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Links 4/29/2024

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How Did Ötzi the Iceman Get His Tattoos? Archaeologists and Tattoo Artists Unravel the Mystery Smithsonian Magazine

Swimming and spinning aquatic spiders use slick survival strategies Ars Technica

Bodies Don’t Decompose as Normal in This Colombian Town, And Nobody Knows Why Science Alert

‘Shut up and calculate’: how Einstein lost the battle to explain quantum reality Nature

Climate/Environment

Human activities have an intense impact on Earth’s deep subsurface fluid flow Phys.org

Abundance, capitalism and climate change Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality and More 3.0

Water

It’s the world’s first Indigenous-led ‘blue park.’ And Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation pulled it off without waiting on Canada The Narwhal

A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization Grist

Are the Great Salt Lake scientists all right? High Country News

Pandemics

Worried About Bird Flu? Welcome to The Party, Pal. You’re Late. OK Doomer

How Did Bird Flu Virus Fragments Get into Milk Sold in Stores? Morning AgClips

Bird flu outbreak in Jharkhand; 2 doctors, 6 others quarantined in Ranchi Times of India

Florida Dolphin Dies of Bird Flu as Alarm Grows Over Species Spread Gizmodo

***

Once a Doctor Has Minimized Literal Death for Young People, Should We Value Their Opinion on Any Topic Less Consequential Than Literal Death? Science-Based Medicine

Africa

Russian Mercenaries Hunt the African Warlord America Couldn’t Catch Rolling Stone

Somalia detains US-trained commandos over theft of rations Arab News

China?

Beijing urges Taipei to resume cross-Strait passenger flights & shipping, starts opening tourist groups Pekingnology

U.S. strategy of damage limitation vis-à-vis China: long-term programs and effects China International Strategy Review

The Jones Act: Consequences of a Destructive Industrial Policy Conversable Economist. “The US military relies on Chinese-built ships to support its military vessels.”

Syraqistan

Hamas has ‘no major issue’ with Israel’s Gaza truce counter-proposal The New Arab

Israel’s Smotrich threatens to bring down government if it accepts new Gaza cease-fire proposal Anadolu Agency

US working to prevent ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu: Reports Middle East Eye. Commentary:

PFLP warns British troops in Gaza would be ‘legitimate target’ The Cradle

The Curious Case of the Freedom Flotilla Craig Murray

***

‘It Doesn’t Fit Some People’s Narrative’ | Sheryl Sandberg’s Film Gives Voice to Israeli Victims of Hamas Sexual Violence Haaretz

Old Blighty

Home Office to detain asylum seekers across UK in shock Rwanda operation The Guardian

DWP has the power to help people. Why is it choosing to threaten disabled people instead? Big Issue

People detained under the Mental Health Act dying at three times the rate of those held in prisons The Independent

Amid talk of renationalising the railways, PETER HITCHENS’ provocative view… The disastrous break-up of British Rail created chaos in the name of competition. And nothing Labour does will alter that The Daily Mail

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine pulls back from three villages in east as Russia claims gains Al Jazeera

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Applaud $95 Billion Supplemental Arms Package Lee Fang

War Analysts Say Ukraine Should Treat the Latest US Aid Package Like It’s the Last One It’ll Get Military.com

The war in Ukraine could reach a decision point by the NATO Summit. Policymakers need to prepare now. Atlantic Council.

***

Why do the US and its allies want to seize Russian reserves to aid Ukraine? Brookings. Commentary from the Robert Solow Professor of economics emeritus, MIT Senior Fellow:

***

UK Secretary of Defence Reveals Italian Supply of Storm Shadow Missiles to Ukraine The Aviationist

Turkey in talks with ExxonMobil over multibillion-dollar LNG deal, FT reports Reuters

Travel notes, St Petersburg, April-May 2024: first installment Gilbert Doctorow

The Caucasus

Georgia, Armenia and the death of the NGO state The Duran (Video)

Thousands protest in Georgia against controversial ‘foreign influence’ bill France24

Imperial Collapse Watch

New Marine One Helicopters Aren’t Allowed to Carry the President Because They Could Scorch the Lawn Military.com

Karl Polanyi’s failed revolution Thomas Fazi, Unherd. “The liberal world order is collapsing once again.”

Illiberal Developmentalism Phenomenal World. “Indonesia under Prabowo.”

B-a-a-a-a-d Banks

Why Bigger Increasingly Means Better In US Banking Investopedia

Biden

Fund manager indicates Jim Biden was in business with Qatari officials POLITICO

AI

Apple in talks with OpenAI to integrate AI into iPhones: Report Interesting Engineering

WILL HUMAN SOLDIERS EVER TRUST THEIR ROBOT COMRADES? IEEE Spectrum

Healthcare?

