Giant Pyramid Buried in Indonesia Could Be The Oldest in The World ScienceAlert (Chuck L)
Did the same collision that formed the moon create mysterious blobs inside Earth? CNN (furzy)
EPA restarts assessment of health risks from nitrate in water The New Lede
The genetic heritage of the Denisovans may have left its mark on our mental health EurekaAlert (Chuck L)
Common dietary nutrient blasts blood vessel plaques in study New Atlas (furzy)
The Happiest Man in the World Nautilus (Micael T)
Climate/Environment
When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics Intercept (Micael T)
The scientist who warned the US about climate change says it’s worse than we thought. Again. Grist (David L)
Trouble looming? North Korea to raise tourism prices and move to the US dollar Eastern Angle (Micael T)
China?
The Philippines are going full Ukraine. Welcoming new US military bases, pulling out of the BRI, provoking China in the South China Sea and now allowing Japanese troops on their soil.
Quite a reckless strategy, can't quite see how it benefits the country… https://t.co/0GwfxRsFP0
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 4, 2023
India
India, its domestic and geopolitical challenges – an overview CADTM (Micael T)
European Disunion
Temporarily closed – when the fight for daily bread is lost Nachdenkseiten (Micael T, via machine translation)
Gaza
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 28: Hezbollah leader warns Gaza attack must end to avoid regional war and ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 27: Biden calls for ‘pause’ for first time since fighting began Mondoweiss
Nazrallah Speech On Gaza Moon of Alabama (Kevin W). A lot of saber-rattling but the immediate asks are for economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
Live: Israel’s Netanyahu refuses ‘temporary truce’ in Gaza without hostage release France24
Israel admits airstrike on Gaza ambulance that witnesses say killed and wounded dozens 9News. Kevin W: “They targeted ambulances in Lebanon in 2006 too.”
More children killed in Gaza in three weeks of Israeli bombing than all the world’s conflicts annually Defend Democracy (Micael T)
No privacy, no water: Gaza women use period-delaying pills amid Israel war Aljazeera
* * * What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7 Jonathan Cook (Chuck L)
* * * Wow. Joy Ann Reid really might’ve just dealt a backbreaker to the empire’s propaganda machine. Making this statement during prime time news is massive. https://t.co/J4K7mC9S9Y
— 🇵🇸 #FreePalestine #FreeGaza 🇵🇸 (@realnikohouse) November 3, 2023
“You can’t behold evil and then return and not speak on it.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about how an experience in Palestine illuminated the connections between the African American and Palestinian liberation struggles, and the moral responsibility to speak out. pic.twitter.com/y0HrXibUJz
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 2, 2023
California Protesters Block Military Ship From Leaving for Israel Newsweek (ma)
Students stage walkout of Hillary Clinton’s college class Light Wave Reports (ma)
The Math of Murder Dennis Kucinich (UserFriendly)
* * * Jews Unlearning #Zionism is my absolute favorite genre on TikTok
Incredible transformation #Israel#Gaza pic.twitter.com/OAmQnfmUAI
— Abier (@abierkhatib) November 2, 2023
Israel's ministers, parliamentarians, generals, president, & prime minister have all said stuff about Gaza that *sounds* genocidal to a lot of experts on genocide.
I laid out the evidence on the @MehdiHasanShow.
Israeli officials, in their own words:pic.twitter.com/TTFQyloJLb
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 2, 2023
A fascinating aspect of the discourse on anti-Semitism right now is that acts like these never seem to be the focus of the New York Post or the ADL. No one will be asked to condemn this. https://t.co/4PK5LtS2O6
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) November 2, 2023
According to The Israel Democracy Institute, %83.4 of Israeli Jews don’t think that “Israel should take into consideration the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza.” pic.twitter.com/DE61jMvq6j
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) October 30, 2023
* * * U.S. Drones Are Flying Over Gaza to Aid in Hostage Recovery, Officials Say New York Times (furzy). If you think this is the main reason drones are there, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. furzy adds: FWIW, Reuters and all the other media are presenting the same story, with the NYT timeline being the earliest. The Hindustan Times points out that the MQ-9 aircraft is known for airstrikes and gathering intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI3rPQOrJnI
Between Iraq and a hard place: Sudani’s US dilemma over Gaza The Cradle (Chuck L)
Who needs the EU’s ‘irrelevant’ Gaza peace plan? The EU does, of course Politico
The House just passed 354 – 53 a resolution that could be read as effectively authorizing war with Iran. "All means necessary" would have to include military means… correct?
Naturally, it also declares support for Israel waging war on Iran
The new Speaker is really on a roll! pic.twitter.com/qDPfVu21eD
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 2, 2023
* * * There’s No Lesser Evil, or Even a Slower Collapse Jessica Wildfire (Dr. Kevin). I doubt this thesis. The Iraq War was touted as being about Iraq’s then second-biggest-in-the-world proven oil reserves, and that consisted of highly prized light sweet crude. And why have Israel and the US been entirely reactive if there were a plan to go in? In the end the US has largely punted on doing anything about that, notably the needed development. And a friend who comes from a wealthy and connected Lebanese family in the refining biz says the Palestine claims are contested, that it’s based on a legally dubious drawing of the offshore map.
Russian ordered daubing of Stars of David in France: report Politico. BC:
Huh? So let me get this straight. A “foreign Moldovan couple”, whose names have not been released, have stated that they did it because “someone from Russia told them to”. BUT, “charges have been dropped because they are probably going to be deported anyway”. Makes perfect sense.
New Not-So-Cold War
Massive Russian drone attack hits Ukraine infrastructure Politico
EU has lost $1.5 trillion over Russia sanctions – Moscow RT (Kevin W)
Poland at risk of direct confrontation with Russia, Belarus — Medvedev TASS (guurst)
Imperial Collapse Watch
House approves nearly $14.5 billion in military aid for Israel. Biden vows to veto the GOP approach Associated Press (Kevin W)
War, Terrorism and the Global Economic Crisis. Ninety-nine Interrelated Concepts Michel Chossudovsky (Micael T)
A ‘No Daylight’ Policy with Clients Always Fails Daniel Larison
Trump
Trump Fraud Trial: Ex-President’s Attorney May Ask For Mistrial After Arguing Over Law Clerk Forbes (furzy)
That’s Just the Way It Is Mary L Trump (furzy)
Biden
Job market slowdown looms over Biden reelection bid The Hill
Democrats en déshabillé
U.S. Investigating Whether Adams Received Illegal Donations From Turkey New York Times
GOP Clown Car
Johnson’s strident LGBTQ views put advocates on alert The Hill
Marjorie Taylor Greene Gets Shocking History Lesson on House Floor New Republic (furzy)
Our No Longer Free Press
The game theory critique of free speech absolutism wins again Carl Beijer
Dao Prize Acceptance Speech Matt Taibbi (Chuck L)
Gunz
US teacher shot by 6-year-old can proceed with $60 million lawsuit, judge rules 9News (Kevin W)
AI
‘I love you’: This robot adopts AI to curb senior citizens’ crushing loneliness ZDNET (Dr. Kevin)
Artists May ‘Poison’ AI Models Before Copyright Office Can Issue Guidance ars technica
The Outsized Impact Oil Price Shocks Have on the Economy Douglad Lamont (Micael T)
The Bezzle
Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of fraud over FTX collapse Financial Times. I knew you could stick a fork in SBF when it was revealed a former Salomon Brothers investment banker older than me was a member of the jury. If there were any doubts (and the super speedy verdict on 7 counts says there were none) that SBF was a nerd poseur con artist, someone like that by virtue of training (persuading clients w/o looking like muscling them) and experience (being imprinted on Wall Street on the law and appearance-fearing side of the industry when SEC enforcement was reported as literally giving heart attacks and “whatever you can get away with” traders did not yet dominate the industry) would clear up any misgivings as to what SBF was about.
