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Links 1/8/2024

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All Vaxxed Up and Ready to Roost, Six Captive-Born Condors Fly Free Bay Nature

Meet ‘Hercules,’ the Largest Male Funnel-Web Spider Ever Found Smithsonian Mag

A snake’s teeth predict how fast it will strike Science

Why is cheddar so delicious? Science now has the answer — and it’s all in the microbes ZME Science

Neptune isn’t as blue as you think, and these new images of the planet prove it Live Science

Human Remains Are Headed to the Moon, Despite Objections Scientific American

Climate/Environment

East Coast land continues to collapse at a worrying rate Ars Technica

Cigarette recycling: Slovakia is transforming filters into asphalt for roads Euronews

Water

California’s proposed water conservation rules too stringent and costly, analysts say CalMatters

Central Asia’s Water Crisis Is Already Here The Diplomat

#COVID-19

Old Blighty

Sunak just shot himself in the foot with his election year starting gun The Canary

India

Land Lords The Caravan. “The windfall gains made in the name of the Ram temple.”

European Disunion

Michel sparks scramble to stop Orbán taking control of European Council The Guardian

Italian foreign minister calls for formation of EU army Reuters

The Logic of Austerity Phenomenal World

China?

Lai explains independence Frozen Garlic. On Taiwan election frontrunner Lai Ching-te.

China to sanction 5 US manufacturers over arms sales to Taiwan Channel News Asia

Myanmar

Analytical Blind Spots and Armed Conflict in Myanmar The Irrawaddy. Lambert: “You can’t spell ‘ignorant’ without ‘NGO.’”

Syraqistan

A Slaughter of Superlatives The New Paradigm

***

Israel launches deadly drone strike on Jenin after facing heavy losses in latest raid The Cradle

***

IDF admits Mount Meron air traffic control base damaged by Hezbollah Times of Israel

Air force’s giant missile-detecting balloon spotted along Lebanese border Times of Israel

US ‘alarmed’ by Israeli bloodthirst in Lebanon Al Mayadeen

The U.S. can’t blindly support Israel and prevent escalation in the region at the same time Mondoweiss

Beirut airport’s screens hacked with anti-Hezbollah message The National

***

Chinese shipping giant COSCO to stop visiting Israeli ports Globes

***

US sends reinforcements to Syria amid terrorist PKK/YPG occupation Anadolu Agency

Iranian press review: Iranians question Russia ties after Israel killed key commander in Syria Middle East Eye

New Not-So-Cold War

Zelensky’s war increasingly seen as ‘fought by the poor’ Asia Times.

Putin Importantly Clarified That The Western Elite, Not Ukraine, Are Russia’s True Enemies Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter

To defeat Putin in a long war, Ukraine must switch to active defense in 2024 Atlantic Council

***

Japanese foreign minister pledges $37M for Ukraine in surprise visit to Kyiv Anadolu Agency

Is the West holding back Ukraine’s rightful self-defense? Deutsch Welle. “There is mounting pressure on Germany’s Chancellor Scholz to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.”

M-777 Howitzer: Despite Russian Electronic Warfare Spoofing Its GPS-Guided Shells, UK To Restart M777 Production EurAsian Times

NATO Directorate Warned Azov Remained ‘Fanatics.’ Recruits Acquired Canadian-Made Rifles. The Maple

NEWS FROM RUSSIA: January 7, 2024 Edward Slavsquat

Imperial Collapse Watch

Speaker Johnson announces top-line spending deal to avoid government shutdown The Hill. Commentary:

South of the Border

Why Is Mexico Putting Tariffs on Chinese Imports? The Diplomat

O Canada

Welcome to Canada’s New Gilded Age Jacobin

Moira Wilson: People who experience mental illness don’t need our help to die — they need our support to live Vancouver Sun

Biden Administration

‘Extraordinary’: Biden administration staffers’ growing dissent against Gaza policy The Guardian. Not sure how “extraordinary” it is to oppose your boss when they’re complicit in genocide, but this stood out: ‘Paul, the senior state department career official who resigned in protest in October, said he’s in contact with several people currently in government who are thinking about leaving over Biden’s handling of Israel. “If there was universal healthcare, there would be more people willing to resign,” he said.’

2024

Nikki Haley is testing the limits of big money in GOP presidential politics POLITICO

1/6

FBI still looking for person who planted pipe bombs ahead of Jan. 6 Capitol riot CBS News

Pence says he believes the FBI didn’t contribute to Jan. 6 riot POLITICO

Democrats en déshabillé

The billionaire plutocrats set their sights on controlling SF’s Democratic Party 48 Hills

Boeing

Multiple countries ground Boeing planes due to safety concerns Xinhua

FAA says some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes may need maintenance to prevent another blowout Associated Press. “The aircraft involved rolled off the assembly line and received its certification two months ago, according to online FAA records. It had been on 145 flights since entering commercial service Nov. 11, said FlightRadar24, another tracking service.”

NTSB releases image showing inside of Alaska Airlines plane where fuselage plug area blew off midair CNN. “According to Alaska Airlines, in the days before the incident, pilots had filed several reports of warning lights that indicated a loss of some cabin pressure and the plane was restricted from long-distance flights over water as a result, The Seattle Times reported. “

AI

‘Constantly monitored’: the pushback against AI surveillance at work The Guardian

Robotics Expert Says AI Hype Is Due for a Brutal Reality Check Futurism

Federal lobbying on artificial intelligence grows as legislative efforts stall Open Secrets

Humanoid Robot Acts Out Prompts Like It’s Playing Charades Communications of the ACM

Healthcare?

