Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war — both real fog and stage fog — in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.
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–Yves
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Climate
Gabriel Makhlouf: Climate change – avoiding the “Do I Feel Lucky?” school of policymaking (PDF) Bank of International Settlements
Miracle Fuel Hydrogen Can Actually Make Climate Change Worse Bloomberg
#COVID19
COVID-19 cases are on the rise. Does it matter anymore? The Hill
Monkeypox
Monkeypox Tracker Global Health. Commentary:
1. A #monkeypox 🧵@WHO has released a new update. They say as of June 2, a total of 27 non-endemic countries have reported 780 cases.
The line list being maintained by https://t.co/VLiqjLB18u currently reports nearly 1000 from 39 countries. https://t.co/nRO5gux6LW pic.twitter.com/OPj3dG5cXP— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) June 5, 2022
On Monkeypox, if we could just decide to “Let ‘er rip” openly and right away, instead of posturing and having many meetings and pressers, I for one would be very grateful.
China?
Dust Off That Dirty Word Detente and Engage With China Niall Ferguson (!), Bloomberg
Can the new US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework really compete with China’s mammoth Belt and Road Initiative? South China Morning Post
Chinese Influencer’s Ice-Cream Pitch Inadvertently Introduces Fans to Tiananmen Square Massacre WSJ
Hong Kong School, Bar Clusters Send Cases to Six-Week High Bloomberg
Myannar
Assassinations Become Weapon of Choice for Guerrilla Groups in Myanmar NYT. Local administrators for the junta have been targeted for at least a year, as NC readers know.
A night with Myanmar’s wizards Today Nigeria News
India
India’s First Case Of Sologamy Creates Awareness Of New Trend – Analysis Eurasian Review (Furzy Mouse).
UK/EU
Boris Johnson faces vote of no confidence in his leadership FT. About time.
Brits Go Wild When Queen Has Tea With Paddington Bear HuffPo
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine War Day #102: Who Controls Severodonetsk? Awful Avalanche
Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on arms AP
Ukraine war: UK to send Ukraine M270 multiple-launch rocket systems BBC. More or less same range as HIMARS. So, long-range compared to a howitzer, not long-range like an ICBM.
As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight? AP
* * * Turkey President Erdogan Claims ‘panic Observed’ In Europe Over Russia-Ukraine War Republic World
We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever Ross Douthat, NYT
Why rushing to document war crimes in Ukraine poses problems FT
* * * NATO holds Baltic Sea naval exercises with Finland, Sweden AP
Bosphorus sea trade unaffected by Ukraine war, sanctions Hellenic Shipping News
Russia’s Lavrov forced to cancel Serbia visit after neighboring countries close airspace Politico
* * * Ukraine volunteer fighter and US citizen Craig Lang armed by Colombia to overthrow Venezuela’s gov’t, FBI source says The Gray Zone
US Excludes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua From Regional Summit Bloombergx
US to allow Venezuelan oil to be shipped to Europe: report The Hill
Biden Administration
Bad Branding: Another blobby bite at the anti-restraint apple Stephen Walt, Responsible Statecraft
Regulatory Capture Cory Doctorow
Supply Chain
The cost of complexity in supply chains FT
Shipping Chaos Is the Latest Sign that Capitalism Is Eating Itself Tribune
The Bezzle
Australian Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer on grifts, Elon Musk, crypto bubbles and Pauline Hanson Crikey
Investors say Miami crypto whiz kid took them to the cleaners Miami Herald
Gunz
Delay may be darkest hour ever Uvalde Leader-News
Going to an NRA convention to find the “Mark Zuckerberg of guns” Yasha Levine
RussiaGate
The Steele Dossier and Lying to the FBI — Not Guilty as Charged John Kiriakou, Scheerpost
Capitol Seizure
Police State Watch
‘I’m not going to help you:’ Man drowned in Tempe Town Lake as police watched, transcripts reveal FOX10
‘Trying to help’: Police officers from across Texas converge on Uvalde in wake of massacre at Robb Elementary Houston Chronicle
Our Famously Free Press
Silicon Valley Corporations Are Taking Control Of History Caitlin’s Newsletter
Calling Bullshit The Art Of Skepticism In A Data Driven World with Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West (video) Center for Inquiry (NL).
L’Affaire Joffrey Epsteins
Elon Musk asks why ‘leaking’ Justice Department won’t spill Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list and says it’s ‘odd’ officials remain silent on billionaire pedophile and his madam Daily Mail. He’s right. But degrees of separation:
Your own brother dated Jeffrey Epstein’s “ex girlfriend”! Insane you’d ever bring this up
— TrueAnon (@TrueAnonPod) June 5, 2022
Class Warfare
Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark (PDF) NBER. From the Abstract: “This paper provides evidence from the US and Denmark that managers with a business degree (“business managers”) reduce their employees’ wages. Within five years of the appointment of a business manager, wages decline by 6% and the labor share by 5 percentage points in the US, and by 3% and 3 percentage points in Denmark….. We establish that the proximate cause of these (relative) wage effects are changes in rent-sharing practices following the appointment of business managers. Exploiting exogenous export demand shocks, we show that non-business managers share profits with their workers, whereas business managers do not.” Professional Managerial Class.
How ‘Mega Landlords’ Threaten Housing Stability for Renters Invisible People (DCBlogger).
Thoughts on software-defined silicon LWN.net. Nobody tell John Deere…
Debunking the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart Mad in America
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
110 comments
Comments are closed.
34-yr-old’s start-up article on fusion energy is from Feb. 2021.
That doesn’t matter much. Excluding the biographical details I’ve been reading identical articles since the 1980’s. It’s like Groundhog Day, every few months in a magazine somewhere the same nuclear fusion article is published with exactly the same claims.
