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At least 3,500 sea lions in Peru have recently died of H5N1 bird flu, nearly 5 times as many as previously reported, the government says pic.twitter.com/ig1H3QsmjE
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How 20th-century synthetics altered the very fabric of us all aeon (resilc)
#COVID-19
Many people claim endemic SARS Cov 2 will be pathophysiologically equivalent to other endemic HCovs
Those people are wrong
The Sarbecovirus subgenus has special ORF genes that suppress key components of the immune system
A tiger is not a cathttps://t.co/2ichR0Z1y2
— Anthony J Leonardi, PhD, MS (@fitterhappierAJ) March 2, 2023
The misplaced arrogance of Western countries continues, despite having handled COVID-19 far more poorly than Asian countries. Asia learned a lot from SARS and did much better during COVID. The West, it seems, is determined to continue repeating its mistakes. pic.twitter.com/fJuqBB6YrD
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) March 3, 2023
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Firewood theft: The forests where trees are going missing BBC (resilc)
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In the once-cool forests of the Pacific Northwest, heat poses a new threat High Country News (resilc)
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China?
Open season on China in Taiwan-focused US House Asia Times (Chuck L)
Powerless and ridiculous for US to cry for its recognition as regional leader Global Times
Chinese spacecraft has been eyeing US satellites high above Earth Space (furzy). As if we aren’t?
OLd Blighty
Has Britain’s Brexit fever finally broken? Chris Grey (guurst)
Theresa May is the true villain in this latest Tory Brexit war The Spectator
Danger alert: Mexico spring break destinations to avoid, according to the State Department Raw Story. Furzy: “Becoming another El Salvador…”
New Not-So-Cold War
The Fall of Bakhmut, A Prelude to the Fall of Ukraine? Larry Johnson. Ukraine was blowing up bridges in Bakhmut on Thursday. Friday Russia was less than half a kilometer from the last road Ukraine could use, meaning it was under close fire control and just about to be under physical control. Yet this is the second headline on the New York Times front page today: As Ukraine Clings to Bakhmut, What’s Its Strategy and What’s at Stake?
Ukraine asks EU for 250,000 artillery shells a month Financial Times. And I’d like a pony. Note Russian routine use is ~20,000 shells a day, meaning 600,000 a month.
Ukraine war: high cost of replacing military hardware will change the nature of the conflict The Conversation (Kevin W). Duh.
* * * Merrick Garland of all people just did yet another secret visit to Ukraine. Who knew all these domestic US law enforcement officials were also such committed practitioners of foreign policy. Which country is the one looking to annex Ukraine again…..? pic.twitter.com/CyocC143j7
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 4, 2023
🇷🇺🇩🇪🇮🇳Differences in how German and Russian Foreign Ministers Annalena Baerbock and Sergey Lavrov were met in India. pic.twitter.com/b9x24fH7FM
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) March 4, 2023
* * * Moscow is forced to state grain deal isn’t working, West is to blame — Russian MFA TASS (guurst)
Exclusive: Russia set to mothball damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines – sources Reuters. Robin K: “Reuters is still reporting the destruction of Nordstream pipelines as ‘unexplained.’ No mention of Sy Hersh’s piece.”
Syraqistan
Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve The Cradle (Chuck L)
How Iraq caused a currency crisis by paying Iran in dinars Middle East Eye
You’re all Palestinians Now: How Harsh Apartheid Policing is being Turned on Israeli Protesters Juan Cole (resilc)
In 2021, American immigrants again moved to settlements far more than other arrivals Times of Israel (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD: A digital star witness brought down lying, family-killing father Alex Murdaugh… and it was his murdered son’s cellphone. The electronic spies lurking in our pockets are now justice’s greatest tools Daily Mail. BC: “And now, a word from our electronic overwatch sponsor…”
Secret Service, ICE break the law over and over with fake cell tower spying The Register
Biden Administration Announces Plan To Stop Water Plant Hacks Reuters
Imperial Collapse Watch
Correction: it is Norbert Lammert who is in the video, former President of the German Parliament.
— In Context (@incontextmedia) March 3, 2023
Multipolarity: Episode 8 YouTube. Philip Pilkington and Andrew Collingwood.
GOP Clown Car
The Trump world-Fox News war gets nasty Politico
Oh my God that audience shot is just cruel. (h/t @acyn)pic.twitter.com/0Bmy8w3TkC
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Judiciary Democrats go after GOP ‘whistleblowers’ in FBI probes The Hill
US senators reintroduce bill to make daylight saving time permanent Reuters (resilc)
The neo-Nazi movement behind foiled Baltimore plot Baltimore Banner (furzy)
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Almost 200 Rights Groups Call on UN to Intervene Over US Abortion Access Washington Post (furzy). US gets well-deserved developing country treatment.
Adoption is not a simple or easy alternative to abortion STAT (Dr. Kevin)
Norfolk Southern Chemical Bomb
Angry residents confront EPA and railroad officials at East Palestine, Ohio town hall WSWS
Our No Longer Free Press
Reality Based People Can Fact Check The ‘Fact-Checkers’ Moon of Alabama (Kevin W, Chuck L)
The Center Cannot Hold American Scholar (Anthony L)
Woke Watch
Florida courts could take ’emergency’ custody of kids with trans parents or siblings — even if they live in another state Business Insider. Odds favor some version of this becoming law. When that happens, expect to see similar laws passed in red states. And then you will see amendments that provide for what amounts to reciprocity: if a kid is removed from a pro-trans state based on alleged imminent “treatment,” other states will provide protection until he gets to the state where the protesting parent lives. Having said that, I wonder how often these situations occur.
Today’s Psychology Can’t Help American Men American Conservative. I think this exaggerates the biological argument. Men and women get very strong gender role indoctrination.
THE MORAL CASE AGAINST EQUITY LANGUAGE Atlantic (ChiGal)
Let Kids Read Roald Dahl’s Books the Way He Wrote Them The Nation (Anthony L)
Supply Chain
Albuterol shortage is about to get worse, especially in hospitals CNN (resilc)
AI
Hackers Can Turn Bing’s AI Chatbot Into a Convincing Scammer, Researchers Say Vice (furzy)
Florida workers got sick after Deepwater Horizon. They want BP to pay. Tampa Bay News (resilc)
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Beware of Book Blurbs The Millions (Anthony L)
Crypto Companies Behind Tether Used Falsified Documents and Shell Companies To Get Bank Accounts Wall Street Journal
The SPAC Fad Is Ending in a Pile of Bankruptcies and Fire Sales Bloomberg (Paul R)
Amazon Pauses Construction On 2nd Headquarters In Virginia Associated Press
If the Housing *Is* the Business Cycle, What Does this Picture Mean? Menzie Chinn
Class Warfare
Ga. Woman Crashes SUV into Popeyes After Order Didn’t Include Biscuits People (resilc). Not that I want to defend this sort of thing, but service rage now on top of road rage may be displacement. I spent two weeks out of the US and noted I was not angry once. I am now angry pretty much every day due to having to fight hard with my health insurer, my incompetent local bank, Delta (who made it well nigh impossible to redeem an eCredit for being stranded in the Atlanta airport) and prospectively with the local lube/minor repair shop, which repeatedly billed for services it didn’t provide, resulting in bricked engine. So it’s not hard to see people taking inappropriate action against available, as opposed to the deserving but unreachable targets.
Edward J. Kane: A Short Tribute Institute for New Economic Thinking. He wrote many excellent and insightful pieces about banking.
Antidote du jour (David C):
And a bonus (guurst):
🔥An Ambilobe Panther Chameleon pic.twitter.com/14JfVBxhii
— Nature Is Lit (@NatureIs_Lit) February 27, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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The Merrick Garland visit to Ukraine was definitely a wtf moment. I kind of get Yellin, sort of. Delivering the pallets of cash. But, Garland? Who’s idea was that, and did they really think it would change attitudes, here or anywhere else? Who’s next, Buttegeig?
Remember when Trump forced his cabinet to sit at a big table and swear allegiance to him, dear leader, in front of cameras? You wonder if Biden has continued that, just a little more discreet and no cameras.
There actually was a reason why Merrick Garland was in the Ukraine. He was having a meeting with justice ministers from other countries. When the Ukraine defeats the Russian Federation, the entire leadership of the Russians will be put on trial for this war from Putin all the way down. The trials will be held in the Hague and the British have already trained 30 judges to conduct thew trials under Ukrainian law.
RK
are you sure he wasn’t there to investigate the Hunter Biden allegations? ….. its possible
…
oh yeah, what is the matter with me – probably some kind of minor stroke that disabled my cynicism temporarilly
I just assume if Merrick Garland is on the case Biden is tacitly announcing he’s given up. Does Garland ever get his guy?
My first reaction was anti-corruption related visit.
Must have been some whistleblowers who needed to be taken care of.
Considering that the sainted leader of Ukraine featured in the Panama Papers with some hundreds of millions of $, I suspect not.
Often anti-corruption related visit means removing an anti-corruption prosecutor that is too interested in the wrong people or “arrangements”.
“yours are oligarchs, ours are venture capitalists”…
Re: Who’s next, Buttegeig?
Good idea! Maybe he can work his magic to restore the substations the Russians knocked out that were feeding power to the catenaries above the rails.
Send him on a one-way flight.
Revoke his passport!
He can fix the “potholes” the Russian artillery has pock-marked the landscape with…
I do wonder what the long term consequences are of those 50-70k artillery shells fired all over the front every day.
Ask the French.
Every year, they collect about 500 tonnes of unexploded ordnance in what was the front line during WWI. It is estimated that around a billion shells were expended then. A hundred specialists are permanently employed to find and dispose of duds. They expect the work to last 300 years…
There are also entire zones so polluted by ammunition chemicals and metals that access there is prohibited, others in which agriculture became impossible because of poisoned soil, and yet others where trees are too dangerous to process in sawmills because of splinters embedded in their trunks.
I think there is also a forest somewhere along the border between Poland and Germany that is off limits do to abandoned ammo etc from WW2.
And some years back a helicopter hangar on an airbase in Finnmark blew up during a thunderstorm, thanks to a bomb that had been sitting undiscovered in the ground (Kirkenes is supposedly second only to Malta regarding how much it was bombed during WW2). Luckily nobody got hurt or killed.
Stuff like this is why cluster bombs were banned (though i think USA didn’t sign the ban), as the bomblets were usually small spheres. Perfect for kids to start playing with if found undetonated.
Oh, and i think they are still clearing the Cambodian jungle for mines…
That is something to worry about. There are parts of France today that are uninhabitable due to artillery from the First World War. People still occasionally die in Europe from bombs, shells, and mines from the First and Second World Wars.
Then there is Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and parts of Africa people are still killed and crippled. Aside from the randomness of them being located from forgotten battle or skirmish, there is the problem of all that farmland, which has been cleared. Hopefully. People have to eat, which means hoping that today is not the day some sixty year old thousand pound bomb doesn’t decide that today is the day to go boom. Or your plow hits a missed landmine.
I mean people died in the Twentieth Century from shells and mines from the American Civil War. Rarely, but it still happened over a century after the last battle. The last I know of was from a Confederate navel torpedo (mine). Waterproofed. Maybe thirty years ago. Fortunately, almost all civil war shells and mines are harmless now.
Wars don’t stop when we say they do. No, they can continue killing long after “the end.”
Just look to Flanders in North France today for your answer. People are still digging up unexploded ordinance from WW-1. H—. Back in the 1960s, when I lived in Petersburg, Virginia, farmers were plowing up Civil War ordinance. Much of it of the explosive mortar bomb type, and since the charge was made of early gun cotton, the contents had deteriorated into nitroglycerine. Thus, very dangerous a hundred years later.
Of more worry will be all of the landmines dug in along that front. For the consequences of that sort of ordinance, look to the history of Cambodia.
Terran humans are extremely skilled at killing each other off.
>>>the contents had deteriorated into nitroglycerine.
My, I didn’t know about that fun fact. The bombs would be far more dangerous then than during the war.
You know of other kinds of humans?
O.o
You are the first to catch that.
Panspermia morphs into Guided Selection, which evolves into Jackpots of various sorts.
There are estimates that in WWI the “dud ratio” was 15-30% while with the modern fuses it has been tested (by Israel) to be around 2%.
That’s still a lot of unexploded ordinance on the ground. I recall Donetsk had to ask for Russia to deploy many explosive ordnance disposal teams to clear the fields last summer so that farmers were able to work on them.
Russians With Attitude just referred on their Twitter feed to the vast number of anti tank/personnel mines that have been used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, often scattered so quickly and extensively that there aren’t maps indicating their location. As a result, the de-mining alone will take decades, with tracts of land rendered unusable and a steady toll of casualties…
And that’s just one kind of ordnance. I might have no sympathy for the congeries of US corrupted stooges in government and hardline nationalists in the military and security apparatus, but no civilian population deserves the decades of economic collapse, bloodshed and blight that this proxy war has visited on the people of Ukraine.
Give full credit — the West has via its gift weapons, loaned specialists and other munitions deliveries punched a lot of dud bombs, rocket warheads and explosive shells from 20mm to 230mm and up to 1000 kg all over the eastern Ukraine-now western Russia landscape. There would have been more, had the Russians not outperformed the anemic Western arsenals.
And let us remember all the other places where the US and various other colonial and “coalition” thugs have filled the land with unexplored ordnance waiting to get bumped, and what should have been considered chemical weapons. Like in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Notagainistan, Kosovo, Libya, Iraq, Iran (via Iraqi proxy), on and on…
Hoping to hear more about the “bio labs” run by the West in Ukraine and other former Soviet parts…
An opportunity to learn Ukrainian and/or Russian. Could be useful at The Hague.
Do rail workers get sick leave days in Ukraine? If so, end that immediately! Mayo Pete’s your guy.
Garland in Ukraine? The most logical explanation, given that he is already semi-retired, is that he’s getting in some globe-trotting on the government’s coin before he officially retires.
