publicpool | The White House summoned the press pool just after 11:20 a.m. for
what some had assumed would be a spray of President Trump's meeting with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Pool was ushered into the
Oval Office at 11:26 a.m., but Trump was instead seated beside former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The meeting with Kissinger was not
on Trump's public schedule today.
POTUS, wearing a dark suit and red striped tie, said he met with Kissinger to talk "about Russia and various other matters."
"We're
talking about Syria and I think that we're going to do very well with
respect to Syria and things are happening that are really, really,
really positive," Trump added. "We're going to stop the killing and the
death."
POTUS then said he had a "very, very good meeting" with FM
Lavrov. He said both sides want to end "the killing -- the horrible,
horrible killing in Syria as soon as possible and everybody is working
toward that end."
The Lavrov meeting was closed to the press and
the only visual account we have of it thus far is via handout photos
from the Russian government.
Those images show Trump also met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Trump
circled back and said it was "an honor" to discuss the issues with
Kissinger because "he's been a friend of mine for a long time."
bloomberg | Sergei Lavrov's official job is foreign minister of Russia, but his
visit to Washington Wednesday won't be remembered for any diplomatic
breakthrough -- just for Lavrov's dripping irony and skill at provoking
adversaries. Lavrov's style, which mirrors that of his boss, Vladimir
Putin, is often criticized as unfit for a diplomat. But I'd argue that
Lavrov knows exactly what he's doing and that the medium is the message
here.
In Washington, Lavrov feigned astonishment for a U.S.
reporter who asked about Tuesday's firing of Federal Bureau of
Investigation chief James Comey: "Was he fired? You're kidding! You're
kidding!"
He also smuggled a photographer from the state-owned news agency,
TASS, into his meeting with President Donald Trump as his official
photographer. TASS immediately published photos of Trump beaming at his
Russian visitors, Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who are
obviously delighted by the reception. With the U.S. press kept out,
these happy photos from their Russian propaganda source created an
uproar.
Sarcasm, provocation, a desire to throw interlocutors off
balance always bubble just below the surface of Lavrov's communications.
He regularly stuns Western conversation partners with crude or
offensive comments.
At a recent meeting of North Atlantic Treaty
Organization ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quipped,
"You cannot tango with Lavrov because he's not allowed to dance that
one." He meant that President Vladimir Putin determined policy in Russia
and Lavrov wouldn't be authorized to make deals. "My mother used to
tell me: always be a good boy, don't ever dance with other boys," the
Russian foreign minister responded.
In this, Lavrov's style mirrors that of his boss. In 2006, Putin memorably told Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to say hi to then-president Moshe Katsav,
accused of raping and sexually harassing women: "He turned out to be a
strong man, raped 10 women. I never would have expected it of him. He
has surprised us all, we all envy him." The Kremlin, whose communication
was a little more self-conscious back then, had to explain that Putin
didn't condone rape and that his words were meant as a hard-to-translate
joke.
Putin's crude jokes are often written off as a product of his
childhood on the streets of St. Petersburg. He's only as polished as an
intelligence officer who served in the former East Germany needed to
be. Lavrov, however, is a highly professional diplomat. He knows the
protocol, speaks three languages besides Russian, and is sophisticated
in his tastes and interests. Even his verse, while not touched by genius, is competent and far less embarrassing than the poetic efforts of many other Russian officials.
Lavrov
knows well how his remarks sound to Western ears. He is also aware that
sarcasm and taunts are often considered unprofessional and seen as a
sign of bad manners in the English-speaking world, especially in the
U.S. And yet he keeps saying things that would have gotten any Western
diplomat fired, playing out barbed comedy routines and engaging in
practical jokes worthy of a college student.
His style is the message: Russians won't play by others'
rules, it says. But this isn't about touting Russia's size and its
nuclear arsenal; it's more of a mischievous enticement, a dare.