The digital divide in access to broadband internet and mental healthcare Nature

‘A market failure’: High prices at Monterey County hospitals drive away many insured Californians CalMatters

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Rejoice! Device That Sprays Your Butthole Now Connects to Alexa and Home for Voice Control Futurism

Groves of Academe

Colleges under siege over Israel, Hamas and antisemitism, look to PR giants for help POLITICO

It is Time for DEI to Die The Wayward Rabbler

Supply Chain

Avian flu surges in Northern California, threatening national poultry, egg supplies The Hill

Class Warfare

Direct Elections for Labor Leaders Make for More Militant Unions Labor Notes

Union Reformers Made Labor History in 2023. They’re Just Getting Started In These Times

 

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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114 comments

  1. Antifa

    SNICKERSNEE
    (melody borrowed from Life Goes On by the Beatles)

    Bibi will be strung up at the stock exchange
    Things are so completely out of hand
    Bombing all of Gaza he’s destroyed the place
    He aims to drive those people out into the sand

    Olive tree to chainsaw, and you’re gone, brah!
    This we lay our hands upon!
    Snickersnee! Martial law marathon, brah!
    Got some land to settle on!

    Hamas is still winning in the rubble war
    Killing every tank the soldiers bring (and they bring!)
    Sniping all their captains from some basement floor
    Oh yes, the massacre is rolling in full swing (swing!)

    Olive tree to chainsaw, and you’re gone, brah!
    This we lay our hands upon!
    Snickersnee! Martial law marathon, brah!
    Got some land to settle on!

    As the IDF feared, Gaza’s blasted, shattered homes
    A defender’s delight — it’s not even hard
    To shoot them from behind stones
    (Ha ha ha ha ha)

    Hezbollah is ready for a face-to-face
    All the north’s become a no-man’s-land
    Hundred thousand missiles waiting just in case
    Old Bibi wants the total war that they have planned

    (Yeah!)
    Olive tree to chainsaw, and you’re gone, brah!
    This we lay our hands upon!
    (Yay!)
    Snickersnee! Martial law marathon, brah!
    Got some land to settle on!

    And it truly appears the Israelis stand alone
    When you slaughter young kids we all take it hard
    You’re flying the skull and bones . . .
    (Ha ha ha ha ha)

    They are even losing the United States
    Even boomers do not understand
    Evangelicals and even apostates
    Can see that Hamas clearly has the upper hand

    (Yeah!)
    Olive tree to chainsaw, and you’re gone, brah!
    This we lay our hands upon!
    (Yay!)
    Snickersnee! Martial law marathon, brah!
    Got some land to settle on!

    And if you want some land
    Just grab the old chainsaw!

    1. Antifa

      Snickersnee (noun) — 1690’s, “a fight with knives,” from snick-or-snee 1610’s “to thrust and cut in knife-fighting,” also snick-a-snee, snick-and-snee, which is suspected to be English-ed from a Dutch phrase. Compare Dutch steken “to thrust, stick” plus snee “a cut, slice.”

      1. lyman alpha blob

        Interesting. Must be where Lewis Carroll came up with “The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!” in his Jabberwocky poem.

        I’d always thought “snicker-snack” was something Carroll made up, like “vorpal”, but looks like it was borrowed instead.

        1. Antifa

          Heard tell of an actual knife fight in Boston once over how to pronounce the slithy in ‘slithy toves’. Is it an ‘i’ as in knit, or an ‘i’ as in knife?

          Slithee or sleyethee?

          Didn’t see it myself, but my cousin’s friend saw the police report.

  2. SocalJimObjects

    Japanese foreign minister pledges $37M for Ukraine in surprise visit to Kyiv. A truly execrable move from the Japanese government, there’s an entire town lying in ruins and a couple of heavy damaged towns with residents sleeping cold because of the earthquake, and yet so far there’s zero mention on how the affected people are supposed to live afterwards. https://japantoday.com/category/national/thousands-forced-from-homes-by-quake-face-stress-and-exhaustion-as-japan-mourns-at-least-161-deaths

    I guess that’s par for the course when you are a country under occupation (US).

    1. The Rev Kev

      Nah, that’s just normal neoliberalism at work here. The next step for the Japanese government would be to tell those people to take responsibility themselves for dealing with the aftereffects. They won’t even send those people bootstraps.

    2. Tom_Doak

      Is it possible we are now using foreign aid to other countries to end-run Congressional disapproval on giving more aid to The Ukraine?

  3. The Rev Kev

    “Missing part of Alaska Airlines plane that blew off mid-flight is found in Portland man’s backyard, investigators say’

    Some good news and some bad news here. As mentioned in this article, the good news is that the missing door was found in a teacher’s backyard so that should help the investigation find out why it was not secured. The teacher sent two images of it to the NTSB which must have been a big relief for them-

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missing-door-plug-alaska-airlines-flight-found-oregon-backyard-rcna132785

    Now the bad news. The plane’s cockpit voice recorder’s record of the event was inadvertently taped over so there will be no help from that end. It only records two hours and then loops over and somebody forgot to power down that unit causing the recording to be taped over.

    1. .human

      I’m so old that I remember a time when investigations began with the immediate collecton of any evidence. Active cover-ups are an MO of failing/failed systems.

      The first FEMA inspectors at the Murrah building collapse in Oklahoma City were prevented from close inspection due to “dangerous conditions.”

    2. CanCyn

      Is anyone else wondering g why that seat was conveniently empty? Why it’s almost as if they knew where the problem was but we’re just hoping for the best.

