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Links 2/9/2024

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Anchovy Sex Is a Force of Nature Hakai News

Puppies found in freezing cold under abandoned house are rescued by good Samaritans FOX

Weird ancient tree from before dinosaurs found in Canadian quarry CBC

Paleontologists Are Still Unraveling the Mystery of the First Dinosaur Smithsonian

‘Incredibly rare’ discovery reveals bedbugs came to Britain with the Romans Guardian

Tract for our times Times Literary Supplement. Wittgenstein.

Climate

Jury awards climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million in defamation lawsuit Orlando Sentinel

#COVID19

A Stagecraft Theory of Pandemic Mismanagement Pandemic Accountability Index

China?

China Offers Support to Accelerate EV Makers’ Global Push WSJ

China’s top legislative body to discuss ‘appointments and dismissals’ amid military purge South China Morning Post

Commentary: Why China’s top spy agency is stepping out of the shadows Channel News Asia

She met over 100 guys but didn’t find love. In China, marriage is pie in the sky for many more Channel News Asia

The Good and the Bad for Biden in Southeast Asia RAND

Malaysia’s top court rules some Islamic laws in Kelantan unconstitutional Al Jazeera

India

Google partners with Maharashtra govt to provide AI-led services Business Standard

Syraqistan

Let Them Eat Dirt Chris Hedges, Scheerpost

AIPAC of Lies The Baffler

Blinken’s Israel visit exposes limits of US diplomacy FT

False Alternative New Left Review

* * *

COMMENT: An Armenia-Azerbaijan ‘peace’ is further away than ever BNE Intellinews

Authoritarian leadership in CIS countries: How presidents maintain decades-long power” JAM News. About page.

European Disunion

Germany mulls nationalization of Rosneft Deutschland: report S&P Global

New Not-So-Cold War

Putin says defeat in Ukraine ‘impossible’ in interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson France24. See Yves here.

Putin rants about Ukraine, detained US journalist, and history in Tucker Carlson interview: Live Independent. A rant? Hardly

Putin says he’s open to negotiating with US over Ukraine war in lengthy Carlson interview The Hill. Not new; talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey.

Journamalism:

* * *

Ukraine risks critical shortage of western ammunition, officials warn FT

Ukraine’s president replaces top general to shake up deadlocked war with Russia AP

Removal of Ukraine’s ‘Iron General’ is one of Zelenskyy’s biggest gambles The Atlantic Council

Patiently Waiting to Strike William Schryver, imetatronink

* * *

Russia’s Next Election Is Likely To Put Putin In Power For Longer Than Anyone Since Peter The Great Madras Courierd

The cost of Russia’s collapsing empire Unherd

Russia the Driver Behind China’s Aluminium Import Boom InfoBrics

The Caribbean

Protests intensify in Haiti against prime minister Anadolu Agency

Biden Adminstration

Reform the Budget Process to Strengthen U.S. Global Leadership RAND

2024

Biden classified docs report brings no criminal charges, but enough to invoke 25th Amendment: critics FOX

* * *

Biden refers to Egypt’s Sisi as ‘president of Mexico’ Al Jazeera

‘My memory is fine’: Joe Biden rages as age question resurfaces FT. Poetic interlude:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Yes, but as President?

A Dementia Patient Is President Because It Doesn’t Matter Who The President Is Caitlin Johnstone. If we’re in Twenty-Fifth Amendment territory, perhaps we’ll get to take a look at Harris’s mad Presidenting skillz sooner than we thought.

* * *

A Grand Bargain Is Emerging in the Supreme Court’s Trump Cases, but Chaos May Be Ahead Slate (marym).

Our Famously Free Press

America: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave Gilbert Doctorow

Tucker Carlson met Edward Snowden in Moscow Semafor

Testimony to Congress on the Threat of Online Censorship and the Need for Free Speech Lee Fang

The Bezzle

Kashkari on Bitcoin:

Disney v. Democracy? A Public Choice and Good Governance Analysis of Florida’s Reedy Creek Improvement Act of 1967 and Its Resulting Regime (PDF) George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 24-01. Even the reactionaries think that Disney’s Florida sacrifice zone is a bit much.

Digital Watch

News Corp in ‘advanced’ talks with AI firms on deals to license content, CEO says NY Post. Silicon Valley builds an industry on theft, and then says “Honey, I’ve changed!”

Google saves your conversations with Gemini for years by default TechCrunch

Bluesky Social Network Ditches Invite Codes, Opens Registrations to All MacRumors

In its tantrum with Europe, Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta, still hasn’t fixed them The Register. Reading the technical detail, it looks like Doctorow was right:

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.