They remind me more of Sunday School. The parables of the religion of progress are timeless.
Flying cars goes back at least to the 1950s
And references to the Jetsons’ car have been around since … the Jetsons. BTW, even though all manner of flying cars and taxis are currently in development, none of them come close to that model.
George’s ride flew with some kind of anti-gravity device driven by an unidentified source that apparently didn’t involve spewing hot air out a nozzle. Our flying cars, OTOH, are suspended and take flight with madly flailing props that mimic bird wings for their lift driven by electric power that has been around since Thomas Edison. And the electricity is generated by burning dinosaur remains to boil water and drive Edison’s turbines.
This article can go onto the same vault as all those stories about natural organisms that will eat up all that waste plastic scattered around the world.
Those natural organisms are more likely than nuclear fusion since there is a lot of energy in plastic and a lot of plastic available as food.
Nuclear fusion – so far a lot of energy has been expended making it work and insufficient energy has been produced.
Yes, though humans really are part of nature (hard to swallow sometimes!), the difference to me is that on the one hand we have the vast immensity of natural, evolutionary forces just doing what they do (without any help from humans) and adapting to whatever environmental conditions/resources have been presented (plastic) vs. on the other hand, one measly, hubristic species convincing itself that it can think its way out of a problem (need more cheap energy).
And think of the catastrophe if we actually developed a “free” energy source.
We’d destroy the planet even faster…..
Looks like they are going out for another funding round. Hence, coverage.
For the grassroots version, dedicated to the spirit of one Mr. Philo Farnsworth, who had already developed television, try here: https://fusor.net/
I love to watch low tech, diverse approaches to monumental challenges.
Re: fusion start up,
“And so he turned to capitalism …” apparently capitalism has so hollowed out American society that a theoretical breakthrough in energy, the sort of breakthrough that would push the US back into a position of global leadership, is ignored by the government and has to go begging rich old white men for cash. Or, it’s vaporware that will only serve to get a few rich investors richer.
US money spent for Ukraine literally exceeds the West’s R&D spending on fusion for the past 10 years.
Compare money spent on US potato chips and fusion research…on year’s of potato chip consumption dwarfs US research money on fusion.
South Korea is a leader in fusion research, and they spend something like (IIRC) only $100 million per year.
this is insane. Truly civilization changing research is being ignored.
the path to science breakthrough is led by lots of failed experiments.
I don’t think this is civilization changing research, but the pitch deck clearly presents it as such. If it were, then it would be criminal to spend so little on it or make the developers go scrounging around for handouts from Gates and Bezos.
I agree that failure is the only path of scientific success, which is why the most important paths of science require government support. Capitalism doesn’t have the financial patience to absorb the failures that will necessarily precede breakthroughs. And the total amount of research funding may not be the appropriate factor in determining government support of basic research (of course in a case like this, basic research related to fusion tech but also related to other technological developments may not be directly included in funding for fusion research). Those necessary magnets might get their research funding via a channel where the magnet technology could make a more immediate impact.
For most of us, a fool and his money are soon parted. And then broke-dom.
For a few, the amount of their money is akin to that miracle non-existent perpetual motion flywheel that does not exist.
They bottomless wealthy can scatter a few seeds here and there, knowing most will not grow, but one of them will — and it will simply add to their limitless number of assets.
I mean, think of it, if you could control centralized energy and develop a new rate-payer base for another, diversified stream of annuity income, I mean why would you not be all over it?
Greed is GOOD!!!
More of the same isn’t exactly “change”. An inexhaustible, centralized energy supply wouldn’t change the nature of an industrial “civilization” or emancipate people from it; on the contrary, the more consolidated a resource, the easier for elites to deny or restrict access to it and make up stories to rationalize the situation. Case in point: the Kwakiutl had a rich natural environment in which Codere (1950) notes that “subsistence demands could have been met easily by concentration on getting and storing enough of a few natural products such as salmon and berries”, but instead they chose to work much harder than they had to, in order to have aristocracy and theater.
Fusion energy will not be a panacea. In fact, all that fusion energy will do is hasted the planet’s demise as all the cheap and unlimited energy will be directed towards destroying the planet with ever more production and consumption. Don’t ever wish for any real fusion energy breakthroughs. The planet needs less energy available, not more.
“‘I’m not going to help you:’ Man drowned in Tempe Town Lake as police watched, transcripts reveal”
After reading that article, it was a good thing that that guy’s wife was not a registered life guard. Otherwise those police would have probably tasered her to stop her jumping in to save her husband.
I am reading that transcript, and I am thinking to myself – could professional police officers really be this stupid?
Let’s pretend, for the moment, that there are no inferiority/superiority/psychology of power issues at play. In the transcript, the officers see a guy who is flailing about in the water clearly in a state of panic. Incidentally, any lifeguard ought to be able to tell you that this state of panic is what makes drowning individuals so potentially dangerous to the would-be rescuer as well as to themselves. But the point is, this guy is clearly in no condition to think rationally or to follow rational instructions – and yet the police decide that the way to help him is to issue such instructions (swim over there, grab that thing) to him, repeatedly.
It’s like – if someone is choking in a restaurant, instead of performing the requisite Heimlich whats-it to help them, you stand in front of them and give them instructions to do it themselves. No person with any level of first aid training should reasonably opt for the latter, and so is it the case that no-one is teaching police officers what to do when they encounter a person that’s drowning, or is it that they are complete morons and cannot comprehend that a panicked individual is in no condition to follow any sort of directions until you alleviate the cause of said panic, in this case, literally drowning?
None of it is really shocking to me, which tells you how bad things have gotten with American police from one’s subjective perspective, but ye gods…
Watching the video, I don’t think the police should have jumped in after him. All water rescue is dangerous… the victim will usually fight you as try and help.
