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Links 4/26/2024

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Patient readers, I need a bit more time to sort my campus protest material properly; please refresh your browsers at 7:30am or so. –lambert Finished!

Ban on non-compete agreements sends shockwave across Wall Street FT

Off with Their Petticoats Literary Review

Climate

Ford just reported a massive loss on every electric vehicle it sold CNN. Meanwhile, in China:

Sometimes self-identified reactionaries get it right:

China’s EV supply chain dominance risks ‘collapse’ of US subsidies, warns South Korea FT

* * *

Plant apocalypse: how new diseases are destroying EU trees and crops Guardian

Too hot, too dry, too wet: climate change hits Italy’s winemakers hard FT

Pandemics

Early tests of H5N1 prevalence in milk suggest U.S. bird flu outbreak in cows is widespread STAT. And the milk we sold abroad?

Pasteurization doesn’t kill H5N1:

So when Mandy said that “[The] FDA has indicated that our milk supply is safe because of the pasteurization process. Unpasteurized and raw milk remains a risk, but the vast majority of our milk supply is safe because of pasteurization” she was lying. How unexpected.

Substantial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through casual contact in retail stores: Evidence from matched administrative microdata on card payments and testing PNAS. From the Abtract: “[M]easuring transmissions occurring through casual contact in the public space is highly challenging as researchers generally do not observe when infected individuals intersect casually with noninfected individuals. We overcome this methodological challenge in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic by combining card payment data, indicating exactly where and when individuals visited stores, with test data indicating when they were infected. We document that exposure to an infected individual in a store is associated with a significantly higher infection rate in the following week. Our estimates imply that transmissions between retail shoppers made a substantial contribution to the Covid-19 pandemic.” That’s clarifying! (When I hear “contact” I think fomite transmission, but what is meant here is close proximity or, as even the goons at WHO accept, transmission “thrrough the air.”)

China?

China warns diplomatic ties with US could face ‘downward spiral’ as Blinken visits Beijing France24

US wants allies to cut chip-related China exports amid Huawei alarm FT

India

India as a Tool to Contain China — Geopolitics Explained World Affairs

How The Portuguese Crown Introduced Órfãs del Rei As A Colonisation Strategy In Goa Madras Courier

The Koreas

‘We must say no’: Seoul defense chief on Korean, USFK involvement in hypothetical Taiwan crisis Hankyoreh

The Caribbean

Haiti PM Ariel Henry resigns as transitional council is sworn in BBC

Syraqistan

Mass Graves in Gaza Show Victims’ Hands Were Tied, Says UN Rights Office The Wire. Commentary:

Amateurs. The pros burn the bodies.

How an ‘antisemitism hoax’ drowned out the discovery of mass graves in Gaza Jonathan Cook

‘No doubt’ Netanyahu preventing hostage deal, charges ex-spokesman of Families Forum The Times of Israel

The Coming Arab Backlash Foreign Affairs

We need an exodus from Zionism Naomi Klein, Guardian

Worse Than You Can Imagine Craig Murray

European Disunion

Germany is becoming a police state when it comes to Palestine activism Mondoweiss

New Not-So-Cold War

Russians do not reduce intensity of their attacks, with total of 114 combat clashes during one day − General Staff Ukrainska Pravda

Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats AP

Ukraine is putting pressure on fighting-age men outside the country as it tries to replenish forces AP

US Department of State has not decided how to help bring Ukrainian men back to Ukraine Ukrainska Pravda

Military briefing: Russia’s narrowing advantage in Ukraine FT

German army prepares plan to ready US troops to fight on Nato’s eastern front The Telegraph

* * *

Ukraine: US doubles down, Russia is cool Indian Punchline. I love the “Peace through strength” framing. Sadly, I can’t find a source for Hermann Göring’s “Guns will make us powerful”; I’m sure it sounds better in the original German.

An intellectual battle rages: Is the U.S. in a proxy war with Russia? WaPo [lambert pounds head on desk].

Greece refuses to give Ukraine its Patriot air defence systems Ukrainska Pravda

South of the Border

US health advocacy groups support Mexico in GMO trade dispute The New Lede

Biden Administration

Sullivan: Defense industry ‘still underestimating’ global need for munitions Breaking Defense. “Global need,” you say.

FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules The HIll. Good news!

Key Bridge Collapse

Trapped ships finally able to leave Baltimore Splash247

Groves of Academe

The Streisand Effect:

Amazingly, college administrators across the country simultaneously flipped open their three-ring binders to “P” for “Protest,” and found written therein “If against Zionism, imitate the IDF.” More proof, if more proof were needed, that debriding the administrative layers at the university woud be a great service to the public.

Sister of Murdered Kent State Protester Allison Krause Speaks out Against use of Militarized Police Responses on College Campuses Amidst Nationwide Pro-Palestine Protests The Sparrow Project

Here’s What Student ‘Boycott, Divest, and Sanction’ Activists Are Demanding Chronicle of Higher Education

Norm Finkelstein at Columbia:

I hope what Black Girl in Maine recommends is happening. It would be a shame to make the same mistakes twice:

I was a little too young to experience 1968 on campus; I hope any veterans of that time will consider sharing in comments.

* * *

Bad Cops

Boston police forcibly remove pro-Palestinian tent encampment at Emerson College; more than 100 arrested Boston Globe

Boston Mayor Wu is, of course, a liberal Democrat in a Blue state.

Emory

University of Texas (1):

University of Texas (2):

Snipers

Ohio University:

Oh, “spotters.”

Indiana University:

Tactics

Cal Poly: Barricades:

When life hands you lemons….

Emerson: Umbrellas, reminiscent of Hong Kong:

Note: “Encampments” seems to be the word, not “occupations.” If I have the sequence right — and It was a long time, I might not, so readers please correct — 2011’s protests began in the United States with state capitol occuputions by labor (Wisconsin), then European protests East-to-West framed as “camping,” and then to Occupy proper. So 1968 is not the only precedent to consider here.

Thanks a bunch, the cops and the Brownose institute would just love to outlaw masks altogether, contributing to our ongoing population cull. so can we please not be stupid?

Digital Watch

Google parent announces first-ever dividend; beats on sales, profit; shares soar Reuters. Stealing content pays off big!

Google Wants to Destroy the Mountain Weekly News & Kill Small Publishers Across the Globe In Favor of Large Media Corporations Mountain Weekly

Police State Watch

Cops testing AI body camera that ‘writes its own police reports’ in five minutes and boast it’s ‘exceeded expectations’ The Sun. I’ll bet!

Imperial Collapse Watch

Ukraine War Funding & Failed Russian Sanctions Jack Rasmus. Highly recommended by Mercouris, deservedly so.

Washington has lost touch with reality. If it doesn’t adapt, the world will pay Marco Carnelos, Middle East Eye

The Bad Faith Olympics James Howard Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation. Refreshingly concise and on point.

Everybody Hates a Tourist

Japan town to put up 2.5m barrier to block view of Mount Fuji Channel News Asia

That sinking feeling: why long-suffering Venice is quite right to make tourists pay Guardian

In The Air Three Quarks Daily

Class Warfare

World’s billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers Guardian

Little boy mistakes multimillionaire for homeless man and they end becoming good friends Upworthy. The deck: “The boy got to keep his dollar and gain a friend.”

Antidote du jour (via):

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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312 comments

  1. Antifa

    SETTLER PARASITES
    (melody borrowed from Strangers In The Night  as performed by Frank Sinatra)

    This is why we fight settler advances
    They build concrete homes on our expanses
    Every day they’re back demanding something new

    They call for compromise while dynamiting
    Houses by the mile and extraditing
    Those who won’t depart to make room for a Jew

    Danger day and night
    That’s how we live now everyone is so uptight
    Spur of the moment scenes of fighting to and fro

    Blood begins to flow
    Soldiers drag our sons away
    When they’ll be back no one can say, and

    Without human rights we’re shoved together
    There’ll be no plebiscites now or forever
    This is why we fight the settler parasites

    They never seem to go away
    They want more houses every day

    Without human rights we’re shoved together
    There’ll be no plebiscites now or forever
    This is why we fight the settler parasites

    2. LifelongLib

      Well, both sides can sing this one:

      This land ain’t your land
      This land is my land
      From the Gaza beaches
      To the Golan Heights, and
      From the cedar forests
      To the Red Sea waters
      There just ain’t room
      For you and me.

  2. The Rev Kev

    “Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats”

    In the same way that the UK demanded that the Ukrainians keep the Challenger tanks that they supplied away from the front lines so that they wouldn’t be destroyed, then likely the US has done the same here with the Abrams tanks that they supplied. Several of them have already been destroyed and at least one of them captured by the Russians. This week, two US-made M113 armored personnel carriers, a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV), a German-made Marder IFV and other vehicles were spotted on transport trailers in Moscow on their way for an exhibit. The thought of having an Abrams tank on display in Victory Park is not good as that might effect future sales. No need to supply the Russians with more of them.

    1. JohnA

      Jens Stoltenberg, aka Stolpskott, is already complaining it is not fair that Russia is displaying captured NATO materiel, as Nato is not involved in this war! He has almost reached the foaming at the mouth stage.

      1. The Rev Kev

        I was reading earlier today that Stoltenberg was saying Beijing must reduce its trade with Moscow to have good relations with the West-

        ‘China says it wants good relations with the West. At the same time, Beijing continues to fuel the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War Two. They cannot have it both ways’

        https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/25/nato-says-china-must-cut-trade-with-russia-to-have-good-relations-with-west/

        Kinda weird how some forty countries of the Collective west are allowed to ship all sorts of military gear and aid to the Ukraine but that if any other country ships stuff to Russia, then they are fueling this war.

    2. Benny Profane

      You wonder how much of that 60 billion will go to the manufacture of now useless Bradley’s.

      1. Neutrino

        and how much will go to offshore accounts, precious gems, metals and villas, but not dachas!

        The lack of accountability and auditing is on form. /:

      2. EricFromGR

        from Wikipedia article:
        “Bradley production concluded in 1995, with a total of 6,724 Bradleys (4,641 M2s and 2,083 M3s) produced for the U.S. Army.”
        It has not been manufactured for the last 29 years!

      1. Polar Socialist

        That thing is actually used by combat engineers. It has a mine roller in front and a huge EW battery on top. Besides, of course, the obvious extra sheeting against FPVs. Apparently they have been so good at punching holes in the Ukrainian defenses that Ukrainians are hunting them with artillery. Mostly you can see them leading a column of tanks and IFVs to take over another village on the Avdeevka front.

        Ukrainians also claim that in Ocheretyne Russians had so strong EW that Ukrainian drones were totally useless – and they don’t have artillery anymore. Besides EW, there are claims that Russians use motorcycles for quick dashes over the fields between the tree lines. Impossible to hit with FPV drones and in your positions before you even know they’re attacking.

        Already ealier, it was probably the surprise storming of Chasiv Yar suburb, I noticed that Russians attacked with 8 IFVs, but only three had dismountable infantry with them – the other 5 were there just to confuse the Ukrainian drone operators (and maybe soften up the Ukrainian positions a bit).

        1. yep

          There are multiple videos of Tsar Mangal tanks doing their thing without much problems. The best counter for them would be an ambush by a regular tank firing APFSDS. Those big NATO tanks were originally designed to stop Soviet tank rush on Western Germany. Now Abrams finally got the chance to show T-72 what it was made for, and it ran away like brave Sir Robin. :-)

          P.S. There is a video of that motorcycle assault, and the interview with the riders. It was the element of surprise that did the trick. Tactics is evolving in real-time.

    2. The Rev Kev

      I believe that wearing a keffiyeh will get you arrested in Germany. Oddly enough, they were very popular with German students back in the 80s. But that was then and this is now. Earlier today I was reading how if you purchase a bible in the US, then this would brand you as a suspect radical with the intel agencies. Waiting for them to do the same with people wearing a keffiyeh.

      1. Ken Murphy

        I had a friend who went to the hajj in Saudi Arabia, and I asked him to bring me back a keffiyeh. It is a remarkably versatile article of clothing. Twisted up into a head covering it works remarkably well at keeping the head cool (and covered) in the Texas sun. Perfect for mowing lawns. It is also of sufficient size that I have been able to use it as a makeshift sling after rollerblading injuries.

        Too bad there are so many negative connotations associated therewith.

        1. Donald Obama

          Hey for what it’s worth, I would get a positive impression from someone wearing a keffiyeh.

          1. Polar Socialist

            Not a German student, but keffiyeh indeed was a fashion item (and a political statement) in the circles me and Mrs. Socialist hanged around in the 80’s. Still got ours somewhere in the closet, I think.

            1. Revenant

              The only place I saw a Keffiyeh worn in earnest solidarity by Caucasians / Teutons was early 1990’s Germany. The university student friends of my German exchangee’s older brother.

              And now Germany suppresses them as verboten….

              I have one in the cupboard bought as a souvenir of a school trip to Israel (atheistic Anglican, cultural curiosity drove me).

        2. jrkrideau

          I have two that I bought years age. The red and white check of course as I was in Saudi long ago and that is the proper colour there.

        3. jrkrideau

          Military briefing: Russia’s narrowing advantage in Ukraine

          Russia has not lost the war yet but it’s close.

          One western official said that while Russia might make some tactical breakthroughs at the frontline, it remained an ineffective army characterised by old equipment and poorly trained soldiers and would not “overrun” Ukraine, they added.

          In February 2022, Russia had a far better equipped and trained army,” the official said, referring to Russia’s initial invasion and subsequent rout in northern Ukraine. “I simply can’t see that it is better now.”

          Those prospects are not distant: 315,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, Cavoli said, adding pressure for the army to replenish its units.

          I understand that the Kremlin is preparing to evacuate to Irkutsk.

    3. edgui

      Months ago I asked myself the same question but in relation to the climate crisis and the rise of outdoor fashion.

    4. PlutoniumKun

      It reminds me of the Countess Markievicz’s advice to young women revolutionaries:

      “dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots. Leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.”

  4. Emma

    Ali Abunimah on Finkelstein

    https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1783581808937852945

    I agree with Ali. Finkelstein is good for debunking the more extremist Zionist lies but his views about Palestinians have always been pretty bad. He long decried BDS as a “cult” and denounce Hamas as terrorists even though there’s a very strong case under international law that Hamas is legitimate Palestinian national resistance, which he does not acknowledge or engage with. He’s against the one state solution and is firmly attached to the existence of the state of Israel. He just wants a ‘nicer’ version that isn’t so openly cruel to Palestinians and gives the Palestinian Authority some kind of Bantustan.

