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Life-sized plastic whale to raise ocean pollution awareness PhysOrg
‘No way!’ Lake Superior spits back Duluth man’s long-lost canoe MPR (Chuck L)
Hurricane Michael flattens beach town like ‘mother of all bombs’ BBC
‘You Just Realize It’s All Gone’: Hurricane Michael’s Heavy Toll Wall Street Journal. A vivid description of the carnage and loss.
Warm Gulf waters spawned Hurricane Michael’s intensity: scientists Reuters. EM: “More interesting than the somewhat humdrum headline suggests.”
Climate Change Sea Level Rise Will Be Worse Than Imagined Rolling Stone (chuck419)
Video: Watch Humanoid Robot Atlas Do Parkour Geek (Kevin W)
Hologram of Amy Winehouse set for 2019 worldwide tour Guardian (Kevin W)
Applying physics modeling to voting of SCOTUS ‘Super Court’ ScienceBlog (Dr. Kevin)
Tech suffers from lack of humanities, says Mozilla head Guardian. Synchronicity! Confirming a comment we made yesterday on the post on what to do about student debt.
Ecologists suggest it is time to rethink the modern lawn PhysOrg (Chuck L). Lambert agrees.
China?
Google CEO Tells Senators That Censored Chinese Search Engine Could Provide “Broad Benefits” Intercept
Malaysia to Repeal Death Penalty and Sedition Law New York Times (Kevin W)
Brexit. A big dose, and some of this from a couple of days back for the benefit of US readers. We are in what Lambert calls an “overly dynamic situation”.
Into the Brexit Labyrinth Project Syndicate (MGL). A terrific high level piece. I quibble with some bits (like the idea that a bespoke deal would ever be acceptable from the EU side, and the claim that the EU would extend the transition period….among other things, WTO rules would get in the way, and the EU firmly rejected going to March 2021 because it would mess up EU bits) but that does not take away from the impressive accomplishment of simplifying such a complicate topic.
Remember those stories that up to 30 Labour MPs have privately told Tory whips they will back May’s deal? Not a single MP we spoke to on the list said they have even been so much as contacted by them. https://t.co/SQu3VoaKh1
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) October 13, 2018
Key para from that story:
A source within Labour’s staunchly pro-EU wing said “the Tories just made it up rather cack-handedly because they are in a mess,” and added that the number of MPs likely to vote for May’s deal is “a maximum of ten.”
Theresa May abandons pledge for ‘time limit’ on UK’s stay in customs union as part of Brexit deal Independent. This whole customs union idea is bonkers to begin with, since it does not solve the problem the Tories and too many supposed UK pundits thinks it solves (frictionless borders) and the EU rejected it before….The Telegraph says Barnier proposed the idea…but this may mean Government sources said Barnier proposed the idea.
Tory Commons leader Andrea Leadsom ready to quit over Theresa May’s Brexit plans Independent v. this tweet:
Is Andrea Leadsom about to resign? This morning she told broadcasters that the PM still deserves an 'opportunity' to get a good Brexit deal. And if the PM wastes that 'opportunity'…? #Brexit pic.twitter.com/f9Wn0lZjJ3
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) October 12, 2018
DUP leader says would prefer no Brexit deal to ‘annexation’ of Northern Ireland Reuters
Revealed: secret Brexit plans to appease DUP with transition extension Guardian. Don’t see why the EU should accept that. They already told the UK it could only have 18 months when it had asked for 24.
Government claims it will lose dozens of trade deals in ‘no deal’ Brexit Politco. Not news if you have been paying attention.
UK would lose rebate if it stayed in EU Guido Fawkes. I had assumed this but now it appears to be official.
Kent motorway to shut as work begins on possible post-Brexit lorry park Guardian
Why the Bavarian election matters for Merkel DW
The rise and rise of Bavaria’s Greens Politico
Syraqistan
“A Single Death Is A Tragedy…” Saudi Edition Ian Welsh (Randy K)
Want to Punish Saudi Arabia? Cut Off Its Weapons Supply New York Times (furzy). If we are lucky, Yemen could be the beneficiary of MbS’ overreach.
Netanyahu Is Destroying Both Israel and the Palestinians Prof. Alon Ben-Meir, Global Research (Chuck L)
Pastor’s Release Aids U.S.-Turkey Ties But Many Tensions Remain Bloomberg
New Cold War
Bipartisan group of senators forward plan to break Russia’s ‘energy stranglehold on Europe’ Washington Times (Kevin W)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Facebook cyber attack sees data stolen from 29 million accounts in its largest ever data theft abc.net.au (Kevin W)
Cyber tests showed ‘nearly all’ new Pentagon weapons vulnerable to attack, GAO says NPR (Chuck L)
Trump Transition
Trump on back foot as stocks tumble Financial Times
It’s OK to Criticize the Fed—Even for Presidents FAIR (UserFriendly)
Trump, Kavanaugh and the Path to Neoliberal Fascism TruthDig. John Z:
Henry Giroux is always worth reading. This is a long piece with extensive analyses. If I tried to pick a significant quote, I would end up with a quarter of the whole post. TL;DR – The last paragraph is a very good summary of what we need to do going forward.
Trump administration proposes tough rules on protests The Hill. In his second term as NYC mayor, Giuliani consistently denied permits to people who wanted to protest against City Hall and criticized anyone who criticized the Catholic Church. But courts would always issue permits for the protestors.
White House considers two female ambassadors to replace Haley at UN Politico
DeVos will no longer seek to delay Obama-era student loan regulations The Hill
The US State Department withdrew Hillary Clinton’s security clearance and those of several former Clinton aides Business Insider (Kevin W)
Who’s Behaving Like A 2020 Presidential Candidate FiveThirtyEight (UserFriendly)
Building a Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism Bernie Sanders, YouTube. Much better than you’d think given the title.
A Critique of Sam Harris Benjamin Studebaker (UserFriendly)
Kill Me Now
I’ve found the Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump in 2020 Fox (JTM). Over the dead bodies of millennials.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Retired firefighter found guilty for shooting at lost black teen on doorstep NBC
Crisis Watch
In Asia, ghosts of crises past return amid Trumpian trade war Asia Times. As much as collateral damage of the Trump trade war could be severe, notice the lack of any mention of the effect of central bank tightening and the cessation of QE on emerging markets. None other than the highly respected economist, Raghuram Rajan, then governor of the central bank of India, complained about how the Fed took a posture of indifference about the impact its policies had on destabilizing hot money flows that would wash into and out of developing economies.
Stock Market Meltdowns Have Become Frighteningly Common Bloomberg
Geopolitical tension casts pall over IMF meeting Financial Times
Banking Industry Unprepared to Withstand Risks From Italy to Trade Bloomberg
ECB Vice-Chair Warns on “Bubbles,” Says B-Word 3 Times, after ECB Caused Most Absurd Bond Bubble Ever Wolf Street (EM)
Does using models really make economics a science? Lars P. Syll (UserFriendly)
Elon Musk Wants Tesla Gigafactory Employees to Live on Site in Mobile Homes TheDrive (Kevin W)
The World’s Most Dangerous Black Markets YaleGlobal (J-LS)
Exxon Now Advocates for Carbon Tax? Hmmm Wolf Street (EM)
Guillotine Watch
Twitter and Salesforce CEOs bicker over who is helping the homeless more Guardian. Twitter put a major office (not sure if HQ but very important office) in a so-so part of San Francisco. Twitterati sent the rents in one of the few semi-affordable parts of SF through the roof because a lot of them rented apartments nearby, many of which were crash pads in addition to their main residences.
Goldman Sachs’ seedy underbelly exposed in shocking tapes New York Post (J-LS)
UWO says banker’s wife spent $21 million at Harrods FCPA Blog (J-LS). Saw this a few days ago on teh BBC< but this will have more informed commentary.
From Jen and John of Pleasant Lake, via Lawrence R: “On the newly exposed lake bottom – Greater Yellowlegs in a Red Maple reflection at the edge of Turtle Cove.”
And a bonus antidote (forgive me for not being able to figure out who sent this to me; I update the post if you pipe up in comments)
anyway here’s the most carefree deer in the world prancing along the beach at dawn ? pic.twitter.com/MIKtsOtDYb
— Ian Laking (@IHLaking) October 8, 2018
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
196 comments
Comments are closed.
Since Google’s refusal, some years ago, to facilitate China’s security goals, the biggest change is in Google’s and peer companies’ increasing facilitation of the USA’s security goals, and the increasing formality of this facilitation (rather than ad hoc unspoken winks and nudges).
Now Google could rightly warn of a new “slippery slope”:
… and presumably the same could be said about monitoring and compiling records of dissenting opinions.
My reading suggests that it is conservatives (including Trump) who are most upset about the new censorship push in the US of A whereas Dems like Schiff of California are the ones pushing for it. Since Trump will be controlling the antitrust apparatus for at least the next two years Google might want to watch their step.
Lefty sites are also coming under the gun as shown by the just announced Facebook purge. From a cui bono point of view it is the Deep State/establishment (Deep Establishment?) that most benefits from a suppression of alternative media on the web. They are also the ones who spend much of their time accusing Trump of being a would be dictator seeking overweening power. You do wonder if some of them may be motivated by jealousy
>> whereas Dems like Schiff of California are the ones pushing for it.
What is it with brain dead Democrats incapable of thinking about the future?
Let’s ask never Trumpers about what they think about Harry Reid’s end to the filibuster. But it was such a great idea a few years ago!
https://mobile.twitter.com/SenatorReid/status/403615847190921216
Senator Harry Reid Verified Account
@SenatorReid
Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.
