The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded the Western Imagination The Marginalian
The First Photo-Illustrated Book, Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae (1843) Open Culture. From 2016, but a good pairing.
It’s time to reassess the ‘dark arts’ of central banks The Telegraph
Bezos Bucks? Get Ready For Corporate Digital Currency IEEE Spectrum
Amazon’s Silent Sacking Justin Garrison
Is This How Amazon Ends? The Atlantic
#COVID19
Several Chicago-area health systems reinstate mask requirements as respiratory viruses spread NBC. Based on lagging indicators, i.e. too late, which is why requirements for respirators should be permanent and, since Covid spreads like smoke, universal throughout the facility.
2023 was the year of the party — and it’s just getting started MSNBC. The deck: “After years of being told to isolate, we wanted to immerse ourselves in mobs of people.” Extroverts are gonna kill us all.
WA Health cuts hundreds of jobs as federal COVID funds run out Seattle Times
Epidemiology of COVID-19 in Infants in the United States: Incidence, Severity, Fatality, and Variants of Concern Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal
The United States is not a serious country:
In Seoul, South Korea 🇰🇷, the comforting presence of "large volume air purifiers" on subway train platforms, cleaning away not only transmissible diseases, but also today's unbearable smog 🤮
Because transit riders deserve clean air!#COVIDisAirborne #CovidIsNotOver #covid19bc pic.twitter.com/ifbjoOs1fv
— Daryl DC 🚅🚇🚡🚍 (@daka_x) December 27, 2023
China?
China struggles to disperse cheap loans to businesses in economic slowdown FT. Commentary:
3/4
in 1980s Japan was referred to as "window guidance". The purpose of monetary expansion, in Japan then and China today, is not to boost market-based demand but rather to boost supply in targeted sectors. Monetary expansion is disinflationary, rather than inflationary.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) December 31, 2023
Back to ‘black box’? As China tightens access to court records, legal experts fear for future of judicial transparency South China Morning Post
Cathay Pacific Blames End Of Year Flight Cancelations On Crew Illness Simple Flying. “Seasonal illness” is the new euphemism….
Myanmar
Myanmar Gives China Green Light to Proceed with Strategic Seaport Maritime Executive. And the junta gets?
High-impact ‘drop bombs’ retaking the sky from Myanmar junta Straits Times
The Koreas
US Overtakes China as South Korea’s Top Export Market Bloomberg
Syraqistan
Updated List: Shipping Firms Reactions To Houthi Attacks In The Red Sea Reuters
Houthi Red Sea attacks ‘will likely continue,’ US Navy says FOX
Exclusive: US to bring back aircraft carrier from eastern Mediterranean ABC
Report: Ships Make Novel Use of AIS to Ward Off Attacks by Houthis Maritime Executive
* * * Reversing America’s Ruinous Support For Israel’s Assault On Gaza War on the Rocks. When you’ve lost War on the Rocks….
Israeli minister reiterates calls for Palestinians to leave Gaza Al Jazeera. Speaking on Israeli Army Radio:
Smotrich agrees with @mashagessen that Gaza is a ghetto: "If we act strategically they will emigrate and we will live there. We won't let 2 million stay. With 100-200K in Gaza, the 'day after' debate will be diff. They want to leave, they've been living in a ghetto for 75 years." https://t.co/jbUaFBClMF
— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) December 31, 2023
Smotrich has been excluded from Netanyahu’s war cabinet, but is still Finance Minister.
Israel eyes UK’s Tony Blair as mediator for Gaza, Palestinian refugees – report Jerusalem Post
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia intensifies Ukraine attacks on New Year’s Eve FT
* * * Zelenskyy: Next year the enemy will experience the fury made in Ukraine Ukrainska Pravda
End of 2023 Roundup – Update on the War’s Technological Progress Simplicius the Thinker
* * * Ukraine War Day #676: “Did you jump high enough?” Awful Avalanche
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, Moscow, December 31, 2023 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
Putin did ‘everything possible’ to make peace, veteran Ukrainian diplomat says Aaron Maté
Ending The Ukraine War Without Ending The Ukraine – OpEd Eurasia Review. Why is that a requirement? Prussia, for example, is no more.
Biden Administration
Big money dispute shows value of ‘hired gun’ economists FT
Spook Country
Operation Triangulation: The last (hardware) mystery Securelist
2024
Exclusive: Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election CNN Politics. I’ve been muttering for awhile that this line of inquiry was the most dangerous to Trump, not the J6 hysteria. Not least if the “contingent” electors were scammed.
Maine Secretary of State says home ‘swatted’ after Trump removed from ballot and Swatting incidents at GOP lawmakers’ homes on the rise over holidays Politico
The Supremes
Digital Watch
Taking Back the Web with Decentralization: 2023 in Review Electronic Frontier Foundation
OpenAI annualized revenue tops $1.6 billion- The Information Reuters. Crime pays.
How one of the world’s oldest newspapers is using AI to reinvent journalism Guardian. “With the AI-assisted reporter churning out bread and butter content, other reporters in the newsroom are freed up to go to court, meet a councillor for a coffee or attend a village fete.” But you know the reporters will be the first to go.
Healthcare
More Undocumented in California Will Be Eligible for Medi-Cal Health Insurance in 2024 Times of San Diego
Gunz
US appeals court allows California to bar guns in most public places Reuters
New Year’s Post-Game Analysis
New Year Intentions: How to Have a Magical New Year Teen Vogue. From 2023, but showed up in my mailbox. So, great start?
Why We Make Resolutions (and Why They Fail) The New Yorker
Bones of Tomorrow Simplicius the Thinker
Obituaries
John Pilger, Australia-born journalist and filmmaker known for covering Cambodia, dies at 84 AP
There Is a War Coming Shrouded in Propaganda. It Will Involve Us. Speak Up John Pilger
Groves of Academe
I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting off Easy vs. President Gay Plagiarized, but She Should Stay. For Now. Harvard Crimson
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Crumbling of the Pax Americana (video) Chas Freeman, Watson Institute for International Affairs. Parts two and three. From 2016; the alarm has been sounding for some time, though few have had the ears to hear.
A Seamless Web of Deserved Trust The Rational Walk. Munger and Buffet. But “trust” to do what?
Without End Cory Robin, New Left Review. On historian Arno Mayer. “Where other Marxist historians of the twentieth century spoke of the transition to finance capital and the corporate form, Arno was more impressed by the staying power of the family firm.”
Class Warfare
Workers at Bay Area Locations of Iconic Sex Shop, Good Vibrations, Move to Unionize SFist
Labor 2023: A lot of noise but few strikes Freight Waves. “[T]here is a price to be paid for labor peace. Contracts ratified during 2023 came with employee wage and benefit increases.”
Working Class Perspectives on the ‘Migrant Crisis’ Texas Observer
How We Obscure the Common Plight of Workers The Hedgehog Review
How to Be a Policy Entrepreneur in the American Vetocracy American Affairs (RR).
When Paris Sneezed London Review of Books. “The cult of 1789.”
The Thing That Is Silence The Convivial Society
The bliss — and benefits — of slow reading FT
Antidote du jour (via):
2024 is said to be the Year of the Dragon. Bonus antidote:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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“Ukraine War Day #676: “Did you jump high enough?””
In that post it has the following section-
‘In this piece we learn about an ordinary Ukrainian woman named Alyona who posted a poignant rant on TikTok. [yalensis: I don’t have the TikTok vid itself, just this description of it, sorry!]’
I came across a version of that TikTok post on Bitchute the other day so here it is-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Coh42g13PZBN/ (1:05 mins)
> 2023 was the year of the party — and it’s just getting started
Get The Party Started!
Happy New Year to all. I got a hearty chuckle from the above video clip by Bob and Ray!. Felt like a few notable news channel interviews* in the recent past of the sitting current US President. Or some knucklehead on CNBC talking about the priority of Bitcoin as a valid investment vehicle; just ignore those “dead bodies” and stolen/vanished $ billions by the likes of SBF and Binance, or the idiots at a company who lost the password to their bitcoin digital wallet.
Or the classic…”If you were a tree what kind of tree would it be..” My answer is usually a pine tree, given they were ubiquitous in eastern North Carolina.
Heureuse annee a la communaute NC / Happy new year to the NC community.
