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Lobsters Are Not Immortal but the Myth That They Are Seems to Be McGill (re Šilc)
Penguins at a Japanese aquarium are Being Fed Cheaper Fish – and They Aren’t Happy CNN (furzy)
Asteroid’s Surface Like a “Plastic Ball Pit,” Scientists Find LINDOLTD.com
A 4-Billion-Year-Old Piece of Earth’s Crust Has Been Identified Beneath Australia Science Alert (Kevin W)
Shinzo Abe
Legacy of Abenomics to Live Beyond Its Tragically Shot Architect Bloomberg
Friendly Relations London Review of Books. An old piece, but worth revisiting at the moment.
#COVID-19
Science/Medicine
‘Several Hundred Thousand’ New COVID Cases a Day Aren’t Being Reported as Hospitalizations Keep Climbing MarketWatch (re Šilc)
Researchers May Have Found Biomarker for Long COVID Boston Globe
Monkeypox
NEW—It is time for the global public health community to recognize a growing reality: #Monkeypox is now a pandemic—unless we declare an emergency & act quickly to combat it, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made with covid.🧵@kavitapmd @yaneerbaryam https://t.co/D2a7y0PaUD
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) July 7, 2022
Climate/Environment
The Suburban Lawn Will Never Be the Same Bloomberg
Wild Species Support Half of World’s Population, Report Finds Guardian (re Šilc)
MIT scientists think they’ve discovered how to fully reverse climate change Yahoo (furzy)
Amazon Rainforest: Highest Deforestation Rate in Six Years BBC
‘Disturbing’: Weedkiller Ingredient Tied to Cancer Found in 80% of US Urine Samples Guardian (Brian C)
Old Blighty
Why Was Boris Johnson so Influential at Such a Momentous Moment? Irish Times
For EU, Johnson Exit Won’t Change Much; Damage Already Done AP (furzy)
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs under investigation by HMRC The Independent
How Boris Destroyed Boris UnHerd
How Nuclear War Would Affect the World Today LSU (sst)
Boris Johnson Is Going, but We’re Stuck With the Same Right-Wing Nightmare Jacobin
New Not-So-Cold War
UN Finds Ukrainian Forces Put Civilians at Risk in Nursing Home Attack Axios
US Announces New $400 Million Weapons Package for Ukraine antiwar.com (re Šilc)
Kiev blasts calls for oversight of US military aid to Ukraine RT (Kevin W)
Zelenskiy Sacks Ukraine’s Envoy to Germany, Other Ambassadors Reuters
Europe’s Big And Expensive Energy Mistake OilPrice.com (re Šilc)
UK Energy Bills ‘Could Hit More Than £3,300 a Year this Winter’ Guardian (Kevin W)
Syraqistan
Oil Minister Says Iraq to Act to Annul Kurdish Oil Deals ABC News (re Šilc)
In Letter to Biden, Shireen Abu Akleh’s Family Demands a Meeting and an End to Israeli Impunity The Intercept (reŠilc)
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka President to Step Down, Parliamentary Speaker Says, Amid Storm of Protests Reuters
Chile’s Resurgent Left Catalyst
Argentine Anti-Government Protests Build as President Calls for Unity World News Guru
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Goodbye To Cash Tolls, And Some Notorious History, At George Washington Bridge Yeshiva World
1/6
Cipollone Asserted Executive Privilege to Some January 6 Committee Questions CNN
Biden
Americans Aren’t Very Happy about Biden’s Middle East Visit: Poll Responsible Statecraft
Three-Star General who Mocked Jill Biden is Suspended Washington Post
Democrats en déshabillé
‘This Is Disgusting’: An Insider’s Account on the Fall of Cuomo Politico
The Supremes
The Supreme Court spent its past term rejecting the rule of law Vox (furzy)
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Clarence Thomas New Yorker
The Supreme Court Dealt a Terrible Blow to Children’s Health NYTimes
There Is No Constitutional Right to Eat Dinner The New Republic
Gunz
Father of Highland Park Suspect Has No Regrets For Helping Son Get Gun Vice
Police State Watch
New Arizona Law Makes it Illegal to Film Within 8 Feet of Police Axios
Guillotine Watch
Read Elon Musk’s Letter to Twitter Calling off His $44 Billion Takeover Deal Business Insider (Kevin W)
Elon Musk, Baloney King The Atlantic
As Musk moves to abandon deal, Twitter faces ‘worst case scenario’ Washington Post (furzy)
Supply Chain/Inflation
Peak Inflation? Why Some Prices are Tumbling Fast Globe and Mail
The Bezzle
The Financial Bubble Era Comes Full Circle Matt Taibbi (ctlieee)
Bill to Grant Crypto Firms Access to Federal Reserve Alarms Experts Washington Post
Top Fed Official Warns of ‘Serious Vulnerabilities’ in Crypto Industry Financial Times
Crypto Rout Deflates Some Web3 Startups Buoyed by Push Into Digital Tokens Wall Street Journal
Payrolls Increased 372,000 in June, More than Expected CNBC
https://t.co/f0TB3GcuYV
Has this led to better care? More cost effective care? More access to care?— James D. Geiger (@JamesDGeiger) July 8, 2022
Antidote du Jour (Tracie H):
This is Mr. Allen’s Hummingbird, who was with his wife, flitting around this bush at the South Coast Botanic Gardens in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA (4/18/2022).
And a bonus (dk):
Bear dug a sitting pit to watch the ducks.. pic.twitter.com/UvIgNHc0cR
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 1, 2022
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
287 comments
Comments are closed.
THE PATRIOT FRONT
(Melody borrowed from Sweet Betsy From Pike)
Did you ever hear tell of the Patriot Front?
Our town tangled with ’em, so I will be blunt:
The Patriot Front’s a collection of cucks
Who showed up packed into three big Ryder trucks
Stacked in like sardines in their big yellow box
They cling to each other and spread monkeypox
They piled out all dressed up in khaki and blue
Then assembled in ranks like a chorus review
They marched in formation to our City Hall
And folks came a runnin’ to witness it all
The Patriot Front told us we are unique
Explorers and warriors with Euro mystique
They spoke of the settlers who tamed the Old West
And said that we have to return to that quest
Their notions seemed strange, and their plans sounded worse
And out in the crowd people started to curse
“These sorry sumbitches are Nazis at heart
Their ambition’s to tear this country apart
They have no regard for one-person-one-vote
If we let them do it, that’s all that she wrote”
“This is our country” they crow and exult
Trolling for f#*!kwits to join their cult
These morons wear MAGA hats, wave their Trump flags,
But cover their faces and their license tags
Well, what kind of heroes will sing their own praise?
But when you confront them, they can’t meet your gaze?
The Patriot Front says democracy’s done
They plan to take charge at the point of a gun
Our heritage, they said, is under attack
From Mexicans, Asians and whomever’s black
From Woke ideology, postmodern texts,
And people who aren’t all that sure of their sex
They claim that our country’s a cesspool of vice
And nothing but starting from scratch will suffice
Whomever’s not like them must die or must leave
Now, ain’t that a hell of a thing to believe?
E Pluribus Unum, they said that a lot
But anyone different from them will get shot
They say we must conquer, we must colonize
The whole thing sounds more like The Lord of the Flies
So we chased them out and oh my they did squawk
But no one ’round here will put up with their schlock
We ran out with feathers and hot tar and rails
But couldn’t catch up with their knaki-clad tails
They ran to their box trucks and left in a fright
Three big yellow Ryders sped off in the night
The whole town was there for that grand Nazi hunt
The last that we’ve seen of the Patriot Front
Thanks for the well written poem. We need a poem about all Congressmen who supported and renewed the Patriot Act.
Peak inflation article. Anecdotal but indicative of the potential for prices to decline, average gallon of gasoline has dropped from $4.69 about June 20th to $4.30 yesterday. Lowest price for the least amount of octane at 87, that is. Southeastern US.
That is the only anecdote on offer, as nothing else I know of is ceasing the months-long climb.
Saw about a $.50 drop in Los Angeles in the last few days too. Haven’t noticed elsewhere but haven’t looked much either.
All flavours of gas are down 10 cents/gal this week here in Hanover, NH. Regular is again at $4.849.
Also in Canada, and this will shock regular NC readers, major grocery store chains may be using “supply chain disruptions” and inflation as an excuse to raise prices and increase their profits.
https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/07/09/supermarkets-are-hiking-prices-faster-than-necessary-and-profiting-from-inflation-star-investigation-suggests.html
Whether they will reverse this practice in order to help tame inflation remains to be seen.
Can confirm; paid $4.47 yesterday – suburban Philly.
Ours have dropped about .50 per gallon, gas and diesel.
3.83 gas
4.79 diesel
N.E. Texas
Sale barn in Emory slammed with cattle yesterday. Miles of trailers lined up down the road.
This is not good for the long term.
Farmers culling their herds? How’s the feed situation there?
Of course, we aren’t having any sort of drought here. Plenty of rain, and no true extremes of temperature yet. The local meteorologists on the TV keep predicting out ten days using what seems to be a statistical average method. So far, they have all been under on their day and night temperatures. Under by about three to five degrees F.
A local aminal auction barn has been quiet for months. I’ll have to check in on it soon.
No rain since early June, 90s and now 100s that whole time.
Pastures are totally sun burned,
smaller creeks drying up.
Feed prices are thru the roof.
14$ for a bag of cubes.
100 for a round bale, the last time I checked at the feed store. Probably more now, will check Tuesday when I go.
They’ve got to be selling dirt cheap.
This is the worst spell of weather out here since 1991.
That was the year we moved here. Looking at my weather site, 1917 could be in the running.
Meaning my history here starts in 91, the weather was quite nice then.
We had one other spell like this about 10 years ago.
This area is heavily treed, so forest fires are a possibility also.
Bad part is, there is no rain in the forecast at all.
Make that last rain date May 5.
2.25 inches.
That’s definitely “Long Hot Summer” territory.
We have been bouncing around at the upper end of the historical mean for this region. Several week long periods of high nineties to low hundreds interspersed with days of ninety to ninety three and nights of around seventy to seventyfive.
Plenty of trees ’round here, but pine bark beetles have been reported lately. So, we could do with a few nice forest fires.
Stay safe and hydrated!
Will do, you do the same
East central FL, we’ve got 90s and rain almost daily so humidity has been raising havoc. I’m going to western TN tomorrow, and their weather has been nuts with the heat. I’ll miss the 100 degree day, but that is way beyond the pale up there.
I did notice a few years ago that a certain high end property “management” firm was establishing a “bolt hole” community up in the Tennessee Applachian mountain region, at altitude. Think minimum ten acre sites with survivalist amenities. All priced at the very high end of the price range. Some of ‘Us” (TM) cannot afford New Zealand, so, let’s do the next best and displace a few hillbillies and create our own ‘Heaven on Earth.’
Shades of the old Hippie movement. The Farm is up there somewhere.
Here’s a wikipedia entry about Summertown, Tennessee. It has a tiny little inset map showing where Summertown is.