12:08 PM – 21 Nov 2013
It did have to be done. It’s a symptom of our complete legislative dysfunction that you need a super majority to do anything, even simple matters like keeping the government running with enough people to sit in the right offices.
Everything Trump is doing now, Obama could have done, and chose not to do. Everything he is doing to twist arms and get his people in office, Obama could have done.
The lack of a filibuster is not the problem. The problem is no one in the previous administration put forth anyone who the people could get behind and left dozens of judgeships stay unfilled. Merrick Garland? He was the best they could find? No one thought to talk to RBG to ask her to retire so that Obama could pack the court with left leaning judges legally? So now we’re gnashing teeth and rending garments because someone else picked up all the power that was lying on the floor and decided to use it?!
The Google Chief probably considers the coming Google Firefly for China to be “good” because he and Google consider China as a test bed for how to make a Spy Engine that strong or stronger for rollout in the US when the “time is right”.
Hopefully enough people will begin using non-Google search engines and other things enough that the non-Googles will be kept in existence against the day that Google rolls out Firefly America.
If one looks at how Googie “works” now as compared to fifteen years ago, maybe
they already have; just slowly.
Buried lede:
Merkley was the only US Senator to endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016 and is the only Sanders supporter who has anything close to the type of electoral and office-holding CV considered (before Trump) a necessity for a Presidential (or even Vice-Presidential) candidate to pass the ‘laugh test’.
One of the reasons why Ben Jealous’s candidacy for Governor of Maryland is so important is that winning it could start building a second such CV.
Not to throw water on Merkley, but the article does go on to say:
I think the table of, Who’s acting like they plan to run for president, which seems to be the geist of the article, is quite a good way to examine likelihoods, but the article makes clear, using Merkley for that matter as example, that just hitting 4 or more of the acting like criteria is insufficient to make an educated guess and one needs to examine each potential candidate (including in relation to the others) as part of the process. The table seems better suited as a means of preliminary grouping than as a final indicator of a given individual’s chance of throwing in their hat.
Perhaps Bernie will run as the vice presidential candidate, thus avoiding the age issue.
I’ve often thought that would be a very good idea.
I personally was quite intrigued to see Bullock listed in that table but then I discovered that they were talking about Steve Bullock and not Sandra Bullock.
Rats! Bullock was da Bomb in ‘Demolition Man!‘
geist-> gistNah. Both work well, if you’ve been re-reading Nietzsche.
“geist”= “spirit”. I was gonna congratulate you on such usage,lol.
as for the article in question…my fear…given 2016 to now…is that if we do somehow manage to get a bunch of actual progressives into office, including the WH, it won’t matter one bit.
The Machine will pull out all the stops to rub that out.
And I don’t think it matters any more how blatant and transparent the skullduggery is.
Machine figures it doesn’t really need Consent any longer, and is more and more Sinverguenza about it’s undemocratic and illiberal ways.
I just saw this this morning: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/12/pathetic-progressives-furious-schumer-rubber-stamps-15-more-right-wing-judges-trump
and am beside myself with ire, spittle and froth.
I loathe the dems more even than the repugs because of nonsense like this.
Fie!
I see it about the same way. Impunity all the way down now, from those who rule us.
We’ll see how that works out.
agree, especially the ire, spittle and froth.
Right, because their shrieking temper tantrum over Kavanaugh is a great way to make a difference…. in how motivated Republicans are to vote.
As opposed to letting some admittedly horrible senators go campaign and try to take back the senate so they could actually do something besides virtue signal.
The only reason the senate isn’t already on vacation is because the dems have a lot more incumbents running than the GOP and cocaine Mitch gets politics and the left doesn’t care about anything but virtue signaling. Next time you demand they ‘take a stand’ try and think about what ‘taking a stand’ is likely to accomplish, they are feckless enough as it is.
Thank yoy
Mitch will let Dems off the leash after another 20 or 30 Trump appointees (Trump Apps) are released through the Scumer store.
All Schumer could do is delay, not stop. all that you do is pull dems of the campaign trail.
Biden: Just in case anyone has forgotten what that lovable old goof did.
Joe Biden Backed Bills To Make It Harder For Americans To Reduce Their Student Debt
There is nothing lovable about that old goat unless you are one of the .1%. He and his spawn are viscous crony capitalists that make Hillary look almost temperate. Well, no. that’s going too far, but anyway you make the point in your link and that is hardly Biden’s only claim to infamy.
kill me now is the perfect marginal annotation for, “Ive found the Democratic Candidate that can beat Trump in 2020” Given his past success, winning doesn’t seem important to Biden. He will somehow manage to keep running for POTUS long long after he has hung up his temporal shape on this earth. That might already be the case and no one the wiser. If the Dems truly support another of his “jovial” runs, as a political party they are even further along the river Styx than he is.
Why is it always “kill ME now?” Why not “kill THEM now?” In self-defense, since THEY are so busily and profitably going about killing US? (Whoever “we” are — the working and unemployed and disabled and old, worn out class, and Syrians and Yemenis and Brasilians, etc., maybe?)
As suicide becomes the more attractive option, “they” will be sure to facilitate and monetize it, don’t you think? Kind of not so smart to express a willingness to be terminated, as the conditions the parasite class have fostered and gotten fat on work their way toward unbearable…
Well, we shouldnt kill anyone, especially ourselves!
Nice illustration of my point. “Nice people finish last. “ Even nice people are, I would say, entitled to defend themselves, even if they stop short of homicide, out of niceness.
Each and every1 of us is a killer, a murderer, an assassin and a sadist…when drivers licenses are given out like free cheese and candy without a peep from the “thou shalt not kill” crowd knowing many more will die then all the gangs and terriorysts we are told to fear…
when we sit quietly as our fellow carbon based life forms suffer and with a glance we pass by and over a homeless person and prey “better you than me”…
As we imagine there might be an answer at the bottom of the next bottle knowingly avoiding the discomfort of thought…
When we blame every German for not having been a hero and stopping the 10% who were the actual gnatzeez…(I know…me defending Germans…imagine that)
We are all murderers, assassins, killers and sadist…
I was a kid, so I don’t remember very clearly during the War itself, but after The War there was a change to differentiating between Germans and Nazis. The Government didn’t care, it employed as many high ranking Nazis as it could find. To hell with prosecuting war criminals, General Gehlen was the only person in all Europe who could effectively “fight the Communists.”
Sometimes you just have to.
Why not ourselves? And why especially not ourselves? Is this a God made us, it is up to Him when we go idea? If not, how does it make sense?
Suicide is a rejection of the world that makes the living uncomfortable. And if god exists, then how can you kill yourself if she doesn’t want you to? Or conversely if god wants you to die, how can anyone be sure suicide wasn’t god’s doing?
Thanks for this comment.
So, the dem alchemy of turning political baggage into “experience” didn’t work in 2016, and I’m not sure that handsy, toothy, hair-plugged affability is the secret ingredient that’s going to make it work this time.
And a note to the author of this article–post-kavanaugh, that “have a beer with” thing may not pack the endorsement punch that it used to.
You can’t actually have a beer with Trump, but that’s okay. He’s not the kind of guy you want to have a beer with. He’s the kind of guy you butter up if you need to evict someone.
I’m sooo motivated now that the Democrats have shown that they were sooo virtuous even in their gawky adolescence that they never once pulled a stunt that had to just be forgiven, not forgotten. That recovered memories of high school are a lode star to guide our polity.
All kinds of stories about the deep psychological woo-woo exercised by the gov, the face, and the madmen, and then you see this kind of stuff.
I was well past twenty five before looking back at myself six months earlier didn’t feel like wondering ‘who is this gormless idiot who’s following me?’ And my felonious behavior was like, ripping off the tags on my pillows. But yeah, thought about all that again. Thanks.
People who root for Republicans get ‘wins’ all the time. They then get mad at the Rs for not delivering absolutely everything that they want. I wonder how that feels?
And Eff Joe. There are obviously no meteors available.
And who can forget when Sessions bats away creepy Joe!
googleImageSearch(“Biden Sessions child”)
hey, we could do this all day!
Lest we forget, recall that during the Clinton admin Uncle Joe also wrote a few-years-earlier version of what later passed into law under W.Bush as the USA Patriot Act.
> … during the Clinton admin Uncle Joe also wrote …
Love it! Senator Biden as ‘Uncle Joe’, inheriting the moniker from Josep Jughashvili!
Regarding the scienceblog article and Supreme Court vote modeling over time, I am pleased with the results. Strange, perhaps, considering my partisan politics lean Republican but comforting nonetheless because I don’t ‘want’ my views imposed on others. Basically, I prefer consensus to conflict and the lack of consensus with respect to Kavanaugh was alarming – not for the fact it existed but for the depth of the rancor and the tactics deployed. We’re better than this.
No, “we” are demonstrably not better than this. Or those of us who might be, are impotent.
From the article:
“The way I thought of it was, if I lined all these people up from the present back through the past, how many justices back in time would I have to go to get an independent voice, someone who goes against that unanimous vote,” Lee said. “You’d have to go pretty far back in time, and what I find is that this time, this correlation length, far exceeds the tenure of any single justice.”
I don’t find this particularly encouraging. The issue is not a single dissent in an otherwise unanimous vote. It is, as the author cursorily acknowledges at the end of the article, about blocs. He claims this doesn’t track with politics but doesn’t go into it.
I saw a lot of consensus. We could have discussed his record on wiretaps. We could have discussed his record on torture. Or we could have discussed his record on people with no money.
