New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered in Spain Sci News
This Camera Takes 1,000 Years to Capture a Single Photograph Science Alert
Chicago’s ‘rat hole’ was mysteriously filled and then restored. Now it’s a place of holy rat-rimony. Associated Press
‘Burn, beetle, burn’: South Dakotans torch an effigy of destructive bug The Guardian
An animal myself Aeon
Climate/Environment
Hedge funds are raking in record profits by betting on ‘catastrophe’ bonds Bloomberg
Water
Algarve drought nears “catastrophic” level Portugal Resident
Drought Latest: The Biggest Cities in Spain’s Andalucia Will Bring In Water Cuts Within Weeks ‘Unless There Is Rain for 30 Days Straight’ The Olive Press
#COVID-19
Immune damage in Long Covid Science
Old Blighty
I was investigated by Britain’s counterterrorism police, which succumbed to political pressure from top Israeli propagandists, diplomats, lobby-affiliated British government officials, and countless right-wing media outlets, who demanded I be arrested and charged over a recent…
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) January 21, 2024
How Britain Invented Modern Torture Kit Klarenberg
UK to upgrade warship defence missile system used in Red Sea Reuters
Over 367,000 UK households without central heating in sub-zero temperatures The Independent
India
Would Rather Stay Here But There Are No Jobs, Say Those at Israel Recruitment Drive in Haryana The Wire
European Disunion
Europe moves into a new world after a crippling energy crisis Bloomberg
Germany’s last solar panel producer prepares to close shop Euractiv. Relocating to US.
German farmers protest agricultural subsidy cuts in Berlin Anadolu Agency
The Koreas
Seoul’s Imported Prophets Logic Mag
China?
China’s gallium and germanium exports tumble as controls on shipments to the West take toll South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
The Mirage of Palestinian Independence in the Shadow of Israeli Policies Elijah J. Magnier
BREAKING: HAMAS RELEASE 17 PAGE BOOK ON WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON OCT 7
HAMAS AL-AQSA FLOOD OPERATION
INTRODUCTION
In light of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and as our people continue their battle for independence, dignity and… pic.twitter.com/IZAY68uHmt
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) January 21, 2024
How Israel’s ‘scholasticide’ denies Palestinians their past, present and future Toronto Star
Jewish Youth Are Indoctrinated From a Young Age in Jewish Day School to Blindly Support Israel and View Palestinians With Contempt Covert Action Magazine
Germany’s leading Jewish newspaper advocates genocide in Gaza Middle East Monitor
Why Israel’s Violence Gets So Much Notice (It’s Not Antisemitism) The Intercept
***
US Navy Says Two Missing SEALs Died In Raid On Iran Ship Reuters
64 ships safely cross Red Sea after disavowing ties with Israel: Yemen’s Houthis Anadolu Agency
This is amazing.
Ships in the Red Sea are going a step further by signaling to Yemen that not only are they not involved with Israel, but with the US too.
“NO ISRAEL/US INVOLVED”
The blockade on the US is in effect. pic.twitter.com/WFVMxG7eZ4
— deeeeeee (@revolutionaryem) January 21, 2024
***
Lebanon: Two Hezbollah Members Dead, Several Wounded in Suspected Israeli Drone Strike Haaretz
Syria calls on intl. community to stop Israeli attacks on civilians Al Mayadeen
***
NYT’s Peter Baker reports that when it comes to deadly attacks on US troops stationed in the Mideast, “President Biden and his advisers worry that it is only a matter of time.”
Meanwhile, whenever news of an attack on US forces comes in, “officials wonder whether this will be… pic.twitter.com/3XAtgczpY9
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 22, 2024
New Not-So-Cold War
A PLEA TO END THE WAR IN UKRAINE Larry Johnson
Shelling of Donetsk by the AFU – A bloody Sunday International Reporters
Russian LNG producer Novatek suspends Baltic Sea terminal operations after fire from suspected Ukrainian drone attack South China Morning Post
***
Duda describes building defence capacity as priority task for region The First News
On pro-war GB News Grant Shapps said we must prepare for war with Russia and said that we must encourage people to join the armed forces.
“Please Apply” said Shapps.
Would you go and fight for Shapps and what he represents? pic.twitter.com/H7u2O2hmr8
— UNN (@UnityNewsNet) January 21, 2024
***
Slovakia to veto Ukraine’s NATO entry to avoid ‘world war’ World Nation News
Slovakia To Resume Cultural Cooperation With Russia RFE/RL
European Parliament concerned over Slovakia proposed legislative reforms Jurist
Thousands rally across Slovakia to condemn changes to penal code proposed by populist prime minister ABC News
Imperial Collapse Watch
US laser weapon program hits a glaring blind spot Asia Times
2024
Ron DeSantis suspends his presidential bid and endorses Trump NBC News
Wall Street billionaires plan Haley fundraiser after New Hampshire: report The Hill
Biden campaign blows off Dean Phillips floating No Labels bid: ‘There are only two options’ The Hill
Democrats en déshabillé
Genocide is not a ‘lesser evil’ The Floutist
GOP Clown Car
House GOP already considering a future without Johnson POLITICO
Trump
Trump win could force UK into war economy to back Ukraine, ex-No 10 adviser says inews
The spectre of another Trump presidency looms as Trudeau’s cabinet gathers to start a new year CBC
Trump’s victory would be a horror for Berlin’s foreign policy
A special headquarters has been created at the German Foreign Ministry to assess the consequences of Trump’s re-election for Germany. Der Spiegel reports that almost all areas of diplomats’ work will be affected, from… pic.twitter.com/DNnAhnjtP5
— S p r i n t e r (@Sprinter99800) January 21, 2024
Our Famously Free Press
The Media and Trump Lee Fang
Julian Assange ‘would rather commit suicide than go to the US’, says brother The Saturday Paper
AI
The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence – book review Counterfire
Groves of Academe
The true cost of the latest round of cuts at UNH New Hampshire Bulletin
The Bezzle
Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Cointelegraph
Church Allegedly Issued Crypto Token Backed by Nothing But God’s Word Decrypt
Guillotine Watch
Chasm of inequality: the future as seen from Davos Counterfire
Class Warfare
It’s Time To Revisit Price Controls, Beginning with Limits on Overdraft Fees The Sling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
105 comments
Comments are closed.