It is at least a hundred miles west of the Appalachian Mountains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summertown,_Tennessee
Thank you for the anecdote about the cattle. Ground beef (80/20) has been a shockingly low $2.99 /lb at my local Kroger for the past two weekends in a row. I thought it might have been a loss leader type price at first, but after this morning, I started wondering if suddenly there had been a cull. I recall in 2008 a similar precipitous drop in beef prices after being priced out of red meat for a while, and shortly thereafter, the bottom fell out of the economy.
I also think people are tapped out too. Can’t raise everything that much, in such a short time, without there being issues.
We were misers anyway and are certainly pinching pennies even more now.
Yep. Some of us are pulling out the table top vises to have a go at those poor centimes.
You do know that many small independently owned stations make barely any profit on gas and rely on the junk food mini mart as a profit center.
The retail price does not give you a clue as to what the wholesale price is. But I agree that Biden fingering gas stations is all wet. The reason for prices at the pump being high relative to oil prices is high refinery margins. That in turn is due to barely sufficient capacity, which in turn is due to underinvestment (peak oil/shareholder opposition to fossil fuels as well as difficulty in getting new approvals) and stricter regs. <5% of all gas stations are owned by refiners.
Ah yes, the age old sun shade in space idea. Nice one, MIT.
That bear seems to have the right idea. Chill and watch the birds.
His fur really blends in well with the surrounding dirt.
Sure does.
Nature is clever like that. I live near some disused farmland, and during spring and fall the local roe deer blend into the local terrain unless you catch them moving. And during summer the uncut grass gets so tall all but their heads are hidden.
It has over the years amused me to observe how in most species it is the male that put on flamboyant displays. Be it tails, horns, colors or some mix. But in humans, it is the females that dress up while the males are the somber ones.
Oddly enough, this seems to be a product of the industrial revolution. Before then, men would dress just as colorfully as it was a display of wealth and status. Never mind that military uniforms were brightly colored in order for the soldiers to tell friend from foe.
I’ve walked by moose not more than 3’ away and nearly missed them because they were standing still. How a horse-sized animal disappears like that is amazing.
Where do Gay Pride parades and drag queen follies fit into that observation?
Apparently, the Republican nomination for governor of AZ will be decided by the drag queen vote. Where’s Bette Midler when you need her?
https://www.kold.com/2022/06/21/drag-queen-says-kari-lake-was-one-his-biggest-fans-before-campaign/
You gotta have friends!
As natural variation…
Hmmmm…. Very arch.
Right next to the brightly lycra-clad Tour-de-France cyclists? Especially the maillot jaune of the day.
Nature and outdoor comment, and us humans enjoying nature. Watched the film “Deliverance” last night on one of the streaming services. Not the first viewing nor the last. Much has changed since that film was released 50 years ago, and then again raping the natural world has not changed.
There is something about being outside on a hiking trail, or being on a river, whitewater or simple class 2 / class 3, that makes me appreciate the local options nearby in western NC.
Many of the deer I see lately are unfortunate roadkill on I-85.
Western North Carolina must be one of the most beautiful areas in North America.
Whenever friends visit from overseas I always try to take them for a visit to Nantahala National Forest. Even the relatively commercial Hwy 64 from Murphy to Hendersonville is stunning in the fall. And then there’s the French Broad River, running alongside the highway. You forget it’s there for a stretch then suddenly it reappears.
We take a picnic and look for a park or a nice spot in the woods to spend an afternoon. At first the best weather seemed to be fall, but spring was just as nice. Now, I even like going in the winter. Just have to remember to refill the thermos with a hot drink.
Quick comment to add about Murphy. I grew up on the other side of NC in the eastern plains part, small town about 90 miles west of Manteo, 100 miles west of Nags Head. Would note the sign leaving Manteo which gave the distance to Murphy (I can’t recall if it read 543 miles or 573 miles, but give or take that’s a haul).
Brevard is great as well, for the proximity to Dupont. For water enthusiasts Nantahala Outdoor Center is a great location.
I practically lived in Brevard at the Sunset Motel for a year while I was
working on Lake Toxaway. The same year I read The Green Mile.
I can go a few miles outside of town for some “wilderness lite” at our local state park. I do see this as a great virtue of our near Appalachia.
However the movie you cite is more of a cautionary tale about what nature may do to us (hence the title). He’s criticizing those city boys while identifying with them (I believe the poet and SC academic Dickey was himself once in the advertising business like his lead character). It’s about nature, but also “the right stuff.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dickey
How else would you know who was superior? The king can dress like he wants, but everyone else needs to dress to catch the eye of the king. In theoretical democracies, uniform uniforms are basically distributed, blue/dark coat, slacks tie. I’m sure Romney is always dressed to the nines, but he’s dressed in the uniform. You can tell Biden is noveau riche and wants to belong by the suits he started wearing when he was announced as Obama’s running mate. Flashy.
With women working in the long term, you’ll see them in more of a uniform. Think Liz Warren versus say Pelosi or Hillary. It’s important to see Pelosi Era women, but Warren is closer to women working in droves.
What is really interesting is that with some shorebirds like the pharalopes, it’s exactly the opposite. Males are drab, and the females have the more striking plumage. I’m not sure if it’s related to who sits on the nest or not.
Ducks generally follow the normal more ornate male, drab female coloring. But geese are generally not sexually dimorphic.
Birds of prey may or may not show sexual differences. Harriers and accipters do, buteos generally don’t. But the females are always larger. Potentially so the pair partitions available food resources by size.
Why such evolutionary divergence? Maybe it’s just random, and a reminder that not all evolutionary changes are adaptive, at least in the short term.
Birds of prey may or may not show sexual differences.
Interesting observation. I wonder if drab coloring in female birds gives better camouflage against the predator birds. Survival of traits most favorable to survival of the species?
It is only with the imposition of modernity fueled by protestant sentiments that we see men dressing less flamboyantly than women.
https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/486417128/18th-century-mens-custom-embroidered
The French Revolution might have something to do with that change to less flamboyant clothing. The English gentry dressed as flamboyantly as the French until they suddenly thought better of the idea during and after the French Revolution. Less about Prot. ideas, I think, and more about looking sober, sensible, and responsible in the eyes of ordinary people, not flaunting their wealth, aka camouflage. / ;)
Re: not flaunting wealth. My mother grew up sort of upper middle-class but after her father died in the mid-twenties, her mother had to support her four youngest children by teaching violin. One way she maintained the upper middle-class vibe was by teaching one day a week at an exclusive private girls’ school with the agreement that her daughters could attend tuition-free. The upshot? my mother had rich classmates, several of whom remained her friends for life. Mom felt the wealthy people she knew during the Depression were very low-key–definitely not ostentatious. Yes, they lived in big houses, but they dressed in rather “quiet” taste and certainly did not flaunt their assets. How things have changed!
Of course, the scale of wealth has changed radically as well.
Can injecting sulfer aerosols into the stratosphere be next?
Personally, I incline to the theory that ‘The Jackpot’ has already been activated to “cure” the problem.
Why not go for broke? I say that we drop some heavy bombs down some carefully selected volcanoes and really get them belching out smoke. It is widely know that volcanoes erupting can drop world temperatures through smoke spreading around the world in the upper atmosphere. You do not want to overdo it, however, and end up like 1815 when a volcano caused a ‘year without a summer.’ Anyway, the natural solutions are always the best. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
One idea I had was for NASA to guide an asteroid to the Earth and let it hit. Pick the right sized asteroid and, voila, instant ice age!
Add in bringing back the mammoths and there you are; Traditional Values are back!
>”One idea I had was for NASA to guide an asteroid to the Earth and let it hit. Pick the right sized asteroid and, voila, instant ice age!”
Not a bad idea at all! Provided of course that NASA is capable of directing the asteroid to a favorable location. That is, one would not want it to plow into a major city, an ocean (too many tsunamis), or a glacier-laden mountain.
Three benefits of your idea:
1. Assuming NASA can steer that giant chunk of rock accurately (and that’s a big assumption), there would be lots of advance notice and no surprise impact sites, unlike those nasty rogue asteroids that are bound to hit us anyway.
Advance warning from NASA prior to re-direction: To residents living in or near the Sahara Desert, the projected “landing zone” of the asteroid, or north or south of the 49-degree latitudes, please be advised that you are required to evacuate such areas within 90 days.
2. The mandatory evacuations, obviously, will lead to a fabulous increase in tourism as evacuees “visit” other areas.
3.. The creation of the largest open-pit mine in human history. Oh, the mineral riches, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial!
I see your idea as a win-win-win for humanity. ;)
Using the Sahara is felicitous. They already have a nice giant bullseye in place for aiming purposes. The target area is also close to the equator, guaranteeing a more even Terrestrial distribution of ejecta and aerosols.
The Richat Structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure
Any development of such a capability would be confiscated by the military for their own uses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
Don’t underestimate the degre to which ‘modern’ Oligarchs now think like old time Feudal Petty Aristocrats, including private armies.
As a long time cyberpunk fan, i am painfully aware…
Going back to pre-cyberpunk days, Niven and Pournelle did a good book about post-apocalypse times, eg., “Lucifer’s Hammer.”
Back “in the day,” post-collapse stories were escapist fiction for an evening’s brain cell abuse sessions. Now we are about to live through the real thing.
Krakatova is ready for the cracks to do it!
Some “leaders” seem eager to skip to the next stage: dropping some heavy bombs on people instead. Nuclear winter and massive depopulation would do the trick.
Should we start with Yellowstone supercaldera?
Yellowstone might be over-extinction. Once ‘activated,’ the Yellowstone caldera might “exceed expectations,” and then we would really be hunting mammoths for survival.
At least it won’t be radioactive… and would affect mostly east of it…
All the way to the Atlantic coast for heavy ash, worldwide for aerosols. Look at how far the fallout plume from the Chernobyl disaster travelled. Better yet, look at the oceanic dispersal patterns for the Dai Ichi Fukushima radioactive water discharges.
Many natural processes are caled “chaotic systems” for a reason.
We would not be anymore.
Fair cop. The Mammoths are planned to be released into Siberia, assuming the cross breeding program is successful.
We need a man with a plan. And given our age of celebrity worship, why don’t we try this guy’s idea ? Okay, fictional work may not solve this but a little Sunday humor.
https://youtu.be/EuOlYPSEzSc
Whenever I read about things like space bubbles and geo engineering, I always remember this episode of In Our Times titled “1816, The Year Without a Summer”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077j4yv
Episode summary from the BBC:
At the end of the episode, IIRC, one of the panelists, a historian, says a cholera pandemic was another consequence of the eruption.
So buckle up folks. Fun times await!
Neat! A cure for Global Warming and Overpopulation all rolled up into one!
Don’t tell the Davosians about the idea. They would definitely try and put it into effect.
Well, if Chindia get tired of waiting for the West to do something, Chindia will launch the sulfur aerosols themselves.
“Three-star general who mocked Jill Biden is suspended”
Trump may be able to get away with sending out stupid tweets but that does not apply to three-star generals. The article mentioned that the commanding general of the Combined Arms Center suspended Volesky from his contract as a senior mentor “pending the outcome of the commander’s inquiry.” Well, yeah. Obviously. But unmentioned in the Washington Post but which I found in another article was that that contract is worth $92-an-hour. Seriously? Is that the sort of goodies that the Pentagon can give their buddies after they retire from active service? Nice work if you can get it-
https://www.rt.com/news/558714-general-volesky-suspended-tweet/
Based on consulting rates in other fields here in the States $92/Hr strikes me as a steal for someone that senior.