Putin's
Russia has allied itself with Western populist forces, whose stand
against political correctness and the constant self-censorship that
comes with it constitutes a strong voter appeal. During the election
campaign in the U.S. last year, I was told many times that Trump's
penchant for uncensored speech was his most attractive quality. The
Dutch say the same of Geert Wilders, the French of Marine Le Pen. The
freedom to say whatever one wants without wondering if it could be
construed as misogynist, racist, homophobic or offensive in a myriad
other ways is, to many voters, a bonus.
Post-Soviet Russians have
relished their freedom to say whatever they want, to be sarcastic, crude
and informal, to be provocative and thus project confidence. Cursing in
the workplace, a lack of respect for propriety and protocol, an absence
of linguistic and ideological constraints were prizes to a society that
had just cast off the Communist straitjacket.
QZ | Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger may be in his nineties, but
he’s continuing to play a key, globe-spanning role in one of the most
substantive foreign policy negotiations of the US presidency so far.
Kissinger, who brokered a ground-breaking detente between the US and
China’s Communist Party’s in 1972, has served a valued go-between for
the two nations for more than four decades, earning him the nickname of
“old friend of the Chinese people.” It’s privilege he has shared with at least 600 people, although Kissinger may be the living person who has held the nickname the longest.
As recently as December, when then US president-elect Donald Trump
threatened upheaval between the world’s most powerful nations, by
accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, Kissinger was already in Beijing
with Chinese president Xi Jinping, reassuring him that “overall, we
hope to see the China-US relationship moving ahead in a sustained and
stable manner.” (A Bloomberg report suggested that Xi may have turned to the venerable diplomat
to better understand Trump, telling Kissinger he was “all ears”
regarding what he had to say about the future of US-China relations.)
Kissinger met with the incoming Trump administration soon after the
election, and helped to connect Chinese politicians with the US
president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports—connections that ultimately led to this week’s meeting.
In doing so, he’s opened up a now familiar controversy in the US—who does Kissinger work for, exactly, and whose side is he on?
Kissinger is “representing China’s interests and trying to influence
American foreign policy,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs
lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that advocates for
citizens’ rights in Congress. “That crosses the threshold for FARA,” he
said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
WaPo | For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.
Putin
should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of
military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the
United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be
patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a
serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history. Understanding
U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has
understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S.
policymakers.
Leaders of all sides should
return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my
notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests
of all sides:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.
3.
Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the
expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a
policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country.
Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of
Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and
cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids
institutional hostility toward Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the
existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be
possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught
basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over
Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in
the presence of international observers. The process would include
removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at
Sevastopol.
These are principles, not
prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that not all of
them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute
satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on
these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward
confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.
libertyblitzkrieg | Which brings me to the final and most important part of this piece.
The entire Comey firing saga could go in several directions, but an
increasingly likely outcome is the one I don’t see being discussed
anywhere. First we need to ask ourselves, what’s likely to happen next?
Calls for a special prosecutor and independent investigation into
Trump-Russia collusion are likely to get louder and louder. Given the
timing of the firing, I support this and I think there’s a good chance
it’ll happen. I hope it does happen, as we really do need to put an end
to all the speculation and hysteria one way or the other, once and for
all. But here’s where it gets really interesting…
If Trump really did coordinate with the Russian government to affect
the U.S. election and indisputable evidence emerges, it will be an
enormous scandal and he will likely be removed from office. Personally, I
don’t think such evidence exists because I don’t think such collusion
happened, but I support an independent investigation. On the other hand,
what might happen if Trump didn’t collude with Russia?
Here’s where Trump legitimately has a chance to destroy the
Democratic Party once and for all. The Democrats have already been
putting all their eggs in the Russia conspiracy theory basket, and this
focus on Russia as opposed to jobs, healthcare, student loans, debt
slavery etc., has made the American public think the Democratic Party is more out of touch
than both Trump and the GOP. Given that’s where things stand today,
imagine what’ll happen to the party and its leaders if they start
spending 100% of their time pursuing this lead and then nothing comes
up? What then?