WHAT THEY STEAL
(melody borrowed from Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears)
Now Bibi’s still defending his throne
Attacking hell for leather
His apoplectic base thinks they should own the whole place
A right wing invention
Their war on Gaza has left Hamas untouched
A failed invasion
That’s not an aberration, Bibi’s soldiers aren’t much
Soldiers part of the time, they’re just-just-just pantomime
Netanyahu thinks he’s hell on four wheels
His nation fades with every house that they steal
Here’s the future that their panic reveals:
Watch them rip apart their applecart just-just-just throw it away
Throw it away . . . Throw it away . . .
Beirut and Cairo will get their turn (Yeah!)
In the near future
As Israel will threaten with a nuclear blast
No-no-no winning through fission
Another of my brothers he now fights underground
They killed his wife and daughters
Beware the pious man who has a gun in his hand
For he feels so . . .
Netanyahu thinks he’s hell on four wheels
His nation fades with every house that they steal
Here’s the future that their panic reveals:
Watch them rip apart their applecart just-just-just throw it away
Wait till all this fighting’s over
Watch Palestine come through fine
When all this fighting’s over
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la
Oh, Palestine!
One little boy, one little man
My nation shall rise . . .
“‘Burn, beetle, burn’: South Dakotans torch an effigy of destructive bug”
Some bugs get the love though. The prickly pear plant was introduced into Oz in 1788 and by the 1920s had infested an area bigger than the UK. Whole regions had to be abandoned to this plant. But then in 1926, millions of Cactoblastis moth eggs from Argentina were distributed throughout prickly-pear-infested areas, followed by a further 2.2 billion between 1927 and 1931. Within 10 years the prickly pear had mostly disappeared and abandoned regions were once more opened up to settlers. So much gratitude was held for this little moth that they dedicated a Memorial Hall to it in 1936 and this was followed by a Memorial Cairn and a Memorial Statue-
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cactoblastis-memorial-cairn
https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/disaster/plagues/display/91971-cactoblastis-memorial
If we were to burn an effigy of the Bark Beetle that has killed around a billion pine trees across the country, it wouldn’t give off much of a flame, being 1/8th of an inch long.
There’s a monument in the middle of Enterprise, Alabama, to the boll weevil, the nemesis of cotton growers. Enterprise sits in the middle of cotton country in southeast Alabama.
It was the boll weevil that taught the cotton farmers to rotate their crops to interrupt the life cycle of the beetle that destroys cotton bolls and makes them useless.
Pete Seeger – Ballad of Boll Weevil:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-6_nyROLak (3:56)
double cicada hatch coming https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/state/2024/01/22/will-the-two-2024-cicada-brood-swarms-be-coming-to-ohio/72309974007/
“Wall Street billionaires plan Haley fundraiser after New Hampshire: Report ”
This sounds like an ultimatum to me. I think that those billionaires are telling Neocon Nikki that she had better perform and perform well in New Hampshire or else there will be no more billionaires shoveling money to her in any fundraisers. Things have really changed for the Republicans in recent years. You use to have a Clown Car pull up early in the season and then a whole bunch of Republican candidates would pile out all wanting the big job. And now? It looks like Trump has bent the GOP to his will and you have very few presidential candidates come forward. Yes, they are still clowns but that is besides the point. Meanwhile the Democrats are besides themselves with shock at how Trump keeps on coming back like the Terminator. Scandals, impeachment, January 6th, lawsuits, etc., the guy is bullet-proof. Trump can’t be bargained with. Trump can’t be reasoned with. Trump doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And Trump absolutely will not stop, ever, until he is President again!
The ambience of such a fundraiser event could perhaps be summarized with some light satire…courtesy of Dangerfield having dinner at the Bushwood club…
https://youtu.be/xPaClGpIfK4?si=9kMdwT0TqgQZTWF0
Money doesn’t buy intelligence. Hailey was always a clown. Her campaign message is mostly doubling down on Biden’s foreign policy and yelling at Trump, despite not resigning in protest.
The usual GOP clown car had a flat taxer, a Ron Paul type if not Ron Paul, an anti-immigrant type, an ugly bible thumper, a polite bible thumper, a western governor/senator with msm friends, a northeast republican, and a businessman. Trump owns the evangelicals and is seen as as businessman. They are all anti-immigrant. Flat taxes are just stupid. Evangelicals aren’t getting younger. Rand Paul is a dork.they all officially hate immigrants. Occasionally they call for a foreign policy person, but I can’t think of anyone who was properly a foreign policy person in campaigns since Harold Stassen stopped running. Hailey is not.
DeSantis marked a few boxes, but Republicans like macho actors. DeSantis would just look buffoonish saying my cold dead hands. Is he going to be claim when they take guns from him?
