Dolphin rescuers take cues from whale stranding to move mother and calf to clear water ABC Australia
Dangerous attraction: Amorous pursuit imperils Cuban crocodile Straits Times
A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change Quanta. Extremely important. The concept of pricing “ecosystem services” is moronic. Half the time we don’t even know what the services even are. Ditto carbon markets.
Psst! Paul Glazer Is the True King of SPACs. (And He Would Prefer You Didn’t Know That.) Institutional Investor
Surge pricing violates antitrust law Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
#COVID19
Guidance for Implementing COVID-19 Prevention Strategies in the Context of Varying Community Transmission Levels and Vaccination Coverage Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC.
Among strategies to prevent COVID-19, CDC recommends all unvaccinated persons wear masks in public indoor settings. Based on emerging evidence on the Delta variant (2), CDC also recommends that fully vaccinated persons wear masks in public indoor settings in areas of substantial or high transmission. Fully vaccinated persons might consider wearing a mask in public indoor settings, regardless of transmission level, if they or someone in their household is immunocompromised or is at increased risk for severe disease, or if someone in their household is unvaccinated (including children aged <12 years who are currently ineligible for vaccination).
This is complex and unverifiable guidance that depends on the honor system (unworkable, since only the individual can know whether they are vaccinated or not). A simple and verifiable rule would be: “Everybody should wear a mask.” The CDC is holding onto this kludge like grim death because (a) they’re the CDC, and they hold onto all their kludges like grim death, (b) they love them their complexity and confuse it with “science,” (c) they believe that treating unmasking as a reward increases vaccine uptake (unproven), and (speculating) (d) they are allowing fear of anti-mask and -vax activists to drive public policy. Oh, and the granularity for wearing or not wearing masks seems to be the county level. I understand the CDC’s data is bad, because they’re the CDC, and county level is probably the best they can do. But since when did a virus respect jurisdictional boundaries? Note again that with the simple rule, you don’t need the data, bad or not, at all [bangs head on desk]. Or maps like this:
— Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo (@KBibbinsDomingo) July 28, 2021
I suppose, if I were a driver in California, I’d want to keep this map handy in my car to know when I crossed the unmarked border between Mask City and Freedom Town. Or possibly in my phone. That way, I could crash into something while consulting it. See Yves’ post for more on the CDC, much more.
The Vaccine Aristocrats Matt Taibbi, TK News. I cannot forbear from quoting the lead:
On This Week With George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday, a bafflegab of Washington poo-bahs including Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Margaret Hoover, and Donna Brazile — Stephanopoulos calls the segment his “Powerhouse Roundtable,” which to my ear sounds like a Denny’s breakfast sampler, but I guess he couldn’t name it Four Hated Windbags — discussed vaccine holdouts.
Fun stuff. Taibbi seems to be hitting his stride.
* * * Trial Data Shows Third Sinovac Shot Boosts Antibodies That Drop in Six Months MarketWatch
* * * Can Gargling Protect School Kids From COVID? MedPage Today. “Of all the studied active pharmaceutical ingredients, perhaps the best data has been generated with dilute [dilute povidone-iodine (PVI)]. This is a broad-spectrum microbiocide with years of data supporting its ability to decontaminate human tissues and kill contagions capable of pandemic spread.” NC was very early on PVI [preens].
Improved ventilation essential to safe use of buildings and public spaces, say leading engineers Royal Academy of Engineering
Health care-associated infection impact with bioaerosol treatment and COVID-19 mitigation measures Journal of Hospital Infection. From the Abstract: “No single technology, tool, or procedure will eliminate health care-associated infections but the addition of a ubiquitous facility-wide engineering solution at limited expense and with no alteration in patient, visitor, or staff traffic or work flow patterns reduced infections by 45%. A similar impact was documented with the addition of comprehensive, restrictive, and labour and material intensive COVID-19 mitigation measures. We believe this is the first direct comparison between traditional infection control, an engineering solution, and COVID-19 mitigation measures.”
China?
All foam, no beer? Why China’s carbon trading scheme critics have it all wrong South China Morning Post
Beijing’s threat to VIEs triggers Wall Street angst over China stocks FT
#28: China in 1983, a miracle waiting to happen? Adam Tooze, Chartbook
Asia’s garment workers say virus used as cover to smash unions Globe_
Myanmar
Myanmar Economy Expected to Contract by 18 Percent in FY2021: Report The World Export. Meanwhile:
Bullets, then the deadly virus and now flood. What comes next?
This viral photo from Facebook is from Mon State. An uncle inhaling Oxygen sits on a table to get away from the flood water in his house. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar pic.twitter.com/hSEWAZlGZN
— Aung Naing Soe (@AungNaingSoeAns) July 25, 2021
Kachin Independence Army says received Covid jabs from China Frontier Myanmar. Hmm.
Two Killed as Myanmar Junta Forces Open Fire on Mandalay Protest Column The Irrawaddy
Pentagon chief: Myanmar military acts ‘flatly unacceptable’ Associated Press
The pandemic didn’t kill Singapore’s UNESCO-listed food stalls. Delivery apps might Rest of World
The Koreas
SNU Cleaning Worker Died at Work from Exhaustion Amid Bullying Allegations The Blue Roof
Syraqistan
Middle Eastern interventionism galore: Neither US nor Chinese policies alleviate The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
They All Scream Over Ben & Jerry’s Not Selling Ice Cream on the West Bank FAIR
Not Afghanistan: Why the US and Iraq won’t leave one another Deutsche Welle
UK/EU
The ‘Boris effect’ is a symptom of Britain’s decaying political system Guardian. In the Guardian, ironically enough.
The Media Hijinks of France’s Most Famous Unknown Artist MIT Press Reader (nvl).