But no.
from nader 10/12 links
“Kavanaugh’s decisions and political statements are so off the wall, I’ve called him a corporation masquerading as a human being. Corporations’ uber alles is his pre-eminent core philosophy. Public Citizen’s analysis of his judicial record (apart from his extremist political ideology) showed that in split-decision cases (which are the most ideologically revealing cases), Kavanaugh ruled 15 times against worker rights and two times for worker rights. On environmental protection, he ruled 11 times for business interests and two times for the public’s interest. On consumer protection, he ruled 18 times for businesses and only four times for consumers. As for monopoly cases, he ruled two times for the corporation and zero times for market competition.”
no, nothing to go after him with than “youthful indiscretion”
Megwich! I’ve gotta admit that I didn’t actually have a link in mind for the last one and just took a flyer. I just assumed. I fear now that I may be the only person with a gut reaction to Kavenauggthplthplhthgghg who has come out feeling validated?
I wonder if we should focus on getting a Homeless American elected president? That would be great.
The Dem Senators did not disagree with that part of his record, or dislike it in any way.
Which reminds me —
Any body have a plausible reason as to why Ruthie G. has not fled to New Zealand ?? She’s had pert near 2 years to make her escape …
In my lowly shlub book, having not followed through on her decision makes her a Supreme Hypocrite !
Normally when the Links page gets uploaded I take a quick scan of the headlines to see which ones really snags my interest. Sometimes they are intriguing enough to make me stop and open a link but tonight when I saw the headline “I’ve found the Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump in 2020” I just had to stop and have a good laugh. I don’t even live in America and yet I knew sight unseen who it would be suggesting. I kept on waiting for the word “Bazinga!” to appear in that story but it never did.
I am going with the theory that the Democrats want to lose in 2020. That way, when the economy blows up, it will be Trump that will have to own that one. They must remember how Obama came in and had to – kinda – deal with the fallout of the financial crash while the Republicans had all the good years before he came in. Why else choose someone who would be verging on becoming a octogenarian by the time the 2020 elections come rocking around.
This belongs to the series of “helpful advice” from Republicans (a FoxNews contributor since 2009) who are very concerned with the health of the Democratic Party.
Well, they owe us a favour from Team Hilary’s good advice to them last time.
“Obama came in and had to – kinda – deal with the fallout of the financial crash while the Republicans had all the good years before he came in” — that ignores that Dubya inherited the bust of the dotcom bubble from Clinton, whose mythologized “we had balanced budgets” reputation rests on those several years of unsustainable windfall revenue form all that dotcom-associated economic froth.
Not that Dubya’s fiscal policies – moar war and tax cuts for the high-enders – helped, and of course the neoliberal Greenspan-led Fed blowing the much-larger and more dangerous (since it went far beyond nutty stock-market valuations) housing bubble in order to counteract the (fairly contained) effects of the dotcom bust ended up doing the real damage. Talk about the cure (housing bubble) being worse than the disease (dotcom bust)! And of course we are in midst of yet another CB-sponsored bubble, the one Wolf Richter refers to as the “everything bubble”, since valuations of stocks, junk bonds, housing, you-name-it are through the roof. This one is perhaps the most dangerous of all because unlike the previous two bubbles, it’s so widespread and the amount of CB EZ-money behind it so massive that there’s no obviously wildly-overleveraged market sectors one can point to in terms of spotting the key weak links in terms of risk.
RE: Elon Musk Wants Tesla Gigafactory Employees to Live on Site in Mobile Homes TheDrive (Kevin W)
Always be innovatin’.
With “mobile homes” there’s no need for suicide nets like at foxconn because they’re low to the ground. And you can take ’em with you when you move your factory to an area with lower wages.
I’d imagine it won’t be long until it occurs to musk that he can build a store too and pay his worker tenants in scrip that can only be used at that store. Some ideas are just too good to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Too obvious?
Hope he’s not been watching the latest series of Better Call Saul, he might get ideas.
He reads Upton Sinclair to look for better ideas to make money. Part of our national return to the era of the Robber Barons, blessed be thy names.
Hope they dont have to live in poisonous trailers like the ones FEMA provided after Katrina.
First, he has to design and build the trailers by repurposing old shipping containers.
WORRY FREE!!! Some say the ubercapitalist who is the villain of sorry to bother you was modeled on Musk.
Well, they probably have a lot of cardboard to recycle. Doesn’t rain a lot in Nevada, does it? Maybe his accountants can figure out how to depreciate the mopes.
> Warm Gulf waters spawned Hurricane Michael’s intensity
“Rapid intensification”: useful phrase of the week.
Mmm, what about, “Enhanced Hurricanes.” Kind of rolls off the tongue.
I like the way “Bombogenesis” lolls off the tongue.
Permastorm?
The Awesome has a ridiculousness that feeds into our coping mechanisms. The Michael images are visceral. ‘It looked like a movie’ is a weird way to embellish an eyewitness account. But with six inches of sea rise, the city of Miami will have to be abandoned because there is no way to get rid of all the poop. Makes one pine for the days when ‘a big wolfe eats the sun’ was the answer to thorny eschatological questions.
How about: “Onset-Hastened Sudden Hurricane Intensification Threat”, or by its acronym, OHSHIT.
Nice one, ewm.
Climate Change Sea Level Rise Will Be Worse Than Imagined Rolling Stone (chuck419)
Only a small bone to pick with the title. “Is Worse” is far more appropriate.
Since we are all frogs in a pot of boiling water, anyone want to get together and start an aquaculture farm somewhere?
I’m a fan of upper MN, for secret reasons, but am open to anywhere that isn’t currently hot. I’m a lot of fun, and as a scientist I can do quite a few useful end-time activities, and with enough $ in advance, we could be producing our own antibiotics and basic medicines. Also have winemaking experience. Nothing says celebrate the extermination of our species like a nice Cabernet Sauvignon.
What will antibiotics be useful for?
When you get cut farming! I can make a lot of things, probably could do insulin as well. Not too hard when you have the right equipment.
I hear quite a lot about subsistence farming and local produce as if the city of 600,000 where I live could survive farming the arid hills that surround us.
If you can make insulin, antibiotics and raise crops, you are part of select few with access to land, training and education. The other 99.9% of us will, forgive us, have to storm your homestead and steal all your stuff. Ah, humanity. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Very tempting… apart from the Upper MN detail. Too cold in winter and too many mosquitoes in summer.
Nakedcapital-commune?
I think of MN because of water access. Fish access, as well. I am open to other options too. I could see something like this work only with reliable water access. West coast is out, but at least they don’t have Lyme disease to the scale the east does.
Its not going to be very cold there in the near future now, ha!
Moved to Faribault, MN in May leaving behind PTSD producing Firefornia. Two rivers converge here, lots of lakes, fertile farmland and even organic farms and coops. Not as cold as the BWCA and lots of rain.
Check it out. Would love a Naked Capitalism community here.
What does ‘BWCA’ stand for?
Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Boundary Waters Canoe Area. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Waters_Canoe_Area_Wilderness I hear the black flies are ferocious, and mosquitoes too. But for the American Pioneer Spirit, enhanced by CRSP-R technology that will allow teh Wise to figure out how to kill off both (without regard to unintended consequences, via “permssionless innovation,” should be no problem…
Why not figure out how to attract them? Attract clouds of them, vacuum them up or trap them, and feed them to homestead chickens.
the permaculture solution is a fly trap with the bottom end in the pond, so as to feed the fish.
If life hands you flies, make flyade.
Uruguay has lovely weather and a large aquefier, along with being bordered by a river. Democracy and freedom are strong values here as are peace and community.
Can you recommend some good background reading on Uruguay? It could be literature, history, politics, anything. Thanks!
There’s a really good Urugauyan movie called “Gigante” from a few years ago. Not a documentary.
Here’s an article on Pine Island glacier – huge iceberg is about to break off:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/huge-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-antarcticas-pine-island-glacier/
I’m personally of the opinion that it will be worse….and faster than is currently being reported….
Agreed. Thanks for the article.
It’s been reported on here about how the 0.1% have bunkers.
Anyone who isn’t forming end-of-world communes are going to get a rough wake-up-call here in a couple years, if not sooner.
It’s all happening “faster than expected”.
That’s because we are arguably in the first quarter of the doom, assuming 4 quarters.
How long each of those will be is best left to speculation, or as history for the last person alive on the planet.
I have the same name here as on Twitter, feel free to DM me if you want to do something smart. I have others that would be interested, some scientists, and outdoors people.
We just don’t have the funds collectively.
Very appealing and I love that part of the country from years of canoeing the Boundary Waters/Quetico.
Alas, I am not on Twitter.
I approve my e-mail to be shared by NC staff to those who want it to start a Nakedcapital-commune. I’m not sure how that would work, but perhaps we just need to get the ball running with a location?
I can’t think of a better way to spend the twilight of our species.
Who knows, perhaps we’ll see some good Northern Lights once in a while.
Would this be a “from each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her needs” kind of “intentional community,” then? Or more like the place in “Road Warrior” where the engineers and scientists congregated around an oil well and crude distillation operation? or any of a lot of potential other scenarios?
I do like the stuff that is going on in Jackson, MS, see the link above on Chris Hedges. But it seems that having darkly melanized skin tones and certain physiognomical features is kind of a “marker of necessity” for anyone who wants to join that action, which includes a lot of illegal underground economy and in part depends on “trade” as a “crossroads hub.”