I’ll tell you what happens. The Democratic Party, as useless as it is
today, will completely evaporate as a serious political opposition
force in America. This is because it appears all of its handful of 2020
hopefuls seem to be completely hyperventilating and losing their minds
about Comey’s dismissal and asserting that it represents proof Trump
colluded with Russia.
Imagine if Trump
is cleared by an independent investigation? These Dems will look like
complete imbeciles with horrible judgement who wasted the nation’s time
while tens of millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet. This
will destroy the party and lead to an easy Trump win in 2020. This is a
potentially lethal trap for Democrats and they seem to be falling for it
in unison.
opendemocracy | Vulnerable employment, with workers experiencing high levels of
precariousness, is a global phenomenon. The ILO projects global growth
in vulnerable forms of employment to grow by 11 million a year. The impacts of this are being felt across developed, emerging and developing countries.
In the UK, much concern about the changing labour market has been
framed in terms of the shift in risk that has occurred between employers
and individuals. The gig economy is often used to epitomise the
imbalance in power between those controlling the technology, and those
carrying out the tasks:
However, this shift of risk reaches far beyond Uber drivers and
millennials on bicycles. It can be seen in the use of contracted, agency
and temporary staff and in the unpredictability of zero and minimum
hours contracts of those working for supermarkets, in warehouses, in
social care and in universities.
The impact of this on people’s lives is exacerbated by a parallel
transfer of risk in the systems set up to support those who are
unemployed or in low paid work. At the same time as work has become less
predictable, the safety net has become less springy and with bigger
holes.
This shift can be seen in cuts to social security, in the changes and
increasing conditionality that universal credit brings, in the way jobs
are measured and impact on poverty is not. It is seen in adult learning
and the introduction of adult learner loans. It is also seen in a
childcare sector that does not have the capacity to offer care to those
with unpredictable or non-standard hours, even though those are the jobs
increasingly likely to be available for those on low pay.
newyorker | “These are jobs that don’t lead to anything,” he said, without looking up from his work. “It doesn’t feel”—he weighed the word—“sustainable to me.”
The
American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of
chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in
the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century
corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective
bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging
reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its
social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.
Support
for the new work model has come together swiftly, though, in surprising
quarters. On the second day of the most recent Democratic National
Convention, in July, members of a four-person panel suggested that
gigging life was not only sustainable but the embodiment of today’s
progressive values. “It’s all about democratizing capitalism,” Chris
Lehane, a strategist in the Clinton Administration and now Airbnb’s head
of global policy and public affairs, said during the proceedings, in
Philadelphia. David Plouffe, who had managed Barack Obama’s 2008
campaign before he joined Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re seeing a
large contingent of the Obama coalition demanding the sharing economy.”
Instead of being pawns in the games of industry, the panelists thought,
working Americans could thrive by hiring out skills as they wanted, and
putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power
to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the
people.
The basis for such
confidence was largely demographic. Though statistics about gigging work
are few, and general at best, a Pew study last year found that seventy-two per cent of American adults had
used one of eleven sharing or on-demand services, and that a third of
people under forty-five had used four or more. “To ‘speak millennial,’
you ought to be talking about the sharing economy, because it is core
and central to their economic future,” Lehane declared, and many of his
political kin have agreed. No other commercial field has lately drawn as
deeply from the Democratic brain trust. Yet what does democratized
capitalism actually promise a politically unsettled generation? Who are
its beneficiaries? At a moment when the nation’s electoral future seems
tied to the fate of its jobs, much more than next month’s paycheck
depends on the answers.
express | BARACK Obama will reportedly pocket a staggering £2.5million
(€3million) today for delivering a speech to a sold-out audience in
Milan as part of his lucrative post-presidential speaking tour.
The former President, who has already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for private speeches since leaving the White House, will make his highest-paying appearance yet at the Global Food Innovation Summit today.
tomdispatch | Since the late eighteenth century, the United States has been
involved in an almost ceaseless string of wars, interventions, punitive
expeditions, and other types of military ventures abroad -- from
fighting the British and Mexicans to the Filipinos and Koreans to the
Vietnamese and Laotians to the Afghans and Iraqis. The country has
formally declared war 11 times and has often engaged in undeclared
conflicts with some form of congressional authorization, as with the
post-9/11 “wars” that rage on today.