German lawyers wrangle over pensioner’s WW2 tank in basement BBC
The Caribbean
Opinion: Haiti needs elections — and outside forces to make them safe WaPo
Exclusive: Leaked documents reveal death threats and roadblocks in Haiti assassination investigation CNN
Asking the right questions in Haiti Agence France Presse
New Cold War
Moscow plans expansion of trans-Arctic shipping Splash 24/7
Swiss prosecutors end Magnitsky ‘dirty money’ probe without bringing charges FT
New York’s Dreamy, Disorienting Reopening (photo essay) The New Yorker. These photos are lovely. I’m a big fan of long exposures that blur human figures in motion. (The essay is filed under “Dept. of Returns,” “a new series on life after the vaccine,” which seems designed to mesh with “Hot Vax Summer,” now inoperative. Perhaps an example of premature vaxulation?
Biden Administration
Delta to Biden: The easy part is over Politico. The lead: “So much for our hot vax summer. America’s official return to pre-Covid life lasted all of three weeks.” Gonna be a lot of frustrated people out there.
Rapid spread of Delta in US complicates Fed’s ‘taper timeline’ FT
Biden weighing tailored vaccine mandates Axios. “Biden’s advisers are eager to avoid looking too heavy-handed with private companies.” The administration is scared of anti-mask and anti-vax activists, too. Or else they agree with them.
* * * Is DOJ Supporting the Purdue Pharma Plan? Or Not? Credit Slips
Don’t Leave Social Media Regulation to the Platforms—Bring in the FCC Marshall Auerback, American Compass
Police State Watch
Leaker of drone secrets gets 45 months in prison Politico
Steven Donziger, Who Sued Chevron over Amazon Oil Spills, Blasts Contempt of Court Conviction Democracy Now (JB).
Sports Desk
What Happened to Simone Biles? Why Did The Gymnast Pull Out of The Olympics? Newsweek. “Laurie Hernandez, American artistic gymnast and former teammate of Simone Biles on the 2016 U.S. women’s gymnastics team, believes Biles became ‘lost in the air during the performance.” As per video:
Imperial Collapse Watch
Charles De Gaulle: America’s Best Ally The American Conservative. “At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sent former U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson to inform de Gaulle of what was unfolding. As Acheson was laying out the photographic evidence of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, de Gaulle interrupted him and said, ‘a great nation like yours would not act if there were any doubt about the evidence.‘ Acheson left Paris with de Gaulle’s unconditional support.” Try that today, lol.
Guillotine Watch
Rich People of The Hamptons Have a New Headache: Even Richer People Vanity Fair
Class Warfare
Striking Alabama coal miners taking protest back to New York AL.com
Ban Private Beaches Jacobin
The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom Grassroots Economic Organizing. On Ostrum, see NC here, here, and here.
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
What makes a 17 year old #AustralianCattleDog happy on a warm day? Frozen chicken broth. Such a big hit that Chloe now has six tubs waiting for her in the freezer. pic.twitter.com/96IRovyS8f
— Dr. Richard Corsi (@CorsIAQ) July 27, 2021
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
100 comments
Comments are closed.
>Leaker of drone secrets gets 45 months in prison Politico
The hefty sentence the Biden Justice Department sought for Hale signals that…prosecutors will continue to throw the book at the men and women who leak information to the media…
Hale, who choked up at times as he delivered a 17-minute statement to the court, expressed no remorse about his disclosures but deep regret about having played a part in lethal U.S.-run drone operations in Afghanistan.
“What I’m really here for is for having stolen something that was never mine to take: precious human life,” Hale said.
What more evidence is needed than Assange remaining in prison and Daniel Hale receiving a long sentence for “leaking” information to journalist that the Biden/Obama regime will continue to protect itself from information that would redound negatively on the narrative it tries to control.
Even the word “leaking” sets up categories that bend the mind in the direction of accepting that certain information pertaining to the activities of our “democratic” gov’t are legally beyond reproach-such as killing innocent civilians with drones. What those in power want is journalist to function as a sluice. And, that is what journalism has become, especially when it comes to reporting the more nefarious activities of the empire. Perhaps the “wastewater control industry” referred to below, is what journalism has become.
[from wiki]
A sluice (/slus/ SLOOS) is a water channel controlled at its head by a gate. Sluice is a Dutch word that means channel. A sluice gate is a gate installed in the channel to manage the flow.[1] A mill race, leet, flume, penstock or lade is a sluice channeling water toward a water mill. The terms sluice, sluice gate, knife gate, and slide gate are used interchangeably in the water and wastewater control industry.
Well, I’m not familiar with the details of the US system, but every country I know of has laws that make it a crime to reveal controlled government information without approval. I doubt if the US is different. That is to say, the person concerned broke the law, and was punished for it. You can argue, and no doubt many would, that his motivation for doing so was good, and in some countries there’s also a public interest defence in certain circumstances. But there’s no argument that he committed a crime.
Even in these neoliberal days, I think few people would want such laws repealed in favour of a rule that anyone in government could leak any information to anyone about anything, which is the only alternative to having laws protecting government information.
False dichotomy offered between oppressive total information suppression law and no law at all.
What is needed is vastly smaller zone of information suppression law and vastly smaller range of “power of classification” and amount of “classified material”.
How is the droning conducted different then May Lai massacre of civilians? As then, now, those that reveal such crimes are the criminals, while those that order and or conduct these actions get the medals…
Not to nitpick, but in the interest of accuracy, Sluice gate, slide gate and knife gate are different open and closed channel control structures with different applications. Not exactly interchangable but who am I to argue with wiki.