Ok, but Ukraine? In winter? Wouldn’t you rather investigate traffic tickets in Greece or Italian riviera?
Ukraine for appearances’ sake, then quickly off to a nearby more congenial locale?
Fascinating stuff. Why do I keep hearing the word “Israel” whistling in the space between my ears, when I see “American” PTB people paying obeisance to that smarmy freak in the Army green T shirt or sweater? Billions of dollars flow through those shaken hands, out of the real economy of the US into the blood siphons of the MIC and Western Elite. With Ukraine,, though, I think the policy machine works opposite the way it does with that “only democracy in the Middle East—“ Z does what he is told, but the perpetual bad habit named Netanyahu and his Likudnik Zionist cronies tell the US establishment what to do. Maybe because our Rulers have no idea what to do on their own, so some critter with a lot of chutzpah can direct their energies?
I also have this strange idea that maybe Zelensky, far from being a CIA-MI6 tool, is maybe actually a massively effective deep plant installed by the Russian Secret Service? I mean, every decision and direction coming from him seems laser-targeted no destroying everything Ukrainian, even eventually the Nazty types, along with pretty much all of NATO and the European and maybe eventually the US political economy. Hold Mariupol and Bakhmut at any cost, kill off what, 25 percent of the male population, what’s left after another 1- or 15 percent have run off to other countries. If my wild-eyed speculation is right, he will have EARNED that Oscar that Penn “loaned” to him.
The Russians appear to be blessed in their enemies. For all the vaunted help the US is providing, 10,000-plus “analysts” working on all the real-time data from all the US C4ISR spy-in-the-sky, to give the Ukies (and the Western Warriors that operate so much of their artillery and other weapons) moment-by-moment targeting information on pretty much all Russian assets, down to the type and manufacturing source of crates of munitions on the ground or loaded on trucks and trains) the “Western army in the field” is getting whipped. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/usnato-isr-addendum-deep-dive-into?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
And still the Combined Axis of Evil Western Forces are not prevailing, and have now discovered that their vaunted militaries are wet paper bags full of pretty much nothing in the way of war hardware. And how many divisions does Biden have, again? And how likely is it that even an attempt to “fully mobilize” the economies of US and Europe could from the current flat-footed standing start, ever catch up to the Russians (and of course Chinese and Brazilians and the rest?)
Too bad we in the West are too stoopid to figure out something in the way of “can’t we all just get along?” and you know, not in the perverse Globalist consumption-and-domination way, just trade to our several strengths instead of trying to be the last one to take a breath on this planet?
well said
The thought that bothers me about Merrick Garland and Janet Yellen going to Ukraine to talk business is the possibility that we as a sovereign country, not as a member of NATO, are dealing so directly with Ukraine. Under arcane rules of “legal” military engagement one country must officially invite another to come and help. Then follows various legal agreements defining what the parties agree to do, both militarily and financially. The handshake by Garland looked like he was telling Zelensky what the US expected in return and Zelensky almost looked confused, as usual. My guess would be that Zelensky just sold Ukraine down the river.
“Amazon pauses construction on 2nd headquarters in Virginia:”
I heard about this building earlier today. I has been said that this building was inspired by the poop emoji. These architects have no self awareness whatsoever-
https://www.dezeen.com/2021/02/03/amazon-hq2-poop-emoji-nbbj/
RK
some may say its a big screw but then, does it mean Amazon’s corporate philosophy is that we are getting screwed, or sh$t upon???
Just a riff on their phallic logo.
Wait, I thought Jeff had bought himself a nice, sparkly yacht to, erm, perhaps compensate…
https://jalopnik.com/jeff-bezos-500-million-yacht-hits-the-open-ocean-for-t-1850128708
Duck penis?
It is the monument of excrement Amazon is allowing to get listed on their website, e.g. tons of electronics with impossible specifications. Want a bunch of 10,000 mAh NiMH AA batteries? No problem!
Amazon building design like poop emoji. Ok, I get it.
I’m more traditional — looks like the end of a giant wood screw to me. Seems appropriate. A — “we wood screw you” to the world.
Hmm, looking at the pic in Rev Kev’s link… Not sure how to interpret, that in the design, they chose to make it a left-hand thread.
Looks like it has drilled a tunnel straight from China.
Wonder if they postponed the second tunnel because of the upcoming sanctions.
I dug to China when I was 6, got about 3 feet down and called it good.
Looks like the representations I’ve seen in illustrations of the Tower of Babel. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
I think the workers around high tech have been laughing about this guy for years. Here’s one take from a TV show by and for the high tech world:
Gavin Belson Signature Box III – Silicon Valley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KbRA2RjhgQ
By the way, if you’re an ironic tech nerd, and want to see an ironic tech nerd take on how the current Silly Con Valley operates, this show is both hilarious and dead accurate.
The Fall of Bakhmut, A Prelude to the Fall of Ukraine? Larry Johnson. Ukraine was blowing up bridges in Bakhmut on Thursday. Friday Russia was less than half a kilometer from the last road Ukraine could use, meaning it was under close fire control and just about to be under physical control. Yet this is the second headline on the New York Times front page today: As Ukraine Clings to Bakhmut, What’s Its Strategy and What’s at Stake?
============================================
is it the water at the NYT, or is it the marijuana? There does seem to be some correlation between how goofy the NYT has gone on Ukraine and legalization of the wacky tobaccy. I mean, other than being high, what logical reason could account for it???
As the guys at the Duran have warned, just wait until Bahkmut finally falls and the slow march of Russians move west and south. The western media will unite around a false flag and other events to try to justify NATO troops and worse. But even Polish mothers will not stand for their sons coming home in body bags to fight Putin. Certainly not German and French mothers.
BP
This is kinda related to your point, i.e., how the media deals with what the media perceives is anti Ukraine reporting. I have mentioned this before, but I never would have thought in my lifetime that the Domino Theory would appear again.
This is a “Fact Checker”:
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/world-verify/ukraine-verify/zelenskyy-ukraine-america-troops-war-video-fact-check/536-68db842f-250f-472c-a5f4-c8894607627d
A video clip of Ukraine’s president is going viral, with some on social media claiming Zelenskyy said the U.S. would send soldiers to fight in Ukraine. That’s false.
=======================================
OK, people can read the link and see the full context. I think one could say Zelensky is saying Americans are not going to be fighting IN Ukraine the same way one could say the US wasn’t fighting FOR Vietnam, but AGAINST Communism. Fighting NEAR Ukraine, but not IN Ukraine.. Domino Theory. Tendentious, and a distinction without a difference….
and O yeah – the zombie Domino Theory – you can’t get rid of it – an argument against communism, terrorism, and its a dessert topping and a floor wax….
It won’t be long now
https://www.rt.com/russia/572384-russia-wagner-surrounds-artyomovsk/
The Johnson article quotes a Jeff Sachs claim that CNN reported the Ukrainian military says over 250,000 of their soldiers have died since 2/2022. If you look at the comments you’ll see doubts being raised about the source by commenters who are not Zelensky fans and so at least don’t appear to be disinfo artists. The doubts are not decisive but I’d be careful about referring to the Sachs numbers until we get confirmation.
FWIW, Douglas Macgregor’s figures as of IIRC 3 weeks ago were 157,000 dead, 38,000 missing in action which probably = dead. So close to 200,000. More of the wounded could have died since then. Reports are that Bakhmut is full of Ukraine dead so the fatalities there may have been somewhat undercounted.
Longwinded way of saying that 250,000 may not be much of an overestimate.
Not pushing back on the figures. I have no idea of the reality but 250k is unconscionable. Although I agree it may well be true.
The U.K. and the US each lost around twice that number respectively in six and four years of WW2 including civilians. British military deaths from the six years of war were “just” (not a good word) 270k. The 250k is in just one year from a much smaller army. It is even a much higher death rate than the U.K. suffered in WW1, which was around 700k military deaths in four years out of around 7 million men mobilized.
Long way of saying it but the absolute numbers and the death rate given the relatively small size of modern armies both seem incredible. Again, I have no way of pushing back factually or any reason to disagree but it seems unbelievable that this is so hidden. Flanders is full of cemeteries, for example. They hit you in the face. WW1 casualty lists were also even published and anyone who chose to could count them.
When this becomes more widely known and believed then I do wonder what the reaction will be. Or maybe people will care as little as they did over the hundreds of thousands or even millions of combined Afghan, Iraqi, Vietnamese, Libyan, …. deaths.
All over NZ every town has WW1 memorials-some elaborate, but whats missing is there aren’t many WW2 memorials.
War gets old.
Ww2 casualties were proportionately lower spread over wider range of combatants. If you examine the war memorials carefully, the later names will be WW2 and subsequent Commonwealth jaunts. In the ratio of several feet of WW1 to a foot of WW2 and a few lines of miscellaneous grief.
It is interesting that at the end of the 19th century, there was a concern among some of the western elite that with such technological progress and new deadly weapons, wars might become too horrific to risk fighting. They weren’t wrong about the effects.
This really is a fight to the last Ukrainian. What a horror.
250k? Piff. I was told that 500k kids dying in Iraq was worth it. I don’t ever expect to hear any regrets from our warmongers.
Today’s weapons and munitions are much more lethal IMO. Then again the nature of the battlefield in this conflict is conducive to casualties and made manifold by Russian tactics with artillery and missiles. Going to be very difficult for Ukrainian forces to push east or south under currant conditions and then what happens after they have been bled for so long.
For those interested, the figures Sachs posted on his youtube channel referring CNN citing Ukrainian General Staff are:
259,085 killed, died of wounds or diseases
246,904 wounded, crippled
83,952 deserted, missing
28,393 prisoners of war
I find them hard to believe (partly because they make my stomach churn), but even if halved, they would explain why we’re seeing kids and grandfathers on the front. Or why men are pressed from the street and thrown to the meat grinder only a few days later.
As fart as I know, nobody has provided any further information regarding those numbers – not even a link to the CNN story.
Such a terrible cost humanity pays,
when a few sociopathic criminals dictate.
A Telegram clip (AIR Paul US Combat Vet) of Chechnyian soldiers refusing to go on a suicide mission. Their Russian superior berated them saying Mohammad’s a coward. Three soldiers shot him with their AKs. Less than ten days later I’m watching MacGregor on Napolitano in which he tells a story of Polish volunteers for AFU refusing to go on a suicide mission. I was unable to locate the clip in my bookmarks but AIR it had the same ending. It sounded like a Ronald Reagan parable with the same level of credibility and without any source. Should I believe MacGregor or my lying eyes?
Unless we are actually there, we should question everything. When the “Authorities” have Departments dedicated to “shaping” the Public’s perception of “reality,” we must parse all, from inception to memorial.
Not directly related, and I may have missed its being linked here, but there’s a very interesting interview of Jeffrey Sachs by a New Yorker staffer. The staffer keeps throwing propaganda at Sachs, and Sachs comes back again and again with corrections. I’m amazed the New Yorker published it.
Example and teaser:
Thank you HMP. It’s a fantastic interview. Those who have not read it pls do give it a bit of tme.
Thank you for sharing a link to Isaac Chotiner’s interview with Jeffrey Sachs at The New Yorker. I was put off right away when Chotiner pointed to Sachs’ role “in pushing post-Soviet Russia to adopt ‘shock therapy,'” which suggests Sachs encouraged such a plan. I’ve read interviews with Sachs in which he claimed to be the one arguing that “shock therapy” was the wrong approach. I was happy to see Sachs hold his own against Chotiner, whom I remember for his propaganda-pushing interview with John Mearsheimer.
HMP
thank you for that link.
JS: This is a war that reflects rising tensions between the United States and Russia now for a quarter century. There have been many points on that path that were truly ill-advised.
Interviewer: Tell me what you think some of the missed opportunities were.
JS: The key to this, which is now well discussed, but still not well understood, is the post-1991 vision of strategic leaders in the United States: that we are now in a unipolar world, and that the United States can do pretty much whatever it wants, and that includes basing the military where it wants and when it wants, entering and exiting treaties when it wants and where it wants, without serious consequence. In the mid-nineties, there was a quite ferocious debate over even the first phase of nato enlargement, where many wise people, including Bill Perry, our Defense Secretary at the time under Clinton, thought that this was a dreadful mistake; many others did, too. And George Kennan, whom I regard as the essence of wisdom, thought that it would lead to a new Cold War.
Clinton chose to move ahead with nato enlargement. Because that first phase was in Central Europe, I don’t think it was decisive, although it definitely made the situation more difficult. And then came the war over Serbia and the bombing of Serbia by nato forces. This was, in my opinion, a dreadful mistake. And there’s lots that we don’t know publicly about this. I’ve been told many, many things by insiders. I don’t know whether they’re true or not, because I don’t see the archives, but I believe that this was a dreadful mistake.
……
Interviewer: Maybe I should phrase the question in a different way. In the past, when I’ve read your writing on the sins of American foreign policy, the global war on terror, our role in destabilizing countries all over the world with coups during the Cold War and the war in Iraq, and the devastation that this has caused abroad, you speak with real passion. Maybe it’s because you’re an American, and it’s good that you’re so critical of our country. Now, when you’re talking about civilians being killed in Syria or in Eastern Europe, you have this almost clinical lack of passion, and everything seems to just trace back to the United States being the secret power causing it. There’s no sense of these people’s wishes or desires, there’s no sense of Eastern Europeans wanting to join nato and why they might want that. There’s no sense of the human-rights issues involved. Do you think that’s a fair critique? And how do you respond to it?
I don’t think it’s a fair critique at all, and I think maybe you’re missing my point completely, which is that I find it horrendous how many innocent people are dying and suffering. I worry about it every day. It’s a horrible thing. It weighs very heavily on me personally, but I believe that understanding these events so that the fighting can stop is of paramount importance.
