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Links 5/16/2023

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Dear patient readers,

If any of you are or are a close contact of someone in the professional sports industry, a sports writer, or someone who manages major venues, please ping me at yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com with “Sports” in the subject line. I am seeking someone with direct knowledge. Thanks!

* * *

Bear in a tree holds Michigan city in suspense for hours on Mother’s Day Associated Press (resilc)

Six lions killed in Kenya in blow to conservation efforts Reuters (resilc)

Forced from Grand Canyon National Park, the Havasupai Tribe embraces spiritual homecoming Associated Press (furzy)

Kenyan Preacher Told Followers Starvation Was Their Salvation New York Times (resilc)

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows good early results Skeptical Raptor (furzy)

New Water Treatment Zaps “Forever Chemicals” for Good SciTech Daily (Chuck L). I want one.

Patient M: The Man Who Was Shot in The Head And Woke Up Seeing The World Backwards ScienceAlert. Chuck L: “A 20th century Phineas Gage.”

WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline WHO. Not consistent with my experience as a formerly fat kid.

William Davies · A Dog in the Fight: Am I a fan? London Review of Books (Anthony L)

It Is Long Past Time to Retire the Oldest, Dumbest Debate in Literary History Slate (Anthony L)

#COVID-19

Climate/Environment

In pictures: Spain faces devastating drought France24 (resilc)

UK airlines’ new ‘sustainable’ fuels may be causing deforestation in Asia openDemocracy

China?

China Opens New Channel Giving Access to $3 Trillion Swap Market Bloomberg

Thailand election 2023: opposition delivers crushing blow to military rule Guardian (furzy)

The Second US–Pacific Island Country Summit Pacific Island Times (Kevin W). TASS, so far apparently only its Russia version, reports that a deal to be announced May 22 includes full US access to Papua New Guinea ports.

Old Blighty

Rishi Sunak was within hours of sending paratroopers into Sudan Telegraph. Kevin W: “A bridgehead too far?”

Where Did the Revenues Go in the British Energy Crisis? An Assessment Institute for New Economic Thinking

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine war: Kyiv hit by ‘exceptionally dense’ missile and drone attack BBC. Lead story.

Note the second ammo storage site hit, not quite as spectacular as the first, has not gotten much mention:

Ukraine SitRep: Explosion in Khmelnytsky – Bakhmut Evacuation – Longer Range Missiles Moon of Alabama. Debunks one of my pet peeves, the gamma radiation spike meme, which too many people who should know better have flogged. One, depleted uranium by all accounts emits only very low levels of gamma. Two, even though it travels through open air a fair distance by radiation standards, it still does not go very far in open air, on the order of feet according to some sources, dozens of feet per others. Moon confirms our skepticism by showing the charts that supposedly prove the famed gamma spike show it occurred the day BEFORE the blast. Ooopsie!

Hungary blocks €500 million payment to Ukraine – media RT

File on 4, Oiling Putin’s War? BBC Radio 4 (resilc)

Safeguarding Your Mental Health from the Harmful Effects of Western War Propaganda – Ten Top Tips Geoffrey Roberts. We are chuffed by #8.

Erdogan accuses Biden of attempt to topple him The Cradle

Syraqistan

Iran Seizes Third Oil Tanker As U.S. Boosts Military Presence OilPrice

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raises nearly $100M for creepy crypto project that uses ‘Orb’ to scan eyeballs New York Post (Kevin W). Aieee.

The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up Wired (BC)

2024

The Religious Landscape is Undergoing Massive Change. It Could Decide the 2024 Election. Politico (furzy)

Trump

Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe CNN (Li)

John Durham’s report on Trump-Russia probe released CNN (furzy). Link to full report.

Biden

WATCH: Patriot Front Guys Appear Again, Mockery Ensues RedState. Furzy highlighted:

It’s funny that they march anytime Biden needs cover for “white supremacy being the biggest threat.”

It’s so damn cynical and transparent.

“How come they’re all wearing the same clothes?” Rogan shouted. “Have you ever seen anything that looks more like feds?” he said, as Taibbi laughed.

Comer Says He ‘Can’t Track Down The Informant’ In Biden Family Investigation Daily Wire (BC)

Ex-CIA chief admitted that the ‘Dirty 51’ letter ‘WAS political’ as agency conspired with Biden campaign to produce it and falsely claim emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation Daily Mail. BC: “How is this not a Hatch Act violation?”

GOP Clown Car

The Corruption of Lindsey Graham Bulwark+ (resilc)

Noelle Dunphy’s Harassment Lawsuit Against Rudy Giuliani Full of Graphic Allegations Daily Beast (Dr. Kevin)

Free speech or federal crime? Protesters are still marching outside conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes NBC (furzy)

Community Financial Services of America v. CFPB Amicus Brief Adam Levitin, Credit Slips. Pending Supremes case.

Debt Ceiling

Kevin McCarthy’s Idea of Austerity: $115 Billion for Tax Cheats and Oil Companies New Republic (furzy)

Abortion

GOP faces critical test on abortion in North Carolina The Hill

Immigration

Note despite factoids like the one below, the surge so far looks like a damp squib, although all those news drones did show a lot of people that looked like they were waiting to enter.

Seven School Gyms Are Housing Migrants or Could Soon. Parents and Pols Are Pushing Back The City

Florida couple’s wedding in turmoil as New York hotel suddenly cancels bookings to house migrants Daily Mail (resilc)

Gunz

The Second Amendment Allows a Ban on the AR-15 Bloomberg (furzy)

AI

AI Can Detect Early Signs of Alzheimer’s in Speech Patterns – Before Symptoms Begin To Show SciTech Daily. Chuck L: “Quick! Send a prototype to the White House.”

ChatGPT is spawning religious chatbots in India Rest of World (resilc)

Farmers Set to Abandon US Wheat Crops at Highest Rate Since 1917 Bloomberg (resilc)

Apple investigated for ‘planned obsolescence’ RT (Kevin W)

Say goodbye to AM radio: Why carmakers are removing it from new models The Hill (Kevin W)

The Bezzle

Narrative over numbers: Andreessen Horowitz’s State of Crypto report Molly White (Skip Intro)

Class Warfare

Americans finally draw a line at tipping as it hits the self-checkout Independent (Kevin W)

Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too. New York Times

Inflation drives US household debt to record $17 trillion WSWS. As this site ad many others have pointed out, household debt is economically unproductive and high levels have a nasty way of producing financial crises.

Antidote du jour (Tracie H):

A bonus (guurst):

And a second bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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198 comments

  1. ChrisFromGA

    Re: airlines sustainable fuel scam

    The link takes me to the wrong site.

    I eagerly await reading the real thing. I’ve always suspected that this was another scam.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        Thanks!

        What a royal scam. Besides the palm oil substitute for used cooking oil, how much energy does it take to ship used cooking oil from SE Asia to the UK? Anyone else see a huge accounting problem here?

        1. Questa Nota

          There’s fully allocated cost
          and there’s fully allocated cost

          Fuel variant of the old What is 2+2?
          Answer: What would you like it to be?

          In this era of accounting shenanigans lies, where is truth to be found in reports, balance sheets, peer review articles or anywhere?

          My ongoing beef with Neoliberal BS, as merely one category example, is that someone can rationalize anything to justify some deviant or criminal behavior.

          Someone else can rationalize publicizing that, and suppressing non-conforming facts.

          But, but, it is efficient, they sputter. Or similar spewing points.

  2. timbers

    Moon confirms our skepticism by showing the charts that supposedly prove the famed gamma spike show it occurred the day BEFORE the blast. Ooopsie!

    Maybe, maybe not. Is it possible the spike could have been caused by the arrival of the depleted uranium ammo, hence the spike happening before Russia blew it up?

    2. Skip Intro

      I am mildly skeptical of the ‘debunking’. Gamma rays, the legacy name for high energy photons, can travel very far. They they are often observed from astronomical objects. Alpha and Beta radiation (Helium nuclei and electrons), have trouble penetrating stuff. In addition, the chart picture was pretty crude. It was hard to tell when the readings were made, and it seemed to just connect points with straight lines, so I wouldn’t be so confident that the first high reading was before the wee hours of the 13th.
      DU is not strongly radioactive, so detecting gamma radiation suggests a lot of it has been dispersed, or some other radionuclides were hit. DU forms the highly toxic, mutagenic/teratogenic compound uranyl nitrate when ‘burned’ in the air. The water-soluble compound will be available for nearby organisms.

      1. chuck roast

        Am I wrong in thinking that a sudden and widespread increase in alpha particles would be a better indicator of DU dispersion?

