Fat Bear Week returns to celebrate the champion of chonk in Alaska FOX Weather
A recession is still likely—and coming soon. Here are 6 reasons why Fortune
Why Do We Forget So Many of Our Dreams? Scientific American
Watching paint dry — to understand and control the patterns it leaves behind EurekAlert!
Fungi Make Safer Fireproofing Material Scientific American
Deepest Bacteria-Infesting Virus Ever Found Pulled From The Mariana Trench Science Alert
How Insect Brains Melt and Rewire During Metamorphosis Wired
Climate/Environment
Alberta officials did nothing wrong when an oilsands leak went unreported for 9 months, report finds The Narwhal
Cover crops and no-till aren’t just good for soil — they also make farmers more money, study says Harvest Public Media
‘The Android of agriculture’: Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa on the future of farming The Verge
Water
Storm Lake gets sucked dry so the world gets cheap meat Art Cullen’s Notebook
The Climate Crisis Is Salting the Water in Major Coastal Cities Common Dreams
#COVID-19
Cause of increased heart risk from COVID infection revealed Cosmos
Disease X: How AI could help plan our response to future pandemics Euronews
Old Blighty
Lost Boys film-makers on exposing Brit-protected Troubles paedophiles The Irish News
UK deploys fighter jets in Poland, allocates billions to AUKUS program Al Mayadeen
One in 20 British kids ‘forced to sleep on floor’ due to ‘bed poverty’, poll findsThe National
UK Energy Bills Are Increasing for the Poorest Households Bloomberg
China?
‘I cried for days’: Chinese home buyers left in the lurch by China’s real estate slump Straits Times
Shanghai faces first mortgage boycott as stalled housing project angers homebuyers South China Morning Post
Indonesia to launch China-funded high-speed rail, first in Southeast Asia Channel News Asia
European Disunion
Wow chart! Based on #SWIFT international payments, we are witnessing ‘de-euroization’ and not ‘#dedollarization. The #euro‘s share in SWIFT global payments has dropped to 23% from 38% at the start of the year.
Are #Russia‘s SPFS and #China‘s CIPS eating up the euro?
By the way,… pic.twitter.com/H39htQISrD— jeroen blokland (@jsblokland) September 28, 2023
Slovakia’s populist party opposed to Ukraine aid wins vote Al Jazeera
NATO Secretary General: Slovakia will support Ukraine whoever comes to power next Ukrainska Pravda
Tarik Cyril Amar – The West’s Real Problem Isn’t Going to Be Russia, or China, but Germany Brave New Europe
New Not-So-Cold War
Without US support, Ukraine stands no chance in war: Ukrainian MP Al Mayadeen
Empty Actions, No Victory Odds | Larry C. Johnson Dialogue Works (Video)
Correcting America’s Course Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
EU will back Ukraine without the US – Borrell RT
European Support for Ukraine Aid Is Plummeting Newsweek
Ukraine is winning. Now let’s finish the job Ben Wallace, The Telegraph
A tragedy in three acts:
1. Daily Telegraph announces British forces will be formally deployed to Ukraine, and Royal Navy “may move into Black Sea”
2. Dmitry Medvedev retorts they will be “a legal target for our armed forces”
3. Daily Telegraph article softened considerably pic.twitter.com/TZm4jxwtPE— Kit Klarenberg (@KitKlarenberg) October 1, 2023
***
Zelenskyy gave battalion of Ukrainian Armed Forces honorary name in honor of OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets. Konovalets, former official in Petliura government, founded OUN which was later headed by Bandera, collaborated with Nazi Germany & was involved in mass murder of Jews,… pic.twitter.com/2QN5tEQlMh
— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) October 2, 2023
The Balkans
NATO bolsters forces in Kosovo as US urges Serbia to withdraw from border Politico EU
He is dangerous and unpredictable and the situation should be closely monitored with utmost care but I do have a hard time believing Serbia would invade Kosovo and engage in direct war with NATO (KFOR).
— Lily Lynch (@lilyslynch) September 30, 2023
South of the Border
Going Gangbusters for Haiti The Wayward Rabbler
Syraqistan
Withdrawal from Syria ‘illogical’: Turkiye The Cradle
Banned Kurdish group PKK claims responsibility for Turkey suicide attack Al Jazeera
At the Gaza fence, a protest wave revives hopes of Palestinian mobilization +972 Magazine
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
Regulators turn up heat on shadow banks after market blow-ups FT
‘There’s no tracing Xbox 360 chat,’ claimed guy now charged with insider trading The Verge
Spook Country
IMPEACHMENT: ‘Cognitive Warfare’ on Capitol Hill Consortium News
Get Real, Congress: Censoring Search Results or Recommendations Is Still Censorship Electronic Frontier Foundation
Biden Administration
2024
Haley rails against lack of Ukraine aid in spending bill, pushes for spending cuts in other areas The Hill
Realignment and Legitimacy
There are more of us than there are of them Salon. The new, grimmer coalition of the ascendant: “The people dying from COVID were voters, and more Republican voters than Democratic voters died by a large margin.”
Myth and mending in the true West High Country News
GOP Clown Car
McCarthy in trouble as Gaetz promises vengeance for speaker’s partnership with Democrats Washington Examiner
Democrats en déshabillé
And as an adviser to Uber https://t.co/cMcNERCgf1
— Avi Asher-Schapiro (@AASchapiro) October 2, 2023
Gavin Newsom vetoes unemployment pay for striking workers, protections for domestic employees The Sacramento Bee
Michelle Obama, Democrats’ Savior and Nominee? Don’t Bet on It The Messenger
AOC suggests Democrats could save McCarthy but ‘shouldn’t do it for free’ Washington Examiner
I look forward to seeing Congress provide, in the very near future, financial support for Ukraine which is valiantly struggling against Russian aggression.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 1, 2023
The Supremes
This Supreme Court Term’s Grimmest Cases Share One Thing in Common Slate
Antitrust
2. The story most people know is that Amazon spies on sellers and copies their products — that Amazon’s monopoly strategy is to exploit its control over the platform to advantage its own products and sales.
This story has been chased and told by media again & again.
— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) October 1, 2023
Police State Watch
Extreme heat can be a death sentence in Texas prisons Yale Climate Connections
AI
MICROSOFT NEEDS SO MUCH POWER TO TRAIN AI THAT IT’S CONSIDERING SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS Futurism
Tech
Apple Says iPhone 15 Pro Overheating Due to iOS 17 Bug, Not Hardware Design CNET
Class Warfare
These Big-Budget Playrooms Will Make You Wish You Were a Kid Again WSJ
Most Teachers Spend Their Own Money on School Supplies. Should They? Education Week
***
“We Can’t Eat Prestige”: Inside the Unionization of the Science Museum of Minnesota Workday Magazine
San Francisco’s Laundry Crisis: The Rising Cost of Clean Clothes San Francisco Standard
The Bezzle
SBF Can’t Blame FTX Attorneys At the Start Of His Trial, Says Judge Decrypt
“Cash Flow King” real estate podcaster accused of $11M Ponzi schemeThe Real Deal
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
190 comments
Comments are closed.
BURNING ON THE STEPPE
(melody borrowed from Burning Down The House by Talking Heads)
Ahhhhhh watch out!
I hear the Devil’s laughter
Ghoul babies
Marching into danger
You have all come here to die
Burning On The Steppe!
Neophytes
To Russian ways of battle
Satellites
See much more than the weather
Death’s the order of the day
Burning On The Steppe!
Here’s your Abrams, here’s your flags
Mumbled prayers to our Lord
Battle wagons are here
We’ll pop up on their radar
It’s a human abbatoir
Fightin’ fire with fire!
Ahhhhhh all wet
Welcome the rasputitsa
Deep mud
We’re stranded in broad daylight
365 degrees
Burning On The Steppe!
Russians are a mongrel race
They’re the Dwarves and we’re the Elves
We’ll put them in their place
Blinded by the smoke and murk
Crawling like we’re small insects
Then we burst into flames, uhhhh!
Burning On The Steppe!
Madhouse
More like a mortuary
That’s right
It’s full of blood and muddy
Surgeons see us all as ruptured meat
Burning On The Steppe!
There are no shells or air support
Just rifles and your bayonets
In this cold rainy weather
If the Starlink won’t connect
Just run toward their parapets
Fightin’ fire with fire, ahhh!