    1. Bsn

      Are you poking fun at Shelob’s picture in the Smithsonian link above? We recently finished our romp through all the Hobbit and Lord of Rings series. It’s a holiday tradition for my hubby and I. Shelob is one of our favorite actresses.

      1. cfraenkel

        Hercules the spider has to work for his prey; not a very fitting spirit animal for a rentier. I suspect the antidote’s handsome carrion eater was digi_owl’s inspiration…

      1. You're soaking in it!

        Hey now, I call foul! Banana slugs are extremely productive members of the redwood ecosystem, and exceptional recyclers. Find a tick to latch your rentiers onto!

  5. The Rev Kev

    ‘Benny Johnson
    @bennyjohnson
    Oh my God
    An MSNBC anchor is straight up CRYING on air over the third anniversary of January 6th
    This is your “media”, America
    How pathetic’

    I swear to god that as each year passes, that North Korean TV presenter Ri Chun Hee doesn’t look so bad after all-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P04pHRBmaaQ (35 secs)

    1. Mark Gisleson

      Taibbi also spammed his readers with a short “Not” [sic] that he has COVID.

      Wishing him well and hoping our hosts stay safe.

    2. Chris Cosmos

      Thanks, great story from Taibbi. The main reason I find Trump appealing is his peculiar brand of humor and the fact he looks like a human being (though peculiar) when he’s speaking. In contrast, politicians always looked highly scripted and robotic even when they appear emotional. I know very well that no matter who is elected the same policies will result with tinkering at the edges, at best, usually to do with cultural/identity politics. Anyway, if I was forced to vote for either Trump or Biden, Trump, because he at least appears human, would be my choice. More likely, I will, as usual, vote for whatever “third” party is on the ballot that reflects my views.

    3. DataHog

      Thank you flora.
      Comedy gold.
      I miss Hunter Thompson’s campaign reporting.
      Taibbi’s reporting sure fills that void.
      Taibbi captures the Big-Picture perspective without shortchanging the absurdities.
      Hilarious reporting.
      Spot on!

    4. Carolinian

      Taibbi is on fire again after all that virtuous but hard to follow Twitter reporting. This new post is a joy to read.

      And Taibbi says politics will be his beat for the rest of the year. Ridicule, by Taibbi and sounds like by Trump himself, may be the only thing that will save us. George Carlin left far too soon.

      Whatever happens in the next few months, sanity needs to be restored. Thanks for the link.

  7. zagonostra

    >Putin Importantly Clarified That The Western Elite, Not Ukraine, Are Russia’s True Enemies

    Yes and they are the enemy of Western proletariat, if you’ll pardon me an old Marxist term. Indeed the following quote could just as easily apply to American’s who support the current political party system: The problem is that a sizable share of the population either actively or passively supports their country’s Western-cultivated neo-fascist identity after being falsely convinced that it’s the only “true” one.

    Those “Western Elites” are C. Wright Mill’s Power Elite and this quote from his autobiography is as apropos as when he wrote it:

    The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us-and in us-and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial.

    https://www.cwrightmills.org/

    1. digi_owl

      Again and again the bigger class traitors turned out to be the proles dreaming themselves bourgeois rather than the lumpens.

    2. flora

      Our pols and parties and advertising tells us over and over that as citizens our only power is in our voting every 2 – 4 years . Voting is important.

      So is unionizing. So is deciding where you’ll spend your money and where you won’t spend your money. So is deciding whether to pay cash or use a credit card. Joining local interest groups. Fighting local corruption problems. There are many things citizens do that tend to increase the feeling and reality of individual and citizen power.

      The last thing the pols and powers-that-be want is for citizens to realize they have power in their own lives that can affect the direction of their schools or town or county or state or the country. imo What’s the old joke about a politician being someone who sees a parade going by and rushes to get to the front of it pretending to lead it? / ;)

      1. eg

        Keeping everyone busy and exhausted just keeping a roof over their heads and their bellies full is designed to prevent them from having the time and energy to participate in ANY of those important civic institutions, flora. And that is no accident …

    3. Skip Intro

      moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial

      I think ‘moral indignation’ has been monetized, and tuned to serve the divide-and-conquer needs the neoliberal project. See Virtue Hoarders, for example.

    4. Feral Finster

      This should have been obvious, long before the war.

      The question is – what does Russia propose to do about it, especially after that western elite ignores red line after Russian red line?

      1. LifelongLib

        We have to move past “Putin good” vs “Putin bad”.

        Putin is a patriotic Russian doing what he thinks is best — for Russia. That may or may or may not be what’s best for the rest of us. At the same time “elites” of other nations (including U.S.) may be grinding their own axes rather than doing what’s best for the nations they “lead”. That’s a separate (and more important) issue than what Putin is doing.

  8. The Rev Kev

    ‘Muhammad Shehada
    @muhammadshehad2
    🚨Israel’s Knesset (parliament) is hosting a conference on building settlements in Gaza where precise maps & plans are going to be presented on Jan 28.
    1000s of Israelis are applying to colonize Gaza, MPs & public figures are encouraging this.
    It’s NOT an “extremist fantasy”!’

    If in a few years time, somebody came up with an Israeli Passover version of this 1967 cartoon, would it be labelled antisemitic and the cartoonist cancelled?

    https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/z408hw/thanksgiving_united_states_1967/

    1. SeventyTwoTrillion

      Israel has forgotten that if they want to colonize Gaza, they actually have to, you know, win against Hamas, and not get blown the fuck out and retreat from northern Gaza with their tails between their legs after taking tremendous casualties. They can bomb Gaza until the buildings have been ground to rubble, the rubble has been ground to dust, and that dust has floated away into the breeze – this doesn’t affect Hamas, who is safely hidden far beneath the surface. They can even funnel every Palestinian into the Sinai, or spread them across a dozen African countries.But they cannot occupy Gaza until they defeat Hamas – and they cannot defeat Hamas, as the last three months have definitively and finally proved. And if they cannot defeat Hamas, they will be utterly demolished by Hezbollah.