Then there’s the hourly rates for lawyers of various stripes:
“ lowest average hourly billing rate by state was $158 per hour in West Virginia. The highest average hourly billing rate by practice area was a tie between bankruptcy law and intellectual property lawyers at $340 per hour. The lowest average hourly billing rate by practice area was for juvenile law at $87 per hour.”
Bankruptcy and intellectual property — interesting pairing.
Well, in the private sector hourly fees get distributed to real overhead. What office/E&O expenses does this government official have?
Of today’s links, 5 or 6 are not mainstream media. Of the mainstream media represented, none of them have a reputation for printing truth or complete stories that include all of the mitigating factors.
How can it be news worthy of discussion if it isn’t true or factual? Is there some reason why the actual news isn’t important enough?
Also, note that censorship is now being done for us. Sites that question the narrative are being hit with DDOS attacks, or are simply being blocked by the providers.
If we look for truth or factual reporting in those who are proven liars, what are we getting?
Is it possible to read between the lines to find truth in propaganda?
This is completely false and I take umbrage at your bogus criticism of Jonah. In merely the first 10 links, we have McGill, LINDOLT, Science Alert, London Review of Books, and Eric Feigl-Ding.
On top of that, for the most part, only mainstream media does reporting, as in presents information about developments in the world. Everyone else is doing analysis and commentary on information provided by others.
As we discuss in our fundraiser, doing original reporting can easily take 10-50X the hours of commentary.
And few Americans would consider sources like TASS or RT or Anadolu Agency or South China Morning Post any of the major Indian publications we feature to be mainstream media because they are not US publications and do not necessarily voice US party line.
Gas plant/oil field explosions:
Medford Oklahoma USA
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/fire/2022/07/09/oneok-gas-plant-fire-near-medford-oklahoma-forces-evacuations/65370183007/
Tengiz Kazakhstan
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Deadly-Explosion-At-Kazakhstans-Biggest-Oilfield.amp.html
So what has the best odds, health and safety violations or foul play?
IMO, less suspicious than the series of food processing plant incidents. But we’ll see…stranger times than usual.
But in the meantime, since Oklahoma and oil has been brought up, I’m reminded of a bit of history. This is a mind-blowing event. The book being discussed is being made into a movie (directed by Martin Scorsese, slated for release later this year).
‘David Grann, author of the New York Times Bestselling “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”, is my guest on this week’s episode of Most Notorious. He talks about his research into a spree of murders of oil-rich Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma. Dozens and dozens of people were being murdered in a crime wave that became so sensational that J Edgar Hoover and his fledgling F.B.I. were forced to intercede. A team of agents, led by famed lawman Tom White would eventually uncover a diabolical plot to slaughter an entire family….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZeGniBL6Gs/
Author discussing his book: “Killers of the Flower Moon”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo0VufCwHOE/
A podcast interview with the author.
Also, I can’t help but be struck by timeline. The 1920s was also the time period of the massacre of black people in Tulsa, Okla.
In a mass culture and absurdist vein, this is also featured in Mervyn Leroy’s 1959 FBI propaganda vehicle, “The FBI Story,” with Jimmy Stewart and Vera Miles. It also includes some ludicrous (given the agency’s history, and probably in response to the growing Civil Right movement of the time) material about the FBI fighting the Klan.
From the author’s descriptions of the book, it is hardly any ode to the FBI.
The author largely concludes that Hoover tried to take more credit for investigations than warranted.
But the Hollywood take on the events remain to be seen.
I read the book. It was fascinating but also sad cos of the excessive greed of the guilty. Some things never change.
That History story blew my mind in the same way ‘Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee’ blew it 30+ years prior.
We suffer a chronic and infectious sickness in our house.
“CDC has only recently started examining the extent of human exposure to glyphosate in the US”
Leave it to the CDC to ignore years of warnings and be decades late on an issue impacting (apparently) 80% of Americans health. And it took a massive lawsuit https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/health/monsanto-johnson-trial-verdict/index.html and a federal court order for our regulators to look into it: https://www.comhs.org/about-us/newsroom/health-library/2022/06/20/federal-court-orders-epa-to-re-examine-whether-roundup-causes-cancer
Seems the Uvalde police are a perfect representation of so many of the organizations we assume are there to protect us.
Maybe in 20 years they will release their studies on covid?
If you don’t measure it, there is no evidence of a problem.
Wasn’t CDC at-least-in-theory supposed to be focused on scouting the world for early signs of catchable diseases caused by disease organisms? Shouldn’t other agencies or organizations have been looking at the health threat from chemicals such as glyphosate?
On How Nuclear War Would Affect Earth Today
Curiously the piece doesn’t mention radiation which, alone, would be catastrophic. Add to that the results the piece does mention. Yet the US and others continue to develop and upgrade their awful weapons.
Put this together with the climate catastrophe piece here and it seems to me that humanity has minted a doomsday coin, heads we lose, tails we lose.
There was a film made back in ’83 called “The Day After” and one memorable scene was when after the nuclear strike, some ragged government representatives told this group of farmers that because of all the radiation, that they would have to bulldoze the top several inches of their fields. But the sour farmers told those reps that that was the topsoil that they were talking about.
If a nuclear war did break out and we survived, I would advise laying in a sledge hammer or a heavy drill. With the temperature drop, we would likely find that fresh water creeks may be frozen over meaning that you would have to break it up to get at the water underneath. No way to filter out the radiation from the water of course.
Ironically those at the Pentagon and DC would get the most humane deaths….instant end beats days of radiation sickness
“Threads” BBC 1983 is even bleakrr than “Day After”
Those movies shaped my opinions on nuclear war preparations. If you can’t make sure those in charge will be sane.be where they will drop one.
Probable thirty seconds of terror then death versus a hideous lingering battle to survive illness, famine and other desperate humans, well it is no contest in my mind.
Depending on where you are when the blast occurs you may not feel a thing.
That is why every person should strip from power or kill any politician that promotes nuclear war or the use of nuclear weapons.
On The Beach. Neville Shute, iirc.
And then there is Peter Watkins’ The War Game (1966). Accidental shootout between NATO and commies triggers worldwide nuclear war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Bulletin
Special Bulletin-1983-made for TV by NBC
Chilling in the realistic potential…
Yes, I saw the film back in ’83 and several times again since. It was said at the time that the film understated how bad it would be, yet the monsters in charge keep on with their delusions.
Not always. When Ronald Reagan saw it, it apparently shook him.
Maybe so, but he did foist his Star Wars nonsense on the world.
RK
speaking of movies I saw One, Two, Three last night (James Cagney, Billy Wilder). As they say, the past is a different country. Now, being only 6 years old in 1961, I only have movies and television to get what the zeitgeist really was with regard to our great communist foe, as opposed to the official, accepted, legendary written history of the time.
Maybe the threat of nuclear annihilation made Americans see the Russians in a fuller, more nuanced, more human way – maybe it is just old fartism, but it seems to me we have really regressed to dogmatic or puritanical thinking now a days. I think the movie showed Russians as real humans (in a comedic mannner but the Russians were not portrayed as unremittingly evil) – compared to today, where the reporting and response to Russia in Ukraine is almost universally juvenile, ignorant and displays an obstinate anti intellectualism.
One other thing, I hate to imagine how many bon mots I missed in the movie. My favorite that I did catch was when Cagey is arguing with the young communist man and Cagney is holding half a grapefruit in his hand and asks the young communist if he wants some grapefruit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4R5wZs8cxI
I thought “On the Beach” was a more realistic depiction. You get the sense that people would actually survive in “The Day After”, but from what we know about fallout, there is no day after following the kind of full scale exchange that takes place in that made-for-TV movie.
Oops, I didn’t see this when I made my suggestion. I read this shortly after it was published, late ’70s I think. But I no longer read apocalyptic things like this. Hopelessness is contagious and I hope to preserve the insane notion that hope is to be had.
I read somewhere that eight bombs is all that is needed to produce nuclear winter. I think they did not yet know about nuclear winter in 1963 (The Day After). Certainly On the Beach didn’t include it. Anyway, when the first bomb is dropped, a lot more than eight are going to follow within minutes. The neoconservatives apparently believe nuclear weapons are just big bombs, so if they set off a couple or three “tactical” nukes, with a yield of, say, 40 tons of TNT, none of the powers with nukes are going to fire theirs off. It’s not like 25 Kilo-tons(the size of the Nagasaki bomb)! A lot of the warheads now are measured in Mega-tons. The problem really is that there are a lot of days after, and most people are going to either starve or freeze to death.
Lou Reed has the answer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StdD1z6Qh0M
The conjunction of the link to LSU’s press release promoting a paper published by the American Geophysical Union [AGU] with the link to the brief description of MIT’s space bubbles for geoengineering evokes eerie thoughts of what these surface presentiments may portend lurking below. The MIT space bubbles is a variation on a theme of geoengineering — space mirrors — which Philip Mirowski thoroughly lampoons near the conclusion [~:46+] of his presentation accessible on youtube: “Prof. Philip Mirowski keynote for ‘Life and Debt’ conference”.
I believe the LSU publication ties their study to nuclear war as an odd lede to attract readers. I looked through LSU’s AGU paper trying to find how the scale of the nuclear war positied in their war scenarios related to the dust emitted into the atmosphere — some idea of how many bombs of what megaton size. I recalled a comment by Daniel Ellsberg suggesting that an exchange of roughly 100 Hiroshima sized weapons or 3-4 hydrogen bombs could throw enough dust into the upper atmosphere to cause a Nuclear Winter sufficient to kill most life on the Earth, including Humankind. [I am unsure of these numbers and hoped the LSU study might present some similar numbers based on their refined model of Nuclear Winter.] The LSU paper modelled the scale of nuclear war in abstract terms of Teragrams of black carbon (soot):
“Five India-Pakistan nuclear war scenarios are considered which involve soot injections of 5, 16, 27.3, 37, and 46.8 Tg [Teragram], representing ranges in arsenal sizes. Scenario development, including uncertainties in smoke production and model implementation, are detailed in Toon et al. (2019), along with an overview of global simulation results and direct casualty estimates.”
I suppose I could chase down the reference to Toon et al. to get an idea of how Tg of soot relate to what numbers of nucear weapons of what sizes … but if nuclear war were the driver behind the LSU study, I can only wonder why it did not include this information. If I am correctly recalling Ellsberg’s statements about the catastrophic impacts of even a very limited nuclear exchange — essentially game-over for Humankind — I can only wonder why bother modelling those impacts in greater detail on a longer term scale. The insaniety of a combined nuclear arsenal of 13,000 weapons, and the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine seems self-evident without knowing how long it will take for the oceans to return to their previous state.
However, a more detailed model of Nuclear Winter might have direct application to concerns about the ‘space-mirrors’ geoengineering projects — their conflict with the precautionary principle. Consider this from the LSU paper:
“Regardless of war location and magnitude, soot reaching the stratosphere from nuclear war firestorms is quickly dispersed globally, absorbing sunlight and reducing the solar radiation to the ocean surface.”