“Ben Wallace: Ukraine’s counteroffensive is succeeding. Give them the tools to finish the job”
Sounds like Ben Wallace wants to resurrect his career after it got derailed by Biden by going ra-ra over the Ukraine and saying how they will beat Russia. But unreported by this article is other things that Wallace also said. He has said in the past how the Ukraine is a “battle lab” for the west but now he wants the Ukraine to draft younger soldiers to send to the eastern front. In fact, he was saying ‘The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but… just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilization.’ So here is the thing. This was from an RT article which took these quotes from a Sunday opinion piece published by The Telegraph. In fact, this exact one going by the link. So, did RT make that quote up or was the original article ‘modified?’
https://www.rt.com/news/583877-ukraine-mobilization-scale-wallace/
That quote is from Ben Wallace’s Telegraph article:
“Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation.”
The quote is not made up by RT.
” I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future” What young? What future? Bloody ghouls. The country has been bled worse than France after Verdun and they still aren’t satisfied. They never will be.
Bloody ghouls is too nice – i appreciate the concise commentary here on this proxy war but it is progressively saddening not to read about any abatement except apparently the EU coming to its senses about throwing money into the grift-hole – but a general sense of escalation by the West continues – have to admit to an increasing nervousness – Dylan’s song “Masters of War” which was published in 1963 doesn’t lose a single bit of relevance or truthfulness today – it is times like this i wished i believed in a heaven and hell but as a apatheist i’m stuck with reality and an unsettling fear of the possibilities – and the strong desire to piss on some folks’ graves – the lyrics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU
Come, you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothing
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
While the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn?
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I will follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead
That chapter is still there in the Telegraph. The part omitted by ellipsis: “the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So”.
All in all, Ben Wallace must have taken an overdose of hopium before writing that pep talk.
So all was good and on path to total victory, until populist Republicans succumbed to Putin’s dezinformatsia and stopped funding Ukraine. I see solid talking point for people who will want to believe West wasn’t defeated in Ukraine.
How far can the UK push Russia? They still seem to think they are playing the Great Game. What should Russia’s response be? I hate to advocate for violence, but as a realist, Russia must be looking at making some British assets go “poof!”. As a country whose prestige has traditionally rested on their sea power, I would guess that Russia would hit the Royal Navy in some way that can be plausibly denied.
Plausible deniability shouldn’t be too difficult to manufacture. They will just point to the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier and send over some oars.
I don’t know what to call this. Flailing?
Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say (NYT)
Russian spy agencies and new technologies could be used to push conspiracy theories, U.S. officials say.
It’s worse than you know, one can practically see the puppet strings Russian spy agencies have over the purse strings, with a operate code-named ‘Mike Evan’.
I think defeating Ukraine on the battlefield would be a sufficient reciprocation. UK actions on Russia have the same impact as all the commando actions of UK had on German military and the faith of the WWII, as Mercouris also asserted. The faith of WWII and defeat of German war machine was decided on the steppes…
Wallace is projecting!
What’s remarkable is that “the average age of the Ukranian soldier is 40”. You do the math. That means there are a fair amount of 55 to even 60 year olds on the higher end. They have run out of available men who cant afford to bribe their way out at 5000 plus. They say full mobilization, but, no way anybody with enough cash is going to walk through mine fields. So, the poor farmers and Romanians are left, and now they want to raid the high schools. It’s godawful evil, especially if you mix in Graham’s rant today about 70 more billion, no whoop, because no Americans are dying.
AOC suggests Democrats could save McCarthy but ‘shouldn’t do it for free’ Washington Examiner
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is repudiation of the Trump movement worth saving My Kevin (since ’07)?
Gaetz has played his hand badly and staked everything on mano y mano battle where it very much appeared he had the upper hand, or if you’d like-the only hand (holding what looks like a cat o’ 9 tails),
but he underestimated the Donkey Show, and why wouldn’t they come through again, to spite the Red Scare and show what posturing poseurs the Freedom Caucus are, further discrediting Benedict Donald.
You don’t think that AOC is gunning for My Kevin’s job by any chance, do you?
All right, I have seen that cryptic reference too many times already.
Who the heck is “my Kevin”?
Kevin McCarthy – Speaker for the House of Representatives. Wukchumni started it since this turkey hails from Wuk’s State and the nickname has kinda stuck.
On a side note, I found it ironic that AOC said in the original article that ‘I don’t think we give up votes for free’ as that is exactly what she has done whenever Pelosi demanded it again and again.
Hey, Pelosi bought her fair and square, she isn’t facing carpetbagging Dems who moved to her district in primaries anymore. That she no longer represents her district and most of her voters except with pr and show tweets is a fair trade for that peace of mind and the ability to use her PAC for increased power and not just staying in Congress.
well-stated – she is a worthless twit who loves hollow virtue signaling and has learned how to play the game unfortunately – sold out faster than Bernie
Donald Trump originated “My Kevin”. Trump has labeled many whom he wishes to control as “My xxx”.
Thanks, I knew it was an allusion to something else. It’s a typically clever appropriation because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is Wukchumni’s congressional representative.
My Kevin is Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who, I have always assumed, is also Wukchumni’s Congressional Representative, not that he is that representative.
Kev’s Congressional district has been Gerrymandered nine ways to Sunday and somewhat represents a toilet in dimension as it snakes from Bakersfield to Fresno-adjacent.
I’m in the top lid, as it were.
“The Crapper” district, heh heh. “We wash our hands. A lot.” At least you’re not in the bowl.
Doesn’t matter if they can’t shoot straight.
ew: There are more of us than there are of them – Salon
‘There are more non-White babies being born at the same time that there are more White people dying.’
US vs THEM, based on race. Thanks, Salon. Good to know you’ve gone triumphantly r*cist.
How progressive! — Looks like Trump’s far from the only one “saying the quiet part out loud.”
Funny thing that. They were saying the exact same thing back in 2016. That whites were a disappearing group and were going to outnumbered by black and Hispanic voters in that year’s Presidential elections. How did that work out? Doesn’t matter in any case. Lots of people from all groupings are disgusted with how they have been treated by the Democrats in power and there are articles that are saying for example that lots of Hispanic voters are shifting to the GOP and even Trump. Black voters too for that matter. Certainly the Repubs don’t owe those voters 600 bucks.
I knew several Democrats that said no Black or woman would vote for Trump in 2016.
The Democrats, both the party and many registered Democrats, believe they are entitled to the votes of every non Caucasian in the country. They spent years doing nothing for these groups but chuckling with glee about their coming permanent majorities, in votes and a in Congress.
I think most of the leadership and their sycophants have yet to process that that was a flawed assumption. And that they aren’t entitled to diddly. And that they have things backwards. That everyone, regardless of their heritage, deserves and are entitled to elected officials who work in their interests, and the right to try to fire those that don’t. Their vote is in their interest not some token immediately given to someone with a D by their name.
After the “New” Dems threw the working class and unions under the bus they had to find another group to hustle for votes… as if most non-white people are not working class. (shhh… don’t talk about economics.)
I knew several Democrats that said no Black or woman would vote for Trump in 2016.
I know a number of true blues that sincerely believe this. I wish, that by understanding the mechanics that lead to this fantasy, a severing at the hip where the well meaning and Team Blue are joined could be accomplished, but I doubt it.
According to this paper, 98% of black women voted for Clinton in 2016.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
Democrats love this because it means they don’t have to actually offer voters anything, they just have to wait for those evil white Republicans to die off.
Never mind that they’ve been beating this drum for decades at this point and have still managed to lose quite frequently despite the changing demographics. Not to mention that a lot of those non-white voters are Latino, who tend to lean more conservative and often don’t agree with the democratic stance on abortion which Dems see as their winning issue (despite not actually doing anything to safeguard it).
Democrats could probably win some more conservative Latino voters over by offering concrete material benefits, but we know how likely that is, don’t we?
So, we’ll get to watch Democrats sit back and do absolutely nothing but rest on their own sense of moral righteousness for years (again) and then see them be shocked when they lose (again) in the future.
If Democrats safeguarded abortion rights, they’d lose it as an issue. That’s why they will always be “fighting for” them and never codifying them.
It is the same with guns, and I am beginning to believe it is the same with housing. Whatever your personal beliefs are it is not in the interest of the political parties to solve them for that just reduces their talking points. This is more obvious with the Democrats, but it is also true with the Republicans.
So…what’s the difference between this Salon piece and “the Great Replacement” conspiracy theory? /s
There’s only a modification in the manner in which replacement occurs. But yes, it’s basically the same, and it also supports the growing conviction among all groups that racial/ethnic divisions are a zero-sum game.
I don’t think this question needs a snark tag …
“White people” have never been a majority in the world, by their own reckoning.
and…?
“Readers and not Breeders” was a slogan back in the late Howard years here in Australia during the baby bonus policy. Seems all it did was spur low socioeconomic youth to go out and have heaps of baby’s so they could get the bonus, it was an explosion which rippled through society.
