Shakira: Singer attacked by a pair of wild boars BBC
Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy Quanta Magazine (David L)
Surfing’ SailDrone Captures Footage From Inside Hurricane Sam Petapixel (David L)
Europe’s BepiColombo Spacecraft To Attempt Its First Swing Past Mercury Tonight Space
What’s the Least Bad Way to Cool the Planet? New York Times (David L)
Energy Crisis Puts World’s Most Ambitious Climate Plan to Test Bloomberg (David L). From last week, still germane.
How mental health became a social media minefield Vox (resilc)
Book Review: The Mirage of a Town Without Cellphones Undark
Lead contamination found in blood of half of young kids in U.S.Bloomberg (Robert M)
Body Horror Baffler (Chuck L)
Enduring memory aeon
#COVID-19
The year public health lost its soul Authorea. Today’s must read.
Science/Medicine
China looks overseas for vaccine data in search for way out of Covid-19 South China Morning Post. Well, they won’t find any here!
Hhhm:
THREAD on a quick Covid update (mainly England):
TLDR: two epidemics really – one in under 18s (and their parents) which is bad and getting worse and the other in everyone else which is getting better.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) October 1, 2021
Moar UK, where they do have data:
This is frankly terrifying. *1 in 21* children of secondary school age had SARS-CoV-2 the wk ending 25th Sept. Rises continuing. Tell me again that schools don't 'drive' transmission and we don't need mitigations in schools. To all those who've been in denial – this is on you. pic.twitter.com/utAXiijq6W
— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) October 1, 2021
Assessing the Burden of COVID-19 in Developing Countries: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications MedRxIv. Preprint.
US
Biden sued by Air Force officers who compare vaccine rule to death sentence ars technica (resilc). Seems a bit better argued that most suits like this but still very unlikely to prevail.
The NYT’s Partisan Tale about COVID and the Unvaccinated is Rife with Sloppy Data Analysis Jeremy Beckham via Glenn Greenwald (KLG)
Confusion abounds as Biden rolls out scaled-back US booster campaign Financial Times
How America Screwed Up the Great School Reopening New Republic
Health workers get panic buttons as COVID deniers get violent ars technica
Finance/Economy
Eviction filings have not spiked after end of moratorium Washington Post. Inconsistent with many local reports on a web search, including Eviction filings in US spike in week following end of moratorium WSWS. But the story indicates that rental protections in many cities may be attenuating the process.
China?
China’s Power Crunch is the Next Economic Shock Beyond Evergrande Bloomberg (Robert M). From last week, still germane.
China’s power consumption reflects the role of US shoppers too Quartz
Philippines’ Duterte says will retire from politics Agence France-Presse
Old Blighty
‘Buy Christmas dinner now and freeze it’ shoppers told, amid warning it’s too late to avoid empty shelves Independent
Britain’s winter blues: ‘Christmas shortages are now a certainty’ Financial Times
German youth voted for change — but what does that really mean? DW
Syraqistan
The brutality of denying water to Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills +972 Magazine
Imperial Collapse Watch
“Inside every —— there is an American trying to get out …” Turcopolier (Chuck L). Important.
We Asked Vets Of The Soviet-Afghan War To Judge The U.S. Exit. Here’s What They Said NPR (David L)
The Living Dead Pax Americana Pepe Escobar (Chuck L)
Counterinsurgency – a much failed strategy? (Originally published on SST in 2013. Re-published on the occasion of our 2021 defeat) Turcopolier (Chuck L)
A Declassified State Department Report Says Microwaves Didn’t Cause “Havana Syndrome” BuzzFeed. Um, the crickets as perps was published quite a while back…
Trump
New Initiative Explores Deep, Persistent Divides Between Biden and Trump Voters Sabato’s Crystal Ball (resilc)
Stephanie Grisham’s Book Details Trump’s ‘Terrifying’ Temper New York Times
Biden
Progressives exult in new-found power and Progressives cheer, moderates groan as Biden visit caps chaotic week The Hill. The danger is confusing a battle for the war. Nevertheless, the moderates (as in the Dem party “do as you are told” faction had to have Biden tell them the obvious? They are that clueless? From the second story:
Yet if the goal was party unity, the president seemed to fall short. In the roughly 40-minute closed-door meeting in the Capitol’s cavernous basement, he broke the bad news to moderates that a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill would not happen on Friday, as scheduled, eliciting discernible sighs from the centrists in the room.
Biden Says Democrats Should Delay Infrastructure Vote Until Deal Reached Wall Street Journal
‘It’s not a success’: Dems head home after infrastructure stalemate Politico
What will people remember from the Build Back Better Act and the infrastructure bill?
The life-changing programs like paid leave and childcare. Health care and housing. Saving our planet. Roads and bridges are important — but we also need transformative change. pic.twitter.com/J7p4t7Cdz5
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) October 1, 2021
Pelosi Powerbroker Mystique Hits Progressive Brick Wall Heisenberg Report (resilc)
Congress Is Stuck in a Quantum Time Warp Charles Pierce, Esquire
‘We’re Going to Make the Rich Pay,’ Joe Manchin Tells Protesters From His Yacht Vice (resilc)
The Infrastructure Bill Is Not Marxist. I Wish. New Republic
Krugman calls for the coin https://t.co/XWkD4SK6Lt
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) October 1, 2021
Democrats Eye Narrowing Biden Plan on Bank Reporting to IRS Bloomberg
Biden tax crusade puts privacy at risk Reuters. Lambert: “This is madness, $600?”
Senate confirms eco-terrorist-linked Biden nominee who endorsed population control Fox. Resilc: “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, everyone to get from street…”
Police State Watch
Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019: a network meta-regression Lancet. Important.
My Time With the FBI Counterpunch (Chuck L)
Criminal Justice Expenditures: Police, Corrections, and Courts Urban Institute (resilc)
Lawyer Steven Donziger gets six-month sentence for contempt in Chevron battle Guardian/blockquote>
Indian Tribes Are Governing Well. It’s the States That Are Failing Washington Monthly
The EU wants everyone to use USB-C chargers—including Apple Popular Science. Resilc: “Never enough ewaste to send to Africa.”
Hackers Bypass Coinbase 2FA To Steal Customer Funds The Record
Turmoil at Bezos’ Blue Origin: Talent exodus came after CEO’s push for full return to the office CNBC
Google Is Scrapping Its Plan To Offer Bank Accounts To Users Wall Street Journal
Nobody Really Knows How the Economy Works. A Fed Paper Is the Latest Sign. New York Times
Class Warfare
Report Reveals the IMF’s Hidden Fees, and How Desperate Countries Pay the Most In These Times (furzy)
There's a much deeper rot in the practices and culture of central bank governance than many are willing to admit https://t.co/IunwKXfRyO
— Rohan Grey (@rohangrey) October 2, 2021
Antidote du jour (Bob H):
And a bonus (guurst):
A spectacular sight 1225m (4019 ft) beneath the waves off Baja California as EVNautilus encounter the amazing Halitrephes maasi jelly.
Full video: https://t.co/y2zROFQ9NY pic.twitter.com/hLcIH87CGw
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) September 29, 2021
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Body Horror, by Patrick Nathan, seems to be shot through with his own rather puritanical horror of the body. He makes efforts to deal with the body as something not to torture, as something to, well, embody, as the carrier of our consciousness, our desires, and our mortality.
It may be the effect of living in Minneapolis. Yet Minneapolis has, for a long time, been a center for “creatives,” for the kind of people who think more about career than about concepts like body and embodiment (let alone the body’s reliance on the health of the land, which extends for miles and miles beyond the Twin Cities.)
It may be the Rhyd Wildermuth, a gay, pagan, Marxist, now ensconced in sturdy Luxembourg (light years from the Twin Cities) has a more measured, more tolerant, more sensual view of the body that he has come to treasure:
https://rhyd.substack.com/p/born-this-way
I can only wonder if Patrick Nathan’s horror is the horror of “American religion,” which is so strongly dualistic and so afraid of the body and its fluids and its impulses.
Thanks for the link to this great article!
This is the best and most succinct summary of where we are with Covid I’m read. I hope its read widely. I think maybe the biggest victim of Covid is public health and science itself. I never, ever, dreamed I would read some of the nonsense I’ve been reading the past year from highly credentialed scientists (Deepti Gurdasani’s twitter link above shows just one example – and she has been subject to quite vile attacks from other scientists).
Just to add to this, here is a twitter roll from Dr Ellie Murray on what ‘endemic’ means and what we have let ourselves in for by giving up on controlling Covid.
In Minnesota, I have tried about a dozen times to comment at Minnpost.com, a local liberal Democrat journalism site, that the vaccinated can carry Covid and spread it, in contrast to the common refrain there and at MPR that this is a pandemic only of the unvaccinated.
I have been censored every time. Even when I link a post from the CDC detailing the science of it, it is censored. After Russiagate I was about done with Democrats. Now that so many of them act with sneering contempt for those who don’t “follow the science” while they deny whatever science they don’t care to hear, I am officialy done with the party.
WiIliam, try and anti-Ivermectin tirade and see if that floats. Go get ’em.
Indeed, if I went there and said something about deplorables sniffing horse paste with vicious spittle metaphorically flying from my lips so tight they could cut glass, they would print it.
You tried, and I respect that.
Let me offer a few remarks as a policy analyst who spent several years working at a school of public health, 2002-2005, located in major American city where the health department was just up the street. The deleterious consequences of neoliberal austerity and continual accommodations to it -cutting public health services ad staff in the name of efficiency and a markets rule mentality- were present then and almost certainly served as a softening up for the Faustian Bargain outlined in this essay.
In 2014 I gave up trying to directly advocate for change in the public health establishment. Google “Public Health’s Response to Decline: Loyalty to the 1%,” if you want to see what I wrote then.
Oops– Dan, the “you tried, and I respect that” comment I made was directed at you.
Even if you got your ass kicked, it’s inspiration to some of us to put up a fight.
770 persons in a phase 2 trial for Merck’s new drug is enough for them to apply for an EUA.
Thousands and thousands of people in trials for the Drug Which Cannot Be Named and it’s “Oh, we need larger trials.”