From an early age, I’ve often thought the killer whale was just a cool looking creature. Naturally, I’d have a different view of the whale thought I was a meal.
This may have been posted here but it’s worth watching again:
Otter climbs on boat to escape orca
https://youtu.be/jeyXRF_1FOE
Dr. Aaron Carroll, chief health officer, Indiana University, in this morning’s NY Times:
“The C.D.C.’s announcement will lead many to believe that the pandemic is getting worse. But if you and most of the people in your area are vaccinated, things are substantially better than they used to be. Hospitals are relatively clear of Covid-19. Few deaths are occurring. People may still be worried, and some may be masking, but much of their panic is that the stuffy nose they woke up with may be Covid-19.
Sometimes it is. As has always been the case, breakthrough infections of Covid-19 remain possible. Such reports have become more frequent. Because the vaccines are not 100 percent effective, some vaccinated people will get infected, some will get sick, and in rare cases, some may even be hospitalized. The success of the vaccines has long been predicated on preventing severe illness, which they do, rather than on preventing any infection.
If the vast majority of vaccinated people who get Covid-19 recover with no real issues, how much should we worry?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/covid-vaccine-delta-variant.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
It is of course possible for the pandemic to be getting worse (as all data clearly demonstrates), and for the situation to (presently) be better than it once was.
Those ringing alarm bells are doing so by virtue of looking beyond the tips of their own noses.
If it’s mutating, it’s a problem. We don’t need a second flu.
One more forgotten link:
https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/cdc-covid-19-may-be-a-few-mutations-away-from-evading-vaccines/
I’m not so sure that the vast majority of vaccinated people who get Covid-19 recover with no real issues. I’ve seen all sorts of alarming stuff about a very large proportion of people suffering mild and even asymptomatic cases who end up with long Covid in the form of major impairments affecting one or more vital organs, including the brain, for months that — for all we know — may extend into years.
I’m vaccinated as is my family but we’re now taking every precaution that we took at the height of the pandemic chiefly because we don’t wish to take a 1-in-5 or 1-in-2 chance that we’ll end up substantially disabled, possibly for the rest of our lives.
Rare?
Illinois has reported 159 Covid deaths of jabbed people, which is about 8% of their total Covid deaths since early April. And Israel reports effectiveness only 16% among those jabbed six months earlier.
I am pretending I’m not jabbed.
I’d say quite a bit, based on the study “Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens”. From the abstract:
” The success of the vaccines has long been predicated on preventing severe illness,”
it is too bad the RCTs were not set up to study that!
Why Are Asymptomatic COVID-19 Patients Experiencing Long-Haul Symptoms?
https://www.henryford.com/blog/2021/05/asymptomatic-long-haulers
This is starting to arrive at medical journals, I’m at a different computer so I don’t have it at my fingertips. As this ignored, the result will be 100,000s of people on disability, stressing Medicare/Medicaid, pulling people out of the job market.
Forgot to link
Having been involved in two different efforts to quantify and possibly price carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, it’s safe to say that it’ll be based on secondary efforts and impacts. The proxy for tracking carbon in the soil is %Organic Matter (OM) on a standard soil test assay. The difference between long and short duration soil carbon seemed non-sensical, doesn’t seem to be a good way to measure either. It is true that no-till will slow down residue conversion compared to traditional tillage. There is a horizon, maybe at 7 or 8% OM that it is useful to apply tillage, but at less than that most tillage will drive down OM and release carbon. Crop residues provide necessary nutrient recycling with nitrogen eating bacteria blooming after tillage operations. Less tilling means residue takes longer to decompose, thereby increasing OM and carbon in the soil. Permanent crops can stabilize nutrients, biological activity, and OM. Matching those permanent crops to climate, soil type, and crop markets will change as the planet warms. Last weeks link to an article about methylation in plants just hints at the possibilities in plant breeding https://newatlas.com/science/rna-modification-potato-rice-yields-boost/ Don’t think for a second this kind advance or manipulation won’t take place.
Retiring productive cropland through a program like the Conservation Reserve Program is on track to be rejuvenated, it’s low hanging fruit https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2021/04/21/usda-expands-and-renews-conservation-reserve-program-effort-boost and will be declared to be carbon friendly but quantifying how much and for how long will be studied. The use of cover crops will be generally a good idea for a number of reasons, maybe getting the corn and soybean production areas into more of a rotation. Tracking soil OM will show short term weather patterns over time, drought years will burn up carbon, wet years will build it back up. OM is a moving target, so some algorithm to norm sans drought or heat or crop stress will be applied with some results showing significant differences from input values. Resulting information will be useful from an agronomic standpoint, and maybe a policy view, but a marketplace hardly. Basically it’d be trading weather.
Solvita has developed a CO2 respiration burst test https://solvita.com/solvita-co2-accuracy/ developed out of work done at Woods End.
Do they really no know about biochar, or is it that it’s too hard to implement? In reading the article and with a basic understanding of chemistry from high school, it seems biochar still works.
That whole thing smells like Big Ag and the pesticide companies pushing more monocropping and GMO bullshit. Who is funding the Salk Institute?
The carbon cycle is a cycle. Like layers of flooring built up on each other, no till packs carbon down into the soil. Carbon is sequestered by deep plant roots for a long time. Kiss the Soil on Netflix streaming is a fine introduction to this in action.
Monocropping chemical agriculture is more like a layer of paint on a barn that is stripped of and redone every year.