“Israel eyes UK’s Tony Blair as mediator for Gaza, Palestinian refugees – report”
Why not Boris Johnson? Another clown politician who is also a war criminal with a lots of blood on his hands. Can you imagine how it would go as Tony Blair as mediator for Gaza and Palestinian refugees. His idea of a negotiated peace would be for all the Palestinians to leave Gaza – and to find a way to be OK with that. Then it would be found out years later that he was awarded shares in Israel’s future gas fields off Gaza as well as seaside property in Gaza itself. The man reeks of corruption.
Don’t forget that Blair is also an Epstein paedophile so most welcome and pole positioned to do Israel’s bidding.
“If we act strategically they will emigrate and we will live there.” We all owe anyone who has caught slack for pushing replacement theory an apology.
Using the violent statements of a member of a settler/colonial government to substantiate the anti-Semitic claims of neo-Nazis is… well, 2024 is off to roaring start.
First, those violent sentiments have been widely and repeatedly stated by many members of the Israeli officialdom, its media and pundits, and member of the public. So they are not isolated as you insinuate.
Second, and far more important, Jake has it utterly backwards. Replacement theory, created by Renaud Camus, asserts that the white majority/ruling classes are being replaced by immigrants strategically to benefit liberals (our PMC) and global elites. Wikipedia points out some prominent Jewish intellectuals in France have defended Camus’ thesis. What the Zionists are doing is the polar opposite of replacement theory.
How does Replacement Theory relate to Rui Teixiera’s demographic Democratic-ascendency model? I wonder how it (RT) came to be the PMC ideological target-du-jour, like Critical Race Theory is to right-wing ideologues.
Replacement Theory is the funhouse mirror image of Teixiera’s “coalition of the ascendant,” which, besides being wrong, did terrible damage to the Democrat party by persuading them — not that they needed much persuading — that all they had to was wait for demographics to create a permanent majority for them, and they didn’t have to deliver material benefits.
In essence, Tiexiera predicted a loss of political power by whites to non-whites; that was the demographic change, after all. It’s hard to see how people who, er, identify as white wouldn’t take the extra step of concluding they would lose political power because they were white, and with loss of political power, loss of material benefits (jobs, houses, etc.).* Then came Trump, political idiot savant or genius, who knows, who took black and Latin votes away from the Democrats, invalidating Tiexiera.
So Tiexiera tries to channel Thomas Frank and become the Working Man’s Friend, but forty years of sneering at the so-called white working class isn’t undone so easily….
NOTE * See Cory Robin on conservatism as a “meditation on lost power.”
First, I wasn’t insinuating anything. Jake was quoting from the linked tweet, which was quoting Smotrich, the Minister of Finance. My reply to Jake was to comment on his use of that single statement by that single member of the Israeli government.
Second, yes, Jake has it backwards. I was trying to point that out but obviously failed because I mis-characterized replacement theory as anti-Semitic. Probably should have gone with “racist fear mongering by white supremacists” or something similar. Although, come to think of it, perhaps I also needed to have written that settler colonialism is a project of white supremacy in order to get the juxtaposition I was after.
In any event, my aim was to call Jake out for his ridiculous statement, since nobody else had in the 4 hours before I’d stumbled upon it. You’ve done it admirably, so thank you.
Sorry I did not mean to sound tart and appreciate your unpacking.
And yes, had I seen Jake’s comment directly I hopefully would have said something….but might not have due to too many things ot do and never enough time….so your well warranted objection was beneficial.
“How one of the world’s oldest newspapers is using AI to reinvent journalism”
‘ “With the AI-assisted reporter churning out bread and butter content, other reporters in the newsroom are freed up to go to court, meet a councillor for a coffee or attend a village fete.” But you know the reporters will be the first to go.’
You have to ask yourself though. Will they be missed? And here I am talking about reporters for the main stream media who will have the resources to enable this to happen. If the White House Press Pool vanished, would anybody even care? Will they long for the words of the reporters telling us how great the economy is going – while telling us to ignore the evidence in front of our eyes and in our wallets & purses? Here in Oz when I listen to the TV news I no longer regard it much as a place to learn what is going on in the world so much as what the latest narratives are. No, seriously. If they were replace by AI I could not care less.
They try to confuse us by ignoring the difference between media employees (reporters) and journalists. Media employees can easily be replaced with AI, a plastic bag or whatever and you would hardly know the difference.
Real journalists, people who investigate the truth behind the statements from politicians, corporate leaders and others in power, are no longer part of the MSM so there is no journalist there to cry for when replaced by chatgpt or whatever stupidities coming up.
Would anyone care, either, if the US president was replaced by an AI? It’s not as if he is actually doing anything but mouthing words placed in front of him.
The moment ChatGPT turned on, it was all over for the Internet at large. To cite the predictions of science fiction — which predicted the Internet in the first place — the Internet is doomed to fail by its own design; as the freely-associated network of networks becomes increasingly automated in its function (by necessity, as it grows too large to administrate by hand) a gap opens that allows the automation to act in increasingly malevolent ways. The most prominent example is in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, which posits the Internet as a hostile, and useless, wasteland roamed by AIs that can and will obliterate any unprotected system as soon as it is detected. The Internet in that universe was replaced by a wholly-owned corporate network that is brutally authoritarian and centralized, so that anyone could be cut off at any time.
In our world, this manifests as the intersection between Web 2.0 and Dead Internet Theory: in a World Wide Web where anybody can contribute, bots can contribute too. As Google and several other Web indexers discovered around the turn of the century, people have been writing these bots for some time, chasing the one fool per million users who pays for it all. Their algorithms struggle mightily against a rising tide of algorithmically generated garbage that signifies nothing, is not intended for human consumption, and yet is paradoxically difficult to discriminate from real user activity.
Sometimes there isn’t even a profit motive; I recently bore witness to an attack orchestrated by someone who wanted to “shut down” conversation on a particular topic. The person set loose bots on the comment thread, which were designed to make comments generated (or even copied) from real ones — in the attacker’s own words, they wasted the user’s time trying to determine if the post was legitimate or not. This is the most disturbing trend out there. We are going to get drowned in noise. Cui bono, you might ask. TPTB are aware of the usefulness (and destabilizing nature) of freely communicated information and are actively seeking to prevent it from spreading.
When PRISM was revealed by Snowden, a bunch of the world’s companies sat up and took notice. The world’s communications were being tapped sometimes even inside the companies’ own datacenters. And it isn’t a US-exclusive phenomenon. This has driven a whole lot of communication infrastructure development as they seek to evade official interference: Amazon, SpaceX and more are building a new Internet, in space. Eventually, if it does not exist right now, there will be a perverse incentive to make the public Internet worthless for the end user, and a new, centralized network will take its place.
Whew. That was a lot of words and CT to say journalism is just another theater in a war on intelligible discourse and the free exchange of ideas. I recall, decades ago, a prediction that the Web would cease to exist by the 2050s. It might happen sooner.
End of 2023 Roundup – Update on the War’s Technological Progress Simplicius the Thinker
Read this, and saw a fair amount problematic issues which of course are par for the course that may not be so good for Russia in terms of military technology advances and other issues. Yet checking the comments, the first several were in the triumphant victory lap category.
Dragging this war on for years (which was brought up in the article) could result in tides turning against Russia in a big way. The West is moving to increase military production and what if Erdogan leaves the scene and his successor opens the Black Sea to the US and NATO?
And why does Ukraine still have electricity and an intact supply infrastructure to the front line?
Simplicius makes excellent points, as usual.
UKR still has electricity because RU doesn’t want a failed state on its border. UKR still has an ability to supply its front lines, because RU wants to wreck as much of UKR’s military potential as it can, at the lowest possible cost to RU. I don’t think RU is very keen to wreck all of UKR’s infrastructure, only to be stuck with rebuilding everything once the fighting stops.
As for the war continuing for years, I don’t see an alternative at this point; partly for the technological reasons that Simplicius describes, and partly for political reasons. RU wanted security guarantees; instead, it has an open-ended war in UKR, continued NATO expansion, and Western leadership which has totally demonized RU. Will the collective West re-arm and re-institute conscription? I doubt it. So RU will gradually establish facts on the ground and impose a new reality. This might take a long time, especially if the SMO in UKR ends up being a mere appetizer before the main course.