Boeing

The Boeing plane whose door blew off midflight was making a ‘whistling sound’ on a previous flight, amended complaint says Associated Press. So Alaska Airlines is implicated too?

Supply Chain

Somali pirates are back on the attack at a level not seen in years, adding to global shipping threats Hellenic Shipping News

Northern Alaska Is Running Out of Rocks The Atlantic

Feral Hog Watch

His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day, It Decided to Kill Him. Texas Monthly

Guillotine Watch

Fauci to cash in on pandemic fame: Ex-White House doc announces he’s releasing new memoir in June reflecting on 40 years in government Daily Mail

Class Warfare

The importance of a mass movement MR Online. Commentary:

It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general, regardless of division according to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production; that as a rule and in most cases—at least in present-day civilised countries—classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple. Why replace this with some kind of rigmarole, some new Volapük?

— V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920). The only other place I’ve encountered the word “Volapük” is William Gibson’s Spook Country. Not sure what to make of that.

U.S. Workers Assess the Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Jobs (PDF) Heldrich Center for Workplace Development

Surprising new evidence on happiness and wealth (press release) McGill University

Mathematicians finally solved Feynman’s “reverse sprinkler” problem Ars Technica

Discovery of quantum vibrations in ‘microtubules’ inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness Science Daily

Antidote du jour (via):

Bonus antidote:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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85 comments

  1. Antifa

    FROM THE TOP DOWN
    (melody borrowed from A Well Respected Man by The Kinks)

    Netanyahu gave fair warning
    That he’ll cross that last red line
    He hopes once he clears the Arabs out
    We’ll forget about his crimes
    Should he somehow get ‘The River To The Sea’
    He won’t be jailed

    With his favorite text
    Ever fresh in mind
    With Machiavelli’s
    Favorite passage underlined —
    ‘All power rules from the top down’
    ‘Ends will always justify the means’

    Now his Cabinet has meetings
    Where their secret plans are laid
    For the dirtiest of dirty wars
    With no food or fuel or aid
    ‘Make them dead or gone — no truce, no frills’
    ‘Every woman, child, and man’

    With their favorite text
    Ever fresh in mind
    With Machiavelli’s
    Favorite passage underlined —
    ‘All power rules from the top down’
    ‘Ends will always justify the means’

    ‘Lebanon is our backyard’
    ‘Hezbollah will be a test’
    ‘This is scripture manifest’
    ‘That the whole world will detest’
    ‘We must starve and bomb and shoot them all
    To see a brighter dawn’

    With their favorite text
    Ever fresh in mind
    With Machiavelli’s
    Favorite passage underlined —
    ‘All power rules from the top down’
    ‘Ends will always justify the means’

    ‘In the realm of world affairs
    You do things because you gotta’
    ‘Palestine will be no more —
    We must make their homeland hotter’
    Bibi’s Cabinet without a doubt
    Has thrown away the brakes

    With their favorite text
    Ever fresh in mind
    With Machiavelli’s
    Favorite passage underlined —
    ‘All power rules from the top down’
    ‘Ends will always justify the means’

  3. The Rev Kev

    “Blinken’s Israel visit exposes limits of US diplomacy”

    Once more Blinken gets humiliated by Netanyahu who blew off any suggestion that he made. Not hard to work out why. The US has promised 100% support for Zionist Israel, ships every spare weapon and munition that they can scrounge up, plays interference for Israel at the UN, votes billions to Israel and will end up sending hundreds of billions to them after the war and all the main political leaders swear their allegiance to Israel. In other words, the US has zero leverage to influence Israel as in nada. The tail is absolutely wagging the dog here and the US can do nothing but mutter suggestions to Netanyahu who is not even listening to them. Why should he? He as good as owns the US political system.

    1. JBird4049

      >>>He as good as owns the US political system.

      And that is the problem, when a foreign political leader has more power in a country than the people of that country.

  4. Another Scott

    Re: Reedy Creek

    At the about same time as Florida Republicans changed the special utility district benefiting Disney, they also voted to change the governance of Gainesville Regional Utilities, which provides electricity, gas, and water to Gainesville and the surrounding areas. Instead of being independently elected or appointed by the mayor/city council, they are now appointed by the governor. This takes the governance out of the hands of local officials, who happen to be Democrats, and replaces it with statewide ones, which are usually Republicans.

    Yet I haven’t heard anything from Democrats or the national press about this issue. The issue only appeared to be discussed in the media around Gainesville. They seem too concerned about protecting one of the world’s largest corporations rather than the people actually effected by the change or the issues of good governance. If that doesn’t summarize the problems with the party, I don’t know what does.