=====================================
Maybe the interviewer is purposefully getting EVERYTHING so wrong so that Sachs can refure all the misconceptions – at least I hope so, otherwise it is an incredible laundry list of how the US media doesn’t know one single objective fact about foreign policy and what the US has really done.
Likely they do not know and do not care, because unless they decided to become a foreign correspondent they are safe behind the moats of fortress America. Where they can fly from ski slopes to party beaches without any passport needed.
It’s beyond comprehension that Isaac Chotiner (staffer indeed!) does not realize how he comes off as, well… stupid. Thanks for the link. I avoid The New Yorker like a plague and would not have known that the interview had happened.
Sachs has been on a path of redemption from past globalist excesses and his New Yorker interview was a good step.
I’m amazed that anyone would be amazed.
The neo-liberalization and en{family blog}itification of the New Yorker has long since been complete.
If not, the Hersh Nordstream piece would have been published there, rather than Substack.
Those troops leaving Bakhmut are having a hard slog of it-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ww1LcAZobU1B/ (9 secs)
Defense Politics Asia has a different take. While each Russian advance increase the possibility of collapse in UAF moral which could bring about a quicker victory, at present that’s not happening and Russia is in for a very long slog if nothing changes:
https://defensepoliticsasia.com/multi-layered-defense-lines-of-ukraine-bakhmut-will-not-be-end-of-the-war-for-ukraine/
And Defense Politics Asia report today confirms this so far, there is no complete evacuation of Bakhmut as yet but a re-positioning. They are losing ground, but not completely evacuating, and preparing further resistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ8hVeM-xxQ
Today the Russian MoD reported twice the normal number of casualties for the Ukrainians in the Donetsk sector. Bakhmut is on that sector, so we could conclude that their positions are more exposed at the moment.
It could be the muddy fields or broken roads under fire they have to use to get in or out of the city. Or it could be that they are forced to do counter-attacks to keep the roads somehow passable.
Meanwhile, Shoigu met today with Gerasimov and Surovikin to discuss about the state of the mobilized men and the logistics situation. Also out of the normal run of things, MoD reported that during the last night, the aviation and rocket forces hit 83 Ukrainian artillery positions. One could easily be mistaken to think that Russians are now preparing for what happens after Bakhmut falls.
This gets me thinking that the large Russia move didn’t happen just because of the reorganization and mobilization, but also because the winter was unusually warm. Thus it may well be that they didn’t want to risk the ground being soft.
If they can get their reorganization done in time, the push may well come in summer. That is unless we get a biblical deluge or similar keeping the ground muddy.
Yesterday’s NY Times:
“”During a war-game session at the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the military officials rehearsed a range of options for an offensive that Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been telegraphing for some time.”
My understanding of the situation is that such a scenario is impossible.
Rasputitsa do not care what flag is on one’s uniform.
what logical reason could account for it???
hmmmm……perhaps the excellent propaganda machine and the inordinate amount of spooks involved with msm of all kinds – perhaps you’re being facetious(probably) about correlation of weed and the disinformation campaign in our press – if they were stoned i doubt their ability to be concerned enough to care about Ukraine – in fact being stoned might be preferable –
as we dig out of our March snowstorm here in Michigan i’ve spoken with a few friends just to chat, but if i want the conversation to end quickly i just start talking about the insanity pervading the USA and the oversize influence our oligarchs think they possess around the world – so we don’t talk about it – instead you have the lady crashing her car into the Popeye place – on the west side of my state they’re talking about making Kent and Ottawa counties 2nd amendment sanctuary locations – huh? – i enjoy the rowdy discussions at NC and they provide a modicum of enjoyment when all around me seem to be whistling past the graveyard – personally i don’t have much optimism or pessimism – i just look at the pooches around me to understand balance and perspective – we are a species determined to become extinct with a lot of collateral damage – i do find happiness and humor in the irony of it all and tend to my small orchard to ground myself and not feel too desperate – damn i miss George Carlin’s take on things – once again thank you all for providing what feels like an island of sanity – jb
Interesting to listen to interview between Sy Hersh and Aaron Mate, where Hersh says NYT and Post are unreadable now, completely off the deep end, and he prefers the Wall St Journal.
Reuters article on Nordstream has been updated with a mention of the Sy Hersh piece.
It must be getting some traction in the subset of Blob entities that actually believe Europe is paying any attention to its vassalization.
>>>is it the water at the NYT, or is it the marijuana?
They do say that micro dosing LSD will help with depression. Maybe they misjudged the amount of acid? It really doesn’t take much. Or are there still some former freaks or hippies working in management getting loose with their supply?
I am joking of course, but the newspaper’s latest writing does make one wonder.
Have you tried good Sid?
There is a reason it was made verbohten, and it’s not because it will harm you.
I know that weed, and acid done in moderation, is fine. But with their increasing detachment from reality, I almost hope that the staff members were on bad trips. I mean wtf, do they get how goofy they seem? If we somehow don’t blowup the world, will they be able to live down what they wrote? Or has The Blob absorbed them into the Hive Mind?
However, Judith Miller apparently suffered nothing from the fallacious
propagandareporting that she did for theWhite HouseNew York Times pushing for the second Iraqi invasion. Maybe I am truly overestimating the honorability or decency (in their broadest senses), or even the desire for doing honest journalism, that the people at the Times are supposed to have. Quaint ideas are decency, honesty, and certainly of doing journalism instead of dishonest stenography.No drugs needed. Just money.
> Ukraine was blowing up bridges in Bakhmut
US sending bridge-launchers to Ukraine for spring fight AP:
We don’t know much detail, or how many. From The Drive:
(The Abrams varies from 54 to 66.8 tons, depending on the model.)
Here is the width of the Dniepr, in case the front moves that far:
So there’s a theory about where the war is going embedded in the weaponry sent. Forbes comments:
If you assume that offensives are composed of pieces of equipment, perhaps. Let’s wait and see.
Thank you, Lambert. For clueless people like me, this is what the bridges look like: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/folding-bridges-how-us-army-crossed-chasms-battlefield-194213
I knew the Dnieper is huge, but looking at the numbers you quote for the Dnieper, surely they are only useful for covering blown-up sections of bridges or use over smaller rivers?
An Ambilobe Panther Chameleon
I have to say, I did not believe that was real. But I looked it up on the innertubes, and it is….
just amazing
A way to make even our psychedelic lizard friend go crazy; put him or her in a room full of Congresscritters.
Actually, there was long a joke that putting chamaeleons on a tartan would drive them crazy.
vao
serious question – do they change colors to match their surroundings – if you put one on a tartan would you get a plaid chamaeleon or are these chamaeleons a permanent color and patter?
I don’t know about a tartan, but chamaelons do change colour.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbXsG8cndeQ
“Can’t – do – plaid.”
I loved The Tick.
So Bloomberg publishes another one sided, not insightful, fill the space, anti SPAC story. First off, as a percentage of total deals the failures they cite is a small percentage. Second, the standard IPOs in the same time period have fared about as poorly. Also, as market has fallen and the Fed has tightened how does this failure rate compare?
The real story, if there is one, is that late in capital markets cycles, when cash is abundant, valuations get very frothy and as soon as tightening begins there are casualties.
We also don’t have insight into VC and PE backed failures, where again frothy valuations led to bad results.
To be fair I don’t really read Bloomberg much. Do they write articles looking at the value destruction and fee extraction by VC, PE and hedge funds (a common theme on NC) at the risk of biting the hand that feeds them?
Biting the “hand” that feeds them?
Now that would be The Register’s slogan…
Re: Greeting committee for Baerbock vs Lavrov.
Are there protocols for how foreign ministers should be greeted at the airport when arriving for G20?
Are the videos really for G20?
I think Baerbock got more of a greeting committee than she deserves. She is actively killing the German economy on behalf of foreign interests. She should have been denied permission from the German prison where she really belongs, denied entry to Indian airspace and no self-respecting ambassador should greet such a foreign agent.
It’s a bit strange. There are protocols for this kind of thing, but here, it looks as though it was the German side that messed up. Somehow Baerbock got off the plane on her own and started walking, which is something that her staff should never have allowed her to do. It looks as if she’s being greeted by two Bundeswehr officers, for some reason, and an Indian who comes rushing up later and seems to work from the Embassy (he’s wearing a temporary security pass around his neck, which suggests that he’s not from the government). He says something like “sorry we’re late.” Then a car with diplomatic plates arrives and the Ambassador jumps out. The Indians don’t appear in the video at all.
It would be normal for an Ambassador to meet any Minister airside, and I presume the Russian Ambassador was there for Lavrov, partly to introduce the others. Quite what Baerbock was doing and why, and where the Indians were, is a mystery. it does sometimes happen though that through faulty scheduling two planes arrive at the same time and the government can only be in one place. If Baerbock’s plane arrived early, her staff might have told her to wait until the welcoming team was ready. Perhaps she didn’t want to. But it looks more like the Germans got it wrong than the incident being a deliberate snub.
It looks as if she’s being greeted by two Bundeswehr officers, for some reason,
Only one German officer. The other is Indian.
Yes, the fourth man in the row greeting Lavrov is the Russian ambassador. The two Indian men are “members of Indian delegation” – I presume G-20 delegation.
Although Lavrov also had one-to-one with Indian foreign minister and participated in the Raisina Dialogue 2023 event. Which might explain why there were more Indians greeting him.
she seems like the type of person who would say, ‘well, ok, but i’m going..”
my mom is just like that…and so is hillary, etc.
so she rushes out, head held high…assertive!
and then the most brief of pauses when she looks around,…then control again…
as if these 3 dudes were who she was looking for.
I respectfully disagree. Given how much India is profiting from EUs sanctions on Russian oil, the Indians should have rolled out the red carpet for Baerbock out of gratitude. After all, Miss “360° turn” is really one of the main forces driving Germany and the EU’s self-immolation, not the deballed Scholz.
I apologize for my imperialistic, eurocentric and male chauvinistic interpretation of the leader of the German feminist foreign policy. I should have known better. Germany is a neoliberal state, meaning that only money counts. You are of course right. Red carpet, parades with kids, flowers and dances. Nothing less!
But I would still like to know what the protocol is regarding greetings. Was this a snub or were the Argentinian minister also met by the ambassador only?
It might be reciprocal.
Lavrov is always at pains to say what a great country and friend India is.
I have not heard Baerbock express such thoughts too often. The west seems instead simply to want to enroll India in its anti China and anti Russia crusade.
So, if I were India I would reciprocate.
I have not heard Baerbock express such thoughts too often.
Umm… do you really want our famous Blabberlena try to?
The final gentleman who showed up seemed to be late. I wonder if he was rushing over from having been the 103rd person who greeted Lavrov.
Hopefully, the steps were ready on time though and her Luftwaffe jet did not have to wait for those.
I saw a wonderful German meme about Baerbock where she says to the effect ‘People thought I was stupid, but now I have turned 360 degrees’.
Re Murdaugh trial–I’ve been assiduously ignoring this saga that seems to fascinate everyone although it is amusing to see what Dick Harpootlian looks like these days. Presumably smartphones record all those steps and hand movements as a way of tracking your behavior in stores where you can buy things that they advertise. This is the kind of thing Silicon Valley whiz kids waste their time on. Or, alternately, Deep State Big Brother is paying them to do it. It is perhaps ironic that Murdaugh thought his phone would be his alibi and instead it narked him out. But Daily Mail interesting? Go figure.
Carolinian
I have been following the trial. And of course, any murder is appalling. But to kill your own wife and your own son….
The son’s phone captured his father (Alex Murdaugh) speaking about the most mumdane topic, the dogs in their kennel, only minutes (?moments?) before the murders occurred. Murdaugh was going to be prosecuted for numerous financial crimes and undoubtedly serve a life sentence for those. Why, if he did, think that murdering his own family would deflect from the financial charges, is unimaginable to me…
I wasn’t trying to be snobby about it. I just don’t watch TV much. If it had been a local trial I’d probably pay more attention. Charleston is actually quite a ways from the Upstate.
Alex Murdaugh had been a criminal for years. He just happened to graduate from theft and embezzlement to murder. In other words, he escalated. Not uncommon. Watch a few true-crime shows or read a few books.
Murdaugh’s wife Maggie (who surely knew of his shenanigans) lived comfortably for a long time off the proceeds of Alex’s criminality, confident that although he had ripped off many others, he would never harm her. “I know he’s a thief but he would never steal from me.”
Well he did. He stole her life.
And his own son’s.
I’ve found accounts of the Murdaugh family’s generations of power and fairly obvious criminality quite interesting. I’d love to know how that one ancestor came to get clobbered by a train the way he did.
When I think of political advisers speaking to crowds at CPAC, for example I would more quickly think of a Karl Rove or dare I write this, another option like former VP candidate Paul Ryan. Just saying, Kimberly Guilfoyle has never struck me as an overly serious person.
They should overlay the crickets sound on that tweet…and the responses are pretty comical to be honest.
“The neo-Nazi movement behind the plot to blackout Baltimore”
Using a precedent from American law courts, perhaps they could be given a choice. Go to prison or join the Ukrainian army at the front. They are sure to find lot of like minded compatriots there.
If they get conscripted into the Ukrainian army, not sure they would find “like minded compatriots”. Ukraine has neo-Nazis but isn’t it the Russians who have been the main source of Ukrainian blackouts?
Maybe the idea could work, like making graffiti artists do public service by cleaning the tagging from buildings. They could be put on teams to restore power in Ukraine.
That cannabis article….the quotes inside….
“You wouldn’t want your lawyer writing a brief after taking a few hits at lunch…”
How is that any different than a 3 martini lunch?
Reefer madness was a super effective campaign at scaring the shit out of everyone.
Don’t worry, the winds of public sentiment have shifted long ago and the resistance to pot use seems to have diminished to an ever smaller group. It has already joined alcohol as a normalized substance and a potent symbol of personal freedom. Any concerns over social ramifications can soon be safely ignored just as they are with booze, and all negative consequences can be blamed on the individual rather than the culture of substance use. Anyone who brings up concerns is already at risk of being laughed out of the room. Opiates are still demonized but are quickly gaining traction as acceptable for recreation using exactly the same rationalizations as alcohol and marijuana.