Tweet of the day:
In the end, the only person SBF could fool was Michael Lewis https://t.co/yhE0xV9CcS
— Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) November 3, 2023
Class Warfare
Uber and Lyft to Pay New York Drivers $328 Million Following AG Wage Theft Probe The City
Antidote du jour (Tracie H):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
169 comments
Comments are closed.
Climate change worse than thought–
As an addition to the Linked article, here’s a podcast hosted by Jeffrey Sachs, wherein Hansen and his team lay out their argument. Quite sobering. 1.5 degrees is “deader than a doornail,” and 2 degrees is “on its deathbed.” We’re headed over 4 degrees according to Hansen. Only Nordhaus is pleased.
And here’s a link to a video presentation by Steve Keen on the need to integrate thermodynamics into economics in order to understand the impacts of climate change.
I watched the video/podcast you linked. Compared with reading one of Hansen’s Communications https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/ watching this video/podcast was genuinely excruciating. Hansen must have the patience of Job. The politics of climate science are truly beyond the pale. Watching this video, I concluded NASA climate data collection and Hansen et al. should be alarmed that their budget lines will soon become ‘unfortunate’ cutbacks as the government embraces austerity to help pay for the DoD budget and our manifold and growing foreign wars. NASA and Hansen beware! I believe this lesson is evident from the government response to the Corona pandemic. Expect that data collection and analysis must be extinguished.
The conclusions I reached after watching the video you linked:
I believe the IPCC has become, perhaps always was, and is, a dangerous political tool — and little more. Climate scientists are horrible champions for their case. Humankind is in for a very rough ride into the future. A couple of riffs in the video echo in my memory — young people need to understand what they are being handed for their future … there is massive political failure …
I believe the u.s. government is not ‘our’ government. The u.s. government has very little concern for the general Welfare of the American people. The u.s. government is concerned for the general welfare of the Corporate People — the court defined and created Corporate persons. The first amendment as interpreted by the supreme court clearly states that money talks.
The Hansen et al. and now reviewed Hansen et al. paper discussed in this Grist link was released unreviewed, more than a year ago. I believe the most interesting study of this work might result from comparing the pre-review paper with the reviewed and now published version of the paper.
I also vaguely recall some unsavory ties deprecating Grist as a source — based upon watching “Planet of the Humans” — which is now on my list of entertainments for this evening.
As for the economics of climate change — it is time to ask what amount of CO2 emission will there be once the Fossil Fuels play out as they probably will some time this Century. Then ask what climate consequences are most likely given that level of CO2 and what should we do to adapt. This of course would ignore other unknown effects that might become better known in the future.
It’s a surprisingly good article outlining the sheer stupidity of Nordhaus. The fact that his analysis was treated seriously by economists says everything you need to know about the state of economics today.
It also benefits the people in charge, as they now have an excuse to do nothing and keep raking in the cash.
Economics is a modern day religion, providing rationalizations and indulgences for the depravities of the rich.
Decades ago my father used to be friends with an economic analyst for TVA named David Patterson. My memory is that the Patterson family were social justice Catholics in what decades later I came to learn might be a Dorothy Day-adjacent tradition.
Anyway, Dave Patterson once said to my father . . . . ” Economics is ultimately a branch of Moral Philosophy”.
Separately, I read once where a one-time president of the Sierra Club named Dave Brower once said . . . ” Economics is a form of brain damage”.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/04/economics-is-a-form-of-brain-damage.php
Putting the two together, perhaps we can say that ” Mainstream BrainDamage Economics is a form of Immoral Philosophy”.
People, even economists, think linearly. Unfortunately, climate change is exponential.
‘Gaza’
At the risk of threadjacking – Came across an RT article the other day which made me think. In 265 days from now we will see the opening ceremony for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. So the question arises – will Israel march out under their own flag or the flag of the Israel Olympic Committee? The IOC has already said that they are ‘committed to the concept of individual responsibility and athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments’ and if anything happens, the IOC will ‘ensure that swift action is taken, as during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.’ I’m sure that both Russia and Belorus will be glad to hear that one. IOC President Thomas Bach said that Russian and Belarusian athletes could be allowed to compete in Paris – under a neutral flag – if they ‘do not support the war and are not linked to the military, or to other services’ in their countries. So what about Israeli athletes, especially if they are in their military? There is no way that this war will be over by Christmas but will spill over into next year so you can bet that there will be all sorts of blowback for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Well lets think about this calmly and rationally. Didn’t the Olympics originate in Greece? If that is the case, probably the first question to be asked would be: Is Greece part of The Garden or it is The Jungle? To get this answer, perhaps Joseph Borell can establish a Committee to determine this. Doing so would after all be a truly diplomatic follow up to usual brilliant diplomatic garden/jungle skills. If Greece is not in The Garden, it would seem The Olympics might be a heritage of Jungle Mankind. In which case, wouldn’t it be best for Europe and The West to exit the jungle ritual or even to end the Olympics and eradicate it from humanity?
On the other hand, if we do get rid of it. an opportunity to insult Russia and rub her nose would be lost.
The Olympics is a huge waste of time and money. The rich countries use it to beat their chests. Get rid of it.
I have not talked to anyone here in France or especially Parisians who wanted these Olympics. Most people think that it’s going to be at best an organizational s—show (transportation is a mess) and at worst, some kind of terror incident will occur. All the politics around it, and the critical mass of street resentments and the unleashed police forces make me very worried. I hope we scrape through and it just goes ok.
Don’t suggest that if you are ever in France. You can now get a 2-year prison sentence for badmouthing Israel!
In Germany you can get arrested and fined for wearing a Palestinian kefiyah headdress. This must be all part of those European values that they keep on telling me about.
These are European values(tm).
Just now the mask is off.
In Germany you can get arrested and fined for wearing a Palestinian kefiyah headdress.
You mean the one that the King of Saudi Arabia and his son Mohammad bin Salman wear? Oh dear.
I believe the Palestinian kefiyah has particular patterns.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrEm5p59UdlJ0AsZx1XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=palestinian+keffiyeh+patterns+image&fr=sfp
Whereas Jordanian kefiyah has other different patterns.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrEs.iw9Udldv8rs2lXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=jordanian+keffiyeh+pattern+image&fr=sfp
And Saudi Arabian kefiyah is sometimes white without patterns at all. Sometimes.