      I essentially take this sentiment as another piece of propaganda. I’m unsure what the official name for it is, but I like to call it “Yes, and…”ing. E.g., Ukraine saying “We’re going to retake Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts. Yes, and we’re going to reoccupy Mariupol. Yes, and we’re going to be building new facilities there and selling some to fund the war effort. Yes, and we’re going to be advancing into Russia. Yes, and we’re going to seize that territory and sell facilities there too. Yes, and…”

      And so before you know it, you’ve constructed this very elaborate fantasy that people can point to with reassurance – “Oh, they wouldn’t be planning all this if they weren’t capable of it! Alright, let’s check out the property in Mariupol!” – and is designed to also demoralize their opponents. But the whole thing is revealed to be a fantasy because they can’t even clear the first hurdle, and never really had a chance of doing so. It’s designed to make the population think they have an actual plan, and aren’t just stumbling along, trying to survive.

      Anybody remember how Hamas’ base was apparently under Al-Shifa? Anybody remember how the bunker busters were meant to destroy the tunnels, and the rest would just be a mop-up operation? Anybody remember how Israeli officials have stated “Hamas’ military capabilities have been dismantled” every day since early November, as if they were trying to convince themselves that it was true, while Hamas continued its death by thousand cuts of the Israeli military? Hell, anybody remember how flooding the Gaza tunnels was going to solve the problem? An endless parade of failures for Israel.

      The IDF isn’t the third strongest army in the world, it’s the second or third strongest army in Israel+Palestine.

    2. nippersdad

      I feel pretty sure that this was a bad time for that kind of thing to come out. I do not doubt that South Africa is still taking notes, and that is going to feature in the amended version of the application to the ICJ.

    3. LifelongLib

      Everything we have now is built on the graves and rubble of those who were here before us. That cartoon should have been titled “Anytime, Anywhere”.

  9. Es s Ce tera

    re: It is Time for DEI to Die The Wayward Rabbler

    Brad Pearce certainly seems mightily offended that someone unqualified and undeserving dared to usurp a noble…er…leadership role at one of the more prestigious…err, noble, schools. Seems to think only superiors should hold these roles. Much ado about how if DEI wasn’t a thing then this never ever would have happened, DEI is surely to blame. But where DEI is trying to remove a caste system, he seems to believe in a caste system, actually, if he believes in what is effectively a nobility or noble class of smarters and superiors and more deserving? Am I reading this correctly, cuz it’s quite a lot of very angry blather to wade through…

    1. flora

      He focuses on Claudine Gay as poster child for DEI. I’m thinking DEI does not mean diversity of opinions, expertiences, diversity of thought. DEI seems very rigid in thought and acceptable outlook.

      Per Wiki:
      “Gay attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire, graduating in 1988. ”

      Phillip Exeter is the second most expensive private prep school in the US. This is not a pre-college school for the children of the poor, the working class, or the middle class.

      Gay then went to Princeton before transferring to Stanford. Both are very, very expensive schools. She was floated into her current position on a cloud of money, the “right education”, and the right connections. imo.

      DEI is a PMC class-based scam with only a thin veneer of equal opportunity PR. DEI is an upper class economic self-protection and jobs pipeline with a virtue signaling cloak. / my 2 cents.

      1. flora

        adding: break down all caste systems and you’ll find economics at the root of them, in my opinion.

      2. digi_owl

        The more i think about it, the more it reeks of a reheated eugenics.

        Basically if one is one drop of native or African or whatever one suddenly have some unique insight into the world even if one one grew up and were educated as part of the higher economic strata.

        Makes one wonder how a comedy like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had been received today.

          1. LifelongLib

            Well, Pete Seeger (and his dad) went to Harvard, although IIRC the former dropped out. There is such a thing as fruit of the poisonous tree, but when it comes to individuals we should (as is said) judge them by their actual fruits, not their roots.

            1. flora

              Yes. But such a cloistered academic grouping has problems of narrowly selected group inclusion by necessity. Why no land grant college people, for example. / ;)

      4. Chris Cosmos

        I would be much happier if these “elites” were actually elite or at least competent. In fact, I have no big problem with Empire in theory if the leadership class were not only interested in something other than their own greed and ambition like maybe the country’s real needs. But the fact is that almost everyone in high office is both corrupt and\or incompetent. This is not a blind accusation–I say this as someone who has seen the decline up close in my many years in Washington and my brushes with the “elites.”

        The situation will not change any time soon. We are only hanging on through the somewhat more competent and honest members of the professional and working class who keep the wheels turning and the electrical grid flowing.

        1. Divadab

          Yes. Hubris abounds and good sense is rare in these types, the Jake Sullivans et al, oozing contempt for their lessers while being lower than snakes.

      5. Es s Cetera

        The error isn’t DEI, it’s having a leadership role in the first place, and viewing that role as somehow magical, elevated, worthy of worship and adulation, deserving more respect than anyone else. Our leadership problem isn’t that we can’t find adequate or competent leaders, it’s that we worship people at all. We got rid of monarchies only to reinstate them by other means.