I suppose highly refined models of the long effects of Tg of black soot in the upper atmosphere might prove useful for getting around some concerns about ‘space-mirrors’ geoengineering projects.
I was shocked when Obama announced his major escalation the military nuclear program. I knew then he was a total wash out of a president.
The doomsday clock is close to midnight, if I am not wrong.
IMPORTANT: Saker website is STILL currently down at 8:17 ET Sunday
Saker blog under attack – URGENT request for help
Dear friends
The Saker blog has been under attack for many months, but we kept it quiet. Our webmaster and sysadmin Herb has successfully beat back all the attacks, but now the enemy has upped both the scale and nature of the attack and we are barely hanging on.
I have two urgent requests:
1) If you are an IT security specialist (or can contact one you know) and you think that you (or he/she), or your company, can help, please contact at the following email as soon as possible: saker-webmaster@yandex.com
Please do NOT email me personally as I am on sick leave and this is way above my IT skills.
2) please circulate this appeal of mine on social media, maybe that will help us get to the right people who can help us.
Finally, we will keep you updated on the old blog’s site here: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/
Thank you in advance for any help!
Kind regards
Andrei
Yes, Saker no go for a few days. From today I am having trouble with Xymphora and The Automatic Earth too. Top pages load, links don’t. Laptop as well as phone. Could be the connection here I guess.
Has anyone else also had their phone battery sink precipitously lately, for no apparent reason? My wife said she saw something about how this is down to the increased surveillance embedded in updates. Which made me wonder whether a ‘sand in the gears’ operation targeting particular users was possible. Obvs with Saker they are attacking the source, but if the answer to the question ‘Can they target users’ site access?’ is Yes, the only question that remains is ‘Would they?’
I wonder if The Automatic Earth is now having the same problem that NC had a week ago, with — what was it? JavaScript errors in connection with certain embedded tweets?
I wonder which three letters are behind it.
The Automatic Earth is not loading for me either. It stalls at the list of posts. The Saker has been gone for days also. Sunday evening.
I haven’t noticed a battery sink but I wasn’t able to load any other sites for several minutes after I tried Saker with Firefox on a MacBook. I’m hesitating to try it now even though I realize that’s probably the intent of the attack.
Just got Automatic Earth here in Oz using Firefox. Maybe the problem is region specific.
Here in MN USA I’ve reached both AE and Saker this morning, although the latter with some burps along the way. DB time outs, etc.
Yes. My phone battery is doing that.
My iPhone battery (one year old) has definitely been draining much too fast and acting buggy the last month or so.
I can’t get it and Firefox says their certificate is no good. Other sites like Strategic Culture are blanked at home but may be available on public wifi and vice versa. Of course there is a long history of the movie studios trying to suppress pirate sites which survive via mirrors. Saker probably doesn’t have the audience to inspire that kind of effort. Needless to say the entities that come in for criticism on Saker–Ukraine, Israel, our own government–are hacker havens.
To me it shows the naivete of the Safe Spacers and the wisdom of Franklin: “those who would trade liberty for safety will get neither.” If the censors get their way we may all have to go buy short wave radios in line with our Cold War redux.
Jamming short wave is a trivial exercise, too. https://windupradio.com/how-to-make-a-radio-frequency-jammer/
Gov.gov can no doubt do it at scale.
The Saker site loaded here in Canada, after a lengthy redirect through some Cloudflare DDoS redirect / defense. The site (Saker) notes that their HTTPS site is down due to the DDoS attack, and to use the older HTTP address. Firefox in it’s default locked down configuration will refuse to use HTTP, you have to manually tell it to do so. (The ‘certificate is no good’ warning you got is due to this)
Thank you. I’ll try it.
I was able to access the Saker yesterday on Google surprisingly; today the site is down again.
“Why Homeowners Opt For Artificial Lawns Over Real Grass”
At least that article points out that all that plastic turf is not recyclable and has to be replaced every 15 years. Then you sit back and think that in 2005 alone, lawns in the US covered about 128,000 square kilometers (49,000 sq mi). That is a lot of plastic that will be stacking up then that will be headed for landfill or the incinerators. And kids can’t play on it in summer real well as they can reach 93.7°C (201°F) on a really hot day. The example was from Sydney but why there when the article starts off by talking about people in Arizona. I am reliably informed that Arizona gets hot in the summertime as well. And of course you have pollution from bits of plastic coming off and ending up in waterways. Yeah, I’m gunna say that plastic turf is not the way to go.
The whole lawn thing is a property value thing, from what i recall.
That said, the modern lawn may well have come out of the desire/need for a kitchen garden.
In the end though, it may all be about recreating English living in wildly different climates in some fit of nostalgia or whatever.
I like Arizona’s insistence on xeroscaping. It defines the home very well and I appreciate the appeal (and the very low maintenance)
The inspiration of the desirability of swaths of land given over to turf grasses comes from 18th century British aristocrats. A landscape design movement, the English Landscape Garden, came to dominate much of elite European practice. It’s exemplar is Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who designed landscapes that evoked a fantasy pastoral world, but which required massive changes to existing terrain. The idyllic vistas which appear untouched and ‘natural’ required huge investment in construction and large ongoing maintenance costs – albeit less costly than a 17th century elite landscape. Basically, it was all ostentatious display of wealth. Part of the point of these vast landscape projects served to show that the owners were rich enough to let agricultural land lie quite passively productive (wool and timber primarily). Much more intensive use of land took place out of eyesight. The exchange for foregone income was personal satisfaction derived in bragging rights and one-upmanship typical of inter-elite striving. Kitchen gardens were relegated out of sight, behind walls or hedges. After all, only peasants raise vegetables and the odd food animal in their front yards, for all to see. (The deformed offspring of this attitude lives on in countless HOAs nationwide.)
The US ruling class that took control through the Revolutionary War were entirely of their time as far as aesthetics and fashion are concerned. The emergent elite were largely wealthy men who apart from the odd quibble about governance and rule of law didn’t want to alter anything at all in terms of class relations, nor would the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ be significantly different from that of the British or French ruling classes (which they assiduously aped then, and our ruling class continued the practice for 200-odd years. The English Landscape Garden became the leading inspiration for a great many USians of great wealth building grand estates. Those estates served as inspiration for less grand manifestations fed by less wealth, a process replicated at smaller scales over the decades. By ~1880 it was not unusual for some lawn to be considered an absolute must for the affluent small city factory owner, bank president, big landowner, etc.
That aesthetic found fertile ground through the marketing of suburban, single family housing after 1900. The 1920s saw a lot of development for this market nationwide. After 1945, suburban single family life became USian state religion. A big selling point to the yobs was a lawn, which under the influence of our aristo-derived notions of what is beautiful in domestic landscaping/gardening, become synonymous with affluence and ‘success’.
I found this article informative, which filled in gaps and/or lapses in my recollection of the period: https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/the-english-landscape-garden/
RK
I just sold my last house, where I replaced the lawn with CA golden poppies and some xeroscaping. Now I have another house, and it has a HUGE lawn. Too late to dig it up as it would be too hot to replace it now, but come winter the lawn goes and some flowering drought tolerant shrubs go in.
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/bop/mexican-red-bird-of-paradise.htm
We’ve moved to a house on a hill outside of the Bay Area. It is hot and dry for my wife’s health but not enough water for the plants. The lawn is brown and ugly but at least the goats and alpaca eat the grasses in their areas.
For a replacement for the lawn, I have found a couple of sites that sell low water use vegetation plants. Here is one of the sites that has three different ground covers – UC Verde Buffalo Grass, Kurapia, and Rushia Nana. No plastic grass!
https://californialawnalternatives.com/
Check out the photos and compare them to a lawn that you have to water and mow.
I was leaning to the Kurapia; but maybe will go with the Rushia Nana because it can take some traffic. They aren’t cheap but the water saving will pay for them in a year or two.
An unorthodox view of Sri Lanka’s economic and political fall.
Green Dogma Behind Fall Of Sri Lanka
Organic farm advocates said they wanted what’s best for the 22 million people of the island nation off the coast of India. What went wrong?
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/green-dogma-behind-fall-of-sri-lanka
What went wrong was 22 million people. The original “Green Revolution” is based on the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Get rid of those two ‘inputs’ and crop yields drop. The nation thus can no longer feed itself. To cope, the nation must shrink it’s population. Expect the ‘outbreak’ of some really nasty new pathogen on the island soon.
High inputs of fertilisers and pesticides give a short term boost to outputs at the expense of long term outputs (i.e. because they destroy the soil). The question of whether they increase outputs depends largely on the start and finish dates you choose to make your comparison. Boosters fo the Green Revolution ignore that for thousands of years farmers have been steadily increasing outputs at a level that matched population growth. Now that global population has almost certainly gone into decline (the figures are controversial, but most demographers now think that the ‘peak’ has past), the focus should be on long term sustainability of the soil, not providing short term fixes for localised shortages.
We actually have no real shortage of food, or agricultural capacity on the planet. What we do have is grossly distorted agricultural systems which are fundamentally unsustainable and are producing foods according to perceptions of profitability rather than a proper relationship between land and human nutrient needs. Ireland produced more food (measured in terms of calories) in the early 19th Century than it does now. The difference is that it now produces vast amounts of dairy rather than grain and root vegetables (yes, the potato failed, but Ireland still exported food during the famine).
As always, the biggest players find ways to profit from shortages (aka the potato famine and still exporting food during the crisis). Shortages can be very very profitable. See Goldman Sachs:
Goldman bullish on commodities, seeing years-long supercycle
https://www.mining.com/web/goldman-bullish-on-commodities-seeing-years-long-supercycle/
While the article is mostly about oil, GS has large positions in agricultural commodities as well.
an aside: if I were being foily I might think taking RU and Ukr grain and oil and fertilizer off the Western markets is a boon to commodity prices for outfits like GS and US grain and oil producers… but that would be foily.
And the U.S. interrupting the supply of food from Russia.
“If you do business with our corporations and special interest’s enemies then you can just starve” seems to be the message.
Here’s some countervailing propaganda to review. Excellent long video. Tons more, at RT.com
https://rtd.rt.com/films/torched-sri-lankas-economy/
“The US embargo on Russian oil and gas nearly destroyed the Sri Lankan economy as it depends on imported energy resources. This ongoing fuel shortage caused extreme inflation of 117% and incited riots. Today the island is shaken by protests against the government. ‘It’s been a perfect storm. On the one hand, the foreign debt grew, and on the other hand, fuel prices went up. That caused an avalanche effect,’ says Alexey Kupriyanov, the senior researcher at IMEMO.”
Michael Shellenberger is not a good faith analyst. He is a right wing neo-liberal anti environmentalist funded by a number of dubious think tanks who poses as a ‘rational’ or ‘concerned’ environmentalist in order to sneak his articles into the mainstream. He is one of many – its a bit of a game of whack-a-mole to spot them.