On a less pessimistic note, best wishes to everyone at NC from the cold snowy Moscow countryside. I arrived here two weeks ago. The shops are full, the city is bathed with holiday lighting, and I see lots more Chinese cars on the crowded roads. Prices are up in ruble terms, but my benchmark bottle of Malbec is hanging in there at about 900 rubles (9 euros at the new improved exchange rate). Life in RU goes on.
So NATOstan’s best hope going forward is that Putin keels over from natural causes and the replacement is someone with less interest in Russian autarky?
Based on posts and comments here, Putin is on the mild side of the spectrum of people who could end up leading Russia. If anyone replaces him they are likely to be worse than he is, at least from a Western perspective.
Maybe Russia can live with a long war but I doubt NATO can. Biden/Blinken thought this would all be over by now with a wrecked Russian economy via sanctions.
I myself highly doubt Biden/Blinken thought this would all be over by now. Their main purpose in life is to bring US war profiteers more profit. Ukraine is a perfect scenario for that. As was said quite a lot at the beginning, the US will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. They would probably find a way to send more bombs there even after all the Ukrainians are gone. Remember how it took us 20 years to lose a war with the Taliban. If it was up to Biden and Trump hadn’t set the deadline for withdraw, we would still be in that war too. And I bet Biden is pissed that Russia doesn’t bomb Ukraine into the stone age like the USA loves to do. He probably thought Russia would Shock And Awe Ukraine, then the world would turn against Russia, and afterwards our war profiteers would get to go in and make a killing on rebuilding.
Those countries that the US cares about already are against Russia. They see Russian reasonableness as contemptible weakness.
The rest of the world doesn’t so much want Russia to win as they want the US to lose. They could not care less whether Russia is behaving reasonably or not.
I don’t think Biden does much thinking at all but to the extent that he does he stated his goal: “Putin must go.” This isn’t my analysis of course but rather that of Russia experts that get linked here and elsewhere and say Russian regime change is the true goal and the Russians themselves get this which is why we have a war.
As for the MIC, they get our tax dollars shoveled to them no matter what. For that purpose they just need to conquer Congress, not Russia.
The only original thoughts that Genocide Joe has ever had are the ones he shamelessly plagiarized from someone else.
For a better understanding of why things are the way they are with respect to US foreign policy I highly recommend reading Kissinger’s Shadow by the historian Greg Grandin. Kissinger was far more evil than even many of his biggest detractors think. His shadow is very long and reaches to the current day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/kissingers-shadow-by-greg-grandin.html
October 3, 2015
‘Kissinger’s Shadow,’ by Greg Grandin
By MARK ATWOOD LAWRENCE
“Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!” Thus chanted protesters as they disrupted a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in January. One demonstrator brandished handcuffs within inches of Kissinger’s head just after the former secretary of state, who had been invited to appear before the committee, took his seat. Once the Capitol police restored order, though, the event gave way to a frenzy of praise for the grand old man of American foreign policy. George Shultz, another former secretary of state scheduled to testify, inspired a standing ovation in the hearing room by praising Kissinger’s “many contributions to peace and security.”
Such is life for one of America’s most polarizing figures, and so it has been for as long as Kissinger has walked the national stage. The competing narratives are familiar, even stale: Kissinger’s champions hail him as a great statesman whose bold initiatives ended the Vietnam War, bolstered world peace and helped restore American power in an era of national decline. His detractors — members of a “hate Henry industry,” as the New York Times columnist William Safire once put it — view him as an immoral cynic who coddled dictators and enabled appalling bloodlettings on three continents.
Greg Grandin’s “Kissinger’s Shadow” decidedly belongs to the second category. A professor of history at New York University and an eloquent voice of the political left, Grandin hits all the topics that one might expect to see in a sharp indictment of Kissinger’s work as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations….
Mark Atwood Lawrence teaches history at the University of Texas at Austin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/review/barry-gewen-inevitability-of-tragedy-henry-kissinger.html
April 28, 2020
How Do You Explain Henry Kissinger?
By John A. Farrell
THE INEVITABILITY OF TRAGEDY
Henry Kissinger and His World
By Barry Gewen
When the nefarious Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642, Pope Urban VIII is said to have declared: “If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not … well, he had a successful life.”
Henry Kissinger likes that anecdote. He cites it in his writings.
This is, perhaps, projection.
Has Kissinger, sly and witty, revived the tale as a wink toward his elegists? He has surely enjoyed success — secretary of state, winner of the National Book Award and the Nobel Peace Prize — yet always in chorus with charges of sin.
Barry Gewen tackles the contradictions, and offers absolution, in “The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World,” a timely and acute defense of the great realist’s actions, values and beliefs.
“We dismiss or ignore him at our peril,” writes Gewen, a longtime editor at The New York Times Book Review. “His arguments for his brand of realism — thinking in terms of national interest and a balance of power — offer the possibility of rationality, coherence and a necessary long-term perspective at a time when all three of these qualities seem to be in short supply.”
In our current age, when demagogues and dictators once more stomp about the stage, Kissinger is “more than a figure out of history,” Gewen writes. “He is a philosopher of international relations who has much to teach us about how the modern world works.” …
His greatest quote:
“But for the accident of my birth, I would be an anti-semite.
Any people who have been persecuted for 2,000 years must be doing something wrong…”
>>>In our current age, when demagogues and dictators once more stomp about the stage, Kissinger is “more than a figure out of history,” Gewen writes. “He is a philosopher of international relations who has much to teach us about how the modern world works.” …
Kissinger helped to create this modern world, which is why it operates as it does, so,
of course he would have understood how his creation worked. A man with his intelligence, education, connections, and experience could have helped to create, not a perfect world, nor one without conflict and even war, but a one more stable and peaceful one that worked for most nations and their citizens. That he chose to treat the world as a game in order to have the enjoyment of power over others and regardless of their suffering as well shows how poor he was at being a human being.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I expect this to be mostly wrapped up by the time Trump is inaugurated in 2025. Maybe the first domino will be Avdeevka falling in February (maybe on the second anniversary of the SMO starting, for symbolic purposes), then Chasiv Yar a month or two later, then Kramatorsk by June. After that things should pick up speed, and Russia may start sending more of the troops they’ve been holding in reserve through the northeastern border toward Kiev. But it will be mostly the same attrition warfare through the first half of the year.
And I fully expect the Republicans to cave and approve some aid for Ukraine. Maybe not all that Genocide Joe is asking for, but enough to keep things from collapsing until closer to the election.
That’s the $64M dollar question.
I don’t see any political interests by R’s to cave unless they get some big prize in return. But what could that be? Concessions on border enforcement? Why pull that chestnut out of the fire for Biden?
Putin saying he’s ready for a 5-year war means the R’s should be similarly prepared for this money pit lingering beyond November, which they don’t want. So, better to let this end now so it’s Biden’s failure.
I see little upside to the R’s (at least in the House) giving Biden much cooperation on anything right now, except maybe for Israel. Keeping the Israel-Gaza war alive for another 11 months would probably serve R’s just fine, as it is putting huge strains on the D coalition. I wouldn’t be surprised if they (via Trump surrogates) were already coordinating with Netanyahu on political strategy. Netanyahu has no love for Biden, and would love to see Trump back in the White House.
…I hope you don’t have to keep waitin’ bro.
Quite possibly.
Keep in mind that the Ukrainians are running low on manpower. There’s videos all over Telegram of aggressive recruiters forcing people to the front. Even women, people who have medical issues, and older citizens are being conscripted.
Nobody should say the SMO will be over by a certain amount of time, but it’s possible to see a faster win.
“war for years”
At current level of war intensity and attrition, Ukraine will not last for so long as years. As long as Zelenski remains obsessed trying to defend every square meter the collapse of Ukraine’s army looks closer and closer. Simplicius argues that such long lasting war is only a remote possibility. The conflict might change course and could last for many more years to the advantage of nobody but we will see.
If Russia doesn’t want a failed state on its border, then how does Russia expect to win?
For that matter, what changed since last year, when Russia was happy to attack (fruitlessly) electrical infrastructure?
I seem to recall that the real purpose of the electrical grid attacks was to force the UAF to spend time and resources (air defense) protecting soft targets, and it worked fairly well.
