where a tightly constructed subtext starts to fall apart), but its vagueness nevertheless supports a surreal reflection on the now-common worlds of science fiction.

The sub-genre of videogames focused on the exploration of an empty planet—from the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod Moon to the relatively recent (and rough around the edges) Lifeless Planet—tend to emphasize the isolation of the experience. Moon is a stark and lonely grayscale affair; Lifeless Planet’s dry landscapes, crumbling ruins, and despoiled forests all liken the game to the experience of walking through a forgotten graveyard. In both examples, the crucial sense of isolation is maintained by a muted color palette, a lack of background music or the presence of atmospheric sounds like the constant and quiet drone of wind. But Corpse of Discovery does not give you that kind of space: your family misses you and the claustrophobic sound of your own breath inside a spacesuit is interrupted by a helpful suggestion from AVA. You are not truly alone in Corpse of Discovery, but the videogame shows how loneliness is a question of degrees and shades, and not a simple binary. It is through this three-dimensional exploration of the pilgrim on a foreign world that the game shows its worth.


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Have you seen this?

Feb 21, 2020

I sure hope not! But if you have, you get to see it again!

I’m not feeling very well, been fighting something for a couple of days. I don’t have a fever…nothing I eat is very appetizing, and I’m a little achy. Am I just worn out? I have no idea… and no, I’m not pregnant! That’s not happening as I can’t get pregnant…

Hope you have a great day!
Thanks for stopping by!!

Later on, hopefully I’ll feel more like my old self and do a “normal” post!

~ Take Care ~

8 Comments on “Have you seen this?

  1. It’s a real nice picture for sure. Hope you feel better soon

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The Ultimate Food Guide to 2019 Richmond Night Market, especially if you have limited budget!

Recently, I did a series of Instagram stories on spending just $30 (excluding the admission) in this year’s Richmond Night Market, and many love it! Therefore, I decide to come up with an ultimate food guide for you, especially if you have limited budget. This year’s admission is $4.95 per person, with an option to purchase the Express Pass for $28 (include 6 visits). If you are planning to go only once, I prefer just getting the one-time pass. The line up doesn’t seem to have much difference, to be honest.

I was lucky to be invited to a media event, hosted by ChineseBites and Tourism Richmond. I tried 25 stalls in the Richmond Night Market, and I was surprised by this year’s creativity and overall quality of the food. Concluding my two visits to Richmond Night Market, here are the top 10 food items that you should try on your next visit.

TukTuk (F25)

Coconut Panna Cotta with Dok Jok (Original & Squid Ink) / $8

Many agree this stall to be one of the best in this year’s night market. It features a traditional Thai dessert, with flavoured panna cotta and 2 freshly fried Dok Jok (Thai Flower Cookie) ($8). The panna cotta comes in 3 flavours: Coconut, Thai Tea, and Thai Green Tea. Dok Jok comes in original and squid ink flavours. It then tops with caramel drizzles and gold flakes.

My favourite is the coconut-infused panna cotta, with mixed dok jok. There are big slices of coconut meat in the soft panna cotta. The squid ink dok jok is rich, with a touch of saltiness. Caramel drizzle elevates its sweetness, and the overall flavor is perfect. Make sure you crush the dok jok before eating it!

Okonomi Bites (F33)

Cheese Tonkatsu Poutine / $10 (left)

This stall features Japanese style poutines, and my favourite is the Cheese Tonkatsu Poutine ($10). I am usually not a cheese person, but I can’t resist the cheese strings and melted cheese. Each order is made on the spot, so it is crispy and hot. The proportion of crust is cheese is perfect. It is best to eat it hot, so you can dip your fries in the melting cheese!