I suppose if the KSA government were nervy enough, it could send people to Germany wearing obviously not-Palestinian kefiyahs and see if the GermanGov is smart enough to train the German police on the difference.
When it comes to Israel / Palestine, Germany law as presently interpreted does not permit public dissent from government-prescribed doctrine.
https://www.theleftberlin.com/germany-a-democracy-crushing-palestinian-dissent-g/
The established parties and institutions like to beat up on the AfD as a supposed authoritarian threat, overlooking how authoritarian they themselves have become on key issues like foreign policy, surveillance, censorship, and war and peace.
So, Goebbels, Strasser, et. al. won after all!
You know, if “He” ever came back again, would the present regime try to stop him or try to co-op him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2aNRYL0nq8 (1:51 mins)
Depends on whose side he was on.
Europolitcians woruld enable thrm and make excuses for them, depending.
Dust off the Haavara Agreement, and he’s just what Zelensky’s looking for.
Same kind of belief in victory, would certainly get support from US/UK.
Wehrmacht ain’t what it used to be though.
♫ The old gray Heer
She ain’t what she used to be
Many long years ago
Heer being the German word for “army”…
Of course, now Germany’s social-democrat defense minister Boris Pistorius is singing a different tune:
♫ Build me a brand new Heer
strong, dutiful Heer
shining, beaming, teeming flaxen Saxons
ocean and ground and air
Cold War strength or stronger (Heer!)
here baby, there mama
no more “Are we the baddies?”
Heer, Heer, Heer, Heer
Heer, Heer, Heer
squeein’, oui-in’
strong and World War Three-in’
our Heer
Jesus or Hitler?
If it was Jesus, they couldn’t nail him to a cross fast enough. Can you imagine him sitting with the Pope and a copy of the New Testament? He’d have a marker and would be crossing out stuff and putting question marks over other sections while muttering ‘Couldn’t those damn fools remember anything right?’
“I told ’em never to scrimp on scribes, but did they listen? Oh nooo, they went and found some strangers, Silk Road types from Sindh, they said, who’ll do it for a whole lot less…”
Eurovision too.
And yet in the ancient Olympics, the contestants were considered under the protection of the G–s and thus “sacred.” Their other opinions and actions outside of the Games were irrelevant.
We seem to have gone backwards here.
Matt O’Brien tweet not true. He fooled a lot of our insiders giving smally to Republicans and bigly to the Democrats, Biden‘s biggest donor/investor 。
I’ll bet a hundred bucks he didn’t read Lewis’s book.
And I would hardly think Biden was “fooled”. He’s proven he’ll take money any way he can get it. And he has all the media on his side to hide the fact.
If Biden didn’t know, it’s only because he didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I have a connection to a pretty high ranking member of the Democrat House leadership, also a member of the DCCC – the Democrat fundraising committee. I asked them about SBF a year ago and was told by this person that they saw SBF around DC from time to time but didn’t really know much about them. This person is also very financially and legally savvy and I didn’t believe that claim for one second.
also all the wall street analysts drooling over the geek: “i love this founder”, wrote one of these masters of the universe. here’s just one link of many coughed up by the search engine.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/11/12/the-devil-in-nerds-clothes-how-sam-bankman-frieds-cult-of-genius-fooled-everyone/
o’brien appears to have memory-holed this dim fact ….
here’s another example https://twitter.com/alifarhat79/status/1720238471564906807
Re: EPA and nitrates in water
Florida isn’t mentioned in the article linked here. However we often stayed at a family cottage on the beautiful, clear Rainbow River in Dunnellon FL. After family members became ill at various times — seriously ill with antibiotic resistant bacterial infections (Pseudomonas), as well as bladder and prostate cancers, I began doing open source research (as in Google). There is much more available online by Florida researchers, especially about the “urban Karst groundwater system” that ‘serves’ millions of people.
https://floridaspringsinstitute.org/the-next-fatality-in-floridas-springs-pandemic/
The following appears to be the link to the ‘Danish study’ referenced in the Links story:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36249267/
Per the following, increases in nitrate seems to be pervasive in the Floridan aquifer, with Marion County the worst hit, having nitrate concentrations on the ofder of 10 ppm:
https://www.ocala.com/story/opinion/columns/more-voices/2018/11/11/bob-knight-too-polluted-to-drink/8405296007/
That must have put the wind up you to learn all that as it would have me. I suppose that if you and you family go back to that cottage on the Rainbow River, that you will have to take in all your water, not only for drinking but for cooking as well. Maybe even for washing your hands. And no going in the river. Damn woman, it sounds like a Hot Zone there.
Bari Weiss making two appearances this morning, winning an award for investigative journalism, and also engaging in her favorite pastime: Cancel Culture! Oh, the irony.
Bari Weiss is a Bibi toady and no mistake.
Don’t worry about her complaining, she doesn’t know what a toady is, despite liberally throwing the word around to describe anyone defending Assad.
You know things have gone terribly wrong in your life when Joe Rogan makes you look dumb.
Turley has been making a big deal out of professors tearing down posters of Hamas hostages (presumably plastered onto University property by Habara inc.) and how this violates free speech in his view. But if someone posted pictures of dead Gaza children the college administration would suddenly discover that Post No Bills is their policy and take them down and Turley, one guesses, would say nothing. I can’t recall him ever discussing the anti-BDS laws which are unconstitutional attacks on free speech.
Which is to say there’s more to defending free speech than the quip that the answer to disfavored speech is more speech. After all some people possess much bigger megaphones than others. There’s censorship and then there’s simply the more subtle act of making sure opposing views never get aired in the first place.
It’s good that Turley has been making the legal case to defend our American tradition of free speech. But at the end of the day conservatives like him and Weiss are mostly defending their own political side.
I have been listening to Judge Napolitano, Colonel McGregor, and the Alexes at the Duran condemn Biden for his Israel policy and wondering if they will ever get around to mentioning the Trump/Kushner years. So far, nothing. Also nothing on Trump’s latest threats to eliminate Hamas.
Just a few days ago I did hear Napolitano dis Trump for pushing the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but I don’t have the link immediately to hand. If I find it I’ll post it.
Interesting, if so far solitary, example.Thanks. I’ll take your word for it.
>Also nothing on Trump’s latest threats to
>eliminate Hamas.
The right-wing nutcases I encounter while rucking (training for the Camino) are openly in favor of genocide. Multiple if fact if you allow them to speak uninterrupted.
> I can’t recall him ever discussing the anti-BDS laws which are unconstitutional attacks on free speech.
If you’ll pardon the suggestion, I would say your memory is failing you there. Big time. Perhaps you’ve momentarily confused Jonathan Turley with someone else?
https://dailymassmeditation.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/jonathan-turley-stephen-hawking-joins-academic-boycott-of-israel/
https://jonathanturley.org/2013/12/17/major-u-s-academic-group-joins-boycott-of-israel/
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/10/16/kansas-teacher-barred-from-employment-due-to-her-support-for-boycott-movement/
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/10/23/houston-area-residents-told-to-certify-that-they-do-not-support-boycotting-israel-as-pre-condition-for-hurricane-relief/
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/04/12/the-u-s-bars-entry-to-founder-of-the-bds-movement/
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/30/trump-administration-moves-to-bar-any-group-supporting-a-boycott-of-israel/
Fair enough. But I’ve only been reading his column for a couple of years now and all of your links are from years ago. So I’ll defend my “memory” for now.
