Led by Tribal Scientists, Montana’s Trumpeter Swan Revival Is a Triumph Audobon Society
Florida’s monarch butterfly population takes a tumble Science News
Amazon’s Endangered Species: World Culture Popula
How the Farm Bureau’s Climate Agenda Is Failing Its Farmers Inside Climate News
Permian Drillers Prepare To Go Into Overdrive In 2019 Oilprice.com
In race to fill LNG supply gap, project goalposts have changed Reuters
Wells Fargo says its promises to restore consumer trust were just ‘puffery.’ But they look more like lies Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
After Protest, Booksellers Are Victorious Against Amazon Subsidiary NYT
Jury delivers $25.5 million ‘statement’ to Aetna to change its ways CNN
Brexit
May races to revive Brexit plan as pressure mounts FT
The UK’s financial services profession is surprisingly resilient to Brexit woes City AM. The words “race to the bottom” do not appear…
Europe Takes a Deep Breath as Action Against Italy Approaches Bloomberg
Macron wants Europe to buy its own military hardware Politico
Training kids to kill at Ukrainian nationalist camp AP. Strange for Ukrainian nationalists to be suddenly getting bad press, after all the support we gave them.
Syraqistan
Yemen – Holding Hodeidah Is The Houthi’s Last Chance Moon of Alabama
Le Drian says not aware France has Khashoggi tapes, contradicts Erdogan Reuters. Le Dria is France’s foreign minister.
Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Assassinations Before Khashoggi Killing NYT
Iran could be the key to cementing India and Japan ties Asia Times
India
India’s shadow banks risk repeating crisis-era mistakes FT
India’s banking system is flirting with a Lehman moment The Economist
India mulls barter system to satisfy Iran’s basmati appetite amid sanctions Business Standard (J-LS).
North Korea
South Korea-U.S. military drills violate agreements: North Korea media Reuters
Unique Thai pottery tradition under threat Nikkei Asian Review. “The owners of some water-jar factories have noted a drop in demand as Thai tastes shift from earthenware to plastic tubs.”
China?
China’s Xi Jinping revives Maoist call for ‘self-reliance’ FT
What’s a Private Company? China Banks Grapple With Lending Rules Bloomberg
Police ‘kidnap’ 10 labour activists across China: Rights group Times of India
In China, Desperate Patients Smuggle Drugs. Or Make Their Own. NYT. Seems famiiar, somehow….
My career as an international blood smuggler Guardian
China wants a new world order. At the U.N., NGOs secretly paid cash to promote Beijing’s vision. Yahoo News. I’m shocked that NGOs would take any secret cash….
Trump Transition
Nancy Pelosi: Mueller Doesn’t Have to Indict Trump for Congress to Impeach Him The Atlantic
‘No Blame’? ABC News finds 17 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats or alleged assaults ABC. Ugly. From the 30,000-foot level, the problem with [new buzzword] stochastic terrorism as a theory is that, when you get down to cases, its claims aren’t falsifiable. (Oddly, the 2011 post is from an anonymous blogger, G2G — “Got to go”? “Government to Government”? — with that single post to their credit.)
With Trump sitting nearby, Macron calls nationalism a betrayal Reuters
Whitaker Dismissing Notion He’ll Starve Mueller’s Probe of Money CNN
U.S. Navy Refused to Help Sinking Migrant Boat That Capsized, Killing Dozens, Survivors Say Newsweek
Georgia Democrats, Abrams’ campaign files lawsuit to challenge rejection of votes CNN
The right to vote is under siege in 2018 Vox
Democrats Should Remember Al Gore Won Florida in 2000 The Intercept. No, he didn’t. He lost it through a combination of fecklessness and cowardice — as the article shows. And 18 years later, here we are.
Class Warfare
Longer-Run Effects of Anti-Poverty Policies on Disadvantaged Neighborhoods NBER
Central American Migrants Are Not Your Enemy Jacobin
Software Startup Accused of Union-Busting Will Pay Ex-Employees Bloomberg
A Year After #MeToo, Hollywood’s Got a Malaise Money Can’t Cure NYT
We’ve started to uncover the true purpose of dreams New Scientist
Do gut bacteria make a second home in our brains? Science
War Is A Racket Smedley Butler, Internet Archive. For those who came in late…
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
Thank you firefighters for risking your lives to save California. #WoolseyFire #HillFire #MalibuFire pic.twitter.com/a5AViNlRBD
— Maria Demopoulos (@MariaDemopoulos) November 11, 2018
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
155 comments
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Thanks for a Monday morning dose of Smedley, the only American military hero.
Yes, thank you…and Smedley is apropos recent elections in the negative:
“capital won’t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people — those who do the suffering and still pay the price — make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that
of the profiteers. “
I wonder if general Smedley also had, say, Lincoln in mind when he said that.
I wonder if general Smedley also had, say, Lincoln in mind when he said that.
Thanks from yours truly regarding the Smedley Butler link. That November 11th has been perverted from Armistice Day to “Veterans Day” speaks for itself and the uber-militaristic nature of the United States, which has pretty much been at war one place or another for the vast majority of the last 150 years or so. Note that the Dems consistently approve higher and higher military budgets along with the Repubs. Not a dime’s worth of difference on this issue. Bah bloody humbug.
As somebody who grew up in Canada with Remembrance Day, I have never had a problem with the US calling November 11 “Veterans Day”. I think it is is nice to have a day to honor the veterans who live on with PTSD and other challenges. I just wish the politicians stood behind their rhetoric and adequately fund the VA and other critical veterans benefits. If we want to have fewer troubled veterans, then we should have fewer stupid wars (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.).
The US came in late into WW I and so missed the bulk of the mass slaughter that turned November 11 into Remembrance Day for so many countries. The US has Memorial Day which started to honor the dead from the slaughter of the Civil War (still the most American casualties from any war) and has expanded to honor the fallen from other wars.
So the US has days to honor both the living and the dead from wars. That is unusual.