I once tried to get a “commune’ started among the students at a Midwest liberal arts college, back in the halcyon days of 1970-72. Lots of jaw-jaw about the political and philosophical underpinnings of the nominal new communal ingathering, but nobody wanted to do the work. The important questions were ‘who will own the stereo and decide what music gets played,” and the sexual structure — ‘free love,” serial monogamy, anything-goes. Not a bit about who deals with the poop and trash, who cooks, who grows the crops and tends the chickens. And as to “property rights,” and the form of ownership of the prospective farm up there near the Wisconsin border that I located and that was for sale pretty cheap with a lot of useful buildings and implements to go with, the word “freeloader” began to be used ever more frequently.
These were all young folks from wealthy Northeast families, the kind of people who could not get into an Ivy League school, with a scattering of what I would call practical hippies with some useful skills, hoping to leverage the money of the others to establish a nice digs for themselves. The whole thing fell apart after dozens of organizational meetings and “trust building sessions.”
Several of these young folks eventually went off to Maine to become sharecroppers on a farm that the professor of Marxist politics at the school eventually bought. They had to put in a couple of years of labor, unpaid, for the MArxist prof-turned-capitalist before even getting the chance to try to negotiate those sharecropping agreements.
Good luck to all of you who might go off to try to find your own trans-cataclysm “bunker.” May you overcome your conditioning as Exceptional Americans, and learn to share, and bend your backs and form calluses (those who have not already got those markers of potential survivability) on your working hands. With any luck, the devastation will overtake millions, after you get established and past all the formation challenges, the millions who have not sold up and joined you in the outback already. One can hope that the cataclysm will reduce the potential flood of refugees who will be wanting what you have. I would advise learning stuff from the survivalist manuals about “defending what you have.” And I hope you also learn that integrating with the people who already live there will require some special skills, too. Similar advice for those who want to toddle off to Uruguay. As ex-pats can tell you, the dislocation and establishment is not exactly easy, and it seems there are fewer and fewer places where “Americans” are welcome — unless they have a lot of money, or special skills.
But you all go for it — just do it with eyes open.
Thank you. You sort of get it.
There is a vast difference among “expat” (correct word) and “emigrate” and “immigrate”. Emigration and then immigration never source in anything vaguely positive in the country or culture of one’s birth meaning the individual human being who harshly leaves their home or culture of birth. The question is: ¿de donde yo? Just for starters.
As for your observation concerning the “places where Americans are “welcome”” begins to get a bit closer to the issues which also include the reverse.
Those in USA need to immediately ponder and meditate on this very issue externally to them and, perhaps, more importantly, internally to them. We do care, you know? We do want you Americans to have a decent life for you in your home?
That’s probably the best description of expat vs. immigrant/ emigrant. I moved to the old world closing in on 20 years ago. I started as an expat but was really always an immigrant (it became obvious less than a year into moving over).
But I will note that I know a few people (not all from the US) who accidently became immigrants. You live in a foreign place so long and it changes you. Your homeland is a foreign country. And for some it just happens and then they need to make the best of it.
Some remain expatriates. After a while, nothing is really home.
Thanks, Kevin, for the expression of caring how we Americans live in our home. To be accurate, given the state of the world, there are a lot of people everywhere who not only don’t care how their fellow citizens live “at home,” they either are blank to or actively pleased with horrid conditions of life for people not of their nation, class, skin tones and other dividing lines. Some of us get our pleasures and our livings by actively making living conditions worse, or simply deadly, for both fellow nationals and people in other lands.
It is enlightened self-interest, seems to me, for those who just want decent and not hyperconsumptive “living large” lives, to want people everywhere to live decent lives. The other kind of people, the ones who bring us globalization and global war and overthrow and undermining of other nations’ governments and do stuff like the Israel-ites are doing to their neighbors and non-Jewish citizens, are one among many causes that bring the “immigration crises” to the forefront and have been setting the stage for mass Volkerwanderungen due to centuries of Elite-enriching, “trade” fueled largely by burning and “processing” carbon. And cancerous “growth.”
I’d have to say that most people in America, insulated by oceans on east and west from mass migration and of several minds (see rich ladies and their “nannies” and house and garden workers and mani-pedi persons, field-crop “farming corporations,” H1-B employers and the like) about immigration, except as a cognitive-dissonance hypocritical whipping boy to gin up class divisions and divert ‘righteous anger’ of the mopes.
So what we get is Peter Thiel and his $11 million Golden Ticket to NZ “citizenship” and the Maltese and other nations’ ruling elite selling similar Golden Tickets to fellow looters.
I and my extended family would not qualify for legal residence, let alone citizenship, in, say, Canada and a lot of other places where the impacts of climate disruption and the failure of globalized trade and other huge vulnerabilities our Owners have built over a couple of centuries with much help from too many of us, may be delayed or reduced to tolerable and survivable (for how many generations?) levels. The UP and Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin etc. have “water now,” but any betting on whether weather patterns will continue to be so beneficent?
Probably several billion humans, wanting to live any kind of life, not just decent lives, and simply to keep themselves and their families alive at any cost, will join the displaced and anxious and demanding hordesI doubt that the people now living in Minnesota and the UP will open their arms in welcome to floods of invaders from the decimated southern regions. I’d anticipate significant resistance.
There were good reasons why the “peoples” who migrated into the dying marches and divisions of the Roman and other Empires formed up into warbands and hordes… and assimilation, where it occurred rather than displacement, was eased, I think, by the relative abundance of open space and resources back then.
I suppose I should go looking for some of those articles on the bunkers. I’d like to know how they are storing enough food for 25 or 30 years. Drinking water, too. Do they really think they’re going to recycle their own waste for the liquid? Rich people? Drink recycled shit? On the other hand these are people who can afford to throw $40 or $50 million away on silly playthings. Very few of them have sense enough to ask, “How do we keep our servants from killing us and taking the goodies for themselves?”
Wanna come to the UP and become a Yooper?
Sure.
Plenty of water on the UP.
Do I need cash? A little low on that. Will be better off in 5-6 months. (having to move in Berlin is financially painful)
What’s the plan? You got infrastructure/land for a nakedcapitocommune?
Will there be space for NC meetups?
Read my reply above to fredommy re: contact info if you are serious.
I can’t think of anything better than spend the last couple years on the plan this way.
Was going to suggest Ironwood. Close enough to the big lake. Really cheap housing at the moment.
My mom is from Ironwood and my uncle still lives he’s there. Has a maple syrup farm. I will inherit part of it and that could be all of ours.
Also the big Indian statue there really grabbed my imagination as a kid.
Say eh to the UpP, eh?
The parkour robot is a fluff piece for a military project. Neato cool. Darpa taxpayer dollars. That ‘thing’s design use case is for wielding weapons. Probably to he used against citizens as much as foreign enemies.
I think that the true message is that robots have finally overcome the ED-209 limitation-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAPwh0SMzIo
Stock Market Meltdowns Have Become Frighteningly Common: isn’t it pretty obvious that when they need a bid under bonds the Fed tries to spur a selloff
“‘No way!’ Lake Superior spits back Duluth man’s long-lost canoe”
The Lake Superior gods giveth and the Lake Superior gods taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lake Superior gods.
By the shining Big-Sea-Water….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw
The Edmund Fitzgerald
What is dead may NEVER DIE!
-Drowned God
No paddling-to-the-sea for *you*!
Re the hurricane: my town–hundreds of miles from the Gulf–experienced it’s largest 24 hour rainfall total ever. Winds were also quite severe. For us, from an intensity standpoint, it was worse than Florence.
wow. those formerly 100 for 500 or 1000 year events are ramping up.
According to my front porch rain gauge in the northwest Texas Hill Country…we’ve had a little more than 30 inches of rain in the past month and a half.
“average” for this county is 29 inches per year.
And that’s without the remnants of a hurricane or tropical storm…until tomorrow (Sergio passes to our north).
Until the last year or two, this was a rather arid place in summer…hot and dry, just like I like it(weather hurts sometimes. I feel cold fronts and tropical waves like they’re in my room)
the ordinary Southwest Monsoon brought us more or less predictable (and modest)relief in August…but nothing like today.
Of note…the “pray for rain” signs in bank windows and check out desks have quietly fallen over or disappeared.
But no one wants to talk about climatology.
Prayers answered.
The power of prayer… maybe pray now for less rain. Or less war.
Careful what you wish for Dept
Hope all the hummingbirds go south now, would hate to see hummingbird popsicle sticks, maybe I’d better take the feeders down.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1051182788546887681
Ryan Maue | weathermodels.com on Twitter: “Monday afternoon will be 30° to 42°F colder than normal across much of Texas. Shocking mid-October record cold blast for Rockies into Plains & Texas.
Aye!
went and collected dry sticks before it hit.
long squall line.
hotter(muggy,Louisiana-like) behind it…so, not the front.
That’s tomorrow night.
Dry sticks being those I keep in reserve(it’s October!) still hanging under the canopy of trees.
I usually don’t resort to them til January at the earliest.
Front comes tomorrow night. drop of 40 degrees, and stays there for a week.
already brought in dry wood for the boys, s o they’re cool for when we’re gone for chemo.
To boot, one of the ten species of grasshoppers I’ve been literally plagued with for the last two years is high in my Oak Trees, where it dries out the quickest, eating away….beyond my reach.
I’ve been out…drunk and stoned finally…digging ditches…connecting the old gully system to the new.
Then light a small fire under my big clawfoot in the greenroom, and soak for 3 hours in lavender and salty splendor..