The perception that the health establishment is owned and operated for the benefit of Big Pharma is just too flaming obvious……
Nearly spat out my coffee reading this comment on the new Merck pill “”There’s a lot of attractive features about it, just like there is for Tamiflu for influenza” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-02/merck-pill-not-a-miracle-cure-for-covid-says-baylor-s-hotez/100509346
Aaaah Tamiflu. What can one say? As it happens, if you’re the BMJ, quite a lot, https://www.bmj.com/tamiflu
# WHO was recommending Tamiflu but had not vetted the underlying data.
# EMA approved Tamiflu, but had not vetted the underlying data.
# CDC was encouraging the use and stockpiling of Tamiflu on the basis of the 6-page manufacturer funded pooled analysis of 10 clinical trials, but had not vetted the underlying data.
# CDC’s promotion occurred despite the fact that, since 2000, FDA, which had vetted the underlying data, required Roche to add a statement to Tamiflu’s product labeling: “Serious bacterial infections may begin with influenza-like symptoms or may coexist with or occur as complications during the course of influenza. TAMIFLU has not been shown to prevent such complications.”
# The majority of Roche’s Phase III treatment trials were unpublished a decade after completion.
# The above facts all remain true today (as of February 2019).
In 2017, WHO downgraded the status of oseltamivir on its Essential Medicines List. (The Cochrane group twice petitioned to have it removed.)
So the new Merck pill might be about as effective as Tamiflu? Expect every government in the world to stockpile it then. Kaching. Kaching. Kaching.
One positive aspect of NC is that we can discuss/debate the use of Ivermectin without being worried. Heaven knows there’s enough to worry in this world.
I’m guessing that there was no discussion of the role of complete corporate control in the interests of brevity.
Kinda related to that –
US Vax mandate concerns from John Campbell in regard to the CDC acting on information from the FDA, which states that all should be vaxxed whether they have already had Covid or not, as without any apparent evidence they state that vax given immunity is superior to natural immunity, which he demonstrates that according to the available studies is actually false.
This would effect about 91 million people, including many essential workers, The first study he quotes estimates natural immune memory of between 6-8 mths & the UK Gov estimate 6 months. A large Israeli study of about 500,000 found that natural immunity was more effective & just 1% of the previously infected who were not vaccinated were represented in weekly cases. He then finished by citing a large UK study which concluded that those who had covid were 56% more likely to get serious side effects requiring hospitalisation if they were to become vaccinated.
The 2 people responsible for this decision at the FDA who reckon on only 90 days of natural immunity are shown in a linked video released 15th July 2021 stating the above position. He is Dr. Peter Marks MD, PhD & the other involved is Dr Janet Woodcock MD. I figured that I would look them up & found that in May 2020 they both recused themselves from operation Warp Speed due t activist pressure in regard to conflicts of interest.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/2-fda-officials-recuse-themselves-from-covid-19-vaccine-approvals.html
More detail on Dr. John’s youtube video called Natural versus vaccine immunity with a list of the studies & the video link.
Thank you for linking that twitter thread. Looking at the comments on that thread, and on another that was linked, I was struck by the number of people who fail to realize that COVID immunity, gained whether through vaccine or infection, is not long-lasting.
‘We’re Going to Make the Rich Pay,’ Joe Manchin Tells Protesters From His Yacht
Standing on the back of his yacht called Almost Heaven (though some argue it’s a houseboat as opposed to a luxury vessel), Manchin assured those assembled he heard their concerns and understood them.
“We’re working hard, we really are,” Manchin said, looking down at the protesters who paddled up to the yacht.
BREAKING NEWS THIS JUST IN:
The Coast Guard has surrounded the protesters and asked them to clear the area to make way for Senator Manchin’s personal valet and assorted staff so they can board the yacht to perform the Senator’s regularly scheduled manicure appointment.
Joe Manchin’s houseboat: 5 things
Cool but it did not include what I was curious about.
1. If the caca hits the fan can he sail off to Vanuatu or New Zealand?
2. Is it at least seaworthy enough that he can sail 20 or 30 nautical miles into the Atlantic and dump a dead prostitute’s body?
3. Is Joe Manchin sea-worthy? Could he scrub the poop deck on Ted Turner’s race-yacht?
He only paid 200K for it which seems pretty scruffy for a luxurious yacht.
I almost thought the headline was from The Onion! And if that’s indeed a yacht, my 2008 Accord is considered luxurious. All 203k miles have been luxury at its finest. It is a 4 door sedan with a V6, so it beats a Yugo.
Yeah they are working hard, we are just certain of it.
By working the word ‘yacht’ into the houseboat, its kind of a: the clock strikes midnight moment in Joe’s Cinderella story, albeit in reverse.
…was Luntz involved?
Looks like a houseboat to me. I’m a boat/yacht aficionado.
https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/social_share_image/public/2021-09/Greenpeace-manchin-boat.jpg?h=16085db2&itok=jT8bRkZF
It is boxy, like a houseboat would be. But it also has quite a bit of freeboard, like a seagoing vessel would have.
Pure houseboats tend to be built on beamy barge-like hulls that don’t draw a lot of water. The house will have big windows along it’s length close to the water’s edge.
Joe’s boat is sort of a hybrid I think. I read it is fitted out in “luxurious” style: leather sofas, big dining table etc. I and my yachting friends would refer to something like this as a “Gin Palace”.
Yeah my step uncle had one of those coast hugging floating coffins. Its fuel usage was less than an airliner but still outrageous, something like 5 gallons to the mile. It cost around $500 to fill the tanks and this was back in the early 90s.
I’m pretty sure all motor boats have horrible mileage. Mine certainly did, when I had one.
There are vastly different fuel efficiency ratings for smaller versus bigger craft. I’ve always been a sailor so I never had to care much but a 15′ or 25′ motorboat can get miles to the gallon versus gallons to the mile like that Manchin fool’s floating tomb.
Manchin bought the boat at a fire-sale price of $220,000 but insured it for $700,000. You now, just like the average everyday Joe and his family in West Virginia. I don’t know about anybody else but if you buy or sell a boat for $700,000 or even only $220,000 it is a yacht. Houseboat or not.
Future insurance claim.
Yes. I wonder if one can insure a yacht against piratical depredations?
Judging from the picture, it seems like a clever way to fake a populist image. ” Look there! On the water! Is it a yacht? Is it a houseboat? No! It’s a house-yacht!”
Regardless of it’s size and gilded status, assuming it ever leaves doc, It’s a floating toilet, a raw sewage and garbage dump using the ocean to spew it’s toxic fare, and an absurdly huge consumer of fossil fuel.
You are wrong about raw sewage:
From USCG:
“Vessel Operators: No person may operate any Vessel having an installed toilet facility unless it is equipped with an installed and operable MSD of a type approved by the U.S. Coast Guard to meet the requirements of 33 CFR Part 159.
Approved MSDs: There are three different types of MSDs that can be certified by the U.S. Coast Guard to meet the requirements in 33 CFR Part 159, each having its own design, certification, and discharge criteria. For more information see 33 CFR 159.53.
Type I is a flow through discharge device that produces effluent having a fecal coliform bacteria count not greater than 1,000 per 100 milliliters and no visible floating solids. This type of device is typically a physical/chemical based system that relies on maceration and chlorination. Type I MSDs are issued a Certificate of Approval.
Type II is a flow through discharge device that produces effluent having a fecal coliform bacteria count not greater than 200 per 100 milliliters and suspended solids not greater than 150 milligrams per liter. This type of device is typically a biological or aerobic digestion based system.
Type III is a device that prevents the overboard discharge of treated or untreated sewage or any waste derived from sewage. This type of device is typically a holding tank and may include other types of technology including incineration, recirculation, and composting.
No, I don’t think I’m wrong. https://www.boatus.org/study-guide/environment/waste/
The “OR” (my bold) says the holding tank is sufficient as long as…
Once you are out three miles offshore, you can dump pretty much what you want. A boat that size will have a considerable holding tank and I suspect a guy like that won’t spend anything beyond that on processing.
Also, the stink pot in question could probably do 20 mph or close so that would take them about 10 min to get out there and another 10 to get back. Time for two Southern Comfort Collins for the coal man.
Where do you think giant cruse ships dump a lot of their raw sewage? Yes, cruise ships can dump sewage into the ocean
International maritime organizations and governments ARE cracking down with sanctions and cruse lines are taking more and more responsibility to fully treat the sewage before discharge, but legally, they can do pretty much what they want in international waters.
Actually i’m not wrong and wrote you a longish reply (in moderation – I took too long) where I provide links. SV, For a private vessel, (no public/paying passengers or some such) you need only have a holding tank and go three miles out.
First you assume it never leaves the dock. Now you assume that vessel is capable of going three miles into open ocean to dump it’s holding tank.. Which is it??
It is true you are allowed to dump your holdng tank past the 3 mile line. Almost every marina these days have free pump outs to dispose of holding tank contents usually adjacent to the fuel dock. So when fueling you can also pump out, Secondly there are, pump out boats that can be called on VHF that will come to your vessel and pump out the contents for free and most will not accept tips…
Dumping your tank is frowned upon. “Clean Marinas” are a thing these days.
Besides, in order to dump the holding tank.
1: The vessels has to go 3 miles offshore
2: Know where the proper thru-hull is located and be able to open it in a sea.
3: Have an operational macerator pump and know how to turn it on.
You know, you should read a comment before just arguing for the sake of arguing. And my comment was not that long. Let’s re-read the relevant sentence and decide if, as you claim, I “assume it [Manchin’s boat] never leaves the doc”
“Regardless of it’s size and gilded status, assuming it ever leaves doc, […]”
The rest of the sentence, where i talk about raw sewage, is predicated on the assumption the boat does leave the doc.
Leaked audio from a Manchin phone call… corruption on full display.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek2m5WHS-c0&ab_channel=TheRationalNational
$700,000 for a yacht? Chump change in any marina of consequence. Just demonstrates how cheaply these politicians, even strategically placed Senators, can be bought.
Out of all the economic drivel, useless analysis posted here over the years, I have yet to see an article/paper calculating the approximate Bang for the bribe/contribution buck. I would guestimate one Bribe Buck to convert to $100,000 Bang Bucks.