Jumping from height from the bridge is not safe. Swimming out, while keeping distance and trying to hand them something to grab would have worked… but he was pretty far out and right near the intake for the damn. It was not safe.
Their best bet would have been to throw something that floats down to the victim. I’m guessing that they don’t have a lot of swim rescue training/experience in the desert.
There should have been a life preserver or rope on the bridge.
Yes, you are so right!
Do Not Ever attempt a water rescue without being a supreme swimmer AND having a flotation device. New ocean lifeguards were certified this week in my local beach town and that was their explicit instruction: never go offshore for rescue without a rescue flotation belt.
Just a few years past a non-swimmer attempted to “save” two ostensibly distressed swimmers near our harbor mouth. This young father drowned. The swimmers weren’t really in distress.
It’s a tough call, but I’m with the cops on this one. Rescuing a drowning person is extremely dangerous if you’re not trained on lifesaving techniques; the drowning person will pull you down to a watery grave in his desperation. Best to toss a rope or lifesaver.
How dare you attempt to take away the enjoyment that so many people seem to derive from bashing cops for not being Omnipotent Superheroes with Eternally Perfect Split-second judgement calls every,.,single…time.
Do people still have such exalted expectations of cops? In any case, failure to be a super hero isn’t the only reason people criticize cops, and isn’t even a requirement in some of the situations where they kill or hurt or fail to protect people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster)
A great American tradition!
You might check out William Walker’s last paragraph. Death by firing squad is death from natural causes.
Google should do a William Walker doodle for the May 2024 bicentennial celebration of the fellow’s birth.
Delay may be darkest hour ever Uvalde Leader-News
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi there Uvalde Texas, what you say
Step aside partner, it’s my day
Bend an ear and listen to my version
Of a really squalid Tennessee excursion
Pardon me, boy
Is that the Chattanooga shoot shoot? (yes yes)
He hit 20
Frankly plenty
Can we afford a Chattanooga shoot shoot
I’ve had my share and no more to spare
You leave the streets of Philly, ’bout 14 shot there or more
Reload a magazine and then you’re emotionally in Baltimore
Bodies in the rue morgue
Nothing could be more defining
Then to have them flatlining
When you hear the last rites spoken
Then you know that Tennessee is not very far
Shovel all the bullets in
Gotta keep the action going
Woo, woo, Chattanooga there you are
There’s gonna be
A certain AR-15 at the situation
Magazine emptied on location
I used to call our funny fate
Some are gonna cry
For those who will never go home
So Chattanooga shoot shoot
Why’d he shoot shoot outside the nightclub where people roamed?
Chattanooga Chattanooga
Get a morgue
Chattanooga Chattanooga
Get a morgue
Chattanooga Chattanooga
Chattanooga shoot shoot
Why’d he shoot shoot the club up all alone?
Chattanooga shoot shoot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGZ6jigic_I
Nothing to see here. Literally.
“Cops have “no specific legal duty to individuals””
Seems to hinge on the diff between ‘Individuals’ and ‘public’. Help me. Is there a lawyer in the house?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/supreme-court-cops-protect-individuals/
Police are not required to protect you.
https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protect
an aside: an update about Uvalde from Krystal and Saagar. utube. ~13+ minutes.
Cops THREATEN Uvalde Mom For Revealing Their Mistakes | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5veoGTzP-1E
The article itself feels slapdash, and I can imagine it isn’t helpful for understanding the issues. The basic concept (as explained in one of the cases the article itself cites!) is summarized by the following points:
1. Government is under no obligation to provide police protection at all (or in general any particular public service).
2. Because government has no legal duty to provide police in the first place, it has no duty in general to provide police protection to any particular citizen. Therefore, an individual does not have a general legal right to seek _money damages_ from the police where when the police fail to protect (or provide inadequate protection) to an individual.
3. However, since the police are a creation of the public through representative government and are operated in accordance with governmental policy, the police are responsible to the government itself and accordingly police officials are subject to prosecution by the government for dereliction in duties.
4. If there’s a “special relationship” between the police and a citizen, then a particular duty to that individual may exist that permits the individual to seek damages for police failure.
The above are general common law rules.
In the infamous case of _DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services_, lawyers basically tried to establish that the Constitution required government to protect individual citizens or pay damages for its failures. The Supreme Court found, like the general common law, that government does not have a general duty to protect and further elucidated that the “special relationship” that creates governmental liability under the Constitution is formed through “the State’s affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf–through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty . . . .”
Keep in mind, government (state, local, or federal) can pass laws establishing clear duties to protect for the police forces under their legal control and providing for liability (money damages) to private individuals in case of failure. The federal government, however, probably cannot compel states or localities to pass such laws–though it possibly (in my view, doubtfully, as it goes too far) could encourage such laws through the exercise of its spending power.
One can readily see why the courts themselves are not going to establish a “duty to protect”–a decision that certain failures or errors create governmental liability has massive implications for how limited police resources will be allocated. For example, if there’s liability in case of school shootings but not in case of regular mass shootings downtown, police may move officers from downtown over to school protection details.
Time to reinstate The Order of the White Feather again.
Call for Super Chicken!
Hear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKss2pBYQ6Y
“besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it”
what part of Protect and to serve do law enforcement not understand?
Super Chicken, part of a triumvirate of cartoons that had the catchiest intro songs ever heard on morning (or was it afternoon? I can’t remember.) TV.
They were from Jay Ward, also known for Rocky and Bullwinkle. I think Super Chicken was in with George of the Jungle and Tom Slick. It was originally a Saturday Morning feature. Later syndicated, which is where most of us first encountered it.