        As for DEI, so for example, bank tellers need anti-bias or sensitivity training on things like not treating a deaf or blind client like they’re mentally deficient, asking grown adults where are their parents, or trying to convince them to sign away financial power of attorney, or for not calling the cops on someone for entering his own branch and depositing a cheque from the recent sale of his house, absent any other indicator than that he is Black. These are concete and demonstrable bias problems that HR departments are trying to solve. I tend to think that something is PMC is not really relevant, but that DEI attempts to address a list of identified problems is. And the question we should be asking is does it or does it not address those problems, or are there better and more effective ways and what are they.

        And, by the way, one of the biases DEI training attempts to address is the apparently prevalent assumption that just because someone is Black and in leadership role, they must therefore be an affirmative action hire.

    2. GramSci

      Brad Pearce is evidently an academic, ‘a contended [sic] man who has time to sit down’ (his definition of the bourgeoisie, via Les Misérables), a man who, among numerous other tells, can cite J.D. Vance’s critique of mediocrity without a trace of irony.

      Yeah, it’s a big caste club, he’s not in it, and he resents the fact that Claudine Gay ever was.

      1. flora

        Maybe. Or maybe most us know who aren’t in the DEI orb that if we were discovered to have plagiarized in our uni papers we’d be dismissed or demoted. Pronto. Plagairism is checked for in long papers, thesis, and disertations. Plagiarism is a cardinal sin in academia.
        See what happened to US historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (wrote “Team of Rivals”) when it was discovered she failed to properly footnote and cite sources in a different book. She instantly lost speaking engagements, guest appearances on The News Hour and other TV shows, etc. She was shunned for a long time. DEI seems to stand for DoubleStandards Extraodinare, Inc. / ;)

        1. flora

          Adding: what would happen to a CEO who started losing significant company money and falling stock prices because of making bad decisions about new products and the company’s customer market niche? Normally they’d be shown the door by the board. What’s happened at Disney? Oh, it’s DEI? Well then that’s alright. The audiences’ opinion – the companies market – doesn’t matter. (Budweiser is still losing money.) Customers are idiots, right? (Maybe they are, but offending your customers is not a good way to stay business.) It’s very exasperating.

          1. Divadab

            Just don’t buy their sh-t. So Disney got taken over by satanists? Divest, and don’t let your kids watch their crap. It’s really not worth wasting emotional energy on this stuff. Take a walk, make a wooden chair, sing an air, play your sitar, whatever. They only control you if you invite them in.

    3. lyman alpha blob

      I thought it was fairly reasonable myself. I don’t see DEI as trying to remove a caste system though – I see it as “divide and conquer” for the ruling class, which now contains some brown people.

      While we all squabble about who is more deserving of the elite positions in society, that nice Black lesbian press secretary is telling us all the the US government has no position on what we should do to prevent the rona, so choose wisely on your own and go die if you guess incorrectly. Much nicer than being told to die by the likes of Scott McClellan!

      One way to look at all this, is that all the DEI initiatives (or DIE might be moire a propos) serve to set traditional minorities up as scapegoats as this whole democracy thing falls apart. I know more than one pundit had that sentiment on the eve of Obama being elected.

      The way I look at it, we’ll know that we’re serious as a society about diversity when people of different classes and economic opinions are allowed into positions of power. When we allow the real “anti-racists” to be in charge of anything, ie., proponents of peace among nations. When we see the people of good conscience like Jill Stein or Cornel West being promoted rather than demonized by the elites in society.

      I don’t much like that rightwing warmongering zealots were the ones leading the charge for Gay’s dismissal. But I also don’t see much that qualified her for the position in the first place. Meanwhile a pretty well known public figure, Cornel West, who has dedicated his life to peace, lifting up the downtrodden, and bringing people together, has been run out of Harvard on more than one occasion already.

      If the Powers That Be were smart, which we know they aren’t, they’d be begging West end his quixotic run for POTUS and take the reins at Harvard to keep him from taking siphoning votes from GenocideJoe. And if I were West and received that offer, I’d gladly accept it, and defer the start of my job to the 2nd week of November, 2024, right after my current business is finished.

      2. Feral Finster

        DEI: “We demand more diverse oppressors!”
        My Dumb Self: “Why do we need oppressors in the first place?””
        DEI Cheerleaders: “Why do you hate diversity?“

      3. CA

        “Cornel West, who has dedicated his life to peace, lifting up the downtrodden, and bringing people together, has been run out of Harvard on more than one occasion already…”

        Cornel West chose to leave Harvard for Princeton, after then president Larry Summers chose to profanely criticize a senior colleague of West with whom West was having general community discussions. Summers also questioned West’s teaching and scholarship. *

        Summers, according to the New York Times, was now an immediate critic of president Claudine Gay for supposed lack of attention to protecting Jewish students.

        * I heard West describe this conversation with Summers.

        1. flora

          And Summers did such amazing work for Harvard’s endowment fund’s wealth when he ran the show. (I use the word “amazing” in the sense you might not think it. But Larry is/was a well connected and a highly regarded economist at the time. (So much for highly regarded and highly credentialed economists. ha.))

    4. Nick

      No defense from me for any university president but yeah that piece makes the author look like a dope. There’s such an ignorance of structure and a personal tone that makes for some ugly racial politics.