An obvious piece of important analysis, glaring in its omission. Omerta rules.
“My 12-year-old has to get vaccinated but a teacher doesn’t”
12-year-olds can’t vote and donate to super PACs. Teachers can. The long term effects of the decision (e.g., 12-year-olds become voters) remains to be seen.
And parents cannot organize? There may be a simpler explanation with less emphasis on evil teachers and their unions. Twelve year olds not going to school doesn’t cause a headache for Newsome. School staff not being there is a big headache for Public officials, including the Governor.
Monday is going to be very very interesting in NYC. Despite the assurances of our mayor there is every reason to believe that a wildly chaotic situation is going to get worse. Parents keeping their children home doesn’t have the same look of failure as not enough buses, wildly overcrowded classes and bottlenecks entering the schools because there isn’t enough staff.
Proposition Nation takes on added meaning. When do the johns get perp-walked?
Oh, yeah. Never.
Hopefully this is the line in the sand that most parents will absolutely not cross.
Krugman calls for money creation (via “The Coin”) by Treasury.
That tweet makes me wonder whether I might be lucidly dreaming.
OTOH, I guess that if PK claims that he has always known about the validity of MMT principles, it’s nice to see him apply them in practice.
My vote for the image on the obverse of “The Coin”:
Abba Lerner
So it has come to this with the numismatrix…
Cryptocurrency & Trillion Dollar Coin have emerged as the best way forward, the former pretty much a limited edition collectible anybody can mint if they have the equipment and electricity, while the latter will be a unique item until the U.S. Government mints a 2nd and 3rd TDC.
Its all delusional, a trillion on a technicality.
The only thing left to decide, is what will the design be on a TDC?
A defiant bald eagle on one side with fistfuls of cash in each talon, and on the reverse, a figure who has already been on an American coin before, so he’s an old hand at it, and whose initials fit perfectly for the scam: P.T. Barnum.
Here he is in 1936:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport,_Connecticut,_Centennial_half_dollar
Maybe the US Mint should do a “mis-strike” on the TDC. That would make it even more valuable. Then, instead of the Treasury sending it to the Fed to credit US account, the gov can auction it off for even more than a trillion. Suck up some of that loose change floating around and ease inflationary pressures. That’s a win, win, win.
Why not programmable, digital currency: the “iCoin”. /heh
https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/01/programmable-digital-currency-the-next-stage-of-the-new-normal/
How do you mint it?
Minting isn’t a metaphor.
While having huge implications for the world of symbol manipulators, the law addresses physical things, not representations.
My guess is the Krugthullu circle is asking him about these things and Republican intransience. The Coin was always pitched as a response to the basic problem of the GOP, and Biden’s act clearly isn’t working. Mitch McConnell didn’t work with Obama because Obama was black but because its about power. The actors haven’t even changed.
I think its less about MMT policies than what Krugman has been selling all these years. Its the same with Jonathan Chait and David Brooks.
hey thanks, Tim, for pointing me towards the recent musings of Brooks yesterday.
read it this am when i arose…
i don’t know how to feel about agreeing with that guy,lol.
but it’s almost identical to what i’ve been muttering and yelling about for a long, long time.
my only quibble with it is the sort of gloss… that the ones without dignity are all right wing nutjobs.
because i am definitely not a RWNJ, but i’ve felt dissed for a long time.
Ressentiment is not a party affiliation…but a feature of class struggle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/federal-spending-democrats.html
Someone should ask Mitch what sovereignty means to him …
or ask his wife. …. / heh
In public too …
There is a large practical danger to acknowledging its all a facade. No doubt “the coin” is a solution, but there is tremendous fall out from it. I think Krugman’s brain is so big he’s sitting on it.
The frequent freak out over inflation in the US is pretty much an exercise in political obstruction. The kind of inflation that Larry Summers is talking about is normal supply demand type inflation. The kind of inflation that the GOP was scaremongering about in 2012 was hyper-inflation. What is not commonly understood is that money in the US is created by private banking. that money is created by making loans. Private banking only works if the loans are collectable. Without going into details, that provides the control rods and facilitates an expanding economy without the danger of rampant inflation.
However, when a government creates money it is done to pay their debts not make interest on loans. There are no control rods on that type of money creation and that is what leads to hyper-inflation. Krugman has had problems with these concepts before and no one should listen to hin.
Hyper inflation via a trade shock befuddles the monetarist rightwing because it fiddles with the moralistic notion of an immortal store of value. Not that decades of groupthink indoctrination has anything to do with it, any backsliding is a threat to its authority[tm] in shaping the social narrative, and as such can never be allowed at any cost[tm].
You’ll get that from people that invariably always reduce complexity down to meaninglessness so it conforms to their moralistic platitudes ….
Yes. And the NYT (of all papers) above quoting Jeremy Rudd saying economists don’t really know squat. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Nobody knows how the economy works.” So what then is “inflation?” The NYT called Rudd “cheeky.” More cheeky please.
>What is not commonly understood is that money in the US is created by private banking
Kind of sort of, but not fully. The money supply consists of 2 things: monetary reserves and leverage in the system. While private banks can change their leverage to influence the money supply, as you note: the Fed can also influence the money supply via increasing/decreasing reserves. And the reserves have been increasing sharply
Pat Lang’s article sounds like what I’ve been hearing from anthropologists and sociologists for quite a long time. From reading his stuff at Sic Semper Tyrannis back before he lost his mind over the ‘socialist’ (is that a culturally accurate reading on his part ?) Biden, my impression is that his rather strong religious convictions may be leading him to some conflation, in the sense that he objects to analyses that don’t give enough weight to religion, as opposed to other sociocultural factors.
From what I’ve been reading about the Afghanistan debacle there was a risible attempt to be ‘culturally sensitive’ by funneling support to established parasites, particularly the peak predator warlords. Their ongoing depredations paved the way for the Taliban comeback. If that’s the case Lang would have to fine tune his criticism.
That fine-tuning included maintaining the delicate balance between cultural sensitivity to bacha bazi and wedding-party droning.
i thought Lang was pretty spot on, there.
my recently deceased stepdad…carried the “60” through the jungles in Nam, ere he got snipered in the back…had much to say on this very topic when he’d had enough beer…and/or had watched some non-vietnam war movie that made him think about it.
imagine my shock when a good ol boy redneck who regularly spoke back reverently to the president on tv said things like :” we didn’t know anything about them”…or, ” everything they told us was a lie”(regarding why fight, what to expect, what the “enemies” motives wre, on and on)
he arrived here on his own, as this was before he changed into a “liberal” during BushII…so i had had little opportunity to discourse on such things with him…they were to be avoided up until then.
i know maybe 3 people in real life who could point to Iraq or Afghanistan on a map(discounting mom, wife and boys)
and i’m old enough to remember when mexican food was exotic in the houston exurban ring—“Taykusses”, my grandad called them(“tacos”).
ironically…and in spite of such malapropisms, my grandparents’ generation were much more informed about the world than anyone i run across, now.
we’re just not interested, as a people.
as for how much of that is due to primary and secondary history/social studies education policy…or the wall to wall flagwaving boosterism we swim in in some places…or just being too dern busy trying to “put food on our family” to care….i don’t know.
my other grandad gave me a Natgeo lifetime membership when i was, like, 5…so i grew up with a different relation to geography, history and the veritable rainforest of humanity’s cultural side….than most of my peers.
jay leno’s periodic man in the streets, exposing american ignorance always made me mad…but everyone around me essentially laughed at themselves…and without a hint of irony.
in this sense…it now occurs to me…mr trump was/is in many ways an american icon….perhaps a cartoon version, but even that is pretty apt.
instead of thousand yard stares, steely eyed courage and starched backs…with eagle imagery with the same idealised focused steel glare…rather a bumbling drunk, tripping over his own gut while grabbing for the waitress, wondering why she doesn’t speak english in a bar in saigon.
> … instead of thousand yard stares, steely eyed courage and starched backs…with eagle imagery
> with the same idealised focused steel glare…rather a bumbling drunk, tripping over his own
> gut while grabbing for the waitress, wondering why she doesn’t speak english in a bar in saigon.
If you don’t know his work already, for a non-PC but wholly-apt counter to this view, search the interweb for Vietnam-vet disabled-Marine Fred Reed.
The worst form of cultural ignorance is not understanding your enemy.
I’m not convinced that western nations in Afghanistan ever understood what they were dealing with when they fought the Taliban. The assumptions of western conventional warfare, pounded into officers at all levels throughout their career, are so powerful that even experience on the ground may not shift them. How do you deal with an enemy that is willing and ready to die, and is not interested in limiting casualties, either on their side or among the population? What’s the correct response to suicide attacks? How do you deal with an enemy that wears no uniform, that is indistinguishable from the civil population, that attacks hospitals and schools? How do you deal with an enemy that believes it is engaged in a holy war in which anything is permitted ?
In the end, I think the defeat in Afghanistan will come down to this. Failure is not the same as defeat. The West failed to build a liberal nation-state. It was defeated by an enemy that used tactics to which it had no answer.
Much as I am hesitant to say this, the only strategy with any chance of “success,” as defined by the West, in places like Afghanistan is genocide. Kill the locals off and repopulate the place with a more compliant people. This was a common tactic in the ‘ancient times.’ The Mongols massacred tens of thousands of “locals” if they, the Mongols, prevailed after meeting resistance. Various empires moved entire ethnic populations around like pieces on a game board. In America, the government’s policy towards the Southeastern natives, the “Trail of Tears,” is a historically recent example. The chosen strategy for dealing with the Plains Indians was starvation and concentration.
To return to Afghanistan, the writing was on the wall once the Soviets gave up and fled. They were much more ruthless in their war making, and still failed in their objectives. America was going to do better? If anything, the American failure in Afghanistan is an object lesson in the bankruptcy of the Western theory of Western Cultural Supremacy.
It is not just the specific American Empire that is dying.
You can’t build a liberal nation-state out of an illiberal multi-non-related-nations group of randomly gathered peoples. Thinking one could was the first big failure of basic common sense right there.