To that list you can typically add a black guy (e.g. Ben Carson) and a woman (e.g. Carly Fiorina) as well. For a bit of nostalgia-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/06/the-republican-debate-meet-the-candidates
Even Tim Scott–who was first appointed to his senate seat by Haley–has endorsed Trump. But perhaps this ingratitude is appropriate given that Haley’s only claim to any national prominence is via Trump’s odd decision to make her UN ambassador.
And he’s engaged to an interior designer…so, I’m sure they have all kinds of photos of them celebrating holidays together. That way we will know they’ve been dating.
I doubt Trump had much to do with her selection. I think he probably didn’t really know who the players were and just appointed whomever the republican establishment told him to, figuring he’d just fire them later if they didn’t pan out to his liking.
That’s why I wasn’t all that concerned when he appointed war criminal John Bolton. Much more concerning is how Bolton became a liberal hero after Trump canned him.
Nobody of influence and authority wants an intelligent president backed by shrewd advisors who support his agenda.
They want an obedient president and well-trained advisors.
Trump stand up well under the MSM/party gaslighting….
Not so sure (uh, JFK parumph) that Dems/Blob think Trump is “bullet-proof.” Ammo production and sale of that and firearms at an all-time high. Large majority of states allow “open carry” of firearms, in addition to “concealed carry.” Here in FL we can now legally carry concealed without even the minimal training given in concealed-carry classes.
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon
“There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware …” Buffalo Springfield.
(For reference, the Springfield was a large-caliber rifle often used in the “hunting” of buffalo, aimed at exterminating the species and hence the Native populations that depended on the buffalo for subsistence.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_rifle
The problem with “an armed society” is that it formalizes and legitimizes ‘force’ as the basic form of conflict resolution. As to whether or not that is a good thing…..Social Darwinists would approve?
Better the average citizen having “force” at his/her side rather that the systemically corrupt US government and its corporate masters. Meanwhile Europeans completely trusting of their governments (who have had a history of treating them well until Washington cracks the whip) are the ones who will lose the future while in the US situation the State must always hesitate to repress us as the French and German governments have been doing. Not that our government hasn’t tried to move towards totalitarianism via the propaganda organs and social media it’s just there are too many independent thinkers around and many of us have guns and military training and will come together if the government tries anything funny. Most of us either do not trust the governments at any level or we are sniffing the air and don’t like the bad smell.
It sure is funny how this era where there are more guns and ammo in the hands of US citizens than ever before seems to almost exactly overlap with the era of outrageous and continuing government overreach.
The gun fetishists are forever claiming they need their toys to safeguard liberty, as if threats to liberty are some theoretical future possibility that they’ll be ready to prevent. Meanwhile in practice not only are they forever absent while liberty is actually being curbed, they’re more often than not precisely the crowd that applauds curbing liberty if it’s justified as fighting against people who ‘hate us for our freedoms’.
Also of course the entire ‘people vs government’ framework forever treats government as this unjustified alien force. Rather than advocating to make government more democratic and accountable, the goal is to reduce government into as much of a non-entiry as possible. This isn’t actually politics, ie the use of public pressure to set policy. It’s instead a kind of petulant, childish anti-politics that imagines life would get on swimmingly if government just didn’t exist. Sorry, but policy will exist, whether you like it or not. Power abhors a vacuum; if you smother democratic government, it’ll just be done by other forces you have no influence whatsoever over.
I recall the words of a friend, a retired USAF Chief Master Sergeant, who spent time as chair of his county Republican committee in western Massachussets, where there is a strong gun culture: if those people get their way everything will be run by those who have the most and the biggest guns. I might add that there is an historical term for such a regime: feudalism.
It’s been several years since I read it, and I suppose the number is larger now, but I have read that even though there are more guns than people in the United States, only 23% of families own even one gun. If that’s so it implies there are quite a few people who have large armories.
Bravo, thank you!
I often read USians (rightfully) not trusting their government, but the reaction is often not to want to improve it. It’s much more common for people to say they just want less of it, as if fixing it is basically impossible in their “democracy”.
God almighty save us from this gun rubbish, Heinlein’s libertarian crypto-fash nonsense. It’s not guns that frighten govts, it’s a people motivated to fight them. Sure guns could be useful – say in the hands of people like the Republicans in West Belfast in the 1970s – but in the end, a govt. is more scared of a people so motivated that ten of their soldiers would rather starve to death on hunger strike than wear prison uniforms than they are of a bunch of Gravy Seal weekend warriors LARPing at 1776. That would require American dissidents having a coherent philosophy and the will to implement it, hahaha.
Grow up, America (but I know you never will).
You seem to have a reading comprehension problem.
If those with guns come together they will be cannon fodder to all the arms that the state police have been supplied over the years. Just sayin..
A majority of US States now allow concealed carry without any training or licensure, following the lead of Vermont which has long been known for gunfights over parking spaces.
Here in Sonoma County obtaining a CCW costs @ $3k and the requirements include an interview with an “Approved” board certified psychiatrist, in neighboring Lake County the cost is @ $300 which reflects the economic differences between the Counties.
The key word is “Approved”.
All good people understand that the right to bear arms should be reserved to the Gentry and Lawn Forcement, if you can’t afford to take several days off during the workweek and afford to spend $3K you shouldn’t be able to bear arms.
Keeping the rabble in line is of the utmost importance, allowing the plebes the same rights as the well to do is a horrible mistake.