Medscape severs ties with tobacco industry after backlash over $3M Philip Morris International deal The Examination

Money as Medicine: Rethinking Health Beyond the Clinic Mad in America

Antitrust

Monopoly Round-Up: Did Texas Join OPEC? BIG by Matt Stoller

Jassy, Bezos, other Amazon execs used Signal messaging app, a problem for FTC Seattle Times

Police State Watch

The Louisiana Town Where a Traffic Stop Can Lead to One Charge After Another ProPublica

Groves of Academe

Yale:

UCLA:

Columbia:

Priorities:

The Bezzle

A wrestling match over who should control robotaxis is playing out in California TechCrunch

Our Famously Free Press

“Decency” and Genocide Tarik Cyril Amar

Tax Breaks Can’t Save Local Journalism Boondoggle

Class Warfare

Union Starbucks stores get surprise visits Labor Tribune

Antidote du jour (via):

Bonus:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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171 comments

  1. Antifa

    GRAB IT ALL
    (melody borrowed from Long Cool Woman  by The Hollies)

    Hamas is ready well below ground
    But the IDF is gonna try
    To chase us out of Rafah with a shakedown
    To murder maim and terrify

    Soldiers with rifles can’t be denied
    They will go where they do not belong
    They’ll kill children eating from a garbage can
    They have no sense of right and wrong

    As they kill and terrorize and they rationalize
    The world will slowly realize

    This Jewish state is just a process
    They’re never done for once and all
    With the ironclad backing of the US
    Murder’s how they grab it all

    Woo!

    The Middle East will never be stable
    Israeli plans will see to that
    Their urge to steal more land will prove fatal, oy!
    What kind of people go for that?

    Greater Israel is their Zion
    They’ll grab from neighbor states with a gun
    This Jewish process means people dyin’
    Their Lebensraum is never done

    Genocide is how they’ll get their homeland
    And it won’t be an open fair fight
    Their scriptures say don’t share
    So you’d better prepare

    The Zionista vision
    Means they’re aiming for collision

    This Jewish state is just a process
    They’re never done for once and all
    With the ironclad backing of the US
    Murder’s how they grab it all

    Grab it all, Grab it all, Grab it all

    Grab it all, Grab it all, mmm Grab it all (they grab it all!)

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Who else suspects that the Biden administration is going to take credit for a phony ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel? They’re desperate to get something in place before Netanyahu revs up the Rafah rampage, probably as soon as Passover ends tomorrow.

      You know the drill … after:

      (1) Supporting genocide for 6 months including the latest Israeli aid package; and
      (2) Undermining the ICJ case; and
      (3) Allowing Israel to kill 33k+ Gazans, including children; and
      (4) Literal starvation and famine

      They will strong-arm Hamas into accepting a fig-leaf of a ceasefire, then declare victory. Followed by six months of propaganda in Politico, CNN, and the other usual suspects on how Biden and Blinken are “profiles in courage” and deserve the Nobel Peace prize.

      All the protests and dead will be memory-holed. Someone prove me wrong …

      1. Khadijah

        Pritzkers and Olins are funding the campus demonstrations to control the opposition.

        “In response to the genocide in Gaza and violent attacks in Israel and Palestine, the Kataly Foundation and the Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective (EJRC) are redistributing $680,000 to 23 Arab and Jewish-led organizations in the U.S.”

        Their Board:
        https://www.katalyfoundation.org/#team

      2. Feral Finster

        Of course. That is the whole point of Kervick’s “getting Israel to listen to US concerns” tweets. Use enough carrot and stick to get Israel to delay until after the election.

      3. EY Oakland

        Hamas is being urged to accept a temporary cease fire, after which the killing will begin again. Who would ever, now, trust anything said by the government of Israel? Anything. This is a set up, to be able to blame Hamas for all the carnage. I feel sorry for the hostages, but also for the Palestinians who, after all, have been hostages their entire lives and victims of increasing cruelty and barbarism. Trust Israel? Never again.

  2. The Rev Kev

    “War Analysts Say Ukraine Should Treat the Latest US Aid Package Like It’s the Last One It’ll Get”

    Somebody should go tell Zelensky and Biden this-

    ‘Kiev is negotiating with the administration of US President Joe Biden on a long-term agreement that would put Washington on the hook to provide Ukraine with military, economic, and political support for the next decade, Zelensky said on Sunday in his daily video address. Such commitments are needed to ensure Ukraine has the “efficiency in assistance” it needs to stem recent battlefield advances by Russian forces and gain the upper hand, he said. “We are working to commit to paper concrete levels of support for this year and for the next ten years,” Zelensky said. “It will include military, financial, and political support, as well as what concerns joint production of weapons.” ”

    https://www.rt.com/news/596736-ukraine-us-aid-decade/

    Normally I would scoff at this but there has been several acts done to Trump-proof things like the US commitment to NATO. A 10-year commitment to the Ukraine to Trump-proof US support for that country is certainly not beyond something that Biden might do.