I do not know what group you run around with but opiates are not close to being acceptable on my area.
If I had to guess Id say the Northwest.
Yes, your claim about opiates is rather bizarre. In the past five years, my doctors have been much, much less prone to prescribe opiates (for things like dental work, etc)–which is generally okay with me, but the opioid crisis happened in part because there was thought to be a national epidemic of poorly-managed pain, and doctors started prescribing more (with the eager help of the drug companies) in response. Now, from what I understand, doctors have a much stronger system of check and balances to make sure they’re not overprescribing. One of the results is that there is more and more fentanyl to compensate, with greater chances of ODing.
We’ve come a long way in 20 years…
https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=1667763
I guess, as Hud would say, “he’s got to go.” I’m a Royals fan, and enjoyed Hud, especially through the Royals’ little run from 2013-2015. They’re not quite past “Reefer Madness” in the Royals organization, I guess.
I would, especially if that lawyer were briefing a jury. Paralegals probably do all the indexing and bibliography anyway.
I wouldn’t want any self-righteous straight-edge Puritan anywhere near any of my business, in any case.
No kidding. There are surely some metacarpels turned to dust from all the hand wringing in that article.
Hmm – maybe the same way you’d tell if someone is impaired by alcohol or any other mind-altering substance at the workplace. Lloyd Bridges gives a tutorial for those not yet up to speed on the topic.
Side note: if you are concerned about people under the influence of marijuana and/or other substances operating heavy machinery at the workplace that could put your life at risk, do not ever go skiing.
But, of course, the Strip posts a CofC forum on the hazards to businesses of legalizing the devil’s weed. The fact that much of their workforce is consuming pot now, either at work, or at home is irrelevant because they can currently do their best rendition of Captain Renault and all liability disappears (maybe?). I have not heard before of the month-long cognitive effects of marijuana, but on an anecdotal level it sounds like the leavings in a bovine pasture.
Legalization will happen here because the voters demand it, the nuances will not all be solved completely beforehand, or possibly afterward.
Implicit in the concern trolling from the business owners is that their business is So Complicated that it can’t be done by someone who is high. Sure I get it if you are driving a big rig or mixing dangerous chemicals, but let’s be honest 90% of jobs could be done by someone stoned out of their mind anyway.
In the late 80’s, I worked in a restaurant in New Orleans where one of the top judges in the city and several lawyers regularly come in for lunch. They always drank heavily and sometimes skipped eating because they had to get back to court. Additionally a couple of uniformed cops would often join them at the bar. In New Orleans when you order a sandwiched dressed, it means you want the sandwich with lettuce, tomato and condiments. When the cops ordered a coke dressed, it meant they wanted a coke with Jack Daniels. They usually tipped well.
Indeed my mother recently passed from cancer.
When I came to help her she was in alot of pain and Rx was not sufficient….it took the medical beuracats incompetence for her to try some CBD gummies.
I was the first and only person in my family to get my mom stoned, I will cherish the memory of her saying ” …we need more cannabis” and looking relieved finally.
Yet even after getting some freedom from pain she was hesitant to use it still, brainwashing is ‘one hell of a drug’
My 84 year old Grandmother, who liked me, once asked to have ‘some of what you have’. So I rolled her one. She smoked it (she was a smoker anyway), and talked family history unknown to me for an hour or three. Straightened up and said: ‘I can’t see why you do this. it does nothing to me’.
The panther chameleon is awesome. I had to just sit and take in the beauty of this creature. Wow!
Road rage, drive through rage, just overall seething rage. Well if they didn’t complete the order correctly, one can always just request a refund perhaps. Added, I am not too sure the point of driving your vehicle into the storefront, except to prove being a general bad ass person. And your superiority over those minimum wage store employees and a likely frazzled manager.
Yeah this sort of thing is not necessarily isolated. Modern life in America can be incredibly frustrating, and that’s if things go half well !!
Circle that thought back to the link to the Niall Ferguson article on mental health, where he glosses over in a single sentence that Kids may, as they wake up and start to think, observe, and ponder the world in 2023, might actually be suffering more than a wee bit of anxiety?
When I look back at my mis-spent youth, there was a lot of asinine adolescent play, but I do think that there was a need to escape, via drugs and alcohol, as well. Maybe escape the looming waxing ‘adulting’ and real, post-nuclear world? That was in the post-Viet Nam sexual, tune in turn on drop out late 60’s early seventies. There were half as many humans on the planet, and information of every type, quality, and source was NOT available at the speed of light, 24/7/365, from an addictive in your hand gizmo.
We used to hitch hike, and get rides, and experience a freedom of sorts.
It is said every generation has it’s challenges, and they are are relative.
BUT, I would say the life of a young adult in 2023 is very uncharted territory. Havent had a plague in hundreds of years. And we are just in the early stages.
Haven’t entered/ fostered a new geological epoch.
Haven’t observed and experienced shortages and systems failures as we now are.
Haven’t seen refugee encampments persist for over a decade.
If one is objectively paying attention, not delusionally cognitively dissonant, well, it is a daily challenge to keep from rage, or angst, or profound sadness, negativity, or swaddle in self-imposed detachment and numbness.
I’m just waiting for Congress to buy at over-market price and mandate Fentanyl for the oldest, weakest, and poorest. Get the dead wood gone, gotta make room in the budget for all those important weapon systems.
Its the Revolution of Falling Expectations.
To say the least.
I guess it was Yves who provided the comments following the shared GA woman Popeyes link. There were a list of issues, and this, “I am now angry pretty much every day.”
When we hear these stories most of us go, what kind of dufus would do something like that? But then we have seen movies where the plot is, a normal schlub has just one too many bad jabs and turns into a mindless vengeance machine.
Seems we all are living in a world of death by a thousand cuts. Good times fewer and cuts increasing. Some of us can be tripped by the straw that breaks the calmer’s react into “postal”.
Reacting — at worst there are guns, at the least bad attitudes and rudeness.
Then those smarting from their cuts may show it by voting for the anti-hero who has harsh words for “the them”…
like Trump or Marjorie Taylor Bobblehead.
(At risk of ad hominem — I call MTG bobblehead because, to me, her head seems rather large for her body, like in those bobblehead figures.)
I have to caution myself, in such moments of varied amounts of limited rage, that other person might have a gun on their person or in their car. Not worth it. One instance a few years ago on the local freeway portion of I-85 (thankfully not under construction) has stuck with me.
There is the analogy of when is enough really and finally enough. I’d suggest a vehicle repair shop fudging their work and then billing for the lack of said work, well that would probably tip the line in many instances. Reviews can be posted online in 2023. Same goes for the ever present topic of healthcare and medical billing and those egregious practices.
Many years ago, in my misspent middle age I studied Aikido. Occasionally a student would ask the dojo master about his experiences using his skills. He replied that once he learned Aikido he had never been in a fight. He counseled us to assume that everyone was crazy.
Further, it can be hard to tell when the anger trigger is the product of mere incompetence, or actual malevolence on the part of the corporate entity (usually) that is stoking your anger.
For instance, for the last week I’ve been trying to check the redemption options on some credit card reward points from BofA. Every time I’ve logged on and tried to call up the rewards website, it does not connect. When I tried calling the bank’s customer service and asked why I could not connect to the rewards website, the doofus on the phone gave me a bunch of runaround, never offered any insight as to why the website has been gone for a week. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the guy, if that had been an option.
As of this writing, the site is still unavailable. Is it down for some sort of maintenance? Or is BofA trying to weasel out of paying its promised rewards to its customers? It’s impossible to say from this end. The former is an inconvenience; the latter would be the sort of nickel and dime theft that sends us commoners into drive-through-a-wall rages. That’s the sort of thing that leads to the Popeye’s incident and the seething that Yves discussed. And its everywhere. It’s a wonder more people don’t get run over.
Mark Ames wrote “Going Postal” on this phenomenon in 2005. Almost 20 years ago now.
‘In Context
@incontextmedia
Hage Geingob, President of Namibia, during his meeting with Herbert Beck, German ambassador, expressed his opinion about Germany lecturing and warning his country about the Chinese.’
He really gave that German politician both barrels and told him where to get off. If there is one country which the Namibians will refuse to be lectured by it is the Germans. Namibia was part of the German Empire in the 19th century and after a rebellion, the German occupiers went all genocidal-
‘From 1904 to 1907, the Herero and the Namaqua took up arms against brutal German colonialism. In a calculated punitive action by the German occupiers, government officials ordered the extinction of the natives in the OvaHerero and Namaqua genocide. In what has been called the “first genocide of the 20th century”, the Germans systematically killed 10,000 Nama (half the population) and approximately 65,000 Herero (about 80% of the population).The survivors, when finally released from detention, were subjected to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, racial segregation, and discrimination in a system that in many ways foreshadowed the apartheid established by South Africa in 1948.’
The survivors, when finally released from detention, were subjected to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, racial segregation, and discrimination in a system that in many ways foreshadowed the apartheid established by South Africa in 1948.
I shake my head when I read this kind of remark.
A policy of “dispossession, deportation, forced labour, racial segregation, and discrimination” was the essence and reality of every modern colonial regime — German, French, British, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese… Colonialism did not “foreshadow” the Apartheid regime; the Apartheid regime was a colonial regime, perpetuating the policies of past colonial administrations in a post-colonial world.
Don’t forget the Philippines, where USA pogrom’s against Southern Philippine tribes spanned the change from 19th to 20th century, and took the co-current British Boer War concentration camp idea and refined it into death camps that inspired a certain German Austrian politician. (Hitler’s American Model, The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law; by Whitman, James Q. and How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States; By: Immerwahr, Daniel).
It’s a comment on the capture of Philippines elites of the Marcos ilk that they would even tolerate US Navy, much less welcome America bases again.
Yep, most Americans have no clue how colonially brutal uncle sam was to the Phillipinos.
If i rember correctly the .45 was invented to stop them when they were….high.
Bloody awful stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_Rebellion#Juramentados_and_stopping_power
You can leave out “modern.” Empires have practiced extermination for as long as there have been empires. The Romans for example.
Apartheid, for all its evil, was not a colonial regime, and was not considered as such by its founders. Indeed, it was so problematic because the Afrikaners, who devised and implemented it, considered themselves to be the “original” inhabitants of an empty land, given to them by God when they fled religious persecution in the seventeenth century. With the exception of a small number of indigenous Khoi-San, they argued that they had lived in the area longer than the English (who arrived only in the nineteenth century) and the Bantu tribes who arrived a bit later, driven down from the North by the Zulu Wars and the mfecane, the “breaking of nations.” This view of things, whatever we think of it, produced a fierce religious nationalism that eventually resulted in the National Party, which represented the Afrikaner majority of the white population, narrowly taking power in 1948, and purging English-speakers from government and the state. The subsequent grand plan of apartheid was to create a “South Africa” of which Afrikaners would be the only true citizens, everyone else of all colours being settled in other, notionally independent areas. Yes, it was insane.
South Africa was(and some argue still is) Settler-colonial, just like Israel and USA. This from the Greek concept from which the word colony (apoikia )was derived.
It’s interesting. I was in Windhoek three years ago and there are still some remnants of its time as a German ruled city. Germans whom I have worked with in Africa also had a tendency to want to go and visit Windhoek for that reason. Although I must say that I found it far less German than they had led me to expect!
All African colonialism was exploitative but the approach taken in what was then German South West Africa seems to have been unsurpassed in its depravity. Which is a difficult bar to cross.
What is most shocking is the lack of self awareness that British, German, French, Belgian and other European elites seem to possess in this respect. Guess they have all read too much Niall Ferguson and not enough Thomas Pakenham.
Worst than King Leopold II of Belgium and his Congo colony? Acts that the other tough skin west European colonialists found repugnant?
Indeed, I mentioned the Belgian Congo in a comment that seems always to disappear in the ether.
Besides, what the Germans did in Namibia was basically SOP. Look up the Maji-Maji uprising to learn how they dealt with a massive revolt taking place exactly at the same time (1905-1907) in what is nowadays Tanzania.
Unsurpassed does not mean worse.
The Belgian Congo occurred to me when I wrote the comment.
German South West Africa and the Belgian Congo are both very much high up in the depravity stakes. And there are plenty of other candidates.
Not sure which one was worse.
they sound no different than the modern free trader of today, they are doing it for the poor. never mind that a 14 hour day, and maybe more, toiling in environmental degradation for $2.00 a day is celebrated as a win for the worlds poor.
I read Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places when it came out in the 1990’s, and Africa had a stranglehold on all other comers, guns everywhere and rife a way of life.
It turned out to be the death knell for western capitalism in Africa, pretty much.
It can be argued that this destruction of indigenous African (and other) political states is the life-blood of Western Capitalism. Capitalisms moves on, always grasping. The colonial structures changed the way it moved, so that the head became separated from the mouth. Otherwise we’d have been talking about African, South American, or Asian Capitalism much earlier.
I have a fondness in my heart for African leaders telling Euros to go fly a kite in an electrical storm. A while back, the president of Ghana visited Switzerland. The Swiss president was waxing effulgently about the two countries’ deep friendship. Did you know that Swiss chocolate is made from the cocoa beans grown in this country?
The president of Ghana took the podium and thanked the Swiss president for her kind words. Then this happened:
Ghana’s President Says Ghana will no Longer Export Cocoa to Switzerland
https://youtu.be/gs_dD7qKfX8
Re service rage: many years ago I took my car to a mechanic my father recommended to replace the muffler. After driving it about 50 miles, it started making an unbelievably loud vibration noise. I was in college at the time, and had to live with it for a week or so until I could drive back home to take it to the mechanic. My dad took the car in, the mechanic “fixed” it and 50 miles later the noise was back. I lived with it for another week, went home and took it to the mechanic. My dad asked me if I wanted him to talk to them. I declined. I walked into the shop, recited the history of the repair and very calmly informed them that if the car was making any noise that it should not be making when I got it back this time, I was going to drive it through the showroom window.