Recent presidents have conducted such wars without seemingly asking
the hard questions -- whether about the validity of intelligence claims,
the efficacy of military power, or the likely blowback from invasions,
drone strikes, and the deposing of dictators. The consequences have been
catastrophic for Afghans and Iraqis, Libyans and Yemenis, among
others. At last, however, we finally have a president willing to raise
some of the hard questions about war. Well, at least, about one war. Or,
rather, questions about one war that are, at least, hard to decipher.
“People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War?” President Donald Trump wondered
in a recent interview, referring to America’s nineteenth century war
over slavery. “Why could that one not have been worked out?"
Trump then suggested that, had President Andrew Jackson -- to whom he’s compared himself -- been in office, he would have avoided the conflict that claimed
more American lives than any other: “He was really angry that he saw
what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There's no
reason for this.’” Of course, Andrew Jackson, who fought in his fair
share of America’s ceaseless conflicts (including against the British during the War of 1812 and the Seminoles in Spanish Florida), died in 1845, more than a decade and a half before the Civil War began.
No matter. The important thing is that we finally have a president
willing to ask some questions about some wars -- even if it’s the wrong
questions about a war that ended more than 150 years ago.
Today, TomDispatch regular
Andrew Bacevich offers a cheat sheet of sorts: the real questions about
war and national security that should be asked but never are in these
United States. Since it’s bound to take President Trump some time to
work his way to the present -- what with all the questions about why we
fought Japanese, Koreans, Spaniards, Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese (again), Germans, Koreans (again), Chinese (again), Vietnamese, and so many others -- it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to start asking Bacevich’s questions and demanding some answers.
cbsnews | It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in
history like Ben Ferencz. He's 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and
he served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial
ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a
group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of
Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million
men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in
cold blood.
Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn't content just to be part of 20thcentury history -- he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.
"If it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war."
Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+
people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben
Ferencz.
The officers were part of units
called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the
German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists,
Gypsies and Jews.
Ferencz believes "war
makes murderers out of otherwise decent people" and has spent his life
working to deter war and war crimes.
kunstler | If you seek to know why this country is in so much trouble, check out
the lead reports about the health care reform bill in today’s New York Times, WashPo,
and CNN. You will find there is no intelligible discussion in any of
them as to what’s actually ailing US health care. All you get is
play-by-play commentary about which political tag-team is “winning,” as
if this were a pro wrestling match — with an overlay of gloat that the
Republicans fell oafishly out of the ring in the early rounds.
Of course, an issue even larger than the health care fiasco is this
society’s tragic and astounding inability to discuss anything coherently
in the public arena, and that might possibly be traced to the failures
of education in our time and its effects on the current crop of editors
and news producers — people who grew up hearing that reality was just a
constructed “narrative” and that one narrative was as good as another.
So, you would surmise from reading the papers (or their web editions)
that the health care problem was simply a matter of apportioning
insurance coverage. That is what the stage magicians call misdirection.
Any way you cut the dynamics of health insurance, as practiced in the
USA these days, it is nothing but racketeering, literally a conspiracy
between informed players to swindle uninformed “patients.” The debate in
congress (and the news media) is just about who gets to be swindled.
This is almost entirely due to the hocus-pocus of pricing for
services. For an excellent dissection of all this, I urge you to read
Karl Denninger’s comprehensive manifesto, How To Permanently Fix Health Care For All,
which he posted one month ago. You have to wonder whether anybody in
congress happened to read this, because the debate has been devoid of
any of the crucial points that it addresses.
The way it works now, the so-called “providers” (doctors, hospitals)
refuse to post the cost of any service, and then charge whatever they
feel they can extract, subject to an abstruse and dishonest ceremonial
“negotiation” with the insurance company. The result: hospital and
insurance executives get paid multi-million dollar salaries, doctors get
to drive fine German cars, and the patient gets financially ass-raped,
kicked to the curb, and eventually stuffed into the bankruptcy courts.