Wasn’t Bari Weiss the creative inspiration for the term “smugnorant?”
Dang! Gotta say I’d pay big money to see bari weiss and joy reid debate this israel / Palestine issue.
Here’s a longer version of reid’s read (2 minutes) and, while I hate to say it, I can’t find anything to disagree with her on. What in the world is going on at msnbc / peacock? Weird cracks appear to be forming.
Meanwhile, over at Clusterfuck Nation, James Howard Kunstler postulates that the involvement of american jews in the fight for civil rights, an endeavor that seems to have been far more successful for the jews than the blacks over the decades, could have something to do with the loss of “liberal” lockstep.
“Conservative” msm-ers like newsmax, on the other hand, are all in for israel and rabidly so IMNSHO.
Like I said, weird cracks….
Said in a comment a coupla years ago that although James Howard Kunstler can do good analytical work, as soon as it is about Israel or American blacks it all flies out the window. This article still does not change my mind. He does not understand that people are beginning to hate Israel not for who they are but for what they are doing. Big difference.
I’ve dropped Kunstler from my RSS. For all his ranting about Biden at the end of the day it seems he and Joe share some similar views.
Meanwhile just reading this talk between Robert Scheer and Juan Cole who is an expert on the region and the history of the current situation. Sampler:
https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/03/palestines-obituary/
And there it is. It’s all about power–who has it and who doesn’t. And arguably it was always about that and making a religion into a nation was justified as giving them the power to, yes, protect themselves but also become players in ways they never were before. It’s this power aspect of the dispute that is taking everything down a very bad road.
This interview with Juan Cole looks good; I’m reading it now. But I was struck by this quote from Cole in the Introduction to the interview where he is describing Netanyahu’s government:
“[H]e brought into his government, when he came back to power late last year, the most extreme, I mean, this is beyond fascism, the most extreme parties in Israel. The religious Zionists and the Jewish power. I mean, these people are terrorists and some of them actually have been on the State Department terrorism watch list, not allowed in the United States in the past. And he brought them into the cabinet. He made one of these guys the minister of national security, put the other in the finance ministry and then gave him responsibilities as a civilian for overseeing the Palestinian West Bank. And both of these ministers who are extremists were also squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank and wanted to steal the rest of it to bring in more settlers.”
What struck me was how completely applicable this description would be to the Poroshenko/Zelensky governments in Ukraine; just change a few names. And how oblivious the Joy Reids and Amy Goodmans of the world seem to be to these parallels. Weird cracks for sure.
There aren’t enough ethnic Russian eastern Ukrainians in the US/West to get the apartheid nature of eastern Ukraine between the 2014 coup and the SMO into the mainstream, or even close to it.
The information has all been in the open, but you have to look for it, it increasingly won’t show up in search.
Existence of large Arab communities, some in Michigan with actual Congressional representation helps with the Palestinian story.
As for the Ukraine, the ultra-Nationalists have made it clear that they want to ethnically cleanse the people from the Donbass and Crimea as well of any ethnic Russians. And if it turns out that all those ultra-Nationalists get big chunks of that now vacant land for themselves, well, it is only a reward for all their good work and fighting.
I stopped reading Kunstler years ago. He has long been a One Shtick Phony.
Personal memory case in point . . . my brother lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. So I go there on visits. The street called Broadway is where the humongous mansions of the Old Rich live. Kunstler has long condemned ugly, out of place architecture.
But some New Rich person bought an Old Rich mansion and tore it down and built a Huge McMegaMansion-From-Hell on the site. Ugly ugly ugly hideous. And people in the area told me that Kunstler has cozied up to the McMegaMansioneer and praised the appearance of the ugly ugly ugly building.
Joy Reid on MSNBC! Ta-Nehisi Coates on Democracy Now! Hell, even Wolf f’n Blitzer on CNN! Definitely some cracks in the massive propaganda edifice.
Of course lip-service toward the Palestinian cause has always been acceptable among liberals. But the blatant genocide has made the narrative impossible to control. Warmongers are suddenly peaceniks. And vice versa, as you point out.
I’ve noticed NBC Nightly News giving more and more coverage to the Gazan slaughter. Will this have any effect?
Months from now those despicable media entities will have “special reports” from the Gaza wasteland. They will ask “how did this happen?” and there will be talking heads emoting the “tragedy” of so many who “died” (not “killed”) with “both sides to blame”. Some State Dept BS artist will assert evidence-free that “we are working to bring peace”. The dead will remain silent. “Never again” was said, but has.
My local congressperson, too junior in the DP to have any impact whatsoever, was excited that Joe was working hard to ask Egypt to open its border and for aid trucks (a few dozen) to get through. BFD, I turned her off after that response to another in the phone queue whose question was similar to what I was planning to ask.
Kunstler says current hostility is all about jealousy which is like George W. Bush saying “they hate us for our freedoms.” So he’s like Bush as well as Biden–what a combo.
Just to inject my very humble two cents: success and power are not the equivalent of virtue or even intelligence. But they can afford plenty of PR.
The crux of the problem is that nation states have been terminated and the world is run by those with power, the neo-liberal wealthy. To keep the neo-colonies in line they have had to revert to good old fashion tribalism, de-secularizing governments across the world. Ethnic hatreds are escalating WWIII — All to increase corporate war profiteering.
Along with tossing away nuclear safeguards with Russia, the greed is so persuasive, that common sense, working, good government has vanished. As a result, the chance for a decent future for mankind on earth with peace and a clean healthy environment is gone.
Damn straight. Weiss was all in favor of canceling, until she got on the receiving end and decided that she didn’t like that so much.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene Gets Shocking History Lesson on House Floor”
I can guess what got Marjorie Taylor Greene so riled up about Robert E. Lee. Last weekend they finally melted down the Charlottesville statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee at a foundry. But then they turned the whole event into a party and had a whole bunch of activists there to watch it being destroyed rather then just have it done on the quite-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/26/charlottesville-robert-e-lee-melted-confederate-statue
The melted down brass will be used to make a new statue with that will not offend any people at all. But MTG should seriously pick up a history book every now and then.
It’s always amazed me how the great financial meltdown in 2008-2009 led the pols to decry ra*ism instead of focusing on banker malfeasance. …and they’re still doing it. Welcome to woke.
Remember Hills’ famous 2016 campaign line,
“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow,” would that end racism?”
So… in order to end rscm we have to leave the big banks alone??? It doesn’t make any sense but there it is. Heaven forbid any serious dem candidate talk about economics for the 99%. /;)
whoa! The Philippines is provoking China in the South China Sea? Instead of the other way around? Well, that’s one way to look at it… I suppose. If you accept China’s claim based on some ancient trading claims and some new dash line claims found illegal a few years ago. Sounds like China is doing an Isr thing. / ;)
Well I guess it worked out so well for Armenia provoking bigger powers, oh, wait…
The question in the South China Sea is who is provoking who? / ;)
I don’t think that China really believes that nine dash line themselves but it is important that they say they do. Check out a map of this part of the world and you will see what is going on. By the Chinese having these bases and claims in the South China seas, it has forced the US and many other countries to mount patrols and send ships there on Freedom of Navigation exercises. All the western effort is concentrated on this area like somebody shining a laser dot to get a cat chasing it.