(yes. that’s literally cooking myself(Bran, Cuhlchulhainn,etc!) but I’d bet that most of you are a little jealous that I can light such a fire,lol)
and of your colors…
Jealous, yeah, jealous, jealous, j I’ve been supp’n Duplin Carolina Red sweet muscadine wine while cooped up in the rain with Superstar having great conversation. She says, “that’s sufficient you’ve had enough, you’re drunk enough for me.” I sez, ‘hunny, I’m never drunk enough for you.’ /naw…
Showed my neighbor from New York City (who bought this old run down house but a nice piece of land) the Ondol Korean heating system and he’s really wanting it. The house is wide open underneath on top of a big solid rock bluffline. Told him he needs to fasten that bottom up to get warmth from mother earth or always be cold. If I ever build a steelmaster home I’m going to do that underneath, somebody here posted ondol.
Laura Nyro – Sweet Blindness
https://youtu.be/nZFD7gH1mJg
…four leaves on a clover
I’m just a bit of a shade hung over
come on baby do a slow float
you’re a good lookin’ riverboat
and aint that sweet-eyed blindness good to me
down by the grapevine
drink my dady’s wine… ?
In the triangle much less rain than Florence so less flooding, but higher winds–so about the same in terms of trees and power lines down and impassable roads. Thankfully I didn’t lose power either time.
I am thinking about just cashing in my summer patio plants–though it’s warmer here than the Chi, not sure they get enough sun to bloom or can winter over. If I can save the plumbago I will but otherwise getting tired of moving heavy pots out of the sun and back to minimize wind exposure.
“Climate Change Sea Level Rise Will Be Worse Than Imagined”: ‘One of the leading climate scientists of our time is warning of the horrifying possibility of 15-to-20 feet of sea-level rise’
I think that this is a far bigger deal than those numbers say. Years ago I was reading a report about sea level rises along the Australian coastline. The report pointed out that land slopes down to the beach so that if the water rose one meter, that did not mean that it would go inland one meter. I think that the ratio was 1 to 7 which meant that if the sea level rose one meter, that it would cause seven meters of land going inland to be submerged.
If that ratio that I remember is correct, then that means that that 15-20 feet of sea level rise would translate to the ocean going 105-140 feet inland. It is for that reason that this report recommended that stuff like power lines and the like should never be put in parallel to a beach but should be laid in at right angles. That way, as the oceans rose, that it would be much easier to cut off those sections being submerged and keeping the rest of the grid going.
Yup, that sort of rise would be devastating to far more than land at the 20 foot contour. A key issue is water – rising seas would push water further up rivers, causing fluvial flooding in areas well inland. Some rivers with a low overall head would virtually turn into estuaries (the Shannon River in Ireland, as an example). The other huge issue is groundwater. That level of sea level rise would result in saline intrusion many kilometres inland, making many groundwater supply schemes undrinkable. It would also significantly raise groundwater levels, leading to other forms of flooding.
So basically, buy a house in Nepal.
20 or so years ago, when the web was new to me, I first heard about “global warming”.
I endeavored to go to the source material, as is my wont.
ended up at the Met in UK, and the Hadley Centre.
The latter had an interactive map(the first I had ever encountered), showing coastlines globally at various levels of sealevel rise.
at the extreme upper limit of the model(which I don’t remember), Houston was underwater….all the way to Bastrop,Luling and Seguine.
Somewhere along the Balcones Fault Line was where the new coast would be…with a couple of hundred miles of shallow sea where the “Coastal Plains” used to be.
They expected this scenario….when everybody in the know was still rather sanguine and hopeful…around 2100 AD.
As I’ve said before, when the Peeps get wind of that likelihood…real estate will crash into the watery abyss….and Bidness as Usual will finally be over…given the intersectionality of the FIRE Sector.
By then, of course, it will be far too late to try some new paradigm.
and given that the last few years have seen many admissions from climatologists that they have been too conservative in their prognostications, that scenario might be sooner than we think.
The Texas Coast under 10+ feet of Gulf Water will be an environmental nightmare…all those Pipe Cities and Tank Farms with all their horrible alchemical products…
“dark, satanic mills”, indeed.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Consider Florida.
Or don’t. I’m starting a Schrodinger Gambit to wish us into a happier reality.
Re nightmare: I believe the rule of thumb is that you can’t put too much seawater on a fuel rod?
We live @ quite varied altitudes well above sea level in our 2 residences, and I doubt we’ll see abrupt change that would drastically alter growing patterns while we’re still gracing this orb 6 feet over, but you never know. The soil in the foothills is marginal and lotsa rocks underfoot, some as big as cars. But using a little Bosch process and things grow ok. In contrast it’s devilish to attempt to grow anything in the higher altitudes. Apple trees I planted 3 and 4 years ago are a little bigger than they were when I planted them, they could take forever to bear fruit, but that’s ok.
Talking apples, we brought a long fruit picker up to harvest 4 crab apples from a tree that just off the road @ 6k in Mineral King. They were quite tasty.
I’d only noticed this tree earlier in the spring when it was in blossom, really a scraggly looking veteran, easily a century old i’d guess. This year’s total was about 60 apples.
There were no low fruit bearing branches, as no doubt bears had ripped the lower ones off eons ago-as they’ll never get jobs as fruit pickers for they tend to tear fruit trees apart, so that the lowest hanging fruit was 15 feet above the ground, a real no man’s land.
A paper by James Hansen et al. from around 11 June 2015 states http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20150814_BouldersAndSuperstorms.pdf
“Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2◦C global warming could be dangerous” by Hansen et al [https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf]:
“The focus for our paper developed in 2007, when the first author (JH) read several papers by co-author P. Hearty. Hearty used geologic field data to make a persuasive case for rapid sea level rise late in the prior interglacial period to a height +6–9 m relative to today, and he presented evidence of strong storms in the Bahamas and Bermuda at that time. Hearty’s data suggested violent climate behavior on a planet only slightly warmer than today.” “… peak Eemian temperature probably was only a few tenths of a degree warmer than today.” I think this is the paper referred to in the Rolling Stone link.
There is also some pictures and interesting discussion about the Hearty Boulders found in the the Bahama Islands as evidence for extremely strong waves during the late Eemian [see acrobat p. 22 of the paper]. These Eemian-age boulders roughly a factor of 10 larger than 92 m3 appear to have been tossed onto the edge of a cliff by waves breaking along the cliff face. “Indeed, given the geologic evidence of high seas and storminess from Bermuda and the Bahamas, Hearty and Neumann (2001) suggested ‘steeper pressure, temperature, and moisture gradients adjacent to warm tropical waters could presumably spawn larger and more frequent cyclonic storms in the North Atlantic than those seen today’.” [p. 24]
I couldn’t find any news or recent papers by Richard Alley or the PennState Ice and Climate (PSICE) group I found by following the link in the Rolling Stone article. Which leaves me wondering why the sudden attention to Richard Alley’s comment “that he can’t rule out 15 or 20 feet of sea-level rise in the coming decades”.
> Trump, Kavanaugh and the Path to Neoliberal Fascism TruthDig.
“In the face of the hatred, racism, misogyny and deceit that have become part of a state-sanctioned public dialogue, no one can afford to look away, fail to speak out, and risk silence.”
> Jaron Lanier: “And so you tend to have this phenomenon where there will be, let’s say, a social justice movement of some kind; it’s initially successful, but then the same data is instead optimized to find whoever is irritated by that social justice movement. Those irritated people are introduced to each other and put into this amplifying cycle where they’re more and more agitated until they become horrible.”
“The time has come to develop a political language in which civic values, social responsibility and the institutions that support them become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic imagination, a renewed sense of social agency and an impassioned international social movement with a vision, organization and set of strategies to challenge the neoliberal nightmare engulfing the planet.”
And restore habeas corpus, while you’re at it, eh?
“”Ariel Dorfman has argued, progressives need a language that is missing from our political vocabulary, one that insists that “alternative worlds are possible, that they are within reach if we’re courageous enough, and smart enough, and daring enough to take control of our own lives.””
> Helen Pluckrose: “In order to regain credibility, the Left needs to recover a strong, coherent and reasonable liberalism. To do this, we need to out-discourse the postmodern-Left. We need to meet their oppositions, divisions and hierarchies with universal principles of freedom, equality and justice. There must be a consistency of liberal principles in opposition to all attempts to evaluate or limit people by race, gender or sexuality. We must address concerns about immigration, globalism and authoritarian identity politics currently empowering the far- Right rather than calling people who express them “racist,” “sexist” or “homophobic” and accusing them of wanting to commit verbal violence.”
This article has 20 cases of variations on ‘racism,’ 2 of ‘sexist’ but 8 of ‘misogyny,’ none of ‘homophobic.’ I assert it is meant to increase outrage, what Lanier calls startle emotions. Nothing, zippo, about ‘ballot’ and only two of ‘vote’ and those are of elite politicians.
> Yuval Noah Harari: “I would say that, get to know yourself much better and have as few illusions about yourself as possible. If a desire pops in your mind don’t just say well this is my free will. I chose this therefore it’s good, I should do it. Explore much deeper. Secondly as I said join an organization. There is very little you can do just as as an individual by yourself. That’s the two most important pieces of advice I could give an individual who is watching us now.”
Yeah, I don’t get it. It was just another Trump panic piece.
Trump, Kavanaugh and the Path to Neoliberal Fascism TruthDig. John Z:
The description of current conditions is OK, but putting it all on DT’s shoulder’s is a bit of a stretch. I cannot get too exercised over DT, as he is but a symptom of the malaise, not its cause. We get rid of DT – and then what? Will anything really change? (Have you noticed how impeachment is not mentioned lately?) Less agonising over DT, and more analysis of systems and structures that got us here could be more productive.
The whole genre of be a good scout recommendations are just too tiring for me. Feels like standing up for justice on the Titanic Shuffleboard Rules Committee. Yeah, a bunch of emergent lifeforms are going to behave sensibly in the face of an energy bonanza.