When Jackie Thennes decided to switch doctors earlier
this year, the hospital system in her Chicago, Il. suburb seemed like
the natural choice. She’d been to the immediate care facility multiple
times before for screenings, and the doctor was in-network.
But Thennes, who is 50 and looking for work, got a nasty surprise
when the bill arrived in the mail: along with an anticipated charge for
the doctor’s visit, she was also charged a “facility fee.” At $235, the
fee was slightly more than the doctor’s visit itself.
Thennes tried to contest the charge with the hospital system, but
to no avail. And while she said she won’t go to the facility again, she
worries about getting hit with the same fee somewhere else.
This is “going to deter me from getting the medical attention I need,” she said. “I’m going to get sick just worrying about it.”
These kinds of facility fees are common at hospitals, where they
help pay the hospital system’s overhead costs. But as doctors’ offices
increasingly are being bought up by big hospital systems, patients are
being charged facility fees of up to hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket
without warning and without the ability to contest them.
The rate of hospital-employed doctors increased by almost 50% between July 2012 and July 2015, according to an analysis conducted
by the nonprofit Avalere Health for the Physicians Advocacy Institute.
By July 2015, nearly 40% of doctors were employed by hospitals, the
analysis found. The trend occurred across the country but was especially
prominent in the Midwest.
It’s hard for patients to research which doctors charge facility
fees, since there’s no comprehensive resource to track it, said Chuck
Bell, programs director for Consumers Union, the policy and mobilization
arm of Consumer Reports.
There is one foolproof option, though, Bell said: ask pre-emptively.
Still, “why should patients have to do this?” Bell said. “Health
care has become this outlier bad, terrible customer experience. Even a
mechanic has to tell you up-front what the estimate is for working on
your car.”
Moving along, let’s take a look at a very disturbing trends happening
with regard to student loans, which as you know are almost impossible
to get rid of, even in bankruptcy. They essentially follow you to the
grave.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)
introduced a bill with several prominent co-sponsors last week that
would prohibit the government from garnishing borrowers’ Social Security
disability and retirement checks to pay for defaulted student loans.
This marks the second time the Senators have tried to curb this
practice; they introduced a similar bill in 2015 was never enacted into
law. And given today’s highly partisan lawmaking environment, getting
the bill through this time may not be much easier.
“It’s a challenge,” Brown told MarketWatch. Still, he said he’s
hopeful lawmakers will respond to growing concern on this topic from
constituents. “Senators and House members are hearing about this problem
more and more. We’re hearing all kinds of people calling us surprised
that [the government] can do this.”
And indeed, the government can. The federal student loan program provides many options borrowers can use to manage their debts, but once borrowers default,
the government has extraordinary powers to get its money back,
including garnishing tax refunds, Social Security checks and wages.
A growing number of borrowers are losing out on a portion of
their Social Security checks to pay back student loans. The number of
borrowers over 65 facing this predicament jumped 540% between 2002 and
2015, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office in December.
Multiple factors explain that spike. For one, over the past
several years we’ve witnessed rapid growth in the number of students
going to college or returning to school during their career. But perhaps
more important, rising college costs over the past few decades means
that it’s more likely that an older adult would have taken on a student
debt either to pay for their own schooling or that of a child.
The challenges these older or disabled borrowers face paying back
their loans is increasingly pushing them toward the financial brink.
The 1996 law that allows the feds to garnish Social Security benefits
over student loans requires that they leave the borrower with a minimum
of $750 in benefits. But that floor hasn’t been adjusted since the 1990s
to account for the rising cost of living. In 2015, about 67,300
borrowers over 50 had their benefits garnished below the poverty line
from just 8,300 borrowers in 2004.
Student loans and healthcare are both ticking time bombs and I see no
real effort underway to tackle them at the macro level where they need
to be addressed. Watch these two issues closely going forward, as I
think fury at both will be the main driver behind the next populist
wave.