Now let us suppose that the Chinese never did this. What would happen then? All those planes and ships would be patrolling off the Chinese coastline and you would have western ships constantly doing Freedom of Navigation exercises in the Taiwan straights. And this means that you are one mistake away from an active shooting war over the Chinese coastline that could end up in a regional war. So for my two bits, better to have it all go down in the South China seas where any trouble can be isolated.
It’s somewhat less simple. The Spratlys are a favored area for several nations to run the same routine as the Chinese, putting installations on tiny dots in the archipelago and basing extended claims on them. The Vietnamese have been the most aggressive about this, but the Philippines and others have done their share. The accelerated Chinese activity in more recent years has partly been a matter of making up for lost time.
If you look at a map of claims on the sea lanes in the area, it’s readily apparent that most of the players have their own equivalents of the Chinese line, They overlap and conflict to a large extent, but any analysis that treats the Chinese version as somehow unique misses the boat pretty badly.
They’re all “provoking” each other, and have been for quite some time. Realistically, the question for the Philippines is how much reliance can be placed on promises by a somewhat overextended United States to “have their backs” should the game of chicken go amiss.
Isn’t Albanese meeting with Xi this weekend?
Albo must have worked out that since China isn’t going anywhere much less away, that he will have to chase after them for trade deals, especially since the potential trade deal with the EU just went down the flusher. I will have to watch how he is received and whether when he leaves that he has to carry his own bag through security or not.
I thought that perhaps ‘the Philippines’ were warning Albo not to travel by boat…
Fortunately for Albo, as he is the Prime Minister he gets to fly in big planes. No small planes for him nor is he foolish enough to take any lonely swims-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt#Disappearance
Thank for this. A prior warning I hadn’t noted!
If China can claim de facto ownership of one of the most heavily used sea lanes in the world, the US can go back to the Philippines after leaving it only 30 years ago. heh. / ;)
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2023/02/08/a-return-to-the-philippines/
Yes, thats a stupid comment by Bertrand. Actually, I’d say borderline racist as he seems incapable of recognising that countries like the Philippines have their own agency and their own interests to pursue. China has been pushing hard at the seas around PH for many years including regular harassment of Filipino fishermen. There have been many times over the past few years that PH would willingly have gone neutral or pro-China, but an unwillingness by China to recognise Philippines as an equal player in the region has pushed the country into the general anti-china alliance. Sometimes the clumsiness of Chinese diplomacy is very bit of a match for the US.
There is a reason why every one of China’s neighbors is wary of China. This is a tricky balancing act: they want to push back when possible, but they don’t want (if their leaders are clever enough) to be the next Ukraine (try too hard to antagonize China on behalf of US and suffer needless wrath). US “diplomacy” in the region is not making their choices easy, IMHO. (Eg Vietnam has serious territorial disputes with China, or rather both “China’s,”(since the Paracells and Spratleys are claimed by both PRC and ROC, technically), but they surely don’t want to fight China for sake of US’ global power play with those islands as the nominal excuse ))
Peter Lee (China Hand) had an article about what is happening there a week ago. And it looks that the current “clan” ruling Philippines is just pro-US and has ideas to make Phlppns a bigger power/player. Sort of like Ukraine.
China hasn’t done in fact much to stir the pot. But is paywalled. I give 1 CAD per article, worth to money and it has entertainment value:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/tthe-philippines-91914903
Biden and his State Department and National Security minions (or is Biden the Minion?) went all in on lecturing China in March 2021. They went all in, full speed ahead, on Ukraine. They went all in on Israel-Hamas.
In March 2021 Wang Yi left Anchorage and met Lavrov in Guilin. Love to have a read out of that conversation. Is it fair to draw a direct line from then to now in Russia-China relations?
The “Ukraine Project”: The ruble is not rubble. Mr. Putin is still president. Ukraine is destroyed with a vast loss of life. “Waist deep in the big muddy” etc. etc.
Israel-Hamas: Biden et al are supporting ethnic cleansing and genocide. Biden et al are permitting a client state to dictate policy … or so it appears.
I look at just these three egregious errors and wonder why these … people … have not been tossed out on their ears for their reckless, short sighted, and heartless actions. But I suppose they will fail upwards as no error can ever be admitted.
Who would throw them out? Consider the vast majorities in congress voting for more of this, some calling for total genocide.
Btw… many Chinese think Guilin the most beautiful place on earth, maybe lavrov was just a tourist? The Li river passes thru beautiful and unusual terrain (if you ever visit, ride a smaller ‘banana’ boat instead of the big tourist boat, you get further into shallow areas.)
You are absolutely correct about Guilin. I have passed through it many times on my way to the Yangshuo region. I regret I have not had the pleasure of a Li River ride.
The Market State is nothing but a policy auction.
As the Market State was consolidated late in the second Clinton term, AIPAC was a first mover, followed by the CIA’s rat line diaspora, in the market for Foreign Policy.
No one else has the money to out bid these constituencies for policies and everyone among the “elected” is chasing these same funds. There are isolated congressional constituencies that are exceptions, but as a rule the money source is more important than the electorate in post Clinton policy making, domestic and foreign.
U.S. Investigating Whether Adams Received Illegal Donations From Turkey I’m wondering if this investigation is in retaliation for Adams not being a “team player” on taking in immigrants.
I see that the New York Times has cut back on their fact-checking department even more. It is Türkiye, not Turkey. I thought that the target audience for this rag is the educated and is the “newspaper of record.” New motto for them – ‘Misinforming people since 1851.’
They couldn’t figure out how to type the dieresis symbol.
Is that what it’s called? I always thought it resembled the German Umlaut. Gave up trying to use it and so just write Turkiye these days for speed.
Thanks to Unicode, where today’s technology is concerned it is the same as a German umlaut.
On a Macintosh set to U.S. keyboard, type option-U — which is the diaeresis or umlaut “dead key,” meaning that, if possible, it will combine with the next letter you type — followed by the letter you want the two dots to appear over.
And under stupid Windows 10 (perhaps 11 too) w/ US keyboard you click Num Lock key to On then type ALT and 0252 together to get ü
Some other combos
ALT 0223 = ß
ALT 0228 = ä
ALT 0246 = ö
ALT 0196 = Ä
ALT 0214 = Ö
ALT 0220 = Ü
or ü or Ü which yield ü and Ü in most HTML environments, like this one, if I’m lucky.
The other useful ones are
° 0176
± 0177
² 0178
³ 0179
and for engineers…
µ 0181
Unicode provides a precomposed codepoint LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS for it. But it is also possible to use a combining codepoint COMBINING DIAERESIS so when doing things like collation you need to do normalization. The real problem in Turkish is the “I/i” casing issue.
What’s “normalization”? The answer to that question, and a comprehensive Unicode tutorial for techie types:
The absolute minimum every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023 (still no excuses!)