    1. Polar Socialist

      A Swiss journal just had an article where multiple Ukrainian officers admitted Ukraine has no chance of winning the war. They have 1/3 of the men they need, and none of those want to fight for Syrsky or Zelensky. Their view as that Ukraine will lose Donbass by August and then they have to negotiate “a freeze” with Russia.

      I guess they missed the memo where Russia is already producing more weapons and recruiting more men that it needs for SMO. If Ukraine can’t hold the line now, why could they do it after August any better…

      1. Michaelmas

        Rev Kev: A 10-year commitment to the Ukraine to Trump-proof US support for that country is certainly not beyond something that Biden might do.

        If it happens, it won’t change the dynamic, which is that Russia has superior overall military kit and capabilities — as Polar Socialist points out — and that it’s their turf, and that China has Russia’s back. Will it?

        Granted, it might move matters a few steps nearer WWIII and will definitely mean prolonged, greater devastation in Europe and, ultimately, more longterm damage for the ‘Atlanticist alliance.’

        C’est la vie.

    2. Benny Profane

      Well, instead of sending cash that immediately goes offshore, and long range missiles, they better get some engineers and construction crews to start building power plants. Those people are going to have to be paid quadruple OT with bonuses to make up for the danger, though. Kinzhals fly fast.

      1. The Rev Kev

        It would be a good idea that except for one problem. They would have to replace a boat load of electrical equipment that works with their electrical grid and there is only one place that manufactures that type – the Russian Federation.

        1. Benny Profane

          That was last year. Now that Russia is going directly for the plants, just start over from scratch.

          Meanwhile the Russians control the largest nuke plant in Europe, now offline. Wonderful negotiating asset. You want juice? Let’s talk.

          1. jsn

            Using what for construction crews?

            Maybe they can hire the Chinese to do it.

            No one in the west has that kind of skilled workforce surge capacity anymore, it’s not efficient.

            1. Benny Profane

              I’ll bet Zelensky has considered the Chinese, but, then said at that meeting, oh, wait…

              All the financial Carpetbaggers from the West want is that famous farmland and a safe, developed port to export crops. Just like Hitler. They could care less about anything else.

    5. Reply

      There are so many things wrong with Biden’s 10-year plan.

      To pick one, how do voters feel about being locked into yet another idiotic war?
      Given the track records in Iraq and Afghanistan, who would want to re-up on destruction, waste, inflation, ruined lives and further foreign and domestic animosity that will never end well?

      Maybe there is some horrible bargain about to be foisted on an under-informed world.
      Hey, it could happen.
      1. Pay for Ukraine, see above
      2. Take in a million or more Palestinian refugees, with free housing, medical, food, education…
      3. Guess what, Joe commits to doing both through some sketchy Executive Action to add to his legacy as the Great Empath

  3. Joker

    Once a Doctor Has Minimized Literal Death for Young People, Should We Value Their Opinion on Any Topic Less Consequential Than Literal Death? Science-Based Medicine

    WHO redefines death. Now you also have literal death, potential death, real death. In addition to that, literal no longer means literal, in a literal sense. If you try to keep up with the Newspeak, your head will literally explode, which could lead to potential death.

  4. yep

    Russian Mercenaries Hunt the African Warlord America Couldn’t Catch Rolling Stone

    Oh, it’s Kony. All meme veterans should remember Kony 2012. It was viral. Everyone was supporting the current thing, and thinking of the children, and saving the World, but got bored pretty fast.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012

    1. Trees&Trunks

      Let me have a guess: “America Couldn’t Catch” should be “wouldn’t catch” because he provided our depraved elites with organs, slaves and children for sex and pushed drugs all over the place, just like Ukraine today,

    2. Feral Finster

      Remember “#saveourgirls?”

      The totebag set dropped that one like a hot turd the moment it was no longer useful.

      1. Thistlebreath

        Video’ll do the trick every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12PExWHjnoo

        (It has been alleged by various sources that…) Mr. Russels & associates devised a door to door “coins and cash in old coffee cans” operation with squads of possibly recently unhoused solicitors going door to door for donations, then being housed overnight in barracks-like conditions, fed and then dropped off in suburbs to repeat daily.

        The most revealing street corner exhibition videos seem to have been scrubbed. They needed black blocks placed over strategic areas.

        The Rolling Stone writer’s credits include strident condemnation of Evil Russian Plots.

  5. The Rev Kev

    “New Marine One Helicopters Aren’t Allowed to Carry the President Because They Could Scorch the Lawn”

    Wouldn’t it be something if it was a requirement of a President to be able to rappel down from the Marine One helicopter down to the ground so that the lawn would not get burned. So that would mean that both Biden and Trump would be out for a start-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ri5L7P9Tw (17 secs)

    1. begob

      … and hit the ground with a roll while laying down suppressive fire: “‘Merica, I got you covered!”

    2. digi_owl

      I can’t shake the thought that in ages past, a permanent landing pad, perhaps with a inlaid presidential seal or some other adornment, would have been constructed the moment the issue arose. But it seems that these days DC, and perhaps USA, or even the proverbial west, as a whole cling to “tradition” like a shipwrecked to a plank.