Counterpunch | It somehow makes US Americans feel good that the “commies” finally
came around and saw the light. It’s a psychological and emotional salve
that reassures the gullible, the uninformed, and the nationalists that
the sacrifices on their side were not in vain. The problem is it’s dead
wrong.
3.8 million of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s fellow Vietnamese and over 58,000 US Americans did not die
in a war of economic systems or ideologies. The world is not binary
and the cause for which they gave their all was not about a free market
vs. a centrally planned economy. It was about Vietnamese governing Viet
Nam without continued foreign interference, occupation, and war. Viet
Nam won the war because it expelled yet another foreign invader.
Despite what embittered Vietnamese-Americans and diehard veterans who desperately want to believe, and want you to believe, that the loss of limbs, life and sanity were not in vain, it’s really that simple.
The “hardline communists” of whom you spoke, Mr. Viet, were also
pragmatists – out of necessity. They made the fateful decision to bend
rather than break with the Đổi Mới (renovation) reforms of 1986, which
began to bear fruit in the mid-1990s during my first visit to the
country of your birth. Viet Nam has one of the fastest growing
economies in the world and is considered to be one of the great success
stories of the developing world. It also ranks 5th among countries sending their young people to study in the US.
In spite of extremes of wealth and poverty that are characteristic of
any rapidly developing economy, Viet Nam’s government has been praised
for converting wealth
into national well-being, i.e., helping to create a rising tide that
raises all boats, certainly not a claim the US can make, where extreme
wealth concentration and a resulting oligarchy are the order of the
day. (20 US Americans own as much as wealth as 50% of the population.)
The Communist Party is not a monolith, as you know. In fact, there’s
probably more diversity of opinion within this one party than in the US
in which “there is only one party… the Property Party … and it has two
right wings: Republican and Democrat”, as another US writer and public
intellectual, Gore Vidal, once described the US political system. I
know this because Viet Nam is not a country I visit from time to time; I
have lived here for over a decade.
theculinarychronicles | Truth be told, most of my “mom-meal knock offs” aren’t 100%
authentic. But that sure isn’t do to lack of trying! She was so quick
maneuvering around the kitchen–throwing a little of bit of this and a
little bit of that into pans that we could never keep up. Let’s not even
begin to get into how she never measured!
So, on one recent weekend, I found myself recreating a meal that we often had growing up– Bún Thịt Nướng or Vietnamese Grilled Pork over Vermicelli Noodles. It’s not a dish that I eat (or more like “order“)
often these days but when I do get the chance to enjoy it, I am
reminded of how it really is a great depiction of Vietnamese cuisine. An
extremely savory and mutli-layered flavor protein, combined with tons
of fresh herbs, pickled veggies, cold noodles, various textures, and all
enhanced by a spicy nước chấm (dipping sauce). And like many Vietnamese dishes, Bún Thịt Nướng is not difficult to make but it does take some time preparing as there are many steps and components to the dish.
I spend most of the time below describing steps to preparing the pork
so if you have any questions, about the condiments in particular, feel
free to shoot me an email. Since I was too lazy to pull out the grill, I
ended up using my tried and true All-Clad grill pan to cook the pork.
It worked fairly nicely but if you want the true authentic flavor, I’d
recommend using an outdoor grill with with one of those wire mesh
grilling baskets. You can pick one up for really cheap at most Asian
grocery stores. You can’t beat the slightly charred flavor produced by
cooking it that way. Plus, if you’re ever in Việt Nam, you’ll see that
it’s the way my peeps do it.
I was quite pleased with the final dish. The warm grilled meat over
the cold veggies and noodles are a perfect pairing–particular for warm
summer days.
foodforfour | This refreshing vermicelli noodles with wok-tossed beef is our
family’s favourite during the summer months. Thin juicy slices of beef
with beautiful flavours of lemongrass is served on a bed of cold
vermicelli noodles, fresh herbs, topped with sprinkles of fried shallot
and chopped peanuts, and drenched in fish sauce.