    Here’s a link to the local news article about the appointment of two board members. I couldn’t find anything quickly about the bill.
    https://www.wcjb.com/2023/10/04/desantis-announces-2-appointments-gru-authority-hours-before-swearing-in/

  5. The Rev Kev

    “The Boeing plane whose door blew off midflight was making a ‘whistling sound’ on a previous flight, amended complaint says”

    ‘According to the complaint, passengers on the earlier flight heard the sound “coming from the vicinity of the door plug.” They brought it to the attention of flight attendants, who then “reportedly informed” a pilot, according to the complaint. After the pilot checked cockpit instruments and found readings to be normal, no further action was taken, the complaint says.’

    Don’t know where I read it but I recall an article saying that pressurization problems were showing up on the cockpit’s instrumentation. Have not seen mention of it since that one article.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Sounds like a typical over-reliance on technology, i.e. the cockpit instruments may not have had the ability to check for a bad seal or otherwise properly alert to an anomalous condition.

      We’ve lost a lot of the “can do” attitude of a good shade tree mechanic. Roll up your sleeves, study the problem, think. Oh, but that takes time and costs money, so screw that, says Wall St!

      1. scott s.

        FAA approves a Master Minimum Equipment List
        which operators can tailor, but not make less restrictive. NTSB will look at what the crew wrote up on the alerts, what maintenance did and signed off on, and also access the logging that the computers do on the sensor/control system.

        As far as “sealing” have no idea, but imagine test would only be during construction and after major maintenance. I could see you could have some sort of trend analysis on the outflow valve position vs outside air pressure, but air flow through the pacs will also impact valve position and not sure how you would correct for that to determine air loss rate through “leaks”.

        1. rowlf

          “Excessive cabin leak rate” can be flagged by trend analysis with a subscription service. 737 Max transmits a lot of operational data and fault message information during flight and some operators use computer programs to monitor and track this information.

          Also, a whistle sound in flight is usually a poor door seal, missing beacon light or a missing antenna, some sort of pressure vessel leak. Often you need an experienced maintenance staff to correlate the discrepancy to the fault. My favorite pressure vessel leak check story was members of my maintenance crew conducting a pressure check on an airplane in the winter and a de-icing truck showed up to de-ice the aircraft by spraying hot glycol. The airplane had about 4 or 5 psid and when de-iced, all of the leaking areas foamed up.

          Most airliners have a maintenance procedure to check if the aircraft can maintain cabin pressurization with one pneumatic supply system or one air conditioning system. Cabin pressurization is conditional on pneumatic supply – air conditioning system – pressure vessel integrity.

  6. petal

    So, does the DNC open things up now-ish, or wait to slip someone in at the convention(Newsom/Obama)? Biden will announce that he will be ending his run for a second term and stepping out? Seems like they have gotten their opening to dump Biden and Harris, like we here at NC have discussed before. I imagine Biden will be allowed to ride out the rest of his current term in order to save face, but there will be no second term.
    Patting myself on back for being right 4.5 years ago. Not crazy, at least about that. Scary that it has taken this long, though. And who is really running the show right now? What has been/is going on?

    1. Dr. John Carpenter

      Considering Biden is out there essentially arguing that he actually is well enough to stand trial for mishandling classified documents rather than taking the win and stfu, I don’t see him going gentle into that goodnight. Based on my own experience with relatives with Alzheimer’s and dementia (and yes, I know I shouldn’t be implying a diagnosis for Biden), they only get more stubborn, belligerent, prideful and nasty as they go into the abyss. I think we’re seeing the beginning of Biden really digging his heels in and I’m not sure how the Dems get around that without creating a big stink, that they seem deathly afraid to do.

      1. The Rev Kev

        I think that you are right. When reporters questioned him about this decision, he turned belligerent and mean. At one point he said that ‘I know what the hell I’m doing.’ He left the podium and almost immediately returned whereupon he made the error of saying that Sisi was the President of Mexico instead of Egypt. I think that those reporters are smelling blood in the water but more important, that it is now permissible to call Biden out on his fitness which was not the case last year.

        1. Cassandra

          …but Biden has always turned belligerent and mean when questioned.

          You make a good point, though, that reporters now have permission to comment on the state of the emperor’s clothes. Which was definitely not the case four years ago. I am getting Harry&Meghan vibes from the latest media coverage.

            1. Lee

              And comparing Biden favorably to Trump because the latter had a memory slip too is both pathetic and hardly reassuring. Kudos to all of those “none of the above” voters. Also of note, the NYT thought Krugman’s view on the matter to be so much in the public interest that I encountered no paywall.

        2. NotTimothyGeithner

          “I know what the hell i’m doing”

          Reading into this, I suspect Blinken et al after their various failed trips abroad have realized they need to change course and Biden simply isn’t going to budge, convinced of his righteousness. Biden was simply trying to put the loyalist staff in their place.