Notwithstanding Western belly slappers like Patriots working, or the Ukrainians shooting down 105 out of 100 missiles fired by Putin.
So what prevents Russia from doing this again?
Please read John Helmer on this. Russia attacked the grid selectively, so as NOT to take it out but to understand better how it worked and most importantly, to force Ukraine to run down its air defense missiles much faster than it would have otherwise. Russia does not want to harm the civilian population any more than necessary, otherwise it would have taken out the internet and other comms the first day.
Putin stated very clearly at the start of the SMO.
There will be no missiles on RU borders, if Ukraine has missiles that fly 100 kilometers, they will take 100km. If Uk. has missiles that fly 500km. they will take 500km. etc.
Don’t think that has changed.
Happy New Year, all.
Ukraine routinely hits targets inside Russia with missiles and drones. I will not be at all surprised if in 2024 some time Red Square in Moscow is hit for dramatic purposes. Remember, Zelensky is a showman.
So what prevents Russia from doing so again?
Of course, Kiev and the West see humanitarianism as contemptible weakness.
Will the collective West re-arm and re-institute conscription?
Guess what the 8 million (mostly) males who entered the US recently are going to do.
see lots more Chinese cars on the crowded roads.
Guess who is the ultimate beneficiary of the current calamity in the world.
I suspect what American elites will find is that returning to “The Arsenal of Democracy” requires re-structuring the country and the economy in ways which are anti-ethical to neoliberalism so re-arming on a scale required to support Ukraine at least in the current political economic environment is not possible. We will certainly see trillions more given to the MIC, and we will all wonder where all the money went.
I suspect a draft is also not possible for similar reasons.
In all likelyhood, Russia/Russians will keep Putin as leader for the next 6 years, which means internal stability. All the while, the general mobilization unfolding in Ukraine doesn’t bode well… for Ukraine.
As for US/NATO MIC, pumping up drones won’t be a game changer. One remembers the images of the massive arrays of shotguns used to eliminate from the North American continent the billions of passenger pigeons. Sometimes mechanical means employed en masse can leapfrog you ahead of the EW tools.
I thought that was good. Here’s the link btw (the one above is mislabeled).
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/end-of-2023-roundup-update-on-the
He’s talking about how drones have changed the battlefield and how counter drone tech is changing the drones.
Re “Drones in 2024 warfare…”
“God made man, But Samuel Colt made them equal”. In a world where the bad guys are generally well armed…….
Imagine countries all around the world in places like Africa and South America, after watching developments in this war, invest heavily into drones. That could very easily put an end to countries like the US, UK and France sending in troops to a country. There would be no way to really protect them. Bases would be vulnerable to attack and formations would be hunted down and killed.
I have watched the increasing use , the dance of offense and defense, the exponential growth of sophistication of drones of all kinds with the recurring thought, that once open it is difficult to re-can a can of worms. Drones in their many manifestations are a fledgling technology but growing with each passing day.To say that drones have changed the face of war has become a cliche´. Coupled with sophisticated ISR, one might question the place of soldiers on the battlefield.
I have read a boatload of science fiction in my life. Seems we are moving into territory that was once considered wild speculation.
And the response of the US to this has been on the order of “We’re working on it.” and all the while keeping those floating targets Ford and Eisenhower safely out of harm’s way.
Then it will be the CIA and the like that will circumvent the drone protections and install Mileis where they care to. More than one way to skin a cat, and the Fokkers and Fuggers behind the curtain can play a long game, in asserting their ownership of everything. Per Musk, coveting Venezuela’s lithium: “We’ll coup whoever we want to.”
Spy vs. Spy. Counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-weapons. All the way down. Because why not? May the best Terminatrix win…
I’m wondering when the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Boogaloo Bois will get their drone supplies built up. Why do January 6th when you can just send a drone to “git ‘er done”? If “we” want to keep sponsoring color revolutions on other people’s territory, at some point they’ll want to return the favor.
Do you really believe that the west has the physical or ideological capability to compete in an industrial-capacity war with Russia, even if China stays on the sidelines? Our financialized system is tuned for producing F35 like systems which maximize ongoing profits and maintenance fees, at the expense of functionality. Where will the manufacturing base come from, and how will its products reach Russia’s borders? Currently the west is expending huge and irreplaceable physical resources to deliver wannabe scrap to western Russia. Is deindustrialized Europe going to build an army to rival the one they squandered this summer? How dumb do we really think they are? Are the war profiteers who own western governments going to stand down from a war they invented, and forfeit profits out of patriotism?
I think we are reaching a teachable moment for MMT. I read that the price of 155mm artillery shells has jumped eightfold, but fortunately Rheinmetall is willing to produce them at that price, and thus assume the energy price increases will level off. We can print all the dollars we want, but if the production capacity for shells is limited, unlimited spending only creates unlimited costs. These costs are not likely to trickle down into general inflation.
I think the point is that “legacy artillery shells” will increasingly be irrelevant in the Game of RISK (c). The battlefield moves toward the Matrix-suited tools of war. And the US War Department is largely all in on bringing Terminators to every theater of contest. Autonomous kill-enabled “robots” set up and turned loose by trans-enabled chains of command. Slaughterbots killing anyone with an inkling of bringing about a better world for humans. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9fa9lVwHHqg&pp=ygUWc2xhdWdodGVyYm90cyB0ZWQgdGFsaw%3D%3D
How does an AI say “Bwahahahahaha!”?
In other words, the much hyped Ukrainian artillery deficit and shell shortage won’t matter.
Russia continues to dither.
Russia still fighting the last war (WW II) in many respects, while slowly fighting to respect the people who they still think of as “brothers.” Russians hoping the Federation model will somehow win out. Jack Reacher does not hold back, the message the US polity is getting.
Humane people usually gat f**ked in a fight.
But Cain slew Abel, so we hear, and as Houthis and other mice have shown, or rats in the case of Likud, other than Superpowers can also roar.
Lots of very “smart” people working on various “technologies” for various paymasters, how to kill and maim (the US War Department has, I have read, a “lethality project” inviting private partners to get big paydays for death-dealing neotech or “improvements” to existing weapons.) Private-public partnerships, am I right? Micro drone swarms, getting down to the microscopic level, kinetic and toxic and pathogenic.
Not a very good vector for Democracy ™ to be riding, but as Andrey Martyanov says, “Well, there you are.“
Nukes at high noon, 10 paces. “Use ‘em or lose ‘em!”
Shouldn’t it be “Our Democracy”?
Like most advertising slogans, that phrase is trademarked, is it not?
I watched the ewetube link and was more than horrified. I urge others to watch and hope that military experts such as redleg will comment on how possible the AI controlled drone using facial recognition is.
Ana in Sacramento
It’s true we no longer have an industrial base, but we have now turned to partners South Korea (and Japan?), who still have factories. So the war goes on.
Stalling for time might be the best option for the neocons, but I doubt Russia plays along with the kick-the-can strategy.
I read the Simplicius piece and my takeaway was that “big arrow” offensives and counter-offensives are likely dead for the foreseeable future on both sides until one side or the other develops better technology to counteract the cheap FPV drones.
Urban areas are another matter. Adviivka will likely be a replay of Artemosvk (formerly Bakhmut) and take some time, but the end seems written in stone.
The real question is can the West afford to keep propping up the Ukrainian economy, weekend at Bernies style? Confetti money can’t build a tank nor raise a cow for slaughter to feed people.
Russian strategy might shift from military targets to economic ones. Hitting a few more grain terminals, and supply lines for food and goods into Kiev would essentially dare the West to keep printing the confetti.
Simplicus’ commentators indulge in lots of wishful thinking.
I think Simplicius is a bit overegging his drone-pudding. No doubt they cause casualties and are an added burden for each side. I’m not saying they aren’t an efficient an nasty addition to firepower available to both sides.
Yet, especially for FPV drones the current very static front lines are the optimum situation (they just don’t have the range* to go look for the enemy), and yet it’s difficult to point out a single section of the front where specifically the drones have been the cause of failure, success or stalemate. It’s still the mortars, artillery and rockets that dominate the battles.
I’ve read that Ukrainians lose drones so often to EW that they have started to install delayed self-destruction charges in them in the hope of catching a trophy collector or two.