This dish is really easy to make and also very versatile. The
vermicelli noodles salad and fish sauce forms the basis of many popular
Vietnamese dishes as the beef can be substituted for another type of
protein. Other Vietnamese vermicelli noodle dishes are served with pork skewers (bun nem nuong), grilled pork ( bun thit nuong), spring rolls (bun cha gio), sugarcane prawn (bun chao tom) and grilled fish.
The trick to preparing this dish is to prepare all your ingredients
before you start to stir fry. Fish sauce dipping sauce can be made the
day before to save time.
Nước mắm pha (mixed fish sauce) is the most well known dipping sauce made from fish sauce. Its simplest recipe is some lime juice, or occasionally vinegar, one part fish sauce (nước mắm), one part sugar and two parts water. Vegetarians create nước chấm chay (vegetarian dipping sauce) or nước tương (soy water) by substituting Maggi seasoning sauce for fish sauce (nước mắm).[citation needed]
To this, people will usually add minced uncooked garlic, chopped or minced Bird's eye chilis, and in some instances, shredded pickled carrot/white radish and green papaya for bún. Otherwise, when having seafood, such as eels, people also serve some slices of lemongrass.
It is often prepared hot on a stove to dissolve the sugar more
quickly, then cooled. The flavor can be varied depending on the
individual's preference, but it is generally described as pungent and
distinct, sweet yet sour, and sometimes spicy.
wikipedia |Fish sauce is an amber-colored liquid extracted from the fermentation of fish with sea salt. It is used as a condiment in various cuisines. Fish sauce is a staple ingredient in numerous cultures in Southeast Asia and the coastal regions of East Asia, and features heavily in Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Thai, Lao and Vietnamese cuisines. It also was a major ingredient in ancient European cuisine, but is no longer commonly used in those regions.
In addition to being added to dishes during the cooking process, fish
sauce is also used as a base for a dipping condiment and is prepared in
many different ways in each country. It is eaten with fish, shrimp, pork, and chicken. In parts of southern China, it is used as an ingredient for soups and casseroles. Fish sauce, and its derivatives, impart an umami flavor to food due to their glutamate content.
theburningplatform | In Part One of this article I detailed how propaganda has been utilized by the Deep State
for decades to control the minds of the masses and allow those in
control to reap the benefits of never ending war. In Part Two I will
discuss recent events, false flags, and propaganda campaigns utilized by
the Deep State to push the world to the brink of war.
The people realize they have been screwed and continue to be screwed
by the politicians, bankers and corporate fascists running the show.
This is the major reason Trump was elected. People were desperate for
someone who offered them a promise of economic revival and reduced
government interference in their lives.
The problem is no one is capable of saving the US Titanic. The iceberg was struck sixteen years ago when the Deep State
engineered a plundering campaign driving the national debt from $5.8
trillion to $20 trillion, and unfunded welfare liabilities to $200
trillion. Unpaid for tax cuts will not save us. Unpaid for shovel ready
infrastructure projects will not save us. Threatening foreign countries
with tariffs will not bring manufacturing jobs back. Excessively low
interest rates will not spur investment, but it will create a pension
crisis and impoverish senior citizens.
Devaluing your currency when every country in the world attempts the
same “solution” will not work. Passing an Obamacare lite healthcare plan
that keeps mega-corporation insurance companies and hospitals in charge
solves nothing. The demographic time bomb of boomers turning 65 cannot
be reversed. Providing the appearance of normalcy and improvement by
artificially boosting the stock and real estate markets to all-time
bubble highs only makes the coming crash that much more devastating.
It is clearly evident to me the drumbeat of war is louder than it has been in decades as this Fourth Turning enters its ninth year. Every previous U.S. Fourth Turning has climaxed with a more horrific war than the previous, as the technological “advances” allow the Deep State controllers to create cannon fodder more efficiently. The year 2011 seems to have been the nexus for the Deep State
to create new enemies and sow the seeds of discontent and revolution
around the globe. U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, while troop
levels in Afghanistan remained low.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