    About the only Palestinian mass movement he could get behind was the ‘Great March of Return’ which is basically a desperate plea to activate the conscience of Western white liberals. Instead hundreds were killed by IDF snipers and thousands were maimed, often leading to amputations because the snipers aimed for the knees. Few people in the West are even aware of its existence.

    I remember hearing Finkelstein say right after October 7 that he was so dispirited by the outcome of GMR that he just gave up on the Palestinian solidarity movement. Imagine just giving up on millions of oppressed people that he purportedly dedicated his life to.

    In short – Finkelstein is well and good on documenting Jewish misbehavior on Zionism. No serious person should follow him on tactics or strategy.

    1. Emma

      The way to engage people and move forward is to tell the truth about Palestine, the founding of Israel, the real face of capitalism, and that of the American empire. The 1968 movements failed in the long run because there was no honest acknowledgement about the American Empire, which allowed people to turn away and for the machinery of the deep state to grind on and destroy whatever gains of 1968.

      If there are lessons to be learned, it should be from successful activists and revolutionaries in the global South, in South Africa, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Colombia. Not old white liberal losers, even if they’re comparatively honorable ones like Finkelstein and Corbyn.

      1. hemeantwell

        The 1968 movements failed in the long run because there was no honest acknowledgement about the American Empire

        Agreed. In my experience in the 70s it was always hard to address extremely well-entrenched notions/sentiments about the need to somehow “stand up to Russia.” It was like you were in a tag team match, arguing against an American imperialism understood more or less as expansionist capitalism, with countries in Latin America serving as exemplars, to then have to deal with a supposedly necessary American-led defense against the supposedly expansionist Russians, “whatabout Eastern Europe?.” With the end of the draft, the collapse of US aggression in Vietnam, and then the catastrophe of Pol Pot most antiwar Americans allowed themselves to drift into the tides of MSM propaganda.

        And thanks for your insight re Finklestein. I had the impression he was weak on support for Palestinians but could not have said why.

      2. Cat Burglar

        Your comment is directionally right, but historically not accurate.

        The US New Left of the 1960s in fact was the first movement to successfully put US imperialism in public discussion there. (If you want a full account, try Kirkpatrick Sale’s SDS, the best history of the largest left-wing organization of the time.) They did not succeed because they were defeated by the power of the state, and they were certainly not liberals or all white.

        Some of them did indeed follow the lead of Global South revolutions (this was called “Third Worldism” in the 70s), to the point of armed struggle. Some are still in prison because of it. After that, there was a consensus among many of them toward popular organizing to create a mass base for a socialist movement (see Adolph Reed, jr., for example).

        If we want to consider what was of tactical and strategic value in 1968, we have to reexamine the factual record of what revolutionaries tried to do, and who they really were, to come to an accurate evaluation of their failures and victories.

    2. Emma

      I would also say that it’s interesting that Finkelstein is showcased in legacy media and big alt media platforms, whereas Ilan Pappe and Miko Peled are basically unknown outside of the dedicated Palestinian solidarity community. Pappe and Peled are both much more charismatic and sympathetic speakers who are also unapologetically anti-Zionist. Unlike Finkelstein, they were both raised Zionist Jews in Israel and knows Israeli society exceptionally well.

      Reminds me of his Chomsky became ‘the’ radical leftist critic of American empire, even though Michael Parenti had better arguments and was a far far better public speaker.

      2. britzklieg

        Meh. You have an excessive opinion of your opinions. Finkelstein and Chomsky have done more for Palestinans than you will ever accomplish by your derisive comments. They are not to be compared with other voices they are to be included. It’s not a competition.

        1. Emma

          They delimit the Overton Window of acceptable discourse in the West and becomes the gatekeeper of ‘acceptable radicalism’. They are also in opposition to tactics and strategies that are mainstream within the Palestinian solidarity movement such as one state and BDS.

          I’m not saying that they’re dishonest in themselves (well, actually I would say that about Chomsky, who had lots of dubious MICIMATT ties in addition to his Epstein link up), but the fact that they’re amplified over people who are far more qualified and centered to speak on Palestine, should be interesting to anyone paying attention.

          1. Carolinian

            Are either one of them still very relevant? They stood out when the Israel issue was far less controversial (in the US) than it is now and any contrarians on the matter could be considered brave.

            1. Emma

              I don’t think they are relevant anymore, because Israel’s actions in the last 200 days basically killed off the two state solution. But they still get way more attention and amplification in legacy media than any other figures in the Palestinian solidarity movement and the left.

          2. Feral Finster

            I take no mortal human as an oracle. For that matter, even Hitler occasionally spoke truth, and I despise National Socialism and Hitler, too.

          3. nap

            Why are you so interested in denigrating people who are plainly trying to help? What have you done recently that can even begin to compare?

            Nobody is above criticism and everyone makes mistakes. But some of the attacks on Chomsky whenever his name is mentioned on NC are really disgraceful, displaying total ignorance of what he has written and done in a long lifetime of working for a better America and a better world.

            1. Emma

              I think Finkelstein is sincerely trying to help and he is doing a great service by debunking the Zionist lies. But Lee Fang (someone else that I’m very much not a fan of) was arguing that the movement needs to listen to him and self censor. I think that’s absolutely the wrong strategy. Trying to accommodate people who would actually think “from R to C, P shall be free” is anti-semitic is not going to get anyone anywhere.

              As for Chomsky, his views exemplify the compatible left. Very radical sounding ‘anarchist’ who can’t accept the compromises necessary in any actual existing socialist state (or Iran) under extreme pressure by US imperialists to persist.

              Too pure to do anything or support anyone, except for about 2 months during the Spanish civil war and Allende. Where did those pure actions get the brave anarchists?

              Meanwhile Chomsky managed a very lucrative career acting as the left gadfly, getting worshipped by generations of left leaning students who might otherwise have gone on to learn more about Marxist Leninism, while getting US government grants and pal around with Epstein.

              If you want to defend his track record and the usefulness of his scholarship, please go ahead and make specific arguments supporting your position. Nothing I’ve encountered impressed me and they reinforce my sense that he’s controlled opposition, promoted to counter the sort of leftist that could actually challenge Western power.

              1. chuck roast

                ‘self censor’…did you listen to what the guy said? I knew nothing about Finkelstein. So, I had no preconceived notions to filter his words with. He spent a good amount of time in his ‘seminar’ slamming the new fangled academic censorship. He says he was a Maoist back in the day. What I heard was a brilliant lesson in Maoist Big Character Posters. Be goal oriented, and make it simple to carry the uncommitted.

                Yeah, I remember ’68, and here we are bitching about contradictions again. We can only hope these kids don’t make the same mistakes we did. I believe Finkelstein would concur.

        2. The Rev Kev

          Chomsky may have done a lot for Palestinians but he is also the guy that told people in 2020 to vote for Joe Biden to save the environment and that the unvaccinated should be removed from society and them getting food would be their problem. He does have his blind spots. Thing is, the guy was born when Calvin Coolidge was President. Bernie Sanders is not that much better age wise either. Are there no real progressives around that are slightly more younger?

        3. hemeantwell

          It may be that they have done more for Palestinians because they tack away from positions that endorse a right to self defense and so end up getting more air time. I’m aware of the travails Finkelstein has endured at the ends of AIPAC et al and applaud his heroic, steadfast resistance to them It’s just sad/ironic/whatever that in a situation in which that right needs to be discussed and affirmed in some form he cannot address it. There’s a marked similarity with what we’re having to consider re the Ukraine invasion and how difficult it has been to do so. As the question is forced on us the specter looms of Amnesty International thinking, which to my knowledge always shied away from endorsing armed responses to oppression or, in the case of Russia, developing security threats.

      3. Tommy S

        Probably the reason why Chomsky outshone Parenti forever, is that he has an amazing factual deep writing career since the 60’s. Parenti? Some, but much of it tends to support ‘socialist states’…The other bigger part, Emma, which I think you may be ignoring, is that Parenti is an avowed leninist. He believes in top down vanguard ‘socialism’, which included huge massacres of commies and anarchists in our ‘leftist’ past. Most young people discovered this in the 90’s, and hence not much of an audience. While Chomsky, and who he supports (Rocker, Zinn, Goldman, Malatesta, council communists, etc) are rightly so, the better writers about bottom up libertarian left movements. I also question how you can belittle the great march, as if ‘some tactical error’… ..I’ve read that kind of top down marxist pronouncements all my life in history. Indeed.

        1. Roger

          Chomsky is the classic perfectionist socialist, with actual successful revolutions always not being pure enough for him. The lover of failed revolutions. He also supported much of the Black Propaganda that was spewed by the Nazis and then the West in Cold War era (and of course Khrushchev who carried out a coup). Getting massive numbers of people killed and maimed for no benefit at all is of course an error. Taking the power of the state is critical to changing society, otherwise any revolution will simply be crushed in a hail of repression and bullets.

        2. Emma

          The ‘Great March of Return’ that killed and permanently disabled what, a thousand people, and got them what in return? If this is your idea of a good result worth repeating then I suggest you go do it next time.

          Yes, Parenti was censored because he’s a Marxist Leninist who doesn’t spend the first 15 minutes of every speech talking about the (more often than not fabricated, see Grover Furr’s research on Stalin’s great crimes) great crimes of Communism.

          Why is that? Because unlike the completely feckless but really radical sounding anarchism of Chomsky, Communism has actually lifted countries out of poverty and allowed them to stand, even under intense pressure from Western imperialism. Stalin is perennially in the top three most popular Russian leaders in Russia. Mao is and had always been, despite his mistakes, incredibly popular in China. That’s what Communism actually accomplished. What has Chomsky’s ideas accomplished other than creating a small clutch of Western leftists who are always comfortable lecturing to the people who actually have to live with the Western boots on their neck everyday?

      4. Roger

        A great take on who the establishment allow to be the “radical” opposition and who they don’t. I could not get enough of Chomsky in the 1990s, and learned a great deal about the actual history of the US Empire from him, but over time I have seem how he polices himself to stay within the acceptable lines.

        Your comment reminds me of MLK, as long as he was campaigning for the vote within the system he was acceptable. As soon as he starting linking to political economy and class he was not.

      5. Victor Sciamarelli

        To Emma: You disrespect inspirational scholar activists like Chomsky and Finkelstein who, especially Chomsky, have informed and inspired people around the world, and you expect to have something to say about the direction of the spontaneous student protests that have created much excitement. I think it’s up to the students, not you, to decide which road to take.
        As any French revolutionist would say; good luck, but pray your head fits in the basket.

        1. Emma

          It really doesn’t take much to bring out the nasty amongst the compatible left.

          How’s telling Communists and anti-imperialists that we’re too radical, constantly repeating baseless lies about Stalin and Mao (who are still far more popular amongst their respective populations than any Western politicians since JFK), and trying to shame us into voting for Biden again, working out for you?

    3. Alice X

      Welcome to the circular firing squad.

      It seems to me that Ali Abunimah and Norman Finkelstein
      are on the same side. The Zionist Entity must be loving this.

      Meanwhile, how many Palestinians were murdered today?

      1. Emma

        Ali is just pointing out Finkelstein’s track record and noting why he might not be the best source of advice on where to take the movement. This is an important action before we canonize Finkelstein and make his very bad prescriptions the roadmap on Israel-Palestine.

        Electronic Intifata has done 1000 times more than Finkelstein on getting the news out about what’s happening to Palestinians now and letting them speak for themselves. And their takes on current events has been consistently proven to be correct, unlike Finkelstein and Klein, both of whom decried the ‘Hamas terrorist massacre’ immediately after October 7 and are still selling a weaker version of that to this day.

          1. Emma

            Klein wrote a Guardian article that affirmed the Israeli version of what happened on October 7, when there was already substantial doubts about beheaded babies and rape claims. It’s linked here.
            https://twitter.com/itranslate123/status/1712262182799286285

            Finkelstein is from listening to at least 10 interview after October 7 and about as many before October 7. He just isn’t willing to talk about Hamas as the Palestinian armed resistance and he abhors violence. That’s fine as an individual choice, but the history of the region show that only armed resistance and deterrence work against the Israelis and Americans. Moral persuasion like what Finkelstein advocates doesn’t work, it failed disastrously in the GMR.

            My arguments have been centered on Finkelstein’s own poor track record. I’m not sure why you’re trying to make this personal about me. I decline to participate.

            1. Alice X

              Thank you for the link. I read the piece. I’m not making anything about you. When someone makes assertions about another’s statements or positions, I like to know the basis.

              Klein’s piece does not mention beheaded babies, or mass rapes, despite your statement. You lose credibility when you make broad assertions that don’t correlate with facts. She does say it (Oct. 7) was unequivocally a massacre. Alright, I will accept that, but not that Hamas did one thing or another, because we know that the Israelis were duplicitous from day one and in fact killed many civilians themselves. She says this:

              Harder for us adults is the fact that, in their desire to celebrate the powerful symbolism of Palestinians escaping the open air prison that is Gaza — which occupied people have every right to do — some of our supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and in some extreme cases, even seem to celebrate them.

              So she could have waited for the fog to clear. As I said, more evidence has come out of the IOF’s hand in the killing.

              She does go on to decry the leveling of Gaza. She offers her opinion of what constitutes antisemitism and Zionism.

              I don’t agree that Klein is repeating the official line, and I’m not distressed by having read her opinion. I have my own opinion which is that Israeli should not exist, I don’t know if she would agree, but probably not.

              I value what Finkelstein has to say, but I will have to review things to try to figure out what you are getting at, you paint with a broad brush which can be sloppy. I heard him celebrating the Houthis attempts at stopping the genocide, so I think he is realistic.

              2. Emma

                I’m saying that her calling it a ‘massacre’ at that point in time is laundering the argument that the Palestinians/Hamas did something deserving of retaliation and condemnation. Klein is not naive about the situation and she knows how her words would be read at that point in time. Now that the public mood has changed, she writes up something that was as obvious and unchanging on October 6, October 7, or October 8 as it is today. But she doesn’t write the article until now. Why?