        1. Skip Intro

          Probably would be, but I think they are much harder to detect, and they have the worst penetration ability of all.

      2. nippersdad

        “DU is not strongly radioactive, so detecting gamma radiation suggests a lot of it has been dispersed,
        or some other radionuclides were hit.”

        Could that be indicative of a small tactical nuclear device having been present?

        1. Skip Intro

          I think even a large nuke has on the order of kilograms enriched uranium/plutonium/whatever, whereas the hoard DU munitions probably contains tons of DU, so detecting a destroyed bomb might be very hard. Maybe there was some dirty bomb material prepped for a false flag stored there. That could be more copious.

      3. JTMcPhee

        I’m wondering whether a Liberal West that apparently is developing bio weapons that target particular sets of genes might also have placed nuclear weapons, actual bombs, not just DU munitions, in the Khml storage. Might explain radiation results. Thanks, Skip, for the mild debunking of the FUD “debunking” being shilled by so many pro-UKE sources. Like so much else at that scale of malevolence, we mopes are unlikely to ever be able to handle the truth that we will never get to know. “Fog of war” lays a thick layer of black paint over so much…

        Our rulers have no limits and no shame —anyone care to challenge this statement?

  3. gnatt

    Shakespeare. the original complaints were about his supposed lack of education and his low status, an elitist argument, so it had to be a noble, Edward De Vere, or even Queen Elizabeth I. Then there was the possibility that it was another artist or scientist, Marlowe or Bacon. Now the possibilities are greater. it could be anyone who lived at that time. but not Will Shakespeare.
    What’s especially interesting is that anyone with half and ear and a sense of rhythm can tell the difference between the writing of Marlowe, ( a powerful writer who, unfortunately for his being a candidate, died just a few years after Shakespeare started, not to mention that he never even got near to writing a comedy ) or Bacon (also an interesting stylist) and Shakespeare, not to mention De Vere or the Queen.
    Shakespeare reaches you in brain and body. These guessers are just tripping.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Reminds me of the story of the professor that spent thirty years of his life doing scholarly research to prove that Homer was not the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey but by another Greek of the same name.

      1. John Anthony La Pietra

        And many thanks to John Joseph Bonforte (the Second) from Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star. (Partly by way of Oscar Wilde?)

    2. DJG, Reality Czar

      gnatt: Thanks. The complainers are often, curiously!, lawyers. I once read an article in which all of the Shakespeare Truthers seemed to be lawyers who wanted to argue the Boy of Stratford out of existence.

      One flaw in the article about Winkler. I believe that Shakespeare’s father was a glover, which if one takes a look at gloves of the time, was a highly skilled métier.

      So the class aspect of it is what drives many of the Truthers. Agreed.

      And, amazingly, he didn’t get an M.F.A., either. How could he have claimed to be a playwright?

      1. Alex Cox

        Shakespeare ‘truthers’? C’mon, now. There is no evidence that the Stratford-on-Avon bag manufacturer was the same person as the London actor. There is, however, a huge tourism industry which depends on that assertion – many hotels, bnbs, and two theatres are based there.
        And there is no contemporary evidence that the London actor wrote any of the plays. As a director, I have never met an actor who was also a gifted writer. Not one. Acting and writing are entirely different skills.
        My favourite candidate (apart from Thomas Middleton, who mainstream scholars believe wrote Measure for Measure) is Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. There’s a book about her in this context: Sweet Swan of Avon, by R. Williams.

          1. CanCyn

            Agreed! I’m sure there are many other examples but as we are currently watching the 2004 HBO series Deadwood (what a gem!) I will throw out the example of Ray McKinnon. A good actor and an award winning writer. He was one of the writers on my all time favourite series Rectify.
            https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0571964/

      2. Jeff W

        “I believe that Shakespeare’s father was a glover…”

        I thought so, too. It seems that the register of Stratford’s court of record on several occasions in the latter half of the 16th century is consistent with that.

      1. LifelongLib

        Apparently there were a number of reasons Marlowe might have been assassinated. IIRC he himself was accused of atheism. While a student at Cambridge he was recruited into Sir Francis Walsingham’s intelligence network, which may be when he met the men who eventually killed him. Marlowe also had an association with Sir Walter Raleigh and someone known as “The Wizard Earl”. He may have had no choice about some of this, but he’d have been better off if he just stuck with writing plays…

  4. gnatt

    Oh. A small follow-up. it’s known that Einstein was a mediocre student. It’s lucky we have a lot of evidence that he actually…or did he? How do we really know? What would Donald Trump say?

    1. Paul O

      That book had a big influence on my 18 year old self. I still have a copy more than 40 year on. Despite some claims the the contrary, I don’t feel it has been convincing debunked. Would recommend a read. You can find what I believe to be legitimate high quality PDF copies quite easily.

    2. Jabura Basaidai

      read the Jaynes book a few times after reading a reco for it by Bill Burroughs – found it interesting to draw parallels while reading “Dawn of Everything” – way back when in college in mid 60’s and getting my mind altered, read “Understanding Media” – sent me down a rabbit hole about our abuse by TV – Gerry Mander, Jane Healy, Marie Winn, Neal Postman all wrote about the abuse – McLuhan was prescient, still so – to paraphrase his saying, the medium is the massage – sometimes seems overwhelming – have not owned a TV since 17 when moved out of home to college – rarely stream anything – reading is what appeals – have a few copies of Jaynes’s book that i send around to folks – ain’t life a hoot?

    3. Susan the other

      Thanks for that link. I gotta say that MM almost made me cringe the way he wanted to not just overanalyze everything but insist on his view as is it were his identity! Ha. Interesting his take on Julian Jaynes’ view of the evolution of consciousness. I always thought JJ was very creative and I didn’t get much xenophobia from his delightful ideas. Now that I am old I’m convinced human consciousness is a very conservative but adaptable tool. You’d think that if our consciousness were evolving with every leap in technology that we’d see that adaptatability in other animals as well. But that isn’t happening – instead we are seeing ourselves discovering, finally, that plants can “think” and animals have feelings. I’d just say that the driver of “consciousness” is curiosity. So to bring that back to MM’s dread of electronic media, I think he fails to see how it facilitates consciousness. And I certainly do not think the TV generations are illiterate – their literacy is alive and well.

  6. Wukchumni

    Forced from Grand Canyon National Park, the Havasupai Tribe embraces spiritual homecoming Associated Press
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Good for them!

    Hiking in the Grand Canyon is backwards in that you go down to come up, unlike the mountains.

    20 years ago a friend was turning 50 and wanted to walk from rim to rim in a day on his birthday and recruited me and another friend to accompany him, and we took a shuttle from the south rim to the north rim where we started @ 4:30 in the morning the next day.

    You are truly walking through time, as different layers of earth are exposed and the color changes, its quite striking.

    We got to Havasupai Gardens (formerly Indian Gardens) after 19 miles and had a nice rest, for we needed it, because there was 4.5 miles and over 2,000 feet of elevation gain still to be done.

    We got up to the south rim @ 6 pm and friends were waiting for us and we all went to the El Tovar for a meal, and sat down and said friends related to our waiter that the trio of us had just walked across the ditch in day, and we ordered, and he told us a funny thing in that maybe 10% of the people that walk it in a day and come to have dinner, order and then fall asleep at the table before the food arrives, ha ha.

    1. Carolinian

      Today about 500 of the nearly 770 tribal members live in Supai Village on the reservation adjacent to the Grand Canyon, so remote it can be reached only by foot, mule or helicopter.

      It’s known for the towering waterfalls that give the Havasupai, or Havasu ’Baaja, their name — “people of the blue-green waters.” Thousands of tourists from around the world visit annually, providing the tribe’s largest source of income.

      So they were not actually expelled from the Grand Canyon, just the national park. Meanwhile establishment of the national park saved the canyon from all manner of non native exploitation. I don’t think we need to feel very guilty about that.

      1. Wukchumni

        I’m over stuff that happened 6 generations ago, and have been meaning to get to Havasupai for eons now, and never got around to it. From what i’ve seen in pictures and friends accounts, they got a very premier part of the Grand Canyon, and Havasupai Gardens is nice, but just a little sliver that has a water source and trees for shade. it is nowhere near Havasupai where they have lived since way back when.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Will Rogers once said ‘Every time the Indians move the Government will give them a treaty. They say, ‘You can have this ground as long as the grass grows and water flows.’ … Now they have moved the Indians and they settled the whole thing by putting them on land where the grass won’t grow and the water won’t flow…’

          And he would know. He was born a citizen of the Cherokee nation.