Re: L’affaire Magnitsky
“Nevertheless, in view of the fact that a link has been established between some of the assets under seizure in Switzerland and the predicate offence committed in Russia, the [federal prosecutor] has ordered the forfeiture of assets and recognised a compensatory claim in favour of the [Swiss government]. The total sum involved is equivalent to more than SFr4m ($4.3m).” Because, in the free world, courts don’t need evidence.
re: long exposure images
Lambert, you might like this film:
https://www.google.com/search?q=china+not+china+shirt+film&client=safari&channel=iphone_bm&source=hp&ei=oEYBYZGyDcfM_Ab7iZ7IDA&oq=china+not+china+shirt+film&gs_lcp=ChFtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1ocBADMgcIIRAKEKsCOgIIKToICAAQ6gIQjwE6AggAOg4ILhCxAxCDARDHARDRAzoICAAQsQMQgwE6CwguELEDEMcBEKMCOg4ILhCxAxCDARDHARCjAjoLCC4QsQMQxwEQ0QM6CAguELEDEIMBOgUIABDJAzoFCAAQkgM6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxDJAzoLCC4QsQMQgwEQkwI6AgguOgUILhCxAzoICC4QsQMQkwI6CwguEMcBEK8BEJMCOggILhDHARCvAToGCAAQFhAeOgUIIRCrAjoFCAAQhgM6BQghEKABOggIABAIEA0QHjoFCAAQzQI6CAghEBYQHRAeOgcIIRAKEKABSgUIPhIBMUoFCD8SATFKBQg-EgExSgUIPxIBMUoFCBMSATJQ7U5YrLEBYMy9AWgFcAB4AIABkAOIAe0WkgEKMjIuMS4wLjIuMZgBAKABAbABFA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-hp&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMwe8RozC3w8sc9YSmtSWtOXmNU4WJ1TMovLRGS5mJzzSvJLKkUEpTi5-LVT9c3NEw3SbbIMigq51nEKpWckZmXqJCXX6IAYRVnZBaVKKRl5uQCAH9KvwpVAAAA&ictx=1&ved=2ahUKEwiox57L24XyAhVBQ80KHZ-fAvUQ9YYDKAR6BAgCEAw
It’s a great short… experimental cinema at it’s best.
The Donziger case is such an obviously corrupt abuse of power that I’m surprised it hasn’t recieved more publicity.
Where are the Bar associations?
I’d think that this precedent would make any thinking lawyer very uneasy indeed, are the associations cowed or merely short sighted and stupid?
Media blackout. The only place I’ve seen anything about Donziger’s case is on NC.
Re: “are the [bar] associations cowed or merely short sighted and stupid?”
Yes.
In my considered opinion and in my experience the state bar associations exist for one purpose and that is to protect the attorneys from the public.
It’s covered in the Guardian as well.
He’s been on Chapo
“Breaking Points” has a bit about Donziger’s verdict:
https://youtu.be/jtAXp4oLj2M
The bar associations were permanently emasculated when Governors and the U.S. Senate discovered they could appoint candidates evaluated as ‘unqualified’ or ‘marginally qualified’ to the bench without consequence/blowback. They then self-immolated as right wing, antiunion Pacific Legal Foundation cranks were able to end mandatory membership / dues paying.
This happened about thirty years ago.
Remember Gary Webb and what happened to him? Done in by his own colleagues for speaking a truth they dared not engage with.
This case against Donziger is a huge blow to legal precedent and freedom of speech, and none of the people in the industry want to be the next victim…
“New York’s Dreamy, Disorienting Reopening (photo essay)” The New Yorker.
‘These photos are lovely. I’m a big fan of long exposures that blur human figures in motion.’
It is an interesting collection of photos but consider this (and remembering that I can be quite twisted) – imagine that this is actually a collection of photos of New York while it was still under severe lockdown. And the reason for the blurred human images is because what we are looking at is actually all the ghosts of those New Yorkers who never made it through the first waves of the pandemic. With this is mind, look at that photo essay again.
I am a fan of blurred exposures like that precisely because they show spirits or ghosts.
“The Department of Justice appears to be mumbling out of both sides of its mouth in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy. On July 19, DOJ filed a “statement” regarding the release of the Sacklers. Not an “objection,” but a statement that sure reads a lot like an objection. Then today we learn that DOJ did not bother to vote its multi-billion dollar claim. The plan deems a vote not cast to be an acceptance. ” Credit Slips
“n 2019, an average of 38 people died each day from overdoses involving prescription opioids, totaling more than 14,000 deaths.” CDC
So the bodies are still stacking up and our government is still playing patty cake.
Hmm is it possible that the opioid crisis is state policy ?
The trick is to make the agents of the state explicitly deny in public that using opiates to raise the death rate is state policy.
Make them deny it in public at a press conference.
I have to agree with you, The Rev Kev, that the blurred New Yorkers in the photos are the ghosts of Covid victims is an a startling jump into the dark. Something like the ghost of christmas past?
Re: “Is DOJ Supporting the Purdue Pharma Plan? Or Not?”
The Biden DOJ coming down hard, both in civil and criminal courts on the Sacklers, will be in all likelihood one of those shoulda, coulda moments that Biden will let slip away….
Draculamala Harris was made Vice President nominee as a thinly veiled promise to Wall Street that Sackler, and all the Sacklers in every field of business, will be immunised and impunified.
So, no, Biden will not let it slip away. Biden will catch and release it on purpose, with the same malice of forethought that the Cheney/bush Administration showed in deliberately on purpose arranging for Bin Laden’s “escape” from Tora Bora.
On rich people and richer people in the Hamptons:
A resident complained about the cost of evenings out:
“She said one night she spent $60 on a one-mile Uber trip home.”
I guess she was too drunk to walk.
Who the hell hails a cab to go ONE mile? And then is shameless enough to admit it? Well, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on her. Perhaps she has a (physical) disability…
I guess that the Hamptons are being “gentrified” by the billionaires and they want all those riff-raff millionaires out. That would be unwise that. Those billionaires will still need people to scrub their toilets and to serve them their burgers after all.