    5. pjay

      Essays like this one by Pearce are extremely frustrating. There is of course a lot of truth in what he says. “Liberal” academia, especially elite academia, has done much to deserve such a withering critique. But Pearce is not interested in fostering some kind of honest critical inquiry or discourse on “privilege” among academics, or anywhere else. Rather, he is serving the interests of those who want to destroy this very possibility. Yes, elite “liberal” academia often serves power through “critical” theories and research that actually obfuscate and misdirect. But the function of critics like Pearce is to point this out not to reform the academy, but to destroy it completely, all the while pretending to be on the side of the common people. He employs all of the terminology and arguments of the Right here. He disdainfully dismisses Marx and Gramsci and a long history of class-based research on cultural hegemony by evoking the right-wing bogey-man of “cultural Marxism.” He trashes a long history of authentic and crucial research on race and ethnicity in the US by rolling it all up in the ball of “critical race theory” – the right-wing trope for erasing *all* history that informs an actual understanding of power. He alludes to a “return to meritocracy” as if that actually existed somewhere in our past until it was destroyed by affirmative action and “woke” culture.

      Yes, liberal academics deserve all the scorn we often heap on them. That’s what’s so goddamned frustrating when I read pieces like this by those who *pretend* to be challenging power and privilege when they are actually protecting it.

      1. lyman alpha blob

        Thank you. You hit the point better than I did above. I don’t really trust the author of the piece at all, despite agreeing with some of his points. I think that society has greatly improved in my lifetime in its treatment of minorities, and my fear for years now has been that this focus on DEI has been taking things too far, which will provoke a backlash that will allow these improvements to be rolled back. The fact that the supposed “liberals” in this country now love a hardcore religious fundamentalist like Mike Pence, at the same time they try to erase the candidacy of Cornel West, should give people pause.

    6. Googoogajoob

      Between Rufo admitting that this was an orchestrached hatchet job via Politico and the tortured reasoning from the talking heads about “why this matters” I’m in the unfortunate camp of having to defend the likes of Gay here.

      This issue has been conflated mainly so the press can continue to ignore the the sanctioned slaughter in Gaza when in the grand scheme of things who gives a toot about this in terms or real world impact?

      They can be cute with how they word it but it’s pretty apparent how just being a minority will always be grounds to question their competancy. Never mind the class background (of which Gay was pretty upper crust from what I understood). It’s also a load of BS to be harping on diversity of thought etc when youre effective demanding the removal of people like her on ideological grounds. The sophistry around this is absolutely brutal and the press are absolute chumps for going along with it.

      Lastly, as its been pointed out by others there was another notable University president caught up in a plagerism scandal – dear readers why did we not see a similar bedwetting routine occur?

      https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188828810/stanford-university-president-resigns

      And even better, Bill Ackman who’s been at the forefront banging this drum is now curling his lip out at his wife been viewed with the same standard.

      https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/01/exactly-one-proposition-2

  11. The Rev Kev

    “M-777 Howitzer: Despite Russian Electronic Warfare Spoofing Its GPS-Guided Shells, UK To Restart M777 Production”

    Is this wise? The M-777 Howitzer is a light weight piece which means that it can be transported by helicopter sling load if necessary. Weight saving is achieved through the use of titanium. But under the battle conditions of the Ukrainian war, it has proven to be too fragile and it cannot stand the high rates of fire demanded by modern combat. Half the M-777s sent to to the Ukraine were destroyed or have been damaged. That is why the most interesting part of that article was at the end-

    ‘The media reports point out that the excessive use of guns in Ukraine resulted in the M-777 burning out after months of overuse or being damaged or destroyed in combat. This wear and tear means that a third of the Western-made howitzers donated to Kyiv are out of action at any given time.’

    Yes, there is a place for them but it seems that there is a need for a heavier gun that is both robust and simple to maintain. But for the M-777, the last one was delivered for use about a year ago and they started to shut the production line. So if they restart production, the workers should still be there though it sounds like they will have to set up production in another city. Here is another article about this gun being produced again-

    https://www.defensenews.com/land/2024/01/04/bae-systems-to-build-new-m777-howitzer-structures-for-us-army/

    Come to think of it, they use titanium in those guns. Don’t they get this titanium from Russia?

    1. ilsm

      The 155mm gun has been a favorite in counter insurgency, and anti guerrilla operations…..

      40 km range and a variety of shells including cluster munitions.

      However, barrels do wear out

      1. digi_owl

        That is the basic problem of NATO, since the 90s it has been optimized for killing insurgents rather than a peer army. Thus it is wholly unequipped to handle Russia or China, never mind both at once.

  12. Screwball

    BREAKING: Congress has just passed a $1.59T spending bill for 2024, with a significant $886B for defense

    With non-defense at $704B, defense now dominates 56% of spending. Keep an eye on defense stocks

    Bold mine. That should tell us all we need to know. Last I looked, we are not directly at war, but 56% of our money goes to war toy makers. So our paid off whores in DC care more about killing people than helping those who live here, and of course “their” bottom line.

    I’m almost 70 years old and I have never been more disgusted with DC than I am right now. In more ways than I can count.

    2. CA

      https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDNdLCJkYXRhIjpbWyJjYXRlZ29yaWVzIiwiU3VydmV5Il0sWyJOSVBBX1RhYmxlX0xpc3QiLCI1Il1dfQ==

      December 21, 2023

      Defense spending was 56.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2023. *

      $1,009.1 / $1,791.9 = 56.3%

      Defense spending was 21.0% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2023.

      $1,009.1 / $4,794.8 = 21.0%

      Defense spending was 3.7% of GDP in July through September 2023.

      $1,009.1 / $27,610.1 = 3.7%

      * Billions of dollars

    3. zagonostra

      Disgust, yes indeed and don’t forget nearly $1T in servicing the interest payments on the national debt. Imagine what could be done if this country had a balanced budget, universal healthcare, free college education, high speed rail, housing for indigent, elimination of food insecurity, etc…but then these are improvements that would profit common folk not the oligarchs that run the country and control policy…yes a lot of disgust to make one want to take an emetic.