I swear, when I got it back, that car was quieter than it was when it was brand new. If I tried that today I’m pretty sure I’d be arrested.
Thanks for this tale. I shared it with my partner and she laughed out loud. We agreed you would be arrested for saying that these days.
“…very calmly informed them…”
Seems to me like that’s the polar opposite of “service rage.” Hey, if it works (and one doesn’t get arrested), it works. (Note: Kids, don’t try this
at homenowadays.) Thanks for relating that!‘I’ve optimized my health to make my life as long and unpleasant as possible’
‘I choose the optimal bread by scanning the aisle for the brownest, gnarliest, most seed-covered mound I can find.’
Also crackers… ‘Mary’s Gone Crackers’ makes the grade. Last week I thought I might have chipped a tooth crunching on a cracker from their Original Recipe box. They’re optimally gritty or perhaps they’re throwing in some sunflower seed shells for extra fiber. Made in Reno, NV and owned by the Kameda Seika Co. Ltd.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130326005407/en/Mary%E2%80%99s-Gone-Crackers-Announces-Acquisition-by-Kameda-USA-Inc.
– ‘The Trump world-Fox News war gets nasty’ – Politico
– “Trump’s likely 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been featured across Murdoch-owned entities as he promotes his recently published memoir. The anti-Woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy launched his presidential campaign with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has repeatedly appeared on the network, with her launch announcement covered live on TV.”
If I were cynical, I might conclude that such a line-up nicely reflects the controlled opposition, and that the Powers That Be have decided Trump isn’t controllable enough.
Interesting use of photos in the Politico piece. Bannon is plastered all over, symbolizing the unhinged non-establishment fascist nature of Trumper extremists, I suppose. I’m not quite sure what the picture of Kim Guilfoyle’s cleavage being interviewed was supposed to represent, but I can guess.
The horror of an open blouse on a Saturday morning, I tell ya. Maybe it is to establish context? Yeah Trump has made the enemy of my enemies list, and it looks like a circular firing line. I find it all kind of sardonic and quite funny. This is Fox News, sir, we have principles !!
Chief principle, well practically anything for eyeballs and bucks. I will apply this same concept to MSDNC, and I would not feign to include CNN as news in any useful application. To paraphrase the ever reliable quote machine known as Hudson on the Aliens film….we’re on an express elevator going down.
Kim’s got this perma-scowl that just won’t quit…
Ah, a clip of a Gerry complaining about too many Asians and not enough white people….gee, I wonder why the former colonizers are having trouble outside the EU. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Truly, if there are 4 times as many Chinese as Germans in Namibia, he should be happy: a “natural” ratio would be 16.75 to one — Germany is overrepresented!
You’d be surprised how many Germans there are in Namibia (ex German SW Africa). When I was last there (OK, twenty years ago) you could still hear German spoken, there were hotels and bierkellers with German names, and the birthday of a certain AH was apparently celebrated enthusiastically (non-Germans being advised not to attend.)
Dr. Doom has cleared his throat: “Worst-ever economic crash coming – Nouriel Roubini”
Count Formaldehyde is a fearsome force when it comes to predicting the worst crash ever, what if he was eventually correct, does that nullify out the other 17 times he stridently informed us of pending doom?
I propose a ‘Lexicon Standoff’ consisting of Roubini, Guy McPherson and Chris Hedges, where the troika attempts to out duel each other in raising rhetoric, no malady ma lady though, women don’t really do hard core doom.
“what if he was eventually correct..”
The link says he has been correct before:
“One of the first economists to predict the financial crisis of 2008-09, Roubini has been warning now for months of a stagflationary debt crisis…”
At any rate, it’s not the people who put out warnings of potential or actual dangers that worry me.
I’m more bothered these days by the all hands on deck minimizing of systemic rot.
And about the 2008 era GFC: that crisis was papered over.
He also predicted a crash in 2010-2013.
Philip Pilkington says we are having a first, good growth in Asia, bad times in the West. Not the same as what Roubini seems to be arguing for.
He was correct in 2008-09, I was following him closely in the years before and agreed with him completely as I do now. Some of my friends were extremely skeptical.
This sucker’s going down imo.
Re You’re all Palestinians Now
Americans too? The Supreme Court just declined to review an Arkansas law that forces state contractors to sign a vow to not boycott Israel. Arkansas considers the state’s business relationship with Israel (???) to be more important than the freedom of its own citizens. Or, alternately, lobbyists paid them to pass that law.
South Carolina has a similar law that says any university professor advocating for BDS will be fired. Some of these laws have been struck down by lower federal courts but not, now, the Supreme Court despite long standing SC support for the right to boycott.
Arguably Zionism has little to do with Judaism or that religion’s often humanist aspirations and everything to do with colonialism. Certainly the Balfour Declaration and other great power support was more about geopolitics than philosemitism. Israelis argue that none of this is any of our business and perhaps they are right but then why are they telling us who we can boycott or who we should vote for? A bipartisan smokescreen spreads across the entire issue.
“You’re all Palestinians Now”, insert the word “East” ahead of Palestinians and you get a twofer. The American Sacrifice Zone is ongoing.
Re. Feds ‘Cave to PG&E,’ Newsom is PG&E’s puppet. When he was lieutenent governor, he voted to allow the power plant to continue from his sinecure on the State Lands Commission. His main job seems to be keeping their stock value up. PG&E donates generously to the state Democratic Party, and worse, to his wife’s charities.
“June 4, 2021 – Siebel Newsom has been paid $2.3 million in salary since launching it. In 2018, shortly after he was elected governor, Newsom attended a fundraiser for the nonprofit in San Francisco. Donors included PG&E, which would declare bankruptcy in Newsom’s first month on the job. ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/
It’s a family affair…
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/open-the-books-exposes-the-legalized-pay-to-play-scheme-by-newsom-inc/
In one report, Open the Books reveal that large corporate campaign contributors gave campaign cash to Gov. Newsom and separately received significantly more in state payments – corporations gave $691,615 in campaign donations and received $1.9 billion in state payments. That’s a very nice return on investment – a $10.6 million investment for a $6.3 billion return.
Another report revealed that Open the Books had to sue and then had to file 442 California Public Record Act requests – one with each state agency – in order to obtain California’s line-by-line spending by state agencies, because California’s Controller, Betty Yee, rejected their sunshine request for state spending, claiming she “couldn’t locate” any of the nearly 50 million bills she paid in 2019.
“Florida workers got sick after Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They want BP to pay.”
I don’t fancy their chances. People may remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill back in 1989 in Prince William Sound in Alaska. Afterwards, you had a lot of people working to clean off all that oil and a lot of them were from a local North American people. They were using high pressure hoses or just scrubbing the rocks on the shore. Within twenty years most of those people were dead through working with toxic chemicals. So I would not be surprised that BP will just wait those workers out.
Ukraine war: high cost of replacing military hardware will change the nature of the conflict The Conversation (Kevin W). Duh.
Estimates of the numbers of Russian equipment deployed since February 2022 are 15,857 infantry fighting vehicles and 1,391 aircraft. Their estimated losses, up to the end of December 2022, according to Oryx, are 794 infantry fighting vehicles, 71 aircraft and 91 artillery pieces.
Ukrainian estimated available deployment has been 3,309 infantry fighting vehicles and 128 aircraft. Their estimated losses as of the end of December 2022 are 418 infantry fighting vehicles, 55 aircraft and 92 artillery pieces.
=================================================
Now I haven’t been paying particular attention to the so called clobber list but it seems to me there is quite a discrepancy in losses being reported. Well, a ginormous difference actually….
First, this was the first time I tried to access the “clobber list” and I found that access was denied.
Second, Google reports using the search term “lost Ukrainian artillery pieces”:
Estimates give that as many as 60,000 rounds of artillery were fired by the Russian forces per day, most of which did not hit any military target. Indeed, Oryxpioenkop.com only reports 1,810 destroyed or damaged pieces of Ukrainian military equipment. This overuse of artillery results in a number of issues.Jan 9, 2023
Third, sources regularly reference on NC apparently do NOT EXIST in the Google search universe…
==================================================
92 versus 1,810. hmmmm….
so maybe “military equipment” includes items besides artillery – but it seems like an awful big discrepancy.
Anyway, I conclude what I always conclude – people have agendas, and factual reality is often not part of the agenda…
An example:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/europe/1000-russian-tanks-destroyed-ukraine-war-intl-hnk-ml/index.html#:~:text=The%20total%20figure%20for%20Russia's,losses%20are%202%2C934%2C%20Oryx%20says.
Russia has potentially lost up to half of all its operational tank fleet since the start of the Ukraine war, according to information collected by a monitoring group, as its military struggles to meet the goals of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Oryx, an open source intelligence website, has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022.
The group said this week it has verified 1,000 distinct Russian tank losses in the war. It said a further 544 Russian tanks had been captured by Ukrainian forces, 79 damaged and 65 abandoned.
—————
The “clobber list” is the cumulative, daily press briefing of the Russian Ministry of Defense. The dry daily briefing generally ends with conflict totals but not total casualties for either side, just equipment. So that it doesn’t show up on Google suggests a large issue with American access to information.
I would strongly suggest that everyone take anything any department of defense says with several grains of salt. Though I will say that RuMoD presents without grand statements, ever. It does talk about “eliminated” Ukrainian troops in specific instances, usually between single digits and 100. It just never presents the sum of all those. It does not usually treat Russian setbacks in a timely manner and rarely publishes Russian personnel losses except once when there was an official total of losses presented.
The Oryx info has been laughed at by a large number of people and does not correspond with the reality of anyone who gets information from outside US sources. For me the test is that if Oryx or Ukrainian information was true, then Ukraine would not need the amount of material support it demands of the west. If Ukrainian material losses were as low as is claimed and then adding western supplies and claimed captured Russian equipment, Ukraine would have a grand army. Except none is visible.
This is especially true with loss of life. Ukraine claims just 16,000 losses (or so), yet Ukrainian social media is full of large fresh cemeteries for military losses. The claims of Russian losses represent roughly 1/2 the generally agreed upon size of the Russian continent in Ukraine at its largest. Yet the BBC couldn’t verify more than about 16,000 Russian deaths using social media, death announcements, funeral notices, etc. And for those following the conflict from other sources, who know what absolute doomers Russians are and especially Russian war nerds, there is simply no way that the claimed catastrophic losses could be hidden.
So you’re absolutely right that there are significant agendas in presentation of information. I suspect the truth lies between the poles, though logic and my own lying eyes shade that truth far closer to Russian information than western. It’s a terrible shame that there is such information control and manipulation because I’ve seen far too many dead Ukrainians that might not be dead if the information environment was more truthful. And if the Russians have managed to completely hide the destruction supposedly wrought on them, we should be terrified. In that case Putin has created the perfect totalitarian state and he really is Bond villain level. Our only hope would be his succumbing to the Bond villain failure of trying to savor the destruction of our erstwhile hero.
I thought Oryx was tied to Bellingcat.. i.e. British/US ‘intelligence’. In any case, the MoD clobber list does not include damage done by PMCs like Wagner, but it can include artillery pieces that have been hit and repaired.
Alexander Mercouris and others see MoD reporting differently. They agree the MoD engages in lies of omission but believe what it does comment on (clobber list) is pretty good.
– ‘The Center Cannot Hold’ – American Scholar
This is a brief review of Jeff Sharlet’s latest book. I haven’t read it, but I did start watching the Netflix series The Family, supposedly based on his 2009 book and also mentioned here. That earlier book, on religion and politics, was interesting. Especially noteworthy was Sharlet’s examination of the Fellowship or the Family, the Doug Coe group linked to the National Prayer Breakfast that was basically a Christian front for power networking – among *elites* – in Washington and even globally. It noted the usefulness of this cover for politicians like Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton. Its hypocrisy was illustrated in their attempted cover-up of the “sins” of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, a “Family” member, when his famous affair was uncovered.
But 10 years later, in the Netflix documentary, this is turned into an exercise in Trump-Putin derangement. Really! The Family’s global networking is now a mechanism for linking the Christian Right with global fascists like Putin. One of the “links” in this nefarious chain is the hapless Maria Butina. Really! She is depicted as an evil Russian agent tying the evil Putin to the American Right – rather than the unfortunate victim of anti-Russian propaganda that she actually was. I was actually shocked at the way Shalet had allowed his earlier work to be used – by the *real* elite – in such a transparently ideological way.
Sad. But it’s getting to be an everyday occurrence.
The Family that Hillary Clinton subscribed to?
“only elites matter”
Discussed in Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate.”
Secret Service, ICE break the law over and over with fake cell tower spying The Register
That explains the truckload full of pallets of cell phones that are handed to every person who comes across the border here in Southern Arizona. Personally, I want more than just a free cell phone and 18 months of free service. If they throw in free cable and maybe an occasional date night, only then will I cross over from Mexico. Let me guess, Elon Musk won another no-bid contract.
Do you have additional information about these phones? This is what I found:
“The phones are issued to each individual for three months and can only be used to communicate with ICE staff. They do not allow access to any other app or even to make phone calls.”
https://kvia.com/news/2023/01/06/ice-distributes-cell-phones-to-undocumented-migrants-in-el-paso/
“But the phones can only be used to access the app – they can’t access the internet, load other apps or make calls. And use of them dates back to the Trump administration.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/04/27/fact-check-undocumented-migrants-can-get-smartphones-tracking/9539929002/
You can find a couple hundred in any trash can in Tucson. I’m not sure why the service would only last for three months since the average wait time for a hearing for asylum is almost two years.
https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-u-s-asylum-process/
Bloomberg on others’ writing about teen/youth mental illness:
The obvious response is that, by most objective measures, such as disposable income or access to entertainment, America’s teenagers and 20-somethings are better off than their parents and grandparents were at the same stage in life, and if they could travel back to 1973 they’d encounter something a lot more like a “hellscape.”