        3. TheMog

          That’s an interesting point re it now being permissible.

          And of course I’m already seeing posts on social media implying that it’s some sort of partisan non-gender specific witch hunt or something. It boggles the mind that this is the reaction to what seems a simple and plain statement from a lawyer.

          Fun level of discourse, but while Belgium seems to have done OK without an elected government, I’m a tad concerned when the titular head of state thinks he’s talking to people who are objectively not in any shape to do so, while Tony Blinken & co “are doing their best”.

      2. Bsn

        A person’s slide into dementia and their actions during, depend a lot on where the degradation is ocurring in the brain. If the frontal lobe is the area most degraded then social skills are effected. So, my guess is that his demential (clearly evident) has increased his lack of empathy, poor social skills, processing of words, and an increase in confusion causing negative social interactions. Plus his mixing up of letters, in this case “M” is common. Mexico, Mitterand, and other words come out (beginning with M) when he’s trying to say something else. Poor man, but I hate to say it …….. Instant Karma gonna get you, Joe Biden.

      3. cgregory

        A friend of mine wrote:

        “One thing that Biden and I have in common is that in our youth we were both severe stutterers. Over the years I’ve kept a keen eye on how he manages his spoken communication.

        “As I, he uses starters (words easy to pronounce) in combination with those starting with hard consonants, the bane of the stutterer. At times he is wordy as he tiptoes around hard to pronounce words. Many of his word choice strategies become ingrained and automatic. I might almost say they become autonomic.

        “As I, as he ages what had become automatic begins to fray a bit. The search for starter words and phrases are somewhat delayed and so our speech is not as fluid as it might have been when we were in our 20’s through 50’s.

        “One word choice strategy that becomes ingrained is to connect a face in the mind’s eye with a name. Perhaps his missteps with Mitterrand and Kohl do not reflect bad memory as much as confusion in word formation due to cognitive deterioration. Note that he will often self-correct if he missteps a name or idea.

        “While I am not a big Biden fan (his foreign policy Weltenschauung is a disaster) I think we all need to cut him some slack and understand that hiccups in his learned oral communication modalities do not reflect deep cognitive dysfunction.”

        1. JP

          I am almost as old as Joe. I lose words and seize up before just continuing with a work around. I can’t remember names or what I ate for breakfast but am cognitively unimpaired. That is, I can still solve puzzles and design mechanical solutions. I still am learning aggressively although when learning a new tune it seems to take more repetition to ingrain the fingering. Although I lose my temper with frustration more easily, I have also mellowed out in many other ways.

          I am seeing many of my contemporaries losing it both physically and mentally, but the one thing that I have gained as I have aged is perspective. With this has come better skill at making decisions and planning my time.

          Now I really don’t like the choices we are looking at for the presidency. My election season bumper sticker is going to say “I’m voting for the idiot”. However the cognitive impairment cited in the press by the hatchet job is just not that important to the job of president unless you just want a glib puppet. A president needs the wisdom that comes from experience and perspective. That is what is needed to hire and appoint the people who do the actual work of the administration.

            1. JBird4049

              Yes to both. Ultimately, the entire executive branch of the federal government either answers to him and/or he is responsible for functioning of its many parts. However,
              much as with Congress, our presidents all love the commander-in-chief, foreign diplomacy, and highfalutin words in soaring speeches than the daily grind of doing their entire job.

    2. griffen

      Mr. Pritzker from Illinois….JB to the courtesy phone please. Democracy needs you now !! Big sister knows a guy and gal pretty well, these Obamas have experience you know. “Please continue the support of Ukraine at any expense (damn those pesky people in Ohio, your troubles are your own).”

      I was too young and not interested in politicians as a teenager, so I don’t recall Ronald Reagan in the latter part of his second term. Plus, cable news telecast pioneer Ted Turner still had a fledgling prospect down in Atlanta. I can’t imagine what the parallel is to this sh*t show.

        1. DJG, Reality Czar

          WT:

          Touché.

          Saint Ronnie, patron of wobbly telomeres everywhere, ora pro nobis.

          As someone with a certain regard for natal astrology, I will mention that at least the country was in the hands of an astrologer.

        2. griffen

          You win the internet. That’s a keeper. At least there was a James Baker (first example comes to mind) in that administration. Not sure anyone in the Biden administration would be at that level.

      2. NotTimothyGeithner

        Skimming the nets, Lesley Stahl’s anecdote about Reagan going gonzo is dated to mid-86 where staffers confirmed he had similar episodes. 41 was known to be taking on the lead in foreign policy during that period. Reporters on those beats are building relationships. Even then, the investigative journalists were few and far between.

      3. scott s.