      It is like we completely lost the ability to make something both functional and aesthetic at the same time, and thus rigidly, dogmatically, cling to the past unchanging for fear of it becoming blandly utilitarian.

      1. Benny Profane

        Trump hated the White House when he moved in. He recognized an old, cramped building hardly appropriate for the modern executive branch. But, yeah, gotta have a place for the First Lady to decorate.

  6. Joker

    UK Secretary of Defence Reveals Italian Supply of Storm Shadow Missiles to Ukraine The Aviationist

    Arma miracolosa. Cambio di gioco.

    1. The Rev Kev

      The Italians must have loved him blabbing to the world that they had supplied Storm Shadow missiles to the Ukraine. Did he ask them first? Not the first time that a UK official put his mouth into motion without putting his brain into gear first. About halfway down that page there is an image with the text below it saying ‘The photo signed by the UK’s Secretary of Defence showing a Su-24 armed with Storm Shadow missiles.’ As soon as the Russians saw that image, they identified immediately the airfield that those aircraft were taking off from and bombed it.

      1. Colonel Smithers

        Thank you, both.

        Fun facts:

        Grant Schnapps uses other names for professional and trading reasons, Alan Green, Sebastian Fox and Corinne Stockheath*. *Me, neither, Conor.

        He used to head the UK equivalent of AIPAC and is not averse to using his daughter, a student at Leeds, for stunts against anti-zionist protestors. Some months ago, the daughter tweeted live how, one Saturday afternoon, she felt threatened by marchers. It was odd as the selfie to go with the whining was of her with the royal palace in Madrid in the background.

        1. Feral Finster

          Schnapps is cynical to the point of open and undisguised sociopathy. His orders count just the same.

      2. digi_owl

        Sometimes it seems like the British are more eager about Ukraine than the Americans. But they need big bro USA to drag the rest of Europe along, because UK no longer have their empire to go it alone.

        Perhaps it is institutional revanchism over Crimea?

          1. digi_owl

            Need to keep that pivot in an uproar so that the only viable trade route is the sea, that the UK/US navy controls…

        2. Jeff V

          Reminds me of an old Spitting Image sketch where somebody (might have been HM the Queen?) is quizzing Tony Blair over the proposed invasion of Iraq. Went something like:

          HM: So you want to invade Iraq?
          TB: Yes, I firmly believe it is the right thing to do
          HM: But some of our NATO allies seem reluctant to go ahead with it?
          TB: Overthrowing Saddam Hussein is a moral imperative, we have a duty to the world
          HM: So you’d do it without the French?
          TB: Yes
          HM: Without the Germans?
          TB: Yes
          HM: The Dutch?
          TN: Yes
          HM: The Italians?
          TB: Yes
          HM What about without the Americans?
          TB: (Silence)

          1. Colonel Smithers

            Thank you, Jeff.

            Rory Bremner did a similar sketch.

            I live midway between the Blair family estates and Chequers and often hike near both.

          2. Terry Flynn

            I’m amazed Spitting Image (the original version) was still being produced that recently.

            In its heyday it was the epitome of political satire: I, and practically everyone in the UK, could name 75+% of the Cabinet for most of the 1980s purely due to that show. Maggie’s downfall episode was peak comedy.

            Then it “predicted a stupid WTAF future” (before the Simpsons got that reputation) by creating a “nonsense” affair by the “totally grey” John Major….. Which then turned out to be true! Of course Tory sleaze was more amusing and less lethal to the whole country back then…. Auto-erotic asphyxiation of a major MP etc. Look it up. But not at work.

        3. JW

          There seems to be a long lasting hatred of Russia in the British elite. Stems , I think, from misguided fear of loss of India via the ‘great game’ in the 19thC. Of course this ignores the fact that they were usually on the same side in most of the major wars since that time.
          The Brits can’t forget that taste for Russia during the immediate period after WW1,
          Unfortunately ‘my’ country lives in the past.

            1. hemeantwell

              Wow. That’s one of the finer examples of War Hysteria in the Service of Treasury Pillaging. I don’t recall that when the Bolshies rummaged through documents of the Tsar’s imperial fantasies that they found plans to go after kiwis.

            2. The Rev Kev

              We got a place like that in Sydney harbour called Fort Denison on Pinchgut island. It was built to fend off the Russkies in case they came here during the Crimean war-

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Denison

              It has been a tourist attraction for decades now and has a restaurant on it which would have a great view.

          2. Polar Socialist

            I think there’s something even deeper than that. Somewhere around when renaissance spawned enlightenment in the early 18th century the “civilized” world moved from Mediterranean to northwards, to Paris and London which earlier had been considered part of the barbaric world.