I’m guessing you’re kidding about the VT gunfights, because having grown up there, most people would ask “What’s a parking space?”.
“Lawn Forcement”. Very good.
In other election news, yesterday erstwhile VP prospect Tim Scott proposed marriage to a woman on a beach and had pictures taken to prove it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/01/21/tim-scott-engaged-vp-trump/
Imagine if Trump locked down a chunk of the black vote just to troll the Dems.
Perhaps the choice of Ronald Fryer would really upend the Democratic control of the Black vote? A working class Black man who made good and rejects all the nonsense that Black kids cant excel just as much as other children in the traditional educational subjects. Quite the opposite of the Harvard President who was recently removed due to plagiarism.
“Would you go and fight for Shapps and what he represents ?”
“No way would I fight for these globalists, I would sign up to fight for Russia !”
“Absolutely not. Wars are bankers wars. I won’t fight for them.”
“I’d rather fight for Putin than Shapps.”
“Wonder if he’s encouraging his family to ? Didn’t think so”
It’s a strange old world in which the comment sections of the big reputable British news organizations are still filled to the brim with sentiments of the “Bring on WW III, there’s no price I wouldn’t pay to kill Russians” sort and yet the respondents to a tweet from a right-leaning independent news organization all sound like they’re ready to storm the Bastille.
I know that it is totally irrelevant, but if you cover up the top part of Shapps’s face on your screen, the bottom half looks like it was computer generated.
The top half looks like a photoshop of a young Tim Robbins.
Thank you.
Shapps typifies the type who entered politics from the 1980s onwards, ignorant, shameless and often crooked. In Shapps’ case, he authored, or claimed to have, self help books on getting rich quick and used aliases like Alan Green, Sebastian Fox, Corinne Stockheath (sic) and two more in the US to tout his expertise.
Last year, he held five different cabinet posts as the Tories rearranged their deckchairs.
He was also chairman of B’nai Brith, a zionist charity, and is happy to use his daughter, a student in Leeds, to further zionist propaganda.
What is worse is there are more like him coming through the ranks, not just Tory ranks.
Thank you, Colonel. Shapps seems to be the sort of person that formally was described as ‘too clever by half.’ His former business ventures tell you all you need to know about this character-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps#Business_ventures
Almost makes one wish that Donald the Orange were to come on across the pond to carry out a New Glorious Revolution. Somehow, many of us knew that having another King Charles was not a good idea.
Glorious Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution
Thank you, Rev. That’s right, except he isn’t.
Give him some credit. He isn’t in danger of going to jail soon for being too stupid to avoid the plods. Unlike every single local politician in Ashfield (the Observer hasn’t noticed that it’s not just one person on trial), Notts, none of whom (oh definitely not) are mates of Lee Anderson and come from both major parties before they became “independents”.
It’s funny in a not-funny-at-all kind of way that when I get sick of the TDS articles about “will he go to jail”, my local news is full of “will the entire council down the road from me go to jail?” Since I’m in the UK I have to add the “allegedly” in case there has been plea bargaining and I’m proven wrong but the original charges were just a tad more serious than the Observer reports.
As Lambert says, the eyes are the windows to the soul. These right-wing goons never smile with their eyes, only with their mouths. Like alligators.
Funny you should say that. Sometimes we get these maniacs in government here in Oz and when you look at their faces on TV, there is this look of fanaticism about them. It really stands out. You look up their history and it only confirms it. Traditionally Aussie politicians strove to be like a guy that you could go for a beer with (e.g Bob Hawke) but these people really give off a bad vibe and even their eyes glare a bit too much. Yeah, this sounds subjective but I assure you that it is a real thing.
Thank you and well said, FB and Rev.
A dozen or so years ago, a colleague asked me to meet her boyfriend, an LSE student about to complete his doctorate in international relations, as the boyfriend, his words, wanted to get some City experience and make some money before a Tory political career.
Over wine in the City, I learnt he was a member of the Henry Jackson Society and wanted Russia broken up and its European bits forced into the EU at the same time as the UK left the EU for an enhanced five eyes alliance.
That guy was exactly as you described. I consumed most of the bottle of white wine that late afternoon in amazement. The day after, a colleague experienced the same with the wacko jacko.
A year or two later, the girlfriend, Polish and with roots in what is now Ukraine, left for the ECB and took up with some German aristo.
I don’t know what happened to wacko jacko. He’s not in parliament.
They know what is expected of them, and they will jump through any hoop you can think of to amass power and rank.
Agree. Former Canadian Con. PM Stephen Harper was famous for his dead eyes.
He has moved on to Chair the International Democrat Union, the club for his soulmates, like Modi and Orban.
I keep losing track. Is Orban bad or good this week?
You’re bad, JT!
Just like Tricky Dicky who’s said to have never smiled above his nose.
How about organizing a bus in front of the governments and parliaments in all countries and the EU administration inviting every warmonger that says that Russia must lose and that EU must prepare for war with Russia to go straight to Ukraine frontline? The bus will take them to the Ukrainian border where local teams will sign them up and transport them to the frontline.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-nato-middle-east-ukraine-china-taiwan-defence-b2478918.html
January 15, 2024
Defence secretary warns of further wars with Russia, China and Iran in next five years
Grant Shapps said the West had moved from a post-war to a pre-war world in his first major speech as defence secretary
By Kim Sengupta
Lancaster House – Britain should prepare for further wars involving China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in the next five years, Grant Shapps has warned.
In his first speech as defence secretary, Shapps presented a dark picture of a “pre-war world” in which old and new enemies have redrawn battle lines against Britain and the West.