What? First, granting all measures of well-being are subject to error in collection and selection bias, to take and use those two in this context is…perverse and perversely ignorant. The first is counterfactual. The second is odd, nearly irrelevant, and wrong (ironically) on both cost and access bases.
As for 1973, the author specified ‘teenagers’. Completely wrong again. I was one. We had jobs, independence, friends, enemies, hobbies that weren’t just on screen, personal freedom from parents and government today’s teens can’t even dream of.
How does an ahistorical, factually incorrect piece like this get put up / published, even in today’s degraded environment? Truly, editors are the most endangered species.
Sounds like the “flat screens and iPhones” quality of life matrix that billionaires like to flatulate about…
Gets me thinking about some sound byte i ran into, not sure what show or channel, where it was claimed that if you’re apartment had a microwave you were not poor.
i was born in late 69, but i remember(being painfully precocious) watching the elder kids around me…and expecting the same level of freedom and of choice as they.
Reagan Revolution and whatever “Great Awakening” that was(!?) ended that…and ive since learned that where i was at(northern exurbs of houston) was one of the places that reversal began.
so the hoped for teenage/young adult freedom and glory and stretching out was over before it began for my cohort.
and, to boot…ive heard from people a decade older and more from me for all my life about the free college, minwage being an actual wage, and all manner of assorted wonderfulness that simply wasnt there for me.
(and to be clear, these and me are all white folks…black and brown of whatever generation had a wholly….different experience)
and the official numbers(fed, etc) bear this exact narrative out.
so, yeah…the fantasy in that article is just silly.
and agin with the serendipity,lol:
fta:”In this senescent neoliberal moment, the powerlessness of the state trickles down into an analogous sense of powerlessness among individuals. Politics invites them to convert their frustrations into fuel for the culture war—the intensity of which is matched only by its inefficacy as a means for catalyzing material change. As if the empty moralism that motivates the toppling of statues or the cheap thrill of “owning the libs” is meant to compensate for the collapse of the middle class or the cratering of economic opportunity for anyone under forty.”
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/02/from-emancipation-to-self-mastery-a-blueprint-for-post-boomer-politics/
2 paragraphs later:
“Rather than asking Americans to pity themselves as persecuted members of a victim group—a posture that includes equity-obsessed progressives and elite-resenting conservatives alike—the politics of mastery would dare them to become the agents of their own empowerment. Instead of self-expression or identity affirmation, it would demand restraint and discipline over one’s passions as the price of true moral, political, and economic agency: the self-determination of the individual as a natural corollary to the self-determination of the state.”
this is exactly the What Is To Be Done discussion that i don’t see happening…especially hyperlocally.
treading water, eyes darting back and forth for the next shark or kraken…
but like Tom Waits said, “you got to get behind the mule”.
besides my felt need to attempt to take care of my own in the vicissitudes i have long, if somewhat cloudily, foreseen…this is a big reason that i’m doing what i’m doing.
i’ll be the Museum Freemen,lol….or, better, the Shakespear quoting Savage.
and on that note, the reason the Savage is top of mind atm…and a small vox clamatis in deserto advocating for that very thing…pick up the frelling hammer:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-savage-reservation?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://unherd.com/2023/02/who-will-stand-against-progress/
(relevant quote:
‘Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?’ asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded. ‘I ate civilisation.’ )
and(lol–working my way through this while watering everything and doing other walk-by-get-it-done farmer things, while jamming ZZ Top’s first 6 albums in the trees)
:”In particular, the transgressive bent of this politics, once a signature of the post-’60s Left, has been emulated with enthusiasm by the Right. As a result, political discourse is now drowning in the noise of two competing pseudo-rebellions across the realms of culture and morality. Each one tries to “out-transgress” the other while claiming underdog status against the presumed hegemony of the enemy in an intractable dynamic that defines the present culture war (the rival persecution complexes that animate this conflict are all-consuming and perfectly complimentary—what one of us has called “kratophobia”).39 Both tendencies are, in fact, left tearing at the already frayed fabric of a mortally fragmented society that has long since ceased to have any functional or legitimate moral center. Consequently, Americans now live in a condition that matches Rieff’s description of a remissive “anti-culture,” where the prevailing ethic is premised on the release of impulse rather than its repression.40″
only quibble so far that i have is that how in hell are we supposed to do any of the things they say we should(that i agree with) from within the current hallucinatory malaise and accompanying Last Men rancor?
which brings me back to Kingsnorth…a small-c conservative, however newly minted…who plays well with Rhydd Wildermuth(small l lefty/pagan)…and who both have seemingly either read or channeled Wendell Berry.
begin at your door.
thats why i started my thing to begin with.
That’s a really great piece, thanks AtH.
Nobody has addressed the elephant in the room, in that sea lions dying en masse from H5N1 is a frightening development, and should it pass to other mammals like say us, the world shuts down in entirety, and the great starving begins.
Right now, so far as I’m aware, with the exception of farmed mink, we await documentation of the extent of intraspecies transmission in the mammals where large numbers of deaths have occurred. If I’m not mistaken, that would come via genetic analysis of virus samples from dead animals. These are pretty spectacular events (perhaps even unprecedented?) but marine mammals do often fall victim to terrestrial disease outbreaks, and this is a whopping big pandemic in birds. I lack reference points to tell me how threatening this looks.
However, the mammal deaths, combined with the news that the bird flu that killed the girl in Cambodia had likely passed through humans on its way to her – this strikes me as genuinely worrying. It would appear that worldwide, different populations of this virus are moving into mammals, including humans. With the past as precedent I think we should regard a very severe human influenza pandemic as in the offing.
We do a flatwater kayak trip once or twice a year on the Colorado River putting in just below Hoover Dam, and I noticed the usually reliable waterfowl were few in numbers compared to the same days on the river in the previous 15 years of paddling it the weekend before Thanksgiving, maybe I saw 75 birds in total in 2 days, where i’d usually see thousands.
Doing it again in mid April, i’ll be curious to see what develops as it’ll be full-on spring conditions…
i pay close attention to the wild birds around here.
no anomalies to report so far this year.
what im watching for is similar to around 8 years ago, when the wild birds(esp. scissortails and swallows) just never came in spring…and our 6 year grasshopper plague ensued….and lasted until the birds came back.
‘I think we should regard a very severe human influenza pandemic as in the offing.’
If that happened, you think that the governments and medical authorities will once more assure us that masks are useless and can in fact be dangerous to wear? And that people should still keep on working whatever the cost?
Yeah, I think we can count on them to at least start with that. When GM said this was coming I was pleased to tell my wife there was someone more pessimistic than me. Unfortunately our leaders have gone above and beyond what would have been necessary to convince me that I was a Pollyanna.
One Good Tern talked about some of the ramifications, such as Penguins, which are colony birds, contracting it. Terrifying.
“Moscow is forced to state grain deal isn’t working, West is to blame — Russian MFA ”
You can bet that the countries of the Global South know exactly why they are not getting food and fertilizer shipments and who is responsible. And yet after doing this the past several months, those very same western nations are going to those Global South countries and demanding that they sanction Russia. When the deal comes up for negotiation, the Russians should pull the plug and say no ships leave the Ukrainian ports until those Russian ships get to depart western ports. Of course if the Russians advance all the way to the west and taking the Ukrainian coastline, then this will no longer be a problem.
Alberta came out on top, with the highest number of attacks per capita, at a rate of 1 in 1,144 people. The prime culprit: elk, which may not seem threatening but can weigh up to 500 kilograms, the report noted.
There were a total of 3,726 wildlife attacks in Alberta between 2010 and 2021, more than all the other provinces and territories combined, according to Parks Canada data. Coming in a distant second was British Columbia, which recorded 293 attacks during that period.
The report found Ontario had the fewest number of wildlife attacks per capita, at a rate of 1 in 374,318 people. Parks Canada recorded 38 wildlife attacks in the province between 2010 and 2021. Like most other regions of the country, the black bear was involved with the most attacks.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/03/02/heres-where-youre-most-likely-to-be-attacked-by-a-wild-animal-in-canada-according-to-a-new-report.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_canada
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My mom grew up there and many relatives live in Alberta, I had no idea what a dangerous place it is.
Canada, not that different from Norway apparently.
As it seems the major threat is from collisions.
Basic mechanism is that the long legs leave most of the mass to pass over the hood and into the windshield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXOWZnRCc20
I was wrong – there is at least one US senator who lives in reality. Are there any others???? – cause I won’t find them using the MSM.
Now, I have to say, I am flabbergasted that this is a repub. All I can say in my defense is that it is hard to overcome childhood indoctrination that dems are the peace party….
He has quite the history-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Black_(politician)
Which notes he was a state senator in Virginia, not a US Senator.
ex-PFC Chuck
whoops!! I got that wrong. But I guess a state senator is better than no senator….
His realistic take on the situation is likely why he is stuck at the state level rather than found his way to DC.
Anyone who survived several score sorties as a Marine helicopter pilot in Vietnam deserves to be heard, especially if he’s a truth-teller.
Two wings….one bird…
..the wings agree on money for bankers and war.
Thank you for the article about adoption(STAT). I’ve had so many people over the years cheerily tell me “You can adopt!” and then I ask them “Do you know how much adoption costs?” and get a blank stare. Then I explain to them. The only people I know that have adopted a (newborn) baby is my former C-suite now hedgefunder friend and his wife. Because they could afford it. I cynically joked with my mother and former partner about them having bought a baby.
My cousin(she cannot have her own children due to health reasons) fostered a 2 year old for 3 or 4 years, then the state suddenly gave her back to her screw-up mother. My cousin had been wanting to adopt the kid. Fast forward many months and a full-on hardcore police raid later(due to crack house, prostitution, and god knows what else), kid ends up back with my cousin one random night and she is finally able to go through with the adoption. Kid has been receiving regular counseling for years. The road to adopting a foster kid was a total nightmare.
My father’s mother was adopted and never had any details. It took place 110 years ago. Just this past December I was finally able to get her original birth information(you get a sheet with the info as they do not send you a copied certificate) from the county through a strange twist of fate. NYS records were sealed for eternity up until a couple years ago. Neither she nor my father or his siblings ever knew about her origin other than she came from Buffalo(only partly true, come to find out). I sent it to my one remaining aunt for Christmas and she was blown away-speechless, and this woman is never speechless. She said “Now I finally know where I come from.” Hedgefunder friend and wife are fully open with their adopted son about his adoption and origin.
One of my Tucson mentors adopted a child she took in as a foster child. Kid’s now in her twenties, and let’s say that my mentor had a challenge or two along the path to her child’s adulthood.
Be that as it may, my mentor doesn’t regret her midlife motherhood decision for a nanosecond.
My cousin doesn’t regret it either, and the whole family is so happy for the child to finally be a part of our little tribe, but the whole thing was so traumatic for her and the little kid that she refuses to go through it again. Her, her husband, and the child foster puppies instead.
My better half was adopted in the early 1940s and now, in her 9th decade still cannot access her true birth certificate. But MN state law says she can do so when she turns 100 so its all good. Two years ago a bill to change that law failed mainly due to the work of an exurban GOP state senator who asserted the privacy promises made to unwed mothers should be honored. A bill similar to what failed to pass previously will soon be submitted, and now that the DFL (Dems in MN) control both legislative houses and the governorship its chances are hopefully better.
The privacy meme is bogus, especially in this day and age. When the draconian adoption “privacy” laws were being passed in the mid-20th century the most active activist involved was one Georgia Tann, the subject of The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond. Tann could have cared less about birth mothers’ privacy. She was far more concerned about keeping the lid on her own scumbaggery.
We tried to adopt in California years ago, and were disappointed to learn that, by the social-worker checklist, we belong to the cohort children are confiscated from, not the one they’re to be given to. When I was young I could see from adopted friends that adoption wasn’t a class war. It is now–but everything is, thanks neoliberals!
A friend once attended an adoption “picnic”. He wasn’t there to adopt, he was part of the entertainment. The event consisted of well-off prospective parents mingling with orphans and children remanded to the state, to “get to know them”.
What it really was was a livestock sale. Except the livestock knew it and wanted to be bought more than anything. They would do everything in their power to get noticed. Overweight or otherwise undesirable children were achingly aware that they were at a great disadvantage. My friend said it was the most depressing thing he had ever seen.
Sad now? Listen to this. Hank Snow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtTdQm57_MU
I don’t know if this has been mentioned in earlier posts and I was away from the internet for a week.
Tribute to a Minder: Fundraiser for Peter Dale Scott
Many of the guest speakers would be familiar to readers of NC, and I suspect Professor Peter Dale Scott is as well, as he was mentioned in many early posts here.
Re The Fall of Bakhmut, A Prelude to the Fall of Ukraine?
Then there is the alternate ‘unmoored from reality’ reality as espoused by Mick Ryan, a strategist and retired major general from the Australian Army.
“…the battle has also allowed #Ukraine to attrit the Russian forces in the east, forcing them to continue committing resources to the battle for a town with almost no strategic value. This has absorbed Russian units that might have been used elsewhere against the Ukrainians. It has blooded the Russians (Army and Wagner) in a way that they have not experienced since WW2.
By some reports, their slow, methodical and frankly, unnecessary, campaign for Bakhmut has resulted in over ten thousand Russian casualties…”
https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1631928057702535168
Loves me a 60’s biker gang flick, especially when its only 6 minutes long…
Viscous Cycles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Jsw6wwW7A
“Keiner da hier.” lol
Today’s Psychology Can’t Help American Men American Conservative
This comes from the article:
Rollo Tomassi, a podcaster and writer who has been discussing the crisis of masculinity for years, told me that psychology is failing men because “modern psychology is by women for women.” “Across all fields,” he noted, “female doctoral students in psychology outnumber males by approximately three to one and have done so for over a decade.” He’s right.