      2. ex-PFC Chuck

        Back in the 1950s Floyd Dominy of the USBR wanted to build a dam in the canyon. That was his leap over the shark.

        1. Carolinian

          Two of them I think but downstream toward Lake Mead. The Sierra Club famously ran a full page ad in the NY Times showing the Sistine Chapel filled with water and the canyon was spared.

  7. The Rev Kev

    “Ukraine war: Kyiv hit by ‘exceptionally dense’ missile and drone attack”

    This article mentioned it but it has been confirmed by Moscow that they took out a Patriot missile system in Kiev using a Kinzhal missile. This is not surprising as the Patriot system is not one that you shot and scoot but a more stationary one with a big footprint. Once the Russians identified where it was, they turned it to ash. No word on casualties or if there were NATO troops in that battery and it may be years before we find out – if ever. This will certainly have an impact on overseas sales, even though these Patriot systems sent to the Ukraine were earlier models which i think were sourced from National Guard units-

    https://www.rt.com/russia/576372-kinzhal-strike-patriot-kiev/

    1. timbers

      BBC is a trusted source RT is propaganda, and BBC suggested Russia is demoralized that Ukraine intercepted all its hypersonic missiles and Kiev officials reported they intercepted all 52 of Russia’s 17 missiles and there are unconfirmed reports some plucky street wise Ukrainian children downed a Kinzhal using their bee bee and squirt guns. BTW who’s on the Patriot missile waiting list – hope they don’t learn Patriots are being blown up in Ukraine.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Well Washington does want Türkiye to get rid of all their Russian S-400s missile systems, which they have already paid for, and replace them with US Patriot missile batteries which they will have to pay full price. Don’t fancy their chances now, especially when the US is running around the Middle East trying to buy as many spare Patriot missiles as they can find. Not much point having a missile battery if you can’t get the missiles for them.

      2. R.S.

        Kiev officials reported they intercepted all 52 of Russia’s 17 missiles and there are unconfirmed reports some plucky street wise Ukrainian children downed a Kinzhal using their bee bee and squirt guns

        Don’t give ’em ideas please! Anti-stress measures with the animals, huh?
        ===
        Ukrainian air defense forces said Tuesday in a statement: “This night Russia attacked Ukraine from south, north, and east. From six aircraft MiG-31K, six hypersonic missiles X-47M2 ‘Kinzhal’ were launched, 9 cruise missiles ‘Kalіbr’ — from ships off the Black Sea and three ground-based missiles (S-400, ‘Iskander-M’). All of them were shot down.”
        {…}
        Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported explosions and minor fires in several Kyiv districts. Three people were wounded and several cars were burned. In the Shevchenkivsky district of Kyiv, missile debris fell into Kyiv Zoo.

        “Fortunately, none of the animals or workers were injured. There was no fire. The missile fragment damaged the greenery, but all the broken branches have already been removed,” Klitschko said. “Anti-stress measures are now being conducted with the animals.”
        ===
        https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-air-defense-repel-barrage-russia-missile-kyiv/

      3. tevhatch

        …who’s on the Patriot missile waiting list – hope they don’t learn Patriots are being blown up in Ukraine.

        That’s a feature, not a bug. The US trained / Harvard educated PMC in the neo-colonies got paid for placing the original orders, and they’ll get paid for buying the software patch, and the eventual replacement.

        1. Acacia

          …who’s on the Patriot missile waiting list …

          Japan, for one.

          And in addition to the “feature” you mention, Patriots will be helpful in terrorizing the population, to further the current govt’s “run, duck, and cover” campaign to manipulate the general public, directing them to fear and loathe the DPRK and China.

      4. hk

        Of course they intercepted all 52 of 17. It’s just they are intercepting them with their missile launchers, rather than missiles, and it takes a whole battery of launchers for each missile.

      5. John Anthony La Pietra

        “All 52 of 17” — that way, if they miss the next 35 they’ll still have a perfect batting average!

    2. ChrisFromGA

      There is a video on telegram of the Patriot system supposedly getting taken out.

      It has been made illegal for Ukrainians to share such videos. It seems the government is spending all their energy tracking down internal “enemies of the state” who post such things.

      Any foreigners are presumably warned not to share this stuff either, including CNN.

      Coming soon to a “democracy” near you.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          No it was the one Louis linked to below.

          It shows a Patriot system launching a bunch of missiles, seemingly a la mode du “Arab wedding party.”

          Then at the very end, there is an explosion near the point where the missiles were launched.

        1. Wukchumni

          We’re utterly Krupp’d, what happens when the $ goes to shit and our arms exports become even more important?

          1. John k

            Imo our arms sales go to shit before the dollar does, this war, not likely to boost sales.

        2. The Rev Kev

          What’s the bet that the Zelensky regime will get so panicked by their own personal safety, that they will demand that most of the aerial defense systems be pulled back from the front lines and deployed to protect Kiev?

          1. NotTimothyGeithner

            Zelensky has been gone for two weeks. My view is this always ends in a coup by the guys who can’t bug out. The destruction of Western wunder weapons and the offensive? might be the match.

            1. hk

              I doubt there will be a Ukraine for Zelensky to return to by the time he’s done with the trip (which may take, eh, quite a bit longer than expected.)

          3. Roland

            Ever since the war began, there have been people saying that Zelensky is green-screened, or here, or there, or about to run away, or whatever. It’s all rubbish.

            Ukraine is a client state, but there are clients, and there are clients. The Ukrainians and the Kurds are US clients, and dependent on that aid, but they fight willingly enough. This war wouldn’t have gone on for a more than a year if the Ukrainians didn’t want to fight.

            Zelensky might not be Charles de Gaulle, but he’s not Ashraf Ghani, either.

            Zelensky has been doing the job of a president of a dependent state at war. He runs from door to door begging, and putting on green shirts to enchant the Karens of his Western sponsors. He does this job well, even though it must be hard for him to stomach. His background in the entertainment industry proves useful. People who succeed in showbiz usually have thick skins and a lot of persistence.

            1. rusell1200

              Excellent points. And in fairness, it’s not like Ukraine has much of a choice but to be at least somewhat a client state of someone.

        3. Ignacio

          The hypothetical day Ukraine switches to a non-hating-Russia government the US will say all those expenses are actually debt owed by the remaining Ukrainians.

        4. ChrisPacific

          Now ask yourself, could your county/state have used $180 million for something?

          Some states will get it, or at least part of it. Those Patriots will need to be replaced. You’ve already quoted the price tag. Jobs for Americans, baby!

          It’s like Keynesianism, except that instead of digging and filling holes you ship missiles to Kyiv and watch them go up in smoke.

      3. Polar Socialist

        The one where the battery launches over a dozen missiles (in a quick succession) and then goes boom? I also saw an image of an apparently failed patriot missile laying in a park in Kiev.

        Banning such videos and images is likely part of the deal with the manufacturer. Patriot sure could use some good publicity for once.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          I can kind of understand the Ukrainian government imposing draconian “loose lips” rules on social media, but to see the UK and US do the same is just disturbing.

          Remember, there is no declaration of war against Russia, not even a AUMF as in Iraq or Afghanistan. Any western citizen should have absolute freedom to post anything war related without censorship or fear of reprisal.

          That they don’t shows how badly the press has been destroyed by the West. We have to go to Twitter to find out the truth and hope that the people who bravely post this stuff don’t disappear in the middle of the night.

      4. Kouros

        The coming elections in Ukraine have been postponed due to martial law being in effect and the state of war. Ukrainians will have this war whether they like it or not…

    3. Irrational

      The hilarious thing is that the Patriot battery apparently shot off a bunch off missiles (30 as spc says further down). At 5-6 million a pop that was a very expensive 150 million+ display of US military prowess.

      1. Jeotsu

        Also, by the annual production numbers Brian Berletic has quoted for Patriot interceptors, that was about 13% of annual production in one salvo, in one evening, from one battery.

    1. hk

      There is something surreal about this, given how Thaksin originally rose to power some 20 years ago.

      Back then, Thaksin was described as a corrupt “populist,” stylistically similar to Trump (and Fujimori in Peru, in a sense), who appealed to popular distrust of the stuffy and self-important Bangkok elites and, more subtly, the king (now the late king) who was given to dictatorial tendencies. I remember distinctly how the army overthrew Thaksin “in the name of democracy” as the Bangkok elites cheered them on and how Western democracy mongers derided pro Thaksin protesters as “anti democratic.”