    4. Kouros

      He’s applauding South Africa and Yemen in their fight to defend the Palestinians against the Israeli onslaught. He admitted that while he approved of the 2018 March, the outcome was despiriting and realised the depth of amorality of the Zionist state. And because of the sheer strength of that view in the Israeli population, he is very skeptical and wold not be surprised to see a total ethnic cleansing in the end.

      1. Emma

        If he now approves of Ansarallah’s actions, that does show a positive change. Perhaps he’ll come around on BDS. Overall, I think he is strongly positive figure for the movement, since he’s performing a very important service of debunking Zionist talking points. I still think that telling students risking their freedom and futures to protest genocide that their very reasonable slogan is too radical is not a good look and bad advice (because Zionists will turn anything into antisemitism anyways, so accommodating Zionist feelings is unnecessarily conceding ground).

  5. furnace

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/coming-arab-backlash

    Good piece, but suffers from beltway brain. In 2024, pretending that the Arab Spring was somehow entirely organic is a bit absurd; there was plenty of destabilizing efforts spearheaded by the US itself, taking opportunity with the radically unstable situation (after all, chaos makes the work of empire a little easier). Though it’s obviously hard to make predictions, it seems like some Arab regimes, such as the Jordan monarchy, are hanging by a thread. Whatever happens, once things start properly shifting, I think we’ll see governments falling fast.

    1. Roquentin

      Sending in the cops to crush these protests gives me worse proto-fascist vibes than anything related to Trump. A morally bankrupt, decaying state that has lost any interest in justifying itself through political ideology and instead resorts to brute force at the drop of a hat. Dark days aplenty incoming.

      1. t

        In the Emory clip, the first cop is careful not to break the professor’s glasses, while shoving her head into the sidewalk and not letting up when the other cop come in to assist. What a weird thing to attend to. I suppose there’s an enforced rule about that.

        1. Vandemonian

          “Home of the brave [cops], land of the free [speaking citizens]” to coin a phrase. /s

          Great to see those IDF zip ties being put to good use…

      2. Benny Profane

        What the hell was that cop doing with an AR-15 or whatever some sort of military killing machine, finger close to trigger, standing guard over that professor getting body slammed? Insane.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Kinda like when Aaron Bushnell was burning to death and you had this SS agent standing there with his gun trained on him, even as others were trying to put the guy out.

          1. JBird4049

            I guess that it is SOP to point a gun at anything that might impact the comfort zone of the police. I almost, almost feel sorry for the dude who pointed his gun at a man on fire being as it shows an amazing amount of either fear or stupidity.

        2. hemeantwell

          My negative political intuition, aka got a bad feeling about this, is pegged. That does look like a swattie with a rifle at IU. Let’s step back and consider what the Israelis are thinking. What if, as seems likely, Scott Ritter et al are correct about the implications of the Iranian missiles, and if that report, via Max Blumenthal, about acute consternation in the Israeli cabinet is accurate? Isn’t it going to be really tempting for them, with one gunshot, to set off a cascade of repression to further distract from the upcoming Rafah invasion, not to mention attacks on Iran? And then there’s the possibility that one or more of the protesters will decided to switch from passive to active and shoot back. These speculations, I guess, tend to be immobilizing, so time to shut up.

          1. Benny Profane

            Kent State helped end the war much faster than any other protest or action or editorial. You think this forest fire or campus protests is bad now? Kill a few students, and we could see a minor civil war of some sort. There’s a whole lot more guns in the hands of citizens today than back in ’70, and a lot of serious military killing machines out there.

            1. Feral Finster

              Those guns are mostly in the hands of deplorables, not college kids.

              I expect that the Establishment will exploit the class division “Rich hippy dippy wimpy college kids vs Real Patriotic Americans” very soon.

              Cynical? Doesn’t matter, as long as it works.

              1. Benny Profane

                The Deplorables don’t like Jews. Israel may have bought a lot of political support, but only the evangelicals have a soft spot for the country, because that’s where Jesus is coming back to.

                1. Feral Finster

                  At least in my experience, the deplorables either could not care less about Jews. or they like Israel because Israel seems “tough”, not to mention something about “end times”.

                  Just saw a lifted truck with an “I stand with Israel” window sticker.

            3. John k

              These are pmc kids. Neither they or their parents are gun lovers. Granted, views change, and Walmart has good prices…
              The question is, at what point does the pmc shift from all in on genocide?

              1. aletheia33

                as i recall, in 1968 there was a lot of parent-college student mutual alienation going on. it’s not clear which way the PMC parents of the current student protesters may be moved–up, down, or sideways. i think they’re pretty addled by the impact of COVID and climate change and “trump” and incapable of thinking (clearly). it does seem likely they’ll go all in for protecting their children, but what that will look like–how they’ll identify/define what they want to protect them from–is anybody’s guess.

                some of the protesters will have come from strongly activist family backgrounds and those parents will be firmly supporting them of course.

                a look at what NPR and MSNBC are saying about the protests might provide signs of which direction PMC parents will freak out in. i’m not expecting much in the way of solidarity or overt support. $$ will of course be deployed.

            5. JBird4049

              I do not think that it is the availability of a semi automatic rifle that is the problem because there were a lot more hunters in the 1960s and the bolt action rifles used then (and now) were military standard for both world wars. It was the amount not only anger, but frustration, not the guns that will trigger the shootings.

              Please do not forget two things. First, explosives and firebombing (during the 1960s some years had thousands), have often been used in civil unrest instead of guns.

              Second, hunting rifles (or bolt action guns used by the military) are more powerful than the M16. It will just take a second longer or you will have to be a little more careful to murder someone.

              But really, if people get angry enough they will find inventive ways to kill others. Just look at the Oklahoma City Bombing. How many people remember that bombing?

              Rather than thinking that people might get angry enough to start hurting people, therefore we should worry about how they might do so, it might be more prudent to not make people that angry before then.

              Also, wtf are snipers or spotting scopes being used at Kent State? Doesn’t anyone remember or read about Kent State shootings?

          2. Bugs

            If you train a few thousand crack snipers over a period of about 20 years in the GWOT, shooting at Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and you gotta do something with ’em when they get home…

      3. Mikel

        Occupy Wall St. was global and received the same violent extremist response in the USA from state and private institution representatives.

        1. Roquentin

          You’re not wrong, but at least OWS had been going on for quite some time at that point. I was horrified when Bloomberg cleared out Zucotti park under a media blackout along with everyone else, but I think it’s how quickly the powers that be went from 0 to 100 here that unsettles me. Especially when it would have been easier to just let the students sit there until the end of the year when most of them probably would have gone home for the summer anyway.

            1. Emma

              I think that’s what the commenter is saying. OWS was around for 2 months before the coordinated effort to take it down. Right now we’re seeing sending in SWAT teams and armed police within 24 hours of the erection of the camps, in many cases against the explicit rules of the University. There’s something afoot and it smells like Continuity of Government directives getting kicked into action.

              Question is why? Why are they doing things that are guaranteed to irretrievably hurt the reputation and possibly institutional stability of these schools and local governments, when they could have tried to slow walk the demands and try killing it through institutional inertia. I am afraid that they’re setting this up for something bigger, at the very least a mass distraction from the invasion and slaughter of Rafah but possibly something much more impactful.

        2. Yves Smith

          Please, no fabrication.

          Occupy Wall Street lasted all of 2 months, US only, and was crushed in a Federally-coordinated 17 city paramilitary crackdown. Thank you Obama.

          There were a few OWS groups that continued to meet and did good work, like Occupy Alternative Banking, Occupy the SEC (which still lives!), Occupy Sandy, and Occupy Homes. But these were splinters that kept going. No critical mass in any of them. And all save Occupy Homes were NYC based.

      4. Feral Finster

        “Sending in the cops to crush these protests gives me worse proto-fascist vibes than anything related to Trump.”

        “We gotta vote Biden because Trump is a fascist!”

        Holmes, fascism is already here, right now.

      5. ArvidMartensen

        The demos are the result of a psyop.

        How many videos are circulating in mainstream media about the mass graves near the hospital, or the killing or journalists or surgeons in Gaza? Not many anymore? So, not only is it a psyop, it is spectacularly successful.

        If everyone involved in the protests can keep going a public out and loud running video loop going of
        #Palestinian bodies in Gaza under rubble
        # Gaza mass graves near hospitals
        #Israeli atrocities in the West Bank,
        #interviews with Palestinians who have lost their families,
        # details of the “where’s Daddy” AI for killing Palestinian families etc,

        THEN the massive msm coverage of these protests would die tomorrow.
        A curtain of silence would descend and probably all the police would melt away.

        There is more than one way to skin a cat. And be useful to the Palestinians who are being slaughtered every day.

    2. Craig H.

      I was a little too young to experience 1968 on campus

      1968-19=1949; 2024-1949=75

      The youngest vets of 1968 on campus are now 75 y. o.

      I know one guy who was there. NYU. He says “If you can remember the 1960’s you weren’t there.” Maybe he took a lot of recreational drugs when he was nineteen years old? When Mick Jagger did his autobiography his ghost writer said the guy couldn’t remember anything from the 1960’s.

            1. Jabura Basaidai

              don’t know if you’ll see this X but i remember the ‘riot’ in Ann Arbor vividly – first night there were no cops – i shared an apartment above the old Pinball Pete’s with a few others and our windows led to the first floor roof of Pinball Pete’s overlooking South University – the White Panthers led by John Sinclair(RIP) got it rocking and rolling and there was actual f#@king in the streets – one of the roommates knew Sinclair and he came up to our apartment to step out on the roof and watch the festivities on the street – the second night was a bit different with masses of Washtenaw sheriffs led by a miscreant sheriff named Doug Harvey and the state troopers massing on South U in the first block from Washtenaw Ave – they pushed us back on South U to the beginning of the Diag at the Engin Arch – the president of UM, Robin Fleming, was at the front of the phalanx of cops and the guy i was with took to screaming at him and when he spit on Fleming that was the cue for mayhem –

      2. dommage

        In the spring of ’68 I was going on 25 had been admitted a bit over a year, already had quite a bit of experience in the discon/demonstration parts at the Centre St courthouse, and along with Charlie Rangel (later a congressman, now 93) represented the first Columbia students arrested at the gym protest that started the ’68 Columbia events. And subsequently represented some of the students arrested at the campus bust and at the 114th St bust. Now, 56 years later, after having worked with the team negotiating for the arrested Barnard students for the agreement that was just announced, – though it remains to be seen how many will accept it – yesterday afternoon the contact people at the west lawn encampment asked the NationalLawyersGuild for legal observers with Columbia ID to come to the campus in the evening, since a “major” Zionist counter demonstration had been announced. I have CUID, pocketed a neon colored green hat with “Legal Observer” on it and walked uptown and to the west lawn. All was totally calm, and I got to listen to a teach-in comparing 1968 to the present by the guy who teaches the ’68 course. He (and his small team) noted (correctly) that 1. most of the SDS group that set off ’68 were Jews; 2. there was a dual focus, on solidarity with the black movement (which was at the center of the gym issue – Columbia with city approval was getting set to build the gym in the public park on the hill that separates the Morningside campus from Harlem) and against the University’s activities in support of the VietNam war. Last evening the counter-demo they were concerned about had no presence on the campus and at about this point in the teach-in I got a call that outsiders with Israeli flags were gathering on Amsterdam Avenue (off campus), there was a counter-counter-demo forming as well, the white mass-arrest buses were parked on Amsterdam above 116th St, which was closed off between Amsterdam and Morningside, and a large police presence. So I, put on the ugly green “legal observer” hat, went out the Amsterdam gate, and went to find the pro-Palestinian counter-counter-demo, three dozen kids with a banner and some drums. The Zionist counter demo was not so “major” – I’d say less than two hundred on the west side of Amsterdam- but with some heavy characters among them. They were being kept off campus, though someone tried to climb the fence at the gate. I stayed with the counter-counter-demo, as it moved from 114th St up the the east side of Amsterdam up to 116th St. There were some loud and nasty confrontations, but the Community Affairs cops in their windbreakers moved quickly to separate the thugs from the pro-Palestinians. At around 8PM I saw the Chief (Gurney, I was told) and his entourage leave, and even though there was still a lot of noise, I also left and went home. As I told my NLG comrade, if I were only 70 again I might have stayed a while longer. Noticeable differences with ’68 ? 1. The NYC cops, in ’68 the TPF (“tactical”) were out of control, now there seemed to be a good number of cops with experience acting to control things, while the heavies with the face shields & plastic cuffs hanging from their belts stood well away from the action; 2. the kids in the encampment were a very mixed group, reflecting what you see on campus, while in ’68 early on the blacks separated themselves in Hamilton; 3. lots of press in the encampment, foreign, student, radical (“the whole world is watching”, but the kids seemed oblivious to it), in’68 the press seemed to be all behind the police lines; 4. the total focus now on what is being done to the Palestinians, while in ’68 there was a substantial (and varied) set of domestic issues as well as the war on VietNam; 5. the use being made of Columbia by domestic reaction, the fascist minded House Un-Israeli Activities Committee press conference and the like; my sense is we are far closer to a police state now than we were then, even if the NYC cops have learned a thing or two.

        2. Xihuitl

          Yes, thank you, Dommage. I was a naive, southern-girl freshman at Barnard in the fall of 68. Sat in the hallway of a building with a lot of Columbia boys. Classes canceled in the spring. Arguments about privilege and whether it was right to call in the police. Grew up and joined the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine. Very disturbed by the way my alma mater has handled current matters.

          1. Yves Smith

            Good for you for keeping the faith after so many years.

            PressTV had a recent interview of Norman Finkelstein where they asked how he got where he is. He gave a fairly long personal account where he said, two years ago, that he had concluded all of his work had been for naught (he was not melodramatic, this is my recap and not how he said it). He said now his regret is that he does not have the mental or physical energy to do more.

            So you never know when all the chipping at what looks like a wall suddenly leads to a breakthrough.

    3. lyman alpha blob

      I saw a very interesting video yesterday, which of course I can’t find again now, which I don’t think l has been posted at NC yet. It should be on the browser history of a different machine though, so maybe I can find it later.

      Anyway, it showed one Jewish woman trying to instigate things at the Yale campus protest. First she stood silently in the middle of the square with the word “JEW” written in blue on her white T shirt, surrounded by pro-Palestinian protestors. Nobody took the bait, so then she started chanting “I am not afraid” while being completely ignored by those still surrounding her, including those carrying a large “Jews for a Free Palestine” banner in her vicinity.