Now that Hollywood is reforming itself, Smedley might be a nice vehicle for some white male actor worried about getting left behind.
A period movie about US adventurism in Central America would be pretty awesome, imho.
And sorely needed. As well as a new perennial history show: What We Have Done.
There isn’t even an allusion to the role of the US in creating “lands people flee” in this Seattle Times article:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/mexico-to-work-to-stop-migration-by-providing-opportunity-in-lands-people-flee/
“Lands people flee.” Not “US-manufactured hells on earth.” Or more typically, “Lands where the US was forced to intervene in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine.” Not a single word pointing at US.
It gets worse. Just searched on “Monroe Doctrine renounced” and found another historical vacuum that almost turns my head inside out.
https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2013/11/has-the-u-s-renounced-the-monroe-doctrine/
There is no “better, more efficient way” to do the wrong thing. Uncle Sam, my uncle, why you gotta be such a g.d. global control freak? Go home, your house is on fire.
“A decent job,” he says. In Michael Hudson’s parasite metaphor, he’s saying, the successful parasite will convince the host that its parasitism is actually helpful.
You’d love Walker with Ed Harris from the 1980’s.
It’s a perfect period piece\, for while.
Peter Fitzsimons is an Australian author who writes about the Great War. Here’s his take on November 11:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-incontrovertible-truth-about-world-war-i-20181109-p50f0t.html
Chris
1971, Eric Bogle: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, is what I think of now in terms of WWI
Here is the version by the Pogues:
Harrowing. The lyrics, for those who can’t bear to listen all the way through.
Re: Software Startup Accused of Union-Busting Will Pay Ex-Employees
Conditions in the tech industry must be worsening if more tech employees want to join unions today. I remember 20 years ago most tech workers didn’t seem to be interested in unionizing. Tech was considered a field with a lot of libertarians who were anti-union. It looks like that might be changing at least among employees. The actual companies are still very anti-union though which is politically explosive because Silicon Valley is considered to be pro-Democratic. How can the Democrats be the party of Silicon Valley and the party of organized labor?
I’ve been in IT for almost 20 years now so I’ve seen a fair amount of change. Yes, for many conditions are bad and are getting worse. There was always a pro-union voice within IT, even during the 90’s, but it has become more pronounced in the past decade as the promises of the libertarian thought collective fail to materialize.
A samuria and an IT expert. An interesting combination. How was Kurosawa to work for? You must be pretty old now.
Hero Protagonist?
Or maybe his dad…
Hiro Protagonist, please. “The Deliverator.”
;-)
I’ve described myself on occasion as a Market Data Ronin. Kurosawa was lovely and age is a state of mind.
I wonder where Zatoichi is? And how he managed to write (and debug) good code.
The blind swordsman?
The very one. In my undergraduate days, decades ago, friends and I would go to a cheap arty theatre to watch Zatoichi films.
How the world has changed since then.
Around that time, in the 1960’s, there was another TV series, Tora-san.
Watching them today, one can glimpse the Japan of that many decades ago, and see how the world has changed, as well.
[From memory] One of the “founding” principles of Silicon Valley (you know, back when it was orange and apple groves) that was unspoken but still accepted by some of the East Coast “refugees” that started Fairchild (and some of them started Intel) was that they basically paid people more in exchange for not unionizing. Keep in mind that a lot of these original founders came from the East Coast military/tech corridor, which was and to some extent still is unionized.
That worked quite well for quite a while, but between the race to the bottom salary wise thanks to outsourcing and other shenanigans, massively increased cost of link and what I think are deteriorating working conditions (but what do I know, I’ve only been an IT minion for 30 years) there is now more interest in unionization. Some of this is also because it’s become more of a regular job, just with even worse working hours places. Also, pay isn’t exactly as great as it used to be – most SV salaries I’m aware of haven’t moved up much since 2008 while the cost of living there has exploded even by their standards. Most of the compensation growth especially at established companies has been via employer stocks and options, and as we know some of that has been heavily propped up by stock buyback. And landlords usually don’t take stock options for rent payments down there.
The libertarian part comes from the time when one or two people could get together and start something that would sustain them and their families and then grow. That era is also largely over.
Dear Livius, in my very limited experience, which I gained through the Internet, Silicon Valley is ultra-whatever (not democratic and certainly not liberal, let’s call it globalist or at least lib-dem á la the Democratic Party mainline) politically. However, financially and economically, they are the ultimate AnCaps.
They won’t support the living wage, the “homeless tax”, or really, any initiative to help the precariat.
> How can the Democrats be the party of Silicon Valley and the party of organized labor?
By selling out organized labor every chance they get, of course.
“Plot 6, Row C, Grave 15 – LRB”
And here is what it looks like. Van Dyke Fernald is the middle image on the right-
https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/108847-tezze-british-cemetery-italy/
He was not only born an American but I read that his family went back all the way to about 1630 so he came from one of the oldest families in America.
Regarding ABEBooks and Amazon, does anyone know if Alibris is now or ever was independent? I haven’t been back to ABE since learning of their ownership.
According to Wikipedia and this page, Alibris is now owned by an outfit called Monsoon Commerce.
what is a good source for buying books online, powell’s? seems like almost everything else traces back to amazon one way or another.
Better World Books seems to me a good choice for both new and used books. Their service is fast, and they do some charitable work. I don’t know how their catalog compares with others, but I have bought some unusual books there.
thanks, at this point i just want to avoid contributing any more money to amazon.
The book business greatly reminds of collectible stamps, in that there are endless amounts of different stamps in a myriad of conditions, and most used ones aren’t worth much as a rule of thumb.
The idea that stamp collecting is dead (just about every brand new-never used USA stamp from 1940 onward is worth merely the face value, or in most cases less than the stated value, otherwise known as ‘discount postage’) and nobody cares, is a different kettle of fish from books, which still has an audience.
While selling a friend’s collection on Amazon, I relied on ABE to figure out correct pricing (AMZ’s 3d party sellers are insanely delusional when it comes to collectible genre fiction).