As I commented in yesterday’s Water Cooler, the problem with Rollo Tomassi (redpiller) is that he’s right. And Wheat Waffles (blackpiller) is also a problem because he’s right.
And what does that say about males who’ve ignored becoming doctoral candidates in psychology? It seems unlikely that the lack of educational achievement by males can also be the fault of women. Do they want us barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?
Given that psychology is pseudo-science at best, seems to me that anyone avoiding an advanced degree in it are the smart ones. Lack of educational achievement by males? Yeah, right… pull the other one.
Ok, this isn’t a dating site nor is it a Lonely Hearts column. Nor is it the “man-o-sphere”. We have allowed this to go on because you seemed like you needed a bit of positive reinforcement and some advice. That time is now over. Do not spew this misogynistic garbage here anymore or you will be going into moderation and any offending comments will be trashed.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/03/the-trump-world-fox-news-war-gets-nasty-00085506
With Fox stars out of the picture, attendees at CPAC flocked to popular right-wing alternatives like Bannon’s War Room, which hosted its podcast live, along with Newsmax, OAN, Right Side Broadcasting Network and others.
William Marks, a software developer and manager from southern Maryland, said he still watches both Fox News and Newsmax, but believes the former is “moving further away from the conservative landscape,” a fault not of the anchors but of “the ownership,” he said.
Even with such defections, Fox News remains king of cable news and prime-time ratings. The top ten most-watched cable news shows are all on Fox News, with Tucker Carlson and the Five boasting over 3 million viewers according to AdWeek. And for conservative stars, Fox News’ evening shows are still the #1 spot for attracting attention for their cause.
====================================================
Fox back in 2016 was not originally pro Trump. And Fox is conservative like NYT is liberal – simply a marketing ploy. Will the media successfully blacklist Trump, or will the desire for proftis …trump the blacklist?
Trump prevailed because of what Chappelle noted about Trump, that Trump is an honest liar. Trump noted that the whole country was a racket, because he (Trump) was using it, and that Obama and Clinton caused and supported that racket as much as anyone else.
But what I really think about is that the repubs had a challenger who said some things critical about the country. The dems status quo challenger, Bernie Sanders, was just not as willing to confront the fact that, just like the mainstream repubs, the dems are part of a racket. Trump was willing to lambast repub nominees, Bernie was not. And the truth of the matter, I think the dems may be more hidebound than the repubs.
I think Trump takes the nomination and election – if only he can be unambigously the peace candidate. But does he have the brains, the spine, (but not the heart – as Meatloaf would say, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad) to lead an anti war candidacy??
It was all so neat and tidy when Trump and MAGA could be blamed on Fox News, and Fox could make a boatload of dough “accepting” that “blame.” Or Vladimir Putin. Just more “evidence” that Trump supporters didn’t really support him. They were just stupid, deplorable dupes.
But now that Trumpers would rather turn on Fox than Trump, things get a wee bit more complicated.
Support for and loyalty to Trump is far deeper and broader than most in legacy media or political circles are willing to admit. And despite the continued characterization of Fox as ultimate MAGA, the network has been losing support in more “genuine” conservative circles since the 2020 election, when it was seen as overly credulous to the claim that it was the “cleanest” election ever or that biden “got more votes than any presidential candidate in history.”
I’d imagine there is a desperate search going on at the highest levels for Plan B to squelch the Orangeman, again, right now. But if I were looking to take the repub nomination away from Trump, I’d be wary of relying too much on Fox News for help with that. Lots of the voters you’d need are just not that into them anymore.
in my all but random forays to neighboring counties of late, ive seen 3 single truck trump trains cruising around with all flags flying(if i did that with, say, peace signs, i’d be considered a road hazard).
there are also numerous businesses in my area(nw texas hill country) who not only never got rid of their often numerous and ostentatious trump displays, but have been apparently keeping them up(as in replacing ratty flags, and such).
so, yeah, trumpism is still very much a thing, at least in the 150 or so mile radial section to the northwest of san antonio.
just one more way the media is delusional and out of touch, i guess.
The Atlantic’s “The Moral Case Against Equity Language” is a sobering and insightful read.
Another direct link to the whole fitful piece can be had here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-moral-case-against-equity-language/ar-AA1886kV
I thought this was a call out truth:
The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal.
To know that the Sierra Club amongst others are paying someone/something for the organizational adoption of this contorted NewSpeak at the impetus of someone/something is a waste of membership contributions and way of their old mission.
Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.
And Truth, at this moment in history as Taibbi is warning about–should be ‘centered’ or ‘foregrounded’ first and foremost.
“Baffle ‘Em with BS” is what this movement speaks to me.
Striving for mediocracy. / ;)
to expand on this, from the article:
Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a nonfiction masterpiece that tells the story of Mumbai slum dwellers with the intimacy of a novel. The book was published in 2012, before the new language emerged:
‘The One Leg’s given name was Sita. She had fair skin, usually an asset, but the runt leg had smacked down her bride price. Her Hindu parents had taken the single offer they got: poor, unattractive, hard-working, Muslim, old—“half-dead, but who else wanted her,” as her mother had once said with a frown.’
Translated into equity language, this passage might read:
‘Sita was a person living with a disability. Because she lived in a system that centered whiteness while producing inequities among racial and ethnic groups, her physical appearance conferred an unearned set of privileges and benefits, but her disability lowered her status to potential partners. Her parents, who were Hindu persons, accepted a marriage proposal from a member of a community with limited financial resources, a person whose physical appearance was defined as being different from the traits of the dominant group and resulted in his being set apart for unequal treatment, a person who was considered in the dominant discourse to be “hardworking,” a Muslim person, an older person. In referring to him, Sita’s mother used language that is considered harmful by representatives of historically marginalized communities.’
Equity language fails at what it claims to do. This translation doesn’t create more empathy for Sita and her struggles. Just the opposite—it alienates Sita from the reader, placing her at a great distance. A heavy fog of jargon rolls in and hides all that Boo’s short burst of prose makes clear with true understanding, true empathy.
…. This huge expense of energy to purify language reveals a weakened belief in more material forms of progress. If we don’t know how to end racism, we can at least call it structural.The guides want to make the ugliness of our society disappear by linguistic fiat. Even by their own lights, they do more ill than good…because they make it impossible to face squarely the wrongs they want to right, which is the starting point for any change…the people in Behind the Beautiful Forevers know they’re poor; they can’t afford to wrap themselves in soft sheets of euphemism. Equity language doesn’t fool anyone who lives with real afflictions. It’s meant to spare only the feelings of those who use it.
btw a wonderful book (TBF), if you haven’t read it.
Thanks for this. The worst sin of bowdlerizing literature in the name of equity language is this: It makes the books boring. What child will giggle with delight reading Roald Dahl’s newly corrected (ahem) Matilda?
James and the Giant Stone Fruit?
Can’t have any emoji triggering or other metaphor mixing. /s
For a notable recent example of speech arising from genuine feeling, there’s this clip from a conversation between Russell Brand and Joe Rogan, which takes an unexpected turn:
https://youtu.be/SlOW82qJTBU
Thank you for that link.
It’s another case of Simplistification: “solving an adjacent problem which is easy” rather than solving the actual problem which would be hard.
It’s also an example of magical thinking: if I believe something strongly enough, the world will conform itself to my thoughts. We got rid of that type of thinking during the Enlightenment. It’s back, with a vengeance.
I’m not sure we got rid of that kind of thinking in the enlightenment. Communism, Facism, and Liberalism are all products of the Enlightenment in my view. I think the Enlightenment was when we decided to make humans God(s).
If milk goes off after a century, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fresh to start with.
Respect for nature doesn’t imply anti-rationalism. Disrespect for nature doesn’t imply reason. In fact it implies ignorance, which is the opposite of reason. People playing God is arrogance and stupidity, not reason.
When we were skiing in Mammoth the first week of February, they were running out of places to put snow, and as you left town, it had the appearance of a walled medieval city with 20 foot high frozen ramparts everywhere. They’ve since gotten a ton more, but Mammoth is running second fiddle to our local ski resort-China Peak, which has received an amazing 564 inches of snow, with 3 to 4 more feet coming this weekend.
I’ve been skiing @ China Peak a few times when the Estonian-American ski club has their annual weekend there.
Quite a sight to see them dressed to the nines, flying down the mountain…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c583eRPAlc
So I heard that the Sierra snowpack measurements now are record setting. “This snowpack actually rivals 1982 and1983, which is the largest snowpack on record.”
Back in that time I would go up to ski several times a year. I’m pretty sure it was Alpine Meadows, one of the chair lifts ran along the side of a ridge near the top. Normally the chair would be 20 or 30 feet above the snow on the slope. One week I went up, the chair had to go through a section where a channel was cut into the snow so the chair could pass.
Late March of ’82 was also when Alpine had such a big avalanche that it came all the way down to the buildings at the bottom killing 7 people and injured 5.
What a sudden change from the many years of drought we have been having.
The next Mammoth trip for the dartful codgers is in 10 days, and we plan these out 6 months in advance and so far everything has worked to our advantage, as we were in Utah & Colorado when it was near impossible to do so in Cali this winter. Once again the forecast looks good.
For the Sierra ski resorts its a troubles with tribbles gig in that all those storms & windy conditions have left them with not many open days-you can’t drive to China Peak as the road is closed, kind of a cruel reversal from winters such as a couple years ago where we made do often on 6 inches if that.
And avalanches aren’t common in the Sierra so you don’t expect them, which is another issue to think about.
Regarding Today’s Psychology Can’t Help American Men.
Unfortunately “Evolutionary Psychology” is bunk, bunk that appeals to certain people, much as Social Darwinism does. It’s conclusions are largely its assumptions, which are made tacit by concealing them with scientifish bafflegab. This is whatl weak-minded/emotionally
driven people typically regard as intellectual rigor. And weak-minded emotionality is a hallmark of right-wing Manliness.
A couple notes to anyone who cares to argue over this: If you want to refute me, don’t waste time attacking feminism. I don’t need an ideology to trash pseudoscience, and your arguments will be entirely besides the point. And if you want to moan and piss about Hypergamy or whatnot, then first you’ll have to convince me that your ideas are about something other than your own feels. Otherwise I’m just going to point out that your reasoning skills appear to be deficient.
>”If you want to refute me, don’t waste time attacking feminism. I don’t need an ideology to trash pseudoscience, and your arguments will be entirely besides the point.”
Okay, I won’t refute you, I won’t waste time, I won’t be beside the point. Thank you for saving me time.
Can you see how you going to the trouble of making this response could look emotionally driven and perhaps not the product of clear thinking?
“And weak-minded emotionality is a hallmark of right-wing Manliness”
I agree on that point and was really looking forward to reading the replies, but it looks like there’s been a refusal to take up the challenge. (Maybe because of your tone?)
What I would suggest, though, is that instead of condemning “feels,” you consider examining the neglected practice of bringing subtlety and discrimination and nuance into our perception of emotions. That might spark a conversation grounded in a desire to explore rather than the Us against Them approach that you so correctly categorize as a dead end.
The war of Men against Women or the reverse is as senseless, bloody, and littered with casualties as any other dualistic enterprise.
Subtlety and nuance is pretty much missing everywhere, imo. Take, for instance, this latest cover of a once fairly good magazine. / oy
https://www.motherjones.com/mag/2023/03/toc/
When ‘clicks’ are more important than facts….
I forget which of those old Chinese Zen guys said “Meet an error with a mistake.” I imagine it’s probably a proverb.
It’s the only way forward I know. Assuming I know which way is forward.
Hmmm, I guess my earlier responses got moderated. I’ll try and tone it down.
If I come across as condemning men’s feelings it’s unintentional. What I do condemn, unreservedly, avidly, is the presentation of the ruminations of prejudice as if they’ve been derived via some sort of even remotely scientific analysis. I’m a 65 year old WASP male, and I will go to my grave feeling that suitcases with wheels on them are for girls. But you won’t catch me trying to promote that as scientific thinking.
Since you make no argument, what is there to refute?
My statements of course. Look up the meaning of ‘refute’.
Well then, a bare denial to your bare assertions.
E. Palestine train wreck.
Doubling down on a stupid cleanup response.
Plan to incinerate soil from Ohio train derailment is ‘horrifying’, says expert
Soil is being sent to a nearby incinerator with a history of clean air violations, raising fears the chemicals will be redistributed
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/04/east-ohio-train-derailment-soil
Broom, rug, sweep. / ;)
Joe Rogan, 2 days ago. utube:
The Latest Developments in the East Palestine Chemical Spill Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MuaFeyczM0
It seems in line with that old saying . . . the solution to pollution is dilution. Eventually someone will counter that saying with . . . the negation of dilution is biological reconcentration.
>How Not to Tell the History of Science Boston Review
The article reviews two books by academics. The books and the review itself reek of revisionism and PMC “wokeism”. There’s a lot of meat in them for someone in the mood to conduct a comprehensive shredding. I’m not. Therefore, here’s only one of the many questionable positions the author(s) take. It is perhaps the money quote for critics of this mess:
“…the 1,518-page screed posted online by the white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik the day he murdered seventy-seven people in Norway in 2011 is replete with references to leading historians of science of the twentieth century…”
Well, if one chooses to use the ramblings of a madman to discredit modern (Western-based) science and exalt science from other sources, all I can say is your argument is in big trouble. And so it is.
Re: Don’t blame social media for teen mental health crisis
This will date me, big time, but there was a time (until the 1980s I am guessing) when kids rarely, if ever, were given drugs for such things as depression and ADHD, diet problems, etc. There was anorexia in my family before there was even a term for it and back then the main and only substance of choice for mischief was alcohol, which many teenagers abused if they could find it, with all the consequent terrible results. Then in the late 60s came the “drug years” and the use of substances for fun, escape, whatever, followed by the War on Drugs…..yet at the same time as this took place there was also an enormous increase in the number and types of drugs to alleviate adult issues – depression, weight loss, anxiety. Remember, “mother’s little helper?”