> … his rather strong religious convictions may be leading him to some conflation …
(Most) military lifers are bad enough but when they go all out for Gawd it gets horribly worse.
cf. the US Air Force Academy
Colonel Lang is a traditionalist Catholic. The US Air Force Academy is infested with Darbyist Rapturanian Armageddonites. Two very different approaches to religion.
Gavin Newsome’s vaccine mandate for children tell me which way the wind is blowing,
At first blush it looks like a Political misstep, when viewed in light of his record as a man of Principal ( Not principles) with many interests it makes sense.
If the children are vaccinated then he can never be forced to close the schools no matter how many kids or staff are sick or dying. If the schools close, the California economy will struggle.
>If the schools close, the California economy will struggle.
Let it burn.
Good call. This will be sad to watch. “It’s all about the children”. Sounding a bit more like “It’s all about the Benjamins”.
> Turmoil at Bezos’ Blue Origin: Talent exodus came after CEO’s push for full return to the office CNBC
FFS Bezos’ warehouses have a 150% annual turnover rate (equivalent to replacing all employees every eight months) but Bubblevision seems to never mention that. Bezos is the shittiest boss in the world.
Amazon shopper = whip cracking sadist
Another account I read said the loss of the moon contract provoked the current exodus. Guess some of the engineers didn’t see much of a challenge in running Jeff’s Thrill Ride.
There’s a lot of Musk bashing around here and justifiably so but arguably Space X is his redeeming accomplishment. If you are NASA why would you pick the world’s worst boss?
“If you are NASA why would you pick the world’s worst boss?”
Ask the families of the victims of the Challenger and Columbia avoidable disasters and they might tell us that NASA is making a very creditable effort to be a ‘worse boss’ than Bezos ever imagined he could be.
Bezos, it can be argued, is just one point of executive dysfunction. NASA can be viewed as being run by an entire executive culture based on dysfunction.
Well according to a documentary I just saw that’s exactly the reason why NASA decided to privatize the spaceflight vehicles and bring on fresh eyes. Musk has launched people into orbit for 1/10th what it cost NASA to do it in house.
Perhaps this too will end badly but NASA is acutely aware of the safety issue if only for the threat it poses to their bureaucracy. And let’s be honest–it’s always going to be a risky endeavor to some extent.
And btw you can also blame Challenger on Reagan who wanted it launched rather than postponed to a warmer day to go with a speech of his.
I was chatting with coworkers recently. Someone brought up Q. I said I read Q for awhile and came to the conclusion quickly that it was CIA psyops to make Trump fans look like idiots.
“They are all idiots,” said one voluble coworker.
“Most of the Trump voters I’ve met aren’t idiots.” Half of his coworkers voted for Trump, some of whom he likes.
“Yeah they are, and they are racists.”
“Most I know aren’t racists either. And I like a lot of them more than some of the woke folk I’ve met.”
“They voted for a racist, they are all racists.”
He had been talking about something he bought off Amazon recently. “So you vote with your dollars for Bezos, does that make you a monopolist pig?”
Another coworker stepped in, “Hey, let’s keep it civil.”
Sly dig that at the end.
I suspect that Trumpers, in some cases, compartmentalize their support for Trump for their own unique reason besides bigotry, but are ok with the bigoted moves of the Trump administration—voter suppression, and limits on consent decrees that stop police brutality–primarily against people of color.
In the Jordan Klepper interviews with Trumpers on the Trevor Noah show, you will find quite a bit of idiocy, cognitive dissonance, and bigotry.
I suspect that if you dug into interviews with average Biden or Buttigieg or Obama supporters you would find a fair bit of idiocy. Oh they might be able to use three syllable words easily possibly couched with both ignorance and classism. They will, however, use the correct and currently appropriate pronouns as they stutter when questioned why such large numbers of people of color who probably face more racism in a day than most Biden voters voted for Trump.
My point being any group who willingly buy that Hillary Clinton lost because of Russian interference not her being arrogant, incompetent and deeply disliked and or haven’t realized that the vaccines do not guarantee you won’t get or spread Covid-19 live in a very big and very vulnerable glass house. They obviously are just as susceptible to misinformation and self delusion as any other group. They buy memes, and tropes and use critical thinking as little as the group who buys that government healthcare has more death panels than our current system.
Ignorance and susceptibility don’t care about party.
If you interview Obamazoids or Clintonites, you will find a lot of idiocy, cognitive dissonance, and social class-status-lifestyle bigotry.
Halitrephes maasi jelly
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, it is a cross between the opening scene ofTwilight Zone and a slow motion nuclear bomb blast going off, yikes!
Between the
Pelosi phlounderingObama Plan posturing and the $600 IRS inquisition, the new slogan should be Bilderberg Better.Article about the FBI / Counterpunch link. Interesting read, I recall the searching but not finding of Rudolph. Still entertaining to think, he was found behind a grocery store scrounging for scraps in a dumpster. Not entertaining, is what they did to Jewell. Yes, driving a black sedan in those parts might get you pegged as a Fed!
I’ve been watching season 2 of a N*tflix offering, Ozark. The main FBI protagonist, if you can stretch the term, is a piece of work (even for a work of fiction!). It’s mostly entertaining.
A good Counterpunch. As it happens I’m quite familiar with the area of NC where the Rudolph search took place. That’s quite the haystack to hide in.
Commenters here have already mentioned Eastwood’s film about Richard Jewell. Highly recommended.
I’ll be on the lookout for that film. I enjoy most of Eastwood’s films. And Sam Rockwell could make a movie about a pet rock and I might watch it.
Went hiking 4 to 6 weeks ago near Landrum. Unfortunately on that day, the forecast for afternoon showers proved quite accurate.
Rockwell…he’s great.
Had another nightmare with Livia Soprano & Nancy Pelosi as the protagonists although it was hard to differentiate between the two at times, especially when one of them told me in my dream that she’d inserted an eggplant rider in the bill, which she plotted to kill.
Maybe you should switch your late night choice of adult beverage for a warm glass of milk? Nancy Pelosi appearing in any dream, no matter the reason, is cause for concern.
Did she look a little like Freddy and have knives for fingers…\sarc
Well, Pelosi does look a lot, a little too close for comfort, like the Vampire Matriarch. That ‘dream’ might not have been a dream. Check your throat in the mirror when you wake up. (This gives the exhortation “Get the Jab” a new and ‘exciting’ meaning.)
Livia Soprano’s way scarier than Freddy Kruger
WRT public health’s lost soul.
If public health has lost it’s soul, it didn’t happen last year.
The public health system has been under attack by business interests for decades.
The network of state level public health departments was/is perfect example of the sort of target that the private sector seeks out in order to harvest public ‘surplus’ for private gain.
The traditional model of networked public health departments ensures that the system cannot be totally wiped out by the loss of key personnel, possible if the system relied on a central, national infrastructure.
The network’s redundancy was by design, and represented a sort of hard-won wisdom as concerns the dangers inherent in putting all one’s eggs in one basket when facing the potential of an epidemic obliterating that basket.
The cost differential between the public health network as it existed, on the one hand, and the potential profit in privatization, and consolidation on the other, put a target on the back of the public health system.
The public health system has been a target of the forces of privatization for decades, and that has led to a slow, and nearly invisible erosion in the efficacy of the network, and a the related, and equally invisible loss of ‘soul’.
Then came Covid, and we’re being encouraged to think this problem happened over-night.
The forces that over decades, have captured degraded our healthcare system in general, with profit as the motive, are the same forces that have captured the public health system and made it so responsive to ‘economic interests’, to the detriment of the publics health.
IOW, it’s an example of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Tragedy of the Commoners :/
Those unable to afford concierge medicine, Congressional plans and such.
Yes, but the pandemic has made the cognitive dissonance physical in trauma wards and enough MDs have been implicated for longstanding realities to obtrude.
Installing MDs in the board room is most likely a conscious choice on the part of corporate investors and private equity to both represent legitimacy and obscure responsibility.
Considering how invisible the damage to the public health network was prior to the pandemic, those efforts appear to have been quite successful.
The focus on Dr. Anthony Fauci is a case in point.
So far, the public is still focusing on the short comings as the result of inept leadership as opposed to the systematic degradation typical of privatization for profit.
While the former is true, it’s the latter that is the root cause.
The way I see it, we’re at the end of the opening act, like that scene in “Jaws” our hosts here linked to a while back. Roy Schider is riding the ferry with the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce guy who are talking about keeping “the beach community open for business.”
Things get more intense in subsequent scenes…
Covid and climate change–
Links dealing with two different topics give us strong clues about the paradigm underlying our social/economic/political system. The message is that human sacrifice is back with a vengeance, and this time we’re not throwing virgins into a volcano to stop an eruption or cutting the hearts out of prisoners-of-war to feed the gods and maintain cosmic balance. Instead, we’re calculating how many humans, along with other living creatures, must be sacrificed to keep economic growth going.
From the link re: public health:
From the mad scientist’s dishonest article on shooting sulfur up in the sky (weren’t we once concerned about sulfur in the atmosphere because of acid rain?):
Here we witness exactly the kind of “radical utilitarianism” decried in the public health article. This would-be geoengineer also resorts to the same sort of speculative “deaths would be worse” argument as Trump employed in removing Covid restrictions in the spring of 202. Of course, such claims in both cases are basically pulled out of the proponent’s a– without either the kind of extensive analysis required to back such assertions and especially without consideration of policies that could reduce the negative impacts like providing a temporary UBI while Covid restrictions are in place.
This Harvard scientist is so determined to sell his Muskian plan that he makes himself look foolish and uninformed. First of all, the problems caused by too much carbon in the atmosphere are not limited to global warming. Too much carbon in the atmosphere is leading to ocean acidification and reductions in agricultural productivity. Shooting millions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere will do absolutely nothing to blunt those negative impacts. Moreover, too much carbon in the atmosphere is just one of the aspects of overshoot because of human impacts on the Earth. Degradation of soils and fresh water along with loss of animal and plant diversity with resultant disruptions to ecological balance and resiliency are aspects of ecological collapse of which we are aware. Chances are they are the tip of the overshoot iceberg.