Disappointed to read this. I clicked on my link to ABE’s search page several times a day for years.
If you are not very demanding, better world books (bwb) will have the cheapest copy online, almost always an ex-lending library reading copy. Their business model involves getting their stock for free, [to the detriment of ‘real ‘ booksellers]. As to their “charitable” work, there is debate in the african librarian / ngo online community as to whether donations of (usually highly inappropriate) US & UK ex-library dross is really fulfilling a need in sub-saharan africa, despite what the so-called charities involved tout. See for example this quote from M.T. Hite’s master’s thesis cited in https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1009&context=culsproceedings
“…However, throughout my eight years of work, U.S. Peace Corps workers, other foreign nationals and African librarians working in developing countries have told me .horror stories about donated books. One US Embassy librarian reported a library in West Africa getting about 20 copies of Vanna White‘s biography – Vanna being a US television game show hostess whose claim to fame is that she turns letters around on a board. Another person told about finding ski instruction manuals and microwave cookbooks in a non-electrified village in Zimbabwe. Perhaps these are apocryphal stories. But in my own experience at Zenzeleni High School, Mseleni, South Africa I found a wonderful, though old, set of encyclopedias . but every book was a copy of Volume A. At another South African school library they had the dress code for 1905 co-eds at the University of Pittsburgh and at a provincial book depot I found mounds of donated books from American service organizations that included books with whole sections missing, directories of health care providers offered by an HMO in Connecticut and a book from the 1920s of Negro folk songs with lyrics in pidgin English and caricatured racist drawings of thick lipped stupidly grinning black faces singing on the cover. …
I like Better World also. But these days, for convenience I go to http://www.indiebound.org and order books from my local independent bookstore. They email me about the status of the order, and when the books(s) come in, I stop in at the store to pick them up. I have the choice of paying online when I order, or paying at the bookstore when I pick the item up.
Love my local, independent bookstore; love Indiebound!
Addall.com is an aggregator; it includes Amazon sites but others too, including Powell’s. I buy most of my books (even recent) on the “used” section of their site, and often find cheaper prices than on Amazon used-book links.
I’ve been really satisfied with Powell’s.
I never knew they were Amazon owned, always though thought it was a lesser, fringe “competitor”. Maybe I am thinking of Alibris and mixing the two.
it started out that way iirc, and amazon bought it.
the emerging competitor to abebooks currently is biblio.com.
alibris [originally – pre-1998 – interloc, which was then the giant of net-based antiquarian book commerce] seems to be in sharp decline
there’s also antiqbooks (netherlands) where you will come into direct contact with the dealers to arrange your means of payment etc
I’ve been using biblio.com for awhile now and have had good luck
there; quite good customer service. Hope they don’t get amazoned.
Damn – I’ve been buying books on AbeBooks thinking I was avoiding Amazon. Thanks for disabusing me of the notion…have to look elsewhere now.
“Amazon’s Endangered Species: World Culture”: ‘As a book dealer and publisher, Amazon wants no competitors, admits no responsibilities, and takes no risks.’
Sounds almost like the perfect definition of a neoliberal corporation to me. Tack on how its ultimate goals bear little relation to a real-world market place and then it would be perfect.
Read Smedley’s “War is a Racket.”
Makes one think, “Amazon is a Racket” and “Wall Street is a Racket.”
While working in the construction trades, my work buddy and I decided that “everything is a racket.” Well, everthing in the building construction process, anyway. But I’ve been reading NC long enough to know that rackets are the rule, not the exception, in pretty much any part of our society you care to look.
whoever needed proof – capitalism isn’t about profit; profit is just the means to an end: control.
I’d have to disagree. Capitalism is totally about profit – the more the better… control is just a byproduct (very much desired, of course), just a cherry on top.
Robots are believed to be easier to control.
(Only if they are not too intelligent, I suppose).
Tweets that make you go Hmmmm?
Gen Michael Hayden (ex-CIA director) responding to a Tarnopolsky tweet re: Trump absence from virtually all the WWI attended by other foreign leaders
It was also hilarious to see pics of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly visiting the Vets Cemetery (without Trump) wearing NO HAT and carrying NO UMBRELLA and no visible rain.
PS. I’m not a Hayden fan. I just thought the tweet was interesting.
Saw a lot of special pleading at an article at-
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24839/dont-be-so-quick-to-blame-trumps-no-show-at-cemetery-on-the-president-himself
which one blogger reworded as “Only a fool would put the President of the United States in a motorcade, IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY, to go 55 miles overland to a ceremony! Only a stark raving lunatic!”
All the other Leaders didn’t have a problem with that deal.
“‘No Blame’? ABC News finds 17 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats or alleged assaults”
Let’s see. That is 17 cases. Out of a population of about 327,000,000 Americans. Covering the past two years. Is that a number even measurable as a statistic? You’re more likely to find a higher number for the so-called Clinton body count – with an equal amount of proof.
Trump is a big sack of {family bog} that advocates street violence that he will take no part in.
Yes, it might be more useful to compare the 17 cases that invoked Trump with the probably 0 cases invoking all other modern presidents.
Will someone please shut the Overton window?
As I’ve been saying, we need to man the barricades against these pirates. Not only are they deplorable, but they have no scruples, being prone to random acts of violence. Or should we say “inspired”?
And just look at their pirate leader. Who would want to be ravished by him?
/sarc
Presstitutes provide a legitimate service for your money.
As Twain noted, “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Who was invoking Trump in connection with violence, threats or alleged assaults?
The perpetrators or the victims?
All 17 cases, or the former in some cases, and the latter in other cases?
And if we assume it refers to perpetrators in all 17 cases, if we automatically assume that, what does it say about our own predisposition?
Well Joe Biden just gave an award to George W. Bush, who started an illegal war founded on blatant lies, killing hundreds of thousands that will cost the USA at least $3 trillion (with VA medical bills) and also tortured people in Iraq, Pakistan, Gitmo and elsewhere.
So if Biden can approve of GWB (and Michelle Obama can hug him) I can’t get too concerned about 17 cases in the US.