            Since you can’t really have good without evil – no Iran without Turan, no Gondor without Mordor, no garden without a jungle – this new world needed a counterpart, and Byzantine’s heir was right there to be given the role of different, distant, autocratic, dark, non-individualistic and evil.

            It also helped a lot that neither Baltic Germans nor Polish had any limits in their anti-Russian propaganda.

          3. magpie

            If Olivier Blanchard is such an elite economist, isn’t he trained to anticipate consequences?

            Another Serious Person with Serious Thoughts that we take Seriously.

          4. Anonymous 2

            It is more complicated than that. Research Conservative Friends of Russia (one Boris Johnson and Carrie Simmons playing a prominent role), now I imagine defunct. Parliamentary calls for an investigation into links between the Conservative party and Russia have fallen on deaf years in the British Government (now there’s a surprise). Catherine Belton’s book is interesting on this.

            Johnson’s enthusiasm to support Ukraine smelt to me of him moving fast to cover his backside.

        4. Feral Finster

          The UK has an institutional interest in stirring up strife around the globe, so that it can show its American Master who the moast loyalest little poodle is and to inflate their own sense of importance.

          It gives british people such a thrill to be standing shoulder to shoulder all brave and resolute with their American Master, sort of like how the yappy little dog in the Looney Tunes cartoons went around praising Spike the Bulldog and trying to get him into fights.

        5. Feral Finster

          The problem is that the Russian leadership don’t want to make war on the West. They want to join it.

          However, Russia needs to understand that the West is a club that they never will be allowed to join, no matter how many symphonies they write, no matter how prudent, accommodating and reasonable their diplomacy. Instead, they will always be hated and they will always be feared, they will always be outside The Club.

        6. Mike

          The British hatred of Russia certainly stems from that imbroglio, but a large part is the loss of Eastern Europe to “Communism” that Roosevelt and Churchill had to accept. Up until then, Britain was all over Greece, Yugoslavia, and Poland.

          1. Polar Socialist

            Roosevelt was dead by then. Eastern Europe was not yet lost, Austria, Finland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia had held quite free elections and so on.

            Truman’s USA decided to split Germany because post-war US economy was likely to tank without European markets – and left on their own Europe would have likely turned into a self-sustaining economic area.

            Even the British were first taken aback by US unilaterally dividing Europe to “spheres of influence”, but since UK needed huge loans from USA to survive, they had no choice but to go along.

      3. Feral Finster

        I am sure that Russia already knows.

        The problem is that, short of a nuclear exchange, there is little that Russia can do about it. Which is why the West continues to escalate with total impunity.

        1. Procopius

          I don’t worry about Russia going nuclear, but I worry a lot about Israel. Especially with those ultra-religious, Zionist fanatics in the Cabinet. If they manage to provoke a real war with Iran, it’s going to go pear shaped pretty quickly, and I’m pretty sure they’ll go nuclear to try (futilely) to save the state of Israel.Then I go back to living one day at a time, because there’s nothing I can do about it.

      4. bertl

        There’s dumber, dumber, even more dumber, then there’s Italy and, at the very base of the pit of total idiocrity, there is Grant Shapps…

  7. yep

    Thousands protest in Georgia against controversial ‘foreign influence’ bill France24

    “There have been mass anti-government protests since mid-April, when the ruling Georgian Dream party reintroduced plans to pass a law critics say resembles Russian legislation used to silence dissent”:

    Broken clock tells the truth twice a day, and France24 not even once. Both Gerogian and Russian law are copies of USA one (Foreign Agents Registration Act). It’s not about dissent, but foreign influence. NGOs are essential tool of neocolonialsm.

    1. Feral Finster

      The students either know all that, or they don’t care. “It’s different!”

      The students demonstrate because they want to be part of The West, The Golden Billion and they know that this is one of the conditions that the West has given them. Sure the West are hypocrites. Those kids want The Good Life and principles don’t come into it.

  8. Colonel Smithers

    Thank you, Conor, especially for the link about railways in Blighty.

    Labour’s refusal to nationalise rolling stock means that over a billion pounds annually, profit margin of over 20%, will still flow to the private sector. The lion’s share of ticket sale prices go to the rolling stock owners*, not the train operating company or railway infrastructure owner. *Clients of and part-owned by HSBC and RBS banks.

    In the past year, the train operator on the lines I use, Chiltern, has had to return two dozen carriages to the rolling stock owner as it found the lease payments increasingly unaffordable. To minimise scrutiny, Chiltern Railways prioritises events at Wembley stadium, knowing the media and more vocal fan travellers will be there.

    Most rolling stock in the UK are about twenty years old. There’s no interest in modernising the fleet. Many trains do not have lavatories. Few offer reliable WiFi.

    The Beeching cuts and Major reforms get a mention, but no context.