      Kids were smart not to react at all. No so smart was posting the video to the interwebs after not managing to provoke any of the protestors to do anything to her. She managed to showcase the peaceful and even somewhat joyous protest attended by many other Jews going on around her. Talk about your self owns.

      If anyone else saw this one and can find it, please post!

      1. Alice X

        There are two different videos of the same person which circulated yesterday on X. I just looked but didn’t find either today. The perils of a short news cycle.

    4. timotheus

      Every police overreaction will expand the campus protests, just as they did in 1970 when I was a college student. Perish the thought that we will see a Kent State ensue, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Some sort of major incident is almost baked in given the insane rhetoric from Biden and his GOP nutcase allies. When it does, these kids will be shocked to see how many of their elders cheer it. They shouldn’t be.

      1. John k

        Don’t slight the dem nut cake Allie’s. Far more dems voted for the ‘fund all wars’ bill in the house than reps.

  7. The Rev Kev

    “Greece refuses to give Ukraine its Patriot air defence systems”

    NATO has informed the Greek government that if they give up their Patriot air defence systems and give them to the Ukraine where it can be duly destroyed, that they have nothing to worry about from Turkiye starting anything in the disputed islands. They said that they rang Erdogan and he swore that Greece will be safe if their give up their air defenses – pinky swear. Normally the present Greek government will roll over on any request by NATO but this one is a bridge too far for them.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      I have to say it is nice to see Greece give the fascists the old “Oxi” once again, even if not so forceful as the one given back in 1940.

      I don’t know much about the current government other than that they’ve sidled up to the US more than would seem wise in recent years. I did a little research on current prime minister Mitsotakis before a recent trip to Greece. His family was driven out of Greece by the US sponsored military junta back in the late 60s and lived in exile for several years, so he ought to know how trustworthy the US is.

      I did the old Thomas Friedman bit of seeking wisdom from cabbies, which despite Friedman’s own blockheadedness, I find a useful way to gauge opinion. With my sample of one ( I decided not to get into it with others after the first answer), I got a positive reaction when I asked whether they liked Mitsotakis or not. When I told the driver I was more familiar with Tsipras and Varoufakis from the prior administration and asked his opinion of them, I got the negative nod and left it at that.

        1. Feral Finster

          We keep waiting and it never happens. I am sure that the CIA has many levers to get what it wants out of Greek politicians.

    3. Ignacio

      Spain was also asked. It has been decided that some missiles will be delivered but not the launchers.

  8. Colonel Smithers

    Thank you, Lambert.

    With regard to the Naomi Klein piece in the Grauniad, a couple of days before, the liberal imperialists published https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/23/israel-gaza-campus-protests by Robert Reich, a regular guest writer for the past thirty years.

    With regard to the Jonathan Cook piece, it’s interesting to compare how Sky and even Channel 4 have exposed what really happened, but the BBC continues to push the hoaxer’s narrative, including his team’s footage.

    Yes, team! Since late last year, Falter, the Israeli embassy, which provides his bodyguards and coordinates the “take downs”, and the Henry Jackson Society have been trying to provoke such stunts. More are expected tomorrow. The aim is to oust the chief of London’s police.

    Readers may be interested in https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65839/who-really-funds-the-jewish-chronicle-why-its-troubling-that-we-dont-know. Rusbridger, who use to edit the Grauniad, does not mention John Ware, ex BBC and anti-Corbyn hatchet man, and William Shawcross*, who oversees government appointments and used to oversee charities.

    Shawcross is the son of former politician and prosecutor Hartley Shawcross, aka Shortly Floorcross, and father in law of Simon Wolfson of the eponymous Cambridge College and head of the Next retail chain. The Wolfsons are zionists and brexiteers. Shawcross uses and used his official positions to promote zionist interests and harass opposition to zionism.

    2. Carolinian

      The decline of the BBC is sad to those of us who have consumed so much of it on PBS and still love the indefatigable Melvyn Bragg. PBS just had an odd BBC three parter called Julius Caesar Rise of a Dictator where reenactors and ominous visuals ae apparently designed to enlist the ancient world in the fight against the new populist threat and make us think of Trump or maybe Putin.Cato is portrayed as the good guy–friend to aristocracy and tradition.

      Of course the same brainworm infecting US media has likely now reached the UK rather than the other way around. Y’all need a quarantine.

      1. Colonel Smithers

        Thank you. I know what you are referring to. Very common now all over British media.

  9. digi_owl

    Curiously, the stronger the unions and the bigger the welfare state, the more automated the economy. Perhaps because unions plus welfare state makes it safer to consider a retirement or go looking for a new job, and strong unions can make a bigger push for company re-training of members. All in all the combination makes it easier to introduce “labor saving” automation as employees do not see as much of a threat to them.

  10. digi_owl

    “Germany is becoming a police state when it comes to Palestine activism Mondoweiss”

    More like said activism is a nice excuse for erecting a police state.

    1. Benny Profane

      You wonder how many in the bureaucracy administering this clampdown learned their trade in the old East Germany.

      1. Feral Finster

        I suspect remarkably few.

        Any remaining Ostis are getting long in the tooth, and there is no need to use them to run a police state. The Americans have plenty of experience that they can share with their German puppet.

        1. Polar Socialist

          Besides, East Germany was so pro-Palestine that they didn’t even have diplomatic relations with Israel. The old geezers would be more likely to participate in the activism that clamp down on it.

          1. digi_owl

            Never mind that West Germany basically retained many a Nazi in its ranks. And didn’t the Bundeswehr recently have a bit of a scandal about a nazi group among its officers?

      2. R.S.

        One may make a joke that it’s the other way around. You may remember that the unification was legally framed as accession of East Germany into the existing state of West Germany.

        AFAIR fairly recently there were surveys and even gov’t talks and some programs. 30 years of the unification and all that. Something like 20% of the population qualify as Ossis (DDR was way smaller from the beginning), but less than 10% of Ossis among the officials of the higher ranks on average.

  11. yep

    China warns diplomatic ties with US could face ‘downward spiral’ as Blinken visits Beijing France24

    The link has an extra “\” at the end that causes 404 error.

    1. Jackiebass63

      Femail bears are very protective of their cubs. If she perceives you as a threat you are in trouble. She will attack and possibly kill you. People fooling around near a mother with cubs are putting themselves in danger. The can move very fast. Stay away from them.

        1. Antifa

          The sight of a small baby bear
          Gives a sensible man quite a scare
          ‘Where the hell is his mother?’
          If you turn around, brother
          His Mama is standing right there

        2. Wukchumni

          My favorite bear encounter was a few miles in on the High Sierra Trail, when 10 feet in front of me 3 cubs each about the size of a small microwave ran down the embankment and onto the trail, and I instinctively backed up another 15 feet, and then down plops mom onto the trail, and she did something really different, in that she got up on her hind legs and then for about 5 seconds ‘shadow boxed’ me in the air with her forelegs.

          I get getting up to see what I was all about as bears have really inferior eyesight, but an amazing sense of smell (7x that of a dog).

          A friend* was the wildlife biologist in Sequoia NP, whose specialty is bears, and I asked her about the shadow boxing, and she was mystified, had never heard of such a thing happening!

          *She’s written many books, I recommend Speaking of Bears: The Bear Crisis and a Tale of Rewilding from Yosemite, Sequoia, and Other National Parks

    2. Joker

      Mommy bear looks ready to start something, because names of the two small ones are Donetsk and Lugansk. It’s an old photo. :-)

  13. ChrisFromGA

    More “trespassers” arrested at Emory, like the chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory.

    What was she doing on campus? Clearly an agitator, probably paid by Russia!

    1. Feral Finster

      Of course. Because nobody would ever oppose a genocide unless paid by Russia to do so.

      Philosophy professors, in particular, are known for the extreme susceptibility to hostile propaganda, as well as their ferocity in combat and willingness to ignore danger as they are overwhelmed by their greed for rubles.

      My dippy humor aside, the russiagate conspiracy theory is equally addled, yet it remains an article of faith among many. So why not try it again, and add a layer of class conflict to keep the masses on-side?

  14. Steve H.

    > Groves of Academe

    Indiana University: On April 16 the faculty voted No-Confidence in the President, the Provost, and the Vice Provost Faculty and Academic Affairs (VPFAA). The VPFAA had suspended a tenured professor for signing for a room for a pro-Palestinian speaker. The Board overseeing declared this was outside of procedure.

    My prediction was that she would make clear she doesn’t need faculty confidence to fulfill her agenda. I take the arrests as this notice. I saw the black helicopter roaming yesterday and wondered what was going on. Here’s a picture of the police sniper on the roof of the student union.

    Here’s the next steps:

    : IU personnel decide to flex their wings. Here’s the Indiana Grad Workers Coalition picketing for more wages on April 17. A strike or walkout is possible.

    : The President goes to virtual classes. There will be fiscal savings based on this, both wages and material such as heating costs. This could pre-date the strike.

    : The nearby PMC neighborhoods get real tikky when they realize their mortgage payments are looming.

    : Possible – the Indiana legislature decides to stop feeding The Party (see Aurelian). Cuts funding for liberal arts while reinforcing Ivy Tech trade schools. Purdue may get a pass, former Governor Mitch Daniels was President there until 2022.

    I’m so glad I’m out.

    2. Anon

      Steve H., were you at IU in late 1968 when the Klan fire bombed an entire row of black owned businesses a block away from campus? I remember the burned out rumble and the smell of the smoke. Someone asked was 1968 a year of foreboding? It was more than that as I recall. The danger was already present.

      Re: PMC neighborhoods near campus
      Most of the houses around IU are owned by the university now. Very few private homes are left.

      Re: Purdue
      Purdue never had the history of protests that IU has. The student body is of a different sort. West Lafayette is not Bloomington.

      1. Steve H.

        No, I was in Madison. Watched people assemble outside the apartment. Hippies were fun, they played in the fountain with me. National Guard troops lining State Street, not so much.

  15. DJG, Reality Czar

    Hickman “Shagbark” may be a reactionary, but only if we think that a sense of proportion is reactionary, I’d venture.

    His last paragraph: “Appeasing these folks by imagining that demand for energy does not need to dramatically decline is a ludicrous fantasy. It’s a non sequitur that does no one any favors.”

    When I decamped to the Chocolate City, I discovered by chance that per-capita energy use by Italians is about 40 percent of per-capita U.S. energy use. So it is possible to run a “modern” society with less energy. As Yves Smith has pointed out, the U.S. would have to return to energy levels of the 1970s, which was hardly the Dark Ages of Anglo-Saxon England.

    I understand well the arguments that the main polluters are large companies that are poisoning the waters and poisoning public discourse.

    Yet because there is so little political will in the U S of A to make change, even to put in a new subway line, let alone high-speed rail from Chicago to Detroit / Cleveland / Minneapolis, the whole question of appropriate energy use by Americans seems to have stagnated. Conveniently.

    2. PlutoniumKun

      Its rarely pointed out, but CO2 emissions in the US have been in significant decline since around 2015. While a major contributor is the decline in coal power, there is some evidence that the link between growth and emissions has been broken. The last couple of years the US (and several other developed countries) had declines of around 2% per annum, despite positive economic growth.

      The US (and Canada) still emits between 2-3 times the norm for developed countries, even allowing for climate, imports/exports and overall wealth. By far the greatest contributor to this is very large US houses, with their heating/cooling demands. Everything else more or less pales next to the giant energy suck of McMansions.

      That twitter from Shagbark couldn’t be more wrong however when it comes to techno fixes in his given example. In fact, fixing the excess energy demand from cooling and heating dwellings is exactly a topic that technology can easily fix. Proper insulation, energy pumps and solar panels can more or less make all dwellings, even McMansions, low emission. We are already well on the way to doing this in States like California and countries like Australia where peak time demand for aircon is now almost entirely provided by solar. If the alternative is abandoning all those houses in favour of tiny urban apartments (assuming you could do this in a zero emission way, which is not possible), is making everyone freeze or boil alternatively, then for me its a techno fix every time.

      In any event, its a straw man argument. The number of environmentalists who don’t understand the need to dramatically reduce resource use amounts to a few bad actors and some californian techo optimists – i.e. a tiny minority.

      But simply talking about reducing demand is not enough. In fact, almost all the needed rapid ‘low lying fruit’ are techno fixes. Rapidly reducing the energy use of homes, electrifying key elements of the economy, displacing fossil fuels from electric generation can be done much faster than the fundamental structural and societal changes that are needed to secure a long term future. We have 100 years of urban sprawl to reverse, not to mention rewiring peoples lifestyle expectations – this is a generational task, not something that can be wished into existence.

      1. urdsama

        “technology can easily fix”

        Yeah, no. All of those things, while relativity easy to accomplish via the technology we have, require outlays of investment, physical material, and use of more energy. Just like EV cars…sounds good on paper but wait until you dig into the details.

        You know what will have an immediate impact? Banning commercial air travel. No tech needed.

        But of course that is a no go because it would involve people giving up on something they think is a right.

        1. vao

          Banning commercial air travel. No tech needed.

          Actually, no.

          The issue is that air travel supplanted other forms of mobility — basically trains and ships, and that suppressing air travel will require reconstituting all those railway connections that have been progressively dismantled, and those passenger shipping lines that have purely and simply disappeared.

          A similar problem affects transport by individual cars: if we want to reduce their usage, then public transport is a must — and many countries have dismantled tramway and trolleybus lines, meaning the tracks, resp. the overhead wires, as well as associated reserved lanes, have all been taken away.

          Hence, eliminating the most damaging forms of mobility (airplanes, cars) will require tech and additional investments…

          1. PlutoniumKun

            Yes, exactly. These things have to be seen in totality. Air travel is awful in environmental terms, but its part of our modern lifestyle and economy.

            I did once think that covid would fundamentally change our attitude to travel, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Cheap flights (and not just in rich countries) is now firmly part of our culture and expectations. It will take a lot to change that. IMO there are more important short term problems that need to be tackled.

        2. neutrino23

          Air travel accounts for 2.5% of CO2 production, significant but not overwhelming.

          Better insulation and the use of heat pumps for HVAC and hot water and addition of solar panels can make your home a net producer of energy.

          Of course, building this home requires a large investment of energy and materials.

          If we set a priority of creating fewer emissions we can move the needle, maybe not fast enough to save ourselves.