The original Sri Lankan agriculture policy was reasonably sensible – they aimed at a 10 year transition to organic agriculture in order to reduce the countries reliance on imports and to boost the added value of food exports. But the economic crisis meant that they simply ran out of hard currency for fertilisers and pesticides, forcing a faster transition that was possible for farmers, making a bad situation worse. But the reality is that the problems would have happened anyway, simply because Sri Lanka does not have domestic sources of agriculture chemical imports and now lacks the hard currency to import them.
It takes 10 years to reasonably shift from traditional crop farming to organic farming. Farmers have done it. The overnight “now you have no inputs” was a disaster. I assume that fertilizer was only one of many things the govt could have cut back on or eliminated. I often shake my head thinking, “city people…”, that is to say people who have no idea what is involved with getting food to their table. “It comes from the store!” right….
adding: by eliminating animal farming, one source of organic fertilizer is eliminated. (also: Where will milk for the children come from? “From the store!”. (sorry))
adding: I’ll amend my first comment to read “I often shake my head when thinking about decision makers and planners making policy while having no idea what is involved with
getting food to their table. “
Oh boy. The milk joke bought back memories of when Phyl nursed the children.
“Hands off you. They’re for the baby now!”
“But dear! What about….”
“Stop whining or Mommy spank!”
“Promise?”
“Shut up and go find something useful to do.”
Happy simple days.
“city people…”
Or as locals in Upstate NY like to say, “cidiots.”
“Summer”
True, city people have no clue about how the food gets to their table. But then, none of us have many clues about most of what surrounds us. It’s black boxes all the way down. This is a problem.
The idea that organic agriculture is “no inputs” is dangerous. There are plenty of inputs, they’re just different and the timeline to their effectiveness is A. longer and B. a more complex system of interactions. (Not implying you believe “no inputs”, just riffing on your statement.)
In the NZ farming context, the rural newspapers we used to get for free in our letterbox usually spoke in terms of ‘only very good farmers should try going organic’. We try to run a ‘minimal chemicals’ farm. Going full organic, cropping or stock, is *hard*. All the miracle agri-chemicals of the last 50 years are really useful, and solve many problems quickly. Yes, their mis-use has led to more, different problems (resistance, etc).
Trying to get all farmers to organic systems is probably not practical, even in a decade-long time scale. We can definitely raise the standard, and cut chemical inputs, but not everyone is capable of playing farming on ‘expert’ mode. Not if they have a mortgage to service. (So yes, much could be improved if we improved predatory finance, but that applies broadly across our civilisation)
Absolutely. I don’t like ideology with my horticulture. Fundamentally, organic is the process of breaking long molecules into little ones because plants can only absorb nutrients in near elemental form. All the manure in the world makes no difference without the biology to release the nitrogen. Organic farming isn’t growing crops, it’s tending soil. But, it’s also possible to use “chemical” fertilizers in a primarily organic system to maximize yield and without damaging soil health. But because city folks are ideologically organic, agriculture has a bunch of half-assed workarounds to get the organic cert as described by the government. In the US one’s organic lettuce from the grocery store sourced in AZ or CA during the winter eliminates herbicide use via employing migrant laborers with weed burners. But once you put a farm backstory, a cartoon of the “farmer” and the organic label, it’s worth it!
Expert mode is a good description. Much more planning ahead and dealing with things you can’t see and are difficult to measure.
Also known as Greens (maybe hipsters)…
April 2021, Sri Lanka government banned import of fertilizer—-gov’t said it was for green reasons, if you want to be cynical it was to conserve hard currency as Sri Lanka already had a balance of payments problem thanks to covid tourism fall.
Regardless, it set off the chain of events (crashing food production) that led to today.
Sri Lanka was 100% self-sufficient in rice until the fertilizer ban
Gravitas Plus | Explained: Sri Lankan economic crisis (an Indian TV news channel, 2 months ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJSsq2fW5ZE
Great opportunity for Chinese govt to add a whistle stop to the Belt and Road line… https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-wild-card-sri-lankas-debt-crisis-84851676
One wonders what is actually happening in this situation. And in so many others.
Great link. Thank you. Comprehensive and quick outline of everything – not just agriculture – that’s pushed Sri Lanka to this point.
I think that video has to be viewed in context of the article posted by Spud below. The video discusses recent problems, but I don’t think it looks at root causes as discussed in the article, which go much further back in time than the video does.
The video said “from a pro market approach Sri Linka switched to a welfare driven mode” and suggests the welfare driven mode is a big part of the problem. The article from spud suggests that it was the IMF’s pro market approach implemented many years ago that developed the critical issues in the first place that we now see. The video does not go back far enough in time.
sri lanka, a case study on how free trade impoverished and starved their people
if you look at every one of these countries that are failing, all one needs to look at is free trade, THE IMF, and other quack economics which are at the bottom of all of this.
https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/09/14/wither-the-sri-lankan-economy/
“Imports were not to be controlled”
and really, sri lanka was forced into trying something, they simply ran out of money to pay for imports, which in the past they were self sufficient in. now look at the mess the free traders have made again. none of this can be turned around over night. sri lankas people are becoming radicalized, so instead of trail and error, violence will erupt because the system of free trade has robbed them of their future.
That is a superb article Spud, exhibit A for a case study in how the IMF fails third world countries, thanks for posting
Well apparently the President pushed through the largest tax cuts in the country’s history. That won’t have helped.
Here’s another take, with a slightly different (skewed?) slant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJahAWNfYG0
It’s by Brian Berletic, an American expat resident in Thailand (who also comments on Syria and Ukraine). (His mangling of local names can be be forgiven; IMO he’s on the side of the angels in the ongoing “clash of civilisations”)
Hi,
I’d like to say that I’ve been an organic row crop farmer in Wisconsin for 6 years, with some success. There are many more practitioners of this than you might think. My mentor, Carmen Fernholz, has been doing it for more than 30 years.
There is information out there on how to do this, though it can be very difficult.
I’ll leave the link to OGrain, a University of Wisconsin program that covers a lot of basic info that seems to be missing in this thread.
https://ograin.cals.wisc.edu/
This is disgusting and it took too long to say so little. Cuomo was an entrenched politician, certain of his goodness and sunlight demeanor in all his dealings with other people. There is a hint of “woe is me” to the author’s tone, which may be unfortunate but tough cookies.
There is a hilarious analogy included, comparing the governor akin to the Falcons leading the Patriots in the 3rd quarter.
Cuomo’s downfall was a good thing, even though the NYS swamp remains brimming with similar critters.
What bothers those of us burdened by conscience and morality is the fact that his self-serving management of COVID and thousands of nursing home deaths doesn’t matter to these professional spin meisters. It is all about messaging.
Further, the illegal corruption and legalized cronyism doesn’t matter either.
And the fawning over Mayo Pete was tough to take before Sunday’s muffins and coffee.
We have Pete to thank for all that hard earned insight into how best to reclaim our standing in this modern life, one airline cancellation at a time. With a future so bright, he’s gotta wear shades.
The author is Lis Smith. She was behind Cuomo’s strategy of working with Republicans to block legislation. She worked for Buttigieg among others, but really, she’s just trying to distance herself without acknowledging her role.
She’s at the putting lipstick on a turd phase of her career.
Lis Smith 2024!!!
I had to give up on Smith’s whatever-it-was when she did her fourth dive into “what had gone before,” all of which sounded more like resume padding than helpful history.
I’m also assuming she never ever comes close to explaining Buttigieg’s “win” in Iowa.
‘Sri Lanka’
When the President of Afghanistan fled last year, he did so by airplane but which meant that he had to leave bags of money on the runway. An embarrassing and costly mistake that. The President of Sri Lanka was smarter however in that he fled aboard the SLNS ‘Gajabahu’ as can be seen in the following tweet. Any Coasties seeing this may recognize that ship as the former USCGC Sherman-
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1545816984037732353
Didn’t recognize it at all. I was stationed on the CGC Rush 82-83–same class 378′ whec–and would never know the ship in the video was the same. 40 years is a long time so I guess my mind is not once it was.
MIT’s space bubbles–
So somebody better check what’s in the water in Cambridge. Up around Harvard Square, Keith (with Gates behind him) wants to shoot sulfur in the sky every two years to block the sun. Now the geniuses down Mass Ave want to make giant space bubbles to surround the Earth with the same goal.
The first idea gets acid rain going again, but think of the fun Gates will have with a competitive bid process for the job between Bezos and Musk. Do they have biologists at MIT? Have they checked with the plants and the bees about how that reduced sunlight will work for them? Oh, I forgot. After we kill all the native plants and bees, they’ll turn to the Harvard boys and Gates will be there with his patented forever Frankenplants and robot bees.
Risking anything from hours in Covid tubes to doing a redesign of Earth is worth it so that WEIRD country PMCs can enjoy their exotic international vacations to places where there used to be Nature.
And people said “Don’t Look Up” was over the top. I guess it’s like 1984. Our elites are taking satire as a script.
https://yes-pdf.com/book/3428
Went to find a quote from ministry for the future, and found a pdf instead.
Complete. Incredibly fast download. Not a tech guy, but I only keep memes on this PC so I went for it.
Are you sure you got MftF? I looked and the download part was an ad for some Wike thing.
I got it 3 times. Once directly from a search link that redirects me to my own hard drive. There are ads all over the site, but the file is there. (it doesn’t confirm if you want to download or where which is incredibly sus)
I tried it once straight from the link and got the ad you referenced. Went to their home page and re-ran the search by typing in the title and the second time it just threw the file in my download folder again.
Odd, but seems to work. I already bought my copy and passed it on.
“And people said “Don’t Look Up” was over the top. I guess it’s like 1984. Our elites are taking satire as a script.”
If you haven’t seen it, check out the movie “Snowpiercer” from 2013 (same director of the Oscar winning foreign film that won the overall best picture best picture award “Parasite”). However, Snowpiercer is an English language film.
Snowpiercer plot (brief overview):
“In 2031, 18 years after an attempt to stop global warming via stratospheric aerosol injection catastrophically backfires and creates a new ice age, the remnants of humanity have taken to a self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards….”
And eating cockroaches
Well, cockroach jelly ..
>Have they checked with the plants and the bees about how that reduced sunlight will work for them?
Isn’t the goal to move the artificial cloud over parts of the earth that are the hottest and don’t have much in the way of plants or bugs.. think Sahara desert or Death Valley. I don’t doubt there will be negative consequences, but maybe it’s worth a smaller trial version to get a sense of what those would be and perhaps even mitigate them..rather then wait until it’s to late to do anything
It may come as a surprise to you, but most deserts are full of life. In no way are they sterile places. Have you actually visited Death Valley?
>most deserts are full of life.
Are they more full of life then similar climates with slightly less sun? Are increased temperatures already threatening the life there (and everywhere)?
The problem with shooting sulfur in the sky every two years and using “space bubbles” to block the sun is that both are only partial treatments of one symptom of too much carbon in the atmosphere. They do nothing to address ocean acidification. If that sulfur has to be shot in the air every two years because it comes down with the rain, then we’re dropping the PH of soils all over the planet. Who has a lot of lime to counter that?
Both are crazy attempts to do anything to avoid giving up GDP growth, a summer vacay in Tuscany, 50-mile commutes in a big SUV, etc. It’s similar to an alcoholic who thinks he can lick the problem by drinking his booze from a glass rather than direct from the bottle.