Still remember old media articles about it being used for new smart phones at the time as status symbols, all whilst these young families were on government family support payments and not working.
C.J.Hopkins latest from ConsentFactory.
https://consentfactory.org/2023/10/01/the-globocap-nazi-follies/
I would never defend what happened in my country’s parliament but I would like it if it were criticized for the right reasons. Few people there were knowingly cheering for a Nazi (Freeland and Zelenskyy being at least two the exceptions). The egregious error here is that such a large group of people know so little about history that no one stopped to wonder if that Ukrainian soldier fought for Germany or Russia. And in our Prime Minister’s apology he managed to completely forget that Russia was our ally in that war. That for me is the the real horror of this incident.
Maybe, though, if they had known they would have seen it as a lesser of two evils choice, I mean yeah back in the day it Russia OK (enemy of enemy kinda thing) and Germany bad, but that’s all mixed up now isn’t it? Russia is the bad guy and even Nazi’s are OK (again with the enemy of our enemy) and Hell, maybe I’m wrong about this whole thing – and indeed my shame should be that our government officially cheered for a Nazi not that they simply don’t know history.
It may be that pretty soon you will see less and less stories online like this in Canada-
‘The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC ) announced new conditions for online streaming services broadcasting in the country. According to the news release posted on Friday, the body is requiring content providers earning $10 million or more in annual revenue to provide information about their activities and complete a registration form by November 28.
The regulatory plan is devised to ensure that the streaming services make “meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content,” the CRTC said.’
https://www.rt.com/news/583879-canada-podcasts-new-regulations/
Trudeau sure loves his censorship.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1708481721170104824
The irony of this coming on the heels (or is it heals) of parliament applauding an actual Waffen SS nazi is stunning. No self-awareness at all.
And not to put too fine a point on it, Canada is offering suicide assistance to the infirm, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill. Which is depressingly similar another country in the 1930s.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/28/canada-expanding-assisted-suicide-law-to-the-mentally-ill/
Sleepwalking into dystopia. / my 2 cents.
may have mentioned this previously – when my daughter attended the NBS in Toronto there would be the occasional parent/teacher events we would attend and often afterwards some of us would retire to a pub across the street and mentioned once in conversation that i felt a great relief when crossing the Ambassador bridge in Detroit on our way to TO because of the great government of Canada – was schooled rather quickly by Canadians, and in particular about the lack of true free speech in our northern neighbor – this was probably 15 years ago and was rather illuminating and made me pay more attention during the 4 years of high school and 2 years of post secondary she attended at NBS –
Ah yes. There was an earlier time I thought Canada a great option for my younger relatives. I promoted the idea of moving there. As time and events have progressed I don’t think it’s such a good option. I’ve even suggested, ever so gently, that some younger members of the family might want to move back to the US. (I don’t push the idea, it’s for them to decide.)
The US is a cantankerous, politically roiling, disputatious country. Even so, these quotes from an earlier SC Justice, Robert H. Jackson, make me now glad I live here and not there. (Where I once considered Canada a good destination, but no longer. Times change.)
“The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.”
and
” The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.”
The Commonwealth countries still follow the lead of the parent country monarch’s govt, apparently. / oy
adding:
I’m starting to see the “cantankerous, politically roiling, disputatious country” that we are as the US’s strength.
I agree Flora. I’m a long time lurker here and I just wanted to take the opportunity to “chime in” because I’ve always loved your no-holds barred takes on freedom of speech, particularly how it manifests here in the United States.
In relation to good wages and workers gaining ground to at least some degree – which in turn helps all of us, as we know – I’m particularly excited at how free speech and freedom of historical inquiry – sans any gatekeepers – has allowed various individuals and groups to unearth both the power and tactics of the Israel Lobby in the United States and around the world.
I believe “the lobby” – which works on behalf of Israel – is one of the most powerful gatekeepers against free thought and inquiry, and I believe it has a directly negative effect on most workers and “plain” folks, i.e. we, the great mass of humanity.
https://www.workers.org/2023/09/73535/
https://www.workers.org/2023/09/73683/
Unfortunately, folks such as Jonathan Greenblatt continue to disappoint in their quest to silence legitimate criticism of what might best be described as “Zionist/Israeli Nazis,” if I may use my freedom of speech to coin such a term.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/adl-sides-with-abusers-over-free-speech-campus/
I hope more people will come to understand the tremendous power this crucial impediment to free speech and inquiry yields, and that they will use their own voice to call it out whenever and wherever they can. It affects all of us.
tl – don’t know if you swing back to see if there’s response to your comment – i might add that back when i thought i wanted to be PT i did volunteer work in PT at a local hospital for 2 years – at that time there were a couple of PT’s doing a round of work that were Israelis – they were ashamed of the way that the Palestinians were being treated – mind you this was back in 1986 – since then the cruel and violent repression of the Palestinians is more than disgusting and to me criminal – the aggressive bullying and intimidation by AIPAC against any discussion of treatment of the Palestinians or BDS would make the PT’s i spoke with back in 1986 horrified, i’m sure – murder, assassination, physically violent intimidation and property theft seems to be encouraged by the right-wing of Israel which has taken complete control of the government – the recent mass protests of the situation with the Israeli courts is good to see –
Hi JB,
I have been circling back. The comment was in moderation for quite a while and I didn’t know if it would be posted.
Thank you for responding, and thank you to Naked Capitalism for allowing the discussion.
AIPAC is just one arm of a much, much larger labyrinthine apparatus. And while labyrinthine and in many ways non-hierarchical, it is the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations – which is, name aside, in fact a tight-knit organization (not a one or sometime meeting or “conference” as its name implies) that sets the agenda for most of the organizations that fall under/within the Israel Lobby umbrella.
These organizations should all be required to register under FARA – the Foreign Agents Registration Act – and there must be strict enforcement.
Both JFK and RFK were adamant about this, and of course JFK was adamant that inspections be allowed at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility.
https://pulsemedia.org/2009/08/28/the-kennedys-vs-israels-lobby/
https://israelpalestinenews.org/author-martin-sandler-says-mossad-may-have-assassinated-jfk/
It is the power of the Israel Lobby that is curtailing free speech and inquiry in the U.S. and around the world such that the history of Zionist terrorism in Palestine is erased.
Let us remember that “Israel” is a self-described “Jewish State” that employs Jewish soldiers using weapons inscribed with Jewish religious symbols on them to terrorize the non-Jewish majority so as to maintain its Jewish identity.
We have words for this type of behavior.
the recent mass protests of the situation with the Israeli courts is good to see
But that has nothing to do with free speech and inquiry here in the United States, let alone the daily terrorism inflicted on the non-Jewish population of Palestine/Israel.
In fact, that seems to be a rather Israel-centric comment which ignores the larger issues I am raising. Issues that affect us all greatly.
I hope this conversation will continue. I will leave you with three examples of the power of the lobby. The first two are centered more around the lobby’s influence in the “democratic/progressive” circles and the third primarily speaks to Sheldon Adelson and others’ influence on the republican side, and their relation to Zionism/Israel.
Adelson, it should be remembered, was also Trump’s biggest funder. Trump’s next biggest funders, incidentally, were Bernard Marcus of the Home Depot empire that destroyed small hardware stores in the United States and Steve Roth, who was involved with Trump’s bankruptcies in the 80’s-90’s and was the Trump campaign’s top economic and infrastructure advisor, despite his having massive conflicts of interest with his Vornado holdings.
The first clip is of a 2017 interview with former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The interview begins with talk of the power of the CIA and corporate lobbies in the United States, then moves into AIPAC. Cynthia McKinney relates how the power of “the lobby” extends well beyond simply Israel/Zionist orgs and has embedded itself into the entire body politic and fabric of life in the United States.
https://youtu.be/Lt2jhx8yhgk?t=705
Next up is a 2016 Mondoweiss piece that includes Emily’s List founder Stephanie Schriock explaining the influence of AIPAC on progressive congressional candidates:
“Where are you are going to go to raise the money that you needed to raise to win a race. And you went to labor, you went to the choice community, and you went to the Jewish community. But before you went to the Jewish community, you had a conversation with the lead AIPAC person in your state and they made it clear that you needed a paper on Israel. And so you called all of your friends who already had a paper on Israel – that was designed by AIPAC – and we made that your paper.
https://mondoweiss.net/2016/09/beholden-progressive-senators/
The aforementioned third piece featuring Adelson and other movers and shakers is an excellent article from The Asia-Pacific Journal entitled “Billions: The Politics of Influence in the United States, China and Israel:
https://apjjf.org/-Peter-Dale-Scott/2829/article.html
jeez, you folks are making me feel a little defensive … I think we all learn live with our own country’s foibles. There is still much to be grateful for here in Canada. It is slipping away, but for now and all of my life, we have had a healthcare system that should be the envy of most people in the US. No one in Canada has to choose between healthcare and rent or eating. I can say for sure that if I were to decide to leave, the US would not be on my long list, never mind my short list
that health care is a major plus that anyone in the US should be jealous we don’t have – and the electric trolleys in TO are awesome – still feel a weight lifting when going across the border and a general politeness missing in most cities over here – don’t get defensive at all – wish i had moved to New Zealand way back when – an old girlfriend had married and moved there spending winter in NZ and summer in Chicago – another friend fled to TO when Rayguns was elected – was just surprised by Canadians telling me we had more rights in the US than they did in Canada – i do like Michigan and have staked my claim –
Regards. Never feel defensive for loving your own country. I do not feel defensive about loving my country, with its warts and all. I think it’s the best, even as you no doubt think your country is the best. / ;)
Thanks Flora. I love many aspects of being Canadian and generally feel like I won the country of birth lottery. That said I’ve never been a ´love my country over all’ type. I think it is a great place in spite of our government not because of it.