Democrats Should Remember Al Gore
Won Floridalost his home state of Tennessee in 2000There we go. I see the Intercept still has some quality control issues. I think normal voters should see these attacks from both parties on the voting process as a complete and partisan joke. It is bad enough already that people are forced to pick between Dumb and questionably Dumber (while at the same time having guessing which is which). Now, once they do get out and vote, if they didn’t vote for the right person, the crap hits the fan, all hands on deck to question the votes! Recount! etc… etc… He said she said, secret boxes, U-hauls, erroneous software, police, Corrupt GOP officials, Democrats who want ballots of questionable origin to be counted in their favor, it goes on and on and on… I can’t believe turnout is as high as it is. When a victor is declared, people find out, amazingly enough, the person isn’t working for them, go figure*! It is very convenient for publishers like Vox to make their own partisan claims when they represent, not the people, but the liberal status quo. Both parties are damaging the electoral process, by design. Because it is the only power people have left, and it is small.
*Gretchin Whitmer has already appointed the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield to her transition team. Money talks… err I mean, “VOTE, participate because it’s sooooooo important!(TM)”
Let me correct The Intercept a bit further:
Democrats Should Remember Bill Clinton’s Zipper, Stuck in the Down Position, Cost Al Gore the Presidency.
Should’ve used YKK zippers.
Yeah, pretty much. At the time Bill Clinton was radioactive and of no use whatsoever. I knew of a third grader in 1998 who made some funny remark (to a third grader) about kissing someone’s rear end, and having it blow up into a major problem at school. One of the administrators involved asked if the child had been listening to Ken Starr on the teevee. Multiply by whatever constant you want to use, and that was enough to cost Gore the election…
We’re starting to stack up electioneering problems and disputes about results and disputes over meddling or interference and so on.
2000 presidential Florida. 2016 presidential Russia. 2018 mid term Florida.
This is how you end up with a military coup, as people don’t respect their elections anymore and have higher respect for the military.
Though it does seem to me that a lot of our problems are just coming from Florida.
What happened in the GA gov race was much more brazen and obnoxious and there’s not nearly enough media coverage around it.
Kemp is a sack of sugar and isn’t fit to run an animal shelter.
Kemp shouldn’t be allowed in an animal shelter- or anywhere near any kind of vulnerable living creature.
I give Abrams a lot of credit for not going quietly.
The stone the Dems are casting would sting more had they not also rigged their own elections.
“Do they only do that to their own fellow Democrats, or dare they do that to Republicans as well?”
Floriduh Democrats have no interest in winning…Florida has a strong recall mechanism…and over one million new voters who probably won’t vote Republican…no need to flinch…do a recall and force a revote with those one million new potential voters…no need to wait until 2020…
but the dumbocrats don’t like winning for some reason….
Let me pull this back…sadly recall is only for certain officials…ignore the little man behind the curtain….
^^^”…but the dumbocrats don’t like winning for some reason….”^^^
and I just came across this, regarding Tucker Carleson’s new book, wherein he “sounds like Bernie Sanders”—when he’s not donning a sheet and lighting a torch.
I’ve warned Team Blue about this very thing for years…that if they left the New Dealism and FDR 2.0 on the ground, some fascist moron would certainly pick it up.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/11/what-the-left-must-fight-against
but again with PayGo and “reaching across the aisle”.
sigh.
Matt Stoller is tweeting some articulate puzzlement about the fact that Dems and Left don’t like wielding power. Refers to Zinn’s historical powerlessness script. Lots to think about and remedy. Ian Welsh was a harsh wake-up about what it takes.
Perhaps the Dems truly believe power corrupts.
But then, money also corrupts.
Well, of course they do … they’ve joined with the order of the Sith.
Red is the new Blue !
The only question going forward is ..Who will then become our Palpatine ?
The Dems are not “Left”, and are quite happy with the Right wielding power.
but it’s harder and harder to even get close to the right direction, when “our own party”, and all it’s shills and trollfarms(the most ironic portion of Russia!) are working so subtly against us.
to wit: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-populist-morass-lehmann
the Vichy Dems(or Versailles…either works) are the worst enemy of the actual Sensible Left(I still run across a few near stalinist Marxists,and other assorted actually Far Lefty Puritans, but they have become quite rare since the appearance of Jacobin).
As I’ve said, my little county has a new, right wing nutjob city councilwoman, who campaigned on Sewer Socialism and Autarky(city/county owned solar farm)…and my feral anthropolgy efforts have revealed that a majority of working class(both apolitical and republican) would get behind a New new Deal…even a Green New Deal, if sold without the triggerwords.
I’ve acquiesced to the effort to take over the Dmparty from within…even if that leaves me nothing to do way out here.
The electoral machinery is wholly owned by the parties.
But when Tucker Carleson steals Bernies’ Thunder, it may be time to figger out how to go over, around or under the existing parties. I can’t do it alone,lol…we need an evengelical movement for what I habitually call “American Liberalism”. That phrase works out here in conservativeland…but Democratic Socialism would seem an appropriate name for the country at large.
Memorise the Second Bill of Rights, and drop them like flowers at the muffler shop or the greasy spoon. It frelling works.
Better us, than them, for providing the narrative framework of America.
If we just wait long enough .. there won’t BE a Florida to worry over. California will have it’s own inland sea, NYC will be an archipelago of skyscrapers, and D.C. will become an estuary, with only the Washington Obelisk as a lonely Delphic-like spire .. but by then, we’ll have other problems .. and allegiancies, to worry over*
* notes : see J.M.Greer’s historical document, commonly know as ‘Star’s Reach’.
;]
wow, where did you get the idea for the link: “Whitaker Dismissing Notion He’ll Starve Mueller’s Probe of Money?” There’s nothing remotely similar to that on cnn.com and your “link” points to something else, entirely.
oh wait, this just in: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-11/whitaker-is-said-to-indicate-he-won-t-cut-mueller-s-probe-budget
oh good, i didn’t know what i was going to wear to the support sessions demonstration, i hate to waste a sheet and pillowcase and halloween is over.