          1. PlutoniumKun

            Thanks, yes, this is exactly the point. We love to blame private jets or wars or ‘other’ things for climate change, but in reality the hot water for the shower you took this morning is a bigger contributor. So, probably was the meat in your burger last night.

            There is no ‘one’ solution, but we need to grasp the big, low hanging fruit – domestic energy use (primarily heating and cooling plus hot water) is the obvious very big one, and the key reason why there is such a variation between countries.

      2. John Steinbach

        How much of that CO2 decline is due to exporting manufacturing (CO2 emissions) to China & other places. Shagbark’s point about the hypocrisy of the mainstream Environmental Movement rings true to me.

        2. PlutoniumKun

          It depends on the war. War is usually a positive for climate change due to economic and population impacts. Its quite likely that the little Ice Age was caused by the genocide of Native Americans and the associated reafforstation of much of North America. The long term growth CO2 emissions stalled during WWII.

          1. Emma

            Biological weapons tend to have lower carbon footprint than other machineries of war…

            I hope that nobody in DC discovers this idea and decide to lean really hard into it.

  16. Wukchumni

    I was only 6 for most of 1968, more concerned about running out of Lucky Charms than anything else…

    What wasn’t around also in that tumultuous year was tiny movie cameras in the hands of protesters, documenting everything.

    The videos in today’s links are shocking, in that it appears that gestalt-p.o.’s have gone with the gambit of arresting as many as they can, with the hopes i’m guessing of ruining young lives in such a manner that it will dissuade more protests, but you can sense its going to backfire badly.

    And it isn’t anything like the Occupy movement, which pretty much said ‘here we are coppers!’ (in that bizarre ‘a mime is a horrible thing to waste’ methodology) as law enforcement made them go away, highlighting the folly of a fixed position when protesting.

    1. lambert strether

      > mime

      I’ve been trying to work “History doesn’t retweet, but it mimes” into shape for awhile.

      History doesn’t retweet, except crimes? Hmm….

      1. The Rev Kev

        How about George Santayana’s famous quote (slightly modified)

        ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to get jobs in DC think tanks.’

        It lost a bit in the translation.

        1. hk

          My favorite is from AJP Taylor: “people learn from history how to make new mistakes.” (At least, as I remember…)

          1. The Rev Kev

            I kinda like this one-

            ‘Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.’ – Franklin P. Jones

        2. JustAnotherVolunteer

          “ I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”

          – Ken Kesey, “One Flew Over the Cuokoo’s Nest”

      3. Glen

        Don’t over look the other outcome from the 1968 protests – the American public opinion gestalt which was matched with Walter Chronkite’s report on Vietnam:

        Report From Vietnam (CBS News, Feburary 27, 1968)
        https://archive.org/details/report-from-vietnam-feburary-27-1968

        The memorable broadcast from February 1968 which chronicled Walter Cronkite’s visit to the front lines of Vietnam following the Tet Offensive.

        The special ended with the now legendary personal commentary from Cronkite declaring that the war was unwinnable, and that the best option was to negotiate for an end to the battle. That analysis would famously lead Lyndon Johnson, watching the broadcast, to declare “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

        America no longer has a Walter Chronkite, but Israel is right to be concerned. This war is unwinnable is what everybody will be thinking, and will be saying soon.

      4. Jeremy Grimm

        The history of imperial decline has rhythm and rhyme as new grifts refine the old.
        But the history of our global Empire’s decline combined with Climate Chaos, and resource exhaustion tells a new tale destined to unfold.

    2. anahuna

      I haven’t yet seen anything about the reaction of the parents of the student protestors. Surely, some of them must be outraged at the treatment their children are getting and the threats of retaliation in the future. If so — if I am not being too optimistic — doesn’t this present a dilemma for Biden? On the one hand, his visceral and long-standing identification with Israel, on the other, his need for votes from the Ivy League parent demographic.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        Biden isn’t smart. And he’s treated his voters like garbage, so he expects it to continue. Parents haven’t had much time to react.

        More importantly he’s destroyed voter registration and gotv efforts with his positions.

      2. Anon

        Some parents of arrested IU students were interviewed and they are very angry. This is not just about Ivy League parents. Students at public universities across the country are protesting. Here in the Midwest protests are happening at IU, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio State and other state universities.

        IU graduation is about a week away. I hope the coming days are peaceful as I can recall Kent State. My mother was always afraid for my brother’s safety when he was protesting at IU against the Vietnam War.

    3. Benny Profane

      Chicago is going to be fun. Stock up on popcorn. Although I wouldn’t be surprised it doesn’t happen, or it becomes the first super Zoom convention in history.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        The pictures of the stormtroopers protecting Frau Hillary are going to look great next to signs that say “democracy is on the ballot.”

        1. Neutrino

          Best to consider on an empty stomach. She It keeps lurking, won’t go away, like a bad penny or an infectious disease. In its reptilian brain, it visualizes some way toward being the savior of the world, called upon to apply its magic powers once again in service to humanity itself.

          In its world, Biden may abdicate at the convention, or at least resign, opening up the marvels of Kamala and some éminence-grise for new placeholder VP. Place your bets early.

  17. The Rev Kev

    “German army prepares plan to feed US troops ready to fight Russia on eastern front”

    This probably dovetails with Macron’s idea of sending NATO – I beg your pardon – European troops into the Ukraine and when they start getting killed, demanding that the US send in their own troops to try to tip the scales. But it won’t work. When Israel attacked the Iranian Consulate in Syria, the idea was that by escalating things between them and Iran into a full-fledged shooting war, this would force the US come in on Israel’s side and to take on Iran. Tough luck if you are a US serviceman though and find yourself getting shot at in order to protect Netanyahu’s political career. But the Pentagon has run the numbers and said that they can’t do it. They don’t have the weapons, they don’t have the ammo after shipping it to the Ukraine and Israel, it would take at least half a year to muster a large force but which would not only be too few to take on Iran but that they would be under fire while assembling in this region. So if this is all true for a middle power like Iran, then sure as hell the US would not be able to take on the combat vets of the Russian army in the Ukraine. And absolutely not in an election year.

    1. Mikel

      The EU representatives are obtuse and NATO has to create an alternate reality where post-Soviet Russia never tried to be a part of the neoliberal economics global order.

      But while Germany is fantasizing about what it can do with “American” troops, it is just about the most perfect plan for ripping apart the USA.

    2. Feral Finster

      “This probably dovetails with Macron’s idea of sending NATO – I beg your pardon – European troops into the Ukraine and when they start getting killed, demanding that the US send in their own troops to try to tip the scales. But it won’t work. ”

      I wouldn’t be so sure.

    3. digi_owl

      I needed to double check the year on that article, as it sounded like an alternate history take on 1941.

  19. John

    My congress critter, Patrick Ryan, predictably voted with the other lemmings in opposition to free speech and the right to protest, petition for redress of grievances. How did he do that? He voted Aye with 381 other similarly impaired critters to pass H. 6408 which confers the power to remove non-profit status from an organization deemed to be supporting terrorism. In this case ‘supporting terrorism’ means supporting the cause of the Palestinians. Yeah, I know the bill is not that simple and straightforward. Are they ever? What it comes down to is that when, a number of years ago, Bibi said he owned the US Congress he spoke the truth then and were he to repeat the statement , he would be equally correct today. So… congratulations to the bond servants of Israel in DC. You have heard your master’s voice.

  20. ChrisFromGA

    Oh, this is gonna trigger little Antony:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/us-china-blinken-stresses-need-to-avoid-miscalculations.html

    Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday that Washington needs to look at China’s development “in a positive light” in order for bilateral relations to improve.

    Xi called this a “fundamental issue” that “must be put right, in order for the China-U.S. relationship to truly stabilize, improve and move forward,” according to an official release.

    1. The Rev Kev

      When Blinken landed in China, he was met by some minor functionary that had a few hours to spare. And there was no red carpet in sight at the base of the stairs descending from Blinken’s aircraft. The Chinese are done with receiving lectures and having fingers waved at them by western leaders, especially from the Biden White House.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Aww, hell no. Just came across a video of Blinken and he is actually threatening the Chinese with major sanctions unless they cut off all trade with Russia that might benefit their war effort in the Ukraine. Change or else-

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRfYY8gmpyY (1:34 mins)

        Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was drafting sanctions that could cut off some Chinese banks from the global financial system unless Beijing severs its economic ties with Russia. Begun the trade wars has.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          We need to keep in mind that it is impossible for sanctions to work against China. China shares a huge border with Russia. China can literally send trucks full of weapons or chips across the border and there is absolutely nothing the US can do about it.

          The net effect will be for China to set up banks outside of the Western financial system that trade in Yuan and Rubles (or BTC, if you want to get excited about that.)

          They already have. The only move left for Blinky-boy is a total trade war, but even that won’t work, because where will Americans get their cheap garbage at Walmart?

          This is just angry bluster from a defeated Blinken.

          1. Pat

            Forget Walmart. Where will Walgreens and CVS get the pharmaceuticals that are such a big part of their profits? And you want to see the public revolt, just make them go cold turkey for a proxy war they have no deep seated passion for. It will make the campus protests look like a bad review on a blog with ten views. (And I have no interest in arms and weapons, but something tells me that most of them are dependent in some small way for something manufactured in China.)
            Nope, they have no leverage. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid enough to do something that will blow up in their faces.

          2. ilsm

            US 1st quarter GDP.

            Consumer spending up, imports for consumer to buy (from China) up too.

            Go ahead start a trade war before November

      2. Polar Socialist

        The man was chairman of the Shanghai Party Committee and Politburo member Chen Jining. Not in the top 7 of China, but still in the top 24. Maybe he was selected for the task because he studied in UK for ten years (he graduated from Imperial College) and probably speaks English better than Biden.

        But yes, lack of red carpet and foreign minister is saying a lot.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Thanks for that info on Chen Jining. Still, I have seen videos of visitors from minor nations get the full treatment in China with red carpets, honour guards and a delegation from China’s Foreign Ministry. Blinken got none of that. I guess that their treatment in Alaska still stings.

        2. digi_owl

          Ah yes, Shanghai. I hear that city is a bit of a sore spot as it never quite shook of its western influences even during the coldest of the cold war.

          It is the city with the biggest foreign communities, and also struggled the most under the COVID lockdowns as the westerners didn’t quite get the need to organize things within their building. Or at least that is the impression i got from what reached beyond the firewall.

      4. CA

        https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/26/us/politics/us-china-military-bases-weapons.html

        April 26, 2024

        A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China
        With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.
        By John Ismay, Edward Wong and Pablo Robles

        [ Please notice the extreme prejudice in the major article, which tells of the immense American military threat to China though China has not shown even the slightest “expansionist goals.” The prejudice against China from the Biden administration and echoed by the most prominent American media is shocking, distressing and ever so dangerous. ]

        1. cfraenkel

          Hmmm…. hard to equate building islands off the coast of the Philippines with “not shown ever the slightest “expansionist goals.” ”

          If you’re goal is convince people, best not to exaggerate.

          (or running illegal fishing fleets that can be seen from space)

        2. CA

          Of course, the Chinese are building in and sailing through waters off the coast of mainland China, waters that have historically been Chinese. Of course, America is threatening China thousands of miles beyond the American coast.

          Writing of “illegal” Chinese fishing fleets as seen from space has no meaning as far as I can understand, but I do appreciate the countering evocative imagery:

          https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/26/us/politics/us-china-military-bases-weapons.html

          April 26, 2024

          A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China
          With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.

        3. steppenwolf fetchit

          China’s unilateral claim to parts of the China Seas equally claimed by other seacoast countries in those same seas seems like expansionist goals to those other seacoast countries, pro CPC hansbara to the contrary notwithstanding.

          1. CA

            “CPC hansbara to the contrary notwithstanding.”

            This is simple prejudice, and shameful and saddening as such.

  21. DJG, Reality Czar

    That Sinking Feeling by Simon Jenkins.

    Hmmm, maybe. There are some parts of Jenkins’s piece that don’t make sense. Boarded-up streets? Boarded-up canals? I happened to have been in Venice for five days over Easter, and I didn’t see evidence of such wear and tear.

    The admission charge to Venice isn’t working out well, what with former mayor and prominent leftist Massimo Cacciari coming out firmly against it. Italians don’t understand how it can be collected, and the process proposed by city hall in Venice is cumbersome. One example is electronic passes–which one would have to get for visitors to Venetians. You invite someone for lunch who lives on the mainland, and you have to find some digital pass so that they don’t get hit for 5 euro. That mad proposed app search isn’t going over well with current residents.

    Without a doubt, Venice suffers from too much tourism. Further, as Jenkins does note, the tourism centers on Saint Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge. I was staying near the Arsenale, and I can assure you that the parts of Venice away from the few big attractions are considerably less touristed.

    Further, Jenkins has some strange ideas about raising funds. Venice already is highly unusual in that the great art churches charge admission. Consequently, I paid admission fees to get into San Giovanni in Bragora, San Zaccaria, and the basilica of the Frari. The money obviously goes for upkeep. These churches were eye-poppingly lovely.

    It hit me strongly that tourism is an odd thing. Some tourists are in Venice to see one or two sights and buy some trinkets and a sandwich. There’s a mid-range of tourism (there’s a Prada store). There’s also a not-exactly-hidden high end of tourism. Someone is supporting the Hermès and the Fortuny shops and paying silly prices at the caffés on Piazza San Marco. I saw pilgrims praying at San Zaccaria.

    The biggest challenge for Venice is the ecological one.

    Tourism? Dealing with it isn’t as easy as Jenkins seems to think.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      They just did something similar where I live, and on paper at least, I like the idea. There are several islands in Casco Bay off Portland which have some permanent residents, but are especially attractive to tourists in the summertime. Casco Bay lines just increased fares for the first time in a while, doubling the regular per-trip rate, but at the same time cutting the cost of an annual pass in half. https://www.pressherald.com/2024/04/25/casco-bay-ferry-service-approves-first-rate-hike-in-15-years-and-its-a-big-one/

      1. DJG, Reality Czar

        lyman alpha blob: I am assuming from reading the article that the ferry is by far the main way to reach the islands.

        Venice is more “porous.” There is the train. One can park one’s car at the Piazzale Roma. Venice is already doing something that your local ferry service is implementing. Monthly passes are cheap for the vaporetto. But a single ride is 7.50 euro. Which was fine with me, as I only took the vaporetto twice.