      I hadn’t been paying attention to how the West views Thai politics for some time so the current narrative sounds kinda weird. If Thaksin is now part of the “pro-democracy” coalition, that would be a quite strange (but not unheard of or perhaps even that unusual) turn. But it does say something about how fickle Western notion of “democracy” is when applied to non-western societies (or even their own, beyond the elite circles).

  9. The Rev Kev

    ‘BREAKING: A large group identified as the “Patriot Front” have been matching around the US Capitol building and National Mall this afternoon.’

    We have a name for people like this in Oz. We call them d***heads. Pay attention to the guy wearing the striped red and white mask in that march as he is very notable. He is the only guy there that is not either a Fed or an informant. Everybody that is got the memo to wear a white mask and that is why that parade is not flanked by cops in riot gear & dogs but by cops on bicycles like it was a Sunday ride.

    1. Wukchumni

      Excuse me, are you the People’s Patriot Front doing your Gap year all dressed alike?

      1. The Rev Kev

        Wait a moment. I thought that they were the Popular People’s Front – the splitters!

    2. griffen

      It all seems a bit well staged. But I’m overly cynical anyway. The red state link has more detail, as they waltzed downstairs into the Metro to go onto their next march, or assignment maybe.

      I guess I need more convincing. Like King Leonidas and his 300 marching in circles.

      1. Louis Fyne

        Because red-state, exurban-rural American radicals always remember to take public transport!

        taking the Metro lmao! I’m always skeptical about these things, but taking the Metro = Feds for my opinion.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Probably find that when they flash their Fed IDs at the Metro station, that they get to travel for free – the cheap b*******. Taking the Metro means that they could take one of the six lines to go back home to their suburbs at the end of the day. Real red-state Americans would turn up to Washington in their personal trucks in a convoy and would be honking their horns.

          1. Wukchumni

            Hickory, dickory, Dockers
            Turned us into online gawkers
            Jihad me going red state milieu
            Not what the far right would do

      2. marym

        If there are cops in right-wing groups there’s the question of whether they’re on the clock as infiltrators or provocateurs, or on their own time as believers.

        At the intersection of cops and right-wing groups consideration of shared interests may be – and historically has been – at least as relevant as the question of who is infiltrating whom..

        https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/prevalence-white-supremacists-law-enforcement-demands-drastic-change-2022-05-12/
        https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/watchmen

        1. LifelongLib

          FWIW, when Hitler joined what became the Nazis, he was a German Army intelligence agent assigned to infiltrate the party. A while later he left the army but stayed with the party.

  10. FreeMarketApologist

    Re: “New Water Treatment Zaps “Forever Chemicals”“:

    So, individuals and municipalities with money will have nice clean water, and everybody else will just have to tough it out and drink the polluted stuff.

    One more expense to inflict on people, one more way to ensure that only the wealthy have good health.

    Heaven forfend that we not use the chemicals in the first place. We are such stupid creatures that we deserve to go extinct.

    1. Jabura Basaidai

      hang on a second – i sold high-end filtration devices – ultra filtration and 2-step RO – 6-7 figure systems – they remove PFAS/PFOA compounds but your left with stuff trapped in a medium or in a concentrated liquid form – i contacted industrial incinerator, no good – there was a lab around Cleveland that used plasma to zap it into basic components but way too expensive to scale – and i chased numerous “solutions” since i had landfill operators that wanted solutions for their leachate – activated carbon and ion exchange work but you are still left with it in another form – even thought of encasing in concrete but it degrades and leaches eventually – there is a reason these chemicals are called forever and wonder what this system costs to scale – oh, and btw, it doesn’t get rid of it –

      1. jefemt

        Reading the fine print in the PR blurb… up to 99%. Quite an array of possible integers between zero and 99.

        I was a bit skeptical, interesting to hear from someone in the R O know.

        Antoine de St Exupery made mention of great design not being what can be added, but what can be removed to still retain the essential functions. PFOA’s are a clear case of putting the shovel down and stop digging/ adding. I recall wondering this when seeing a 100% cotton garb featuring a durable water repellant? Cotton w/ DWR? Why? WTF. To add cost?

      2. ChrisPacific

        I read the article. They are filtering/capturing them and then destroying them using ‘special electrochemical and photochemical techniques’ that they developed. That phrase is doing a lot of work and I didn’t see any independent verification (the linked journal article is anodyne and looks at variation in decomposition speeds, and makes no such bold claims). So it could be vaporware, like the regular articles we see about fusion.

        If it holds up it’s a good development nonetheless. Yes, the US will use it to perpetuate inequality and probably turn it into a grift, just like everything else they touch, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be beneficial in other parts of the world.

  11. griffen

    Saying goodbye to the AM radio in newer vehicles. Who are these manufacturers, bloody minded Communists! I find it hard to grasp, that the engineering is not available to make the AM frequency cooperative in newer technologies. Or maybe it’s something that is too difficult to monetize?

    When driving and in a last ditch effort, I can try the AM frequency to search for local sports radio since I chose correctly to ditch my Sirius XM subscription in 2022. But at the same time, it’s not like Charlotte, or Atlanta, is the same geographically as say, rural Kansas or flat east Texas.

    1. Pat

      Grew up in the Southwest, not the flat parts like you mention though. AM radio was a godsend. There is more FM now, but the towers and ability to bounce, meant that there was AM radio even in more remote areas. It might only be one channel and not be your choice of programming, but if you hung around long enough you usually got a local news report and the weather. Would bet that could still be the case in some places unless you plunk down for satellite radio.

      1. Lost in OR

        In the 60’s I lived in Owens Valley CA and had an old beat-up phonograph with a AM radio in it. Nights, I would listen to Wolfman Jack on Albuquerque radio. I can hear him now.

        2. Pat

          And in smaller NM towns, I was listening to rock and roll on KOMA out of Oklahoma. Funny.

          1. Idaho_Randy

            And in rural southern Idaho, listening to KOMA was the primary rite of passage.

      2. jackiebass63

        Where I live most of the AM stations broadcast religious programming.When I was young there was only AM and in my location only receivable at night. I now listen to sat radio but I am going to ditch it because it is in my opinion too expensive.I only listen to radio in the car so it doesn’t matter. I’ll. listen to my CD’s on a memory stick. It has most of the kind of music I listen to.

      3. Questa Nota

        Driving along through the desert or plains or mountains, listening to AM stations fade in and out, was a happy memory from childhood. There was something intriguing to a young child about those far-off stations beaming news, music, weather and such into the car. Sights and sites were enhanced by anticipation and imagination stimulated by AM radio.

    2. tevhatch

      I’m still awe struck at the numbness that the weather radio broadcasts bandwidths are still not available/standard. When I traveled in North America I carried a Japanese handset which would alert, but it’s range would be impacted by the partial faraday cage of the car until I got a magnetic antenna to stick on the roof of the rentals.

    3. Wukchumni

      I grew up listening to the Real Don Steele on KHJ, 930 in terms of amplitude modulation, Boss Radio.

      1. Jonathan King

        Boss Radio (the creation of “genius innovator” Bill Drake) was IMO the death knell for creative AM music programming. I fail to understand the nostalgia some feel for it, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” notwithstanding. That said, in L.A.The Real Don Steele was an exception to the cookie-cutter jocks KHJ’s restrictive format demanded. Today may not be a Frabjous Friday, but Tina Delgado is still alive!
        https://www.mixcloud.com/cruisinshow/the-real-don-steele-93-khj-10th-aug-1966/

      2. Nikkikat

        Great memories listening to my transistor radio with its single ear plug as I walked to school and hoped for a beatle song.

    4. Carolinian

      Electric motors do cause buzzing on AM and as we all know electric motors are the car future (??).

      I’m still mourning the substantial demise of shortwave in North America. World Service was a welcome companion on camping trips.

    5. TimH

      Who are these manufacturers, bloody minded Communists! I find it hard to grasp, that the engineering is not available to make the AM frequency cooperative in newer technologies.

      The PWM motor controllers in electric cars are generating EMI in the AM bands, which comes through just like ignition noise did in the 50s through 70s.

      There are of course ways to shield… but costs. Looks like the EV manufacturers have collaborated to drop it, so AM doesn’t become a competitive feature.

      1. Duke of Prunes

        My Toyota Prius Prime (Plug-in hybrid) has no problem with AM. It’s obviously a veiled cost cutting measure. Tesla started it, now it’s cool and most are following suit because it’s cheaper.

        Also, my other car, a mild hybrid, has no AM radio, and I bought it anyway so maybe the product managers were correct. Although, I’m in the dog house since my wife can’t listen to the Cubs.