    The cuts to the system in the 1950 – 70s were the result of a review by Dr Beeching. He was a friend of a Labour turned Tory politician called Ernest Marples. Marples was Tory transport secretary in the 1950s. Marples’ wife owned most of the shares in a construction company Marples & Ridgeway. As lines like the Central** closed, Marples had the M1 highway built by his wife’s firm in parallel. Marples fled to Monaco in the early 1970s to avoid paying taxes going back thirty years and died there. **Now resurrected in part as HS2.

    Privatisation was motivated in part to handing over property to private sector friends, land amounting to hundreds of thousands of acres and buildings, often in areas ripe for redevelopment.

    John Major is old fashioned and obsessed with nostalgia from his youth in south London. That includes the former railway companies like the Great Western and Metropolitan (not the current Metropolitan underground line).

    Don’t you just love the corruption in Blighty?!

      1. Colonel Smithers

        Thank you, John.

        On Saturday evening, I chatted with some of the station workers on my way home and pointed out that blog post.

        It resonated with them. They had some figures Richard’s blog could have used. They also had ideas to improve the system, but no one in authority is interested.

    2. digi_owl

      It is really frustrating to have all this observational data telling us how bad an idea it is, and yet Norway is hell bent on doing just the same. Supposedly in order to comply with some EU directives.

    3. Colonel Smithers

      I forgot to mention an anecdote from my former manager about 10 years ago.

      He was a City solicitor, before joining a client / our employer, in the noughties and worked on railway privatisation. He said that the city lawyers and Whitehall civil servants working on the privatisation knew nothing about the railways and spent a grand total of a couple of hours after work at a station and its sidings to observe the mechanics for the legislation and contracts. They then retired to the pub.

      May I add that it’s not just the politicians. Most Whitehall officials are averse to getting their hands dirty and don’t want to run anything that requires technical knowledge. In the French edition of his book on Brexit, the EU’s Michel Barnier was as scathing of the officials as he was of the politicians.

  9. The Rev Kev

    “Why do the US and its allies want to seize Russian reserves to aid Ukraine?”

    The Brookings Institution being completely useless again. They hum and haw about whether this is legal not but avoid the one fact that cuts through it all. If it was in any way legal, they would have done it over two years ago. From time to time they make announcements that they are exploring possibilities but there are none. Sure, under the International Rules Based Order they would be able to do this but the problem here is that the Russians have the capability of blowing a hole in the western financial system if they do.

    1. Captain Obvious

      Legality is irrelevant. Might makes right, as long as it’s mighty enough. Second guessing means that they are becoming aware of their impotence, and that their actions might have consequences.

      1. Revenant

        I went to Evensong tonight (#2 son in the choir) and heard two very odd Lessons. First of something from Genesis where Abraham us commanded to bring a veritable Babette’s Feast of offerings, where the writer takes time to say he presented the beasts halved but not the fowls. I lost interest after the cookery book bit. But then the New Testament reading was that disreputable old Sophist St Paul, Romans Chapter 4:
        “It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. 14 For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, 15 because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.”

        That’s quite a syllogism: law brings wrath, wrath/transgression is bad; we should without law and live by faith. It’s a hair’s breadth from Carl Schmitt and his State of Exception….

        [The OT reading was Genesis Chapter 15 and the covenant of Abraham. It contains the sacrifices and then and long list of First People between the Euphrates and the Nile that Abrahams seed will dispossess. I am not sure what the Dean was playing at. These are not the official readings for the day according to the Common Book of Prayer. Is he making a point about Israel and in which direction…?

        8And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? 9And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. 10And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. 11And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

        12And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. 13And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. 15And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. 16But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

        17And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

        18In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

        19The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.]

    2. JW

      The Brooking report ends with the idea that the Us and allies can persuade other central banks etc that everything is really OK because ‘new rules’. Are these people completely stupid?

      1. hemeantwell

        For writers like that we must conclude that ranking above a motivation for Not Being Stupid is a motivation to gain notice and advance their career by churning out Something Palatable to Rulers. Atm publishing something Smart, i.e. tracing reality developments, still risks being Prematurely Critical, inviting suspicion. Betcha right now there’s a whole lot of thinking and writing with a finger to the wind and a prevailing ruling class sentiment to pander to is still unclear.

    3. Skip Intro

      Most of the assets are held in Europe, so most of the repercussions will devastate the EU rather than the US. Much like the sanctions. Such an odd coincidence.

    5. ilsm

      Seizing bank assets is same as seizing ships on the high seas…..

      Diplomacy by other means.

      The biggest guns! Or banksters’ clicking.

      1. Feral Finster

        Yup. What does Russia propose to do about it?

        “Don’t quote laws to us. We carry swords.” – Gnaeus Pompeius

  10. Henry Moon Pie

    Covid–

    A pop culture note. I’m binging on “The Resident,” a TV series that aired from 2018 through 2023. (sort of a busman’s holiday for me). The first two episodes deal honestly and compassionately with Covid’s onslaught: the danger to health care workers exacerbated by lack of PPE and understaffing; the tragedy of dying patients unable to be with family; the necessity of masking (health care workers check each other’s fit); the tragedy of the lives lost. Also, in the episodes at the end of season 3, when Covid was upon us, two of the star medical workers state, “Covid is airborne,” and they contrast it to other infectious threats like candida auris.