Finally, our Harvard man (can always tell ’em, just can’t tell ’em much) creates a straw man for his argument that carbon sequestration is insufficiently fast by limiting consideration to planting trees while ignoring all the work being done on regenerative agriculture that restores soils and habitats while removing carbon as Gabe Brown and the scientists he cites in Dirt to Soil demonstrate.
The neoliberal nations of the world are as much in thrall to religion as medieval Europe, but YHWH and the rest of the Trinity have been replaced by the Invisible Hand and monotheistic theology by the myths of growth and money. Where human sacrifice was practiced on victims numbered in the dozens or less in times past, now millions, and before long perhaps billions, are sacrificed justified by ungrounded speculation and willful blindness to alternatives.
Yes, apparently industrialization has rolled back the Axial Age innovations.
Our new God Kings are crowned by Mammon.
Their vision of the future ends with their own deaths and the have no concerns whatsoever about how many others they kill before then. Maybe even seeing our deaths as a possible benefit to their children.
> Their vision of the future ends with their own deaths and the have no concerns whatsoever about how many others they kill before then.
. . . or after.
If someone upstream pollutes the water so that those downstream can’t use it, it leads to war.
The future can’t fight back.
If you’re a God King, the future dies with you so it is of no concern.
Though that logic does make having kids superfluous.
But then, the Greek Pantheon did see their spawn as playthings too.
> If you’re a God King, the future dies with you so it is of no concern.
If you are the First Emperor, you will live/rule forever: the Grand historian Sima Quian on the tomb at the heart of the Emperor’s 20 sq, miles mausoleum:
“They [the labourers] dug through three layers of groundwater and poured in bronze to make the outer coffin. Palaces and scenic towers for a hundred officials were constructed, and the tomb filled with rare artifacts and wonderful treasure. Craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anyone who enters the tomb. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze and Yellow River, and the great sea, and set to flow mechanically. Above were represented the heavenly constellations, below, the features of the land. Candles were made from ‘man-fish’, which is calculated to burn and not extinguish for a long time.”
It should also be noted that high CO2 levels have been shown to reduce the nutritional value of rice. The jury’s out on other crops. This is on top of the already serious reductions in the nutritional value of our food because of soil degradation and breeding for supermarket appearance rather than nutrition or even taste. (that practice should constitute fraud)
These linked problems would seem to point to regenerative agriculture as essential for both its carbon sequestration effects and for improving the quality of our food. The problem would appear to be that the practices of regenerative ag–limit disturbance, armor the surface, build diversity, keep living roots in the soil, integrate animals–although they are scientifically based, are basically low tech and offer few opportunities for potentially profitable scams like rocket ships carrying sulfur to the skies.
this was linked to something that was in a link in a Link(Ha!), here, in the last few days:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
and i’d like to recc this book again:https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44326330-the-enchantments-of-mammon
i got a bit more than 1/2 through it when my recent chaostime began, in May…and it’s a fascinating take on this very topic…economics as religion.
Here’s what he says about trees etc.
So he is not in fact ignoring capture solutions other than trees. Whereas your ad hominem does not account for the Socratic tone of the article which is merely asking which way is best. Nor is he painting a rosy scenario for geoengineering.
IMO these discussions should be taking place and not condemned via spats of high dudgeon.
I don’t know what sort of carbon sequestration methodology you’re imagining, but the one the author talks about is the planting of trees. The things you highlighted would be necessary to accomplish the kind of tree planting effort the author imagines.
Never does he mention regenerative agriculture in this paragraph or any other paragraph in that article. And regenerative agriculture does not require any of the things you highlighted: irrigation, fire suppression or genetically modified plants. Did you imagine fire suppression would be necessary for regenerative agriculture?
Air pollution deaths from the added sulfur in the air would be more than offset by declines in the number of deaths from extreme heat, which would be 10 to 100 times larger.
You’re rather dismissive of this idea. Do you doubt the likely number of deaths from extreme heat, or the number from added sulphur (which isn’t the only material proposed for stratospheric aerosol injection)?
And Keith has been very clear about what SAI can do, and what it can’t, like reduce ocean acidification or atmospheric CO2.
Or — we could simply learn to use less energy, and avoid both sorts of deaths.
Do you really trust more technology to counteract the effects of three centuries of unhinged techno-worship?
Sorry I can’t remember the name of the commenter here who recommended a book called A Small Farm Future, by Chris Smaje. You might want to read it. Basically, the problem is not global warming so much as capitalism running amuck, consuming every resource on earth in order to stoke the fires of endless economic growth.
Cloud-seeding won’t solve that problem.
There is talk of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, but even if that happens, the world will already be hotter, with worse heat waves, droughts, floods and storms, and rising sea levels.
That is very true. There must be carbon removal one way or another to stop the heating and eventually reverse it. This spraying scheme does nothing to accomplish that. The other bad effects continue. Why not go with a method that addresses ecological collapse in a number of different ways simultaneously? Why not go with a method whose list of side effects doesn’t sound like Stephen Colbert, when he was still funny, hawking the latest from Prescott Pharmaceuticals?
It’s high tech. It comes with awful known side effects and the unknown unknowns are terrifying. Why would anyone think that’s a good idea unless there was money behind it?
Net-zero is a cynical dodge and a dance around the need for actual-zero and reduction of current levels of legacy skycarbon alreay up in the air.
” Net-zero” just means ” let’s raise the skycarbon level to a thousand ppm, and when we reach a thousand ppm, then we will only put up as much more skycarbon as natural processes take back down. And hey presto! Net Zero! as Kurt Vonnegut would have said.
“…consuming every resource on earth in order to stoke the fires of endless economic growth.” In my demented mind the crux of the problem is the profit motive. If we just slam on the brakes and say “profit does not exist in this world and we can’t afford to pretend so anymore” so we are going to make credit go around without profit and without debt service. We need to do this. Eliminate the need for profit in order to survive to make more profit to stoke the fires of endless…profit. If the profit motive were eliminated decisions would be made based on good science; cooperation and equality; respect for the planet and etc. Today and for as long as profit is the goal human civilization will exploit the planet and each other to gain it. It’s much, much too expensive.
“economics as religion”
And then there’s the other myth of economics as science. Kate Raworth does a nice job in Doughnut Economics of tracing how John Stuart Mill sought to cast economics as a “science” to capture some of the glow from scientific advancements of his time. Later came Jevons with his supply and demand curves in an attempt to make economics an apolitical inquiry into “laws” just like physics.
Oops, wrong spot.
Re: death estimates
He doesn’t consider alternatives, the most obvious being to move people out of heat-stricken areas. Consider his own list of the downsides:
Does he want to claim he can quantify and localize these effects? Is that even possible? How can he possibly know how many people might be killed by such huge and inherently unpredictable side effects? He’s pulling that “10-100” times out of his rear.
With that list of side effects and the admission that, at best, it treats one aspect of one symptom of a broad ecological overshoot, there are a lot better alternatives.
Do people in heat-stricken areas want to be moved out? Who would move them out? Would countries less affected want them? Keith says there’s evidence that “support for geoengineering research is stronger in regions that are poorer and more vulnerable to climate change”, and that tallies with my personal experience.
How do you know the side effects of SAI would be huge? Keith says it would make some regions wetter and others drier, but global warming is doing that anyway, and research suggests that overall, the changes would be more drastic without SAI. And using, say, calcite for SAI is unlikely to deplete stratospheric ozone (though I notice Keith makes no mention of it in Friday’s NYT article; perhaps it’s been ruled out as a possibility).
If India becomes too drought-stricken hot to inhabit any more, where do a billion Indians get moved out to?
Anywhere they want to, given that they have atom bombs and delivery systems, and the expertise to make chemical and biological agents if they feel they need to in order to make some kind of a point.
Stanley’s S&D curves were sketchy at best. I always remembered him for his theory that sun-spots cause economic panic. Maybe he had something there…
I’m not seeing Keith mentioning ocean acidification or the other adverse effects of excessive atmospheric CO2 in his NYT oped.
And I do see him trying to play cute by limiting deaths incurred with his spraying by carefully limiting them to “air pollution.” What about those who die from the depletion of the ozone layer or those killed by floods or famine due to drought caused by making “areas wetter or drier?” That supposed utilitarian calculation, offensive by its own terms, is phony.
How about something more along the lines of the Hippocratic Oath. Humans have done enough resulting in the death of other humans and non-humans. Let’s stop. We don’t employ any more technologies or practices that cause death, even–prays not to be struck down by the IH–if it might make some billionaire a nice return on his money. That’s where all the propositions we’re going to hearing in the coming years are coming from ultimately. People cannot conjure up this amount of hubris without that kind of motivation.
China thinks their phosphate resources are better used at home.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-10-01/china-expected-to-stop-phosphate-exports/100505026
China must have somehow gotten the idea that Australia and AUKUS are self-sufficient in political guano/..
China realizes that we’re approaching Peak Phosphorus based on known reserves. Growth-uber-alles-ers have ridiculed the idea of Peak Phosphorus, like they ridicule any assertion that Earth’s “resources” are not unlimited, especially since the discovery of large phosphate reserves in Morocco that are claimed to be capable of providing phosphorus needs for another 300-400 years.
There’s just a little problem, though. Those Moroccan deposits have high levels of cadmium. Cadmium is toxic, and is taken up through plant roots and deposited in roots, leaves and fruit. Yummy.
China realizes that phosphorus is critical for plants, and that it cannot be supplied by other plants like nitrogen can be added to the soil through the action of bacteria working with legumes. The Chinese are apparently trying to avoid having to rely on adding toxic cadmium to their soils because of the need for phosphorus.
If Joe Biden really wants to demonstrate that
democraciesneoliberal oligarchies are superior to whatever the Chinese are, he’ll have to demonstrate that the U. S. government is capable of reining in the oligarchs at least enough to keep them from killing us all. The Chinese government seems to be moving on several fronts that at least appear to be accomplishing that feat under their system.The Moroccan phosphate rock would probably be treated as an ore . . . . refined into chemical phosphorus for making into various pure phosphorus chemicals for various fertilizer formulations.