        1. lyman alpha blob

          Yes it’s the ferry or swim here. And given the changing climate bringing great whites to the area, one of which ate a tourist a few years back, and the increasing number of seals that can be seen from the ferry, swimming isn’t such a great option.

          And yes, it does seem like the measures proposed in Venice would be difficult to enforce, but good to hear they are doing something to make it a little easier for locals at least.

          I recently saw that Spain has about had it with tourists, too. In Greece a couple weeks ago, as I was taking a cab through one of Athens’ less desirable neighborhoods and saw a heartening to me graffito in English saying something to the effect of “European tourists, welcome to hell!” in an alcove littered with rubble.

          Not sure if Venice brings in those gargantuan cruise ships, but getting rid of those is always an option. Bangor, Maine started letting them in a several years ago, thinking it would be a boon to the local economy and they quickly soured on that notion to the point they have now mostly banned them if the courts don’t overturn a recent local ordinance that would limit visits to 1,000 passengers per day – https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/04/08/hancock/large-cruise-ship-visits-to-bar-harbor-may-soon-end-joam40zk0w/

          Hopefully Portland will follow suit. There are street vendors I like to frequent for my lunch, and on cruise ship days they sometimes sell out before I can get my sausage, which really chaps my nether regions.

          The best solution I can think of is the collapse of the Western financial system, because I suspect the increase in tourism is due to those few at the top now taking a much larger share of the wealth and doing most of the traveling. I know a few people like that, who take several overseas trips a year to places they don’t really care that much about, just to check them off a bucket list. Thankfully, that solution I mentioned does seem likely to come about if some key nations finally decide they’ve had enough.

          1. Terry Flynn

            Single vs longer-term ticket prices have moved in precisely the opposite direction on UK buses, courtesy of the £2 single fare cap that has been in place for a few years now. However, the cynic might argue that there is a common ulterior motive underlying this scheme and the Venetian and Portland ones: “encouraging” people to stop using cash.

            Pre-cap, if you knew you were going to make a return trip (2 bus trips) in a day, then the Nottingham City Transport day-rider ticket was worth it, and you had the peace of mind that if there is travel disruption and you need a third or more buses then they’ve already paid via the day pass (currently 5 pound-something).

            Unfortunately, even NCT, which provides one of the lowest cost-per-mile bus companies in the UK (by successfully beating off the predatory pricing across much of the country leading to the FirstBus/Stagecoach duopoly) now forces you to think much more about what you buy and how you pay for it. To “get your money’s worth” you must make at least THREE trips to make the day-rider worth it and so most commuters are “encouraged” to use contactless payment which deduct £2 per trip until you hit the 3rd trip, in which case your card/e-wallet is charged the day-rider rate to cap your payment. People using cash for a £2 trip are increasingly being hammered, given that infrastructure is now third world in nature, bus timetables mean diddly squat and you’ll almost definitely end up paying 3x£2 or higher multiples when you are forced to change plans last minute just to get to where you want to go.

          2. gk

            Genoa had graffiti reading “classe media creative fuori dal quartiere”. (Tourism isn’t yet a problem)

        2. gk

          You’re out of date. It’s 9.50 now. But a 5-year pass (100, up from 50) lets you pay 1.50 per ride.

    2. gk

      > Boarded-up canals?

      I’ve seen them. Either for cleaning or because water levels were too low. It’s too much to expect a journalist to figure that out

      > I was staying near the Arsenale,

      I hope you visited the Communist Party with the shrine to the First Communist

      >Venice already is highly unusual in that the great art churches charge admission.

      Not that unusual. Milan and Florence do so too. And the Venice system does mean that the small churches are usually open. San Bernardino in Bergamo only opened shortly before Mass in the evening. Then they stopped doing Mass…In nearby Credaro, to see the Lotto Assumption I had to make an appointment with the sacristan.

      > (there’s a Prada store)

      And not much else. I needed to get a new shirt after an encounter with a (illegal) pigeon at St. Mark’s. The only affordable ones were tourist T-shirts at an outdoor stand

      > paying silly prices at the caffés on Piazza San Marco

      An American friend once took me to Florian. I don’t think it was any more expensive than a normal expresso in Zurich (and it was much better quality)

      1. DJG, Reality Czar

        gk: Cleaning canals. Yes, that I have seen. I arrived on Holy Thursday during alta marea, though, and there didn’t seem to be a problem with any canals at too low a level.

        Shrine to the First Communist. Where? I missed it. I must have spent too much time at the Pasticceria alla Bragora munching on corneti. Also, living as I do in Torino near Gramsci’s former apartment from his student years and early work as a journalist, I somehow think of him as The Communist.

        Prada. And Fortuny. Away from the tourist epicenter, I saw some stores carrying well-made clothes and housewares, but living as I do in Torino, where the array of clothes is remarkable, I wasn’t tempted.

        I was looking instead for sarde in saor.

        All in all, Venice has plenty of problems with pollution of the lagoon, weird oversized ships, the water table going down, deterioration of the wooden piles that the city is built on (Jenkins thinks the city is built on iron rods), and tourism. The physical city is what worries me the most.

        1. gk

          > Shrine to the First Communist.

          That’s my explanation. It’s actually one to Jesus Christ:

          https://www.alamy.com/headquarters-of-communist-party-in-venice-italy-with-jesus-christ-image64911946.html

          > I was looking instead for sarde in saor.

          Try Vittoria 1938, just across the Scalzi from the train station. It’s remarkable to find such a good restaurant in such a tourist trap neighborhood.

          From today’s press: Palestinians protest the Venice entrance fee

          https://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/corteo-protesta-ticket-25-aprile-2024.html

    3. PlutoniumKun

      The only truly successful model for limiting tourists while keeping the gains is in Bhutan. You can only visit with a very expensive visa, and these visas are limited. But the price of the visa goes towards your guide and accommodation – and only local guides and local people are allowed provide the accommodation. Plus, they have banned mountaineering, so they keep the idiots who pollute Everest away.

      The other country which is quite good at managing tourists is France. It helps of course to have a country where nearly every town and city is beautiful along with numerous beautiful beaches and mountains, but they are very good at ensuring the vast numbers of domestic and foreign tourists are spread as widely as possible, and managed well in the inevitable choke points, like the Eiffel Tower or the Mona Lisa or whatever. One problem Venice has is not the number of tourists, but the failure to provide some good alternative honeypots in the wider area to spread the demand. Similarly with Florence and Amalfi. The Italians just aren’t very good at ensuring that the tourists get to see the many beautiful places that aren’t over run, and could actually do with the business.

      1. Emma

        Maybe they just want to concentrate them in a few places so they don’t have to deal with them elsewhere. Venice is sinking and drowning anyways, why not milk some tourist bucks out of it while its all above water?

        The overall culinary standard in Venice is way below anywhere else in Italy, but there are a few nice seafood restaurants as long as one is willing to pay. Go in early February, when it’s only as crowded as a normally busy tourist spot elsewhere.

  22. Anon

    Yesterday at Indiana University, a pro-Palestinian anti-genocide tent encampment on the university’s designated “Assembly Ground” for protests of all kinds was broken up by State Police in riot gear. More than 30 students were arrested. They were shoved by riot shields, pushed to the ground, dragged by their limbs, zip tied, held for hours in a fieldhouse without being read their rights and then taken to jail. I didn’t know about the sniper but it isn’t surprising.

    This crackdown is in violation of university policy dating back to January 1969 when the university designated the area as the “Assembly Ground” for use as “a public forum for expression on all subjects”. Advance notice of public forums is not required. Further, the 1969 policy states that “structures” are “an appropriate exercise of the right of expression in the Assembly Ground”.

    During the Vietnam War, many antiwar protests were held on this field. I was too young to participate but I remember them as they were not far from my elementary school. My older brother did take part in the protests. He was of draft age.

    This month, the faculty at IU overwhelmingly gave a vote of “no confidence” to the university president, the provost and the vice provost in large part because of the administration’s actions against pro-Palestinian scholars and protests. It is eerily similar to the Vietnam era. However, the university administration seems more prepared and less hesitant to crack down on protests than in the Vietnam years. A very bad sign.

    1. lambert strether

      The administrators think they represent the university and are essential to its function. In fact universities got along quite well with no administrative layers, or very thin ones, for many centuries.

    2. Louis Fyne

      >>>the university administration seems more prepared and less hesitant to crack down on protests than in the Vietnam years.

      It is pretty unambiguous what types of speech is crimethink. But to say the quiet part out loud will put you on a LinkedIn banned list

      1. Anon

        It is now being reported that IU’s 1969 policy allowing “structures” to be erected on the “Assembly Ground” was changed by a secret ‘ad hoc committee’ on Wednesday night before the Thursday crackdown to forbid “structures”. The names on the ‘ad hoc committee’ are not being released.

        One of the people arrested yesterday is an IU professor of German Literature who has been very outspoken in his opposition to Israel’s genocide. He is Jewish.

        Protests on the IU campus will continue today, both on the “Assembly Ground” and by faculty in another campus location. Faculty are more united in these protests than they were during the Vietnam era.

        1. Anon

          One of my former professors at IU, a Jewish Polish-born son of Holocaust survivors, who voted “no confidence” at the all-faculty meeting this month said he saw very few junior (aka untenured) faculty at the meeting because they are afraid to speak out. This fear I do not remember from the Vietnam era although admittedly I saw everything from a child’s eyes then. However, it appears free speech in academia has become more dangerous now.

          1. Art Vandalay

            The elimination of tenure, and the descent into precarity of non-tenured adjuncts and the like, helps avoid the problem of people being able to stand on principle. Our whole country is set up to ensure everyone’s exercise of rights is prevented by fear of joining the ranks of the unhoused.

      2. Friendly

        LinkedIn recently deleted several of my posts without notification and without my consent for apparently violating its privacy policy. Looks like I made the list!

  23. The Rev Kev

    “Ukraine War Funding & Failed Russian Sanctions”

    The US has only several billion dollars of Russian assets so they figure that if they steal it, that the blowback will not be severe. The EU on the other hand has something like $280 billion in Russian assets so if they stole it, they would be literally burning down their international financial markets. Of course this would suit the US just fine as it would remove a competitor and those people that have money invested in the EU would probably pull it all out and invest it in the US instead. Of course the Biden White House is pushing the EU to do this so it is a bit of an impasse. I got an idea.

    How about if the EU sold that $280 billion to the US. There could be debts cancelled with the US for part of it but in any case the US could simply print up the money to buy those assets. That way, it is not the EU’s problem any more and if the US wants to steal the full $300 billion they can knock themselves out. As the US has been telling the EU that there would be no problem doing this, then they can prove it by stealing that money. Sounds like a plan to me.

    1. Polar Socialist

      I believe Russia stated, after Biden signed the law, that should US proceed to confiscate any Russian property, Russia would degrade the diplomatic relations with USA. What that entails, I have no idea. At least calling the ambassador back to Moscow, certainly. And asking in a diplomatic way the US ambassador in Moscow to take a hike, too.

      1. ilsm

        Stealing financial assets is no different than stealing a ship at sea….

        Diplomacy by other means is war.

        This time enacted by U.S. congress.

      2. Feral Finster

        In other words, there isn’t really much Russia can do, not that the US or its puppets care.

        1. Polar Socialist

          JPMorgan just lost half a billion in Russian court. There’s still something like 9 billion dollars worth US investment left for the Russian companies to loot take over.

          And of course, tens if not hundreds of billions of revenue lost if those assets are taken over. As those numbers start adding up, you’d think Wall Street will tell Biden to re-calibrate.

    2. Feral Finster

      Both will steal Russian assets, but they will coordinate their actions, along with those of America’s other catamites and buttbois so as not to provoke a shift from one jurisdiction to another.

      This also will be useful in reminding the various gulfie tyrants what awaits them if they go off-message with regard to Israel.

  24. eogen

    I was in college during the protests of the late 1960’s. Yes, they had a role in stopping LBJ from running for re-election, but the ultimate legacy of the protests was contributing to the election of Richard Nixon (who’s emissaries told the North Vietnamese that they would get a better deal with him as President, thus knee-capping LBJ’s nascent outreach for peace talks, and also prolonging the war with the loss of thousands of additional soldiers lives.) Many of the protesters from the Ivy League subsequently became investment bankers, or otherwise became avid supporters of the “system” they were protesting. God help us if today’s protests help elect Trump.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      Gee, imagine if Biden stopped supporting the genocide, then there would not be any protests. It’s just that simple.

    2. Buzz Meeks

      Don’t forget Henry Kissinger was a part time advisor to LBJ who was spying for/reporting to Nixon to help sabotage any negotiations with North Vietnam.
      With friends like Kissinger, Schumer and Netyahoo you don’t need enemies.

    4. The Rev Kev

      ‘Many of the protesters from the Ivy League subsequently became investment bankers’

      I was watching a comedy skit on YouTube today about class reunions but some of the comments were interesting. One teacher said that they don’t like class reunions either but was interested to see a kid who he knew as a cheater in class come back to a class reunion as a banker.

    5. Martin Oline

      I have an apocryphal account of the ’60’s demonstrations, probably 1969 but the specific year is unknown. My friend, now deceased, recounted that during an anti-war demonstration in Berkeley the police began to get violent and the shout went out “Chicks up front!” This had no calming effect on the violence but merely resulted in young women getting their heads fractured.

    6. Feral Finster

      Holmes, fascism is already here.

      Right now the two party system is asking us the equivalent of which child molester we want to chaperone the birthday sleepover.

    7. Dr. John Carpenter

      What would you suggest instead? And how is Biden any better, or even different, than Trump’s policy in this regard?

    8. doug

      ‘Many of the protesters from the Ivy League subsequently became investment bankers, or otherwise became avid supporters of the “system” they were protesting. ‘

      I was in college in 68 and many of the ‘protesters’ were there to see girls w/o bras and try to get laid. They were not all that politcal.

      1. cfraenkel

        Heh – In the eyes of the squares, I’ll bet ‘to see girls w/o bras and try to get laid’ was political.

    9. digi_owl

      I keep wondering how many protested back then because they risked getting drafted if they dropped out.

      1. Ellery O’Farrell

        Many. Many.

        I too was in college in 68, though I was in Europe that summer and missed the fun. But I saw what happened after the lottery went into effect: protests shrank, as those with high numbers weren’t that interested any more.