        I think you can throw FDR in that mix, in particular at Yalta where he couldn’t rely on aides for everything.

        See many parallels FDR 44 Biden 2024.

    4. Katniss Everdeen

      It should be pretty clear to everyone by now that “president biden” has been assigned the seat on the boeing plane next to the unbolted door plug, and he hasn’t fastened his seat belt as instructed.

      This special counsel’s report didn’t come out of the blue. Plenty of people (merrick garland, for instance) knew what he was going to say and undoubtedly even helped craft the language.

      The hot dog and the hamburger–newsome and pritzker (!!)–would be names on the ballot, but no way can they beat Trump.

      So here’s a wild scenario in keeping with the circus this government has become. nikki haley switches parties and winds up as the democrat candidate. She’s still getting big money and she’s the undisputed choice of the neocon uniparty. She continues to campaign even though she’s got no path to the republican nomination. She’s taken a softer stance on abortion, the dem’s only “winning” issue, and she simply oozes idpol cred.

      It wouldn’t take much to convince the anyone-but-Trump crown that, in searching her “soul,” haley could just no longer be a member of a political party in thrall to an orange racist, fascist, dictatorial, insurrectionist pig, who wants to destroy our democracy and give the country to Putin for Christmas.

      The more I think about it, the more I think it could work.

        1. Bsn

          No, not too late. Remember the Convention in Chicago where Hubert Humphrey was “assigned” the nominee though no one had voted for him. Who will they assign this time around?

          1. You're soaking in it!

            Those were some fun times! The whole world was watching. Man, do I miss me some Abbie Hoffman.

      2. Pat

        I gather the WWF is in bad straits at the moment. I bet they would happily host the Haley Clinton cage match.
        Because the only way Haley becomes the Democratic choice is over Hillary’s dead body.

        1. griffen

          Actually, they recently initiated a new contract to begin streaming live sports / live scripted entertainment on Netflix. Dwayne Johnson was featured on CNBC the day of the announcement. Johnson is also now a board member of the parent holding company, which trades under the symbol TKO ( TKO Group Holdings ).

          Since we mention new potential candidates…a President Dwayne would project a powerful, healthy image would he not?

  7. Polar Socialist

    “Russia’s Next Election Is Likely To Put Putin In Power For Longer Than Anyone Since Peter”

    Not really true. Even if not taking in account that for four years (2008-2012) Putin shared power with Medvedev, Catherine the Great ruled for 34 years. And both Nicholas I and Stalin ruled for 30 years, which is the limit set in the article.

    A darned long time it is, anyway, so why not just run with that, and not make stuff up? Or is Russian history suddenly becoming en vogue?

  8. DJG, Reality Czar

    From the Semafor article about Carlson meeting Edward Snowden, scrolling down:

    –Politico’s Jamie Dettmer didn’t wait to watch the interview to put Carlson in the company of American history’s worst journalists: “Tucker Carlson is far from being the first Western journalist to have aligned himself with the enemy. There’s a long tradition of the likes of Hitler and Stalin finding pliable Brits and Americans to do their propaganda for them.”

    I watched part of a segment of Breaking Points yesterday, in which Krystal and Saagar were desperately trying to get out of their ideological straitjackets, she the Hillary Clinton diehard, he the libertarian fan boi, so as to explain what Tucker Carlson was up to. They rolled some video of Hillary Clinton calling anyone in favor of engaging with Putin a “fifth columnist.”

    I’m not sure at all (well, maybe I am sure) that Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know where the dubious term fifth columnist comes from. Possibly Francisco Franco (who is still dead).

    As with the focus-grouped moniker “basket of deplorables,” Clinton just doesn’t understand what she is talking about, so long as she can fling an insult.

    So now you know: If you go to the story posted by Yves Smith today about the interview with V Putin, you are a traitor to the Republic.

    2. The Rev Kev

      I’m trying to imagine the effect of Tucker Carlson releasing an interview with both Edward Snowden and Tara Reide. That would be, ahem, explosive. I wonder if he met Canadian Eva Bartlett as she had to flee to Russia as well.

  9. DJG, Reality Czar

    Discovery of quantum vibrations. Science Daily.

    Okay, in scientistese: Hameroff and Penrose, “This opens a potential Pandora’s Box, but our [idea, because it isn’t a theory–DJG] suggest[s] consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules [and] protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, ‘proto-conscious’ quantum structure of reality.”

    In short, what Epicurus said 2500 years ago: As atoms descend, there is “the swerve.”

    For an easier explanation, there is the wonderful poem by Lucretius, On the Nature of the Things

    1. Deb Schultz

      The article was published in 2013, so I’m wondering what has happened since then with corroboration or not of this interesting theory.