Anyway, it’s quite likely that should there be an “arrow” operation of any size, it’s quite likely the FPV drones can’t keep up with the mobile warfare and we’ll see a significant drop in the number of publihed videos.
* recent developments seem to be to either land the drone behind enemy lines to wait worthy target in ambush or use bigger mother-drone to deliver several smaller drones.
why not some modern versions of “punt guns”?
https://gizmodo.com/this-ridiculous-gun-was-made-to-shoot-100-birds-at-once-1733331843
Working link for “2023 was the year of the party — and it’s just getting started” article at-
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/party-year-2023-taylor-swift-beyonce-barbie-rcna131352
So what happens when crowds of people have to gather together to vote in all the elections this year leading up to the big one in November? What strains of Covid will be floating around by then?
Horrifically true, and also not the first time Lambert has made me do a spit stake with my morning coffee. (My first official guffaw of 2024)
Horrifically true, and also not the first time Lambert has made me do a spit stake with my morning coffee. (My first official guffaw of 2024)
lol, of two minds, are we? ;-) Happy New Year, and that goes to all, particularly those who fill this comment space with so many well-thought and informed comments.
Happy New Year to NC and the commentariat.
The ABC News link did not work for me, this one https://abcnews.go.com/International/exclusive-us-bring-back-gerald-r-ford-aircraft-carrier-eastern-mediterranean/story?id=106021259 did (if I figured out how to post a link..).
I find the Amazon article from the Atlantic odd. As a European I have never been on it for its American-ness, but principally it is damn near impossible to get English books at a reasonable price where I live. However, in later years we have experienced fraud attempts and packaging so poor that items arrive broken.
On top of the infamous labor practices it adds up to “only use when unavoidable”.
No idea where you live, but I find a great selection of books at https://blackwells.co.uk
Their shipping is not fast, but it is always free. Another great advantage is that Blackwell’s has many books in soft cover months and even YEARS before the paperback editions are available in the U.S.
All that said, I purchase most of the books I buy from one of two excellent independent book shops within walking distance of my home. There is a third, but it’s a longer walk.
I can recommend hive.co.uk for books. Good prices, free delivery and they donate a portion of the sale price to a local book shop of your choice. Otherwise waterstones stores have pretty much a monopoly in most towns these days.
Blackwell’s has completely replaced the Bezos Bazaar for me! Service is great. Selection unparalleled. Prices are comparable. Shipping is “free” to US and fast enough. No VAT. Not sure how they do it but I’m also happy to support a real business that cares about its customers. The Blackwell’s in Oxford is one of my favorite places, ever. So an order to the company is a vicarious pleasure, too. No good independent bookstore nearby for me.
Many thanks for that link. Free delivery to France too. Brilliant!
I think that bit was overdone at least from the consumer side. Though one of the stories of Amazon was skirting sales taxes for years, and comparisons to the Sears catalogue and that chain from over a century ago who’s name I can’t think of have been made.
Though it seems like Amazon’s real problem is they operate in a medium cost to entry environment. They don’t have the best store locations or like Wal Mart can guarantee diapers/milk when you forgot them.
This is where stock valuation is problematic. Amazon will be too dedicated to chasing valuation it forgets it’s just a catalogue. Theyve run out drone delivery, but they are dependent on usps and shipping companies which are open to everyone.
That Atlantic story is just a rant pasted on top of links that actually explain the situation.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/temu-is-losing-millions-of-dollars-to-send-you-cheap-socks
Since Amazon itself is only marginally profitable due to shipping costs (hence the very heavy push toward Prime) it’s hard to see how a Chinese company using the same business model but no warehouses or delivery trucks poses much of a threat. As for Chinese “junk”–my Chinese TV seems to work a lot better than my previous “American” TV.
Thanks. That’s some good news to start the year!
In the US and perhaps elsewhere use Bookshop.org
They support local bookstores.
Please update me if I presume something no longer applies in our modern era…but is plagiarism somehow okay or is it not? I’d presume an esteemed Ivy institution, our country’s oldest if I am not mistaken, would not bend to such a degree. I only had followed the headlines when this broke, after the debacle of the university leaders appearing before Congress middle December.
What a joke. Leaders in business aren’t accountable to shareholders, like, ever (current broken US corporation Boeing in the lead) and now this steaming pile from one of the highest regarded institutions. And to be fair, I could only attend the campus as a visitor and no way could I have ever attended as a student ( no money, not the best of preparatory training ). I’d add, much like living 8 to 9 years in Chapel Hill made me a resident, and one+ year as a UNC affiliated employee ( UNC Physicians ), those aspects didn’t actually make me a part of the university. I’m digressing and it’s too early and cold. All the “little people” must follow the rules, of course, including myself.
‘is plagiarism somehow okay or is it not?’
Plagiarism sunk Biden’s first attempt at being President back in ’88 as he was caught at it several times and it came out he did the same in law school. But it is the 2020s so all is well and now he is the Prez.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#Presidential_campaigns_of_1988_and_2008
You have to wonder though about the student or professor that did not get that position in university because somebody who cheated by plagiarism took their place instead.
ChatGPT and other ABS* systems will make plagiarism both easily avoidable and fundamentally unavoidable, since the plagiarist can just have the BS bot do the writing without them explicitly copying anything, yet the text may contain large swaths of near verbatim duplication of real authors’ work. They will never know who they copied from.
*Automated B. S.
I regularly use grammarly to turbocharge my writing. It also does a good job of plagiarism detection, which I use to ensure new papers do not use the same language as I used in prior papers – apparently, these days, self-plagiarism is no longer allowed.
Wtf is self-plagiarism? Everyone has a written pattern or accent with preferred words, phrases, and concepts.
The teachers are ferocious when they talk about plagiarism and its consequences with me having to point out during one such class lecture the problems of being insanely focused on even the possibility of it; I often do not know exactly where my ideas or words come from especially when I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking on a subject. Much, maybe a majority, is blended, sorted, and organized subconsciously; it just flows into my pen or keyboard. I often just check the logic, grammar, and spelling, and then I submit it. Of course, if needed, I can and will back up a statement of fact or a quotation with at least one citation. But showing my work is almost impossible half the time.
However, what they are demanding now is much more strict than it was twenty or thirty years ago. I believe that it is unreasonable so especially for the less experienced writer that most students are. Students can and have been dropped from or failed in a class for minor failures. I disagree, but it can be justified as one should not accept even such modest intellectual theft or dishonesty, but it is true that a line needs to be drawn. However, seeing all the Important People getting away with blatantly grotesque cut-and-paste plagiarism of not just a phrase or a paragraph, but of entire pages and papers, makes me both angry and nauseous.
But college students are not Important People are they? They, like all the other little people, are under a different, much harsher and unforgiving, set of rules.
Funny, all my life I have been told that we are all equal under the law. While I saw some efforts, however feeble, towards that reality as a child, today, I see the reverse. Much like how all those who chant drone-like “saving democracy, “rule of law,” or a “rules based order,” do not believe in them, they do not believe in equality under the law. Rules for thee, but not for me.
I had a paper rejected because too much (10%) of it was already published in a paper it built on. Its hard to paraphrase the methods section and some of the introduction, which are based on the same techniques in the same field, not to trigger this aspect. I use Grammarly to see where I stand and if I need to remassage (uselessly) the same words.
>>>Its hard to paraphrase the methods section and some of the introduction, which are based on the same techniques in the same field, not to trigger this aspect.
To restate this, the English language only has so many words to say the same thing, which means that using an overly strict criteria for plagiarism, the search for it is almost guaranteed to succeed and be counterproductive?
@griffen, you are correct. Most academic institutions have a policy on academic honesty that takes the position that plagiarism is unacceptable. AFAICT, this has not changed.
What has changed is that many institutions are now taking the position that faculty get to decide on the use of generative AI on a case-by-case basis. Many institutions see that it’s a can of worms and don’t want to formulate a blanket policy. The can of worms is being dumped onto the plate of the faculty who assign work to students.
This, I would say, is a slippery slope to plagiarism.