  12. John Beech

    Regarding the pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine, article, since I read from left to right, the social media icons blocking the first few letters of text are infuriating. Thus, I barely skimmed through. Too bad nobody responsible for the site actually uses it the way ordinary folks do.

    1. griffen

      I too found that feature incredibly distracting. What I found encouraging, at the very minimum, was the potential for treatment of an insidious disease like pancreatic cancer. And they included the cautionary note, this vaccine is not a cure-all or be-all but a reasonable treatment option. I’m not a medical person by any stretch but it painted a scenario, I think I understood, of how the vaccine works is basically patient – dependent and therefore difficult to broadly scale.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        The promise of MRNA vaccines is that scale isn’t an issue. The production facilities are limited, and tweaking it is easy. With items like pancreatic cancer, the lab techs have plenty of time for the computers to find the correct formula for each patient. The shelf lives and distribution potential mean patients don’t even need to travel or be away for extended times.

        1. SteveB

          I don’t understand why they refer to these MRNA treatments as vaccines..
          They are therapeutics, a treatment for a disease. By their own admission they do not prevent the disease, they TREAT the disease. Therefore they are a therapeutic.

          As wonderful these discoveries are, why confuse people with incorrect terminology.

          1. flora

            we trusted the old-style vaccines.
            so they cleverly changed the def of “vaccine”.

            Now they can call these jabs “vaccines” according to their new definition. And if its a “vaccine” instead of a gene based therapy, that gets around all sorts of mandatory safety testing required for gene based therapeutics. Clever monkeys. / ;)

            1. Mildred Montana

              Is there anything nowadays which isn’t preventable(?) with a vaccine? Just off the top of my head, HPV, shingles, hepatitis A, B, and C, etc. etc. etc. If I watched more MSM advertising I’m sure I could name many others.

              Covid vaccine hysteria has opened a treasure chest for pharmaceutical companies and they are taking full advantage. They have discovered the Comstock Lode—vaccine version. And what a Lode it is! No need for mucking around for silver. It is government-subsidized, and therefore insanely profitable.

              What a racket. If I don’t get shingles, they tell me their vaccine worked! This despite the fact I was probably never going to get shingles anyway. If I happen to get it then that is only a “breakthrough” event, uncommon and unpredictable and therefore not attributable to vaccine failure. An anomaly. In other words, the vaccine works, except when it doesn’t.

              Never put anything past the duplicity of Big Pharma. I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the future vaccines for Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, cancer (see the link about pancreatic cancer), etc. etc. etc. And they will all be a scam because the outcomes of vaccines cannot—can never be—accurately measured.

              1. kareninca

                Vaccines have certainly prevented me from feeling ennui and likely will for the duration of my life.

            2. Vandemonian

              I’m so old that I remember when ‘vaccination’ only meant the preventative for smallpox (vaccinia). All the other jabs were ‘immunisations’.

          2. Grebo

            They call them vaccines because they prime your immune system to fight the cancer, like a vaccine, rather than act directly on it like a drug. They can’t prevent the cancer because you have to catch it first so they can tailor to match.

            What I wondered is why inject mRNA to make antigens in your cells rather than make the antigens in a test tube then inject them.

            1. flora

              About injecting mRNA to turn your own cells into antigen factories. My question, too. Apparently no way to control how many cells or where in the body or for how long said cells make the antigens – based on the results of the current mRNA things. So, how do you calibrate a dosage for a specific dose effect? Never made sense to me. But what do I know?

  14. John Beech

    Regarding the timing of the COVID vaccines; having originally read about time of day being a factor a few weeks ago, when scheduling our 4th (or maybe 5th) jab for yesterday (Walgreens), I slotted us for 11AM. Anyway, and for reasons unknown since we were the only ones there for vaccination, it took them until quarter of 12 to do the deed.

    Whether time of day is a factor, or not, that’s as close as I could time it. Who knows, maybe it matters!

    Sadly, I am anticipating an international flight of several hours in two weeks and hope like Hell a mask protects us as it’s mathematically certain amongst 300 fellow travelers quite a few will be COVID-contagious and spewing virus. Pray for us if you believe.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Get:

      1. A Darth Vader mask (half face P100s give a better face fits than N95s, they pinch the face a bit but are more comfortable to breathe through). I like this one but there are others:

      https://www.amazon.com/GVS-SPR644-Elastomeric-Professionals-Replaceable/dp/B095YBV2T9/

      2. An device that puts a negative charge on particles, including viruses, so they attach to wall or fabric rather than the inside of your nose:

      https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077Q8HD6X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

      Really does last an incredibly long time on one charge.

      3. I recall you do nasal rinses. For a plane ride, I suggest the fallback of a nose spray + gargle. I like 1% home brew povidone iodine (home brew because you need to dilute it down from 10%) but there are other products that also disrupt the virus.

      1. Jabura Basaidai

        good call Yves – agreed previously about the Elastomeric and used it on a flight from Detroit to San Jose and back early in 2022 – very comfortable – add the AirTamer and all the bases covered – i didn’t wear swim goggles to protect my eyes but never got sick – my friend said i looked like a hornet with the mask on –

      2. semper loquitur

        I’ve been rotating between a cetylpyridium mouthwash rinse, Betadine nose spray, and gargling/spraying with electrolyzed water. (A few small studies have been done on the safety of using e-water as a mouthwash and they are good so far. It’s used in dentistry, to fill swimming pools, and as a general anti-germ wipe. But there is an element of the unknown for sure.) I figure it’s safer than just subjecting my body to one set of chemicals for such a long time.

  15. Mikel

    “Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows good early results”

    “…I need to make a final point. Cancer “vaccine” is a bit of a misnomer. These vaccines do induce an immune response, but they are not preventative like vaccines for pathogens – they are used as treatments…”

    Yeah, we know it’s not going to stop the hype machine from throwing around “vaccine” even when they know it’s wrong.
    They can get away with any BS now.

      1. semper loquitur

        I found an eight inch thick Webster’s dictionary sitting out on a stoop in the West Village years ago. It doesn’t define the Internet or anything relatively recent. It’s a gem.

    1. .Tom

      The photos with that AP story are stunning. The 3rd one is just amazing.

      Do NOT miss.

    2. Wukchumni

      I’ve seen black bears shimmy up a 100 foot pine tree in 10 seconds, its quite something to see, here-have a gander.

      https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0bM-s_2LiH0

      Its their defense mechanism to go up in a tree and your best chance to watch them from below, as they aren’t leaving until they feel comfortable-as in you are gone.

    1. Pat

      Her 81 year old hands looks like mine did as a teenager. (I swear I was born with washer woman hands.)

      Not that we can trust the photos. There has been work done. Both before the phot shoot and after.

      1. Kouros

        The article reminded me of Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War

      2. Screwball

        Thanks for the link Rev. My mother was from Appalachia and very much like the lady in that article. My PMC friends bang on them as stupid red neck hicks who voted for Trump. They should be so lucky to have a woman like that (or my mom) as a parent. Maybe they wouldn’t have turned out to be such self righteous assholes.

      3. semper loquitur

        She’s a monster. Believe me. You wouldn’t want to be in a room with her for more than five minutes.

        1. Mildred Montana

          I believe you.

          I read a biography of Martha Stewart many years ago. According to the author, she tried to screw her gardener of her 20-acre estate out of his overtime pay by classifying him as an “agricultural worker” (and therefore not entitled to overtime pay). She actually fought him in court. I have no idea of the outcome nor do I care. Because the principle is always the same: The rich will screw (or try to) the poor.

    3. flora

      Why Sports Illustrated? Why not Vanity Fair? No matter how good she looks she’s not going to get the eyes of young men who look forward to the swimsuit edition.

      (Does anyone else get the impression some of the US’s biggest brands are going out of their way to annoy their main audience/customers?)

          1. flora

            Corporate US spent the past 30+ years shipping US manufacturing jobs overseas. Shipping good middle class and working class jobs away to other countries. Now corporate US plans to eliminate even more US jobs with AI and robots. Maybe they decided to have some fun by mocking the sensibilities of the middle class and working class whose jobs they outsourced.

  18. Jon Cloke

    Re the Patriot Front guys, just imagine if there were still any journalists in the US, who could investigate the PF and expose them..

    Wait, wasn’t Matt Taibibi a journalist once?

    Before he became Gym Jordan’s lap-dog?

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      The idea that one guy can be the Superman of investigative journalism is not a reasonable ask. That sort of story would be a ton of work and he has only so many things he can take on.