  10. The Rev Kev

    “The cost of Russia’s collapsing empire”

    Well this article is a relief. I guess that Putin won’t be invading Europe any time soon as he has lost most of his tanks and troops. I suppose that all those NATO countries can forget spending big money – while impoverishing their countries – on weapons from the MIC. They can spend that money on their people instead. That’s a relief. And here I thought that WW3 was just around the corner. Good job UnHerd magazine.

    1. furnace

      Someone must have forgotten to warn the Russians that they can’t make any more tanks! What a silly mistake. Or was that the US?

      Man, if projection was a fatal disease would there be any American politicians or pundits left standing?

  12. The Rev Kev

    “Fauci to cash in on pandemic fame: Ex-White House doc announces he’s releasing new memoir in June reflecting on 40 years in government”

    Yeah, the guy has gotta cash in and spin his image to show that he really was America’s Doctor. Only it turned out that he was actually Dr. Kevorkian. i would imagine that sales will be initially high and then drop off. There would be lots of people and groups buying this book just to support him initially. Say what you will but when I saw his image on the cover of his book, I immediately thought of the phrase ‘the banality of evil.’

    1. griffen

      Sure of one thing, it will be a seller to American households who eagerly bought Mueller votive candles and the latest effort at fiction by one James Comey. \ sarc

      Making a stab at where he visits to interview first and exclusive, for an official book launch…MSNBC or will it be CNN ? Welcome to Morning Joe, we are glad to welcome as a special guest, it is America’s First Doctor, Saint Anthony.

      1. IMOR

        Those memory-impaired by his actions may purchase multiple copies unawares! Need to weight the best seller list formulae for that.

    2. Bsn

      I wonder, if the book sells well, if it’ll be excluded from the NYT Bestseller list as Robert Kennedy Jr’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci” was.

    3. lyman alpha blob

      Prediction: Democrat party buys up all the copies to make it look popular and you find them shortly thereafter in the remainder bin at your local dead tree shop. No 2nd printing.

  13. antidlc

    https://twitter.com/CDCDirector/status/1755722559310397485

    Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH
    @CDCDirector
    CDC leaders visited Orussey Market, Cambodia’s largest live bird market and a critical place to detect emerging viral threats in animals and prevent the spread to people. By building and strengthening #OneHealth systems, we can prevent and contain outbreaks at the source.

    Photos at the link.

    She wears a mask at the live bird market but not outside the market with a group of people.

    1. t

      In her defense, there are not a lot of US employers who need to state that they are “following the CDC guidelines for visiting bird markets.” She doesn’t need to be setting a stage for requiring returning to the office or meeting clients restaurants.

  14. The Rev Kev

    “Weird ancient tree from before dinosaurs found in Canadian quarry’

    A fascinating article to read as it talks about one of the many paths that nature did not end up taking. I hope that somebody builds a full scale model of this tree so that we can see better how it looked.

  15. Roger Blakely

    Re: She met over 100 guys but didn’t find love. In China, marriage is pie in the sky for many more Channel News Asia

    Here is a sentence from the article highlighting a response from Qian Lei, twenty-seven-year-old professional matchmaker in China:

    As to why girls may reject a guy, it may be “because he doesn’t meet their height requirements”, said Qian. “Girls tend to value height a lot, and they often prefer guys who are at least 1.7 metres tall.”

    As I have posted here before, the first thing that a man is to women is his height and the second thing is his wallet.

    The reason for the falling rate of family formation across the planet is not hard to understand. Women will not settle for any man who is not in the top five percent of men in the dating market. Those men have all of the options and can choose any woman. However, the women are not asking themselves what those men want.

    This article starts by highlighting a twenty-eight-year-old female finance executive in Shanghai, Zhao Miaomiao. This article ends with this quote from her.

    “I want a high-quality marriage. But the people I currently know can’t meet my expectations. So even though they want to be with me, I still reject them,” she said.

    1. Harold

      “China’s social conservatism at odds with decades of female empowerment.”

      A lot of men in former patriarchal societies want to “rule the roost” (be deferred to & waited on hand and foot ) and now women don’t want to put up with it. I predict (hope) this will begin to change in less than a generation, as both men and women adjust to more egalitarian ideals.

    2. Terry Flynn

      I have an anecdote from 2015 which suggested certain independence-loving Chinese women were more interested in…..an Australian passport. I had hired a professional cleaning company to thoroughly bring my Sydney unit up to at least the standard it was when I’d moved in 6 years previously. The company owner was an Aussie citizen – a Chinese-born-han-ethnic woman in her mid 40s who had a certain Je ne sais quoi which at first merely suggested to me “she will get this job done well and ensure those Real Estate vultures don’t try it on with my security deposit”.