      2. jsn

        Only government deficits could have funded the things you list.

        Wherever they exist, that is how they came to be: the private sector has never done these things anywhere.

        Pity our deficit pays for wars and stock buybacks, but deficits aren’t the problem there.

    5. antidlc

      “…defense now dominates 56% of spending…”

      And this is why we can’t have nice things.

      re:‘Extraordinary’: Biden administration staffers’ growing dissent against Gaza policy
      ‘Paul, the senior state department career official who resigned in protest in October, said he’s in contact with several people currently in government who are thinking about leaving over Biden’s handling of Israel. “If there was universal healthcare, there would be more people willing to resign,” he said.’

      (bold mine)

      1. Feral Finster

        Employers want anxious cubicle drones.

        Mortgage and student loan debt being other favorite means of control.

    6. ChrisFromGA

      I don’t think anything has passed yet. What happened is Johnson appears to have caved without any reason, which is a very bad sign moving forward.

      I don’t know if anything changed since they turfed out Kevin, but I think there is still an internal House rule that any GOP member can call for motion to vacate to oust Johnson similar to how they ousted McCarthy. Keep an eye on the Freedom caucus – they could throw the deal into disarray by either threatening to turf out Johnson or actually calling for what is essentially a vote of no confidence. That would paralyze the House until the crisis gets resolved, possibly taking weeks, if not months.

    7. tegnost

      I guess that is making boeing stock more resilient in the face of the dynamic incapacity of it’s commercial arm, not even down 10%… One might think 887 billion would move the market more and I guess one can speculate that the insiders all bought bought bought last week, lockheed and raytheon not notably up as of this writing

    8. Chris Cosmos

      Sounds like a lot of money but the “bang for the buck” is very low. My estimate is that an increasingly meager amount of that money actually goes into real military capacity. Most of it goes to keeping the ruling elites in the money. The Pentagon is the most systemically corrupt part of the US government. I don’t begrudge the ruling elites of taking a little off the top but when wars are now “fought” mainly for profit it has turned the federal government as the most noxious institution in the world. At least fascist/racist Israel has a point to their brutality–the US only seeks chaos and war to enrich its ruling class.

  13. The Rev Kev

    “The billionaire plutocrats set their sights on controlling SF’s Democratic Party”

    They will take control when they can pry it from Nancy’s cold, dead hands.

      1. JBird4049

        South of San Francisco, I don’t know anything about local politics, but I can guarantee that all the Bay Area counties north and east of the city are just as corrupt and for sale to some oligarchs. Heck, the Marin Democrats are just craven, corrupt, libertarian pseudo liberals. If it is convenient and gives them some virtue cred, they will do it. If it actually cost them money and they actually have to interact with the peons, they get the vapors.

        Well, I should say that this is true throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, it is just more obvious in uber white, ultra “liberal” Marin with the local police being abusive towards minorities and forgiving of whites, particularly of the upper classes, much as anywhere else. At least, the other counties have some politicians that aren’t pale beige and their vomitous political speil is of a better quality. But it is all corrupt as anything and for sale to the highest bidder.

        Actually, I have not checked, but I think that the local Democratic councils or committees at the county level do not really exist, being more theatrical than performative, forget about functional and competent. I mean if much of the Republican Party is a skeleton at the local level, why not the Democrats? If there was a political party with the level of community organizing that even the Republicans of fifty years ago had, they would own any of the nine Bay Area counties.

        Bringing back the block captains, but that would require a political party that to actually do something for their average constituent to get and maintain that level of organization and leadership. That would make the community resistant to oligarchic control and money bombs by outside organizations, which the elites do not want.

  14. CA

    https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1744373123892351301

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    I think this is the first time we have a figure on Ukrainian casualties from a credible source: former Prosecutor General and Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko said during an interview that Ukraine lost 500,000 soldiers so far.

    https://www.eurasiantimes.com/it-will-be-a-shock-ukraine-lost-500000-soldiers-in-war/

    “It Will Be A Shock”: Ukraine Lost 500,000 Soldiers In War So Far, Nearly 30,000 Per Month:…

    9:58 AM · Jan 8, 2024

    1. ChrisFromGA

      If they start leaking honest numbers on Ukrainian casualties, it’s a sure sign that they want Project Ukraine if not shut down at least put in mothballs.

      (They = MSM)

  15. nycTerrierist

    re: the weeping MSNBC clown/host —

    imagine his reaction when he hears what they’re doing in Gaza?

    n.b. breakout contender for Alex Christophorou’s clownshow awards

    1. Screwball

      I remember reading the circus clown known as Glen Beck used Vicks under his eyes to help him cry on camera. I thought he was one of the most repulsive clowns on TV. MSNBC is full of the same ilk, and they are not alone. I’m still at a loss of why (and how) people can actually watch that $hit – and I’m being kind.

      I mean, really, how bad can TV get? And how bad can it get and still get viewers? I don’t get it. MSNBC is awful every time I have ever watched if for more than 5 minutes (can’t stomach any more than that), and that holds true for most of cable news. Might as well watch “The View.” Kidding, that’s worse. The View should get an award for the dumbest show in the history of mankind.

      I guess it might say more about the people watching, but I digress…

    2. Steve H.

      Late correction, my eye was drawn by the saucy extremity of the 2023 line, where the August high was higher than the March peak, the very abherence distracting my data-eye.

      Thus, ed.: Except December, not March.