You only listed the problem for sulfur.. not what was being discussed: “space bubble”. I’m absolutely expecting there to be downsides to this too — which is why I’m surprised your resorting to a red herring falacy
But even with the downside [which I’m still not entirely sure what it is].. maybe its worth it to at least do a small scale trial run?
Space bubble will lead to the moral hazard of ” we have solved the global warming problem, we can keep basing the economy on fossil fuel.” The outcome of that moral hazard being that we will acidify the ocean enough to kill all our most favorite seafood. And then whatever other bad things happen after that.
I’m just catching up on the takes, but its fascinating how confused they are, which is almost inevitable when people insist on applying ‘left’ and ‘right’ and ‘nationalist’ or ‘liberal’ labels to Japan (or any other non-western country) when their politics is very deeply rooted in their own history.
Abe was definitely a mixed bag. In many ways an ultra nationalist and neoliberal who followed a strongly pro-US foreign policy, but he also sought good relations with Russia (and faced down both domestic opposition and US opposition to this), fought for better child care and welfare policies (albeit to persuade more women to work longer hours), and was steadily reducing Japan’s reliance on the US militarily and forging an independent foreign policy, while also following monetary and fiscal policies that were extremely loose and radical, albeit hamstrung by the weird LDP obsession with increasing VAT. As some have observed, he was very much on the populist right, but he was also smart enough to keep a lid on the real crazies that populate much of Japanese politics and may well have led the way to better politicise and politicians (not least by encouraging more women in to politics).
The really weird thing is that there are lots of rumours that the assassination was tied up with his very shadowy connections to the Moonies. It shows just how complex the Japanese/Korean/US relationship is that a crackpot like the Rev. Moon could have such a deep and malign influence in the politics of all three countries.
How about that time Rev. Moon had himself crowned the Messiah at a ceremony held in the Senate Office Building?
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/a-crowning-at-the-capital-creates-a-stir.html
https://www.qwant.com/?q=Sun+Myung+Moon+king+messiah+senate+office+building&t=web
Indian punchline has a say as well:
https://www.indianpunchline.com/shinzo-abe-a-controversial-visionary/
A slice of life in bankrupt Sri Lanka. I [HK travel blogger] Spent a Night in Bankrupt Sri Lanka (Harsh Reality)
what economic collapse looks like, only in Lanka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKOd8TDptt0
Dude goes outside, talks to driver, and goes back to table with recently met stranger-friends.
“They ordered a Sprite for me and even opened the cap. Sri Lankans are so friendly….”
Whew. Tense moment for me, but he’s okay….
What a horrible thing to happen to the people of Sri Lanka. Wishing them the best.
But they aren’t in any hurry to let that foreign money leave the country. Smart.
The only tragic thing about Abe’s assassination is that it didn’t happen sooner.
Harsh. Abe was hardly a paragon of virtue – indeed he may well be held up as one of the most cynical and manipulative leaders of the LDP in the post-war era, who tried to inflame all sorts of social conflict. But – and as my oldest friend (who’s lived virtually entire life since our time at Cambridge in Japan and is a Dean at a top Japanese university and is as embedded in the country as you can be) agrees – Abe was complex and wishing him dead is not nice.
Yes his social and “overall Japan” policies were arguably very very troublesome. However he showed surprising levels of pragmatism in economic policy, being powerful enough to be unafraid to perform rapid u-turns on taxation when his neoliberal cronies demanded tax rises to “balance the books” and duly (as per MMT) threatened to put the country back into an even worse funk. He is a large reason why Japan has only teetered on the point of depression rather than falling into it….. All because he just decided “where is this inflation you keep conjuring up as the boogeyman? Sod the tax rises if it keeps the economy afloat and LDP in power”.
After all, can we be sure that a non-Abe neoliberal-to-the-core PM who ended up inflaming nasty prejudices following economic depression would have been better? Might have been even worse….
731
Not often mentioned is that Allied POWs, including Americans, went through Unit 731 and were dissected – while alive and awake.
Yes, the infamous “liver horderves” incident at the “Office Party” for the Unit. Ishii, the head of Unit 731 was not punished and died of cancer in 1959. He collaberated with the Americans after the war.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way. You get to choose one.
Becoming a monster is ok when fighting that big scary communist monster bear. /s
If there is a bear…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_in_the_woods
Among other things, that was presumably Republicans’ revenge (served cold) for the “Daisy” commercial of 20 years earlier…
A late great uncle of mine, on my mother’s side, was a POW held captive by the Imperial Army from circa March 1942 to 1945 (I would have to confirm the actual date he was ultimately freed). That man survived a hell on earth existence and lived to speak of it. Not related but tangential to the time and era.
USS Houston ca30, cruiser class, torpedoed in late February 1942.
The POW camps in the Philippines were liberated in spring 1945. Those in Japan proper in August.
And us Brits invented concentration camps. And Yanks are only nation to drop nuclear bombs on innocent people. He was definitely not nice but i presented a counterfactual. Your point?
I made a perfectly reasonable point that Abe was a thoroughly nasty if pragmatic guy but saying it’s good someone murdered him was not helpful and noted a policy stance he took that just might have avoided something worse.
TBH I’m slightly alarmed at the sentiments in this thread.
It could be a case of group “projection.”
Not only concentration camps, but mass killings as well. The Brits may seem like slouches compared to the Americans, but they can more than hold their own when it comes to evil doing.
This part:
(4) … all the people involved were either tried and executed (by the Soviets and Chinese), or given full pardons in exchange for their ‘experimental data’ (by the Americans).
This is what Abe found so funny, and approved of. This is exactly what he was referring to in this …”
I guess they were given room and board with the Nazi scientists.
I hate to appear to be defending Abe, but its ridiculous to argue that he had any idea that the unit number could be connected to Unit 731.
That was an entirely contrived outrage by China (even most Chinese people have little to no idea what Unit 731 represented).
That’s entirely untrue about Chinese people’s awareness of unit 731 and Japanese atrocities in China. I spent a few years in China a couple decades ago and was schooled repeatedly about Japanese war crimes. Given Abe’s repeated, proud visits to war criminal shrines in the face of international outrage, and the fact that his own grandfather was a war criminal responsible for running parts of the Japanese occupation in china, it’s more likely that he knew exactly what he was doing and reveled in it
The Chinese public awareness of Japanese war crimes is relatively recent, and even then has tended to be restricted to more educated Chinese, it has been kept off basic school textbooks. It was only after the 1990’s that Chinese people were allowed discuss them in a non-selective manner, and even then its gone through various waves of interpretation. The Chinese government basically turns on and off the tap of outrage when it suits them (pretty much like most societies when it comes to this type of thing)..
Yep. Phil found all sorts of inconsistencies that made a “coherent societal temporal” account impossible. A jigsaw puzzle where pieces were often swapped out with another, making “even” post-modernist interpretations look at best ridiculous and at worst a “western plot”.
All part of why he realised he’d gone as far as he could and he had to switch area of research….. Or at least approach it from a radically different angle to get at any “truths”. He knows he is safe, despite being a Dean (with attendant “serious” responsibilities) because his first ever faculty party had his superior’s wife wearing a “trendy English” t-shirt……. Pity she and hubby had poor English……. “Too drunk to family blog” almost made him spit sake into his boss’s face. This is reddit-worthy
Very true. In fact, Chinese president Xi sent condolences to Japan expressing the warm regards he held for Shinzo Abe.
I don’t know where you get your information about what the Chinese public knows and doesn’t know about Japanese atrocities in China, but it’s utterly incorrect. Many movies have been made about this dating back to the 1980s.
Hey all, recent finding on the interwebs reveals that Russell Brand is up to his antics again. It is an interesting and relevant clip, including some video footage I don’t immediately recall but I miss a good bit during the workdays.
Political theater, and the Democrats in leadership.
https://youtu.be/w1_hYe3hhjE
Re: Abenomics / “A national election Sunday may now see a surge in support in a wave of sympathy for Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party”
Did Abe take a bullet kamikaze-style for the party?
I think that this election will determine if Japan changes its constitution and remove all the references to peacefulness and self-defense.
It takes a few generations to forget the lessons the ancestors learned through painful experience. We’ve seen a bit of that in US in recent decades, in areas like financial regulation and public health. I’m guessing that it’s a “natural process”; not sure what social structures could ensure that lessons favorable to survival be remembered into the future.
“not sure what social structures could ensure that lessons favorable to survival be remembered into the future…”
The one that “should” and has been perfectly positioned to do so: educational system/schools.
If schools can’t do that, then the entire concept of “education” needs to examined.
If the schools have been recently infiltrated and subverted by the enemies of social survival, then perhaps those enemies and their methods for infiltrating and subverting the schools are what should be examined.
remove … peacefulness and self-defense
Way too late for that to have any military effect. The neighborhood has changed. As has Japan’s demographics. But there’s pretty good odds Japan will build Australia’s next submarine if Australia replaces its Collins-class.
For decades the United States has interfered in Japan’s elections; mostly to ensure continuance of LDP rule. A re-armed Japan is very profitable for US arms merchants.
The Japanese seem to fickle when they have a surge in support for the LDP just because an ex PM gets assassinated for non political reasons. I wonder if the same kind of thinking prevails in the US?
‘There Is No Constitutional Right To Eat Dinner’
Oooooh, the snark is strong with that one. Very tasty with my morning coffee. Caitlin Johnston must be chuckling at Kavanaugh’s dyspepsia… he didn’t stay for dessert!
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/07/09/our-entire-civilization-is-structured-around-keeping-us-from-realizing-we-can-do-this/
Most media outlets appear to be pretending the extensive protests by Dutch farmers are not happening, as well. What little reporting there is tends to portray the farmers as special-interest extremists, unwilling to co-operate with needed environmental measures and lacking support in broader society.
That, although the latest survey results dated July 10 from pollster Maurice de Hond put the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in second place, winning 20 seats — only one less than Rutte’s VVD — if Dutch lower-house elections were held today.
What little reporting there is tends to portray the farmers as special-interest extremists, unwilling to co-operate with needed environmental measures and lacking support in broader society.
But of course. The only qualified experts to solve this problem are the ones who created it in the first place.
My goodness, Lexx! That Sri Lankan crowd makes the January 6 ‘insurrectionists’ look like pikers! Guess we are not hungry enough. Yet.
Give it time. We will be.
If I was Trump running for President in 2024, I’d include a plank in my platform pledging to ban the export of American food until everyone in the country has enough to eat. The left overs can go overseas. If we do see widespread hunger by 2023 and on, this would be a winning campaign strategy.
Effective populism.
DC is a long ways away from most of the country. Gotta have money to travel.
It’s all a matter of organization. Look at where the Jan6 crowd came from, as in, all over the country. Also, using busses to bring in crowds of true believers for “spontaneous demonstrations” is an old tactic. I saw it up close a few years ago here in our very own half horse town. A BLM demonstration against some Confederate Monuments in the downtown was heavily ‘beefed up’ by a dozen big tour busses of BLM stalwarts from Jackson, which is ninety miles away.