“I would never defend what happened in my country’s parliament but I would like it if it were criticized for the right reasons. Few people there were knowingly cheering for a Nazi (Freeland and Zelenskyy being at least two the exceptions).”
It’s not as if the Ukrainian SS and which side they fought for was some closely guarded secret that only those with the highest security clearance were allowed to know.
If those members of Parliament actually didn’t know what they were cheering for, it is only because they knew that if they asked questions, then they would not like the answers that they got.
Ignore the posturing of PM Globalist Uni-brow and his Yahtzee Grandkid Twitchy Bird Lady sidekick. This glitch in the matrix is another opportunity. Maple syrup can’t fix it. Ask the truckers.
Happily, the human race is still robust and available for membership.
The lesson from the ridiculous morally-retarded parliamentary Yom Kippur clap-a-thon is that Russia was and apparently always will be the intellectual and moral superior of the anglo-fascist resource colonies.
Good luck with further de-programming. Options are available.
Thoughtfully, what the Nigeriens did was “dissolve all institutions”.
A few days ago there was a very good deep dive into this history by the Forward:
“The fact that some Ukrainians collaborated with Nazis is no secret, but it’s been whitewashed and even celebrated in Canada”
https://archive.ph/JJKf2
One thing I hadn’t realized was that it was eastern Ukrainians who fought against Germany, western Ukrainians who joined Nazi Germany. I wonder if those lines are roughly similar to those in today’s conflict.
Of course. The was a link some time back on history of Ukraine to WWII that lays out the regional issues and various independence movements and their motivations. What I don’t know (or how does one determine) how important 19th/20th c history is to people today. So the idea of a Polish or Polish Lithuanian Empire — does that exist with the average person? Or reconstitution of Novorossiya?
From 2014 to 2015 Luhansk and Donetsk were working on a federation called Novorossiya, but after Minsk accords Kremlin told them to drop it.
In general, the European nationalists specifically drink from the poison mostly concocted in 19th century, during the era know as “national romanticism”. Mostly it was borne out of “romantic nationalism” during the Napoleonic wars, when the armies suddenly grew enormously and the elites found out that dying for a regime was actually something the average European at the time tried to avoid as much as possible.
As a fellow Canadian, I disagree; I just can’t see them being that stupid or uninformed. The beginning o the introduction went something like a patriotic Ukrainian who fought the Russians in WW2…
Now, I grant that some of them are too stunned to figure out that means Nazi, but a whole bunch of them had to know — and not care.
Besides, our country has form in embracing Ukrainian Nazis, right up to Cabinet level. Did you read today’s Globe and Mail piece about the University of Alberta agonizing over whether to return the hundreds of thousands in endowment funds it has received from sources linked to the Waffen SS Galicia Brigade in Canada.
I find that hard to accept. Rota introduced Hunka by saying that he bravely fought Russians in WW2. How many standing ovationeers in the Caniadian Parliament are so ignorant that they didn’t know which side was which in WW2? Some probably were. But “few” knew this much history?
I think the message here is clear, either they are too stupid to be MPs or they are too cowardly to be considered representatives of their constituents rather than performing seals for their party.
Even if Rota hadn’t explained that Hunka bravely faught Russians and said only that he is a WW2 vet that saw combat action, the fact that Zelensky is in the room applauding him tells you which sides he was fighting resp. for and against.
The history for those that need to be told is thaty Canada and the Soviet Union were allies in WW2 fighting Nazi Germany and its allies.
My wife, a Canadian with little interest in history, still knew immediately that Russia/USSR was an ally of UK/Canada during WWII, and she being great with logic, due to education in philosophy, she knew that if the applauded guy fought against Russia, and Canada was allied with Russia, the logical conclusion was that the guy fought against Canada as well…
Cognitive dissonance (I am being charitable here) has affected the whole of Canadian Parliament, and it will never wash away, regardless it the event gets expunged from any official records – and reminders of it will not be just Russian propaganda. I was sure to write my MP, also reminding him also that the Red Army had destroyed about 70-75% of German military.
I don’t think it’s cognitive dissonance. I think it’s obedience and cowardliness. The ugy truth nobody seems brave enough to say out loud is that Project Ukraine gets unanimous support in Canadan politics regardless if The West pays and provisions Nazis to fight the Russians or not. Because of this unanimity the parliamentarians stand and applaud either because they didn’t think it through, that in WW2 Hunka was fighting an ally of Canada, in which case they are too stupid for the job, or they understood fine and applauded anyway because they were too scared to break unanimity and face the press/party repercussions of being on the record sitting it out, in which case they applauded a Nazi fighter for personal utilitarian reasons. I’d take stupid over that kind of coward.
Mid level management, which they are, are some of the spineless, coward, and bumlicking individuals that one can concieve of. These are not warriors used to fight, having some honour, and willing to fall on the sword.
Most of the idiots in the House have no idea about the history of WWII. By the time they got to applauding Hunka, they were a bit worse than performing seals and would have applauded a passing seagull or pigeon.
Trudeau’s apology was a horror.
It’s better in blackface.
https://youtu.be/pxiyVqjYeUY?si=jC-OsnQfSQCh6cd-
re: Gavin Newsom vetoes unemployment pay for striking workers, protections for domestic employees – The Sacramento Bee
No surprise there. Newsom is WEF.
Every man ought to be a Davos, Davos man
To live a life of freedom, Davos make a stand
Have your own lifestyles and ideals
Possess the strength of confidence, that’s the skill
You can best believe that he’s a Davos man
He’s the special god son in anybody’s land
Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey!
But flora, didn’t you see that he just appointed a former labor organizer and union official to be US Senator from California (see comments below)? She’s also a Black woman, and a mother, and a lesbian. There must be a good reason for his veto. I’m sure we just don’t see the big picture. Maybe the Senator will explain it to us.
oh absolutely….she clicked all the right boxes – she posted a tribute to Feinstein on social media, calling her “a titan in the Senate” and “a legendary figure for women in politics and around the country.” – she has also been a longtime ally of Vice President Kamala Harris which speaks to her fairness and honesty – director of public policy and campaigns in North America for Airbnb which always plays fair with its employees, oops excuse me i meant independent contractors – she led a SEIU and that union’s leadership track record reveals a union that repeatedly fails to support its members at the bargaining table and on the picket line, so Democratic! – and of course she currently lives in Maryland, but, the governor’s office said, she owns a home in California and will switch her voter registration – how convenient – definitely checks all the boxes and has the necessary virtue signals – fingers down my throat now –
Newsom is an ambitious politician. He has been playing both sides for a while now trying to gather support for a run at POTUS in 2028, if not sooner. By vetoing the legislation Newsom gets some points from right to work states. His decisions don’t hurt him in California as he could shoot somebody on Rodeo Drive and still have overwhelming political support in the state.
Blacks have had the shitty end of the stick since before i was alive. Appointing more is fair enough by me. Black women check two boxes at the same time as women have been handed the shitty end of the stick since time immemorial. That she has a ‘blackified’ first name? Get over it!
agree with all you mention, but who is talking about her name?
Uh… I’m not sure, but if you think this is about her being Black, or a woman, or a mother, or a lesbian, then I think you missed my point.
MLK said something about the content of character being more important than the color of skin.
Why should someone on strike have unemployment benefits? If I down my tools, it’s by choice. Look, I back striking workers 100% . . . but they form/join a union and the unions builds its coffers using the dues expressly to have monies to support striking workers giving up pay to force an action.
That union leaders treat said fund as a personal piggy bank is one problem, and that they pay themselves exorbitant amounts, is another problem. And if said fund is inadequate, then this is a management issue to be resolved by the union.