IIRC, this was actually featured here on NC in “Links” a week or two ago.
Forgive my ignorance: NC is the first place I ever saw “Türkiye.” When did it stop being Turkey in the US?
https://www.guideoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/map/vector_map_of_turkey_country.jpg
It happened in June of last year when they requested that their name be officially changed from Turkey to Türkiye at the United Nations which was approved. This article says that that was what they called themselves going way back to 1923-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds
So no more jokes about any alliances between Turkey and the Sandwich Islands.
Thank you! No fear, I don’t do Dad Jokes.
OK, that made me laugh. Thanks. / :)
Speaking of Turkeys, I see that *checks internet* there are about only 18 more days till Thanksgiving now. Time to make those preps.
F. Scott Fitzgerald on turkey:
https://www.openculture.com/2013/11/f-scott-fitzgeralds-13-preposterous-ideas-for-your-leftover-turkey.html
Lettuce be honest about the ‘war on deliciousness’ that is clearly underway!!!
The internet tells me the Chinese invented bacon, so, if all three form an alliance, it will be a nice club.
A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig (Boston, 1888) by Charles Lamb:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43566/43566-h/43566-h.htm
I had that same question previously and I wondered if it had something to do with Kiev being pronounced “Keev” in the MSM.
That one’s easy: Kiev is Russian, Kyev is Ukrainian, and you better know the (Big!) difference all of a sudden. Like Zelensky vs Zelenskyy, though that one seems to have slipped the Overton Window for silliness.
The Ukrainians also banned the use of the letter ‘Z’ because the Russians used it as a signature for their forces. So should it be Elensky or something?
As a child I took Ukrainian classes taught by nationalists. And at that time the nationalists were fine with spelling it Kiev, and pronouncing it that way, on the basis that that’s how English speakers pronounce it. And when speaking Ukrainian you use the Ukrainian pronunciation.
By the way, it’s written as Київ, and when I am in a Ukrainian-speaking environment this sounds to me closer to “cave” than “keev”, (yes, there’s a diphthong but the first part is pronounced more lightly) which suggests massive hearing problems in the MSM.
Or more likely they’re just trying to sound sophisticated, but they come across as sounding American instead.
On second thought it’s more like a quadrathong (ˈkɪjiu̯) and the v part is a sound that doesn’t really exist at the end of English words.
The “amusing” thing is Kiev (Киев) is pronounced “Keev” in Russian. The Ukrainian version of Kiev (Київ) is pronounced quite differently.
That depends on how quickly you speak and perhaps regional variation. I pronounce it as Kiev. But in a hurry it may well sound like Keev…
Anyway, it is mere pretentiousness. Those same people still call Moskva “Moscow”, Sankt-Peterburg “Saint Petersburg”, and so on. To say nothing of what they call Baile Átha Cliath.
Or Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.
“target audience for this rag is the educated”
Well, the “Grey Lady” realized that the taget audience was being dumbed down and has reacted accordingingly.
The appearance of color print was clearly the moment when they jumped the shark, landed in a dumpster fire and became the “Yellow Whore” of today.
Did I detect a subtle dig by you at them about “Yellow Journalism” making a comeback? :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Exactly right, except for subtle.
I always thought it was the Style section that brought them down.
As someone who worked in magazine pre press for awhile, I thought it was fascinating when they started color. You really cannot get a decent saturated color image on newsprint, so their art department was creative and got some good looks working with what they had. I tried saving a few, but, newsprint fades in days, and the look was lost. Unfortunately, it carried over into their online editions, maybe to have a more consistent look with the paper, but that flat, unsaturated color editing look is getting old when you see it on a device. Nobody under 70 reads the actual paper anymore, so, they’ll adjust.
I remember earlier traumas in the ’60s and ’70s when the Times experimented with lightening up with its times–articles became shorter and less orotundly sesquipidelian so to speak, and they controversially reviewed tv shows as well as movies. It was like Dad growing his sideburns and wearing those stupid wide ties; the Times has been stupidifying for generations.
To be fair to the Yellow Whore, they are certainly not alone. In the early-mid ’70’s even the local paper for a very small working class city and surrounding rural counties was written with at least high school level vocabulary, featured substantial articles on affairs from local to international, and took 45 min to an hour to completely read.
Now it looks like a picture book aimed at first graders that is a ten minute read if you’re really slow.
Maybe, but, they get a double hit by going after Turkey, too
If my memory serves me well Turkey/Turkiye was a state sanctioned political corruption cash cow back in the nineties/naughties. Remember Dennis Hastert? Sorry, nobody wants to remember him.
Going after Turkiye seems like a dumb idea, but ain’t that America.
Re: Ancient Pyramid of Gunung Padang:).
As Graham Hancock has covered extensively, there is solid evidence such as this of ancient civilizations from ~25K years BC. Yes Hancock is a fabulist, but he gets a lot right, including where the evidence of ancient glacial period civilizations exists – in non-glaciated areas such as Indonesia, and undersea areas such as the Persian Gulf, as sea levels are now ~400 ft higher than 25 k years ago.
Our own civilization will also leave evidence undersea, for future generations to marvel at (and to deny and demonize the messenger as the scientific community has done to Hancock).
I read Hancock like historical fiction, but I love him because he makes you think. He’s almost certainly on to something with the idea that glaciations forced people into climate refugee areas and that construction would be a hotspot for social evolution. I’m also of the opinion that our popular idea of “hunter-gatherer” is detrimental. Smallish social groups sure, but not some sort of barely survival existence and constantly on the move.
I suspect seasonal migration was the norm. Why wouldn’t you go to a bend in the river where the spawning fish ran thick every spring. And then you’d stay there for a while to eat well and process the catch. That’s your preferred spot and you quickly learn that the berry patch at the edge of the woods is excellent, which leads you to cutting, trampling or pulling the non-berry plants and the berry patch becomes bigger and more productive. The women (who are smarter) figure out that whatever bast fiber plant is growing nearby can be worked and they have the time to develop fiber technologies. The biggest game changer of them all. The evidence of all this would be thin on the ground for future generations to find. But I would suggest that the only way to produce midden mounds large enough for us to find precludes the popular conception of Hunter-gatherer life ways. 25 people for maybe a few weeks as a once off event will not make an archeological level midden mound.
The amount of surplus production hunter-gatherer societies can produce appears to have greatly exceeded what archaeologists and paleoanthropologists from agricultural societies were prepared to imagine.
James C. Scott’s “Against the Grain” describes a variety of ways that humans cultivated food. The idea of hunter-gatherers roaming a pristine wilderness vs agriculturalists clearing vast land areas for monocrops is at best a drastic oversimplification and at worst borders on utter BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadic_pastoralism
And the building of the Egyptian pyramids may be something similar, as supposedly the work force would go there between sowing and harvest seasons. In turn related to the rise and fall of the Nile.
Yes! In the early-mid mesolithic in Western Europe, pollen records show that hazelnut pollen shows a sharp increase. This indicates selective clearing in favor of hazelnuts to create groves which were exploited seasonally. Pretty close to agriculture, even though officially categorized as “hunter-gatherer”.