    Throughout its seasons, it deals with the effect of money in medicine and the questionable value and horrific impact of chemotherapy.

  11. pjay

    ‘It Doesn’t Fit Some People’s Narrative’ | Sheryl Sandberg’s Film Gives Voice to Israeli Victims of Hamas Sexual Violence Haaretz

    I’m curious to see whose “voice” is featured in Sandberg’s film, since the voices featured in earlier media coverage have pretty much been debunked, and when the UN sent its “investigators” over they were not allowed to talk to any victims.

    Since I don’t subscribe to Haaretz I was not able to read this article immediately. Are any victims actually mentioned who are featured in the film, or is it the same sources?

    1. digi_owl

      Almost like they think we learned nothing from the Gulf War incubator story.

      And are they trying to make real every darn nazi claim about Jews?

      1. Feral Finster

        You be shocked how few humans did learn anything from that particular hoax. Cue up “Iraq is hock full of WMDS we need to start a war right away ZOMG!” and they fell right in line.

      2. pjay

        I remember well the Jessica Lynch saga from that war, which was another relevant case study in propaganda. None of the original story was true. She did not fight off the Iraqi army until she ran out of ammo; she was not tortured by her captors; and the “heroic” night “rescue” by US forces from the hospital that had saved her life was completely staged and unnecessary. But that wasn’t enough. She was used as a prop in the *second* Iraq invasion as well. It seems the US army told her there was medical evidence that she had been raped by her captors. Since she had no memory of it and she had been under constant treatment by the hospital staff within hours of her injuries, they said it must have happened right after the accident. She allowed this to be reported in her biography, written by Rick Bragg (former NY Times reporter whose bio is “interesting” in itself) that came out in November 2003. Not only did this rape revelation drive publicity for the book, but it conveniently fit the on-going propaganda war against Sadam and his sadistic soldiers raging in the media during Iraq invasion 2.0.

        The Iraqi doctors that had treated Lynch – and actually shielded her from the Iraqi military – claimed there had been no signs of sexual assault, she had been brought in wearing her full uniform and flack jacket, and that such an act against her unconscious, bleeding, and broken body would have killed her. But no matter.

        1. pjay

          Oops. Of course the Jessica Lynch story was from the second Iraq War. Temporary brain short – these wars start to merge together in my aging memory. But everything else is correct, which actually makes it even more relevant here. Lynch’s ambush and capture occurs early in the invasion, in March of 2003. The propaganda story explodes all over the media. After her heroic “rescue,” the story is debunked piece by piece, including by Lynch herself. But then it is tweaked and resurrected with variations to serve the same purpose again a few months later.

          The brilliance of such a story is that there is just enough ambiguity so that anyone who questions it can be labeled a rape-denying jerk.

  12. Mikel

    “Tax Breaks Can’t Save Local Journalism” Boondoggle

    Tax Breaks: the Brawndo of the USA’s idiocracy…in the sense that tax breaks would be the big idea to make crops grow.

      1. Mikel

        The folks in Idiocracy believed all corporate PR and believed Brawndo was a cure all for themselves, crops, and probably greased their engines with it….just everything. :)

    2. Wukchumni

      You get the idea that to be what passes as a journalist these days in a fishwrap vein, one needs to be able to go at least one page deep in the Google when researching something, and be your very own editor, judging from how much awkward prose & misspelled words i’ve come across as of late.

    3. bob

      It’s sponsored by Very Serious People.

      Advance Publications, owner of Conde nast and many other Very Serious Media. Probably one of, if not the largest media companies.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

      They have splintered out and are now owners of lots of “smaller, local media”. It’s not small or local. It’s all owned by the same group.

      This demonstrates the fractal nature of them well-

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Advance_subsidiaries

      The way I read that taxbreak was that it was made by Advance media. They get all of their “journalists” paid for by tax breaks. Every one of their “smaller, local media” properties gets another tax break/new worker.

  14. Es s Ce Tera

    re: It’s going to be so funny when the most reactionary, amoral 10% of Columbia’s graduating class can’t find jobs at the white collar crime factory because other kids were protesting genocide

    It’s going to be even funnier when people realize that participation in this protest is a good indication of support for corporate DEI policies. Given a pro-Israel or anti-Israel stance, I’m going to hire the anti because the Zionist is a supremacist, so going to be so much more problematic for a manager, probably racking up all sorts of internal HR investigations about this and that alleged instance of racism, harassment, etc., whereas the anti-Zionist isn’t going to cause me any problems.

  15. griffen

    Antidote with the piano player for those captive audience of big ears. Would he be playing ( likely not ) a little GNR on the ivory keys ? Maybe the elephants do not notice the symmetry of their large tusks and the 88 keys on a studio Kawai or a Yamaha…

    Welcome to the jungle
    We got fun and games…
    You’re in the jungle baby !