Hey, I’m on the #resistance distribution for the pre-dialed Giant Street Action Response that the Doofus Dems have been planning and lining up for a year now. The Great Idea and Inspiration would be “Keep Mueller Investigating, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THERE!!!!” And the trigger for this feckless idiocy, to be revised and extended ad nauseam by “our” New Broom House Dems, would be the firing of Mueller.
I’ve got a spare Keebler Elf outfit I could lend you … comes with a smoking spliff, I might add ..
Gooooooaaaaaalllllllll!
Thanks, fixed.
very welcome. my “tone” might have sounded “critical.” wasn’t meant to be. I used to run web sites for some people. Nobody gets everything right in one shot. Ever.
“Le Drian says not aware France has Khashoggi tapes, contradicts Erdogan”
This sounds unlikely. Perhaps Erdogan could apologize for the oversight and say that not only is his Ambassador in Paris handing over a copy to the French Government, but that other copies are also being handed over to French newspapers Le Figaro and Le Monde, French TV stations TF 1 and France 2 & French radio broadcasters RTL & France Inter. That way Le Drian will be sure to hear and read the recordings.
I am surprised the Mossad doesn’t have a copy themselves. They are usually very good.
Ha! You don’t suppose Mossad was advising MBS’s squad, or even in attendance? No, it wouldn’t have been so clumsy.
Canada comes out and admits it has copies of the tapes…
Hilarity! The link for the flamingos redirects you to yesterdays Kochodile in algae picture. No wonder the flamingos are all looking up (in alarm?) There’s an Assistant Political Operative nearby!
This is bizarre. I’m sure I copied and pasted the new link in, or at least performed the action of pasting. It seems that sometimes my touch is too light for the machine to react. It’s the same issue with the Bloomberg/Whitaker link.
This is the closest thing I could find…not cnn but bloomberg…personally I think trump may view russia russia as the gift that keeps giving, if your enemy is digging themselves a hole, give them another shovel…..it’s got to be down there somewhere…
I see it’s been found…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-11/whitaker-is-said-to-indicate-he-won-t-cut-mueller-s-probe-budget
Two guardian pieces worth a glance:
1) a “long read” on neocon darlings Mujahedin-e Khalq with much detail on their current albanian incarnation
Terrorists, cultists – or champions of Iranian democracy? The wild wild story of the MEK
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/09/mek-iran-revolution-regime-trump-rajavi
2) Crown Prince’s wings clipped as Khashoggi death rattles Riyadh
…Central to the resentment, according to sources close to the royal court in Riyadh, is a view that the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan betrayed the Kingdom by disclosing details of the investigation and refusing all overtures from Saudi envoys, including an offer to pay “significant” compensation.
“They say they were betrayed by the Turks,” a regional source said. “That’s where they are in their most private thoughts.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/12/saudi-arabia-crown-prince-mohammed-wings-clipped-as-khashoggi-death-rattles-riyadh
I like the mention of “regional rules” myself…
Betrayed by the Turks…
I wonder if the Turks are stilling smarting over the Damascus scene from the film, Lawrence of Arabia.
I’m guessing there was some difference in defining “significant”
“Training kids to kill at Ukrainian nationalist camp”
I am not surprised that this camp was hidden in the west of the country as that is the heartlands of Ukrainian nationalism particularly the Galician region. You are talking about some really hard-core nationalists as can be seen in that video clip and they have little tolerance for non-Ukrainian values – certainly not Western values. When you see the symbols that they use and the night-time torch lit parades it all starts to get uncomfortably familiar.
Sure they would love to push out the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine but there are other minorities closer to their base that they will deal with eventually. By that I mean the Polish-Ukrainians and the Hungarian-Ukrainians and the real hard-core nationalists do have an expansionary agenda on the back-burner in the form of a Greater Ukraine. The EU is having trouble with Poland and Hungary not bowing to western European values so I do not see how they will be able to absorb the Ukraine. In any case the place is an economic basket-case due to the local oligarchs stripping any assets of value.
Those kids, by the way, aren’t being trained for eventual service in the Ukrainian army. More likely they are being trained to one day take their place in neo-Nazi formations like the Azov Regiment.
Ukraine – people in glass houses.
Yours is a rather harsh assessment from the sidelines. I wonder if our kids lived in constant threat of border wars, we would not want them to have some training to defend themselves in an extremist situation. I think many parents would. The fact that the camp has been labeled as extremist, nationalist, whatever is likely Russian infospin – they do that ya know. Where did the story come from?
How is this “camp” any different from what our own NRA does? They endorse teaching 8-year-old girls to shoot Glocks! We in the US are not in any danger from an invading neighbor with years of attacks on our soil unless you buy into the pathetic Trumpaganda about evil boogiemen invading from the south pretending to be central American refugees.
Not different from NRA and that’s supposed to be a defense? NRA is a loathsome scum organization. How’s that from “harsh”?
Ukrainian child death squads receive government funding, and NRA, horrible as it is, does not. So there’s that.
Its been labeled the way it has because its run by Svoboda, whose record and views speak for themselves.
The only “border wars” threatening the Ukraine happen during its periodic offensives against the Donbass separatists, which violate the Minsk II accord more than anything the Russians are presently doing.
I’ll bet those kids loooove themselves their cookies and chocolate …
War is not only a racket, it’s a glitchy racket:
Veterans haven’t received GI Bill benefits for months due to ongoing IT issues at VA [NBC]
Getting the ZIP code right … CRISPR level stuff … but the good news is that help is on the way … oh, never mind
“More than 45,000 jobs sit vacant at VA…”
Budgetary madness figures bombs don’t need retirement benefits.
My stepdad is 100% disabled(T-5) from Viet Nam.
VA has been real good to him(and by extension, us).
They recently got a new vehicle, with a chair lift…aside from VA Transport vans, he hasn’t been off our place in 10+ years.