  17. The Rev Kev

    “Meet ‘Hercules,’ the Largest Male Funnel-Web Spider Ever Found”

    No, no, no, no, no. Don’t wanna be anywhere near a funnel-web spider. They’re as bad as a red-backed spider. Telling people in that video that they can just nudge one into a container and pop a lid on is not something that I would lightheartedly try to do myself. That’s like telling people that they too can capture a rattle-snake by just going behind one and grabbing it by the neck. Easy peasy.

    1. t

      My outdoorsy cousins who do this kind of thing never tell other people to. But you bet that spider link was texted to them.

      (Pro tip- if you see some snapping twigs of a branch to fashion a field snake hook, back at least 30 feet away. Slowly.)

    2. Terry Flynn

      My project manager in Sydney (resident of inner suburbs, like me) told me of her one and only encounter with a funnel-web spider. It showed itself after hiding in her laundry. She was ironing her favourite blouse when it appeared from the sleeve. Natural reaction on recognising it was to use the iron. No more spider, but also no more nice blouse.

      I found a weird spider in my bath once. Quick google search established it to be a white-tailed spider. Not quite so feared these days, but the guidance at that point was “don’t get bit and definitely not if you’re young/old/already fighting an infection or somesuch”. Kettle of boiling water and running hot tap for a good while put paid to it. I also quit making fun of a friend who held up his forearm in front of his face when entering the “outhouse” beside his apartment building until he could access the light switch – the outhouse contained the main garbage bins. If you’re gonna get bit bad, arm gives you more of a chance than face.

    1. zagonostra

      Thanks for the link. It’s interesting, and revealing, how both sides of the political isle aren’t that interested in this. We are, as Whitney Webb’s book title suggests “One Nation Under Blackmail”

      From Craig Murray Article:

      That the security services of both Israel and the United States assisted in funding this activity seems to me entirely likely, and a very simple explanation of the spending way beyond the apparent source of income. Epstein appears to have been an excellent “agent of influence”, well worth the money in the eyes of these states.

  21. Feral Finster

    Is the West holding back Ukraine’s rightful self-defense? Deutsch Welle. “There is mounting pressure on Germany’s Chancellor Scholz to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.”

    You can take that one to the bank. Germany will hem and haw for a couple of days, then cave.

    Meanwhile, Russia continues to dither, getting good people killed as a result of its indecisiveness.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      By definition, if you cannot defend yourself without massive foreign support, you’re not capable of self-defense.

      You’re reliant on the largesse of others.

      Speaking of people getting killed, anyone seen Raytheon Lloyd, lately?

    2. NYMutza

      Putin is a bureaucrat at heart. Bureaucrats are naturally risk adverse which is why Russia continues to dither in Ukraine. NATO grows stronger as Russia continues to bleed. Time is not on Russia’s side with respect to the Ukraine conflict. They either win it within 6 months or they may as well withdraw all of their forces, lick their wounds, call it a day, and accept the humiliation they will deserve.

    3. jrkrideau

      Gilbert Doctorow made an interesting point a while ago
      Vladimir Putin has been very cautious in conducting this war precisely because the Russians have a decidedly low opinion of the professionalism, and at times even of the sanity of their American counterparts.

  22. upstater

    The propaganda that damned Ukraine Chas Freeman Jr. Unheard

    “The way the American media has dealt with the Ukraine War brings to mind a remark credited to Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

    It is a more verbose expression of a better-known maxim: in war, truth is the first casualty. It is typically accompanied by a fog of official lies. And no such fog has ever been as thick as in the Ukraine war. “

  23. Tom Stone

    I’m glad to see Ashli Babbit’s family is suing the Capitol police, at no point before she was shot to death did she constitute an ” Immiment threat of Death or serious bodily injury” to anyone.
    That was Murder in the second degree but would probably have resulted in a plea deal of “Manslaughter” if taken to trial, resulting in 2 years in prison.

  25. zach

    Putin Importantly Clarified That The Western Elite, Not Ukraine, Are Russia’s True Enemies Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter

    Does anyone else find Korybko’s analysis offensively one-dimensional?

  26. Willow

    Why Pentagon wanted its war with China now not later? (Until State stuffed things up in Ukraine..)

    “The aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles that have formed the land-based leg of the nation’s nuclear deterrent triad for half a century can no longer be upgraded and require costly replacements.. We can’t do it at all.. That thing is so old that, in some cases, the drawings don’t exist anymore [to guide upgrades]. Where the drawings do exist, they’re like six generations behind the industry standard, he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. They’re not alive anymore.”

    https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/01/06/minuteman-iii-missiles-are-too-old-upgrade-anymore-stratcom-chief-says.html

    1. NYMutza

      Land based ICBMs are antiquated weapons and wholly unnecessary. All of the Minuteman III missiles should be decommissioned and not replaced, though for political reasons they won’t be.

  27. The Rev Kev

    Just putting this out here. Austin has had to be kept in hospital for a coupla days due to ‘complications’. Could it be that the sob got Covid while in hospital? it would explain a lot.

  28. spud

    on the logic of austerity article,

    i have always felt that free trade is a form of austerity, it guts wages and allows capital to escape internal austerity policies initiated by the markets, as well as regulation, taxes, tariffs, capital controls etc.

    this safety valve called free trade, still allows capital to accrue by exploiting other countries, all regulation and tax free, then shuttles off the surplus to tax havens.

    this leaves just the average deplorable(worker), to have to shoulder the immense costs of free trade, a impossible burden that leads to ever growing indebtedness, massive and expanding poverty, and political radicalization.

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