If ‘things’ get too bad, you could whip up a modern Bonus Army. Carpool to the Capitol and run Amok for President.
A note of caution: most protests need permits, otherwise the police can Kettle and mass arrest to their hearts content. They’ve learned how to contain real dissent since Occupy.
Yes, the police state is way ahead of any mass movement now days.
But some entities can still create destruction. We live in more than interesting times. Downright disturbing. I wish for an answer.
I counter with the observation that America hasn’t seen “real dissent” since at least the Bonus March of the early 1930s. It took Army intervention to ‘disperse’ that group. Then there are the coalfield wars, and the union bombing campaigns of the turn of the Twentieth Century.
The police in America don’t know what is going to hit them when some enterprisong groups start to use IEDs against them. Just ask any Afghanistan Vet about IEDs and the damage done.
I would consider it to be the “turning point” when a ‘kettled’ crowd begins to fight back against the police. It’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if.’
An example of a proto-Opposition force would be the Black Panthers. They got taken down by the Forces of Oppression, yes, but their legacy lives on. There are Black Separatist groups in America today, and some are politically active.
A ‘kettled’ crowd would be very easy to mass-slaughter with machine-gun fire or mass-torture with the mobile Raytheon Oven Ray. I think there will only be 2 or 3 ‘kettled’ crowd fight-back incidents.
After that, resistance will be more dispersed and diffuse.
“Enough to eat” is kind of subjective. In theory we already do that — see food stamps. And any good ol’ PMC knows that if you are unable to jump through the buearocratic hurdles to get food stamps its because you must not actually be hungry
If you liked that Sri Lankan crowd, just wait to see those for Europe about November or December – weather depending. Europe is heading for a catastrophe and the political leadership is acting like the Uvalde cops. In places like Germany they may have to go back to home schooling like they did during the Pandemic by winter time. Those schools will just be too cold to send students too.
“UN finds Ukrainian forces put civilians at risk in nursing home attack”
The Ukrainians thought that they were smart locating their military units in hospitals, children’s schools, apartment blocks, etc. If the Russians hit them, though they may lose that unit, they get a propaganda boost via the unquestioning western media. But Scott Ritter explained some time ago in a coupla videos that under international law, if you put your military next to civilians, then it means that it is fair game civilians or not. And that means that the Ukrainians are guilty of breaking international law by locating their military next to civilians in the first place. I suspect that as those civilians were Russian-speakers, that the Ukrainians saw that as a bonus. But the Russians must have massive amounts of videos showing what the Ukrainians were doing.
‘Antidote Du Jour’
If you don’t know (I didn’t) that there is a classification of hummingbird called ‘Allen’s Hummingbird’, the descriptive sentence is confusing… and funny.
https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/bird-species/hummingbirds-swifts-and-swallows/allens-hummingbird/
‘NEW—It is time for the global public health community to recognize a growing reality: #Monkeypox is now a pandemic—unless we declare an emergency & act quickly to combat it, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made with covid.’
It seems to strange this. With the present Coronavirus Pandemic the long term strategy turned out to be to ignore it and do some hand-waving to make it look like you were doing something. And to accept the ever increasing death toll as something to be ignored just to keep the economy going. But it took two years to get to this point. But with Monkeypox it looks like we are skipping the first two years and going straight to the Coronavirus strategy direct.
It’s time to sharpen up the blades of the guillotines. They will be getting quite a workout next year.
Letting the Coronavirus Pandemic get “out of hand” is spinnable. Doing the same thing so soon after with another Deadly Pathogen will be an obvious and highly visible sign that the Status Quo PMCs have lost the ‘Mandate of Heaven.’
Hilarity ensues, characterized by incidents of very ‘sharp wit.’
Seriously. At this point the only way our misleadership class could begin lowering the death rate is by introducing a zombie or vampire virus that rebrands the dead as “undead” instead.
Biden: “I’ve reduced the death rate to pre-Trump levels!”
Citizenry: “Zombies are eating our brains out here! What are you talking about?”
Media: “Why won’t the Left admit Biden is a hero?”
Actually, we could consider Long Covid as a progressive Zombie syndrome.
Of course, redefining ‘death’ is something an adept PMC class could do.
I’m reminded of Philip K Dick’s story of what happens after the Supreme Court legally defines the moment of personhood for a fetus as when it learns algebra.
It’s all up to the Supreme Court now.
“‘Romero vs. Reality’ has been accepted by the Supreme Court for consideration next year. Now for the rest of the legal news, here’s our Legal Expert Reporter Kamala.”
I’m under the impression that the blade of the guillotine does not actually need to be sharp.
Somewhat related, a 2009 (since scrubbed) UN report touting the benefits of involuntary hunger. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
UN Deletes Article Touting ‘Benefits’ of World Hunger: ‘Hungry People Are the Most Productive People’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/un-deletes-article-touting-benefits-of-world-hunger-hungry-people-are-the-most-productive-people/ar-AAZle5Q
cached Goog image of report:
https://archive.ph/UQJBl#selection-515.0-518.0
A modern Modest Proposal, no doubt. / ;)
Did the UN understand the satire or did they think it a straightforward essay? That’s the question. They were suddenly embarrassed enough to scrub it. / ;)
Neo-liberal thinking –> neo-liberal butt-covering, it’s all one!
The scrubbing seems to be more about third parties taking at face value even if UN insiders understood it as satire or not.
Basically the biggest example of Poe’s Law in action to date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
And on that note, the last 4+ years or so is basically one long example of Godwin’s Law…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Many years ago, I worked as a lab tech in a medical school endocrinology lab. I do not remember anyone ever sharpening the guillotine we used to decapitate rats. So I believe you are correct.
Back in the days of pre-guillotine beheadings, family members would often pay the executioner extra to assure a one-stroke end.
Back-to-school time will be revealing…
I recently read that Gebreyesus and his WHO are actively suppressing all attempts to have monkeypox declared a pandemic. I personally believe that is because Gebreyesus deliberately wants to make sure that monkeypox becomes a pandemic.
He is running the WHO delay-and-deny playbook for monkeypox exactly as he ran it for covid.
What is his hidden real agenda? Who does he secretly actually work for?
“The Financial Bubble Era Comes Full Circle” Matt Taibbi
“Regarding the BlackRock fund’s provision allowing them to borrow up to a third of the reserves, I learned that government money market funds typically do not borrow, but also that the company would enjoy access to the Fed and its repo borrowing program.”
(Screeching brakes sound)
And if this were to come to pass, what would the effect be on money market funds that are NOT crypto?
I can’t help but sense they are trying to use this crypto con as a front for a bigger heist to come…
Good point. Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), anyone? Where was that so-called collateral? Where were the ratings agencies on those so-called ‘fully secured’ bonds sold to pension funds? / ;)
Shades of 2008.
And the icing on the cake to the suspicions:
“Bill to Grant Crypto Firms Access to Federal Reserve Alarms Experts” Washington Post
“A wave of notoriously risky cryptocurrency firms could one day be integrated into the traditional banking system under a little-noticed provision in a new bill that is raising alarms among financial experts about potentially destabilizing consequences.
The provision — part of a sweeping proposal to regulate the crypto industry that Sens. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced in June — would force the Federal Reserve to grant so-called master accounts to certain crypto firms seeking them from the central bank. The accounts give holders access to the Fed’s payment system, allowing them to settle transactions for clients without involving a separate bank….”
USA: Hair on fire over Jan 6…
Sri Lanka: “Hold my beer…”
Sri Lanka is safely a smallish island while Pakistan which has ten times the population, nuclear weapons, Balochistan, militarized politics, failed economy (recently offered to buy $1B LNG and no responses), historical and current difficulties with neighbors, etc etc is embedded in SouthWest Asia.
It would be nice if Pakistan was an island and Sri Lanka was on the continent.
And there are some Pakistani comments on posts by newsites about the events in Sri Lanka that give reason for the concern you expressed.
The Pakistan LNG thing gets even crazier when you learn that they have spent decades trying to get a pipeline going with Iran, who has reserves perhaps second only to Russia.
One slowdown seems to be that Iran keeps trying to extend the project to include India, and India keeps showing interest and then withdrawing. The last time, in 2010, was because USA offered to work with India on some nuclear power plants.
But last i could find, China seems to have gotten interested…
While Pakistan is often scolded for bad gov’t, nevertheless for quite a while they did reasonably well in managing COVID.
It is worth bearing in mind that Pakistan rarely gets sympathetic treatment. India hates them, the globalists hate them, Islamophobes hate them, etc. They’re always on somebody’s foecal registry.
Yep sucks to be you Pakistan … foreign policy reset hits a dead end
america is now a casino, that was written into law from 1993-2001. the so-called digital coin stuff is just that, a legal crooked casino.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/18/mary-childs-on-the-man-who-turned-americas-economy-into-a-literal-casino/
“hen you have an industry like our financial community, that gets to basically write the laws—I mean, what made a lot of this stuff legal was stuff that Bill Clinton signed into law with a great deal of Republican support, called the Financial Services Modernization Act, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the latter being specifically designed to punish, or drive out of her administrator position, Brooksley Born, a former lawyer for banks and so forth who understood what a scam this was. ”
https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/presidents/the-unsweet-16-americas-worst-presidents-ever-brac/#four-seeds
“Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, which was one of the first things we did in the wake of the Great Depression. That law ensure that banks couldn’t gamble with your checking and savings accounts, and is one of the main structural responsibilities for the 2008 crisis. Clinton’s pro-Wall Street policies imbued America’s largest casino with bipartisan super powers they had never fully enjoyed, and they took their new largesse and used it to wreck the economy less than a decade after Clinton left office.”
We must keep in mind that while banksters wrecked the global economy–it created just another investment opportunity! Which made them even richer! Even if the Central House hadn’t given those platinum customers trillions in new chips!
Futures and shorting, the two activities of modern finance that makes my head hurt.
If i borrowed your car, sold it to some kids that used it for a rally, and then bought it back at a discount, you would likely string me up. But that is just your everyday short sale on the stock market.
Looks like the story of that 10 year old who had to travel across state lines after being denied an abortion may be unraveling. I don’t like linking to The NY Post but don’t have a Washington Post subscription so this is the version I read:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/09/biden-faces-doubt-over-story-of-10-year-old-rape-victim/amp/
Torn on this. Would hope the story isn’t true because no 10 year old should have to experience that. But, if it isn’t true then the media and politicians that hyped this pulled another russiagate type fake news story to score political points and fumbled.
This is a general comment on reporting of stories about abortion. I don’t offer any further insight as to whether this particular story is true.
No arrests in a rape case, and refusal of mandated reporters (or others who assist someone needing an abortion) to speak to the media will not necessarily be a “red flag” that the story is false in the post-Roe pro-harrassment and pro-punishment world.
In this story I don’t know what “no arrests…have been reported” means. I assume an arrest would be a matter of public record, but the story at the link for that phrase mostly raises the issue that there doesn’t seem to have been any investigation to find out.
I don’t know what public policy is as far as cops sharing information about initial reports or follow up short of an arrest. However, rapists not getting arrested isn’t something that doesn’t happen, so without any other information, that’s also not a decisive indicator of whether a story is true or false.
Thanks for this added info and insight. Much appreciated!