So it’s my opinion the workers should a) put a stop to being ripped off by their ‘leaders’ and b) do the math in advance (to see if the number of workers going out will be adequately funded for however long it takes). This is a numbers problem.
But expecting me, the tax payer, to be party to their strike by giving them unemployment benefits is never going to fly for the same reason benefits for unemployment don’t accrue to folks who quit their jobs. Or at least . . . not with me!
Yeah…they at least should have to wait until the business owner employs ‘scabs’ to maintain profits.
SBF Can’t Blame FTX Attorneys At the Start Of His Trial, Says Judge Decrypt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for crypto gold;
The blockchain trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The sum thing for nothings have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that day in the courtroom while out on large
They cremated Sam Bankman-Fried
The link crashes my browser. Tried 3 times, 3 crashes.
Apple Says iPhone 15 Pro Overheating Due to iOS 17 Bug, Not Hardware Design CNET
Error message says ‘certificate for this site is invalid’.
Try this ZDNet link instead. It works.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-says-iphone-15-overheating-not-a-hardware-issue-and-a-fix-is-coming/
(an aside: I learned a long time ago to not download anything from CNET, too many hidden payloads. This CNET link doesn/t even have the real CNET logo, different typeface, so it may be a fake site. )_
Double-checking the CNET logo, it looks like it’s a new version of the old logo. Haven’t used CNET in years. It still crashes my browser(s).
Maybe try going to that site with java-script shut down in your browser. See if it makes a difference.
Thanks. Might work, but I never change my browsers security settings, which I set. I’d rather get a false negative than a missed positive. / ;)
What you could do is what I did and that was to install the Pale Moon web browser on your computer-
https://www.palemoon.org/
Not only does it act as a backup browser on my computer but there is a button on it that you can disable java-script with a click for those sites that cause trouble because of them like the NYT.
I might try that browser in running in a sandboxed form as an experiment. Thanks.
thanks for the link – another browser choice always appreciated TRK
er… I’d rather get a false positive alert than a missed positive.
Sympathies on the phone, Flora. I look forward to the cartoons of iPhone users wearing oven mitts…
Prob just me but when I visit XTwitter these days the demands on my computer overwhelm my browser. Snooper software always points to the known backdoor in my OS, the one used by The Blob and/or hackers.
Social media sites are data hogs but what I see on X these days is off-the-charts stuff, the kind of cyber activity where I shut my computer off, unplug the router in the basement and then take a long walk (periodically scanning the sky for drones).
There is a world beyond crappification, a world of hyper-surveillance. I’m a power user not a geek. I can see them looking at me but I can’t look at them. The worst part of it all? I can’t remember exactly which Philip K. Dick book I’m living in!
RE: “cartoons of iPhone users wearing oven mitts…”
Ok, that made me laugh. Too true. Thanks. / ;)
Mitts and better:
Samtime: https://youtu.be/75bxg24Od_U?si=wLwWRfcQUzuBJ0kK
Pip-pip!
“SF’s Vanishing Laundromats: The Rising Cost of Clean Clothes”
I got an idea. Back in the late 1840 the good people of SF use to ship their dirty laundry to Hawaii and even as far as China to be cleaned and sent back to SF because it was economical to do so. Now there are a lot of desperate people that lost everything in those severe fires in Maui while the Feds left them swinging in the wind. So how about they get together as a business and do San Francisco’s laundry for them with clothes shipped in on old 747s? The sheer exploitive nature of this idea would be music to Gavin Newsom’s ears as after all, is his favourite restaurant not named the French Laundry restaurant?
https://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question123505.html
Laundromats are really the last bastion in the War On Cash, I smell a coinspiracy, if you don’t mind my Monday morning quarterbacking.
it is a freaking war – quarter car washes too – been gathering links on that one for at least 15 years – it will be difficult to succeed but ‘they’ will keep on trying – death of a thousand cuts –
Payphones were the first to go. If they were still around you couldn’t force poors to spend money on cell phones. I think people have forgotten how cheap landlines are (were?).
Public bathrooms, drinking fountains, park benches you can lie down on…add all of these to The Deteriorata as lost things of our youth.
We have a quite pleasant public bathroom in Tiny Town near the museum and yes its a rarity in this day and age.
Only a stone’s throw away is a Greek food truck that serves up tasty tucker, and the only such themed food truck i’ve ever seen.
A local restaurant that went out of business and seated say 75, languished on the market for about a decade and the owner of a Greek restaurant in Malibu, bought a place here to live and decided we needed one like it here, so he bought the property.
The new eatery when finally opened early next year will seat 240 people, after extensive renovations and expansion.
The aforementioned Greek food truck-Tony’s Taverna on wheels, is his way to introduce us to the fare he’ll be serving in the brick & mortar later.
Opa springs eternal!
I’ve used those rest rooms you speak of. Very pleasant indeed. The museum is pretty cool too. How’s the tap water in your neck of the woods?
From yesterday’s links:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-09-27/californias-struggle-for-clean-water-is-getting-harder
Will the expanded restaurant have expanded restrooms, or use the public venue?
Ah.
The Deteriorata vs the Desiderata. Indeed.
Never heard of any import laundry business in Honolulu. I don’t think SF-Hawaii trade was a thing until the civil war created a market for sugar which eventually led to San Francisco sugar refining business. Hawaii (Lahaina and Honolulu) was a center for whaling fleets, but I don’t think San Francisco was in their itinerary.
The first Chinese laundry opened in SF in1848, so the Hawaii trade likely didn’t last long. Think about it, the Chinese jump started both mercantilism (railroad construction) and fancy fashion (clean apparel) in America long before becoming the worlds largest manufacturer :)
Back in the late 1840 the good people of SF use to ship their dirty laundry to Hawaii and even as far as China to be cleaned and sent back to SF because it was economical to do so.
Reputedly, Brazilians enriched by the latex boom during the second half of the 19th century sent their laundry to Portugal to be cleaned.
‘forced to sleep on floor’ due to ‘bed poverty’
“Bed poverty”. That has instantly reminded me of this German cartoon. For those who don’t read the language, the City Marketing guy says, “You’re not homeless anymore. Now it’s called Urban Sleeping”.
https://ruthe.de/cartoon/3156/datum/asc/
‘Daily Telegraph announces British forces will be formally deployed to Ukraine, and Royal Navy “may move into Black Sea” ‘
Say, does anybody remember the time that a British warship – the HMS Defender – sailed into Crimean waters and pretended that they were actually Ukrainian territorial waters a few months before the war broke out? And how the Russians fired warning shots while the British pretended afterwards that that never happened?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Black_Sea_incident
You think that the Royal Navy will try this stunt again?
Plus Turkey bans countries from sending warships into the Black Sea in time of war, unless returning to base.
They’ll lean on Erdogan to make him change his mind.
You may be thinking of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits
Note how it dates back to 1936…
What was the utmost stupidity of that stunt is that according to the “San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea” from 1994, if Crimea is contested territory, Russia has right to declare Military Exclusion Zone around it limiting the “innocent passage”.
Royal Navy can claim UNCLOS sanctioned “innocent passage” only if UK accepts that Crimea and the surrounding waters are not contested or invaded areas.
Well, not in a world based on laws and agreements. In a rule based order, UK has natural rights to the Sevastopol naval base, and only autocrats hellbent of world domination would deny this.
It’s best to ignore pretty much everything the British government says, since the majority of it has no basis in reality.
Otherwise you end up wasting mental energy wondering why they are saying the opposite to what they said last week, or how a foreign secretary can know so little about foreign affairs, an education secretary can know so little about education etc.
UK was pulling a lot of stunts right before the fighting started. Like doing several surveillance flights from UK to the Black Sea and back in full view on any flight tracking service one cared to check.
At some point on start to go numb with all the hypocrisy on display.
Re: Brave New Europe: The West’s Real Problem–Germany
Not brave enough to entertain the possibility it was the US/NATO that blew up NordStream.
Oddly enough, you have to go to German right-wing populist media like Compact magazine to see that point of view acknowledged.
https://www.compact-online.de/nord-stream-terror-auf-welcher-seite-steht-scholz/
I’d call the German mainstream media “cowardly” but even that would be giving them too much credit. They’re not cowed, they’re enthusiastically playing their part obfuscating the truth and expanding the war.
Right! And I’d say they are also making the implicit point that “We dont need no Goebbels any more. We can self-organize.”
Well, Erich Vad had already used the word “Gleichschaltung”. This time, it looks almost as if it were self-imposed.