      1. Questa Nota

        To mention nothing of the purity tests that change that Everything Bagel journalist into a Nothing Bagel.
        Should one be called a Bialy? /s

    2. tevhatch

      Everybody in journalism starts somewhere. I’m looking forward to reading your well researched report.

    3. semper loquitur

      This is an content-free smear on Taibbi. He was under heavy fire from the DNC crooks who, recoiling like vermin from the light of journalism, were seeking to smear, humiliate, and incriminate him. Jordan was/is a tactical, and perhaps strategic, ally, “enemy of my enemy” as it goes. Where was that champion of truth AOC? Bernie too busy polishing Biden’s shoes?

      1. Jabura Basaidai

        thank you semper – JonCloke utilizing nonsense logic in that ad hominen – watched that Democratic ethically challenged representative from Florida cut off Matt and dog-piled by other Dems was just McCarthy-esque – yes or no Mr Taibbi no elaboration – the Dems continue their downward spiral – AOC just a toothless joke and so sad to see the denouement of Bernie after voting for him in both primaries –

        1. semper loquitur

          My pleasure. I know Taibbi getting grilled was porn for the Democrats and their drone army. It was yet another opportunity for the Right to seize the moral high ground. Matt Walsh is, I suspect, fostering a future political career with it.

          Now they are the defenders of truth and children. Funny how everything the Left™ does widens existing divides and fractures people in new ways. Funny how that feeds directly into the hands of the Right.

  19. Alice X

    A friend sent me this link to a piece at AntiWar dot com, by David Stockman – yes, Stockman once of the Ronald Reagan regime.

    He doesn’t deal so much wth RFK’s viewpoints in general, whatever they are, but specifically with Ukraine. Stockman’s Ukraine analysis will be understood hereabouts, but his sole attribution of its formation to Lenin and the would be Soviets misses a critical point. Nationalist would be Ukrainian elements in 1918 negotiated a separate treaty with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk allowing for a very brief protectorate independence. Germany lost and that horrendous treaty was abrogated by Russia. Still, Stockman’s map of the 2010 Ukrainian national election is useful.

    Why RFK’s Candidacy Matters to the Conservative Cause

  21. Jason Boxman

    If you can’t afford treatment, you die. Period. But this missive on the latest breast cancer screening recommendations doesn’t mention that:

    I’m a Breast Cancer Surgeon. Here’s What I Think of the New Screening Guidelines.

    By Mehra Golshan is the executive vice chair of surgery, professor of surgery and the clinical director of the breast program at Yale School of Medicine.

    So when she had her cancer (colorectal), she got the best treatment and the best recommendations in the world.

    Given all of this, I think the U.S.P.S.T.F. took a step in the right direction with its new advice, which was issued as a draft, but fell short in some ways. The task force acknowledged that dense breasts can increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer and that certain race or ethnicity groups are at higher risk for early-onset breast cancer. But it failed to issue more individualized recommendations for these groups, instead calling only for more research. Black women under 50, for example, die of breast cancer at twice the rate of white women under 50 in the United States. We have known this for decades, and it is unacceptable.

    What about all the women that cannot take time off work to get screened? What about all the women that can’t afford treatment? What about all the women that don’t have time or ability to play the neoliberal charity care game, tracking down charity care, charity chemo drugs, and so on? What about the women that are alternating between happyville and pain city depending on income eligibility for Medicaid or ObamaCare premium subsidies?

    Yeah, many of those people are f**king dead walking. I’m not surprised someone that gets an opinion piece in the NY Times doesn’t mention any of this. Golshan has access to the best treatment and advise in the world. Not to mention:

    The United States has the most advanced health care in the world, and yet so often I see cancer diagnosed too late or later than it should’ve been.

    Only if you can pay, or can get yourself on the right insurance that you qualify for so that you can get an annual screening. (“Low-cost or free mammograms Medicare, Medicaid and most insurance companies cover the cost of screening mammograms.” per Susan G. Komen is a 501(c)(3))

    Been awhile since anything I’ve read has made me this angry, shockingly. Normally it’s just a simmering rage.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Mammograms are not good tests. They are poor at detecting fast moving cancers that will kill you and good at detecting slow moving growth you will die with rather than of.

      Key sentence here (emphasis original):

      Mammograms did not affect mortality at all.

      https://newrepublic.com/article/116581/mammogram-study-says-screening-doesnt-improve-mortality

      Ultrasound is a better test in women under 60 and also has the advantage of not pumping radiation into soft tissue:

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5638217/

      One problem is the manual exam alternative presented is always a self exam. I’ve seen studies in Oz (which has breast clinics) that people who feel boobs all day are better at picking up those small dangerous cancers than mammograms. Thermography is also very good at identifying the dangerous growths but weirdly no insurance will pay for that.

      Risk of breast cancer is lower in women over 60 due to lower estrogen levels.

      https://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/overview-risks-breast-cancer

      1. Revenant

        Also check out Micrima. We invested as seed funders nearly twenty years ago but it is finally in the clinic. It uses radar imaging of the breast, which works in dense tissue (young women) and does not require breast compression and so reduces risk of metastasis. It also does not involve inonising radiation.

        https://www.micrima.com/

      2. roxan

        Medicare seems to only cover mammograms. Since I already had breast cancer, I tried to get both MRI or ultrasound, to check the other breast and rib cage. Nope! So, maybe lots of insurance plans don’t cover anything but mammograms. The 3D they use now seems to provide a clear picture–I knew what I was seeing immediately when the radiologist showed me. I knew I had dense breasts, but not that it was something to monitor. Dr friend thinks dense tissue is more metabolically active, not just hard to see tumors. I think manual exams don’t find tiny tumors–a waste of time! I finally told the drs to skip it–tired of being poked and prodded when scans are so much better. I think care in Europe is probably better.

    1. Pat

      Just a couple of notes on the two migrant stories, first all mention the end of title 42, but in almost every case this was in the works or happening before it ended because NYC has been getting 100s of migrants a day for months.
      The hotel in the Daily Mail story are apparently real jerks because the local news had a similar story with a different couple whose wedding was the end of this month. Both found the hotel had cancelled their contracts by calling them, no attempt to contact them had been made, nor did the facility try to help find alternatives.
      The use of the school gyms, comes after taking over a closed midtown hotel and a closed public school that I know about. The lack of notice to anyone is SOP for the Adams administration. He may have found a way of lessening the housing laws that govern facilities, but it is clear they have run out of appropriate spaces for families if they are putting them in the gyms.
      Local reports have Westchester being the next outer county to get migrants. Not sure how Rockland and Orange got them first. My only thought was it was easier to find hotels that really needed long term contracts at prices NYC (and state) could afford further away from the city. (And since multiple local and county officials have stated they were not approached first but found out after, it is clear the search is the hotels.)

      1. JBird4049

        None of this is a good reason, but it does give a good example of “Gimme more, more, more!” Well, that and playing identity politics with some identities worth more than others. Of course, when one puts person instead of their assigned identity, it shows just how messed up current “liberal” politics is nowadays. Rather like how politicians are now focusing on reparations for Black people instead of housing for poor people. Truly f***ed up.

  23. Pat

    So judges deserve to be protected from free speech, and one law is not enough?

    Anybody remember that the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a 35’ buffer law to protect women from anti choice advocates in Massachusetts because the anti choice have the right to counsel women going about their private business who never asked for and didn’t want it. It was declared unconstitutional. In fact Roberts was quoted as saying it was an “extreme step of closing a substantial portion of a traditional public forum [public streets and sidewalks] to all speakers”. That article makes clear the protesters never left the sidewalk. Judges are not going about private business. But people without highly paid jobs to offer spouses, and fancy retreats are the ones prohibited from trying to “influence” judges by gathering on sidewalks.

    I might not expect that protesters can influence judges, but I do think they should be forced to live in the world they are shaping. They can even have 35 feet as a buffer, unlike the women, but trying to stop protest entirely is just one more sign this country does not believe in free speech.

  24. Carolinian

    Re The Corruption of Lindsey Graham–so we eagerly turn to this piece thinking it must be an expose of Lindsey’s days as McCain’s wingman, trying to start wars around the world.

    The Bulwark is an American anti-Trump conservative news and opinion website launched in 2018 by Sarah Longwell, with the support of Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes.[1][2][3][4] It initially launched as a news aggregator, but it was revamped into a news and opinion site using key staffers from the recently closed Weekly Standard.[5]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulwark_(website)

    Never mind…..