Was that 10 year old already having monthly periods? If not, she could not get pregnant. Rape is rape and should always be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 10 years old is awfully young to be experiencing menses.
orbucfan
Not any more. Children are much bigger, and mature faster, possibly the result of all the hormones in the food in our grocery stores? among other things. My eleven-year old granddaughter is 5 feet 8 inches tall, and filled out like a 20 year-old from my generation. Some of her school mates began menstruation as early as 8 years.
To add….65 years ago one of our neighbours, the same age as one of my sisters, had her first child at 12 and the second at 14.
In today’s xeno-estrogen-soaked environment? I’m not so sure.
“How Elon’s Bizarre Twitter Takeover Saga Could Have Just been a Cover for Him to Sell $8.5 Billion in Tesla Stock” Fortune
If it wasn’t illegal for him to sell the stock, I’m trying to think of why Musk would need a cover to sell. And if he needed a cover, why would he need such an elaborate ruse now with all the thinly veiled grifts he’s gotten away with so far? He can pretty much say any non-sense and armies of Tesla stock bagholders spring to his defense.
Maybe insider trading?
If it’s assumed that’s the case, he has 9 insider trading lives.
He must wipe his butt with print outs of SEC regulations.
Not buying the article either. Lawyers get ready for billable hours to increase. He can say pretty much anything and will; but spouting nonsense about acquiring a publicly traded corporation (and doing so after acquiring a decent size percentage interest) works at odds with even the toothless regulation we have now. Unless he was inspired by watching Wolf of Wall Street?
He can say boo about the materiality of the bot situation. But I am unmoved by his sudden discovery, that his advisers at MS should complete better due diligence is necessary.
TWiV 917: Boosters on, Paul Offit
“Paul Offit returns to TWiV to discuss why, during the recent FDA advisory committee meeting, he voted against releasing revised COVID-19 vaccines containing an Omicron component…”
Relevant discussion begins a minute 11.
Antidotes:
YS – animals (usually)
LS – plants
JLS – birds
Jonah – reptiles or insects?
Insects are fascinating, are often not thought of or well thought of: they really deserve some good PR.
Fascinating that the latest research indicates insects may in fact be crustaceans or a spinoff thereof, just as scientists now say birds are in fact the modern-day descendants of the dinosaurs.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216114034.htm
I can see the resemblance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab
Trumps name as well as tariffs were completely left out of this. if the democrats were smart, and they are not, they drink the free trade kool aid, they would be gearing up americas youth for trade schools, and not four year degree’s in paper manipulation and shuffling.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/supply-chains-manufacturers-to-the-us-120722956.html
“The supply chain delays have resulted in billions of dollars tied up in inventory, which have led to “chip fabrication plants” like semiconductors ramping up U.S. production, along with steel mills, EV battery factories, food production plants, sawmills, and other building material products, Branch noted.”
As lambert says. Rule #1. Ain’t gonna happen due to higher labor costs and feckless policy makers.
ramping up U.S. production
This will take longer than expected because America’s chip land has another potential shortage: Electronics engineers Why screw around writing Verilog when you can earn tons more with Python, Java or Go?
Russia and the US produce about 250K STEM graduates yearly with China producing about four times that.
DoD is concerned Report: Pentagon Says STEM Education Deficit is Weakening America The United States risks losing its competitive advantage if it continues with its business-as-usual approach and fails to equip its workforce with the education and skills to develop and field complex, cutting-edge emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, machine learning, and hypersonics..
There’s at least one contrarian Are U.S. scientists and engineers in short supply? Telling myth from reality.
And then there’s this story.
Without yet reading the links, I am going to call BS on a shortage of engineers because I have been hearing about X engineers, mechanics, programmers, coders, scientists for about thirty years. Usually right after a bunch were replaced by H1b visa holders or sent overseas. I believe that even much of the tool and die workers could be pulled from retirement if they were paid and treated commensurate with their experience and knowledge, but that’s crazy talk. Maybe even socialism.
I could be wrong, but I’m just saying.
I was thinking the same–another problem is many of those engineers now go into finance and “tech” where they are paid more because the almighty capitalism has determined those are the most productive jobs within our economy
>>>they would be gearing up americas youth for trade schools, and not four year degree’s in paper manipulation and shuffling.
I think that a very good liberal arts degree (and not a MBA!) can be very useful. It is a cliché, but a good degree broadens your mind and teaches you how to think.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign
Uber broke laws, duped police and built secret lobbying operation, leak reveals.
“MIT scientists think they’ve discovered how to fully reverse climate change” Yahoo
The problem is described as man-made climate change, so the answer is more man-made climate change.
Brilliant. (facepalm)
it’s called vertical integration. MIT enables industrialization and the resulting carnage. MIT then enables the mitigation of said carnage. Brilliant!!!
Walgreens is up another 8% today on half as many tests in the past rolling 7 days as prior. So maybe this is a data artifact from fewer people, and more people knowing that they’re sick, getting tested? But we’re now just below the previous positivity peak in the last wave. All of NE is now bright red except Maine.
https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.jsp
If only as a country the US had real data, we’d have more information. On the other hand, in NC:
https://greensboro.com/news/local/state-newly-reported-covid-19-cases-slowly-rising-across-north-carolina/article_f9a92ffc-fd6c-11ec-8127-efab99df847c.html
So maybe not a surge? Who knows! Relying on anecdotal reports is sad.
So reading The Supreme Court spent its past term rejecting the rule of law, it is hard not to conclude that we’ve entered a new era of Court supremacy, an extreme reorientation of political power and accountability, or lack therefore, with the acquiesce and even encouragement of Congress. While liberal Democrats whine about a fictional coup attempt by Trump, here we have an actual coup, where the Court now decides what is and is not in the Constitution by its own prerogative, to its own ends. That seems a coup to me.
“Coup” seems to me too strong a word for one of the branches of government running away with itself, which has happened often.
The antidote is quite simple: a constitutional “check”. Congress has the power to restrict the issues the Court is even allowed to consider.
Of course, Democrats have no real interest in abortion, or any other kind of reform. Easier for them to shrug and say “vote in November”.
Some insights on the Abe assassination from an American living in Tokyo. He is well acquainted with the culture. He note that unfortunately, the LDP has extended control of the Upper House. This is bad for a number of reason. There is a lot of speculation as to motives. More to follow.
India
WooHoo Putin/Modi masterstroke!
Indian diplomat (retired) M. K. BHADRAKUMAR reports India to boost Sakhalin-1 oil output
[Read it for current events and read it for history!]
MKB doesn’t say it but I think this is the moment the West lost its historical grip on India.
Next step: training all those under-employed Indian workers to rebuild Russia’s infrastructure resting on melting permafrost.
Some notes from a March article that are relevant today:
I see this happening where I work, and my wife saw it too:
Max Alvarez: The Chronic Understaffing Running Workers INTO THE GROUND | Breaking Points
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnfmdQoMPWE
American elites have worked real hard over the last forty years to destroy the working class, and they have succeeded. So now, in America, work does not get done.
About those MIT space-bubble-rafts to reverse global warming by reducing incoming sunlight . . . . if they are deployed and they work as advertised, they will be considered standing permission to return to the strictly fossil-fuel-based production and consumption system in all respects.
That will mean more carbon skyflooding which will mean more ocean acidation which will mean the extinction of all our most favorite seafood species. Since the “abolition” of seafood will be another tool in the Jackpot Design Engineers toolbox, I expect these MIT space-bubble-rafts will be deployed as soon as the Mass Democide Elite can get them built and launched.
The assault on teachers continues:
“Teachers go to the ‘dumbest colleges’ — who said it and why it matters”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/09/controversy-teachers-dumbest-colleges/
It isn’t so much that the teachers go to “dumb” colleges as it is that teaching credentials are easy to get as the required course curriculum is not considered difficult. The de rigueur masters degrees are easy to get as well.
Teaching is an art. The degrees give you a framework but only practice and talent brings you success. The subject of the article compares it to physics but that’s an apples to antelopes fallacy. He also compares children to the plants in his wife’s garden.
re: “Argentine Anti-Government Protests Build as President Calls for Unity World News Guru”
Might Argentina be the first financial colony of the USA to repudiate dollar debt?
They also expressed interest in joining BRICS recently as well… something to keep an eye on (and also how the US responds, or not)
> They also expressed interest in joining BRICS recently as well… something to keep an eye on
Indeed it is. China and Russia have expressed interest in creating a new transnational reserve currency. Multi-polarity is coming and the US/EU/NATO are accelerating its arrival with sanctions and strong-arming nations to go along.
Well done humans, you’ve made the new Covid the most transmissible disease on planet earth!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/your-covid-protection-outside-isnt-what-it-was-in-2020-heres-why-its-time-to-think-more-critically-about-outdoor-gatherings/ar-AAZoUoC?li=BBnbfcL
Well done! Here in the U.S., we have shouldered more than our share of the burden–as we always do–contributing the highest absolute number of dead citizens!
In fact, even on a population-adjusted basis, we are number three in the world. Only Peru and Brazil beat us–and, you know, who knows if you can trust their numbers, am I right?!
I wonder what we will do for an encore…..increase infectiousness another six fold? WE CAN DO IT! “Go virus, go virus”.
Following up on continued observations that panhandlers and beggars and buskers in the DC/VA/MD area are not doing alright. More reports of attacks from last Friday in Baltimore. In the last case, the estate of that individual will have a tough time proving the man with the bat responded in self defense. However, I wouldn’t want to be the career prosecutor that tried to take that case anywhere because reports suggest he was surrounded by armed individuals. The intersection where that happened is right by the inner harbor. It’s a very busy intersection. I’ve never seen Baltimore police enforce things like keeping squeegee kids off the medians. Not sure how the area will respond if they start.
My question about the Abe assassination and the riots in Sri Lanka, is, do either of these events work to extend US influence in Japan or Sri Lanka vs say, Russian or Chinese influence?
I don’t know with Sri Lanka but with Japan, no. Japan is a military protectorate of the US still trying to play nice to China because its market and being neighbors.
New name for the dynamic disaster in D.C.
Move first letters.
Hiden + Barris
It looks like the Saker is backup and running.
The story about Hunter Biden being involved in bioweapons labs appears to have some legs.
Chris Heinz and Hunter Biden and good old Devon Archer all show up.
Rosemont Seneca Partners to Rosemont Seneca Technological Partners to Metabiota to Echo-Health Alliance.
Metabiota funded labs in Ukraine.
Echo-Health Alliance was funded by WHO and NAIAD and funded corona virus gain of function research at WIV.
In cooperation with Metabiota, starting in 2014.
Interesting times.
Something for the quiet hours – and fellow nostalgia buffs. A trip down Market Street by cable car shot on April 14th, 1906. Four days later a lot of what you can see in that film would have been destroyed or damaged and the lives of those people changed forever-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY (11:38 mins)
Guaranteed to give fits to modern traffic cops & occupational health and safety people.
oh dear,
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-administration-signals-support-controversial-142132431.html
Biden Administration Signals Support for Controversial Alaska Oil Project
you know what Truman said about the real deal every time. and if the oil is allowed to be exported, what a tragedy this will be.