My near, mid, and long term rules of thumb are that the status quo will be strangling everyone until the next crisis. There will be scrambling during that crisis. And then we will find a new status quo that gives a little more concern to the realities of thermodynamics. Then that status quo will gradually strangle us…
And frankly, moral cleanliness in a crisis may lead to a worse status quo. See 2008. Let’s teach those rich about moral hazard next time.
When I get worried, I’ll start being really chummy with my neighbors. (I’m just barely ‘E’ as are my ‘NTJ’ scores.)
Be a good Joe. Learn something useful; especially things you like that other people don’t want to do. Try to build up a life in in an area that worked before the 1950s. Get away from the coast and littoral. None of these recommedations make me feel like a prat.
“I can’t equate my canoe as being as good as the Socrates,” Kellner said philosophically.
hahaha Kraker a frustrated lit major maybe?
It’s cold and dark up there, a lot. A Norwegian Bachelor Farmer could eat Nietzsche’s lunch. (Although Superior appears to have ‘Canoe Issues’)
And I’m only being so mean about this because this is what real journalists do. Stupid word fun.
Like:
Munching Swedish Beaver Causes Blackout
https://www.thelocal.se/20110722/616
One of many proud examples (::Careful, their pop-ups know this). Screw Betteridge, this is a cunning array of stunts.
It’s accepted theory that lakes do not have currents; they have hydraulic gradients and wind stress, known as turbulents. Turbulents – yes; currents – no. However, Lake Superior is sooo large… Maybe it does have currents. Who knows?
> “A Single Death Is A Tragedy…”
I have seen about a dozen articles where hay was made that the man was a journalist. I do not believe one word of that. Since I am never going to see any evidence I am just going to assume he was a spy. That is why this is a big deal. All the spies in Washington are in a tizzy because he was a spy.
Too bad for the Turks though.
There is a report that Jamal Khashoggi was wearing an Apple Watch when he went inside that was not only recording but was also transmitting the recordings to his iPhone as well as the Cloud. If so, the Saudis are well and truly screwed but there is no guarantee that we will ever hear those recordings.
It may be that a deal will be worked out between the Saudis, the Turks and the US. The US involvement would be that Apple would have such a file on their servers and Trump must now this even though he is prevaricating in his comments to reporters about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.
The Saudis would have been smarter kidnapping him and then claiming that they were doing an extraordinary rendition like the US does, especially as it would have been done in the Saudi Embassy which would have counted as Saudi territory. Idjuts!
Never hear of him before, but the connections, wow.
(Wiki)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I lived in Lake Tahoe for a year in the mid 80’s, i’d pop down to Walley’s hot springs in Genoa Nv. and occasionally run into a fellow that worked for Adnan Khashoggi, who had a palatial estate in Tahoe.
Well, there you are. Fayed was a consumate insider.
In fact, he consumated in…
Same goes for the recently released “pastor” with the buzz cut who was imprisoned for two years in Turkey because erdogan is a really mean “dictator.”
It’s like geopolitics explained by Dr. Suess.
This quote from Zero Hedge is actually the sanest take on the whole affair that I have seen regarding the media’s take on the Khashoggi situation.
“What the mass slaughter of civilians and even bombing a school bus full of children in Yemen couldn’t do, the murder of one of their own did: a growing list of major media companies have declared they are pulling out of a high profile investment summit in Riyadh set to start on October 23rd over the alleged Saudi state murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi “insider” critic Jamal Khashoggi.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-12/media-sponsors-pulling-out-mbs-hosted-investment-summit-over-khashoggi
Actually, this article is even more relevant to Craig H’s original comment:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-12/killing-saudi-journalist-khashoggi-could-spell-end-mohammad-bin-salman
According to that source, Kashoggi was no journalist, and he wasn’t just a spy, he was former head of Saudi intelligence posing as a journalist. There’s much more going on.
That’s the one I read, pjay, except at Strategic Culture
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/12/killing-saudi-journalist-khashoggi-could-spell-end-for-mohammad-bin-salman.html
Surely that couldn’t possibly happen here.
In one of his Farewell Tour talks, Chris Hedges speaks of him as a colleague.
Mr Khashoggi had parallel careers. He was both a journalist and an adviser to a powerful Saudi prince, Turki bin Faisal, who has served as chief of intelligence, as well as ambassador to the US and UK.
Thanks, yes he wasn’t an impartial observer it seems
Thank you for the Hedges dope. I have not seen that elsewhere. This is going to be one of those Rashomon deals.
Lambert wrote this yesterday:
““Debased currency” and “counterfeit money” are pretty shopworn tropes, if you ask me. That’s why you can’t do serious work using them, as drumlin woodchuckles’s question instantly shows. Just saying.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’d like those of you willing to join me in a little bit of do it yourself reporting…
Here’s the gig, anytime you do a retail transaction using cash, and the cashier pens the money on you, this is your chance!
Please ask the cashier how often he or she has had counterfeit money in the past that was attempted to pass?
They’ll spill their guts to you, because you will be the first person that ever asked them that, and it speaks of their expertise in that regard.
Ok team, go gettem!
Replies are consistent when i ask lately :
“More than you would expect. It goes in cycles. Every few months there is a run when we see a lot.”
that’s been my experience, as well…and I’ve been asking that question for a long time.
I get the gist( or Geist, as it were) that it’s audience participation theater.
Same… my dad needs a OCD therapist and she will no longer take the bills from my ersatz machine so I’m stuck paying with real money from the bank.
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
–DNA
Just build more shoe stores and everything will be fine…until the SEH.
I’m unimpressed with the Guardian’s editors, who framed the twitter – sales force CEOs’ relationship as “bickering”. It would be just as accurate to describe them as trying to “out compete” each other raise funds for disaster relief. (The rightward bent of the paper is also displayed in its 13 October headline, which touts Mr. Trump’s chances of re-election. For more than a moment, I thought I was reading the Economist.)
Had the Guardian’s editors thought to better frame that “bickering” headline, they might have shamed other CEOs into contributing more. It is their lobbying that has helped prevent recognition of climate change and deprived their host government of adequate revenue to deal with disaster relief. Perhaps the annual target for their giving should be ten percent of the estate tax they would have paid, but for Mr. Trump’s cuts.
The kicker on Clinton’s security clearance being removed is that it was at her request. The Politico headline is all over that.
Support for Brennan and/or cynical political manuever. You pays your money and you take your choice.
Avoiding embarassment of having it yanked for cause with attendant bad PR.
Shes Gotta stay viable for the Dem draft in 2020.
Uff. A sensible move by Hillary makes me wonder what I’m missing.
I’m missing why it is a sensible move now, but wasn’t sensible earlier in the almost six years since she was Secretary of State. Of course she was running for President but that pipe dream ended almost two years ago. And the SoS who would be possibly consulted would be Kerry. She has had no use for that clearance since January of 2017.
Everything has a price. Regarding Brexit, in some ways opening the doors to refugees from Libya (thanks HRC), plus the other Muslim majority countries (following the failed Arab Spring – special thanks to BHO for allowing Al Assad to cross the red line with impunity), has led to what may be the death knell of the EU.
Basically, these events (2011-2014) precipitated the rise of UKIP, Marine in France, and AfD in Germany plus a host of other right wing-ish responses. Predictably, too. Fail to see where this leads?
Begin with the UK being a non-trivial destination for EU goods, representing a permanent seat on the Security Council, plus major standing army/military force being made out to be the fall guys for standing up and saying, “Hey, wait a minute!”. Add Germany’s reluctance to mutualize debt and incredible reliance on ongoing export based economy plus Merkel’s irresponsibly opening of borders. Stir in a dash of Italy recalcitrance – these days in terms of budgeting (but talk about a nation that’s taken it on the chin both in terms of once being an economic powerhouse able to handle its debt load and devalue as necessary) to a state capable of making what’s happened to Greece look like a minor fender bender. What’s the result? A potential tinderbox of nationalism. Spain is largely forgotten because she’s financially impotent, but she has her own problems with holding herself together as a single nation. Russia is always seeking to do what’s in her own interests. Me? I wish Merkel had not opened the doors, that Hillary hadn’t had her way with Obama in Libya, that Obama had stepped up to the plate during the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, we can’t rewind the clock. What happens going forward? I predict the EU, like a jilted lover, plays hardball with the UK. There will be a backlash because the Brits are a proud people. This may result in civil war (the Irish question is merely papered over), Catalonia may split Spain, God help us if AfD surpasses 25%, and the Spaniards well remember when Muslims ruled. Another land war on the European Continent is not out of the realm of possibility if cooler heads don’t prevail. E.g. if Barnier isn’t neutered (or at least brought to heel from his power trip), if Merkel doesn’t stop sleep walking, and if Italy genuinely doesn’t care about meeting EU budget targets and goes off the rails (this last scares me the most). Me? I wish May would bring Trump in to help her (private consultations, at least) because if anyone sees a way for Britain and the rest to profit from this, or at least not get their heads handed to them, it’s that guy.
Did Assad cross the “redline”? Or did the jihadis with Turko-Saudi assistance stage a false flag gassing in hopes of getting Assad blamed for it and attacked for it?
“White House considers two female ambassadors to replace Haley at UN”: ‘“It’s so hard to get a security clearance so there’s a bias to get someone who is already in the system,” said a senior administration official.”