        And I graduated in 1971. I watched in some amazement as classmates shaved, got haircuts, and donned three-piece suits the very day after graduation. Yes, while still on campus. The brazenness of the hypocrisy was both stunning and eye-opening (the transformation itself, no; having watched them throughout our college years, I’d expected that). They just smiled and waved at me as if nothing had changed.

        1. aletheia33

          i would imagine that evenings of graduations can be occasions for serious talks with daddy.

  25. DJG, Reality Czar

    While we are on the student protests, I wanted to add some background about the ultra-fascinating Minouche Shafik, tinhorn tyrant extraordinaire.

    From Wikipedia:
    “She was gazetted as Baroness Shafik, of Camden in the London Borough of Camden and of Alexandria in the Arab Republic of Egypt, in the 2020 Political Honours and was introduced to the House of Lords on 15 October 2020.[68][69] She sits as a crossbencher and made her maiden speech on 28 January 2021.[70] Shafik took a leave of absence from the House of Lords in July 2023.[71]”

    I would argue that the spirit of U.S. life if it still exists, a kind of republicanism (lowercase R), should have kept such a clownish royalist from any U.S. institution of importance. She’s Prince Harry without the spicy baggage. She’s a Monty Python skit that ended up in the trashcan.

    I am reminded of my (many) years in publishing, which often included the parachuting in of some Brit with a plummy accent who, che sorpresa!, turned out to be a complete bull-shit artist sent in to condescend to the raggedy colonials. One of them even Anglosplained to us how the new owners (Murdoch) would have to destroy our pension plan.

    Second, and I don’t want to criticize the students: It is important to link Ukraine proxy war and devastation, Palestine genocide, and the impending China madness. These events are all one phenomenon.

    Third: How’s that voting for the lesser of two evils working out? Time to destroy the MonoParty with Mauve and Blue Facets?

    1. Colonel Smithers

      Thank you and well said.

      Theresa May calls the likes of Shafik citizens of nowhere. I call them the deracinated elite.

      Shafik ran LSE. Her former husband later led a Cambridge college and was considered to head the Bank of England.

      I met her a dozen plus years ago. She was then a candidate to head the Bank of England.

      It would not surprise me if Shafik knew nothing of Kent State.

      1. DJG, Reality Czar

        Thank you, Colonel Smithers. I didn’t know that Theresa May was that astute.

        There are two mysteries in my eyes: What purpose does it serve to make her a baroness? Is it because she reduced London School of Economics to a feudal estate?

        See:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik#London_School_of_Economics

        Is this summation correct?

        The second is that any committee looking for a new president of Columbia University would even have considered her.

        1. Colonel Smithers

          Thank you.

          I was not aware of this entry. It is accurate. There are many like her in academia, especially from the US.

    2. Feral Finster

      The American PMC has a weird thing for British accents, assuming sophistication, worldliness and competence when they otherwise should not.

      1. digi_owl

        I am reminded of how the gilded age robber barons tried to give their lineage some class by plying broke European nobles with money if they just married their daughters.

      2. vao

        You mean posh English accents, and not the kind of accents you typically hear in Len Loach’s movies?

    3. digi_owl

      “These events are all one phenomenon.”

      An ailing empire flailing around to remain in power.

    4. cousinAdam

      Thank you, good Czar! Your contributions to this great Commentariat, along with those of Colonel Smithers (self-styled “pirate of the City”) and other learned veterans are indeed welcome and deeply appreciated by the NC faithful!
      To your third point – I worry for Jill Stein’s principled and earnest Green Party campaign – will she be seen as merely siphoning votes from either side of the duopoly and can she prevail over RFKjr (imo toxic for not standing up to AIPAC)? I pray she and her party can mount a Third Party challenge that exceeds that of “time to clean out the barn” Ross Perot (and successfully distance themselves from the Euro Greens who’ve pretty thoroughly ’pissed their own cheerios’ at this point). Her recent interview (featured here at NC) with Mike Hudson and Radika Desai is not to be missed, btw!) “The future’s uncertain ……. Let it Roll, baby, Roll!”

  26. Wukchumni

    We’re politically divorced now, but wow, check out what Kev’s protege was up to…

    Kevin McCarthy Protege Under Investigation For Sexually Assaulting Daughter

    Republican Kern County Supervisor Zack Scrivner is being investigated for sexual assault after his other child stabbed him in the chest twice

    Zack Scrivner, the Kern County Supervisor, is under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting his pre-teen daughter, as stated by Sheriff Donny Youngblood during a press conference on Thursday.

    Scrivner, a Republican, is currently the Supervisor of Kern County and a long-time friend of former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.

    Sheriff Youngblood recounted the incident where Scrivner, apparently experiencing a psychotic episode, was armed with a gun at his Tehachapi home, following a call from Scrivner’s aunt, District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer.

    Deputies dispatched to the scene discovered Scrivner had already been disarmed and had sustained two stab wounds in a physical altercation with his children, sparked by the assault allegations.

    Thirty guns, electronic devices, and psychedelic mushrooms were seized from Scrivner’s residence, leading to forensic examinations to determine potential influence.

    https://lamag.com/news/kevin-mccarthy-protege-under-investigation-sexually-assaulting-daughter

  27. Amfortas the Hippie

    the guy who came way out here to do my Texas Organic Certification, circa 1998(?), and came by every few months thereafter…well, we’d hang out and talk and have coffee.
    he used to work for Aphis…specifically on the gypsy moth.
    and he didnt hold back even way back then about how utterly absurd and inadequate the system was.
    lots of loopholes for the Right People, nowhere near the people and resources actually needed…and the balls to the wall drive of “Trade is Always Good!”….essentially open borders for plant and animal products, so the rich could get richer.
    since then, ive been an advocate for local ag….and this issue is only one of the very good reasons to do that.
    my county has had a milk shortage for the last couple of months…even buttermilk and lamb milk replacer for the one lamb we’ve been bottle feeding.
    2 people at stores have finally learned that its due to the bird flu in dairy.
    and its scared them….especially the feedstore guy.
    this wouldnt be nearly as big a deal if we had a rational regional….or even subregional system.(yeah…wild birds and all…but do we really need to import so much foodstuff?…just so conagra, et alia doesnt hafta pay americans?
    ship has likely sailed, of course…but i say better to upend the corporate gravy train,now…and prevent even more damage.(there’s wheat diseases and such out there waiting…lots of scary monsters show up in the literature when i go a-lookin, occasionally)

  28. The Rev Kev

    ‘Robert Mackey
    @RobertMackey
    Caroline Fohlin, the Emory professor of economics seen on video being thrown to the ground and handcuffed by an Emory police officer for expressing concern at the violent arrest of a protester on campus, was jailed for 11 hours and charged with… Battery Against Police Officer’

    She’s lucky that she wasn’t also charged with resisting arrest or disobeying police instructions. Sucks for the police to have the whole thing on video showing what actually happened.

      1. Polar Socialist

        Come to think of it, aren’t professors part of the PMC? They’re surely supposed to be above getting manhandled and falsely charged by the police.

        Especially economic professors holding up the TINA facade.

        1. Feral Finster

          If this is how they treat people of influence and authority, this simply shows how far the establishment will go to retain power.

        2. Henry Moon Pie

          Mario Savio explained to us 60 years ago that the university’s president was the CEO, the faculty were the workers, and the students were the products. The logical response to that by the opponents of Empire is to shut it down, thereby cutting off the Empire’s supply of PMC enforcers, fluffers, etc.

  29. Patrick Donnelly

    Students have realised that they have little to which to look forward. What is the system for them:
    no career;
    rising rents;
    compete with recent immigrants for entry level temporary jobs;
    inescapable and increasing debt;
    expanded awareness of the fascist nature of modern USA; genocide approved at nearly every level, for certain inconvenient children.

    This will not end well.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      As a note, this is what awaits potential foreign students. Why visit the US? This is being pulled on minor elites. No one is safe.

  30. The Rev Kev

    “The Bad Faith Olympics”

    Alex Christoforou was saying in a video that Thomas Massie had video online of the Ukrainian flag-waving and the chants of the Democrats in Congress shouting ‘Ukraine’. But then Speaker Johnsone sent a demand that he take it down or he will be fined by him as Speaker. So Johnsone is seeking to punish fellow Republicans in order to protect Democrats now?

    1. Benny Profane

      Johnson is a relatively young man. I’m guessing he doesn’t have enough assets to throw it all away like this. There had to be a bag of cash and/or promises of a juicy gig outside of politics for him to turn like this. Maybe a sweet offshore account right now waiting.

    2. ChrisFromGA

      Mike Johnson committed fraud against his own caucus.

      Fraud in the inducement occurs when A enters into an agreement, knowing that it is supposed to be a contract and (at least having a rough idea) what the agreement is about, but the reason A signed/made the agreement was because of some false information that B gave to A.

      For example, Mike Johnson promised the GOP caucus that he would not allow spending bills without a 72 hour review, and in fact he lied as the bills were passed in fewer than 72 hours after being published.

      He also lied about not permitting Ukraine aid to come to the floor unless border security measures were included.

      The GOP caucus relied on Johnson’s fraudulent statements in voting for him to succeed Kevin McCarthy.

      Therefore, Mike Johnson’s entire speakership is based on an act of fraud, and Republicans must back Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s motion to vacate when they return to DC next week.

      De facto, Mike Johnson is currently not the Speaker of the House. Hakeem Jeffries is.

      Failure to vacate and remove him means the death of the Republican party. It is no longer a party at all, but a fraudulent entity meant to confuse and mislead Americans into thinking that there is any choice at the ballot box.

      1. Mark Gisleson

        I don’t think Hakeem’s boss of much of anything. I do believe that among other things, Johnson was shown Plan B, Plan C, Plan D and at some point realized they were going to do this whether he joined in or not. He’s been paid in some way, gained additional access to The Blob, and he ran the clock out so that almost none of this will actually reach Ukraine, at least not Zelensky’s Ukraine.

        Watching Johnson admonish the flag wavers didn’t seem like he was lecturing out of weakness but rather out of certainty of being right by the rules. Taking down the video was simply a courtesy you’d expect from a nonhyperpartisan Speaker. He’s a true believer as much as any Russiagater and that creates an interesting dynamic. I’d argue that Russiagate is to politics as cargo cults are to religion. Johnson may seem crazy to many but compared to the anti-Russia crowd Jeffries represents?

        1. Mark Gisleson

          Just read Jack Rasmus and stand amended on money not reaching Ukraine. If the munitions have already been sent, then this funding bill just another part of the massive cover-up surrounding this war and that’s an issue much, much bigger than Mike Johnson.

          In this Starship Troopersverse, every time I learn more, I become more certain there won’t be elections this fall.

          1. ChrisFromGA

            I find it quite plausible that someone from the blob pulled Mike Johnson aside, and said, hey, help us out here. We already sent XX in weapons and if we don’t get some fresh money printed up, we’re going to have a hole in the Pentagon budget the size of Wisconsin.

            Plan B was probably faking kiddie vids of him and uploading them to his cloud accounts.

            Nonetheless, he’s a fraud and a profile in cowardice.

            1. Polar Socialist

              I heard there are 468 seats in the congress up for election the coming November. And if there’s no money for the MIC, how can the MIC donate for all those campaigns?

  31. reify99

    Somewhere, in the mass of info I’ve looked at this AM, I saw an Al Jazeera film linked. This had never been aired due to pressures and purported to show how the Israeli lobby funded an astroturf organization and embedded paid infiltrators, (50 K, plus benefits), to undermine orgs that advocated for the Palestinians. It was very good, hidden camera stuff, dialogue, sub-titles.

    Now I can’t find it. Can anyone help? Not wanting to give anyone an assignment but if you have it at hand a link would be appreciated. It was eye opening.
    Thanks

  32. ilsm

    Indian Punchline is always worth the read!

    A bit of explaining is needed for the observation that US troops will do logistics and maintenance behind the lines…..

    One, would a soldier be more or less likely to “look the other way” while a vehicle was diverted coming off transport. Would the graft be 10 or 100 times that during Vietnam?

    Second, if they say the soldiers will do maintenance, they are diverting, the equipment is largely repaired and often set up by civilian “tech reps”.

    There will be more US soldiers in Ukraine, but not for the advertised reasons.

    1. Glen

      US troops don’t do anything that gets too far from “pulling the trigger” now-a-days. Contractors will do all the rest (Wall St and PE must have profits! And the longer this insanity lasts – MOAR profits!) But I don’t disagree that we probably already have “boots on the ground” in Ukraine in some fashion or other.

      Funny thing is if this was happening while I was still in at the tail end of the Cold War, we all would have been thinking this is completely WTF insane. Deploying troops to the border of the USSR, and opening fire. There was a name for that – WW3.

  33. Feral Finster

    “Germany is becoming a police state when it comes to Palestine activism Mondoweiss”

    This didn’t start with October 7. This began with the War On Russia. October 7 merely intensified the rush to totalitarianism.

  34. Feral Finster

    “Greece refuses to give Ukraine its Patriot air defence systems Ukrainska Pravda”

    We go through this kabuki theater every time. Greece will fold.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Right, but game theory suggests that Greece should follow the master Erdogan’s lead, and hold out as long as possible for the most “goodies” possible.

      By the time they give up those Patriots, the NFL Dallas Cowboys will have moved to become the Athens Cowboys, their entire GDP will be subsidized by Powell’s printer, and every American will be legally required to eat at a Greek diner 2 times a week.

      1. Feral Finster

        I’m sure that the Greeks will do so, but they will fold in the end, lest Master stop relying solely on carrots and start using sticks..

    2. eg

      And what material difference will those Patriots make across a 1000km+ front line? Zotz. It’s theatre.

  35. Roger Blakely

    RE: Substantial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through casual contact in retail stores: Evidence from matched administrative microdata on card payments and testing

    I don’t need someone spewing SARS-CoV-2 out of their mouth in the grocery store for me to be in trouble. I am incredibly sensitive to SARS-CoV-2. All I need is for the exhaust system in the restroom to be connected to the general ventilation system in the building.