In the wide-ranging address, in which he called on Nato members to increase their defence spending to at least 2 percent of their GDP, he warned that the foundations of the rules-based international order are being “shaken to the core”…
Hell no, we won’t go!
Gooooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
Another useful Davos get together was nearing fruition, sour apples as it were. Illionaires from hither and yon expressed themselves in a manner befitting their rank in society, financially.
The main focus seemed to center on which one of them would be the first Trillionaire, as being the 2nd one would be anti-climatic.
In terms of wretched excess-nobody would care or want to be the fattest person in the world @ 1,542 pounds, but we’re talking money here-not girth.
> A PLEA TO END THE WAR IN UKRAINE Larry Johnson
is quoting a Jan 6 tweet from Maria Mateiciuc. Reading her account of a trip to Ukraine made for a depressing start to the week. https://nitter.net/MariaMateiciuc
I just read Yves Smith’s adjacent post on what the International Court of Justice might do. It seemed to me that surely the ICJ cannot just punt–find a technicality so that justice isn’t done.
Then I read the Kit Klarenberg piece on Britain, torture, and, especially, torture in Northern Ireland. Links, above.
There’s this: “The case was then referred to the European Court of Human Rights, which astoundingly ruled two years later that while the Five Techniques were “inhuman and degrading”, and breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they did not amount to torture (bold by DJG). In 2014, after it was revealed British government ministers had expressly greenlit use of the Five Techniques in Northern Ireland, Dublin asked the ECHR to review its decision. Four years later, the Court declined.”
If a court that should be looking for torture cannot find it, then the ICJ won’t find genocide. I encourage other commenters to take a look at that post–which is a kind of a slap in the face (undoubtedly not meant as such by Yves Smith). Sometimes, facts are a slap in the face.
This is disheartening. This is where we are. What is to be done?
Here you have it from Nobel Peace Laureate Obama:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/01/obama-cia-torture-some-folks-brennan-spying
You just have to make sure the folks doing the torturing are “real patriots.” He learned well from Nobel Peace Laureate Kissinger.
I’m very sorry, DJG. There is no justice.
Cassandra:
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
Let just be done even if the heavens should fall.
Can any of us truly want to keep this rotten system going? (And when a system is this rotten, won’t a few well-placed kicks bring it down?)
Don’t know, DJG. I tried for political revolution for a number of years, but my toes are sore and the rotten system totters on while the corrupt rich get ever more corrupt and rich. And yes, the corrupt absolutely do want to keep this rotten system going. They see themselves as Masters of the Universe.
Personally, I don’t think it will be too much longer before ecological and social collapse whether or not BRICS+ gives a well-placed kick. Unfortunately, it will then rain fire on the just and the unjust alike.
The rain it raineth on the just
And on the unjust fella.
But more upon the just because
The unjust stole the just’s umbrella.
-Charles Bowen
I’ve worked with a lot of snooty tradesmen, always constantly poo-pooing other people’s best efforts. For a long time, I also engaged in that kind of behavior, because it made me feel special and clever and important to point out the flaws in other people’s best efforts.
Then I realized, that my best efforts rarely amounted to anything more spectacular than the best efforts of others that I had been poo-pooing.
And so now, when some snooty tradesman starts to poo-poo someone else’s best efforts to me, my response is “if you don’t like the way it looks, look at something else!”
Similarly, there’s still plenty not rotten about our system. Just look at something else for a minute! I assume that’s why the antidote du jour is a thing?
With Obama, there is always the sense that his focus group says to present as just sanctimonious enough, thereby preserving his image. Halo polishing continues. /s
“If a court that should be looking for torture cannot find it, then the ICJ won’t find genocide. I encourage other commenters to take a look at that post–which is a kind of a slap in the face (undoubtedly not meant as such by Yves Smith). Sometimes, facts are a slap in the face.”
Of course that is what will happen. Then the supports of genocide will cry sweet vindication.
“This is disheartening. This is where we are. What is to be done?”
Force is the only language that the sociopath understands. Clever rhetoric and legal arguments are meaningless without force.
I am afraid you are right. Steven Douglas told us this many years ago. I wish It were otherwise. How can that force be applied? Osama bin Laden (another Yemeni) comes to mind as he managed to nearly do It using a few guys with boxcutters.
John Mearsheimer and the “realist” school of foreign policy says the ultimate authority in international relations is force. Whoever has the power to force events to go their way will be the the only authority. I don’t like that philosophy, but it seems to be true. No matter what the court says, events will continue as the powerful want them to.
This is not an adequate explanation with respect to Israel. As Scott Ritter has said, it now has a third rate army and can’t even win its own war games even when the US joins in. It has managed to unite its neighbors against it. The poor Houthis are choking their supplies and the US can do bukpis about it. The big reason Hezbollah has not attacked (but may pre-emptively since Israel has made clear it wants to take southern Lebanon up to the Litani River) is that the Lebanon is close to being a failed state and really really really does not need war.
Various kinds of power. Blackmail, extortion, bribing the US legislature, espionage, infiltration and ownership of media, lucking into an alignment of the planets that let them build nuclear weapons, a German government that has given, repeat given, Israel up-to-date attack/cruise missile submarines. Army may currently suck, but we can bet they are, like other armies, learning on the job. Played their hand very well, given the situation. And White Guilt is definitely a thing, magnified but generations of subversion and narrative jiggling. Along with distraction and massive idiocy by other power players.