Awaiting news stories about hostile takeovers of neighboring houses. Someone has to be raising funds for such, with subscribers in the Hamptons and the usual places. Maybe there are air rights or some condo or Air Billions and Billions at stake?
And launder their money and scrub their image and so forth, as well.
If the OPOOP and the OPOOPOOP turn the merely 1 per centers into their enemies, the merely 1 per centers can make the OPOOPs and OPOOPOOPs really suffer.
> Who the hell hails a cab to go ONE mile?
To be fair, I don’t know what the streetlight situation is in the Hamptons. Walking home on narrow unlit roads might not have seemed like a good idea;
With Teslas on the roads…
That and lack of sidewalks. Posh residential areas sometimes go out of their way to be pedestrian unfriendly, the scaled-up cousin of hostile architecture. Still not defensible however.
Also to be fair, she might have been wearing ‘cab shoes’.
I used to take a cab to go 6 or 8 blocks if I thought that by walking I might be late for last call at my local watering hole. But that was back in the olden times when Uber was just a twinkle in Old Nick’s eye. I’d hand the driver $5 cash to NOT turn on the meter so if he or she got a call from dispatch they wouldn’t miss out on a better fare. I got my last gin and tonic and they got $5 for doing about 3 minutes of work – everybody was a winner!
$60 on the other hand is almost literally highway robbery.
This is the kind of story I come to Naked Capitalism to read. Awesome.
Looks like dnc person running against Nina Turner will fit in with the rest of the criminals of the demodogs.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/27/nina-turner-primary-opponent-shontel-brown-facing-felony-ethics-probe
With the neoliberal rot so entrenched in Team Blue , my gut is the “centrists” will have a candidate without this kind of background once in a blue moon, and they will move to canonize those candidates.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I knew Shontel Brown was brainless, and a product of NE Ohio’s completely corrupt Democrat politics. Now it appears some others will know it, too.
But I’ll bet the mainstream local “media,” such as it is, will be silent on this.
One former Brown more local endorser switched the other day and encouraged others to do the same. My guess is this is the kind of thing that will blunt a political career especially with “centrsits” not attracting young people or having an untapped population and the elected heard this. It’s probably bad.
Yep just got this email
Hi, Steven. I’m Councilman Walter Stewart, representing Ward 4 in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. I’m writing today to voice my support for Nina Turner, and to encourage you to make a contribution to her campaign.
I’ll explain more about how and why I came to support Nina in a minute, but if you’re ready to chip in now, please use this link:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/snt-em-july
Here’s why I’m with Nina:
I started out supporting another candidate in this race. But after seeing and hearing some of the divisive rhetoric and misinformation being thrown around, I reconsidered.
For the last four years, this country has been very divided. What we need now is someone who will stick to the issues, and always fight for the working people of this community.
That person is Nina Turner.
Nina is from the grassroots, she’s down to earth, and she cares about people. Her record, and her history here in Ohio have proven that.
Nina Turner is not trying to please big business and people who come into town wearing their titles and then leave town.
She’s with the people. You can see her. She’s out there all the time. And even when she’s not campaigning, she’s out there talking to the people, and listening to the people.
Nina has the vision, the know-how, the experience, the sincerity, and the heart to carry us forward.
I don’t see anyone else out there like her, and it’s why I’m supporting her campaign. I hope you will too.
If you can afford it, please make a contribution to Nina’s campaign today. If elected to Congress, Nina will always put the needs of working people over corporations and big business, but she needs our help to get there.
Thank you,
Walter Stewart
Councilman, Ward 4
Warrensville Heights, OH
Hopefully Turner and the Sanderists will decide that while getting Turner elected would be nice, it should be Priority Number Two.
Priority Number One should be the utter destruction of Brown and her extermination from public life. If that can be achieved, it will inspire slow patient efforts to exterminate every Brown-backer from public life in widening circles of political extermination and declintamination.
Well, I was wrong about the local media. The Plain Dealer’s editorial cartoonist Jeff Darcy weighed in, and not just with a cartoon:
https://www.cleveland.com/darcy/2021/07/turner-brown-ads-get-nasty-darcy-cartoon.html
When did Newsweek get sassy? Here’s their headline which made me laugh: “Hillary Clinton-endorsed Candidate Shontel Brown Faces Potential Ethics Probe”
https://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-endorsed-candidate-shontel-brown-faces-potential-ethics-probe-1613460
Love that they make it very clear who supports this corrupt candidate.
The machine must have enough early votes for Brown and know it.
>Walmart offers 100 per cent free college tuition and books for ALL of its 1.5m employees in bid to lure workers in a tight job market
This is a pretty big deal if there isn’t some catch involved especially since what one earns at a Wallmart is probably less than the cost of tuition at some public colleges.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9831529/Walmart-pay-cost-college-tuition-including-books-1-5-million-employees.html
>Walmart uses higher education costs to hold employees hostage
My money is on a catch without knowing the details, but just think what other incentives the proles could extract from the plutocrats with a national strike.
Well, it’s not really a college education, it’s Special High Intensity Training . . .
“The retail giant said Tuesday that it will invest nearly $1 billion over the next five years in career training and development programs for workers who want to pursue majors in high-demand fields, such as business administration, supply chain and cybersecurity.”
. . . offered by ten partner colleges. When I had an office job way back in the ’80s we used to say that you had to take a lot of Special High Intensity Training to get ahead in the company.
artemis
Reminds me of high school. Next to our school in Hamilton ON was the Hamilton Institute of Technology. Of course, like all schools they had jackets with the initials H I T across the back. We high school reprobates, when we did talk about further education (seldom, we were reprobates), always referred to that school as South Hamilton Institute of Technology, or S H I T.