The cadmium would be treated as an unwanted pollutant to be dumped out into the ocean or land or groundwater or wherever the phosphate refiners could get away with dumping it.
It’s similar to the way there’s now resorting to tar sands. To keep up the fiction of inexhaustability, “dirtier” and dirtier sources are deemed usable requiring more and more expensive refinery methods and producing more and more toxic by-products.
And the denial goes on.
Moroccan phosphate: the ” Alberta Tar Dreck” of phosphates.
Regarding the coin debate: could the FED just cancel a trillion of the treasury debt it holds? It would effectively be the same as the coin yes?
I am not a financier, but doesn’t the fed already do that when buys bonds on mark to model then rolls them over? They may or may not do this exactly, but the cost of the 09 bailout was in the “t’s”… Anyway, this sounds like a good way to hand money to people who don’t need it.
I certainly got some details wrong so went looking for an article of explanation…
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-5-things-to-know-about-the-surge-in-fed-mortgage-bond-buying-2019-11-16
at any rate the fed buys a lot of crap and has an agenda…I don’t have the chops to decipher it…
No. They “physically” could. Just like someone physically could commit murder, or in this case suicide, but there are existential repercussions to this.
Earlier this week there was a debate posted between prof. Hudson and Thomas Picketty. Hudson was brilliant and to the point in his friendly criticism of Picketty. That the only solution out of the West’s(USA’s) predicament is debt jubilee but that this is the most unpalatable option to those in charge. The Fed cancelling the portion of debt owed to it would be just that, debt jubilee. They can do it no doubt. But if Lenin once wrote about the capitalist selling the rope that will hang them. The Fed cancelling it’s owned portion of debt is a strung up leap off the gallows.
French police open fire on migrants’ dinghy on Dunkirk beach with potentially lethal rubber bullets to stop their illegal boat crossing the Channel to the UK Daily Mail
We have about 200 miles of mostly-disjointed, slightly used, wall sections down of the Mexican border that we probably won’t need until January, 2025. Will this help make up for stealing the nuclear submarine contract from Australia?
How Mental Health Became a Social Media Minefield
The Soviets were pioneers of this, weaponizing mental health. Capitalists turned mental health into a growth industry.
At least with the Soviets, the propaganda was obvious and easy to discern. In the West, capitalism and politics have merged to induce fears, nourish doubts, and to exploit the concept of mental illness for power and profit: the Soviets have nothing when compared to today’s liberals!!!
Politically, pushing conformity, obedience and group-think is nothing new, but instead of a little red book good citizens seem expected to carry a bottle of Adderall or whatever big pharma is pushing this month… though it might not be a bad idea to spike news-readers coffee or water with this before they go on air for broadcasts… can’t see a problem with this.
During the “resistance” portion of SERE training, alongside induced-dependency, the topic of learned helplessness was introduced– basically one of the tactics cults and other groups use to control their captives. Whenever I happen to catch some commercial t.v., whether “news” programs or commercial breaks, I can’t help but to think that I am observing military-grade psychological warfare being waged against a mostly untrained and inexperienced civilian population.
I’ve lost friends to Limbaugh and Maddow– grown and intelligent adults– who came to believe “Obama’s birth certificate is fake!” or “Trump is a Russian agent!” (funny how these lies share the same origins), and if this can happen to mature individuals what the hell is going to happen the minds of kids growing up on a diet of social media? Is public education up to the task of teaching kids enough to resist and avoid the cult-like BS and to develop actual independance of thought, to retain the power of their own individuality and autonomy of person?
I am in no way suggesting that mental health issues can be real or serious, but there seems to be a great deal of effort spent in attempts to convince people that they have problems that they don’t really have, or to redirect persons from focusing on actual issues that could/do/will affect them– this is one of the landmines found in social media, though designed to maim, not kill.
12 states till have moratoriums so I would say that is enough to stop a spike…
https://www.mba.org/advocacy-and-policy/cmf-policy-issues/cref-eviction-moratoriums-by-state-map
A Declassified State Department Report Says Microwaves Didn’t Cause “Havana Syndrome”
(readable)
HOW WE REVERSE ENGINEERED THE CUBAN “SONIC WEAPON” ATTACK
(technical)
On Cuba, Diplomats, Ultrasound, and Intermodulation Distortion
“Beginning with screen shots of the acoustic spectral plots from the AP news, we reverse engineered ultrasonic signals that could lead to those outcomes as a result of intermodulation distortion with non-linearity in the acoustic transmission medium. We created a proof of concept ultrasonic device that amplitude modulates a signal over an inaudible ultrasonic carrier. When a second inaudible ultrasonic source interfered with the primary source, intermodulation distortion created audible byproducts that share spectral characteristics with audio from the AP news. Our conclusion is that if ultrasound played a role in harming diplomats in Cuba, then a plausible cause is intermodulation distortion between ultrasonic signals that unintentionally synthesize audible tones. In other words, acoustic interference without malicious intent to cause harm could have led to the audible sensations in Cuba.“
The Havana subplot was one of the dumber story elements of the Russiagate story arc. I’m not sure what the writer was thinking with that one.
The three writers, from Zhejiang University and the University of Michigan, were seeking to explain how the sounds recorded in Havana may have been entirely due to US Embassy ultrasound sources, such as devices used for burglar alarms, room occupancy sensors, counter-surveillance or pest control, and that even if Cuban sources were involved, there needn’t have been any intent to do harm. Their findings very much undermine the ‘Russiagate Havana subplot’ narrative of evil communist attacks.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/disneys-aladdin-broadway-musical-canceled-for-2-weeks-after-more-covid-breakthrough-cases/ar-AAP3ueu
Disney’s Aladdin Broadway Musical Canceled for 2 Weeks After More COVID Breakthrough Cases
Golly gee, what a terrible tragedy for Disney, a cherished American institution which has given families so many wonderful, wholesome hours of entertainment. Disney has done so much to make America what it is today. So sad.
Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy Quanta Magazine (David L)
La Mettrie is a fascinating character, a polymath type of figure. I think of him as basically taking Descartes’ ideas and extending them to their natural conclusions, by not being worried about what the [Catholic] Church might say. Descartes was always trying to finesse his arguments in order to avoid being burned alive, or otherwise being subject to harsh clerical treatment. Descartes considered nonhuman animals as “beast-machines.” (This is a term I re-appropriate and hope to rehabilitate in my book.) The beast-machine for Descartes was the idea that nonhuman animals were machines made of flesh and blood, lacking the rational, conscious minds that bring humans closer to God.
==============================
The article certainly doesn’t advance the ideas that animals don’t think, and the idea that would follow that conciousness can’t evolve, but because it is such a bete noir of mine, I feel compelled to note it.
Just a few days ago the antidote had a video of a bear trying to get a mountain goat – the goat had fled down the side of a steep cliff. First, the bear had to understand that the mountain goat was prey, and that bears eat goats. But it also had to understand the future consequences of it’s (i.e., the bear) actions – that if it tried to go further down the cliff, it was likely to fall off the mountain, and ….?die?, i.e., that is, the bear had conciousness of, if not its own mortality, at least the idea that falling has extremely negative repercussions. The bear understood its own FUTURE survival if the bear undertook certain actions. The bear, being in the environment, fully understands the myriad of ways the environment can affect it.
So just a long winded way of saying that human intelligence differs from animal intelligence merely in quantity, and not quality.
“Inside every —— there is an American trying to get out …” Turcopolier (Chuck L). Important.
Several times during the hearings the question of what went wrong, not in Biden misjudgments at the end, but rather in the overall conduct of the 20 year campaign. Promises were made to do intense studies of the road to failure, and I am sure that the studies will be made. It is our way to study such things when they go wrong, but it is seldom true that the study produces valid answers, answers that are valid, accepted and/or implemented. IMO this case will follow that pattern.
In the course of the two days of hearings the word “culture” was occasionally mentioned in passing. The word was mentioned in what seemed to me to be a furtive, slightly embarrassed way. This is typical of Americans, who are in my experience incapable of sustaining the notion in their collective minds that there are other world views that for other peoples are as valid and motivating as the “melting pot” hybrid that has emerged among us as something like a people.
….
After serving on this board for a number of years, it became clear that the professional staff who served the foundation were deeply opposed to grants that stressed study of “culture;” folkways, customs, group identity, etc., and most especially RELIGION as motivating the course of history. No. What was desired by the staff as members of the group-thinkery that is the academy were studies concerned with the “REAL” factors in any situation, in other words, the economic factors hidden beneath a smoke screen of all this “culture nonsense.” *
=========================================
* That is, if you can’t install a system to make the most money possible, you’re not understanding the TRUE motivation.
You know, American’s are incapable of seeing, and apparently understading, that afforcable health care for all would be easily doable, and a great benefit to the economy of the US. Yet, Amercians believe arguments more ridiculous than Elvis is alive, to thwart health care for all. So the belief that the rest of the world should do things the way we do them is just part and parcel of the great American penchant for incuriosity.
This really cool the Amerikan govt doing something to help small ranchers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/feeling-cheated-ranchers-opting-meatpacking-090010648.html
That is great. Locally, the smaller more boutique ranchers (pricey organic meat sold direct at farms or at the farmers market) use a USDA-certified mobile slaughter service because there is no slaughterhouse in this area. Using a similar meat-packing operation would be a real boon for them and might even result in lower prices to the consumer. We generally can’t afford their stuff except for special occasions (eg. short ribs, $22 a pound).
That higher price per pound puts more carbon in the ground.
I found Damien Contandriopoulos’s article, The year public health lost its soul, in Authorea to be helpful in my thinking. I have been sick constantly for a year. The cause of my sickness was that I was giving public health the benefit of the doubt. California has been open since 6/15/21. We’re all good. Right? Nope. I am finally starting to feel better because I wear a respirator and goggles in the office and in the grocery store. I participate in no public gatherings. I live my life as if the harshest lockdown is still in effect.That’s what it takes to stay healthy these days. And oh, we are going to see pedal-to-the-metal Delta spread through January.
Acetaminophen and Tylenol are risky? But I can buy them by the grip load for next to nothing. There must be something more safe that I can take for some of the problems I have with Covid such as inflamation. Iver……. dang, what was that called? Isn’t it pretty safe?