Yes to the catchy part. I can still sing the ‘George of the Jungle” theme song. (Oh, the detrius of a misspent youth!)
“Watch out for that tree!”
Hear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8rViF7V_oA
[Funny, but I just had the thought that our present day Oligarchs are just like George.]
“Ukraine War Day #102: Who Controls Severodonetsk? Awful ”
in a way, this question is irrelevant as the undeniably reality will make itself known.
the fact that this is even a question is bad news for Kyiv, as Severodonetsk is proverbially the hinge on which Moscow can close the door on zukraine in the Donbas
Gonzalo Lira yesterday:
2022.06.05 What Happens To Europe When Russia Wins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUYtvk4sqE
A point of view at odds with the MSM.
He makes a lot of good points in that video. I think that there has to be no less than a massive change in leadership in the EU countries to stop the EU heading off into self-imposed oblivion. It may be, as he said, that this winter will be as bad as the one in 1945-46 when the US had to ship in massive amounts of food into Europe to stop the people starving. But the present EU leadership are content to tell people to lose a few kilos and to cut or even eliminate showers to spite Putin. That is not going to hack it come October. This is gunna get bad for sure.
The weird thing is most Europeans seem oblivious to what’s likely to happen this autumn and winter. As you say its going to be bad. How bad? I have no idea but its certainly going to be something that few living today have had to go through.
“Ukraine War Day #102″ episode concurs …
re: Janet Yellin and “Friend-Shoring”
silly.
by what criteria will the usa determine who is “friendly”?…and how long will such a determination last?
factories, ports and everything else that goes into physical plant and distribution takes time to build…years…so if usaempire determines that…say…Palau is a “friendly” tomorrow…gins up the imf loans to build capacity and even more jack to integrate that capacity into the distribution mess…what happens if next month, Palau has an election, and a new dealer(damn commie!) wins, and adjusts course?
or if amurkin legionaries on site go on a rape and/or murder spree?
i think the cats out of the bag as far as “The World” trusting usaempire with anything.
even the EU is having a de facto discussion about this giant problem.
i think its also pretty clarifying that Yellin didn’t suggest simply “Reshoring” to Conus…but that would be silly, indeed, i suppose.
i mean Guam is still ours ain’t it?
and we can have slaves there….
Some of the US’s friends have stopped answering the phone calls. Not a good sign, imo. AP report.
Mexican president confirms he’ll skip Summit of the Americas
https://m.startribune.com/mexican-president-confirms-hell-skip-summit-of-the-americas/600179573/
i think you more than well enough know that no commie will be allowed to come to power in any country we make such long term investments in.
by hook or crook, they will make sure that guy that wants to renegotiate the contract doesn’t win, or if he does win, that he has no real control and then they will turn the economic and propaganda screws to make sure that the plebs vote him out. not only vote him, out, scream for his blood while voting him out.
so, if you see investment going in there, one has to assume that the “real” power structure in these societies is fully on board with whatever it will take to make them pay off, no?
dude came out, got me dick in the dirt couch stoned.
rambled on about the local powerstructure, like he always does.
usually mere entertainment.(yeah, that’s me, lol)
but this time, he named names.
(all such intelligence goes as quick as a whit to my offsite executor storage facility/)
it really is turtles all the way down…except replace turtles with greedy ruthless white men.
fingers everywhere
RE: The Steele Dossier and Lying to the FBI — Not Guilty as Charged John Kiriakou, Scheerpost
What an odd sussman summary, particularly coming from John Kiriakou. It seems like he’s been taken hostage by somebody and forced to make this statement or have his legs broken.
The clintonites were unsophisticated in the world of “intelligence” and were duped into thinking the steele dossier was real???
WTF? OK, Rip Van Winkle.
re: They are not intelligence professionals
Same thing jumped out at me when reading Kiriakou.
Um, yeah. Ok. Hillary Clinton is simultaneously Secretary of State and “not an intelligence professional, so easily duped.”
That’s why when she said “17 out of 17 intelligence agencies agree Trump is Putin’s puppet” she was being “authentic” in her misunderstanding of how intelligence briefs work.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/jul/06/17-intelligence-organizations-or-four-either-way-r/
And that’s why supposed “fact checkers” such as PolitiFact still pretend Clinton’s 17/17 statement is “True” even once the AP and NYTimes publicly admit they printed Clintonite bullshit like bobbleheads.
Hillary Clinton said the US Coast Guard agrees with her assessment “Trump is Putin’s puppet.” And we’re supposed to just sign off on this kind of stuff as “plausible incompetence” rather than intentional disinformation spread through mainstream news outlets.
Seriously? How deeply could these people believe their own bullshit?
These people don’t have to believe their own bullshit – just the people they WANT to believe it. In this case, literally, when Sussmann was acquitted, it validated Russiagate to the PMC class because it was solid proof of Hillary’s innocence.
If that isn’t proof enough, look at all the BS Tweets and statements issued by the WH & Democratic party that is complete unadulterated BS and their base sucks it up like a Hoover.
Orwell would be proud.
When Steve Bannon said, “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Blue team members mistakenly interpreted this as exonerating themselves from being responsible for the flood of bullshit in the mainstream media. The reality is not only are both parties (and the US intelligence agencies) culpable for propaganidzing their own citizens, they’ve mutually created an arms race of bullshit manufacture, which not only didn’t end with Trump holding office, it escaltes continously in the present moment.
What’s really going on is the more mainstream news one is exposed to – from both the Red and Blue channels – the more removed from reality one’s thoughts and beliefs become.