//His old interview to Emma
https://www.emma.de/artikel/erich-vad-was-sind-die-kriegsziele-340045
https://www.pressenza.com/2023/01/ex-brigadier-general-erich-vad-asks-what-are-the-war-aims/
===
Wir erleben weitgehend eine Gleichschaltung der Medien, wie ich sie so in der Bundesrepublik noch nie erlebt habe. Das ist pure Meinungsmache. Und zwar nicht im staatlichen Auftrag, wie es aus totalitären Regimen bekannt ist, sondern aus reiner Selbstermächtigung.
===
To a large extent, we are witnessing a media conformity that I have never seen before in the Federal Republic of Germany. This is pure opinion mongering. And not on behalf of the state, as is known from totalitarian regimes, but out of pure self-empowerment.
===
The border situation in my area has become uncontrollable. Aid groups and the Border Patrol are completely overwhelmed.
People have been waiting up to three days in temporary holding camps to be processed.
The only shelters in the camps are made from brush wood striped with bare hands from the local Ribbonwood bushes supplemented with a few thin plastic tarps and bed sheets that have been donated .
The landscape around is becoming lunar as everything for a 1/4 mile around that could even possibly burn is ripped from earth becoming fuel for the nightly fires.
The word that these migrants (Asylum Seekers) get is that The BP will take almost everything that they arrive with, so many arrive in shirtsleeves. Local folks have donated as many coats and blankets as possible, but we only have a population of around 600 people living in our little town of Jacumba Hot Springs so most of the migrants have no blankets and only maybe a piece of cardboard to sleep on.
The temperature over the last three nights has been below 45 degrees with misty rain for the last two. Women and children that arrive after the BP stops transporting (around 5:30 or 6:00) often spend the night with no shelter at all.
Yesterday when I arrived at 8:00 AM there were 7 women with 8 kids, 2 of them infants who had spent the night begging for shelter in the completely jam packed huts.
I mean in no way to denigrate the efforts of the Border Patrol. All of the officers that I have met have been doing the best they can in a situation where they have a massive lack of resources and support. They make great efforts to pull out the women with children as quickly as possible.
The Border Patrol is not set up to handle this. They have not supplied not more than a little water and some snacks.
At best the groups that I have been working with (mainly Border Kindness) have been able to give daily people one or two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and 1 1/2 Liters of water. Many people get less
I could go on and on.
Here are the counts that I have made by number of water bottle given at each time.
Friday : 220 Total 70+ of whom are women or children
Sat : 350+- 90+ women or children
Sun : 600+ 150 women or children
I expect another 200 or three hundred to arrive Sunday night or Monday. I hope I am wrong.
We are running out of everything
LA Times:
Wave of migrants that halted trains in Mexico started with migrant smuggling industry in Darien Gap
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-09-21/wave-of-migrants-that-halted-trains-in-mexico-started-with-migrant-smuggling-industry-in-darien-gap
Cartels are getting rich from smuggling drugs and people.
https://twitter.com/annvandersteel/status/1708270085540897258
Hi Valiant. Thanks for sharing. Which country and which border in the world are you describing? Thanks
>Newsom picks Laphonza Butler
He reportedly did not impose the condition that she not run for a full term. A black gay woman certainly fills three Democrat identity check points. In a Guardian piece it was said that she worked to organize on behalf of home healthcare workers and I certainly like that.
In her early career she was helping people like caregivers and nurses but since then she has gone to the Dark Side and endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary while in 2020 she played a central role in Kamala Harris’s 2020 Presidential campaign-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laphonza_Butler
And that article states that Butler ‘moved to Maryland in 2021 when she assumed the presidency of EMILY’s List. Governor Newsom’s office stated Butler would reregister to vote in California before taking office as a senator.’ So if I read that right, when she was appointed she was actually living on the other side of the country.
Wiki may be useful to try to understand what the spooks are up to but I’ve grown increasingly wary of it where politics are involved. And that started from a low bar.
But one could note that I did not say that anything will fundamentally change.
The Borg will probably not be undone from the inside. A few may try but they get ousted.
She apparently still has a home in CA.
There are only 39 million people in California, but how many are over the age of 30?
Here’s the specific text of her Wiki bio; as usual with Wikipedia, the useful information is often between the lines:
“Butler joined SCRB Strategies as a partner in 2018. At SCRB, she played a central role in Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign. Butler also advised Uber in its dealings with organized labor while at SCRB.[9] She was known as a political ally of Harris since her first run for California Attorney General in 2010, when she helped Harris negotiate a shared SEIU endorsement in the race…”
“Butler left SCRB in 2020 to join Airbnb as director of public policy and campaigns in North America…”
“Butler was named the third president of EMILY’s List in 2021. She was the first Black woman and mother to lead the organization…”
From SEIU to Uber and Airbnb. SCRB is a major “consulting” firm also linked to Newsom. As Rev indicates, if you read her bio you get a very informative picture of how a promising union activist gets co-opted by the Democrat machine. I hope I don’t sound too cynical.
The perfect candidate. She’ll take over where the ghoul left off, adding new graft to her portfolio.
And if you speak ill of her you will be a misogynist racist.
It was an NYT piece here.
An introduction from Newsom is here.
I’m getting a hunch that she will be encouraged to run for a full term. She is 44, Katie Porter is 49, Adam (barf) Schiff is 63 and Barbara Lee is 77. I’m not in CA, but if I were I could vote for any one of the three women.
Absolute proof that negative traits follow a normal distribution, irrespective of the sexual orientation, ethnic background or any other identities of the individual. There is good and bad, sociopath and empathic, in evert identity.
I’m not sure what is meant by evert identity, did you mean every identity? (duckduck gets me to Jason Evert and a religious thesis).
Whatever a group asserts as their identity, which is now so pliable. Nowadays we have a “furry” community, I am sure that there are both good and bad furries.
There is good and bad, sociopath and empathic, in evert identity
I don’t believe they’re evenly distributed, thankfully.
Both sociology/psychology – as well as many other “disciplines” such as ponerology, illustrate for us rather tellingly that a solid two to five percent of the population has socio/psycho tendencies that are rather easily tapped into and utilized for the aggrandizement of this same two to five percent, in a never-ending cycle…to the detriment of the rest of we mere mortal, empathic souls.
Social taboos traditionally kept these “evil” or socially regressive tendencies in check. Organized religions and systems of laws were erected by the masters in order to control the rabble, under the guise of being beneficial for them.
If enough pressure is brought bear, the religions and laws can be brought to operate somewhat in the interest of the people. But they seem to always be ultimately controlled by the masters:
“I’m Uncle Sam, that’s who I am
Been hiding out in a rock and roll band
Shake the hand that shook the hand
of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan
Shine your shoes, light your fuse
Can you use them old U.S. Blues?
I’ll drink your health, share your wealth
Run your life, steal your wife”
or
“The masters make the rules
for the wise men
and the fools.”
This two to five percent now has the literal means of “god” at their disposal via control of the means of “creation” – i.e. the mental images and narrative that both define who we are and how we make sense of the world – as well as the seemingly godlike power of the utterly value-free modern science and technics which enables the maintenance of the value-free “economy” that we all live under.
Modern science-technology/economy-gdp growth are all-of-one. They are all value-free and unable to place “judgement” on anything. Operating in this self-imposed vaccuum is seen as the highest ideal, when in fact it is insanity raised to infinity.
Well, I can vote in California, and while Porter and Schiif and Lee are veterans of Congress, I can’t vote for someone who is older than me; Lee. There’s too much of that already in Congress. The Newsome appointee has NO general election experience; and not likely to contest for DiFi’s seat.
Both Porter and Schiff are high profile in SoCal (where a majority of the electorate lives), that’s who will contest for the seat. So far, I like Porter’s use of the whiteboard to educate the uneducated. Adam is going to have his work cut out for him. We’ll see.
There is a running thread that the Senate needs a Black woman to replace Kamala. Um, Kamala was a mistake…let Georgia elect the next Black female senator.
Love this framing (After 3 years, student loan payments are back):
In the mist of the worst Pandemic in 100 years, citizens were “let off the hook” for a moral obligation. Clearly these American should feel undying shame.
“Why Do We Forget So Many of Our Dreams?” – and why do we remember the ones we do? – and remember the ones we wish we could forget?
Am I missing context in Myth and Mending in the True West – would the email reference to “call Saul” have been more likely to be about Alinsky than the TV show?
Just one spot where the reporting didn’t seem entirely based on the person I saw in the quotes.