I work with my students every semester on writing research papers, and the requirement for serious academic writing is that sources must be cited. Strictly speaking, ChatGPT is a source, and if a writer uses output from it and doesn’t cite it as such, that right there is plagiarism. Next, there are acceptable and unacceptable sources. E.g., a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is an acceptable source, while ChatGPT and Wikipedia are unacceptable sources. This doesn’t get into some of the deeper problems with peer review that KLG has explored in articles for NC, but this is the basic distinction and is serviceable enough for teaching students the nuts and bolts of academic writing.
Of course, none of this will stop unserious writers from using generative AI, but I would say that unless they identify it as such, they are already engaging in plagiarism, and a university that has a policy against plagiarism but no policy against the use of generative AI is on the slippy slope.
The rot in society is pervasive, and the elites know if they start holding a fellow elite accountable then it opens it up to other sacrificial lambs before the big donors are taxed.
yeh, I’m thinking that this was a Board of Overseers epic fail…unless, of course, their function is primarily to rubber stamp a fellow member of the 9:15 AM Sunday foursome.
They know how to blame the caddy for losing the ball.
Plagiarism is okay if you are part of the in-crowd. Everything is permitted them. Remember Biden’s first presidential run was sunk by his Plagiarism? But in 2020, nobody mentioned it, Biden was the Second Coming of FDR Because Trump?
But God help you if you are part of the out-group. You can never win, the burden of proof is always on you.
Correction: Biden was the Second Coming of FDR Because Sanders. Then Trump.
John Pilger, RIP. A sad way to start this new year. Thanks for the ‘War is Coming’ repost, Lambert!
For activist/writers, we also lost Daniel Ellsberg, Al Giordano, and Kevin Phillips (yes, he sort of redeemed himself with his writings from the 1990s on). Not as politically inclined but with relevant perspectives, Jerry Mander and Henry Petroski.
For politicians that I didn’t hate, we lost Lowell Weicker, John Olver, James Abourezk, and Bill Richardson (especially for his hostage negotiator work).
“The Crumbling of the Pax Americana (video)”
Chas Freeman is always worth listening to and here he lays out a few ground truths. I note that this talk was at the Watson Institute for International Affairs which is also where Mark Blyth is a professor. Can you imagine a talk between these two?
Love the antidote, I’ve had the good fortune of actually traveling to Komodo and seeing these amazing creatures live and in the wild.
When I was 8 years old I called the Oakland SPCA and told them I’d be happy to take a Komodo Dragon or a Gorilla if one showed up.
They called about 18 Months later and told my Mother that they had a Gorilla for me…
Which led to a conversation I did not enjoy.
“Bezos Bucks? Get Ready For Corporate Digital Currency IEEE Spectrum”
the return of company scrip?
Unless you can pay your taxes with it, it is not a currency then.
Or the various “Rewards” programs out there. Some of which have been analyzed to be worth more than the companies products or services.
I only scanned the article, so perhaps I missed it, but odd that it did not mention video games which have been doing this for some time.
We already have that. Their called gift cards.
“High-impact ‘drop bombs’ retaking the sky from Myanmar junta Straits Times”
Plus ca change…
This bring to mind the hand dropped bombs of WW1.
I guess the benefit is higher range than a mortar and more mobility than a larger artillery piece.
Israel
The commitment to Israel is total as seen here-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/o2TPRfDF9OVA/ (17 secs)
Americans, not so much.
Bob and Ray for the win! Thanks.
Here’s some financial advice from SNL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ZJKN_5M44
Labor and strikes.
#1. The only thing that big labor unions have been preparing for the past few decades of neoliberalism is lobbying. You have to prepare for a long time to strike.
#2. Most industries cannot strike legally, and have barriers to cooperation. Teachers for example will never strike en masse because each town/city have a local chapter, and working conditions are different based upon social economic factors. A rich suburban district rarely strikes, the one in Andover Mass was the only recent example I can think of.
#TeamBezosTrifecta
Once again, the organization of links is superb and this little trio is right up my various wheelhouses (::snort:: via YCombinator), so here we go:
Bezos Bux – I called this out as a concern years ago, but not able to find my own comment here (yet) sadly. Amazon has the cash and marketplace to do the most here, but having to establish and defend a form of currency is not a trivial endeavor, and there’ll be no backstopping from el gobierno, so … #CaveatEmptor
Silent Sackings – all the lemmings in Silicon Valley decided to plunge into the mass layoffs thing because Elon’s enshittification of X/Twitter appeared to those numb-skulls to be a “success” … LOL … another nail in the “tech bros aren’t here to save us” coffin. Today’s “Visionaries of Silicon Valley” post is spot on as well. TL;DR – they are not visionaries; just greedy goons and gophers of tech oligarchy, and eventually, they run out of other people’s capacity to formulate thoughts about anything worthwhile. The good news is that we are now in the AI hype cycle, so perhaps all Bezos’ AWS boffins have to do is wait out the eventual downside of the irrational AI exuberance. Good luck lads n’ lassies!
End Of Amazon – Yes, you can file this under ‘B’ for “Biter Bitten”. China’s position at the source end of the global supply chain always meant that it was best positioned to cut out various middle men. I was surprised to see the article assert the following (emphasis mine):
I dunno … hasn’t the sentiment in recent years been that Amazon is taking too much from 3rd party sellers (exhibit A via the street.com)? It was only a matter of time, and the only way for Amazon to fight back is to make it more profitable for sellers which is invariably less profitable for Amazon. #Popcorn
Antonio Garcia Martinez – Chaos Monkeys Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Describes the processes in place and the characters very well.
Uneducated, uncultured egomaniacs
#TYVM
Any and all data and even anecdata about Amazon’s impendlng doom instill hope. I just wish that his personal fortune also would disappear.
That m#^**f5;-*#{et stole a lot of money from me. I boughy quite a few ebooks to my ipad for a while. Then I wanted to close my account at Amazon. Then he blocked the access to the ebooks I haf paid for. Theft and a foretaste of the WEF regime.
Chris Hedges
The Death of Israel – Read by Eunice Wong
I’m not at all sure that this is how it will end.
You know, US and Canada are settler colonial states of fairly recent vintage (and, if we go back far enough, so is practically every country)…
No nation/state has the right to exist. Nation/states exist due to the application, by its peoples, of diplomacy or might.
The whole of America is made up of former, fairly recent settler colonial states. As well as most of Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, also Hawaii, New Caledonia, Tahiti…) Ominously, all modern colonial projects (from the 15th century onwards) relied upon a genocidal endeavour.
With colonies, settlers never cut links to their homeland, contrarily to e.g. the Aztecs, or the barbarians during the great invasions, when peoples migrated wholesale into new territories after abandoning their homeland.
Neither are colonies integrated as full-fledged parts of the colonizers’ realm. Colonized people remain subjects, not citizens, and if there are no citizens at all in the realm, they have a lower status than subjects of the “core”. This distinguishes them from a properly multi-national/multi-ethnic empire.
Greeks had colonies proper in the Antiquity (and quite some trouble with the local populations which did not appreciate the settlers), as well as multi-ethnic empires and kingdoms (from Alexander the Great onwards), and formed a people itself probably derived from mass migrations (Dorian migration).
In colonial states that collapsed through the revolt of the colonized, settlers made a small, often tiny minority of the population (3.6% in Angola, about 10% in Algeria). Settler states that attempted to maintain the colonial framework after breaking with the metropole did not fare well under those circumstances (Rhodesia, Namibia, South Africa). In those countries where the colonized ended up a minority (e.g. USA), they had no chance. Israel is the borderline case, at about 50%-50%.
Please tell me more about China, or Mongolia, or Greece, or Iran, etc…
How reasonable! The difference is that since then international standards for how these things are handled have drastically changed – most would say improved. Another difference is that the subjugated indigenous peoples in the US and Canada were small minorities of the overall population, not almost 50% as is the case with Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Another difference is that the national leaders of the US and Canada never expressed the blatant genocidal intentions towards Native Americans that Israeli leaders have towards Palestinians. But how reasonable of you to have made your point!
Its sad, but much of what we are seeing was predicted decades ago based on birth rates and Israeli behavior. It was definitely discussed when Sharon dismantled settlements. When he stroked out, the Israeli watchers all recognized how this ends. A country of 7 million with another 7 million prisoners can’t function as an island.
Two things have caught my eye. Fetterman is discussing his depression and how mean social media is. His team has figured out his whole heel turn isn’t a good look. They can’t walk it back, so they are going to hide behind depression.