The experience was markedly more screwball than it was the last time they got him a vehicle.
VA is uglier…more condescending, even…at least the money people are.
last time stepdad was at Audie Murphy, I did my usual wandering anthropology thing…the mood among the staff was noticeably more dour(they are still enthusiastic about the jobs they do, however)…and the patients I spoke to brought up the change in regime before I could.
This was in June.
> stochastic terrorism
Key phrase from the original post:
“and who get access to national media in which to do it.”
It looks pretty much like what John Robb calls Open Source Warfare. While it is not very quantifiable, it is conditionally very effective. The condition is the substrate into which the message is sent, which initiaties the individual responses. Social instability correlates with the number of unemployed (particularly males) between the ages 20..30, which overlaps with recent labor force non-participation. That’s an active substrate.
Then it’s how many points of contact there are. Subversive plays in cold war Russia were hand-typed and passed, and now messages are passed on USB drives to keep them out of the cloud. But that is still a chain and not a net. Mass media can generate millions of points of contact in an instant. So, cui bono…
The phrase “stochastic terrorism” is designed to undermine free speech claims in resistance to outright censorship (it’s coming). Just as Citizens United (and other cases) determined that what looks like giving money is in fact an act of speech, so “stochastic terrorism” teaches us that what looks like speech is in fact an act of terrorism. Just you wait.
Social instability….males between the ages 20-30.
Is it because this is a male-dominated world?
In the jihadi areas, yes. The NC article used males for better long-term analysis, so that’s an artifact of the study.
Would it be a (slightly) better world if social instability would correlate with unemployed females between the ages 20-30?
Would that be from the society paying more attention to their problems?
Or because they would have become more pro-active in pointing out their problems?
Woolsey fire burned a nuclear waste site claimed “Significantly contaminated.”
https://www.psr-la.org/woolsey-fire-burns-nuclear-meltdown-site-that-state-toxics-agency-failed-to-clean-up/
More than one way to generate radioactive dust.
The HQ2 Scam: How Amazon Used a Bidding War to Scrape Cities’ Data: In These Times.
What’s more valuable: the data the cities coughed up in trying to land HQ2 or the tax breaks Amazon is getting for HQ2?
Echoing perpetualWar from above – Makes one think, “Amazon is a Racket” . . .
Billions of free money in the hand now, and a future with billions of free money handed over by the peasant’s politicians, the question is how many rackets is Amazon running? The answer is, we don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them all.
Another question is how many rackets are run that Amazon profits off of. There is at least one.
From Wolfstreet the other day.
The last question for now, what would the economic moonscape look like were Amazon to “grow” into it’s stawk price?
I am constantly baffled about why the Democratic Party allows incompetent political hacks to run the elections in the big Florida counties. If they want their votes to count in those counties, they need to do better ballot design and set up enough voting infrastructure to be able to execute the volume. If these problems were encountered in Republican strongholds, the RNC and Koch Brothers would have swooped in years ago to restructure things.
I am generally not a conspiracy theory fan. Most “conspiracies” can be easily explained by incompetence which is much more likely to occur than secret well-executed cabal conspiracies.
Oops — wrong thread.
Outsourcing is such a common strategy in software development, one place I worked at was setting up teams in Indian and Romania… because everyone else is doing it, we were told. It certainly wasn’t because qualified people aren’t in the US; but we cost more and would have to live in a tent to compete on salary.
And lets forget about ability and quality or even just competence? If it is cheaper it must be better, because profit?
“If they want votes to count in those counties…”
Quite a presumption there. “Fighting for you,” all rightie then…
Re: Macron/Europe/military hardware
“He is in favor of a better burden-sharing within NATO,” Macron said. “I agree with that. And I think that in order to have a better burden-sharing, all of us do need more Europe. And I think the big mistake — to be very direct with you — what I don’t want to see is European countries increasing the budget in defense in order to buy Americans’ and other arms or materials coming from your industry. I think if we increase our budget, it’s to have to build our autonomy and to become an actual sovereign power.”
And…
“Macron also talked in the interview about the need to strength the euro’s position as a global reference currency — not as a challenge to the U.S. dollar but as an alternative for purposes of stability….”
I’m sure people wait breathlessly, not for Trump’s response, but Germany’s.
Also those words don’t fit into the USA’s vision on globalization (full spectrum USA dominance).
Those kinds of words usually mean regime change…but more so if the country is on the wrong side of the equator.
Third time’s a charm.
The first time, the Dough Boys arrived just in time to preserve their autonomy. The second time, it was the G.I.s.
Third : the #me toowar nukular-safespace giiiiiirly men ??
About the future, it’s hard to make predictions.
I assume the Aetna verdict will wind its way to the Supreme Court, where like the Exxon case, it will be substantially neutered. Haven’t most states nerfed punitive damages pretty significantly?
“American blood was banned from China with reason. In the mid-1980s, just as the Aids crisis peaked and US scientists discovered the virus that caused the disease was borne by blood, American drug companies knowingly sold HIV-tainted blood products in Asia. Thousands of hemophiliacs were infected with HIV. China’s ban on foreign blood kept the pandemic at bay for a while, until the government’s insistence that Aids was a foreign disease helped create perfect conditions for a homegrown epidemic.”
What?
Going by that quote, my guess is the perfect conditions mentioned in that passage is hinting about Chinese secretly dating Westerners, even while the ban on foreign blood was in place, creating a false sense of security.
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/11/richard-ojeda-2020-president/
I’m inclined to like this guy….but this seems like a bone-headed move.
Also, I didn’t realize how much money he got from Krystal Ball’s deep-pocketed donors in Silicon Valley.
This from the Ojeda article:
“Speculation in Washington has begun to focus on the possibility that the ultimate Democratic nominee for president is not someone currently being discussed as a frontrunner. A recent poll found “none of the above” topped the list of presumed candidates.”
Translated: “We-the-Few have got to- got to!- find someone who can stop Sanders”.
Out of curiosity, why do you consider it bone-headed?