      She arrived at precisely the agreed time with two very quiet, timid younger ethnically Chinese women and since I don’t speak Mandarin, have no idea what those imperious commands meant. But boy, did they do a brilliant job. Late in the job, when she decided she didn’t have to watch events so closely she started chatting to me. I revealed I had planned to stay in Aus, had recently got my citizenship and passport, but due to unforeseen events would be returning to Europe. I sure couldn’t afford to keep living in Mosman. “You single? Money worries could have been over! My sister in China is really needed here but……”

      She cackled and touched my arm. I laughed and thought I’d exit the whole uncomfortable situation by telling a certain truth and revealing her sister had bumps in the wrong places. Big mistake. She laughed uproariously and said “that makes it even better – can be honest!”. I was gobsmacked but got a great anecdote for how my life might have been very different and in a much sunnier climate.

      It might also have been different in other ways. A few days later when depositing into my bank in Chinatown the cash from my car that I’d sold, feeling nervous about having such a large stash in hand, I see her in the next queue depositing what looked more in the region of AUD500K. She spotted me and breaking off her Mandarin conversation with the teller, cackled and said something to the effect of “all sorts of things pay well, eh?”

      PS. The (Anglo) Real Estate Company still tried to stiff me on the deposit. I threatened them with NSW Law, plus the fact I’d made it my business to get in with the (former British LSE-Economics graduate expat) landlord and that I worked with globally renowned academic marketers. I got my deposit in full. Wonder to this day if I could have got a lot more cash…..! But maybe “living in interesting times” would have been the curse it is supposed to be.

  18. dk

    Reading about Waylon the warthog and the tsking about his aggressive behavior, it seems pretty normal or at least predictable to me for a matured adult to challenge the dominant individual of his social context. If his keeper Austin hadn’t raised him so closely, Waylon might have attacked him much sooner, in the course of regular development, considering him either as prey or as an ordinary competitor. Since Austin was part of Waylon’s family group, the attack would come only when Waylon reached his biological majority, and would target Austin not as prey or as a competitor, but as the “alpha” of Waylon’s own tribe. Waylon’s calculation that he could win such a battle was correct. If this analysis is correct, Austin might have avoided some injury simply by not fighting back, a social signal of submission and an acknowledgement of Waylon’s new role as the dominant warthog of the enclosed domain.

    1. vao

      a social signal of submission and an acknowledgement of Waylon’s new role as the dominant warthog of the enclosed domain

      Sure, but what are the proper signals of submission and how does one acknowledge Waylon’s alpha status in a way understandable by the warthog? Konrad Lorenz had interesting observations about those for wolves, birds of various kinds, and other animals, but I do not think he studied warthogs.

    2. griffen

      I nearly expected to read about the young man’s demise at the very feet of his otherwise friendly, linebacker sized pet. Talk about getting gored twice, both on the way into you and on the way out sounds all just very painful.

      Maybe avoid injury by respecting the power of the animal and those sizable sharp tusks.

  19. Tom Stone

    Biden is deteriorating so quickly and obviously that he doesn’t look like he will make it until November, and while Harris may be acceptable to the Blob she is so obviously depraved and corrupt that I can’t see her winning the Presidency.
    So who will it be?
    Newsome is too Noisome, perhaps Pritzker?

      1. Bsn

        Ha! I remember that Nixon poster. Thanks Flora. My other favorite poster from those days was “Phi Zappa Crappa”

    2. undercurrent

      Quick reply: the telegenic young governor of Michigan, and the hulking, genocide loving senator from Pennsylvania, whose health seems much improved, as though an i.v. drip of missles and mayhem is restorative, in the latter’s case. Added bonus: both battleground states, both neoliberal, both much, much younger.

      1. JBird4049

        California Governor Gavin “Good Hair” Newsom is my choice, but that means dumping Kamala Harris. Maybe, the PMC could Hillary Clinton and Newsom together? Both have serious flaws or issues, but I can see the enbubbled leadership thinking it a marvelous idea. If the Democratic Party is going to sidestep the primaries, perhaps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be invited to that limousine ride as well.

  20. Tommy S

    Regarding the MR article……A link, that is factual from Chomsky in the 80’s Also an essential read is Voline Unknown Revolution, as well as Emma Goldman and Berkman books after their visit there. If the ugly head of Lenin continues to surface, as some ‘sage’, we should all relearn the history of the bolshevik coup, and its destruction of the workers’ collectives and free unions. Chomsky, “But the State priests knew better, and moved at once to destroy the factory committees and to reduce the Soviets to organs of their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a “Draft Decree on Workers’ Control” that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be “answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property.” As the year ended, Lenin noted that “we passed from workers’ control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy,” which was to “replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers’ control” (Carr). “The very idea of socialism is embodied in the concept of workers’ control,” one Menshevik trade unionist lamented; the Bolshevik leadership expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.” https://chomsky.info/1986____/

    2. Roger Boyd

      Chomsky is very much representative of a western socialist left that predominantly value purity over the actual messiness of a popular revolution which needs to be constantly protected against Western destabilization and aggression. No actual revolution will ever be pure enough for them. They love doomed to fail groups that better align with their purity requirements, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico.