The other is Blinken, I stress Blinken, authorized emergency funding for ammunition bypassing Congress. Biden and the Congress don’t want their names on it. LIke Fetterman, they are in too deep especially Biden with his very public lies, but yesterday, there was a story about how Biden is “frustrated” over Netanyahu not releasing tax revenue to the West Bank. They won’t stop the genocide because they don’t want to call it that especially with their remaining voters and they hope everyone will fall for “Biden didn’t know Netanyahu was an evil man.”
A lot of wishful thinking. The US is a settler colonial state, and even if it were to collapse today, it probably would not be replaced by the native inhabitants.
The arc of history in no wise bends towards justice but towards power.
But does Israel have that power? In purely technical terms they could exterminate the Palestinians, but then there are other states who would either withdraw critical support in face of naked genocide, or if they are hostile, be eager to use the opportunity settle other scores with them. And so instead of just exterminating Palestinians, Israel is employing Tony Blair to somehow sell world on “voluntary resettlement” or whatever.
Israel is tiny country that managed to piss off everyone in their neighborhood, the “best” scenario if they insist on continuing on current path is they end up like North Korea. Except even North Korea has China over the border to prop them up.
Israel has nukes. It’s immediate neighbors don’t. That’s the game changer. That’s why Israel is so hell bent on Iran not having nukes, because if Iran were to have nukes that would seriously impinge on Israel’s freedom of movement in the region. .
North Korea has nukes too. Problem with them is that while they are good at scaring US from outright invading you, when the enemy is more fuzzy and the threat less definitive, their utility quickly evaporates. So if for example they try to take out Hezbollah and it doesn’t go well, like Hezbollah starts making inroads into Israel, what they are going to nuke? Beirut? Tehran? Or Berlin with the hope that EU will save them?
Israel already is engaging in more or less open ethnic cleansing and, barring that, genocide.
Nobody outside of Yemen dares do anything, as long as Israel’s American thug stands ready to smash dissent.
Can it get any more obvious when the powers that be tell us that SBF will not go on trial for illegal campaign contributions (a hundred million!) because we, as a nation, just want all of this over with, at the same time that Trump is facing years of jail for real, but, mostly imagined crimes and bad behavior for, what, almost ten years now?
Low morals in high places, the corruption is profound.
Of course. Some crimes are very bad, Very Very Bad, but only when the outsiders are accused of committing them.
When the insiders do them, then that makes it okay!
It would not surprise me in the least if SBF’s lackadaisical defense was entirely on purpose, much as the Ghislaine Maxwell trial was determined to Not Go There.
I have to concur. The Dems, and especially the Biden administration, bleating on about “politicization of the DOJ” is a first class example of projection.
Hunter and SBF, model democrats.
I’d say that rather than the public interest, it’s in the private interest to cover up the shenanigans of the scions of grift.
“…it’s in the private interest to cover up the shenanigans of the scions of grift.”
We certainly haven’t heard anything about the Romney/Pelosi/Kerry kids on the boards of biological research firms in Ukraine for a couple of years now. One might almost think that one had imagined those reports.
Links?
The best one can find now is to the controversy over the existence of the labs, themselves. On the one hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj54bHx3a5M
And on the other:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological
Nothing can be found about any convergence of PE interests like those of Romney or Pelosi kids anymore. I have no idea if they were involved, but in light of all the work that went into burying things like the Hunter lap top, that maybe should not be so surprising.
Thanks!
Right?!
Double Standards ‘R Us Democrats!
Politics as sport is the ruin and perhaps redemption of this country. By ruin, I mean it is part of what has led us here. The SBF debacle is little more than a play in an American football game where there are multiple penalties on the play, and ‘we’ get to choose which penalty to accept.
Automatic First Down!
By redemption, I mean it’s all so glaringly out in the open now. Less people are fooled. More people are seeing past the ostensible sleight of hand. Less people are willing to “play the game”. Pretty soon, the agents of this country’s deceiptful duopoly are going to realize they’re playing before a largely empty stadium.
#SeeYouInNovember
The House has had Trump’s tax returns for over a year. According to one tax expert who has seen them
The IRS nailed Al Capone for tax avoidance, but not Trump? Even with all that extra enforcement staff?
For the elite class, you can get caught red handed in full public view and still not face consequences.
Poor Al Capone was in the out-group. How times have changed.
The tax code has been rewritten since they got Capone.
There is probably little or nothing that the IRS can flag because practically every extremely wealthy person in the country has lobbied Congress for years to make sure almost every thing they do is tax deductible.
Garrison Keillor essay from 2017.
Garrison Keillor: The gentle people shall prevail
https://captimes.com/opinion/column/garrison-keillor-the-gentle-people-shall-prevail/article_ebfe4978-3a4a-5090-b31c-63f640f8a2fa.html
And a Keillor quote from another article:
“What keeps our faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, … tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids—all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.”
adding: Garrison Keillor and Miss Jean Redpath, (what a wonderful voice she had), singing a different version of Whispering Hope. / :)
Jean Redpath & Garrison Keillor: “Tuna, the Food the Food of My Soul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzyI_Hh8ufI
Huh. The Tube says not available? Try this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzyI_Hh8ufI
Gentle as in the genetically created humans in Margaret Attwood’s MaddAddam Series?
Methinks Attwood’s dystopic triology novel set, warning though it may be, is a different sci-fi track from the idea that humans can and will in themselves find a way, without some dystopic something-or-other or sci-fi way, to save themselves from an inhuman disaster. / my 2 cents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/books/review/maddaddam-by-margaret-atwood.html
September 8, 2013
Final Showdown
By Andrew Sean Greer
“Where, where is the town?” Talking Heads sang. “Now, it’s nothing but flowers.”
What a joy it is to see Margaret Atwood taking such delicious pleasure in the end of the world. And it is nothing but flowers. In “MaddAddam,” the third volume of Atwood’s apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy, she has sent the survivors of “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood” to a compound where they await a final showdown. But what gives “MaddAddam” such tension and light are the final revelations of how this new world came to be, and how the characters made their way to this battle for the future of humanity. Atwood has brought the previous two books together in a fitting and joyous conclusion that’s an epic not only of an imagined future but of our own past, an exposition of how oral storytelling traditions led to written ones and ultimately to our sense of origin….
that’s nice.
adding: many years ago when I was home visiting the folks, PBS was showing a 10 or 20 year anniversary show of A Prairie Home Companion on TV. I asked the folks if I could please watch that, knowing it wasn’t on their normal schedule of Sunday night TV viewing. They kindly said yes, OK, they’d entertain themselves reading some books while I watched my “silly show.”
When this bit came on Mom, rural child of the Great Depression, suddenly looked up from her book, started to sing along to the old Whispering Hope words, realized Redpath and Keillor had change the words, and she glared at the TV, (how dare they), and then she started to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. By the end of the song there were tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks. “They’re just silly!” she exclaimed. I never saw her laugh so hard before or since.
Re: ‘black box’, reductions in legal transparency in China.
Yeah, that would be bad.
https://www.courts.ca.gov/cms/rules/index.cfm?title=two&linkid=rule2_551
Sealing Your Settlement Agreement from the – Public Eye
condonlaw.com
› wp-content › uploads › 2013 › 09 › christensen_settlement.pdf
PDF
Sealed Out-of-Court Settlements: When Does the Public …
core.ac.uk
› download › pdf › 268210871.pdf
PDF
LR 49.1 Filing Documents Under Seal in Criminal Cases
mnd.uscourts.gov
› sites › mnd › files › LR-49-1.pdf
PDF
https://abcnews.go.com/US/judges-order-doj-releases-slightly-redacted-version-affidavit/story?id=100734802/
Et many al, across going on 30 years.