> not only are both parties (and the US intelligence agencies) culpable for propaganidzing their own citizens
Culpable to whom, based on what claim on what property against what theory, and for what relief, and how is it to be enforced? You entitle yourself to remedies from the state for doing what states are designed to do (enforce values over the people’s will) as if you would ever collect on it without a revolution, and you appeal to reality? It reads like Misty Flip is back here running psyops.
cul·pa·ble /ˈkəlpəb(ə)l/ adjective: deserving blame
culpable to whom?
well, to me, for one.
come the collapse, i intend to eat whatever power elite i come across.
i reckoin i’m owed.
the rest is for the truly poor.
of course.
and i..unlike our erstwhile aristocracy…know who the truly poor is.
“last shall be first..”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-8BoWU3XMo
fuck those people, and all their works.
“they are just mistaken” fails to answer too many questions to withstand scrutiny.
that saying “never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence” seems like a very convenient cover story to hide one’s malice behind incompetence, then program your victims to refuse to see the evidence.
my rule of thumb is to throw out half of everything said by “former” intelligence and gov. officials. a lot of them can’t seem to stop pretending ignorance. the problem is then, which half?
Malice and incompetence are by no means exclusive, something HRC and others have repeatedly demonstrated.
“As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight?”
Sending Territorials who are basically Dad’s Army to the front with only 10 days training is just murder. And even on the front there are shortages with rifles, armour, etc. in spite of the flood of money and military gear into the Ukraine. None of it is really serving a military purpose but is more to make pr victories. So what happens when those older guys get chewed up? Hmmm. Say, whatever happened to those grannies that were filmed three months ago being trained on AK-47s by those Azov guys?
Thank you, Rev.
There has been footage of children of school age being armed and trained. When I saw that, I remembered the footage, real and from Downfall, of Hitler greeting some children of similar age “as German victories got closer and closer to Berlin”.
Speaking of fighting, I escaped the Jubilee to Picardy, including the French Derby. At Amiens cathedral, I saw a memorial to Raymond Asquith, son of the then PM, and compared his sacrifice with the children of chicken hawks, including the Blair family who own a few stately homes in my home county of Buckinghamshire, thanks to cashing in on war.
That Kyiv model with the AK47, according to Instagram, was last seen at a Polish airport heased to points unknown.
And IIRC, if you look at the wideshot Getty photo of Granny AK47, she was being trained by Azov
https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1493191005889310720?
“”After sologamy they step more fully into their life’s work or meet their beloved after marrying themselves,” she said.”
Need one divorce oneself if one’s beloved shows up? Adultery?
Funny how things never really change.
From “Jackson Palmer on grifts, Elon Musk, crypto bubbles”
I still see heaps of money being funnelled in by crypto promoters. They’re waiting for a fresh batch of fools to come in. This happens in cycles…..What I like to watch out for is organisations that have an ethics policy that prohibits writers from having crypto. The New York Times does not have a policy like this and I know for a fact that some of their writers own it as well.
From Mark Twain’s “Roughing It”
You could go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there was no lack of them), put up a “notice” with a grandiloquent name in it, start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money, and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner….New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run straight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty “feet,” and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice of it.
“Roughing It”: I enjoyed that book!
Russia!
When you’ve totally lost the anti-Putin, pro-West, Russian intelligencia/intellectual crowd… …good job, democrats.
I recommend that you check out the author’s bio, then read the article.
Dmitri Trenin
Dmitri Vitalyevich Trenin is the [former] director of the [now defunct] Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank and regional affiliate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former colonel of Russian military intelligence, Trenin served for 21 years in the Soviet Army and Russian Ground Forces, before joining Carnegie in 1994.Wikipedia
Dmitry Trenin: How Russia must reinvent itself to defeat the West’s ‘hybrid war’
Russia’s very existence is under threat. The country has to take serious measures to ensure it survives
https://www.rt.com/russia/555916-russia-west-hydrid-war/
I don’t see any “losing”. I see a liberal ideologue recalibrating his pro-imperialist patter in order to 1) remain important and free after his think tank was duly shut by the Russian government in April 2) conserve capitalist culture and capitalist class relations in Zone B.
HD, I’m not seeing that: he was a “pro-West” guy but now he clearly states that we are at war. I’m not seeing any “pro-imperialist patter” either. But I have no doubt that his views have evolved, especially in light of more recent and present circumstance.
I also have no idea what a liberal is these days– I’m still kinda stuck on what liberals used to be back in the days before they became tools of the 1%.
we have neither allies nor even potential partners left in the West.
They are in fact striving to exclude Russia from world politics as an independent factor, and to completely destroy the Russian economy.
Such an attitude on the part of the adversary does not imply room for any serious dialogue, since there is practically no prospect of a compromise, primarily between the United States and Russia, based on a balance of interests. The new dynamic of Russian-Western relations involves a dramatic severance of all ties…
This circumstance almost completely nullifies Russia’s previous foreign policy strategy towards the US and EU…
This enemy’s strategy should be actively countered.
In relations with the West, the strategy of Russia will continue to address the containment of the nuclear, conventional and cyber abilities of the US, and deterring it from exerting military pressure on Russia and its allies, or even attacking them.
Now it is necessary to move from retaliatory steps to initiatives that will strengthen Russia’s position in the total economic war declared by the West, allowing it inflict significant damage on the enemy.
Today, and for the foreseeable future, Russia is a country at war.
That Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine, win the war, was clear on 24 February. The “narrative” was a fiction that gave the appearance of reality until one looked behind the curtain revealing that the “Great and Powerful Oz” was a small man with a megaphone, the “Blob.” The fiction diverted attention from the real war, the sanctions war, the economic-political war of the Combined West against most of the human race. The outcome of that larger aspect of the “West against the Rest” was predicted to be more injurious to the sanctioners than to the sanctioned and it has been so. Europe is facing economic catastrophe. Inflation is rising rapidly in the USA. The dollar is challenged as the sole reserve currency. China and Russia are more closely aligned than ever. The neo-liberal’s globalized world is dividing into two blocs. How did so many purportedly knowledgeable people manage to be so wrong on so many fronts?