“Beijing’s threat to VIEs triggers Wall Street angst over China stocks”
All those equity funds, tax havens and investors will have to go get old Joe to defend their right to make a profit in China against the forces of “good government”. But they forgot that when it is the other kid’s bat & ball, he gets to make the rules. After all, what China is doing is what governments are supposed to do in a capitalist economy – take the punch bowl away before things get out of control. And I am sure that they have been paying attention to what people like Michael Hudson have been telling them. People make the mistake that the CCP stands for the Chinese Communist Party but what it actually stands for is the Chinese Capitalist Party.
Capitalommunist? Communapitalist?
Re: delta variant & schools
I’m a father of three school aged kids. I lost my job in March 2020 because I had to stay home when the schools closed. It’s been almost 18 months of having my three kids home, most of the time I’ve been solo with them. The zoom thing didn’t work for our kids so I home schooled them over the last school year. It has been a hell of an 18 months. It has been very rewarding, with all the time we’ve had together as a family, but dang if I wasn’t looking forward to them returning to school this August. It is a lot of work watching three kids, day in, day out.
With the unchecked surge in the delta variant here in Sonoma county, we are now wondering if it is safe to send them back into the class room. The prospect of them staying home for another indefinite period is very daunting as a parent. Of course we will do whatever is necessary to keep our family and community safe. But geez, I’d like to have a little time to do something other than round the clock child care and schooling.
I think the entire country is quietly desperate for the schools to reopen this fall, but it seems the corona virus is going to make that a very risky proposition. How the hell are working families supposed to juggle this, yet again, for another year, with minimal support from American society.
It’s a looming crisis that everyone is ignoring.
Easy and pointlessly snide comebacks do not change the fact that you are correct re: crisis point. The comments and attitudes from parents I’ve heard since they concluded entirety or nearly so of the 2020-21 school year remotely are VERY different in tone than in the initial emergency disruption or the beginning of the 20/21 school year. Less committed, angrier, and/or quietly noncooperative, i.e., “[heck with] it, riding with me to and at work is educational too”; “They’re home, but we mostly don’t do the work”; and similar.
Ignoring or rational-amizing the plague away. My circle of friends is now taking it pretty seriously with a few exceptions in part due to my proselytizing. The train tells a different tale of the general public, although I have noticed an uptick in cars with all mask-wearing passenger in the last few days.
I can say this, if I hear one more person tell me that “You can’t make people do what they don’t want to do.” I’m going to noticeably sigh in frustration. First of all you can, by providing arguments based on the best information available to you. But the phrase indicates an attitude more than any brute fact of life, it’s a “freedom” thing. The palsied vision of personal freedom that fails to see real freedom lies in communication and cooperation.
That ultimately ideological notion derails the rational framework needed to take critically take in that information and more to the point to even consider the process. Especially in our age of rapidly depleting freedom on multiple fronts, clinging to one’s cherished beliefs and frameworks is a kind of freedom in itself.
Speaking of the end of things, I’m giving up my dog walking gig in Manhattan because a. trains and b. my client is going back to work from home due to fears of Delta. This will be a serious blow to my income. I’d bet I’m not alone in that.
Everyone has to do what they must to feel safe of course, but just about all the private schools in our area, including my son’s, were in-person for just about all of last year. My son’s school had a handful of covid cases but did way better than I thought they would.
“Tailored vaccine mandates”.
What this means on practice is that they’re back to “nudge” theory.
I don:t think it’s the anti-vaccine or anti-mask advocates that they’re fearful of confronting. Heck, their own temporary stint at unmasking probably did as much to discourage masking as activists have done.
They don:t want to be “imposing” on the lords and ladies of private industry.
This has been an Achilles heel of all measures throughout the pandemic.
Only customer-facing retail and hospitality really had firm requirements imposed during the less than meets the eye lockdowns.
Mfg and warehousing were essential and exempt from closure from the beginning, regardless of whether there was anything essential about the product. Following guidance within the factories and warehouses was largely on the honor system.
Musk’s eventual reopening of the CA car plant in open defiance of the authorities was noisy and public, but many such situations were resolved by ignoring the situations.
Lack of mandated paid time off either to get vaccinated or to recuperate from side effects of vaccination has probably been as big a drag on the vaccination effort as any other single thing.
The mask mandate was similar. I saw much more masking here in establishments open to the public than when I visited private mfg firms either for interviews or to visit friends.
I wonder if they will actually say that if you take government money or services, that you will be required to have a vaccine first. Not just the unemployed but Veteran’s Affairs, rental assistance, food stamps, aged care and whatever else they can think of. So this would be the 20% or so of the population that receives government benefits each month. It will be seen as just and fair by the PMC and liberals will cheer this happening because the unvaccinated are holding the country hostage and stopping the economy go back to the way that it was before, dontchaknow.
The problem here is that those are the same people they want to die.
Another problem, is that some of “those people” are the ones who declare they are “anti- big government”, “conservative “( may declare they are Republican or Libertarian), support the military, and qualify ( under table income, so “poor”) for any government monies, benefits (Medicaid), rental assistant, food stamps( SNAP) that one can imagine. Some of these people are among the anti-vaccine ( it’s a government plot, or a hoax, or they want us to invade our precious bodies with poison, etc.) Now, my question is: What will “those people” do, if all of their government”assistance” requires vaccination? Never underestimate how ironic (hypocritical) people can be in their own special and entitled status .
Beautiful photo of the orca. Thank you. Hopefully, it was taken with a telephoto lens beyond 300 yards distant from the whale and the photographer was not in the voluntary no-go zone on the west side of San Juan Island where these endangered resident whales gather and feed.