I’ve taken the human form and it’s safe. I have to buy it online from India.
Ivermectin is safe enough that it has been given to millions of children around the world…
I never met a hoss that would take Tylenol. Ivermectin yes!
re: Build Back Better
Perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the (almost) Perfect. The bipartisan bill would already be the largest increase in infrastructure spending in the past fifty years, and there’s votes for it. Congress would be wise to get it on Biden’s desk as soon as possible and then argue for the other $2.5 trillion. It is doable to get the latter, even with Manchin most of his issues are vis-a-vis debt and inflation. Taxes on the rich increase (in a manner that Manchin said he could support, based upon the supposedly leaked letter mentioned in yesterday’s WC) and we progress forward. He’s open to the social spending so long as it’s paid for and isn’t just more entitlement spending – not that people aren’t entitled to healthcare, but it (entitlement vs non-entitlement spending) is a strictly technical problem vis-a-vis how the US gov’t creates it’s budgets. The same can be said of the whole process, lol.
He’s playing the same angle his predaccessor did with Amtrak’s creation. Because of this, WV got some of Amtrak’s first high-speed rail experiments and prototypes in the early 1970s. Biden is going to Congress this week to negotiate directly as Byrd did with Nixon, although the roles were slightly different as Nixon needed money for his continued Vietnam effort. Biden is better situated as he simply cut and run from Afghanistan, which is how the bipartisan bill was actually paid for.
Why would anyone with a conscience want to take the bribe and join the machine, instead of crushing the reactionary “moderate” tendency and destroying neoliberal legitimacy?
The “bipartisan infrastructure bill” is basically another round of fossil fuel subsidies including actively harmful freeway projects, which is exactly the opposite of what any group of sentient beings would and should be doing right now.
The ONLY reason to pass a fossil fuel subsidy bill is if that is the necessary price to be paid in our corrupt and dysfunctional system for getting through a much larger bill containing things that actually need to be done.
The barely leftish wing of Congress should absolutely hold out for their priorities, and should absolutely vote down the bogus infrastructure bill with no regrets at all, unless the bigger bill passes first.
Hillary Clinton is booed in Northern Ireland, called a war criminal:
https://youtu.be/2VaJVpTtVZg
I have never been prouder of having Irish ancestors. I applaud them.
Craig Murray will be in Prison for quite a while longer.
His address is
157095 C Murray
G3/34
HM Prison Edinburgh
33 Stenhouse Rd
Edinburgh
EH11 3LN.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
And if you want to write to Julian Assange his address is
Prisoner A9379AY
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London
SE28 0EB
UK
You can’t send him postcards, only letters.
Vaccine mandate update
The local basketball arena mandated vaccines. Arena knew there would be significant amount of workers that hadn’t been vaccinated. Actually, it was many more than they thought. So many workers didn’t and will not get vaccinated, that arena has a rapid test station set up just for workers. At a place my friend’s job, had a covid outbreak. Strange considering everyone supposedly vaccinated. When company demanded to see vaccine cards, half the staff had forged cards or just lied about getting vaccinated.
The other day I mentioned a planned protest at our hospital and Friday it took place. According to the newspaper 200 nurses and doctors came out and the protest was not just about the forced vax but also about the ban on Ivermectin since that’s “interfering with the doctor/patient relationship.” The hospital’s response was that they are following CDC’s guidelines. No mention that any staff have been fired yet, unlike in NYC.
My guess is that there won’t be firings around here and those NY nurses may start fleeing to Dixie.
Singapore says that sooner or later everyone will catch Covid. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/sooner-later-many-catching-covid-lawrence-wong-112206219.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink
Singapore is 82% fully vaccinated.
Dr. John about the importance of aspirating injections, with special reference to the current injections. utube, 20 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBaIRm4610o
Oh hey, look, the Walton’s (the premier family for the destruction of America’s industrial infrastructure) now wants to branch out into a new area – the destruction of America’s ecology:
WSJ: The Colorado River Is in Crisis. The Walton Family Is Pushing a Solution.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-colorado-river-is-in-crisis-the-walton-family-is-pushing-a-solution-11633167002
Water markets. Reminds me for Frank Herbert’s Dune. Just lovely.
Because markets!
(And quick short cut to the end state – you are poor and will no longer get water out of that tap thingy in the kitchen.)
Water markets already exist insofar as legacy actors can sell their water rights to someone else. In AZ indian reservations do this and new real estate projects involve securing a source of water.
In California rich cities like Los Angeles have green lawns while poor small towns are running dry. The story you linked is heavy on Walton influence and light on the details of what is being proposed.
I have to admit, I cannot get past the WSJ paywall, and did not read the article. Just knowing the absolute destruction the Waltons rained on America via Walmart over the last forty years (and judging what they did to my small town), I’m assuming they will propose buying up complete municipal water districts and destroying the concept of “public water systems.”
Dept. of In a Nutshell:
Alabama governor plans to use COVID relief funds to build more prisons:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/575005-alabama-clears-plan-use-covid-19-relief-funds-to-build-prisons?amp
Why is dejoyless still in charge? Sad
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/01/us-mail-about-to-get-slower-more-expensive/
Because he is implementing the policies that the powerful want. This is what Biden expects of him, same as Trump before him.
I wonder how long until they make their own passenger jet engines?
https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/j-20-stealth-fighter-thrills-crowds-at-airshow-china/
They are working on it: CJ-1000A is developed for the Comac C919 narrow-body airliner.
Jet engines are not impossible to make but difficult to get right. Consider that P&W/GE/RR have problems on their engines. For an airliner reliability is a big concern, so much that some airlines will swap engines after delivery to stagger the age of the engines.
I propose that the coming trillion dollar coin have Martin Luther King on one side and Malcolm X on the other.
Other proposals encouraged.
How about one side have the Pentagon with the phrase “Gotta Pay the Contractors” on one side and Mount Rushmore only with Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton and Obama replacing the original presidents on the other?
If I thought we could direct the freed funds to public health, education, housing, retirement, etc, my suggestion might not be so cynical. Unfortunately I am pretty sure that the majority of our monies will still go to tax cuts for the rich, privatization, and military misadventures.
LOL
Some of us have long had hopes that the Pentagon might be turned into a shopping mall. Great location.
Except for the occasional plane flying into it.
The Pentagon already has a shopping mall. It’s where the buses stop to drop their passengers.They had a Barnes and Noble bookstore there which had a remaindered books table.
>>>Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019: a network meta-regression Lancet. Important.
From the study’s summary:
>>>We compared data from the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to three non-governmental, open-source databases on police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted.
…
>>>We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA.
Bold is done by me.
I have to wonder if the misreporting was actually accidental, or if it was purposely accidental, like the missing half of the police homicides to the FBI’s crime reports until a very few years ago.
The government wants to know ever more about us and to Hades with the Fourth Amendment, but getting accurate, verifiable, and easily available information about it, at every level, is somehow difficult. Even for something as simple as how many people are killed by the police every year. IIRC, the federal government has been classifying into obscurity greater percentages of data each year for decades.
And I knew the state of Oklahoma’s police was probably the deadliest state in the Union, but seeing the stats makes it all the more horrifying. Somehow, I do not think that it being the last, formerly designated Indian Territory (until the entire territory was finally stolen) is incidental to this.
Like I have said before, Native Americans have the worst of everything, regardless of race, but get almost no coverage. This, even though it has only been going on since before Plymouth Rock. Either by the media or the Woke. Interesting that.
In this episode of let the variants roam free: Inside United Airlines’ Decision to Mandate Coronavirus Vaccines
(emphasis mine)
Let the virus be free!
Although to be fair, it’s hard to imagine a wealthy CEO of a business that would mostly not exist with the necessarily strong travel quarantines we require to reduce the spread of variants to be cognizant of the collateral damage of his charge. Or care much about his own behavior.
there are reports of rents skyrocketing everywhere and I don’t get it. 700,000 people have died, many of them tenants, so they no longer need apartments. Millions have lost their income and are now homeless, so they aren’t renting, how can landlords get more rent? just how big is the actual market of AirBNB? I suspect Yves has run articles explaining this, but my search skills are limited.
I inexpert suspicions/thoughts/guesses that it is all the investment or venture funds that have been buying all the housing stock with all the extra money from last years Covid stimulus and the quantitative easing from before that. It is effectively free money for the already wealthy looking to invest somewhere, anywhere, and an immediate income stream is not required, but only desired. Think of all the empty apartments in many, if not most, of the larger, wealthy cities. The cities have a shortage of housing for their citizens, but out of town, even country, investors buy apartments or even houses to earn wealth from the increasing values, store their money, or even as a form of money laundering. One can even use the supposed increased value computed by the inflated listed rents as collateral to get more very cheap loans.
Mixing retail with housing, think of all the empty store fronts in NYC or San Francisco. In a real economy, not having tenants to rent store fronts, or houses, or apartments would force the property owners to reduce their offering rents, but in the whacked out economies of today’s countries, not so much. There are more incentives to Not actually rent.
So my favorite, and San Francisco’s best, art and writing supply store had to close and move to Oakland (IIRC) not because it was unprofitable but because of the pre-covid skyrocketing rents, even though there were plenty of empty store then as well. Survived the Great Depression, but forced to move anyways. And until recently, most new rental construction was in the higher, even luxury, end market despite all the employed people living in their vehicles throughout the entire San Francisco Bay Area. That’s not to talk about the people living on the streets. Some of it is also because of the NIMBYs worried about “those” people moving in near them and lowering property values. As if van and car dwellers and human waste covered streets do not as well. Plus, human decency, but what’s that worth, besides one’s own soul?
It is cheering to see the DemProgs acting as sort of a go-slow to the DemRichies effort to destroy the Bigger Biden Bill under cover of that mean old Manchin and that mean old Sinema.
I would like to see the DemProgs reject DemParty unity as a goal. The only DemParty unity I am interested in is seeing the DemProgs force the DemRichies into Unconditional Surrender and an utterly abject humiliating subservience to DemProg rule. Failing that, I would like to see the DemProgs exterminate the DemRichies from politics, and if that means no bill, and exterminating the DemParty itself from existence, I am fine with that. The DemProgs can then monopolise the “Democratic Party” name unto themselves, and begin a long and extensive purge of every Fromite Borenite Clintonite piece of DLC filth and metastatic Clintonoma cancer cell and every Yersiniobama pestis political plague germ from out of their DemProg monopoly Democratic Party.