Because in their entire careers, they have never, ever suffered any consequences for being wrong no matter how disastrous their actions. Just so long as they were acting in the interests of the Blob. And as an example? Larry Summers. ‘Nuff said.
China is playing this skillfully to its own benefit. Lots of talk about Ukr at this year’s WEF meeting in Davos. No talk at all about Taiwan. The MSM talking heads go on and on about RU and NATO and Ukr while ignoring China, another major player in world politics. Note to the MSM: It isn’t 1990 anymore.
Because they saw, perhaps, but they did not understand. Nobody thought it worth studying the reform of the Russian military and asking what the consequences would be, nobody thought it was worth studying Russian military doctrine, nobody thought it was worth asking how the Russians would use their new equipment, and most of all nobody ever tried to game out how a war with Ukraine would go given actual likely Russian objectives, actual doctrine, actual tactics and actual equipment. After that, being wrong is very easy.
My new theory on “why monkeypox now” is that you can’t just selectively let only one infectious disease rip. If we’re letting Covid rip, we are letting them all rip.
Electric Car road trip. Hit piece by the Germal is paywalled. I assume conceived and funded by a clever group of oil guys during a several-martini lunch.
I googled average, mean, median distance driven by American, and came up with 29 miles per day.
This is precisely the point of E-cars… commuting- locally, for our daily tasks. Not our oh so infrequent 4 day road trips.
You could, depending on region, transportation routes, realistically cover 29 miles in a Golf Cart or Bicycle.
I was on the local bicycle advisory board for a few years, and we were working, along with the University’s Western Transportation Institute, on making our cool and groovy town more bike/ walk friendly. Tough climate- northern Rockies, 4,800′ ASL.
Anyway, at that time, the average American walked less than 300 steps a day. (I know, there are no Average Americans..)
PS (paradigm shift) rent a car for long trips, bike/walk, get a low cost micro e car/ golf cart ATV for local trips, do something wildly disruptive and ride-share, vehicle share, to take an alternative form… Seguay, e scooter, one wheeled monoboard, car share an ICE vehicle with the neighbors for car needs.
We’re gonna need to take a shift— wonder what fuel price point we will need to create demand destruction and adoption / acceptance of substitutes?
I know the crew-cab lifted 8′ box black smoke 4WD pickup American and Stars and Bars flag flying Friday night cruisin’ Main group will not adopt, but they are on the far end of a bell curve.
This from a guy who averages 15K a year driven- mostly for work- in a rural western flyover country locale… but I do walk and ride bike when in town for the vast majority of my doins’. I , too am a non-meaningful placeholder on the opposite attenuated end of that same transportation bell curve.
Jackpot—it is going to get ugly.
Maybe what’s needed is a class of “road trip” vehicles that can do 2k miles without any recharging. Why keep the gas station model?
The article wasn’t paywalled when I read it. But you might be right about it being gas industry propaganda, since the whole road trip was so absurd: hurrying 2,000 miles from New Orleans to Chicago and back in four days. Why would anybody do that?
Still, the state and availability of chargers seems currently very dodgy. And of “high speed” chargers there are almost none. But if we can spend $40 billion on war in Ukraine I’m sure we can spend $5 billion subsidizing the auto companies with an electric charging network.
(Wasn’t there a $20 billion figure being mentioned just a while ago? As the sum it would cost to house every homeless person in America? If the great American populace were polled about these various billions, I wonder what their priority would be)
Didn’t read the article, but it likely wasn’t a Tesla they were driving. (Or at least they weren’t using the Tesla Super-Charge re-charge stations.) Most of the re-charge stations in my town are 7 Kw and are designed for users that are going to spend hours working/shopping/eating at a charge point.
This issue has been discussed here before. High-powered (fast) charge points take bigtime electrical conduit and the installation of safety measures for use by the general public.
A BS article in the WSJ probably backed by the FFI…..I own a Tesla and a round trip from New Orleans to Chicago would require 4.5 hours of charge time at Tesla superchargers. Road trips are not a problem in a Tesla. I could not read he article as it’s paywalled for me so couldn’t tell what type of vehicle was driven. It’s going to take a while for the rest of the BEV industry to catch up to Tesla in both the vehicle and charging network. The Musker was pretty astute in building out the network of charging stations before car sales ramped up.
Elon’s flaking out but he’s got some brilliant folks making an incredible vehicle.
I’ll do 1000+ miles per day when going from jobsite to jobsite (with 2-3days between). I can’t charge a car for hours when I’m usually on the road for a 14-18 hour stretch in a normal, gas-powered machine– it’d extend travel-time by days, make me uncompetitive, and would piss-off the clients.
And, no, I usually can’t fly because I’m carrying hundreds of pounds of tools and odd-sized equipment.
What is Tiananmen besides an overhyped and sensationalized cudgel that the West uses to try and bludgeon China? What is 200 dead protestors to the millions of its own citizens that the US has killed, that it’s killing even now?
The importance of Tiananmen is to be measured by the scope, intensity, and duration of the Great Firewall that the successors of Mao have erected and maintained to prevent any public discussion whatsoever in the territories of the PRC.
And what’s this “great firewall” but opposition to letting Western propaganda flood the Chinese Internet? Lol, “any public discussion?” Any at all? Or is it just them cracking down on a Western talking point that only people on the National Endowment for Democracy’s payroll care about?
Yes, Tiananmen is very important to Western PMC.
…and not at all important to 241 dead people, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were students), 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 People’s Armed Police that Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to the Politburo.