Right on! Thank you for beautifully speaking up.
So about 35 years ago, I was on a forty foot sailboat going up the Straits headed to the Pacific Ocean for Swiftsure, a local sailboat race. Its raining, calm, quiet, light winds, and about eight of us are hiking out with our feet hanging over the side.
All of a sudden there is a pod of whales around us, and a very large male comes up right next to the boat, rolls a bit and takes a good look at all of us. Nobody says a word, but we all quietly pull our feet back up on deck.
They are simply magnificent.
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2021/07/28/special-election-upset-jake-ellzey-defeats-susan-wright-in-tx-06-race-n405063
The run-off race between Wright and Ellzey to fill the seat left vacant by Ron Wright’s death in February was seen as a test of Trump’s endorsement power. This isn’t just Susan Wright’s defeat, it’s also Trump’s defeat. Besides a formal endorsement, Trump did a robocall for Wright and his Make America Great Again Action PAC contributed a last-minute $100,000 campaign ad buy for her campaign. He was also featured in a virtual get-out-the-vote event Sunday. Wright was supported by the Club for Growth who pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign spending in support of her. Wright had the endorsement of Senator Ted Cruz.
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Portends
We have been using frozen low salt beef and chicken broth cubes as treats for years with our dogs. They make great low cal treats and work especially well as a treat our diabetic dog loves.
“Not Afghanistan: Why the US and Iraq won’t leave one another”
Iraq would get rid of the US but all Iraqi oil revenues are deposited in a US bank as a sort of hostage. And it is not like the US is a reliable military partner. Already Iraq is having to replace their US tanks & aircraft with Russian tanks & aircraft due to the unreliability of the US in servicing this gear. And when the US announces that they have bombed Iran-backed militias what that actually means is that they have bombed Iraqi militias that are patrolling the border to stop ISIS forces. It has been said by a high US official that the only worse thing of being an enemy to the US is being an ally of the US and I believe that this is the case here. And it would hardly become a “a pariah state” if the US left as they still have oil that the world wants. As this article state, the Iraqi air force is comparatively weak but that is only because they have been kept deliberately weak for the past 20 years. Originally, the US did not want Iraq to have an army, navy or air force at all but only a 30,000 border patrol. Anyway, I came across a short video last year that explains the US-Iraqi relationship-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqi3TpE0FGI (2:20 mins) – Not Safe For Work
RE: the Paul Glazer article
Paging Harry Markopolos…
Do you have any evidence that that is what’s happening here?
Glazer plays the game, understanding the rules (mathematics) of the casino, and he plays it very well.
RE: Ban Private Beaches
Some of these private beaches are really ridiculous. We visit a relative in Cape Cod who has a home a few hundred yards from the ocean. You can walk up the road a bit and down a stairway over the dunes to get to the public beach – it’s about 50 ft on either side of the stairway. The rest of the beach, which stretches for miles in either direction, is private, and reserved for those with waterfront homes. Those miles of beach are generally just about completely empty. First time I visited I made a point of walking through the “private” part, hoping to maybe tick someone off and then give them a piece of my mind abut hogging the beach for themselves. Seems nobody in those luxury homes was around to complain so my only satisfaction has come from some of those residences built to close to the shore being washed into the ocean in the ensuing years. You take what you can get…
Here in Hawaii all beaches are public and adjacent landowners have to make arrangements to allow access. There are occasional problems with landowners blocking access and (unfortunately) beachgoers not always being the politest of visitors, but in general things work out.
I grew up in an area that has private beaches. Most owners didn’t mind kids but I did get chased off a time or two.
Re. : Health care-associated infection impact with bioaerosol treatment and COVID-19 mitigation measures Journal of Hospital Infection.
This reads more of a sales pitch for SecureAire LLC than anything else. First the technology described, “Active Particle Control” sounds an awfully lot like a bog-standard ionization unit with “semiconductor” blah blah “technologies”.
The study does not indicate what type of filtration was replaced, or it’s condition prior to replacement, making the before and after comparisons suspect. SecureAire’s product might just be a good product but I saw nothing that separates it from other commercial HVAC ionization units.
Sad news: Apparently Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report has passed away.
https://twitter.com/freedomrideblog/status/1420392314053222401?s=21
Wasn’t a regular reader but found his writing insightful and/or thought provoking most the times I read it.
That is sad. Bruce Dixon who I believe was the other co-founder died not that long ago too. Hopefully Margaret Kimberly will keep carrying the torch at BAR – she is quite the flame thrower herself.
Glen Ford was the man.
I will always remember his deep voice and intelligent and insightful commentary on the happenings of the day.
The working class, and especially African Americans, have lost a noble and true fighter for the cause.
His writings will carry his legacy forward into the future.
I always viewed him along the lines of Cornel West only way more badass and ready to call anyone out.
On Vaccine Aristocrats; If the uneducated rabble is prohibited from entering public facilities like courthouses and libraries, if they cannot fly, if they don’t get V.A. and Social Security benefits,then by god, they are exempt from paying income taxes to support the institutions they fund and cannot get access to as well as the financial lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Being of a different apartheid class, they should go to an all cash economy and only support each other’s small businesses.
Agree, time for an alternative economy
Today’s two-fer: soil carbon + feral pigs!
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/07/28/news/wild-pigs-co2-emissions-soil
Amazing shot of the Orca. Thank you for sharing.
About the shifting soil science/knowledge paradigm . . .