I’ll be so pleasantly surprised if the ICJ does anything substantive with respect to what seems a lay-down case by South Africa and intervenors. But that has pre-judgment already been tarred as “antisemitism.”
“This is disheartening. This is where we are. What is to be done?” Well, DJG, that captures the Monday morning mood precisely.
And, thanks to Conor linking to Kit Klarenberg’s piece on Britain inventing modern torture, I discovered my European colonialist power-generated genocide/ atrocity of the week (will they ever stop?). The anodynian-named “Maylasian Emergency,” billed as one of the only ‘successful’ counterinsurgencies of the 20th century.
Last week’s genocide of the week was the Germany’s attempt to wipe out the indigenous Namibians. After all, an invading colonial power needs only enough locals to mine the diamonds, unranium, and other minerals we civilized people lust after.
The ongoing genocide/famine/ethnic cleansing/relocation of the Palestinians by the Israelis is uncovering so many of these disasters that were unleashed by the European nations in Africa and Asia. Is this ripping back of these polite cover-ups, revealing the pustulence beneath, one of the reasons why the US, UK, Germany and France are resisting the labeling of Israel’s actions as ‘genocide?’
The Trump section makes it look like several of our Allies have figured out that:
1. Biden is likely toast.
2. And any promises his administration has made aren’t going to be worth diddly.
What none of those stories are addressing is why they were stupid enough to go along with them. This is particularly important in Germany’s case, as they have trashed their economy probably beyond salvaging.
I imagine “most real Germans” did not vote, with their largely meaningless ballots (given the party system there, as I understand it) or with their hearts, to follow the neocon lead in demolishing their living space. The globalist oligarchs have been wondrously successful in co-opting the forms of legitimization of “policy” while sucking the life out of the planet.
The US population, unlike Russia, has had its shared myths and shibboleths artfully shattered, maybe irretrievably. And expression of the general will by “voting” here is clearly a lost cause.
Good luck to us all…
Ignoring the Euro elite who spent time at US schools, Berlin would lose power within the EU if Russia was more aligned with the EU, and they simply don’t know how close the 2020 election was. They couldn’t conceive Biden wouldn’t be president for eight years.
I suspect Scholz is operating under the idea he can run on being pro-German for fighting Russia when he is up for reelection instead of being attacked for being a Eurocrat (political attacks are all the same). Now he just dug a whole so deep, he can’t conceive of a way out. Macron too who is now gambling that hiring a couple of French Buttigiegs is going to convince young voters Macron is one them. It’s just that Macron can only find clowns.
The micro-country elites are likely convinced they will sell land for US bases and Wal-Marts if they are good lapdogs.
Sulaiman Ahmed: The Hamas Media Office publishing a book on the events of 7 October and rationales.
This is a major change. For many years, the Israelis dominated the discussion. I recall earlier rounds of negotiations. The Palestinian spokespeople would make long answers in heavily accented English. They were nearly incomprehensible, and I have plenty of experience with accents, having grown up around my immigrant relatives.
Meanwhile, the Israelis would push their ideas on the Anglosphere using some guy named Brent who had just made aliyah, spoke perfect Californian, and had a strong jawline.
How things have changed. Mohammed Al-Kurd, farther up, is a big indication. He came to prominence when settlers were trying to take over his neighborhood in East Jerusalem. He seems to have known, though, that he had to get out. I can imagine the number of death threats.
So long as Hamas doesn’t fall into Zelenskyy’s terrible habits–like dragging a Ukro-Greek Azovnazi into the Greek Parliament–it may have the opportunity to turn the discussion its way. Further, the immigration of Arabs into the U S of A and U.K. seems to have changed the equation.
Now: Hamas has to make sure that its twiXts do not fall into Ukraine-style babble with snow leopard cartoons and weirdness lifted from misreadings of the Lord of the Rings.
What Azovnazi made it to the Greek parliament? I’d be interested in reading about that if you have a link. I’d thought Golden Dawn had cornered the market on nazis in Greek parliament. They might not like the competition what with the Ukronazis screwing with the orthodox church, but then again I don’t know much about their politics other than that they’re fairly open fascists.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/azov-fighter-video-overshadows-zelenskiys-address-greek-lawmakers-2022-04-07/
Mr. Zelenski introduced him as a video prop during one of his get out the wallet tours early in the conflict.
That was nearly two years ago.
“Trump win could force UK into war economy to back Ukraine, ex-No 10 adviser says”
That is going to be a neat accomplishment. The British Army is the smallest size it has been since the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy has to mothball two ships so as to use those sailors to man other ships, the stocks of weapons has been depleted as it has all been sent to the Ukraine, the country is facing a bad recession, energy is much more expensive, the British political establishment for both parties has stalled out, there are a lack of competent political leaders, well, you get the idea. And this ex-No.10 advisor thinks that it is going to be just like 1940 all over again? Little wonder that he is an ex-advisor. Hmphh. Lions led by donkeys all over again.
Thank you, Rev.
As the Tory party is now the party of estate agents (realtors in the rebel colonies) rather than estate owners, it won’t surprise you that there are more estate agents than soldiers in the UK.
Simply from an historical perspective, real home prices in the UK and US are remarkably high. Real home prices in both countries have historically tracked inflation. I have no idea what the ramifications might be, however:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=of2H
January 15, 2018
Real Residential Property Prices for United Kingdom and United States, 1992-2023
(Indexed to 1992)
And the Indian owner announced the closure of the largest steelworks in Britain (in Wales actually) last week, pretty much ending steel production here.