The Dem/Uniparty see the DemProgs the same way and they have the support of the Deep and Security States as well as the same deep pocketed American kleptocracy that support the likes of Kyrsten Sinema, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin and Mich McConnell; I support your goal, but there is a long, hard way before it succeeds.
It is nice to see some spine in the Progressives.
If they understand that it is a long hard goal, then each passing frustration and prevention of attaining that goal may well make the DemProgs more intolerant of DemRichies and less forgiving of them; and might lead them to conclude that the only proper approach to them is indeed political extermination.
They would be right, if they ever reach that point. And if they do, they would then need a powerful Intelligence/ CounterIntelligence Division to keep the DLC Clintobama filth from disguising itself as “DemProgs who have seen the light” and sincerely want admission into the newly decontaminated party. They must never under any circumstance be allowed in. Ever. Ever.
Like the Labour apparatchiks did for Jeremy Corbyn? Both in politics and in the police, Anglo-American establishment skillfully uses informants and the police to spy on and hinder anti-establishment, or even just reformist organizations.
Now, if they could just be just as skillful in governing, emergency government services, or just in winning any of those wars. But that’s just silly talk as there is no profit in doing that.
They would have to create their own with zero personnel drawn from the Govertelligence Community we already have.
It would be very hard to do. But without it, such a genuine Party cannot prevent mass contamination by DemRichie infiltrators.
I don’t think reforming the Democrat party is realistic, but I was very encouraged by the news that nearly half of both Democrats and Republicans think that splitting up the country is a good idea.
Splitting up the USA into small enough units that they cannot threaten the rest of the world is pretty obviously the best gift the people of the USA could give to humanity. But I would not have thought more than 10% of the country was already on board with that idea.
I live in Arizona, and I will donate money and vote as needed to put an end to Sinema’s political career, but other than that I think I will probably focus my political energy going forward on legitimizing the idea of a peaceful breakup of the USA.
Who gets custody of the H-bombs? And the A-bombs?
Who gets custody of the H-bombs? And the A-bombs?
Trust me. Probably the worst anybody could do is bore into the casing of one and trigger a criticality event that kills them from radiation poisoning in a day or three.
Thermonuclear devices are impossible to set off without the codes and some very specific knowledge. The average American in possession of one would no more be able to set it off than they would able to invade Cape Canaveral and then run a space program as a result of that.
So I left a comment in Spanish, lost in moderation, translated: She is Castellian. the boars were Catalunyan, were they separatists?
Oh well, never rmind.
Lost now even in English.
OBTW: I like her.
Gotta hand it to the Israelis: They are totally up-front about their prejudices.
Omer Bar-Lev, who as Israel’s minister of public security oversees the country’s police force, decried what he said was “the prevailing assumption that as long as they are killing each other, that’s their problem.”
Violent Crime Spikes Among Arabs In Israel As Officials Admit Neglect (NY Times)
Bar Lev is from the Labour Party, hopefully he’ll have enough time to effect some change.
The article doesn’t make this calculation but 100 homicides per 2 million population translates to 5 per 100,000, which is a bit less than the California homicide rate (5.6)
And is it mere hasbara to note that Bar Lev, who is a Jewisraeli, decries this attitude?
The relevant question, of course, is whether his decryal of this attitude is shared by such a tiny minority of Jewisraelis that it will amount to nothing more than a decryal in the wilderness?
Not sure what you mean. He’s the minister of public security, not a random lefty. Of course he may succeed or fail to do something about it. We shall see.
In any case, this rate, which is below the US average and 3 times less than Black murder rate in the US is acknowledged as a problem. One can be cynical and say that only lip service has been paid to solving it.
Rabin ( Labor) was the Prime Minister. And they assassinated his ass. Bar Lev should think about that. Perhaps get his friends ( if he has any) to have a revenge-plan ready to go if he himself gets assassinated for trying to address that ” its their problem” attitude.
It’s a spare the air day in Sonoma County, with a red flag fire warning.
I crossed the Russian River west of Hacienda Bridge, it was less than 10′ wide where I crossed and the water did not top my knees.
It’s windy and 88 degrees.
Ten feet? There are creeks in Marin as wide in a wet year. As much as I worry about mudslides and flooding due to the burn-off, we really need some rain. I am even seeing browning twigs on Redwoods that are at least decades, if not more that a century, old, not some new tree, which is disturbing. I have never seen that before. Like ever.
I.ve been seeing the same browning of redwoods throughout Sonoma County since early August.
And not just a few.
I did not see this during the 76-77 drought.
https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/21-129.pdf
The FBI and DOJ are implementing important reforms as a result of our prior FISA reports. However, we believe additional action is necessary to ensure rigorous supervisory review and to further strengthen Woods Procedures oversight to reduce the risk of erroneous information being included in FISA applications, which can lead to faulty probable cause determinations and infringement of U.S. persons’ civil liberties.
========================================
So, no one is demoted, no one is fired, no one is prosecuted, no one is convicted. And the same people who didn’t know how, or didn’t want to, enforce prior FISA court rules, will now be expected to enforce the new and improved FISA court rules.
Kevin Clinesmith was charged and convicted, sentenced to 400 hours of community service for lying under oath to a Federal Judge.
No discipline by the Bar, he’s still allowed to practice law.
Vaccinated patient starts an outbreak in Israeli hospital.
“Israel: “A nosocomial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant infected 42 patients, staff and family members;
39 were fully vaccinated” (h/t @JeanRees10) https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.39.2100822
Within the linked study:
“The index case was a fully vaccinated haemodialysis patient in their 70s.” And “Four days after admission, the index case was diagnosed with COVID-19 by PCR for SARS-CoV-2 E gene with a quantitative cycle (Cq) value of 13.59”
https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1444344743161475075
If I am reading this correctly, Index case means the first person causing the outbreak. And he went undiagnosed (asymptomatic?) for four days.
Awesome! But NSFW!
Honest Government Ad | AUKUS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb5OKrYzZp8
Here is a little tiktok video which teaches us that we need to know the “rest of the story” before deciding for sure for sure what something means just because we saw it.
Clearly the hotel manager in this video felt the kids did something wrong. Unfortunately, the kids did not record whatever they did or did not do before they started recording the hotel manager in the video. So I have no way of knowing for sure if he is “overreacting” or not.
Though my instinct tells me he is not/ did not, and the way the junior Karen keeps video-phoning him and the way she says ” I am recording you” suggests to me that these kids did exactly what he thinks they did. And if so, he handled it exactly right. Maybe they will benefit from this Reality Therapy, if indeed that is what it is.
Anyway, here is the video.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/q045b8/hotel_manager_teaches_kids_a_lesson_after/
And now, a demonstrator with a sense of political humor.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/q01bzn/happening_now_dallas_texas/
And here is a micro-video showing evidence that people knew how to make things before the digital era.
Anyone who can make a thing like this today with just hand tools or some “primitive” power tools at most may well be Jackpot Survival-Ready.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/pzz98i/old_craftsmanship/
And get this . . . ” Joe Manchin, who is holding up crucial climate change initiatives in Biden’s reconciliation bill, collects $500,000 a year from coal stocks dividends: report” Here is the link.
https://www.businessinsider.com/senator-joe-manchin-half-million-year-coal-stocks-climate-crisis-2021-9
I couldn’t read it myself, because I have reached my “free article limit” at that site, but I can get a feel for what’s in it just from the title.
Assuming the DemProgs kill both bills before letting the Manchin get its way, who does what to whom next? $500,000 per year in dividends? That must be a lot of stock. Is there any way to find out which particular mining companies Coaly Joe’s stocks are in? If there is, a movement of millions to lower the use of retail electricity in the service areas of the utilities which buy that coal could very well attrit and degrade the revenue stream going back to Coaly Joe. If there is no way to tell which ones, then an electricity down-usage movement would have to be much more geographically broad, and diffuse, and less effective against Coaly Joe in particular.
where did IM Doc disappear to? Miss his commentary
He’s overwhelmed with cases. Fewer than the earlier peak but tons of staff have quit.
Astonishes me some pols and hospitals think they can fire/drive away experienced staff in the middle of a pandemic and have a good outcome.
By their standards, it is. So long as the ratio of cost to revenue is increased, it is considered a good outcome by them. And so long as it the “libs,” conservatives,” “horsey paste,” “Trumpers,” the Moon People, whatever can be blamed for the deaths instead of the cutbacks, why worry?
Thank you for the update on Donziger. Unconscionable that this is happening in the US, although not surprising given the treatment of Assange and others.
For the heck of it I typed in “Donziger sentenced” and the Guardian article was the first to come up. Nothing from any of the mainstream corporate press in the US except for the WSJ. But if Navalny wasn’t fed a second dessert nightly during his incarceration in Russia you’d heard Maddow screaming about the injustice of it all for weeks.
“Public health lost its soul.” True. But the ruling financial cult by definition has no soul. Only money has value. This philosophy has been in charge since Bill Clinton. There is no alternative to the corporate/state. If something profits corporations, it’s done. If it costs them money, it is deep-sixed. People are of no matter. Since Barrack Obama, financial leaders are lawless. Privatized government simply cannot do “public good”. There is no such thing in the current political/economic system.
Get use to it. You are on your own. Without the restoration of democracy and good governance; climate change, public health, public education, endless wars, and homelessness cannot/will not be addressed. The transfer of money, already 50 trillion dollars, from the 90% to the 1% will continue until system collapse.
Here is what is claimed to be a ” far right boogaloo boi” admitting to having pretended to be a BLM protester while shooting at a police station. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/q059v2/weve_been_saying_that_sht_all_along/
Because if it is true, it raises again the question of how many “antifas” were really MAGA Trumpanons in antifa disguise. And how many “arsonist looting rioters” in several cities were really MAGA Trumpanons in disguise working to get arsonist looting and rioting started and under way.