The concept of “paradigm” itself should be recognized as a “concept”. A “paradigm” is a system for ordering and understanding what knowledge we think we have about something in such a way as to gain or find more knowledge about that something. Of course a paradigm will be a perception filter carefully screening and filtering out any otherwise-findable information which does not fit within the paradigm. Just as ” the map is not the territory”, the paradigm is not the reality. Perhaps people can reach the point of admitting that any paradigm is just a discovery tool and should not be an identity-badge or an identity-investment.
On to soil itself, soil is not just a thing. Soil is a place where things happen. We know that some of the carbon now in the sky came from massive soil disturbance and soil-carbon oxidation attendant upon modern mainstream soil-stripmining-based agriculture. We know that some of the now-skycarbon used to be soilcarbon. We see that some farmers are successfully restoring soilcarbon back to prior levels.
The new paradigm preaches that stable soil humus is a happy myth and not a real thing. If that is so, then carbon is constantly cycling into soil and back out of it, at whatever percent the soilcarbon level is at.
If that is so, then even after the soilcarbon is restored to pre-destruction levels, it will only stay restored as long as the methods which restored are rigorously pursued with unflagging discipline. So some skycarbon can be drained back into soil, but it will only be kept there as long as the methods which put it back there remain in force and in use to keep it there. It won’t be a set-and-forget storage method.
So ways will have to be found to measure soil carbon buildup or burndown at various and many soil depths in many places. As a mere amateur, this seems like a solvable sample-taking engineering problem to me.
And hopefully the new soil paradigmers will start experimenting on how fast or slow the hungry soil life can decompose biochar mixed into the soil. It would be nice to have that real information to be able to do some real thinking with and about. Do the new soil paradigmers think that the carbon in Terra Preta do Amazon soils is centuries-old legacy dura-carbon? Why or why not?
“All models are wrong, some are useful”, as George Box said in 1976. He was talking about statistics, but his observation is also true in other areas.
It makes sense that adding more carbon to soils will result in there being more carbon in soils. The refined model that posits specific long lived carbon compounds as the main source of the benefit might be wrong, but I think the general principle holds. In the future, we’ll understand a lot more about just how much of that (temporarily) stored carbon resides in viruses, bacteria, fungi, bugs, worms and plant roots.
Healthy, actively supported soils hold carbon; dead soils don’t. And mark me as unsurprised that a generously funded technological ‘quick fix’ wasn’t the answer we were looking for.
What recarbonizing the decarbonized soil would be is a one-time quick time-buy. We can only do it once, and then we can “keep” the restored soil carbon up at the level we have restored it to only if we keep doing the things which keep the level up.
So if we do the one-time quick time-buy, what will we do with the time we have bought? Because we only get to buy it once.
Meanwhile, wetlands are longer-term carbon down-sucker store-uppers. Wetland should be restored and increased.
Agreed, and agreed
Drumlin, I consider myself a Terra Pretaian after reading comments on this blog and doing youtube “research” on my own. There are a plethora of university/ag school seminars on biochar to be found there. I didn’t notice biochar discussed in the article explicitly, but maybe there were oblique references via citation.
My own slightly informed opinion on the article is that there is no one shot or easy trick, and my reading of your comment is that you may be of a similar mind.
My understanding of T.P. is that it was developed over generations, perhaps many centuries. Our modern research can’t address that long time aspect through field trials. Another aspect of TP that I feel addresses climate change but I didn’t notice addressed in the article is the amount of life supported, and all that life is of course carbon based(temporarily sequestered carbon if a reader must think of it that way).
I’ve seen images of TP trenches vs non TP trenches and to me the difference was noticeable to level of at least 4 ft deep. But in this situation, I don’t think we are limited to just the first 4 ft of soil, why can’t we bury quick growing carbon extracting biomass 10, 30 or 100 ft deep? Do the microbes that release carbon make their homes that deep? I would think not as most new carbon will enter the soil from the top.
My .02 and would love to hear feedback from anyone…
Here is a book I have a copy of. It seems very useful and viable to me, though as an amateur what would I know? It is about our best understanding of terra preta as of the writing of the book, and how to have the highest chance at succeeding to simulate it, or neo-create a neo-version of it in one’ own gardening or even microfarming activities.
Here is the link. ( Notice that it is a NOmazon link. We can still buy some things from NOmazon).
https://bookstore.acresusa.com/products/terra-preta
Taibbi
I don’t get Fox but I do get PBS where this doof Hoover (great granddaughter of Herbert) runs a show called Firing Line–a disclaimer at the bottom saying “not affiliated with William F. Buckley’s Firing Line.” In other words she can’t even come up with an original show title although in fairness the orginal was a PBS show delivered via my state’s SCETV and the tight bond between Buckley and a local upstate SC megatycoon.
So Snuffleupagous and guests are inviting Biden to touch the Third Rail. Will he do it?
Thanks for this observation:
There is a remarkable description of how the Corona virus operates — just out as a Nature News Feature: “How the coronavirus infects cells — and why Delta is so dangerous” https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02039-y
This news feature includes some fascinating animations of the Corona virus in action and some detailed diagrams showing what is known, so far, about how the virus infects a cell, takes over the cell’s machinery to manufacture virus particles and shuttles the virus particles out of the cell. This is very different than my simple-minded understanding of how a virus works.
It’s as if one of my rants to family or friends got remade with production values and a proper screenwriter!
Thank you very much for posting this.
Thank you for the links on Elinor Ostrom, one of my heroes. She did more to combat the misleading tragedy of the commons arguments than almost anyone. As someone that supports strong democratic economic planning, her work is extremely important as it is a means of dealing with tacit knowledge in economic planning, which Hayek focused so much on in his attacks against economic planning. Derek Wall’s book on her, published in Pluto Press, is awesome and her classic 1990 book Governing the Commons is important and pertinent.