Wonder how the British arms industry and naval shipyards will cope were there to be WW3. Total lack of joined up thinking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/business/tata-steel-britain-job-cuts.html
January 19, 2024
Britain’s Largest Steel Mill to Become Greener, at a Cost of Jobs
Tata Steel said it would replace blast furnaces with an electric furnace, a move that will cut emissions but also as many as 2,800 jobs.
By Stanley Reed
Tata Steel said Friday that it planned to shut down the blast furnaces at Britain’s largest steel mill, in Port Talbot, Wales, and replace them with an electric furnace — a move that would cut carbon emissions but could cost 2,800 jobs.
The company, part of the India-based Tata conglomerate, says the steel mill, much of which dates back to the 1950s, has frequently lost money.
“The course we are putting forward is difficult, but we believe it is the right one,” the company’s chief executive, T.V. Narendran, said in a statement. “We must transform at pace to build a sustainable business in the U.K. for the long term.” He said Tata had invested almost 5 billion pounds (about $6 billion) in the British business since 2007, when Tata bought the mill….
Makes you wonder who’s clown show Ukraine really is…
What I completely missed in considering the attempts by leaders of the European Union Commission and NATO to change Hungary’s government structure and policies eve though Hungary has been developing quite well with the Orban government, is that Slovakia has joined Hungary in policy stances and is expressly supporting the Orban government. The Orban government will not be isolated from here, and Slovakia as Hungary has been decidedly successful economically…
Of course Slovakia, as Hungary, has been drawing economically closer to China:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17Pmj
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Germany, Czech and Slovak Republics, 1993-2022
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17Pmo
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Germany, Czech and Slovak Republics, 1993-2022
(Indexed to 1993)
Yes and both countries along with Austria have long term gas contracts with Russia and have refused to turn them off. Austria is also hub center for gas. I would think of moving my business there if it needed natural gas.
“The Orban government will not be isolated from here, and Slovakia as Hungary has been decidedly successful economically…”
What makes you so sure? Look at the craven european response to Nordstream, for instance.
Not likely that the southstream will be blown in the Black Sea any time soon…
Recall that the Orange Beast has “family” in Slovakia. Hope springs eternal . . .
Slovenia, actually.
“Slovakia to veto Ukraine’s NATO entry to avoid ‘world war’’
Slovakia may be a sign of how things will shake out when the war is over. Newly elected Prime Minister Robert Fico was furious when he learned that the previous government had striped the country of weapons saying ‘The former government left us without our own anti-aircraft defenses, without combat aviation, and we don’t even have the promised 700 million for MiGs, which the government also handed over to Ukraine.’ So now he is not going to let Hungary be steamrolled by the EU as he knows that he would be next. He won’t let the Ukraine join NATO as that is an invitation for the Ukrainians to get NATO into a war with Russia. He has defended the Ukraine’s attempt to get into the EU though I imagine that there would be all sorts of restrictions for several years like has been done with other countries. Certainly reversing an order prohibiting cultural cooperation with Russia and Belarus is a step in the right direction though that Slovak minister of culture, Martina Simkovicova, is not finished with just that-
‘Last week, Simkovicova said she “rejects progressive normalization” and announced her decision to stop funding various LGBTQ projects. “Non-governmental organizations related to LGBT will no longer parasitize on the money from the culture department. I will certainly not allow it under my leadership,” she said in an official ministry statement on Facebook. “Such practices have come to an end, we are returning to normality.”’
https://www.rt.com/news/591012-slovakia-cultural-cooperation-russia/
All in all it sounds like a conservative, pragmatic government like Hungary and I wonder if other countries will follow.
– ‘Tools for Thinking About Censorship – Ex Urbe
I had a strange reaction as I was reading this piece. It was historically informed and useful, and I found myself agreeing with its points. The author’s main theme is important: that much censorship is self-censorship, and that those who would censor want you to believe they are much more omnipotent than they actually are to create fear. So why did I sense something missing as I was reading, a kind of myopia about certain threats along these lines? Perhaps it was her examples of both villains and victims. Among the former: the Inquisition, Stalin, contemporary China, 1950s McCarthyists and racists, prudish movie censors. Among the latter: Galileo, civil rights advocates, Black Panther comics, Yevgeny Zamyatin. Book publishers and Amazon were noted as contemporary threats, but *why*? If they were censoring (selectively), then *at whose behest*? Was it mainly racists and moral majority and anti-science types?
Then I saw the Trump cartoon. I immediately knew what was missing, and what type of now familiar myopia I was sensing. Trump is on the phone in his (Oval) office, demanding a list of everyone who bought a copy of 1984! The author seems to be oblivious to the real forces behind the state-corporate “censorship industrial complex” that has been the sworn enemy of Trump and, increasingly, of any challenge to Establishment narratives. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m not sure this liberal historian is actually capable of grasping the most important sources of censorship in the US and the West today. Rather, this serves as yet another warning to liberals about the “authoritarian” menace.
Nothing on the early elections in India? The polls in March are just for show now. The real action was today in Uttar Pradesh.
We are not omniscient and limit ourselves to 55 links because that number verges on being too many.
The normal practice when a reader wants to call attention to a topic he deems to be important is to provide links.
I had no idea what Small Boots was referring to, so I duckduckgoed it and found an article about the official consecration of a controversial new temple built over a mosque destroyed during riots in Ayodhya, 32 years ago.
From the article, and contrarily to what Small Boots is implying, commentators think that Modi will indeed benefit, but only marginally, from the event.