Asomi Mochi (F17)

Authentic Japanese Homemade Mochi ($5) made its appearance at the night market this year again. Though you can also get them online, I don’t mind grabbing one here, as a late-night dessert. The mochi is wrapped around a strawberry, with red bean paste filling. The strawberry is sweet and juicy! You can also find the new flavor, Cheesecake Mochi, at the night market. It is with cheesecake filling instead of red bean paste. It is refreshing and not overly sweet or heavy. I recommend the original, purple yam, and the new cheesecake flavor!

iTofu (F50)

Cold Tofu Pudding with Fresh Mango & Handmade Taro Balls / $5.50 (+$2/topping)

Few years ago, I discovered iTofu at the night market, and I just fell in love with it. Then it opened a shop in Richmond, and I have always been a huge fan. Over the years, the quality of the tofu pudding didn’t diminish. It is always one of my favourite stalls here! I would recommend to get a cold tofu pudding with fresh mango and/or handmade taro balls ($5.50 + $2/premium topping) as toppings and share it with a friend! It will get hot and smoky in the night market, so a refreshing dessert is the best!

Zzim Drumsticks (F42)

With many korean fried chicken stalls at the night market, I think this one needs more of your attention. Instead of deep fried chicken, it is Korean braised chicken drumsticks that is cooked overnight, so the flavours are soaked into the drumsticks. It comes with two flavours: Black (sweet soy garlic) and Red (hot spicy pepper). Each portion also comes with a skewer of tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes). I recommend getting the “Red”, because it is more like a sweet type of spicy, and the rice cakes taste much better with Korean hot sauce!

Pancho’s Bakery (F5)

Churro Cone Sundae / $10

A Toronto-based churro shop just arrived the Richmond Night Market this year, and I was amazed by its soft, crunchy churro! You can choose between the Churros or Churro Cone Sundae. I recommend to go with the sundae, as the cold treat is slightly melted when you bite into the freshly-made hot churro cone! It is a lovely texture. With the sundae, you can choose the choice of syrups and toppings as well. That’s when the wet wipes come in handy, because it will get messy.

Mr. Crabzy (F107)

Stuffed Crab Claws with Shrimp Paste / $13.95 (3 pcs)

It was my first time trying this place, and it was delicious! The Stuffed Crab Claws with Shrimp Paste is perfectly fried and crispy. They use local dungeness crab claws and fresh shrimp to make the paste. The crab is meaty and remains juicy. Though it is on a pricier side, you get what you pay at this stall! I do wish there is some kind of dipping sauce to add heat to these claws.

Rotato Potato (F21 – F22)

Cheese & Sour Cream Rotato / $7

This is a classic, and it is known for not only the cool rotato, but also the long line up. I like how you can do 2 flavours (half and half) on 1 rotato. My favourite combination is the cheese and sour cream! Although some people might already get bored of this stall, I still think it tastes pretty addicting once you have a bite of it again.

Teppan Bossam (F34)

Spicy Pork Belly / $8.50 (regular)

Another classic on the list – Korean-style Pork Belly. It is another of my all time favourite. You can choose among the 3 flavours – Spicy, Barbeque, and Garlic. I tried the spicy this year, and I thought it is nothing too special. So, I still prefer the garlic flavour. The garlic sauce pairs well with the tender and juicy pork belly.

Salty’s Lobster Shack (F68)

Lobster Roll / $19

This is more of a bougie-style stall, featuring Nova Scotia Lobster Roll, Lobster Chowder. It is difficult to find lobster rolls in Vancouver, but now you can get your hands on them at night market. For one full-size lobster roll, it is $19. The bun is filled with lobster meat, and I think it is worth the price. I think the lobster chowder is pretty salty, so I will stick with my lobster roll here!

Overall Impression

I include a mix of new and classic stalls on this list, and I hope this will help some of you to get a glance of the food at the Richmond Night Market this year. I highly recommend to go for stalls that you cannot try elsewhere, except the night market! It is nice to see new and creative stalls every year, and I am already looking forward for the next year’s one (is that too early to say?) and of course my next visit with my friends!

Richmond Night Market | Instagram | Facebook
Address: 8351 River Road, Richmond, BC V6X 1Y4
Fri to Sun: 7 pm to 12 am

Disclosure: Media Event

2 Replies to “The Ultimate Food Guide to 2019 Richmond Night Market, especially if you have limited budget!”

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