Can’t be that hard to get a security clearance as there are five million people running around that have one of those. On the other hand, by demanding that you have a security clearance, you have eliminated the bulk majority of the 250 million men and women in the US to only those 5 million of which many would be ‘insiders’. I believe that Lambert would say “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”
In passing – that deer prancing along the beach. Anybody else notice that he moved like Pepe Le Pew?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drQVRaqPSuk
Trump will now rent (Republicans) his enormous email and phone lists, $35 per 1000, more for Facebook placement. Take that, privacy!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/us/politics/trump-political-data.html
but seriously the other side word never do that
Nope. Seriously, Obama held his lists like nuclear codes, and the DNC rations them out to moderate creeps as a weapon against (leftist) insurgents. Trump monetizes his. Freedom, it’s not just for fries anymore!
Re Bernie’s speech:
Ok, I’m not going to say anything else about Bernie here. I don’t want people to think I’m a pro-Trump/right wing troll, and I don’t want to start another contentious debate. Like many here, I strongly supported Bernie in 2016. I just ask the NC community to please listen to Bernie’s comments on Putin and the “authoritarian axis” carefully (this is supposed to be a “foreign policy” statement). Also pay attention to what is missing in his foreign policy pronouncements (we all agree with his comments on inequality, the environment, “inclusion”, etc.). I might also gingerly ask if it is allowable to raise questions about George Soros without being an anti-semite (also a question for Giroux).
Here is a text of Bernie’s speech for those who want it:
https://medium.com/@SenSanders/building-a-global-democratic-movement-to-counter-authoritarianism-46832e3beef6
Bernie’s always left foreign policy to party nitwits. Still does, which requires him to recite party lines as he builds national/party cred. I completely agree with your observations. This is Bernie’s version of being Obama, whose hopey changy thing was transparently built on vampire squid money. Bernie’s vampire squid is the party apparatus, his only hope for building a platform for change, because the duopoly makes a third party unthinkable.
But I correct myself: the party’s clearly thinking about what Bernie must be thinking too, that a successful insurgency within the party must lead to a schism for reformers to be successful, since Democratic leadership must always and ever suck. And that would be why the Democrats recently bruited their loyalty oath for all candidates, that they swear party fealty to . . . whatever comes down the line. They never had to do that before, because their absence of service to most people who may one day vote has never been so brazen. I hope times get more interesting.
If I could believe they were just “nitwits” I would not be so worried. But I can’t.
re: Does using models really make economics a science? Lars P. Syll
Thanks for this link. My abbreviated take:
Modern mainstream economists ground their models on a set of core assumptions — basically describing the agents as ‘rational’ actors — and a set of auxiliary assumptions.
Shorter: Assume a can opener.
Economics — in contradistinction to logic and mathematics — ought to be an empirical science, and empirical testing of ‘axioms’ [assumptions] ought to be self-evidently relevant for such a discipline. For although the mainstream economist himself claims that his axioms are universally accepted as true and in no need of proof, that is in no way a justified reason for the rest of us to simpliciter accept the claim. (my emphasis)
Shorter: Well there’s your problem right there. heh.
Theresa May’s latest Brexit Plan….
The best thing about Theresa May is her taste in clothing: Refined, dignified, perfect for a woman of her age and position. The worst thing thing about Theresa May: Everything else – with the possible exception that’s she’s neither BoJo nor Rees-Mogg. But then again, since I’m not from the UK, who am I to judge?
I’ve wondered how much the syntactical action of her name has lead to her being at the undecided point she’s at: “Well, Theresa May…”
So if I ever get brain damage and go into politics, I think I should change my last name to ‘Might.’
In Thursday’s water cooler I posted a YouTube link to Chris Hedges calling for revolution against the corporate state. Thank you to those who replied, including Lambert who asked what would Victory look like and what would be the next organization?
Lambert, I’m sure you’re familiar with Cooperation Jackson, the reorganization of Jackson Mississippi being undertaken by its poor black community to use community property, worker cooperatives and a Time Bank to begin structuring a new Society after capitalism. Here is an interview on the show On Contact with Chris Hedges with the leader of Cooperation Jackson…from 7 months ago
https://youtu.be/O2Ew8Qi0ADY
And here’s a link to the comment I made in Thursday’s water cooler that includes the link to the Chris Hedges speech earlier this week.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/200pm-water-cooler-10-11-2018.html#comment-3039246
Yeah, I didn’t comment but I watched. That’s the one where he calls Khashoggi a friend.
“Ecologists suggest it is time to rethink the modern lawn”
Well, yes; that’s been known for a long time. There are multiple option: flowering “lawn;” garden, like Lambert’s or our front yard; more-or-less natural meadow; trees. The original lawns were sheep pastures. And much depends on the local ecology. In the Willamette Valley, grass is the default plant, if you don’t let the blackberries and other brush grow. In fact grass seed is one of or main crops. Most of our place is savannah – grass scattered with trees, mostly cultivated trees. People seem to gravitate to that look, and it can be very productive.
The “flowering lawns”, also, are area-specific. Most of them depend on white clover as a base; that’s what I plant when I have a bare area. Grass will appear soon enough.
We lived several years in Albuqerqe, NM. Quite few front yards there were covered by rocks, scattered with native plants like cactus. Rocks have advantages: you don’t have to water, fertilize, or mow them.
Here in north central fla, the well kept lawn is the exception. I only hear from codes when I’m on a detour route and someone complains about how the brush on my easement makes it tricky to run the stop sign.
Honestly, I always find Henry Giroux very difficult to get through. I wasn’t sure why but reading Benjamin Studebaker’s latest piece regarding Sam Harris helped me figure it out—Giroux writes very much in the realm of idealism and I’m much more of a materialist or, really, a behaviorist. Giroux says things like
Yes, but, what do we do? Does “imagining a life beyond capitalism” do much of anything? That’s not what Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing—they’re employing real behavioral strategies, changing other people’s behavior through their own. When Sanders writes, in a recent op-ed,
“Yes, but, what do we do? ”
+1.
adding: what we do is bound up in our sense of duty or obligation, imo, and not in our degree of hope.
‘Non nobis solum nati sumus.’ – Cicero
Whereas hope is a private emotion and an individual state of being.
To be boring and go on too long on this point:
Hope asks nothing of you, demands nothing of you, but comforts you individually; duty or obligaton, however one understands it, requires active engagement with the world.
“Yes, but what do we do?”
Adding:
I know the words “duty” and “obligation” have been used by tptb to bully people into doing things they morally oppose.
I also know the word “hope” has been used by tptb to soothe and drowse people into inaction. i.e. No need to do anything, hoping is enough. (No, it’s not enough.)
What is it about (what passes for) the Left and the love of abstractions?
Agree on Henry Giroux: thousands of words seemingly designed to
ensure Nothing Changes. The right doesn’t do that. Mmm.
Interesting piece in yesterday’s NYT, Democrats are Blowing it, Again
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/opinion/liberals-trump-midterms-2020-election.html
Very well done. But the Ds won’t read it or heed it. We know that.
Really? I read that and I see a “this isn’t my Rethug party!” whine bent until he gets to “I would vote for Democrats if they were!”
We don’t want them to be what they are, any more than Bret Stephens does, but what we want them to be is miles away from his ideal. He really wants them to be Hillary Clinton, despite the already tired “you cannot be civil” Hillary quote.
Because the first thing we all know, in whatever parallel universe Hillary became or becomes president, is that she will be more than civil with the R’s of that universe.
Stephens should enjoy his time as a true minority. It’s gonna last.
2018 A comprehensive look at US hurricanes, climate modes & damage. Don’t get riled up at me, it’s just real data. Most people simply won’t believe that US landfalling hurricanes (overall & major) are down since 1900
Continental U.S. Hurricane Landfall Frequency and Associated Damage: Observations and Future Risks
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0184.1#/doi/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0184.1
Continental United States (CONUS) hurricane-related inflation-adjusted damage has increased significantly since 1900. However, since 1900 neither observed CONUS landfalling hurricane frequency nor intensity shows significant trends, including the devastating 2017 season.
No one better not get angry at you. Honest data is honest data. However, do not forget that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Straight into the doghouse, it seems, if I write what I really think about the self appointed prophets who want you to believe that they can predict the climate. Especially when it (among other things) is being used as an excuse to centralize global government in order to address it.
Much prefer to listen to these guys, near always get things close in regards to long range weather everywhere I go, been following them for a while.
Harris-Mann Climatology Updates Climate Forecast to 2040
https://www.prweb.com/releases/globaltemperatures/to2040/prweb14101291.htm
But I should have been born in the last interglacial. It was warmer, nice and fertile for the mega-flora and mega-fauna. I will never understand why you folks believe that the planet should be cold and starved of CO2… the world is getting colder until the sun swallows it
i don’t think gavin schmidt or james hansen appointed themselves experts–they went through the standard qualifying process. i’m not so sure about harris and randy mann, though; who appointed them? why should we believe these guys over people who became experts in the more traditional manner?
The world’s top scientists (activists) at the IPCC are appointed by other salesmen, unfortunately a real scientist has no influence that’s why people like Richard Tol and Judith Curry had to leave.
Gavin & James they’re not experts at anything except suckering people into believing ldl&s. Hansen predicted an El Niño for like four+ years straight that never happened, the models have utterly failed to match then they made it up that the cooling never happened.
Nobody appointed Harris & Mann, hopefully, like everyone I’m allowed to have an opinion
Like everyone, you’re allowd to have all the opinions you want. And your opinion is no more entitled to automatic respect than anyone else’s opinion. Your opinion has to earn respect through showing a reality-based understanding of the subject, just like every other opinion which wants to be respected.
I looked at the paper you referenced and thought this observations was telling for how well the public is responding to climate change: “We demonstrate that this increase in damage is strongly due to societal factors, namely, increases in population and wealth along the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts.”