I can’t imagine Ojeda will win, but I’m definitely curious to see his campaign. I also think that the more outsiders who challenge the core, professional structure and focus of the Democrats, the more likely we are to eventually get a reformed party that actually focuses on the working class and concrete, universal material benefits.
I want to see Gabbard in this, too, and probably a few others who I’m not yet thinking of. If any of them get any traction, or even just rile up the campaign debate, then it’s going to help lay the groundwork for possible party transformation. The current goal of leadership still seems to be to return to a pre-2016 consensus and pretend that Trump never happened and the Sanders/Clinton wing rift isn’t real; Ojeda, Gabbard, and others like them have the opportunity to put the lie to that hope and force a debate about class the party is going to have to have if it’s going to get anywhere and if we’re to have any hope of improving the economic well-being of the working class in this country.
We need alternate ideas and rabble rousers right now to highlight different directions the Democrats–and the country–can go. Right now, I still put odds on Trump being re-elected in 2020. If that happens, Democrats are going to be thrown into chaos and it opens up the potential for serious reform, whether or not it happens. But if the alternate ideas aren’t out there, it’s going to be a lot harder to pursue and push those reforms. I don’t know if Ojeda is the right candidate or not, but I’m looking at his initial quotes in which he’s talking about how the party has abandoned unions after he helped lead the WV teacher’s strike. That’s a voice, and a debate, the party desperately needs right now.
I realize there’s still Bernie, but we need more than just him. If this primary becomes a debate of a variety of flavors of status quo candidates and the continued agitations of Sanders, I feel like we get locked back in the 2016 box and it just kicks the can farther down the road for real reform. So bring on Ojeda and others, I say, and let’s throw a few bombs into the debate so we can get off script and start thinking about some real alternatives to what the current Democratic leadership, and a good chunk of the professional base, wants the party to be.
The left needs to build a bench at state and local levels. I want ojeda grabbing a seat in congress. He only lost by around 10-ish points. Run again for the same seat in 2020 and he can definitely win.
If he’s running for prez, then he’s NOT getting into congress and he’s not able to help us much. If he’s in congress, he can write/support legislation, train staffers and generally help advance an agenda that helps working class people and gives them a voice.
The left needs influence at all levels of government, not a bunch of candidates getting in each other’s way while running for president.
Tulsi? Well, maybe not.
Thanks. I like the Modi connection least of all.
> The current goal of leadership still seems to be to return to a pre-2016 consensus
“They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, of the Bourbons
Another good article from wsws on the California fires.
California wildfire deadliest and most destructive in state history
Among their comments:
It seems that we are truly an endangered species.
To build sprawl or denser cities?
Are scientists and engineers being stereotyped here? Many of them are making the globe warmer. For example, sprawl engineers designing sprawling structures. Or rocket scientists – rockets do make the globe warmer.
Building and maintaining just the roads would be a major help. Allowing the various fire departments to do those controlled burns and enforcing the already existing rules and laws on brush clearing around homes and other buildings would go a long way to reducing the deaths and destruction. I don’t think it will prevent disasters like the Camp Fire, but the frequency, and size of them would decrease.
Between housing costs forcing people into more isolated fringe housing, the various NIMBYs preventing brush clearances despite the various municipal and state fire departments warnings and sometimes pleading, and the already inadequate roads deteriorating into more inadequacy, even without climate change, the situation is just going to get worse; neoliberal policies are making things worse than needed and until California starts dealing with the increasing corruption and increases funding and enforcement on those roads, houses, fire ameliorating, and breaking the developers and investors power, it is only going to get worse, much, much worse.
I do not see my state doing so anytime soon. Feel good political Kabuki on the Gunz, and lots of noises about Doing Something on housing, yes. Spending money and code enforcement, forget about. That would annoy the donors and the 10% who votes. So bring out the popcorn, and watch the annual California barbecues for the next however many years or decades.
In China, Desperate Patients Smuggle Drugs. Or Make Their Own. NYT. Seems famiiar, somehow….
China wants a new world order. At the U.N., NGOs secretly paid cash to promote Beijing’s vision. Yahoo News. I’m shocked that NGOs would take any secret cash….
———
That new order is likely to be familiar, somehow…
“Meet the new boss same as the old boss.”
“But China is different.”
“And Russia is different too.”
> U.S. NAVY REFUSED TO HELP SINKING MIGRANT BOAT THAT CAPSIZED, KILLING DOZENS, SURVIVORS SAY
Somebody does not know the law of the sea. My guess is the ignorant party here is newsweek and this is fake.
Life as a mariner involves obligations that are unlike almost any other occupation – most notably is the obligation to render assistance at sea. While other hazardous occupations, such as logging, mining, and trucking often include circumstances where a worker comes cross another party in need of assistance, none of these occupations include a “good Samaritan” legal obligation to render assistance. In most cases, a person reacts to save another person as result of compassion or instinct, or both. While mariners will have the same compassion and instinct as other professionals, mariners have a legislated obligation to render assistance.
I know just about nothing the navy except that the Federal Government has increasingly dysfunctional and that includes ignoring any inconvenient laws, rules, and human decency. If the Feds have no real problem with Americans dying why would some dying refugees necessarily make an impression? It’s an awful thought true.
Link for Whitaker and the budget:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-11/whitaker-is-said-to-indicate-he-won-t-cut-mueller-s-probe-budget
With Trump sitting nearby, Macron calls nationalism a betrayal Reuters
—–
Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism, Macron said.
If the latter is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and perhaps the French president shouldn’t desire patriotism either, and it is proper to betray it…in the right direction of course.
And that right direction cannot be globalism either.
Wells Fargo. Again? Lying and defrauding? This time about promising NOT to lie and defraud from now on? Has the Onion hacked the LA Times?
This is a window into the ludicrous impunity of CEOs and the utter impotence of the regulators they hire not to regulate. Get this:
“Regulators are justifiably furious. In April, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency folded in the auto loan case with an investigation of improper fees Wells Fargo charged to mortgage applicants, and penalized the [shareholders] $1 billion for both. It was one of the largest [shareholder] fines in history.”