  25. Katniss Everdeen

    RE: Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe CNN (Li)

    It’s pretty clear that this fbi/cia group can never ever let either Trump or RFK, Jr. anywhere near the white house.

    Trump knows now what he didn’t know then (and so does everybody else), and, in addition to knowing more than just about anyone else about the scourge that is big pharma and their dastardly deeds, RFK, Jr. has a significant fbi/cia chip on his Kennedy shoulder.

    The prospect of those two teaming up to move fast and break things is almost too delicious to contemplate, but what those backed-into-a-corner rats will subject the country to to prevent it is absolutely terrifying.

    DeSantis should read the room and wait his turn with his reputation intact. This report, sans prosecutions, is a MAGA call to war.

    1. Screwball

      I would prefer to see orange jumpsuits and pink slips for those who deserve them. But I won’t hold my breath. And how about getting all those same lying spooks off our TV screens. Not holding my breath there either.

      I’m old, and I’m sure the news coverage is different today, but I can’t remember in my lifetime the crap show I have witnessed in the last 6-7 years. Daily I shake my head at what goes on and nothing happens.

      I watched an interview with Katie Halper, Aaron Mate & some ex-spook named Ray McGovern. McGovern said they should defund the CIA. I’m not against that, but do a big flush on the FBI as well (I don’t think we should defund the FBI, but I’m open to discussion).

      And while we are in the flushing mood…congress should be next. Git r done!

      Wishful thinking, I know. 1/3 of the country doesn’t believe the Durham report anyway. Russia-gate will continue to live on. The first thing out of one of my PMC friends on hearing the Durham report – you mean the Durham hoax?

      I’m sure the media will comply, and I can hardly wait to hear the spin from serial liar Adam Schiff, who should be run out of town on the next train if it hasn’t derailed yet.

      1. tegnost

        … The first thing…

        I encountered this also, “hey look, no convictions ha ha ha” and I said “He did prove the whole thing was bullshit, which I’ve been saying since the very beginning” and the subject was thankfully changed

    2. repiet

      I live not far from Ottawa, IL the site of one of the Lincoln Douglas Debates. What Trump should do, imo, is challenge RFK Jr. to a debate in Ottawa. Not far from Chicago, but in a deeply red area of the state. Would be an interesting spectacle, no matter the content of the debate.

  26. The Rev Kev

    “Erdogan accuses Biden of attempt to topple him”

    Erdogan does not strike me as the forgive and forget type of guy. He might still be sore of how that US backed coup attempt tried to kill him back in 2016. But I have no idea why he thinks that Biden is still trying to regime change him. Well, except for the Turkey Democracy Project which has members like ‘UANI chairman Joe Lieberman, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, retired Bush administration counterterrorism official Frances Townsend, career U.S. diplomat Alejandro Wolff, retired CIA officer Robert Richer and former UANI senior advisor Norman Roule’. Oh, and John “Yosemite Sam” Bolton. Can’t forget him-

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/24/neocons-take-aim-at-turkey/

  27. Mikel

    “Inflation drives US household debt to record $17 trillion” WSWS

    “…According to a report last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, this “excess” saving has been nearly exhausted. Only $500 billion remains, which will be gone by the end of this year, removing that cushion against the twin evils of inflation and recession…”

    So, any cushion people have against precarity is called “excess” and degenerate rentierism is not considered “excess.”
    The BDSM economy…

  28. tevhatch

    Papua New Guinea –
    Aaron Good on Geopolitical Economics Review discusses how the Rockerfeller (Freeport McMoRan ) and CIA were very unhappy with JFK and Dag Hammarskjöld, and this may have had just as much if not more impact on JFK’s unhappy experiences with CIA, as well as Dag’s being put on watch list by CIA and South African agents.

  30. t

    “People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health…”
    The artificial sweeteners thing seems to be about eating habits, not whatever chemicals.

    Didn’t get to the very end. Do they mention diabetics? At all? Or the .0000whatever percentage of the population who have allergies or intolerance for plant sugars (well beyond the “beans are a a magical fruit” with plant sugars that we, as a species, cannot digest.)

    1. Ignacio

      IMO it is good idea to reduce the sweetness of the diet (apart from the special care diabetics must have with sugar). For my sins I have some coffee cups during the morning and I dislike it lacking all sweet. I have resorted to sweet it with honey.

      1. Carolinian

        I demand sugar with my coffee but even two lumps would be nothing compared to your average soda can which has eight teaspoons or equivalent.

        So blame it all on the Coca Cola company of Atlanta, GA.

  31. CaliDan

    Safeguarding Your Mental Health from the Harmful Effects of Western War Propaganda – Ten Top Tips Geoffrey Roberts. We are chuffed by #8.

    Missed one: if opposition sources are actively being steamrolled by involuntary, paid-for content, listen closer to the oppositional source. Presently attempting to view The Duran’s latest (less than 20min) on YouTube and find myself watching a 35+min ad/sermon for some religious org (Shadow Mountain something something Church) about failure not being a sin. [Don’t judge, using someone else’s computer…]

  32. Lexx

    ‘Americans finally draw a line at tipping as it hits the self-checkout’

    We give adequate tips for services rendered. If so service, then no tip. When we do tip, we find the person(s) who rendered that service and hand them the tip in cash and everyone’s happy… except maybe management. To them I offer ‘the bird’.

    1. Questa Nota

      Try explaining tipping to foreigners.
      They are baffled by the whole notion.
      Why not pay a decent wage?
      Why tip on take-out?
      Should the tip be pre-tax or post-tax?
      Why those little devices with suggested tips starting often at 20%, even on take-out?
      Why are those little devices also biased against you in their amounts?
      What to select when that cashier is staring you down, practically daring you not to just pick the safe middle amount, say 22% or 25%?

      Neoliberals take heart, with enough heavy moral suasion, even more wages can be paid by the customer, so lower hourly rates apply. No benefits, not enough hours, just missed that cut-off level, too bad, try again just before rent is due. At least you get a free meal.

      1. Late Introvert

        >Try explaining tipping to foreigners.

        My parents never even taught me about it. I told my daughter do 1/10 of the pre-tax amount and double it. For carry-out do half of that. But we only eat at local restaurants 95% of the time, and we want them to stay open and for the staff to like us and not feel resentful while they are handling our food.

        Tipping for a haircut is probably a similar thing, I want your best work, no feeling dissed.

        Does that help? It is weird for sure.

    2. Duke of Prunes

      I never use self-checkout by choice, but in the rare occasions where it is the only option, I am often tempted to tip myself (i.e. steal) for the work done. I deserve to be compensated for my checking and bagging work. I’m a bit too honest to ever follow through, but it does cross my mind…

      1. Don

        I have never used self-checkout — will drop the attempted purchase in the vicinity and just leave, if I am not offered an alternative. Am often asked by staff, who probably think that I am too old and/or stupid to figure it out, “why won’t you use self-checkout?” “To save your job” usually results in silent puzzlement, but all you can do is try. Also have never ridden in an Uber or stayed at an Air B&B.

  33. Darthbobber

    A quibble on the Daily Mail laptop letter article. The claim that the agency itself was involved rests on this:
    “An email shows Brennan agreeing to have his name added to the letter of signatories by the then acting CIA Director Mike Morell.”
    But I believe Morell’s last stint as acting director was in 2013, and that he had been retired for a few years by letter time.

    Which by no means that active agents weren’t involved, and their active involvement is by no means necessary to make the letter a sleazy piece of deliberately misleading crap.

    But this particular smoking gun fails to smoke.

  34. The Rev Kev

    “In pictures: Spain faces devastating drought”

    Lots of those images looked like they were taken in California not that long ago. But Spain looks like they are really under the hammer.

    1. John k

      Sahara has been trying to leap the med for a while now. Imo Greece/Italy also in jeopardy.

  36. Amfortas the hippie

    https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

    looks like somebody in the Blob finally chewed through the restraints.
    everything we, here, have been hollering about from the get-go is included…and the only instance of the usual perfunctory and rote “Russian Aggression”, Unprovoked” “Putin’s Imperial Ambitions”, etc…is put there to dismiss it as foolishness and fantacism.
    worth a read.

    1. Roland

      An excellent article! The authors understand the importance of the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, and that BMD only makes sense when used in combination with a first strike. They also understand that today’s USA is best understood as a revisionist power, not a conservative power.

    2. Jeremy Grimm

      I was disappointed after reading this opinion essay you pointed to in Harpers. The essay reviews all the very good reasons for Russian involvement in the Ukraine. … But I had hoped the essay might provide some insight into the ‘why’ the u.s. is involved in Ukraine — as promised in the title. I think Michael Hudson better explains the ‘why’, although I cannot grasp the psychology which might motivate that ‘why’, or its ramifications.