Whether a trend can be found in the hurricane hurricane frequency activity since 1900 I couldn’t figure out what evidence supported the second claim made in this extract from the paper regarding hurricane intensity: “However, since 1900 neither observed CONUS landfalling hurricane frequency nor intensity shows significant trends, including the devastating 2017 season.” Strangely, the paper seemed to discuss damage as a measure for hurricane intensity.
A paper which cited the paper you pointed to — but isn’t available open-source: The Extremely Active 2017 North Atlantic Hurricane Season:
“The 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season was extremely active, with 17 named storms (1981–2010 median is 12.0), 10 hurricanes (median is 6.5), 6 major hurricanes (median is 2.0), and 245% of median accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) occurring. September 2017 generated more Atlantic named storm days, hurricane days, major hurricane days, and ACE than any other calendar month on record.”
— might suggest the term ‘trend’ is an important word to the conclusions in the paper you cited.
The data is notoriously hard to interpret. It is generally agreed that there is no strong evidence of an historic increase in hurricane activity on Atlantic coasts. However, it should be pointed out that rising sea levels is a major contributor to making tidal surges much more dangerous for coastal communities.
Also what is “activity” — how do you compare a huge, lingering Cat 2 vs a quick over-and-done Cat 5?
Well, you do it by damage, but that tells you about where people were lucky or unlucky enough to live, nothing at all about Mother Nature.
Exactly. What I had heard from the modelers and probabilistic risk people I work with is that we’re seeing fewer hurricanes making landfall, but due to sea level rise and other climate factors, the ones that do make it are bigger and stronger. Due to the increasing population and investment at the coasts these hurricanes cause more expensive damage.
Up since 1960.
I’ve been grimacing in anticipation ever since I read your earlier comments that you think this is a subject for kibitzing, but really, No.
Try to understand what you are actually doing to people impacted by reality. Take a look at the Michael photos. When was the last time a hurricane hit Spain? Oh, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_hurricane
No. I am going to assume you are in a location that leaves you completely unaware and completely unaffected by what is now happening to our world, so that way I can then be pleasant about this with you. But No. I am not in such a location. So I’m prejudiced that way.
It would be lovely if wishful thinking were the solution. But No.
Try this by the hippies at the American Institute of Physics:
The Discovery of Global Warming
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm
No, that is not rain in my boots. And please do not make any further effort to tell me that you know better.
If you really can’t get over the itch, try something that’s historical and only offensive to dead people. Like, ‘the Dust Bowl was not that dry.’
Re: Brexit
I’m also puzzled by the claim that Barnier is quite open to an extension of the transition period. The main advantage for the EU of the transition period ending in 2020 is that the next pluri-annual EU budget starts in 2021. If the transition period is extended, it will be a major headache for budget discussion (do you negotiate two budgets, one with the UK one without…). Ok, there are probably ways to mitgate that but I would think the EU would be very very reluctant to make that concession.
I think its wishful thinking by UK negotiators – I can’t see any chance at all of an extension. There seems to be a lot of confusion among the journalists which I suspect reflects chaos behind the scenes on the UK side.
Just come back online to see that Jimmy Dore has a 34-minute video up titled “What Is MMT And How It Works w/Stephanie Kelton” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5baKgv7Zl5g
With only 24-hour notice, residents scramble to move out of condemned Ferguson apartments
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/with-only–hour-notice-residents-scramble-to-move-out/article_9d872e13-385a-5ecf-a5bc-e4b80604ba35.html
“‘You Just Realize It’s All Gone’: Hurricane Michael’s Heavy Toll”
What really surprises me is the number of people in that article that lost everything and did not have time to grab much before bailing out of the area. I am afraid that there are some parts of the United States that are more hazardous to live in than others. Tornado Alley comes to mind as well as the Gulf states. I am no survivalist myself but after some disastrous floods in my area a coupla years ago I did find a bit of forethought invaluable. If I was living in one of the Gulf states I would have to put together some sort of Bug-out bag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug-out_bag) for each family member. That way, in a few minutes notice, they could be thrown into a car which would give them the means to get by for a coupla days while you wait for the Feds to – hopefully – get their act up to speed though since Katrina I am a bit dubious about their ability to cope.
Another vital bit of survival I would consider to be a solid briefcase. Why that? To keep your vital paperwork in it such as insurance papers and the like. Maybe a printout of your passwords and the like too. And not everything should go into it. The rule would be to put in not what you think that you need but what you can literally cannot do without. Also in here should be an external hard-drive with a copy of every foto or film that you own. If you have paper fotos, scan them at high resolution and ad them in. It is what I did. I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen of disaster victims after a fire, flood, etc. that say that they had lost all their family fotos, wedding fots, kids fotos, etc. Who really wants to lose those? I always thought that those preppers were going on a bit too much and in truth some really go overboard. It seems though that with climate change, more and more people are becoming preppers whether they want to be or not.
>Netanyahu Is Destroying Both Israel and the Palestinians Prof. Alon Ben-Meir, Global Research
What promise?
I’m currently rereading Max Blumenthal’s Goliath. The story of modern Israel is not a pretty story. Netanyahu is bad. Really, really bad. But the notion that there was ever some sort of nice, principled Israel that people like Netanyahu are destroying isn’t supported by the record. There’s a whole class is Israeli liberal who is convinced 1967 was the turning point, that before that Israel was a respectable state. Whereas Blumenthal never losses sight of the fact that the country was literally founded on ethnic cleansing; the forced expulsion of 700,000 Palestinian ‘Arabs’. They developed the Davidka, an oversized mortar designed specifically to make a horrible and loud noise in order to force people out of their homes. There’s a monument to the thing right now in a part of Jerusalem.
Israel is a country that has always been insane. It’s just that the crazy now has complete control of the asylum.
Isn’t it crazy how an idea born out of nineteenth-century Western European Colonialism could be such a fail in the twenty-first century?
Re: Sam Harris.
I’m an atheist, and I have a very dim view of Islam, which I view as bad even by the very low standards of religion (there’s an exmuslim subreddit which is a very bleak and depressing place to read. The stories recounted there go a very long way for me in undermining any possible positive opinion of the religion. There are depressing exmormon and excatholic and similar subreddits, but none of them are filled with people in literal fear for their lives).
But Harris is a moron. He says a lot of things, not all of which are crap, but he touts logic and critical thinking while simultaneously just parroting whatever the latest DC imperialist line is. The fact that it’s the West that has destroyed three Muslim countries in the last 17 years, and not the other way around, is something that completely fails to penetrate Harris’s skull. He’s firmly convinced the middle-east is a war zone because of all the backwards savages who inhabit it, and not because, er, history’s mightiest military decided to cross thousands of miles ocean to bomb said ‘savages’.
What are Sam Harris’s views on the US enabled genocide of Yemen, you might ask. I’ll tell you: Sam Harris has no views on the genocide of Yemen. He never talks about it.
“None other than the highly respected economist, Raghuram Rajan, then governor of the central bank of India, complained about how the Fed took a posture of indifference about the impact its policies had on destabilizing hot money flows that would wash into and out of developing economies.”
Why would the Fed worry about the impact of their domestic policies on other countries? That isn’t their job. The problem here is precisely that those countries don’t defend themselves with capital controls because that would be against the orthodoxy imposed on them from the developed countries. That is the State Dept. and the military, not the Fed. It’s a direct effect of corporate globalization, one of its goals.
The dollar is an international reserve currency. The Fed provides swap lines to the ECB, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and maybe a few that I have missed. So the Fed takes international responsibility for the dollar exposures of foreign institutions.
More significantly, the US asked for international cooperation in the wake of the crisis in terms of having coordinated banking policies. You can’t ask for cooperation and then throw other countries under the bus.
Moreover, large US banks have significant foreign exposures. You forget the Latin American crisis of the 1970s. Volcker had to rein in his interest rate increases because it was breaking Latin American economies, and with it, US banks.
Late in the evening but this looked interesting. Guardian article about how Putin’s United Russia party is losing elections in the East to young Communist candidates, who are now correctly dubbed, the opposition. United Russia is dragging its feet on holding run off elections which the communist is likely to win. Putin’s popularity going down in favour of people Western “liberals” won’t like.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/13/communist-challenge-exposes-cracks-putins-power
This attractive 30 year old sees Lenin as a “political inspiration.”
I just saw an interesting comment on veganism at Reddit. It doesn’t fit any current threads or subthreads here, but it will soon disappear unfindably into Reddit’s bottomless pit of lost and unfindable entries. So here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroWaste/comments/9nwg9y/plastic_and_veganism/
About the modern lawn, we have modern lawn all around the multi-unit buildings of our Co-Op. It gets no fertilizer. It gets no pesticides or herbicides or any such thing. It gets no supplemental water. It fends for itself on skywater. So the only carbon emission it causes is the periodic mowing it gets. I don’t know if it sucks down more carbon through growing than the mowers emit through running their engines. Maybe not, because the soil is hard unforgiving clay and the lawn does very little growing. And gets only seldom mowing.
Kids play and run around on it. Adult members do stuff on their “little back yards” part of it.
If small-yard homeowners mowed their little lawns with hand-pushed reel mowers . . . or solar-electric-recharged battery powered mowers, then that gas-powered lawnmower emission of carbon would be deleted also.
Into the Brexit Labyrinth, and the supply chains of auto makers:
What? You mean that the “makers”, the “entrepreneurs”, the management pricks who make hundreds times more than their workers, can’t figure out how to rejigger their supply chains faster than the morose British political elites plodding reluctantly toward Brexit?