Re: The false elector plan and the insurrection…I agree with Yves, the bones for an insurrection conviction lie not with 90 percent of the mob that overran the Capitol but with some of the other details – the false electors being one of the most obvious. But there are others – the strange calling off the the National Guard just before Jan 6th (I will get back to that); the efforts to convince states to change votes; the tiny percentage of mob members who were there with previous planning and intent (Proud Boyd etc) to halt things. The overall strategy was, in my opinion, three-fold. One, convince Pence to delay the certification and throw things back to the states; and Two; hope that a mob action would frighten Congress into delaying the vote, also dropping things back to the states. The third component, and the one least examined by the Jan 6 committee or anyone else so far as I know, concerns the strange National Guard restrictions applied just before the day. My theory here is that Trump and his people were absolutely certain that on Jan 6th the left and Antifa would come out in droves just as did his supporters, and the plan was that when people rushed the Capitol there would be a tremendous riot between supporters and Antifa, at which point Trump would declare martial law and take over. We are seeing snippets of this now and then in various reports, but I am sure there is more.
I think Trump was trying to bait his opposition into the streets that day and then use that as his excuse to take over. All you have to do is watch that video of all of them watching the riot build before Trump went out there to speak. The sense of giddiness and anticipation is palpable. They fully expected to still be in charge at the end of the day.
TDS much?
Or it could be that the reason that there was little to no investigation of the law enforcement failures of January 6 is that it was something the investigators didn’t want investigated. That the baiting wasn’t being done by Trump, but by his bipartisan opposition. That so many FBI “informants” were part of the crowds in order to egg them on. That the ease of entering the Capitol was intended. Unfortunately it didn’t play out as intended.
Personally I believe that the delayed investigations into the electors scheme is only happening because January 6 failed to destroy Trump. He wasn’t convicted only impeached, and as many people rejected the claim of insurrection as those that embraced it. If the opposition PTB could erase that and him, everything would be forgotten. Because trying to upset the electoral college is a bipartisan project, and focusing on attempts to subvert electors doesn’t help that project. Unfortunately the so-called insurrection failed, he survived and is the GOP front runner and could win next year. There may be no choice.
One of these days it’s going to start occurring to folks that maybe Kevin McCarthy got along with Democrats because he didn’t press on J6.
In the vein of, “second verse, same as the first, but louder!” We have this article from the Guardian which tells us that the poor, beleaguered, plucky heroes, behind the Stanford Internet Observatory are ready to spend 2024 fighting misinformation from the right. Because that is the only direction misinformation comes from.
And the Biden Administration, despite crushing labor, and the poor, and illegally supplying Israel and Ukraine with weapons for illegal purposes, is not right wing.
I read this to mean we’re going to make the media even more useless in 2024, and we’ll also cut off your options for alternate sources of information. Not that anything there is surprising to people here. Someone posted last night that Yves and Lambert and others might end up being targets of official displeasure in 2024. I think the odds of that happening are increasing. Be careful out there!
It starts with an earthquake…
I feel fine. How about the rest of you?
Everybody feel fine?
I hate this song, and now it’s stuck in my head.
Powerful stuff from Chris Hedges
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/31/israels-genocide-betrays-the-holocaust/
There’s actually a movie about the Sonderkommando called The Gray Zone. You see them persuading the victims that the building they just entered is a communal shower and then later collecting the bodies for the crematoria.
Some of us would contend it’s really all about honesty. States may have “only interests” but when you start talking about “the most moral army in the world” you are just lying. So it’s truth that has been put into “the gray zone” and that may be the biggest crime of all.
‘You see them persuading the victims that the building they just entered is a communal shower and then later collecting the bodies for the crematoria.’
They also added little touches to make it seem normal. Like telling those people to remember where they placed their clothing so that they could quickly find them after their shower. It was only when they were in that room that they noticed that there were no drains.
This is the movie I mentioned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grey_Zone
Of course Americans have often been in their own Gray (or Grey) Zone. The My Lai massacre and many other episodes in the Vietnam War show how fear can create a kind of moral as well as physical cowardice. John Hersey had a similar theme re WW2 with his book The War Lover. It’s not about condemning the perpetrators so much as condemning the deeds–something our current politicians in Washington by and large are afraid to do.
It’s been a long time since I saw that 2001 movie but as I recall in the end the Jewish helpers at Auschwitz do revolt. How this maps to reality I don’t know but it is based on a book by a camp survivor.
Aren’t we missing some essential nuance?
The Holocaust and genocide are evil when Jews are the victims; and justified when Jews are the perpetrators. Antisemitic speech to incite hatred and violence against Jews is evil; such speech by Jews against Palestinians is OK.
Get it? /s
Last night, January 1, Stepan Bandera’s birthday, the Russians destroyed the Roman Shukhevych museum in Lvov/ Lwów/ Lemberg/ Lviv.
Shukhevych was one of the perpetrators of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of tens of thousands of Poles, Jews, Roma, and other ethnic minorities.
The Russians also bombed and damaged the University college Stepan Bandera attended, again on his birthday.
Bandera & Shukhevych have been accorded Hero of Ukraine status by the post-Maidan fascist regime over objections of the EU and Poland. It is illegal in Ukraine to criticise these men; it is illegal in Poland to extol them.
Russians indeed do propaganda quite well when they choose to, imho. -a.v.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
Greetings from Saline hot springs and a happy New Year to all!
Greetings to you from frigid South Carolina, no springs. 2024 has gotta be better than 2023.
Michael Pettis is the much favored American and British economic analyst on China, The problems for me, however, are that Pettis is a Milton Friedman-style monetarist, who fails to understand just how profoundly China has developed these 45 years because China adopted a development framework that Robert Solow long favored.
Solow understood many years ago that technology advance was the main driver of economic growth. Chinese planners understood this as well. Chinese emphasis on national projects leading to technology advance has been continual and Xi Jinping has made clear the emphasis will continue at the highest level.
For instance, these last several years China has been spending from $100 to $150 billion years on water conservancy programs, always with the intent to provide for irrigation for agricultural regions. Additionally, seed development has been a major concern with dramatic results… Applications of the Internet of Things to crop and livestock monitoring…
Monetarism can have an indirect effect of technology advance, but that is not considered enough by the Chinese. Another year of fine growth in 2023 and impressive technology advance show, to me, that the Chinese approach has been and is necessary.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17icV
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, European Union, India, Japan and United States, 1977-2022
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17id3
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, European Union, India, Japan and United States, 1977-2022
(Indexed to 1977)
There is another angle to this topic
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-tries-to-censor-data-about-nearly-1-billion-people-in-poverty/ar-AA1m9iaC
> Exclusive: US to bring back aircraft carrier from eastern Mediterranean
Odd. Although Ford on extended deployment you’d think hanging around for another month wouldn’t be a problem to show support for Israel. Is this an indication of displeasure with Netanyahu? That there’s no US support for Israel’s next offensive against Hezbollah? As Scott Ritter has noted numerous times Israel can’t beat Hezbollah on its own – at least conventionally. Will Israel back down or go where no sane country would go?
Wonder what the sailors’ morale is like. Although now that I write that out… I doubt it would be a big factor in the US decision making.
How reasonable! The difference is that since then international standards for how these things are handled have drastically changed – most would say improved. Another difference is that the subjugated indigenous peoples in the US and Canada were small minorities of the overall population, not almost 50% as is the case with Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Another difference is that the national leaders of the US and Canada never expressed the blatant genocidal intentions towards Native Americans that Israeli leaders have towards Palestinians. But how reasonable of you to have made your point!
Running short on Lieutenant Dans. Maybe the typical military recruits are in Pass Me By status.
A firearms website forum has a poll on “Would you recommend joining the military to your kids?”
Many veterans comment. Running about 85% against joining the military.
A sample against comment: “I don’t totally disagree with you, I just don’t know how having my son join the military and fighting the next disaster our government gets us into is a good thing. Whether it’s guarding oil fields in Syria or getting into it with the Russians in UKR (Biden’s words). Neither are our business and as we’ve learned, typically leads to much bigger problems (examples: OBL, from Soviet-AFG through until Xiden’s cluster of a pull out of AFG to Obama’s handy work in IRQ).”
Thanks, but no thank you, for a depressing pair of New Year links!
The main reason I visit such alternative media sites as NC, is primarily because they often tell me what I want to hear
ie that the oppressed and unfairly exploited/demonised have a fighting chance, to not just survive but thrive, and the Empire is declining.
Simplicious now tells me that Ukraine-Russia are going on for another 5 years of playing leap-frog in military tech development, and Hedges tell me Israel will go down .. eventually .. when the ‘truth’ comes out in the historical wash.
Im getting too old, I would like to see just one worthy geopolitical win before I pass off this mortal coil.