      I read Chomsky for his coverage of many disappeared historical facts about the West, but when it comes to the Soviet Union, China etc., his anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist leanings become very apparent. He dreams of a pure revolution in an unpure world.

  21. Willow

    > Twenty-Fifth Amendment
    How will Clinton take Harris becoming 1st female US president? No chance. Hillary will make sure Joe stays president so long as he’s got a pulse. Clear Biden won’t be on the 2024 ticket for Dems. Who could it possibly be?

  22. skippy

    Heh … wake up here in Oz with coffee in hand to peek at the responses to Tucker/Putin media event and BANG right between the eyes …

    Why Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson need each other right now

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/tucker-carlson-vladimir-putin-interview-explained/103445144

    This coming from the once vaunted national voice of the traditional labour little people, post having a few executives foist on it to drag it into being run like a Business[tm] and not an independent news source against the machinations of the private sector head shrinking infotainment.

    Then some bang on about rants and screeds, classic dialectal gaming where one accuses others first of what they are actually doing, and have been, fact free perception management. Flash backs of debating AET economic libertarians and ex ante axiom breathers … ugh …

  23. samm

    “All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple. Why replace this with some kind of rigmarole, some new Volapük?”

    It reminds of of all the commotion around replacing “equality” with “equity.” Instead of a simple concept that applies to everyone, we are given one with complex eligibility requirements. Isn’t it simply because liberals love nothing else? (“it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of complex eligibility requirements.”)

    1. carycat

      For a short time around 1980, I was one of three people that greeted each other in the morning in Volapük in probably all of NJ. A chance conversation about dead languages led us to wonder about what Volapük is like and our lab’s awesome technical librarian tracked down one of the few books ever published on it. So we had it for a month via interlibrary loan from the Cleveland Library. We checked the “return by” list at the end of the book and noticed that it was last checked out just before WW2! The book was a language primer and so the 3 of us that were interested learned a few basic phrases but did not elicit more than a raised eyebrow or two from bystanders when we tried them out in the office hall ways. Our opinion was that it is just a badly done attempt at a “universal” (but really myopic about what constitutes the universe) language. So I wasn’t really sure William Gibson got it 100% when I read Spook Country when it came out but too lazy to really research it more. Given how aggressively libraries administrators are getting rid of dead trees, I fear that such an interlibrary loan is no longer possible now.

    2. Revenant

      In defence of equity, it was (prior to the Judicature Acts ) a distinct branch of English law and, whereas the Common Law was focused on the form and process of matters (such that if the wrong or the complainant did not fit the prescribed form, or god forbid the pleading was incorrect or out of time, then no relief could be granted), Equity derived from Canon Law and took a teleological view of the law and would provide relief to deliver justice – provided the complainant was deserving. Hence the maxim “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands”.

      After the Judicature Acts fused equity and common law in terms of civil procedure, with plaintiffs being able to plead for relief in common law and/or equity in the same court, the principles of reasoning nevertheless remain distinct and different remedies still owe their character and implementation to their origins. Equity has been the route for innovation in English law because it accepts novel applications of principles in the pursuit of justice where the statutory law was barren.

      For example, the entire doctrine of promissory estoppel – that if you do a thing to your deteriment in reliance upon a promise the other promiser is estopped from resiling from it – is a 20th century creation of equity, largely by Lord Denning (the radical English judge) and often motivated by cases involving wives whose husbands had mortgaged their houses and then divorced them leaving them roofless. The statutory background was that co-signature on a mortgage was not required even though, without special arrangements, property on marriage belonged to the husband well past WW2. In the end the law was reformed but until it was, Lord Denning and others used equity to address the problem of “deserted wives’ equity” (in the phrase, the equity refers to the wives’ beneficial interest in the property even though the legal, i.e. common-law, title was vested in the husband).

      In fact, the entire field of trust law and the concept of beneficial interest being distinct from legal title is a creature of equity.

      So, while the emphasis on “equity” rather than “equality” may seem faddish – may even be a fad – it has a much deeper resonance with jurisprudential history that the law should comport to religious notions of inter-personal justice, indeed to a moral framework, rather than be amoral and impersonal. Whether those who relabel “equality” as “equity” know this is another matter!

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