Frontline politics in California. In pouring rain on Saturday, dozens of people, including parents with strollers, who usually stop for nothing, were clustering around women with clipboards. What’s that? A parking place opened up.
They were volunteer signature gatherers to put Prop 19 back on the fall ballot. We eagerly signed.
After decades, and our family paying over a hundred thousand (uninflated high value) property tax dollars, thanks to Proposition 13, we are now confronted with the state legislature written Prop 19.
Artfully worded to look like fire relief, (not one cent allocated so far, “Covid’s fault”), it barely passed by 51% in 2020. It means when we go, our children get a full reassement of our family home and have to pay massive property taxes.
Details at Wikipedia.
They will be forced to sell. Some tech billionaire, who can afford the new taxes, or private equity will most likely buy and bulldoze our 1200 square foot house and the fruit trees. Our renter gets kicked out of the garage conversion, probably becomes homeless. Newsom gets more money to blow on high speed rail fail, or Medi-Cal health and gender care for worldwide foreigners who step into the state. Our adult children get to move to Nevada or some cheaper place. This is one reason for the recent massive California exodus in the last two years.
Voters can download and print the petition here, or look for activists gathering signatures in this last week to do so.
https://reinstate58.hjta.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Official-Repeal-the-Death-Tax-Petition-plus-Instructions-and-Top-Funders-Sheet-January2024-deadline-February5.pdf
Re Jewish youth
Hedges had an interesting interview with someone who grew up in Israel and also experienced an eventual awakening from the indoctrination that takes place in their homes and schools. When it comes to prejudice “you have to be taught” which is something we Southerners of a previous century know very well.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-miko
All of which is to say that the sales job on Israel is from true believers by and large because they had to be taught. It’s their Israeli (and in many cases Jewish American) tragedy as well as that of the Palestinians but a lot more comfortable tragedy until lately. It took an intervention to fix Jim Crow and history needs another.
How “fixed” is Jim Crow again? You got the carceral state with millions of black males in prison.
And those voting rights? https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/jim-crow-legacy-continues-today Not so much.
And on Southern back country roads, there are remnant signs where one can still make out the message — “Ni3456, Don’t let the sun set on you in [this town].”
Comforting alt-liberal trope though.
The Empire is not and never has been a “nice place.” The ugly is just less well obscured.
We’ve had this discussion here before and I can only speak to where I live. Maybe Florida where you are (right?) is different.
My school district opened a new billion dollar high school a few years back and about half–maybe a majority–of the students are African American as, I believe, is the principal.
And yes while the big money people in my town are overwhelmingly white the society as a whole is nothing like when I grew up here. The fact that you see old signs or I see the separate stairs that once led to the “colored” balcony of a now closed movie theater don’t mean much.
I’m not sure if this has been posted before. Hinds County jail (Jackson Mississippi) has been burying dead prisoners for 8 years in the field behind the jail. 215 bodies have been found.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/12/1224449631/mississippi-jail-graves-investigation
Aieee!
Wasn’t there an old Robert Redford movie that mirrors this story? All I can remember is the scene where they pull coffins from a hidden burial ground.
– Julian Assange ‘would rather commit suicide than go to the US’, says brother The Saturday Paper –
I didn’t read the article, but damn bro probably maybe shouldn’t be giving anybody any ideas.
Given what he has endured these last years, I imagine the man is exhausted. I am actually surprised that he has lasted this long; he has aged thirty years in the last decade.
Much respect, Julian.
>Another Hollywood strike? Musicians union ‘prepared to do whatever it needs’ for AI protections and streaming residuals
The suits want great music, they don’t want to pay for it.
ADM drops 20% on open, cue Matt Damon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Informant!
Translation?
President Trump is likely to cancel the American public punishing economic sanctions and allow the importation of cheap Russian grain, fertilizer and diesel to lower our food prices?
My stomach and my wallet are voting for an orange man this year.
That is misinformation, the stock fell because it looks like there is a major accounting fraud issue in one of its divisions. The CFO has already been forced out.
Even oligopolies can’t make money legitimately anymore.
Here in the good old USA we have a full blown propaganda and censorship industry on top of “Total Information Awareness” and a militarized police.
1.2 Million dead and 16 Million crippled by Covid and it’s “Just the ‘Flu”.
And it’s an election year with the major factions ( Brutal Nationalist Oligarchs Vs Brutal Globalist Oligarchs) fighting to see who will be looting what’s left of American Society as the empire collapses from pervasive corruption.
Thank God for Chocolate!
Re. Phillips vs. Biden
Dems are making this about freedom and democracy by ignoring a primary and insisting that there be only one candidate. It would funny if there was less risk of fat-tail catastrophes riding on the outcome of 2024 assuming the winner is Biden or Trump.
The Dems are messed up like a football bat.
I came across an interview with an American commentator (I think it was on Jimmy Dore) claiming something similar about his days in Hebrew school. That it was a political as well as religious instruction.
If there has a been a shift in education over the last few decades years, it could explain a lot about the rising extremism within Israeli and also the ironclad support abroad despite the evidence of apartheid and oppression.
If there has been a similar shift in Evangelical education over the same period that could explain even more. Not just in relation to Israel/Palestine but across a range of social issues.
New docu from David Rogers Webb: The Great Taking. utube. ~1hr 11 minutes. Very interesting about the changes in finance and financial laws, including bankruptcy laws that are not widely known.
The Great Taking – Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3AVceraTI
But… is a crypto-currency “Backed by Nothing But God’s Word” necessarily less reliable or stable than the usual ones?