“Fungi Make Safer Fireproofing Material” surprised nothing from Paul Stamets in that article – he truly is the preeminent scientist about fungi – a fascinating scientist about using fungi to remediate land, help bees and lots of other stuff – spent a week in Olympia once almost 20 years ago at a seminar he gave at his Fungi Perfecti facility – he is personable, intelligent and respects the earth –
“Haley rails against lack of Ukraine aid in spending bill, pushes for spending cuts in other areas”
If there was still a real, working press around, you would have a reporter call her out in public by asking at a press interview the question ‘You have said that we need to make spending cuts in order to send more American money to the Ukraine. Can you please tell us the areas that you want to see those cuts made?’
The real answer for her of course would be social security and medicare.
Re: the grizzly antidote
The wilderness can be beautiful. It can also be dangerous. Two people and their dog were killed by a grizzly Friday in Banff National Park. From the CBC:
Merle Fox and his wife Laurie have managed Sunset Guiding and Outfitting west of Sundre [Alberta] for the last 14 years. Fox said his camp is roughly three hours west of where the attack happened by horseback.
“Well, I hate to say it, but I wasn’t really surprised,” Fox said in response to hearing about the attack.
“Bears are hungry at this time of the year and there are no berries or a thing out there for them this year.”
Fox said a late frost in spring froze off all the berry blossoms, leading to a shortage of one of bears’ main food groups. He added that faced with a vegetation shortage, grizzly bears will turn to eating deer, young elk, or wild horses instead.
“I think that’s probably why these two people were attacked, is that the bear was hungry and he saw them as an easy target.”
While he’s not too nervous traversing the area given his experience, Fox said he and his guides often head into the backcountry armed, just in case they do encounter a bear.
Sometimes though, if you are very very lucky, a grizzly will just want to take a break, chill out and watch life go by-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbE53XUtVw0 (1:25 mins)
live cam bears fishing in Alaska
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsLvnFQW_yM
Even though nobody has been killed by a bear in Cali since 1875, I go out fully armed when i’m in the backcountry, and fully legged too.
smart move W – when you say ‘armed’ assume you mean bear spray and large caliber piece –
friend who lived and fished Alaska for some time about 30 years ago would never go into the bush to fish without bear spray, a condensed air can attached to some type of a small megaphone and a 44 mag with dumdums – only had to use the megaphone a couple of times and never the piece –
Most of my traipsing is around these parts and both bear spray and weaponry are verboten in Sequoia NP.
I’ve somehow survived sans either for eons, and have never had an animal encounter where I felt any danger, only wonderment.
So, when you write ‘fully armed’, you mean…?
Do bears kill ya first, then eat ya? Or do they prefer their prey still screaming and wigglin’ and fully aware they’re being eaten live?
If there are worse ways to go… hmmmm, Husband sez maybe slowly fed into a woodchipper feet first (ala ‘Fargo’) minus the briefly enjoyed ‘circle of life’ paws before winking out from blood loss.
I’m miffed the dog died too. Probably sounded the alarm first, and then what was their plan? Was the dog supposed to save them?
I’m not anti prosthesis but prefer original factory models.
No dog will save you from a (h)angry Grizzly. One quick swipe and it’s gone!
It was state law in Alaska that one had to carry bear protection when in the woods, be it firearm or pepper spray. I remember the ranger for a national park in Alaska recommended we carry a pump 12 gauge while backpacking, and that everybody in the group know how to use it.
That was a while ago, not sure what the law is now.
That is ghastly. But the bear was still there when authorities arrived and they killed it.
This is the piece:
Couple dead after bear attack in Banff National Park, grizzly killed
I have a friend who lives in Trail BC. The first time I visited, on the way home from the airport we had to slow down to let a bear cross, this was right next to her house. I asked if she should call the authorities to report about the bear. She laughed at me and said she would have to be calling every few days if that were the case
Apparently they come down into the backyards for the food people grow. This was a year that the wildfires had destroyed much of the berry bushes.
A recession is still likely because the PTB want one, it creates churn and batters labor, both very lucrative.
Somewhat related…
https://www.lajollalight.com/news/story/2023-09-28/most-popular-scripps-health-groups-to-exit-medicare-advantage-at-end-of-year-cutting-off-32-000-patients
FTA…Scripps has long been known as a premium medical provider throughout San Diego County and generally has operated with healthy margins. But Van Gorder said Sept. 26 that the organization is currently on track to suffer its first operating loss in recent memory due to the same factors — increased labor and supply costs — that have led medical providers throughout the nation to suffer in similar ways.
“The last time we lost money from operations was probably 23, 24 years ago,” Van Gorder said
Lifting liberally, but there’s still some gems in the article besides these…
In its most recent quarterly financial report to bondholders, Scripps lists a $46 million operating loss for the nine months ended June 30 with total expenses of $3 billion and revenues of $2.9 billion.
Scripps, though, still has cash in the bank, listing $3.4 billion in unrestricted cash and investments compared with $3.3 billion for the same period in 2022.
Look! 46 of the millions, but only three of the billions! Don’t do the math, nothing to see here, move along (ok, ok…46 million is 1/65th of 3 billion…teetering on the brink, I tell ya…those damn “labor and supply costs”…)
From the U-T…
“Scripps Health chief executive Chris Van Gorder was paid more than $16 million in the three most recent years for which public information is available — a salary and benefits package that far exceeds what other San Diego area hospital officials collected, records show.”
Is he labor, or is he supply?
well it looks like Bernie is bought and paid for – sad to see this traitorous perspective – to have supported him is almost embarrassing – well he did make his millions on his book –
“I look forward to seeing Congress provide, in the very near future, financial support for Ukraine which is valiantly struggling against Russian aggression.”
Yep! Bernie wiped out his reputation as a “dissident”. I feel soiled by the fact that I supported his presidential bids. He could have stood up when it mattered, but he caved just like all the rest. What military contracts do companies in Vermont receive?
I’ll play the devil’s advocate here and posit that bernie is making sure his hat doesn’t get thrown into the ring.
“I’m just a lowly rural senator focused on my constituents”
This does prevent the dnc keeping his voters in the pen…
The other side of the coin is how stupid are the dnc for whacking him as bernie wouldn’t have led directly to socialism (for the other people,of course, socialism for the rich is ok) but is just another centrist.
@Jabura Basaidai and BillS
Don’t be too hard on yourselves. At the time you supported Sanders he was playing a very good and progressive role. Unfortunately the Democratic machine flicked him aside like a piece of filth, beat him down and he has now obviously given up.
Sad, but had he won in 2016 he might be in a very different place today. Your country too.
Agreed. Still, you’d think Sanders would have the self-awareness to just quietly vote with the Dems and keep his mouth shut. By speaking out like this, he only disgusts his former supporters to a such a degree that they’re likely to seek political refuge elsewhere.
Stop kidding yourselves. Team D made a deal with McCarthy and that is why the 45-stopgap financing for the federal government went through. Part of the deal was that McCarthy would agree to further financing for the war on Ukraine. The regime in Kiev will get all it asks for and more.
Sanders shows less self-respect than a whipped dog.
Promises are made to be broken. The instability of all things which defines our present timeline will get the last word.
Promises are made to be broken – but only sometimes. When it’s something that TPTB really cares about, then A Promise Is Something Sacred.
Perhaps. Republicans do take great enjoyment breaking promises made to Team Blue. At this point it’s hard to blame them. Besides, Wuk’s Kevin may very well decide breaking that promise is the road to travel. We shall see.
It was too much for me, that’s for sure.
Actual [family blog] Nazis.
Makes no difference.
War train just keeps chugging along.
Bernie is now my favorite uncle with whom I’m not on speaking terms.
Sanders was a sheepdog in 2016 and we were suckers to trust him again in 2020. Which just makes me wonder: Is RFKj a sheepdog? I suspect so. His campaign so far is quite well designed to sheepdog UA, covid and R-gate skeptics. The speculation in a couple of fringe media outlets last week about him considering a switch to Libertarian didn’t add up to much.
Yes.
Avoid future embarrassment and regret by covering your ears and shaking your head ’til your cheeks wobble every time you encounter someone singing RFKj’s praise, if even faintly.
It’s an awful opinion… I agree.
But… we always knew back in 2019 that Bernies opinions on Foreign Affairs were garbage. The whole point of voting for him was for his Health policies, minimum wage etc.
From a foreign affairs perspective, we’re no worse off (we’re also no better off, but…) with Bernie, but maybe public health might have been a thing again.
But every time Bernie mangles his health messages (eg if he says covid is over) he deserves condemnation.
‘A recession is still likely… and coming soon’
Well, there’s something I didn’t want to know, that Beyonce and Taylor Swift matter to ‘the largest economy in the world’, and when their concert schedule peters out, financially speaking, we’re all in even deeper doody than we were before….ffs.