Josh Mitteldorf, posting at his blog Daily Inspiration, agrees that due to artifacts that cannot be explained otherwise, ancient technological civilizations must have existed:
https://dailyinspirationblog.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/proof-of-an-ancient-technical-civilization/
Josh Mitteldorf is, among other things, a serious researcher into aging and the possibilities of slowing or even reversing the process.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=josh+mitteldorf
Thanks for the video! Amazing degree of accuracy and underlying deliberate geometric patterns in these jars! My question is – is it necessary to hypothesize advanced technology or is it possible that very patient and thoughtful and skilled people spent thousands of hours painstakingly making these jars using manual techniques?
This was the most sacred work – these are canoptic jars, used to store remains into the afterlife – hugely important to the eternal life of the wealthy and powerful dead person. One jar could have been the life’s work of a craftsman – using simple tools (disparagingly described in the video as “sticks and stones” showing a great paucity of imagination). By the time these jars were made, people had been working stone for two million years – surely they had many techniques developed over this time period passed on through the generations over millenia. Just take a look at early Acheulian handaxes – already a marvellous example of human ingenuity – and compare it to the magnificent smooth, sharp, and effective neolithic hafted axes. These axes maintain an edge better than any steel. And it is clear that axes had a sacred element – each one represents a vast amount of work to make, and they were treasured.
Yes it is possible that there was advanced technological civilization before our received chronology of technological development – but it seems to me that stone technology was the highest technology in the pre-metal stone age. Of course the smartest and most skilled people would have been working in this area just as today they work in advanced technologies including silicon chips (also stone lol!).
Thought this might be of interest…
“An ammonia engine is a type of internal combustion engine that uses ammonia as its primary fuel source. What makes ammonia unique is its composition, consisting of one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms. The absence of carbon atoms in ammonia translates to the absence of carbon dioxide emissions during combustion. This distinct characteristic is why ammonia engines are viewed as a promising solution to combat pollution.”
https://medium.com/@pareto_investor/toyota-ceo-our-ammonia-engine-is-the-end-of-evs-daf889608091
Problems with ammonia
1) highly corrosive
2) overwhelmingly produced from natural gas
3) poisonous
4) exhaust products include NO2 – highly corrosive toxic gas.
5) heating value less than 1/2 that of methane.
What’s not to like??!!
I have primarily read about it being considered for ships and other large engines that currently run on what may well be described as reheated tar.
And NG is just the most energetically convenient source of hydrogen right now, via the famous Haber-Bosch process. There are alternatives, but the problem will mainly be that industrial ammonia is core to fertilizer production as well. Thus any of it that do not go to food production will impact our ability to feed ourselves. In particular once NG is no longer as convenient.
Why i keep suspecting that we will have to revert to some 1950s style living, at least. Where production and consumption is more localized and adapted to local geographical conditions. No more having raw materials circumnavigate the planet one way and finished goods the other, because cheap transport allows companies to shift production to where it is most profitable.
The accompanying Nitric Acid?
So many thanks for the Indonesian pyramid link. Never, ever underestimate our ancestors. That timeline is astounding. Engineering at this scale also suggests high development of the whole suite of civilizational technologies like fiber production and cultivation of plants (as opposed to agriculture, cultivating wild or semi-wild plants). The white man’s narrative of human development is self-serving.
Have you read Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything?
“ancient civilizations from ~25K years BC.”
Isn’t that the plotline from “Stargate”?
Are HRC and Cookies Nudelman hosts for evil alien parasites?
“…evil alien parasites?”
There is a quite large Internet presence of religious who define that term as referring to literal Demons. Think of it as a Counter New Age movement.
Re; The Happiest Man in the World
Don’t let me lose my mind, oh, God;
I’d sooner beg with sack and rod
Or starve in sweat and dust.
Not that I treasure my poor mind,
Or would bemoan it should I find
That part from it I must:
If they but left me free to roam
How I would fly to make my home
In deepest forest gloom!
Be drugged by fancies smouldering
In rank and wonderous fume.
And I would hear the breakers roar,
And my exultant gaze would soar
In empty skies to drown
Unbridled would I be and grand
Like the great gale that rakes the land
And mows the forest down.
But woe befalls whose mind is vague:
They dread and shun you like the plague,
And once the jail-gate jars,
They bolt the fool to chain and log
And come as to a poor mad dog
To tease him through the bars.
And then upon the evenfall
I’ll hear no nightengale’s bright call,
No oak tree’s murmurous dreams–
I’d hear my prison-mates call out,
And night attendants rail and shout
And clashing chains, and screams.
A. Pushkin, 1833
“‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 27: Biden calls for ‘pause’ for first time since fighting began”
After the massacre at that refugee camp, Biden asked for a pause as it has finally sunk in that such things are already costing him votes big time and I think that he may have already lost Michigan. But Netanyahu has already blown Biden off and said that Israel will not agree to any ceasefires and intends to proceed “with full force” until Hamas has released all hostages taken in the October 7th attack. Naturally Biden is totally helpless to do anything about this because he is only the US President so is countering Islamophobia instead. And this led to the title of a recent post by Caitlin Johnstone-
“Biden ‘Countering Islamophobia’ While Incinerating Gaza Is The Most Democrat Thing Ever”
an aside: appreciation to NC for being one of the only, early, US sites willing to assess what’s happening without cheering for either team; and more importantly, without conflating the Irs govt with all Israelis or conflating Hammas with all Palestinians. I see that happening a lot in other online and print forums, and in politics for that matter.
Muslim Population by State
And Bibi “blowing Biden off” tells us exactly how serious the asking for a pause was. It’s purely for consumption by American audiences.
Turns out that Biden’s idea was only a psych. Arab leaders have been pressing for a pause to Blinken but he has refused because it would give Hamas time to reorganize or something-
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/arab-leaders-want-a-ceasefire-to-end-gaza-madness-us-says-it-would-allow-hamas-to-regroup/7yo41lkik
House approves nearly $14.5 billion in military aid for Israel. Biden vows to veto the GOP approach
I feel better now…I got my dose of schadenfreude for the day.
America’s two party system is so polarized we can’t even agree on how to fund genocide.
It’s like a good sinus rinse or a dose of wasabi. We’re all dosin’ with something, Chuck.
For me it was spending the morning trying to unpack the Michel Chossudovsky article. I think I’m going to have to read his book…. like that pile on my nightstand wasn’t high enough.
Due to being overly distracted by current affairs, I purged the non-fiction from my nightstand save Richard Halliburton’s The Flying Carpet, which I plan on taking up next.
You will enjoy “The Flying Carpet.” It shows us an earlier age, when “Wonder” was still possible.
Yes, thank you.
How many children can they kill for $14.5 billion?
What is the marginal revenue product for Boeing selling guidance kits to kill children?