    My view of things is that the vast majority of people are inhaling SARS-CoV-2 all day. It doesn’t bother them anymore. SARS-CoV-2 is transferred from their lungs into their GI tract where it multiplies. SARS-CoV-2 gets eliminated in the restroom, where it gets mixed with the general air in the building. That’s how I get hit with it. There doesn’t need to be some active case of COVID-19 walking around the grocery store spewing SARS-CoV-2 for me to have problems. I wear an industrial respirator in all indoor public spaces. I still get hit with the SARS-CoV-2 that lands on my eyeballs.

  36. Roger Blakely

    RE: US health advocacy groups support Mexico in GMO trade dispute The New Lede

    When I go to the grocery store here in Southern California, I see shelves overflowing with packages of corn tortillas. It’s all toxic waste as far as I am concerned. Only the organic, non-GMO, tortillas are fit for consumption. By the way cattle get sick from eating GMO corn too.

    Trader Joe sells only food without GMO corn products. I once asked the store manager why Trader Joe doesn’t advertise this fact. She told me that Trader Joe doesn’t want to get sued by Monsanto.

    1. Late Introvert

      Cows are not able to digest any corn well, the cruel bastards shove it down their throats to fatten them up before slaughter. We used to call them slaughter houses in Iowa but now it’s “meat packers”, LOL.

      Industrial meat is a product of much suffering, both mental and physical. That can’t good for them or us either.

  37. CA

    “I’d have more respect for most climate change folks if they plainly stated that the only way to effect their goals is to reduce demand for energy.”

    Simply paying attention to China would show this is entirely false, and malicious in that the intent is to make environmentally sound development appear to be impossible.

  38. Jason Boxman

    it’s interesting that liberals are happy to treat protesting kids violently, but might not be so quick to act were it scary armed conservatives. It’s precisely because these kids are completely defenseless that they’re so brutally treated. There’s no risk in engagement, and little political fallout risk it seems. this is the kind of thuggery that you get in a police state, very much one that Obama normalized with his coordinated attacks on Occupy.

  39. Carolinian

    Kunstler–eh. I notice the “I” word doesn’t make it into his column on the weekend “flipperuski” although the vote for Israel funding is at least as outrageous if not much more than that for Ukraine. But then Kunstler did write a column a few months back saying that those picking on Israel over Gaza were just jealous. Or words to that effect. 30,000 bodies later this self proclaimed futurist seems a bit off. Ranting isn’t much of a value add.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      To be fair, he does have a new column today taking up the issue, although the “I” word still doesn’t appear. I won’t bother linking to it, since it’s just a screed mocking and demonizing all the campus protesters putting themselves at risk.

      Much like Turley, when the subject of Israel comes up, it reminds me why neither one of them ever made it on to my daily reading list.

      1. Carolinian

        Turley today on the cancellation of the USC graduation: “waaaaa!”

        https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/26/problem-solved-usc-cancels-graduation-to-avoid-pro-palestinian-protesters/

        the university is yielding to the mob […]

        The problem of violent protests and threats on campus is not solved by removing the potential victims. To yield this ground is to surrender control over not just the campus but the academic operations of the school. Higher education has to aspire to be more than a mere mobocracy where threats not logic prevail.

        But isn’t it the protestors who are being both threatened and attacked and the administrators and pro Israel students who are only pretend threatened by their ideas? Just asking. Have any of these encampments really been violent? Turley the lawyer and “free speech absolutist” seems oddly in favor of pre-crime.

  40. barncat

    WRT campus protests: Don’t you think UT and Ohio State should cancel their football seasons right away? So near the election! /s

  41. ChrisFromGA

    My Kamala

    Melody

    (Sung to the tune of, “My Sharona” by the Knack)

    Ooh my little pretty one, my pretty one
    When you gonna takeover the wheel, Kamala?
    Ooh, you make my motor run, my motor run
    Your mommy jokes just make me squeal, Kamala

    Never gonna stop, give it up, such a silly mind
    I always get it up, for the touch, of the prosecutin’ kind
    My, my, my, eye-eye-eye, whoo!

    M-m-m-my Kamala

    Come a little closer, huh, will ya huh?
    Just enough to look in my eyes, Kamala
    Keep your eyes on Hillary, might kill ya, see?
    An Arkancide is no way to die, Kamala

    Never gonna stop, give it up, such a silly mind
    I always get it up, for the touch, of the prosecutin’ kind
    My, my, my, eye-eye-eye, whoo!

    M-m-m-my Kamala 2x

    [Guitar break]

    When you gonna succeed Joey? Succeed Joey?
    Is it just a matter of time, Kamala?
    Is it just a destiny? Your destiny?
    There’s not much there left of his mind, Kamala
    Never gonna stop, give it up, such a silly mind
    I always get it up, for the touch of the prosecutin’ kind

    My, my, my, eye-eye, whoo!
    M-m-m-my my my whoo!

    M-m-m-my Kamala! 4x

  42. Es s Ce Tera

    One of these university admins is going to eventually break ranks and become the first to support the anti-genocide or pro-Palestine cause. Any bets on which? It feels like many schools have thus far been silent, haven’t come right out of the gate with a position.

    AIPAC probably has a list.

    1. Lena

      Alas, even Earlham College, probably the most Quaker of all Quaker colleges, has not come out against Israel’s war on Palestinians. Earlham’s administration did issue a statement back in November. In it, they said they don’t want to upset the tender feelings of any of their students who may be a-okay with genocide. It’s sickening. My Quaker ancestors helped to found Earlham. They would not be pleased.

      When you’ve lost Earlham…

  43. jax

    1968 – I’m a veteran of those times and can say unequivocally that the bases were loaded for mass civil unrest that year. We’d had the assassination of a President, while the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were to come in March and June, prepping the way for the disastrous Democratic Convention in Chicago in August. The Black Panthers were fully with us, Cesar Chavez was already a hero, we’d already had the Watts and ten other urban riots, and a nascent feminist movement was growing out of the more radical student and anti-Viet Nam groups. One year later I was running mimeographed instructions from one underground Berkely group to another while ducking tanks on Telegraph Avenue.

    The student protestors today remind me of protest tactics in 1968, but we don’t have the stew of historic events compressed within a two- or three-year period that caused the bon fire in ’68. Nor do we have the wide array of militant groups breaking across ethnic and class lines. I’m not sure if the current protests are building a momentum to a ‘moment of truth’, which is probably the death of one or more 18-year old students, to light a conflagration, or whether state repression will suppress this movement as it has all others. My heart weeps for the innocence of the young who press against the police fully believing that their government will not main or murder them.

    Addendum: There is a reason why Marvin Gaye’s 1971 release of ‘What’s Going On?’ is still played among radical groups today. I was organizing in Manhattan when it came out and you heard it from every window, every bodega, every boom box, every doorway. It’s the anthem of that time.

  44. juno mas

    RE: Bad Cops, Video

    Male cops slamming female protester to the ground will create MORE opposition to the strikingly disproportionate repression being served on lawful protest. BTDT.

    All of what I’m seeing on campuses across the US is not new. I was part of the campus protests of the 60’s (UCSB, Isla Vista) and the rioting police expanded the protest numbers dramatically. Today’s repression will do the same. Unless, of course, dead Palestinians doesn’t resonate in the consciousness of Americans. Then, of course, we’re all dead.

  45. Anon

    Update: All Indiana University protesters who were arrested yesterday have received a 1-year trespass warning by the university. They are not allowed on any IU property for 1 year or they face criminal trespass charges. This includes the tenured professor who was arrested.

    Faculty have now joined other protesters in the “Assembly Ground”. At least one tent has been set up in violation of IU’s new “no structures” policy implemented late Wednesday. Police are also in attendance.

    Some faculty say they will not grade assignments or submit final grades as a protest. They are also calling for a boycott of graduation. The academic year ends soon.

    1. Late Introvert

      Wow, this is bad shit going on in the bad ol’ USA. Does Mossad have compromat on every single Admin or what.

  46. Donald Obama

    Are there censorship implications from net neutrality? Does this give the government the ability to shut access to specific websites? Or is the rule as narrow as stated, and limited to removing “pay to play”?
    From The Hill Article:
    FCC Chair – “This is good for consumers, good for public safety and good for national security.” Emphasis mine.

  47. Michael Mck

    Re. war. A CA Nat. Guardsman just said he was being deployed to the mid east “after the Superbowl”.
    Governors can block their State’s Nat. Guard from being deployed out of State.
    People in every state can get ahead of the issue by pressing for a commitment to always keep their State’s Guard at home. Especially on stated with competitive elections.
    It isn’t called the ‘International Guard’.

  48. Tom Stone

    Anyone surprised by the violent reaction of the Police to peacefuil protests hasn’t been paying attention.
    It is going to get a lot worse until it provokes a reaction which will “Justify” the Domestic Terrorism Bill that’s been ready for years.
    In every Country and in every instance the Police have ALWAYS been willing to round up the usual suspects and deliver them to the slaughter.
    There are no exceptions.

    I wish I could disagree with Barry’s comment that “You can not overestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”

    1. sleeplessintokyo

      BINGO
      that is the plan. Generate outrage and plant violent stooges so that they can effect the clampdown

    1. cfraenkel

      The virus has not (so far) mutated to human to human transmission (yet, hopefully). Having it in milk gives it that opportunity. We are playing with fire.

      It’s not a binary on/off risk. It took months for the Sars2 virus to evolve and get enough of a foothold to where covid-19 took off.

  50. Donald Obama

    Per the article in the Hill, why is net neutrality a “national security issue”? Any time I hear of national security being cited as a benefit to some legislation or regulation, it makes me suspect one or all of: restriction of civil liberties, increased militarization, or tribute to entrenched oligarchical interests.

    1. Anon

      This is a sobering article. Unlike Princeton, at Indiana University, students and faculty are protesting together against Israel’s genocide. Law professors at IU are helping arrested students to get charges brought against them dropped and their rights returned. I’m very proud of my flyover school’s students and professors.

  53. DG

    “I love the “Peace through strength” framing. Sadly, I can’t find a source for Hermann Göring’s “Guns will make us powerful”; I’m sure it sounds better in the original German.”

    Goring:

    “We have no butter…but I ask you—would you rather have butter or guns?…preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes us fat.”
    speech at Hamburg, 1936, in W. Frischauer Goering (1951) ch. 10

    and this seems to be an appropriate time to resurrect his observation:

    “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
    in conversation in his cell in Nuremburg, 18 April 1946; Gustave Gilbert Nuremburg Diary (1947)

    https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00004897

  54. Even keel

    The automated EV factory in china. Made me think of the droid factories in Star Wars.

    I thought socialism was supposed to employ people. Why would a socialist country want to replace skilled workers with robots? To increase the return to and power of capital?

    1. The Rev Kev

      Maybe a recognition that their working population is slowly ageing out and it might be wiser setting up things so that not so many workers will be needed down the road – who won’t be there.

        1. The Rev Kev

          I’ve always been impressed by the fact that China has concentrated it’s efforts into lifting people out of poverty while us western countries seek to push people into poverty.

    2. eg

      Because replacing labor with capital frees up labor to do other things, and in a socialist country there will be other things for labor to do rather than simply be thrown on the scrap heap of homelessness as in neoliberal countries.

      1. Michaelmas

        eg: Because replacing labor with capital frees up labor to do other things, and in a socialist country there will be other things for labor to do rather than simply be thrown on the scrap heap of homelessness as in neoliberal countries.

        Thank you. It’s a limited, misguided idea of socialism displayed in a comment like ‘Why would a socialist country want to replace skilled workers with robots? To increase the return to and power of capital?’

        No. As Marx wrote: –

        ‘He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so [under capitalism] if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner… without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.’

        1. CA

          It’s a limited, misguided idea of socialism displayed in a comment like ‘Why would a socialist country want to replace skilled workers with robots? To increase the return to and power of capital?’

          [ Thank you for the explanation. A 5,000 year old wondrously accomplished civilization; a 5,000 year old civilization of 1.4 billion can surely chose to characterize itself as socialist and in so choosing China is of course socialist. ]

      2. CA

        “Because replacing labor with capital frees up labor to do other things, and in a socialist country there will be other things for labor to do rather than simply be thrown on the scrap heap…”

        Surely so. After all, China has worked steadily to end poverty and having ended severe poverty through the country, China has already begun a national program to prevent a falling back and to further better the well-being of those who were poverty stricken.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Why would a socialist country

      The obvious answer is that Chinese is not a socialist country, which has seemed obvious to me — though I grant, to few others — since Xi let a million or so mostly working class Chinese people die by relaxing Zero Covid under pressure from Shanghai businesspeople + Western reporters whinging about their coffee shops (along with the sorts of Shanghai-ese who hang out with those reporters).

      Still baffles me to this day that the one country with the manufacturing power and (I would suppose) the operational capability to shield all its “essential workers” with air filtration and decent ventilation didn’t do that, when Xi knew from early 2020 that Covid is airborne, but whatever the answer to my bafflement might be, it’s not that China is a socialist country.

      1. Pat

        Not disagreeing with your basic premise, but wouldn’t improving ventilation systems have required opening up in order to get the equipment and then do the work?

        I wouldn’t be overly surprised to find out that they have been upgrading their ventilation systems, and not just in selected places like here. I’m not saying they have, but there does seem to be more concern for life there judging by their lockdown, both rules and design, and by their acceptance of NPI and the choice of “vaccine” type. And they certainly started earlier and held off ending it far longer than Genocide Joe and friends.

      2. Emma

        Socialism isn’t an all or nothing things. It simply means that the public, either through the state or various civic cooperatives, own means of production. By this measure, the various levels of the Chinese government own about 50 percent of the means of production through the various state owned enterprises. It also controls the industrial policy through control of banks and means of money protection. Further, the current central government is indicating that it is moving towards more socialism over time, with specific goals to meet by 2049.

        I don’t like how it handled the last part of COVID-19 either, but that has nothing to do with whether it’s socialist or not.

    4. PlutoniumKun

      First off, China is not a socialist country. Its not even close.

      But the direct answer to your question is that these investments are tied up in local funding arrangements which have a heavy bias towards up front capital investment, and this heavily incentivises what would appear at first glance to be an overinvesment in robots vs. workers. Its roughly equivalent to what happens when there are low nominal interest rates. I don’t believe its necessarily a deliberate policy, just the accidental outcome of other policies. You see the opposite happening in countries with high interest rates/currency values but a focus on keeping labour supply high. Its a choice developing countries make – one is not necessarily better than the other, its just one of many elements that go into implicit, as opposed to explicit, industrial policies.

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