Furious, I tell ya! But not quite enough to refer it to the Ministry of Just Us Rich Guys. So 1% Sloan skates again from a lengthy prison sentence for grand-scale larceny and fraud. The gall of criminals at the very top of our Cannibalist economy is breathtaking.
Nope, impunity and immunity. And the defense for a civil case. Explicitly stated promises not to lie, cheat, and steal are mere advertising “puffery” a legal term (no kidding) meaning what’s claimed is understood to be an outlandish exaggeration, like flying pigs, and not something average person would actually believe. Again, not the Onion.
Macron is thinking of Chauvinism.
Perhaps we have a translation problem?
“First, we know that Gore won Florida in 2000. If a full, fair statewide recount had taken place, he would have become president.”
Of course, this ignores who was asking for what. It was NOT the Gore camp, that wanted a full statewide recount. They wanted only the recounts in the specific counties where they had filed for them. (which would have left Bush still ahead, it turns out.
A full statewide recount was what the BUSH team claimed to want, and what the supremes ruled there would be no time for. So we got the paradoxical that a recount done Gore’s way would have left Bush the winner, but one done the way Bush’s people claimed to favor would have given Gore a winning margin.
Antidote.
The necks – they remind me of the columns of Alhambra.
Don’t know if the same thought occurred to its architect.
“Europe Takes a Deep Breath as Action Against Italy Approaches”
What happens to the world economy if the EU collapses? Salvini’s threat to block their budgets is definitely a Samson option.
Near th eend, the article acknowledges my point that the face-off is politically beneficial fo rthe present Italian gov’t. Especially if we keep in mind that we think they’re in the right; Italy needs expansionary policies.
Fighting London and Rome at the same time seems like a two-front war for Berlin.
Poland, Hungary, and maybe Slovakia, too. 5 Fronts.
“Democrats Should Remember Al Gore Won Florida in 2000 The Intercept. No, he didn’t. He lost it through a combination of fecklessness and cowardice — as the article shows. And 18 years later, here we are.”
Al Gore threw the family- blogging election, right in front of all of us. And not just after: he also ran a terrible campaign – sound familiar? And then Kerry did it again. Kerry lost the debates, to Bush II, and then he came in second in the electioin, against Bush II. When everybody knew what Bush was.
It’s been a long time, now; people who were born in 2000 voted in this last election. So whatever this is, it’s gone on for an entire generation. It’s normal, now.
Maybe the Democrat’s donors told Gore not to contest the results.
I suspect that’s where the conspiracy really lies.
It goes back farther than that. Gore’s convention speech was a bell-ringer, very populist, and he got a big bump in the polls. If he’d kept on like that, he would have won easily – but he didn’t. I think he got a message from the funders.
IIRC, Gore tacked centrist after the convention, then tacked populist when the race became uncomfortably close. But nobody believed him. Naturally!
On the donors, the horrid Joe Lieberman was the tell. (Lieberman sponsored the bill to create the DHS, and then went on the become Obama’s mentor, which should have told people something.)
Afterthought: we have to consider whether the Dems blocked Bernie precisely BECAUSE he would have beaten Trump.
Usually I can’t read the FT links because of the paywall. Today, a hotel gave me a copy of the paper and I was able to read the Brexit article. I think it’s very significant —
According to the FT, the EU is now proposing to attach two additional conditions to the “backstop”: EU environmental rules, and EU rules regarding state aid.
EU environmental rules might well be a blessing, given Tory and Labour contempt for the natural world. But the state aid restriction is highly significant. It would prevent future parliaments from putting money into industry (something Britain desperately needs) and as such seems like a preemptive strike against a future Corbyn government.
Worse, it might even prevent the renationalization of the railways. As such, expect to see very little attention paid to it by the MSM, and expect May to sign onto the new restrictions with gusto.
For FT links, do the following. Copy the article title and paste it into Google in inverted commas like this-
“article title”
Look for the story out of FT and when you click on it, it will take you to the story.
I’m all for environmentally friendly farming but break with bourgeois liberals on…
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-long-can-we-expect-present-interglacial-period-last
How long can we expect the present Interglacial period to last?
No one knows for sure. In the Devils Hole, Nevada, paleoclimate record, the last four interglacials lasted over ~20,000 years with the warmest portion being a relatively stable period of 10,000 to 15,000 years duration. This is consistent with what is seen in the Vostok ice core from Antarctica and several records of sea level high stands. These data suggest that an equally long duration should be inferred for the current interglacial period as well. Work in progress on Devils Hole data for the period 60,000 to 5,000 years ago indicates that current interglacial temperature conditions may have already persisted for 17,000 years. Other workers have suggested that the current interglacial might last tens of thousands of years.
My concern is that the seesawing, unstable weather is related to this. So, will stand with the farmers who are not convinced that climate change is much other than natural variability.
Worldwide temperatures had been falling for the last few 1000s of years, and a new glacial should have started. As nobody knows what triggers the onset, we also do not know why we ‘missed’ the last one (one hypothesis is that rice agriculture release enough of methane). But with the ongoing climate disruption, we won’t have another one for the next few 10 000s of years.
As an aside, you should be aware that over 90% of ‘global warming’ just disappears into the oceans, and ~7% serves to melt ice on continental glaciers. The remaining 3% serves to heat the atmosphere, and is already heaving havoc almost everywhere.
While ‘natural variability’ may explain day-to-day and year-to-year changes, it does not explain why the stratosphere is cooling, Greenland is melting and other long-term trend changes.
Regarding Florida: there are reports that Bart O’Kavanaugh was part of the Brooks Brothers mob. He was a hatchet man back then.
“South Korea-U.S. military drills violate agreements: North Korea media”
This is not the real news. Both North and South Kore are still ratcheting things back down and they have just removed 20 frontline guard posts leaving one empty one each. More on developments like this at-
https://www.rt.com/news/443710-korea-dmz-border-posts/