“Temporarily closed – when the fight for daily bread is lost”
That is one thing that I miss from Germany – the Bakeri. You could walk in an see a huge range of all sorts of bread with all sorts of flavours. Unfortunately it is typically mostly crap, sliced bread in plastic bags here in Oz and if you want something better, you have to pay through the nose. Almost forgot. When you are finished in the bakerei, then you go to the shops that specialise in cakes and the like as they don’t usually sell them in bakeris. Ended up with a serious addiction to “Berliners” before I went to the next country. Damn, I made myself hungry again for these things-
https://www.recipesfromeurope.com/krapfen/
Actually, it’s called Bäckerei (pronounced beck-er-i, with the stress on the i), and I’m cheating by using a German keyboard.
Oh no, now will your keyboard want to take over the Internet with Um-louts?
What Fried said, above. And the other sort of shop that is more cakes and pastry is a Konditorei.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Konditorei
Now I’m hungry for that yummy, “not too sugary, just right” stuff too.
Lena The Corporate Raider always said that once you had eaten Soviet bread, no other bread would satisfy. Any Soviet bakery would do. In fact, Soviet bread by itself made for a delightful and nourishing meal.
Once in a while she would try other bread to see if capitalist bakeries had finally got the hang of it. It was always no dice.
Once in a while, Byelorussian bread would work as a substitute. But even there, the quality had fallen.
Even old-time expats confirmed. Veganism was easy if you had plenty of Soviet bread.
Russian bread is made from non-gmo grains.
sounds like bread in Finland.
Thanks Fried and caucus99percenter. I was just getting ready for bed when I wrote that and was having difficulty remembering the correct names. Damn, it’s breakfast time here now and my Berliner addiction has returned. :)
Or you can make bred yourself. I am lucky my wife is a genius of practicality and a cheap Scott and making now great bread(s)…
please forgive me, i’ve forgotten which of you introduced me to Saints and Liars – thank you again – just remember you’re from Vermont – revisited their music this morning – unfortunately they don’t tour too far from home – the opening lyrics of this songs ring so true for me –
“These times, these times, are going to swallow me whole…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25jfpXtkcj4
and thank you Lambert for the Firesign Theater yesterday – here’s another tidbit –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y–x3nQQ0Ng
Re: The game theory critique of free speech absolutism wins again
Beijer has nice theory, but the examples cited for the tit-for-tat approach seems to be firing from work based on twitter pile-up. While I can see how one can try to fire such censors in return, I really don’t know how he thinks this can be done when we talk about state/NGO/corporate censoring through the social media companies, let alone when you are being beaten on demonstration and sent to jail. It would be nice to be able to shadow ban all The Blob apparatchiks, or whack Biden/Bibi/Macron over the head and put them in jail for a few days so they can learn by experience, but world doesn’t work like that, right?
The reality is that as the weaker party, all you have is the power of argument.
Your daily COVID. This Tweet includes a neat graph showing the growth of BA2.86.* worldwide over the past months:
https://x.com/RajlabN/status/1718077617859919973?s=20
Showing remarkable growth, upward. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I’d guess by the end of January this will be top 5 in the US.
Stay safe out there!
re: A No Daylight Policy
I had never heard of this term before. How on earth is such a thing “supposed to give the U.S. more influence with the client”?
Very confused why someone would think it’s actually an effective strategy, rather than just transparently empty words. But maybe I don’t actually understand how it’s supposed to work? Would appreciate if anyone could explain it, thanks!
I am distinctly pleased that students walked out on Hilary Clinton. I can only hope that now that a clue has dropped they will realize that there is nothing admirable about her and to distrust her judgement on pretty much everything. That would be one of the few bright spots in this utterly horrific situation.
May we be lucky and it is just part of people believing the war mongers and sociopaths as they tell the world who they are.
Sorry, no way. She’s immune to this sort of criticism at this point. Did you catch her recent comment about how MAGAs should be deprogrammed? Yes, she said that. I really doubt some Columbian kids can affect that lizard brain. No doubt she’s been on the phone trying to find out who the “anti semitic” protestors are, and finding ways to destroy their young lives.
They’ll probably end up on her MS Excel sheets of enemies. Yes, she actually used an MS Excel sheet to keep track of her enemies, what they did, when they did it, etc. I guess that she didn’t like MS Access.
Oh she’ll remain delusional about both her abilities and what should be given to her until the day she dies and probably beyond (if there really is a hell she’ll spend most of eternity screaming she is there by mistake.)
No I want people, especially young people, who have bought the Hillary Clinton much abused gift to humanity persona, to recognize her as a toxic entitled narcissistic sociopath. That her students, people who have paid to hear her supposed wisdom, have recognized how deeply wrong she is and rejected her on this enough to stand up and leave gives me hope.
RE: What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7 Jonathan Cook (Chuck L)
A must read IMNSHO and thank you, Chuck L.
The evidence-free “40 beheaded babies” and “Hamas as rapists” Oct. 7 “savageries” are being relentlessly invoked to justify the extermination of 2.3 million people, and anyone who dares to question their veracity here in these united states is being maligned and slandered as “terrorist supporters” worthy of a myriad of life-altering punishments.
Recently a “trend” has emerged where people like piers morgan and nyu professor scott galloway have asked for “forgiveness” for their venomous attacks on fellow citizens during covid.
“Imperfect ‘information’.” “Shit show” indeed.
This entire israel / Palestine issue has the stench of one of those “can never happen again,” “lessons learned but never are” situations that have been assaulting the world with increasing frequency these days.
But the stakes are way too high this time to let this pass “quietly,” only to be “forgiven” later because “the fog of war” or some other euphemism whitewashes it, and all “responsibility” for it, away. Remember well john brennan’s years-later admission that he “misread” satellite images of non-existent wmds in Iraq as “seeing what he ‘wanted’ to see.”
If that makes me an “anti-semite,” then so be it.
I think the planet was knocked off tilt by Biden becoming president. It was just too much for the poor thing.
Also, the problem with lies is that they get found out and we’ve been served up so many over the past years. Clearly the truth isn’t going to set us free but it is a refreshing change. And as Yves wrote long ago, trust is an important social lubricant. Our social machinery is creaking and falling apart from the lack of it.
> planet was knocked off tilt by Biden becoming president
Great mental image! German has an apt verb for when something is rotating unevenly and/or off-center: eiern. It’s related to the noun das Ei (plural Eier) = egg, which lends it richer connotations than suggested by the standard translation “wobble”.
Alastair Crooke’s latest:
Paradigms are fractured beyond the imagined; perhaps irreparably
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/paradigms-are-fractured-beyond-the-imagined–perhaps-irrepar
Of course Netanyahu’s whole plan is to salt the ground so no talk of two states will ever reoccur. But the decades of intransigence can only continue with US support because in reality Israel is a tiny country.
Putin says defeat the US and NATO in Ukraine and you defeat the neocons and the whole paradigm.
Protests today
DC (scroll to overhead crowd photo)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/04/us/washington-dc-ceasefire-protests-palestine/index.html
London, Berlin, Paris, Ankara, Istanbul
https://www.reuters.com/world/pro-palestinian-protesters-demand-gaza-ceasefire-european-marches-2023-11-04/
I am heartened in a small way that these folks are not letting up.
Especially since a lot of other folks, many with the “seven ways from Sunday” of the Blob behind ’em, will continue to try to lay a big ole guilt trip on ’em and accuse ’em of all kindza “-ism” and wrongthink.