      In the end, I am left with a clear impression of Russia and the Russian Power Elite as rational, even reasonably adept players of the Great Game. I remain mystified for how to understand the u.s. and the u.s. Power Elite. To me, the concepts of nuclear first strike and Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD], touched upon/spectrally raised in the essay, seem the height of insanity. Related notions of a ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon or a ‘survivable’ Nuclear War — after some of the Nuclear Winter calculations — seem as rantings from a frothing mouth spewing forth from the deepest bowels of Bedlam. Recalling such paradigms as General Thomas Power or General Curtis LeMay, I know the u.s. has empowered and glorified madness. I have no idea of the character of our present Shadow Power Elite — if the word ‘character’ can describe their spiritual nature as sentient(?????) beings. Our Empire seems unable to perceive or pursue even its own best interests, and worse yet, it seems intent on self-immolation using the rest of the world as its pire.

      In the u.s., we are riding a race car to Hell, and the driver seems mad as hatter.

      1. Roland

        First strike obviously makes no sense on its own.

        But when combined with various ABM and ASAT systems, a counterforce first strike might become feasible, in a way that wasn’t possible decades ago. That depends on how well those systems work, and whether the first strike is well-conducted. All of the most important information is secret, so who knows?

        What I do know is that the USA has invested heavily and continuously in a wide variety of ABM systems, over the course of forty years. Maybe that was nothing but a complete waste of time and money. Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know how good the stuff is. I just know it exists.

        I know that the USA has established a new military branch for their Space Command. It is too easy to crack jokes about this, so I won’t bother. But objectively it does indicate a willingness to wage war in space. That probably doesn’t mean waging war on Mars. It almost certainly, then, means military action in orbital space, i.e. to attack the surveillance and communication satellites of other countries.

        The USA has also done a lot of R & D on techniques to suppress OTH radars (e.g. the HAARP program which experimented with local alteration to the ionosphere). There is a possible application to the problem of nuclear first strike.

        The article’s authors believe that some of Russia’s nuclear war-fighting capability, such as their early-warning systems, may have deteriorated, at least in a relative sense. Again, I don’t know how well Russian missiles or radars have been maintained. We’d have to fight a war to find out for sure.

        Mind you, there are things that a weaker or disadvantaged adversary can do to increase its nuclear war-fighting capability. Such as: decentralized command-and-control, with multiple independent launch authorities, adoption of a launch-on-warning posture–or at the most extreme, a launch-by-default posture. However, all of these measures are dangerous, and a government would have to feel desperate before adopting any of them.

        It is worth bearing in mind that only a certain proportion of a country’s nuclear striking forces are available at any given time to respond at short notice. It could take hours or days for a country to be able to stage a maximum response, and such maximum readiness cannot be maintained for long periods, without a drop in ready rates later on. This is significant in the calculus of first strike and ABM systems, because depending on the degree of surprise achieved, the victim’s retaliatory forces might be considerably less than the theoretical maximum, even before the actual attack began.

        Finally, note that the today’s weapons are much lower in yield than those of the Cold War, so even counterforce ground bursts against hardened targets would not produce anywhere near the levels of radioactive fallout that would have been expected in the 1970’s or ’80’s.

        Every change in warfare during the past generation has tended to make nuclear wars more fightable. Therefore, I hesitate to use a word such as “madness” to refer the current US nuclear war-fighting doctrine. Wicked? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely. Suicidal? Maybe not.

          1. Roland

            Discussion won’t be worth much, if we accuse everybody of being AI. So don’t be silly.

    3. hk

      There are still a few very subtle, but self serving and wilful lies (I am 100% sure that the authors know they are lies.). The Georgia war was begun by Georgians, who, with considerable backing of NATO, decided that they could overwhelm the token Russian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia in a surprise attack and block reinforcements from coming in. Pretty much every account of the conflict notes that the fighting began with the Georgians shelling the South Ossetian capital in a surprise attack. They failed miserably, but not because Russia started the war like what the article baldly lies.

    1. tevhatch

      Since the English gag of mounting the portrait on a noose would not work in French, would a picture frame shaped like the neck clamp of Madame Guillotine be out of place?

    2. Pat

      Not sure if the size is designated, but this indicates the framed size may be. That would mean my preferred solution wouldn’t be possible. It would no longer fit in the administration’s urinal, but perhaps hanging proudly above it could still be done.

      Tasteless as it may be, I have often thought more than a few of our elected officials should not only have gag toilet paper with their images but that gag urinal targets. I am pretty sure they would be bestsellers. Even without the equipment, I might want to attempt to hit the “bullseye” for several of them.

    3. JBird4049

      That is just being an arrogant ass. Why would he do that? Does he think he is like Elvis Presley or something?

  38. Mildred Montana

    >Patient M: The Man Who Was Shot in The Head And Woke Up Seeing The World Backwards ScienceAlert

    Thirty years ago the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a fascinating essay called “To See And Not See” (contained in his book “An Anthropologist On Mars). It told the story of Shirl Jennings, blind since childhood, who had his sight partially restored in his middle-age.

    However, things did not work out as expected. From Wiki: “He was overwhelmed with visual sensory data and was unable to connect what he was seeing with his visual memory, which had all but disappeared. The family contacted Dr. Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist known for his book Awakenings, who, along with other physicians, concluded that Shirl would need to relearn how to identify objects that he could feel and smell by using their visual cues.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirl_Jennings

    I read Sacks’ essay. Jennings, even after his sight was restored, still had difficulty using those visual cues. In one anecdote he walked around to the other side of a lamp and its shade to look at it, apparently unable to understand that the back would be the same as the front.

    In another, there were the puzzled reactions of family members to his strange behaviors: “Shirl is acting blind again!” as he went around the living room feeling all the objects therein. Even though he had some normal eyesight, for most purposes he was still a six-year-old blind child.

    1. JBird4049

      Yes, a person has to learn how to process what they are getting. I think that much of hearing in people comes from the lack of use. Isolated individuals, especially because of declining hearing, lose what they have because of the lack of use as it is like using a muscle. In my own experience, I have taken around two weeks to get back to where I was after a prolonged period of isolation or broken hearing aid. Or even just having a new device as every device is slightly different from any other.

      Unfortunately, people do not understand the time lag between using an aid and effective use. They just pop in the aid and going bananas from the sudden rush of sound; they don’t take the time, much as an athlete does, to gradually increase the use, preferably in a quiet environment to start.

      I suspect that all the people who lost their sense of smell from Covid, even when they get it back, will find it hard to get full use of it again.

      1. Mildred Montana

        JBird4049:

        I can so sympathize with you and your hearing loss. I cared for my elderly mother for five years. She was totally deaf except for a hearing aid in her one functioning ear. If her hearing aid were to lose battery power or malfunction she would become agitated and distressed until the problem was fixed.

        That’s how important hearing is. I only wish that the hearing could understand how important it is to the hearing-impaired. Understand and empathize: Speak directly to the hearing-impaired. Don’t raise your voice (that doesn’t work). Just look them directly in the face, move your lips, and enunciate clearly.

        1. JBird4049

          Yes, being screamed at really doesn’t help, but clarity does.

          The masks do not help with their covering hall of the face as I still can get the emotions with the eyes, but not the words from lip reading. This is the most frustrating thing of the pandemic.

  39. Bugs

    “Noelle Dunphy’s Harassment Lawsuit Against Rudy Giuliani Full of Graphic Allegations”

    Well, that was stomach churning. I don’t know what trigger warning I’d put on it; just truly vile.

    I guess it’s about what one would expect from a guy who sold black Louisville Sluggers for presidential campaign swag. America’s Mayor indeed.

    1. Michael Fiorillo

      Ever and always a nasty piece of work, and the candidate/mayor of white suburban retribution on the city.

      nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/the-forgotten-city-hall-riot.html

  41. Joe Well

    >>The Head of The Supreme Court of Ukraine Has Been Arrested on a $3 Million Dollar Graft Charge.

    Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas goes to work every day same as ever.

    How could Ukraine be less corrupt than the US?

    1. ThirtyOne

      An opinion from a telegram channel:

      Resident
      Colleagues, the Office of the President has long controlled the judiciary in the country, but everyone is well aware that the decision to bring down judges was not made at Bankovaya.
      Now the West will receive additional arguments for reforming the judiciary for its clientele, which means that the Office of the President will lose control over the Supreme Court.

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