Compare and contrast with the West’s favored tactic:
“The press, they never even cared
Why some youth leader walked into a speeding car
In ten years or so we’ll leak the truth,
but by then it’s only so much paper!”
Peter Lee, which was a witness, has unlocked his article on his observations of that eventful day:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-what-i-67316331?utm_medium=post_notification_email&utm_source=post_link&utm_campaign=patron_engagement
China’s bad behavior ought not be excused because American behavior has been exponentially worse. China needs to come clean, as do the Americans and Europeans.
All well and good, but being American and not Chinese the coming clean (or not) of China is not a thing for me to try to accomplish. Its pathetically difficult enough to exercise even the most miniscule influence on the nation of which I’m a citizen.
But what does “come clean” mean in reference to Tiananmen Square? Danny Haiphong’s portrayal, which was censored, has been verified for the most part, even by Western sources. But as usual, the facts trickled out gradually and got almost no attention in relation to the original story which is *still* the commonly accepted account – and apparently the only acceptable history by our Ministers of Truth.
“US Excludes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua From Regional Summit”
You could pair that article with this one-
“Biden Scrambles to Avoid Americas Summit Flop in Los Angeles”
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-06-05/biden-scrambles-to-avoid-americas-summit-flop-in-los-angeles
He tried to keep those exiles happy in Florida but in doing so may have turned this Summit into a fiasco. What is he going to offer those countries? World Bank and IMF loans?
The world’s biggest four-day work week pilot begins [CNN]
In these days when you just don’t have the time to do everything that needs to be done, I would like to commend our Arizona politicians for looking for ways to allow citizens to multi-task. For instance, now this Arizona voter can attend a Blake Masters’ campaign rally and a Klan meeting at the same time and you probably won’t be able to tell the difference.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/blake-masters-blames-gun-violence-on-black-people-frankly?source=articles&via=rss
I remember when politicians had enough class to keep the quiet parts quiet.
Going to an NRA convention to find the “Mark Zuckerberg of guns” Yasha Levine
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If the grid goes down for an extended amount of time, about the only mechanical thing continuing to function in these not so united states would be guns.
The weird thing is most Europeans seem oblivious to what’s likely to happen this autumn and winter. As you say its going to be bad. How bad? I have no idea but its certainly going to be something that few living today have had to go through.
Gonzalo is right freezing and starving for US Neo Cons isn’t a smart idea. Where I disagree with him revolves around his thesis that there are elements within the various European states ready to talk with Russia. I don’t think there are yet.
They have been winging it since day one and they still hope that something will happen and Ukrainian tanks will be heading to Moscow.
I will take the Brits out of this for now, they are the least exposed and for them the longer the conflict goes on the better. However, for the other Western European countries the whole situation is collective madness.
Natural gas is going ballistic today in the US
another slow motion disaster in the works, people will literally freeze to death this winter in the US
Your point made me go look at a chart of gas prices over the past couple of decades. Prices seemed to sit around $10 during Bush’s terms, but dropped dramatically in the 2010s. My understanding that at least some of this was due to selling fracked gas at less than production cost, at least in part to squeeze our gas producing “enemies” Russia and Iran.
So gas was artificially cheap for geopolitical reasons.
Now we’re going to try sanctions prohibiting the use of Russian gas and replace it with LNG largely drawn from the USA, thus raising our gas prices dramatically and German gas prices insanely.
Just how are me my neighbors here on the East Side of Cleveland supposed to plan our budgets when one winter gas prices are at $2 and a year or two later they’re at $10-16? How do you plan for a gas bill that mushrooms that fast?
These idiots playing non-stop Risk have no feel for the pain and harm they’re inflicting on their putative countrymen.
Australian Dogecoin…
Nice tutorial on behavioral economics.
***behavioral economics*** = post marketing study ….
Weekly Summary on COVID-19 Deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm
No updates for TWO WEEKS.
RE: How ‘Mega Landlords’ Threaten Housing Stability for Renters Invisible People (DCBlogger).
The threat to renters from “mega landlords” raising rents in this time of rampant inflation is obviously an acute problem. But there are also less-discussed future issues, undoubtedly destined for the “whocouldanode” category, from turning so much of the single family housing stock into “mega landlord” capitalist endeavors requiring perpetually growing profits.
Aside from the “wealth” building aspects of home ownership for those formerly known as the american middle class, owner occupancy encourages pride in, respect for, and stability of communities and their institutions–schools, businesses, government, public spaces–with all of the quality of life benefits those feelings imply. You don’t shit where you eat. Turning an increasing percentage of the population into rootless, unanchored vagabonds, always in search of a less expensive roof over their heads, will have profound societal consequences that are not difficult to foresee.
In his speech the other day, biden the dullard pledged to “alleviate” the shelter crisis by “building more housing.” As if he, or any of us, would live to see the day. As far as I’m concerned, local leaders should anticipate the havoc that will result from allowing wall street landlords to turn their cities and towns into temporary human waystations, and strictly control the percentage of single family homes that can be non-owner occupied through ordinance or statute or whatever works.
If that’s “anti-capitalist,” so be it. Out-of-control “capitalism” is devouring the country, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure that never seems to materialize.
Welcome to the 78th anniversary of D Day. Three Ukraine stores from the Guardian today.
First story:
“Six Russian border guards were reportedly killed last week when their position came under fire near the Zernovo border checkpoint in Ukraine’s north by partisans. Two days later an explosion struck close to the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.”
Border guards are lightly armed sitting ducks. The partisans may have shoot at them from the Ukrainian side of the border. If this was authorized by the Kiev government, it demonstrates how that government can expand the war without western control and draw the west into a larger war. The US is now a hostages to Ukrainian actions.