This of course became an obvious elephant in the room for youth – all these adults pontificating about just say no while rushing out to refill the valium scrips. So, by, let’s say, the late 70s something had shifted in the overall medical system, a big move to prescription drugs to alter moods (maybe linked to the allowance of prescription drug ads on television, prohibited until I think the late 1970s) and with it a general acceptance that there might be a drug solution for every problem…further complicated by the uncomfortable fact that while a societal demand might cause the development of a drug, the development of a drug will go in search of creating a societal demand through advertising….
Thjs came to the fore first in the giving of speed to kids to counter their ADHD, and then a whole family of drugs for ADHD and allergies, and what happened, was, the entire medical establishment backed the change, such that as the years passed more and more solutions for whatever problems kids had could be found in a drug, something to focus their attention, or wake their brain up, or control their anger……exactly at the same time that more and more drugs were developed to alleviate problems for adults…
It has now been nearly a half century since we began drugging our children on a widespread basis such that the children, even the grandchildren, of the first generation of kids given drugs on a broad basis, entirely legally, are now in the most recent generations having all these problems. A half century of it being permissible to use drugs to treat discomfort, difficulty, anxiety, attention problems. An entire medical and therapy establishment has arisen based on this system, a system that has arisen for all the best motives, after all we all want our kids to succeed, right? But, still, we have now developed a fabric in this country of medical help being chosen to wash away difficulty and pain and anxiety and rejection, an entire industry supported by all these therapists and doctors and drug companies and incessant TV ads for drugs (not for children – yet – but for everything under the sun for adults). This is NOT to say there are not cases where assigning drugs to some child is the best and proper solution, but it IS to say that within a societal fabric awash with drugs legal and illegal, consumed by all sectors of society, backed by the full power and force of expectation and herd-like solutions, it should be obvious that maybe the root of all these problems are the very drugs that have been prescribed these last two generations rather than social media and any number of other explanations…..
As you noted, it was the “Greatest Generation” that began this climb into the pill bottle. Some lyrics from “Mother’s Little Helper:”
Combine alcohol with Valium, as that heavy drinking and smoking generation did, and you got some interesting results. And before long, with all those mothers wearing pink sunglasses, doctors began selling them speed for their boys if they acted up in school.
I think the images of the wonderful 50s and early 60s are more a product of seeing plenty of episodes of “Andy of Mayberry” and “My Three Sons.” In reality, Aunt Bee was on Haldol and Donna Reed was living in a pink haze.
Something has been making our society sick since well before Lewis Powell or Ronald Reagan. Maybe it’s the Bernays Sauce (deemed “commercial speech” by SCOTUS) ladled over everything in copious quantites..
The Greatest Generation was first known as the Great Depression Kids, then as the WWII generation. Dire poverty and desperation in childhood followed by world war and death in young adulthood. What the heck was “normal”? It’s wonder they weren’t all suffering from some form of PTSD, imo.
THIS.
Flora, that sums it up. It’s amazing that they came through it all as well as they did.
The think you are right about drugs and society. I also think social media, at least in its for profit surveillance form, is a social poison, especially for kids.
It’s not like the Army/intell agencies sponsored “emotional contagion” experiments on Facebook (and possible/probably other) social media 10 years ago or so, unbeknownst to the social media’s users themselves.
Oh, wait….
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/jul/01/facebook-cornell-study-emotional-contagion-ethics-breach
Do depressed people shop more, buy more stuff? Inquiring minds want to know. / ;)
When pharmaceutical companies got some immunity from side effect damage some decades ago then didn’t that have the effect of telling them to pull out all the stops and push through harmful meds in their pipeline?
It would seem that they were essentially self-regulating some parts of their business at that point, which would surprise their universe of pill takers, and prescribers. Why trust them without some legitimate oversight? Especially one that hasn’t gone over to full regulatory capture.
Combine that with the infamous Vampire Squid Firm line, paraphrased, about cures not being a sustainable business model and you can see who is aligned against the Hippocratic Oath.
/end rant
At Sydney Uni, in the 80’s, the Student Union had – in a large room under their offices – a weekly J Club – where dope dealers displayed their wares and competed for students like me. It was cheap and you got freebies. The Vice Chancellor decided (against all legal rules) to invite the cops in and bust the place. I missed that day, but got lumbered with everyone’s there stash of shit, all kinds of stuff. The best by far, sampling wise, was Tenuate Dospan, a weight loss pill – women especially marketing wise – that was the best speed ever invented. Chinese John, the local drug guy, dope and speed and whatever money could buy, was important to keep as a friend at the time, so I gave him three. A week later he got back to me, and wanted more. It was like nothing he had ever seen before.
I wanted to put a word in here about one of my all-time favorite musicians who died yesterday, David Lindley. Probably most well known for his work with Jackson Browne and his session work with Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Warren Zevon and many many more, I preferred his solo work both acoustically and with his band El Rayo-X. He was a master of anything with strings – fiddle, banjo, oud, saz, guitar, acoustic and electric lap steel etc etc.
Solo, his amazing version of Warren Zevon’s “The Vast Indifference Of Heaven”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQxrHqKFFqc&ab_channel=mathiasnielsen66
And with his band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txL3Z4JlFeo&ab_channel=dubmomonga
Tragic. He was one of a kind. You could always identify his playing under every artist he ever collaborated with. Here it’s Jennifer Warners
https://youtu.be/ZiCC7r_3fvA
R.I.P David Lindley
underappreciated master
Yep. And don’t forget Wayne Shorter just shed his body too.
Yeah it’s been a tough week for music lovers.
Apparently Lindley had struggled with long COVID for a couple of years and finally died from associated complications.
But Joe Biden said the pandemic is over so no worries.
Broken as designed:
Truly the most hilarious thing I’ve seen lately, though, injecting text into a web page that causes the bot to actively try to trick a user into visiting a malicious web site. True genius.
And no one’s going to expect it. The perfect social engineering attack. I get spam emails all the time about a bitcoin wallet, for example, which I don’t even have. Imagine a chatbot getting someone to give up their bitcoin key? Bank PIN, whatever. This is limitless carnage. Someone’s already crafting prompts that’ll get someone infected with ransomware, and you can keep interacting with the bot to pay, and unlock, your system, all with these prompts. Wait for it. It’s coming.
Thanks Bing!
These bots are really a solution looking for a problem. But will cause much mischief in the meantime.
Ukraine and Russia casualty numbers seem to be somewhat obfuscated using search engines… is there a reliable go-to site (without listening to a podcast) for this information?
Not really. If this was officially a war, Russian armed forced would be required to keep Duma informed of the casualties, but as it is only a special military operation the official casualties will be reported when the ordeal is over.
For the Ukrainian side, I’m not sure if we will ever have a plausible official number. There seems to be plenty of suspicion even in Ukraine that nobody actually knows the true casualties (due to multiple reasons).
From yesterday? In a growing petrochemical hub, the East Palestine derailment triggers ‘an uneasy feeling’
If you really consider this, we’ve got the murderer conducting the investigation here. That’s insane. Why would NS want to find anything? So they won’t. Their contractors won’t. And the EPA probably doesn’t care to either.
This place is rural. I’m amazed no one’s just blown up the tracks. Stop the trains. Done. You’d probably not even get caught! Americans are really docile. It’d be too expensive to secure the entire length of the rail line.
What’s been done, what’s being done to these Americans, is unconscionable.
RE: EU Countries delay landmark law to end sales of CO2 emitting cars by 2035
The wrangle seems to be over allowing ICE cars to continue to be sold provided they burn “carbon neutral” fuel. This seemingly innocuous nit could be the loophole that makes the ICE phase-out toothless.
On seeing the EU legislative process one wonders how anything gets passed:
I hope this eventually does get passed. It’s similar to a rule passed in California. One hopes this will spread and the auto companies and oil companies get the message: phase out these technologies and write off those investments–you have 12 years notice. Do it.
The wee problem is that America had it’s functioning public transportation systems degraded through machinations by some oil companies, the tyre companies, and a big automobile company back in the 1940s. The desired outcome was the car centric America of the 1950s and 1960s.
EV vehicles are much more expensive to own and run than ICE vehicles were, when costs are adjusted for inflation etc. Without a viable public transportation system, a region’s population will sink into fellahin-dom. (Hat tip to JHB. I hope you are doing well in the Big Easy.)
Who could have ever anticipated that EVs were a manifestation of ‘The Jackpot?’
Portlandia intermittent episode?
When you’ve lost Wal-Mart, who is next?
A week ago or more there was a discussion about the difference between hubris and chutzpah. It was very informative as I had thought they were the same. The following clip from 1997 is a remarkable demonstration of hubris. It reminds me of the Athenians when they sent thousand of troops to Syracuse in 415 BC as a strategic move against Sparta. It didn’t end well then either and nearly the entire expedition were captured (dying in quarries) or destroyed in Sicily. It’s working according to plan.
Yves wrote, regarding the enraged GA woman who drove her SUV into a Popeyes:
“Not that I want to defend this sort of thing, but service rage now on top of road rage may be displacement. I spent two weeks out of the US and noted I was not angry once.”
I live in Switzerland most of the time (dual citizen Swiss-American). Like Yves, I notice the calm and basic contentment of workers here. A stark contrast to Brooklyn where people are screaming at each other on the street. The education system in Switzerland is solid; if students who choose a non-university path, they train in apprenticeship programs while going to school. My husband was a mason; it took 4 years of study+apprenticeship. Just because you’ve hammered a nail here, doesn’t mean you can sell yourself as a carpenter. You need a certified qualification. Being a waitress, or sanitation worker, is considered a honorable career because you’re trained, and are expected to be competent, in all aspects of the work. Swiss workers receive a good wage (minimum $25) + benefits, incl. health insurance and 6 weeks vacation, guaranteeing that the person can have a decent life…..an apt, a family, and vacation. Unlike in the US, they mostly stay in their profession (because changing involves 4 more years to qualify), and don’t aspire to being the CEO, i.e., the American Dream of being anything you want!
It sounds boring and predictable but quarantees stability and peace of mind. At a Zurich coffee bar, one young woman served everyone with a welcoming smile, calm and competence. She wasn’t at her wits end worrying about how she’d pay her bills and survive, as people have to do in Predatory America.
I wish this was true up in the frozen north as well, but since the 90s Norway has put vocational schools on the back burner and only recently noticed how much the nation is lagging (likely thanks to COVID closing the borders).
Then again the whole education system is a mess, thanks to who pays for what (very little of it directly from the state, who hogs most of the taxes etc).
For those following along at home, the latest variant report is out: https://github.com/neherlab/SARS-CoV-2_variant-reports/blob/main/reports/variant_report_2023-02-03.md#variant-report-2023-02-03
Are we gardening in a toxic world?
It seems the answer is yes– but is there anything we can do about it?
The answer to that question is also yes!!
In this video I share my thoughts on the recent, tragic, toxic train derailment in my own home state, other concerns we as gardeners must face with contaminated soil and water, and some possible solutions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkg3vi2ion4
Here is a wide ranging gold mine of an interview of feminist and artist Jennifer Bilek by Object UK on the gender identity industry. It’s got it all: the Pritzger’s funding of the “trans presidents” Obama and Biden, Big Pharma, the “transhumanist” and “post-humanist” techie angle, the funding of university departments, the law firm constructing the legal concept of trans, the fine toothed comb media censorship, the online trans-activist cult, the unhappy marriage of feminists with Right-wing media, the near total capitulation of the Left-wing media, the Arcus Foundation’s buying and selling of the psychology industry, the total commodification of human sexuality and reproduction (and all aspects of human life), the normalization of autogynephilia and pedophilia, the utter misogyny of it all, and the burning need for a mass movement. At the base of it, side by side with the profiteering, is a need for disassociation. The fear of mortality, the craving of mostly powerful men, to separate themselves from their humanity.
The Gender Identity Industry – Jennifer Bilek
There’s a LOT of money involved. A few years ago the US LGB market was worth $9bn. That market is now worth $3.6 trillion, globally. Jennifer tried to publish her findings many times, but only right-wing organizations like the Federalist would publish her. Now you can find her work on UK’s own Uncommon Ground media (link below). If you struggle to believe her, check out her many references and hyperlinks to the evidence.
I asked Jennifer what was the belief she put forth which received the most controversy. Her answer ‘That women are human’. Capitalism dictates that new markets must constantly be created, and the gender industry whizzing us swiftly and profitably towards transhumanism and total disembodiment, provides this service royally for the medico-pharma complex and for the misogynist AGPs, Incels and other misogynist men and their confused female handmaidens. Traumatization by drugs and surgery helps to switch off our brains and make us compliant. We ReSist and we OBJECT.
https://youtu.be/GJ_bbk_wMZs
Best blurb ever! You hooked me, I am totally going to watch it.
Thanks for this as I would never have found it on my own. Watching/listening now.
The dead and dying Sea Lions are heart wrenching.
I posted two separate links this morning that just went poof. Don’t know why.
Here is a post by someone who struck a small blow against an unjust law through the creative application of malicious compliance, which could be considered a form of uncivil obedience.
It is titled ” Lawful or Chaotic”?
https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/11i238i/lawful_or_chaotic/
How many people would have to practice malicious compliance towards certain unjust laws or situations to make them untenable or unenforceable?
Unions have a phrase for this tactic: “work to contract”. As long as relations with management remain healthy and stable, shop stewards are willing to fudge detailed contract procedures for the sake of simplicity. But the slightest display of petty abuse by management and a strong union immediately implements “work to contract”…and the entire production line slows to a crawl. It’s one of the most potent tools in the union toolkit.
I suspect you will find many a 60s comedy show, in particular anything with a military setting, that features a few episodes involving just that.
first para of the article:
if linking this garbage is free speech I guess you’re gonna do it but this is the kind of crap I read NC to avoid—blecch!