We were sitting here trying to remember the last time we bought concert tickets; it might have been ‘Chicago’ and they were hard to get. Since then I thought corporations like Ticketmaster would kill live concerts… but no, apparently there is no ticket price too high, it’s just another bragging right. ‘Guess how much I paid for these tickets!?’ ‘You got tickets?!’
“Without US support, Ukraine stands no chance in war: Ukrainian MP”
Lindsay Graham will have you know that it is worse than that-
https://twitter.com/alx/status/1708550162694508815
Just logging off for the night but thought to drop an article I just now came across-
“Austria Chancellor’s solution to poor families: McDonald’s burgers’
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/mcdonalds-burgers:-austria-chancellors-solution-to-poor-fami
If the guy isn’t a WEF graduate, then he should be.
Yep, and his understanding of ‘duty of care’ is something to behold.
Antidote du jour has me reaching for the flea comb…
tooth brush too
Regulators turn up heat on shadow banks after market blow-ups FT
Rarely does the day go by when there aren’t a few inches in the pink paper about the threat of hedge funds, PE and shadow banking. There appears to be a good deal of angst in the euro ruling pluto-class over the cracks in this bloated part of the financial system. This is a good round-up of their concerns. Leave it to the English to attempt to set up a “new facility” to foam the runways for their golfer buddies.
You may recall this hilarious op-ed from last week’s FT…Dealmaking languishes at decade low on private equity drought. There was a lot of yukking-it-up on internal comments. But clearly the big-wheels gave this knucklehead free rien in order to set up an obvious straw man for further excursions into the shadows. It appears that a really serious war is shaping up among the financial elite. Normalized interest rates will do that.
Small farmers are up against California’s $1.1 billion carrot industry in a vicious fight over groundwater: ‘We are being totally overrun’ Fortune
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Water is for lying over…
…whiskey is for lying under
The complainant grows pistachios. Isn’t that too part of the water problem?
Whereas carrots are good for you. Maybe CA should start regulating according to what they are growing. Which is to say everyone who chooses to live in a state with inadequate water may be part of the problem. Of course some are a much bigger part than others.
It’s nuts, the situation. And being partial to pistachio ice cream i’ll recuse myself.
One fellow in Ridgecrest, Ca. has 1,600 acres of pistachios and has sunk the water table quite a bit so as to be practically a public nuisance in using up available groundwater, but law is on his side, yes it is.
https://www.ridgecrestca.com/news/court-of-appeal-sides-with-mojave-pistachios-and-issues-order-to-show-cause/article_cb164aba-ec42-11ed-9993-3b886f68dbeb.html
>>>This Supreme Court Term’s Grimmest Cases Share One Thing in Common Slate
The real problem is the extreme wealth disparity and the grotesque corruption in this country of ours in addition to the disappearance of common sense, competency, and attachment to reality.
Re The Messenger on MIchelle–the author says Michelle won’t run because she’s making too much money selling her “be all you can be” lifestyle advice. However the article tiptoes around the other consideration which is that she has utterly no qualifications for the job. Even her husband had some sort of brief political career before running. Meanwhile Michelle is so blandly apolitical that she hugged Dubya on the excuse that he’s a fellow “presidential.”
So she would be running for the “presidential” party. Whoopee.
Which is not to say in the age of “all about the PR” a high celebrity Q score won’t tempt the ever superficial Dems. Let’s hope it doesn’t.
Lambert will love this, from Iowa COVID-19 Tracker: “Data from Biobot are lagging badly for all sewersheds. There are no datapoints after 9/14/2023”
So much for data of any kind anymore.
I wonder how long people will say the sky is purple until I start to believe? Is it really collective insanity if nearly everyone accepts the premise, regardless of whether it is true? I guess I’m lucky that I’m not suicidal, because this country is completely broken. I’ve had to settle for a persistent sadness instead.
I’m afraid I predicted this. As soon as biobot.net got a CDC grant, it stopped faithfully chronicling wastewater data.
https://biobot.io/a-review-of-biobots-successful-partnership-with-hhs-and-cdc/
What they cannot threaten, they will bribe instead?
First rule of management: what you don’t measure you don’t need to manage.
The best example that comes to mind is the botched 2011 Statistics Canada “Census” performed as per the order of then PM Stephen Harper (Oh, Canada!). The Chief Statistician resigned… It was called the National Houshold Survey…
Is it not brilliant that the winners of the Novel Physiology prize, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, for their contributions to the development of the mRNA vaccine, accepted their prizes wearing masks?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/health/nobel-prize-medicine.html
priceless
Not that I am accusing the relevant Nobel Prize committee of being politicized – I know that is just paranoia on my part – but that NY Times article is pretty interesting. The two were awarded the prize based on their discovery of a chemical modification that allowed mRNA to be absorbed by cells without being destroyed by an immune system reaction. But based on the article, they won because their discovery made possible the rapid development of the “strikingly effective vaccines made by Moderna and by BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to produce its vaccines.” The focus of the article is on the vaccines and the “tens of millions of deaths” averted because of them.
Of course early in the piece we get this warning: “The slow and methodical research that made the Covid shots possible has now run up against a powerful anti-vaccine movement, especially in the United States. Skeptics have seized in part on the vaccines’ rapid development — among the most impressive feats of modern medical science — to undermine the public’s trust in them.” But we are assured that “the breakthroughs behind the shots unfolded little by little over decades, including at the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Weissman runs a lab.”
Now I’m no physiologist, so I welcome any correction to my naive understanding. But it seems to me that we can separate as research issues (1) the chemical mechanism developed by Kariko and Weissman for repressing immune reaction to mRNA, and (2) the “rapid development” of COVID mRNA spike protein vaccines that utilize this mechanism. The questions and controversies concern the latter, not the former. Yet it sure seems like these two researchers are Nobel recipients because of the Miracle of the Vaccines. So, by extension, this seems to me to be a way to award the Nobel Prize for the Vaccines without actually having to give it directly to Big Pharma. Am I just being a paranoid conspiracy theorist again here?
There are some other noteworthy elements in this article, such as the story of Kariko’s research being long ignored by the scientific Establishment, with the strong hint of gender prejudice playing a role. But I’ll leave it here for now. Perhaps at this point I’m just too jaded and cynical to believe in anything anymore – like Nobel Prizes being awarded for pure achievement.
EFF on online safety bill
The article mentions Section 230 and in this talk Max Blumenthal has some things to say about it.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/29/max-blumenthal-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-for-the-internet/
To wit this 90s Congressional provision both lets social media off the hook for irresponsible content (example: how to steal a KIA) and at the same time lets them censor when they want since they are supposedly private companies with “free speech.” It’s a no lose setup for Facebook etc–and EFF is defending them along with all the small sites that need protection–but may need a rethink when government itself is un-Constitutionally pushing censorship.
Blumenthal says 230 gave birth to the social media behemoth that has changed the internet.
Tom Brady was paid $55 million for doing about a week’s worth of work total over a three-year period by disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a bestselling author.
Michael Lewis, who wrote “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the former FTX head Bankman-Fried, whose federal trial on fraud and money laundering charges is set to begin in Manhattan on Tuesday, splurged on endorsements from Brady, Stephen Curry, and Larry David.
Curry, the Golden State Warriors basketball superstar, was paid $35 million for doing the same amount of work, according to Lewis.
The author also noted that Bankman-Fried paid actor-comedian Larry David $10 million to appear in a Super Bowl commercial for FTX — on top of the $25 million sum that it cost to produce the ad, which happened to include a cameo by Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman. (NY Post)
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S B-F was Santa Claus doling out the Benjamins!
He reminds me of Bruce McNall in his over the top generosity, an old school grifter who owned the LA Kings, a top rated horse racing stable and movie studio, among various trophies.
Also notable in the 60 Minutes interview was the fact that SBF was considering whether to pay Trump $5 billion to not run for president.
The whole SBF/Effective Altruism/crypto saga suggests that people with quantifiable brilliance also tend to be Daffy Duck loony when given the means to try to change or better the world. Hence the billionaire race to Mars, electric cars, AI and similar nuisances inflicted on the rest of us.
These geniuses might be useful, however, if kept on a short leash by squads of us possessed of ordinary intelligence and a good measure of true Christian humility.
Wasn’t it Jesus who said, The laborer is worth his wage? Thanks for nothing, Jesus.
> Why Do We Forget So Many of Our Dreams? Scientific American
If my dreams were committed to memory like my waking experiences then I’d be even less able to discern reality than I am now. I’d have to spend most of my contemplative waking and dreaming time sorting out what’s what. It’d be terrible.
Re: Haiti
Thanks for the link! Haiti is the touchstone of ‘social justice’.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:40-45&version=NIV;KJV
Oh, Haiti,
It took them over 150 years to pay their “debt” to France…