Second story:
the Estonian left-center coalition government has collapsed. Estonia has the highest inflation rate in Europe (20%). The issue was domestic spending. If the old government can’t form a new coalition, the right-of-center parties will probably form the new government. The farthest right party sympathizes with Putin and questions the Biden election victory.
The present Prime Minister says the war should go on until Putin is tried for war crimes, a non-starter. So that means large US/NATO ground forces must be stationed for the foreseeable future in Estonia, which is what the Estonian government has wanted for years. The Prime Minister also notes that from the beginning of the Russian 1940 occupation of this former part of the Russian empire to 1991 at the end of the Soviet era, the proportion of Russians living in Estonia rose from 5% to 30%. When I visited there in the 1990s, the Russians tended to live in old apartment blocks on the edge of the capital and continued to speak Russian. I assume many of them are rightists.
Third story:
yesterday Zelinskiy for the first time visited the Donbas front. The video is of a visit to a headquarters in Soledar. Apparently the HQ is comfortably situated in the huge underground salt mine complex with a drone overhead (watch the monitor in the video). There is no sign of Russian bombing.
He also is reported to have visited Lysychansk, directly across from the river from, the real front line, a contested city where Ukrainian soldiers have been reinforced in the industrial district. No video of that. The Ukrainians are apparently hoping to create another Azovstel in Seivierodonsk, but this time with a retreat route after the industrial district is destroyed by the fighting, all with the appropriate videos for the western viewing audiences.
Industrial districts and housing blocks with deep cellars make excellent defensive positions. Unfortunately, as in Dublin in 1916, Stalingrad and Berlin in WWII, Hue in 1968 and Mosul and Aleppo more recently, that’s not so good for the civilians and the architecture. But the war cameramen can give us great footage to watch.
As for D Day, in the US we remember the film of the American soldiers wading ashore under fire on Omaha Beach. Three thousand Americans were killed or wounded there. The French, on the other hand, remember the film from Saint Lo, a town 10 miles from the beach. The first Google response to “Saint Lo bombing” at https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/battle-of-normandy/cities/saint-lo says: “As early as June 6, 1944, the town of Saint-Lô was bombed by the Allies, which aimed at the railway station and the power station: every day for a week, air raids continued, gradually transforming the commune into a heap of ruins. Nearly 800 inhabitants are killed in the bombing of the night of June 6-7.” In other words, American bombs killed more French civilians in Saint Lo than the number of Americans killed by the Germans at Omaha Beach.
“Strategic bombing”, mass slaughter of civilians, was quite a feature of WWII by all belligerents. But it’s certainly not presented that way in primary school, to say the least. I guess this is how you spread democracy far and wide, by first plowing under the fields, so to speak.
Given that it is the anniversary of the D-Day today, there is an excellent review by Adam Tooze on his Chartbox substack that it is a worthwhile reading and maybe one of the best pieces I have read by Mr.Tooze:
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-126-for-the-anniversary-2c1?s=r
Great stuff, and important on artillery/firepower
Wow, a long essay. Thanks. I fall asleep to audiobooks of atony beevor, Cornelius Ryan books so I sort of know some sporadic detail, multiple times of dday, stalingrad and so on.
I’d never heard this particular take, or at least stated so front and center. I shall dwell on it.
Mayo Pete got interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Now that Mayo has said the quiet part out loud about having the government step in to buy food, gas and more, I feel all relieved and won’t worry about any baby formula shortages, or supply chain issues. His crack team will be on the case. /s
RE: COVID-19 cases are on the rise. Does it matter anymore? The Hill
I am absolutely gobsmacked that this is where we are.
I feel like I’m living in a Twilight Zone episode, or The Matrix, or a dystopian movie
…or I”m having a nightmare (In which case, someone PLEASE wake me up.)
It’s like The Stupid has become a hyper-object.
China?
Taiwan bans exports of chips faster than 25MHz to Russia, Belarus Already cut off from most x86 chips, the two countries lose out even more
This is probably not the biggy it is being painted as:
MCST Elbrus-16C
Russia’s own chips are not quite as spiffy as Intel’s or AMD’s latest but they are a far cry from a 386.
Who knows, maybe the Russians will need to learn to program instead of writing bloatware and apps.
Australia
File this under What-Could-Go-Wrong: Police want your happy childhood pictures to train AI to detect child abuse Like the Hotdog, Not Hotdog app but more Kidnapped, Not Kidnapped
Australia
A reminder your AUKUS partners are far away and the Quad ain’t gonna help you as Chinese Fighter’s Decoy Dump In Front Of A P-8 Sets Dangerous New Precedent A Chinese J-16 released chaff right in front of a P-8 maritime patrol jet, which could have had deadly consequences.
I’ve worked on both the M270 and the HIMARS in the 1990s.
Some points:
* Exactly the same range, they fire the same muntitions, it’s just that the M270 carries 2 packs rather than one.
*Each pack can carry 6 MLRS rocket, range about 30 KM, or one ATACMS, with a range of up to 300 km.
*ATACMS is no longer in production, but still in inventory, so it is unlikely to go to the Ukraine
* There is a follow on to ATACMS, Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which might enter service in 2023, with a range in excess of 500 km.
Imperial Decline
Nobody wants to work for the war machine whine Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy
Good. Murica needs to be humbled.
Wtf makes westerners think the avg. Chinese person gives a *bleep about Tiannenmen Square anymore than the avg. Americans care about the 3 million Middle Easterners they’ve murdered since 2001? Like it’s going to cause a spontaneous ripple of outrage and repraisal in Chinese society? LOL!
“But a relatively less risky time if your goal is to not get severe COVID or die.” Again completely ignoring the risk of infecting others. Who infect others.