  16. Benny Profane

    That chart in the essay about the Jones Act is really something. I’m one to say that naval warfare is dead, but, still, we are threatening the world power in shipbuilding on the other side of the earth when we can barely make any boats, and they actually make some of our support ships!
    As Mecouris repeatedly says, if you’re impressed with Russia’s ability to ramp up industrial capacity so quickly (vs. our pathetic manufacturing base), you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait until China starts gearing up, although, no doubt, their warehouses are probably overflowing by now.

    1. CA

      “Just wait until China starts gearing up…”

      https://english.news.cn/20240115/1bbaa3fa3d2b435f962487f3cbd2864e/c.html

      January 15, 2024

      China’s shipbuilding industry retains top spot globally in 2023

      BEIJING — China has maintained its top position in the global shipbuilding market in 2023, with strong growth in both output and new orders, industry data showed on Monday.

      The country’s shipbuilding output climbed 11.8 percent year on year to 42.32 million deadweight tonnes (dwt) in 2023, accounting for 50.2 percent of the world’s total, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

      New orders surged 56.4 percent year on year to 71.2 million dwt, taking up 66.6 percent of the world’s total during the period, figures from the ministry showed.

      The sector’s holding orders totaled 139.39 million dwt at the end of December, expanding 32 percent year on year. The volume represented 55 percent of the global market share.

    2. CA

      “Just wait until China starts gearing up…”

      https://english.news.cn/20240323/1a302643f7fe4d3595f893ce97ac6ae6/c.html

      March 23, 2024

      China’s ship exports soar in first two months

      BEIJING — China’s exports of ships jumped during the first two months of 2024, both in terms of volume and value, official data has shown.

      China exported a total of 937 ships from January to February, up 59.9 percent year on year, according to the General Administration of Customs.

      The export value soared 180.6 percent from a year ago to 48.25 billion yuan (about 6.8 billion U.S. dollars) during the two months…

      1. Benny Profane

        And shells. There is a shell shortage in the world right now. Won’t be in China. Tanks? Military transport? Mines? Missiles (to spec)? Drones? Especially drones. Pfft. So much for “overcapacity”.

  17. Wukchumni

    Half a political league, half a league,
    Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of debt
    Wrote off the sixty one billion.
    “Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns even if we never get paid!” he said.
    Into the valley of debt
    Wrote off the sixty one billion

    “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
    Was there a Republican dismayed?
    Not though the warmongers knew
    Johnson had blundered.
    Theirs not to make reply,
    Theirs not to reason why,
    Theirs but to do and abide.
    Into the valley of debt
    Wrote off the sixty one billion.

    Drones to right of them,
    Drones to left of them,
    Drones in front of them
    Volleyed and thundered;
    Stormed at with missile and shell,
    Boldly they goaded and well,
    Into the jaws of debt,
    Into the mouth of financial hell
    Wrote off the sixty one billion

    Flashed all their drones bare,
    Flashed as they turned in air
    Hitting the M1 Abrams there,
    Charging an army, while
    All the world wondered.
    Plunged in the battery-smoke
    Right through the line they broke;
    Ukrainian and Russian
    Reeled from the missile stroke
    Shattered and sundered.
    Then they rode back, but not
    Not the sixty one billion.

    Drones to right of them,
    Drones to left of them,
    Drones behind them
    Volleyed and thundered;
    Stormed at with missile and shell,
    While conscripted soldiers fell.
    They that had fought so well
    Came through the jaws of debt,
    Back from the mouth of financial hell,
    All that was left of the funding,
    Left of sixty one billion.

    When can their glory fade?
    O the wild charge they made!
    All the world wondered.
    Honour the large charge they made!
    Honour the Light Brigade,
    Noble but futile sixty one billion gesture.

  18. Jake

    “Hundreds of Yale students have restarted a campus encampment”
    After living next to meth camps in south austin for over a decade, it’s really hard to watch these kids setup encampments at college campuses. I agree with them about Palestine, but seeing those grey and green tents, the exact same ones that activists hand out to the drug addicts that terrorize my old neighborhood, I feel a seething hatred. Loved watching them get roughed up at UT by the state police. Creating encampments is not a great idea if you want to get people to support your cause, IMHO.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      “Sitting in the whites only section of a restaurant that has a black section while whites only establishments exist is just not a way to get people to support your cause.”

      What is that Maya Angelou quote?

    3. The Rev Kev

      By golly you’re right. They should let their feelings be known at the ballot box because we know how well that always works out and how politicians listen to them. They only have to wait another six months to able to do so and that should mean that only another 30,000 Palestinians or so will be murdered by the Israelis by then – tops.

      1. t

        Oh, but it would work out if only more people would vote!!! (Of course only when they vote blue no matter who!)

    5. JohnA

      Forget it Jake, it’s …..[fill in what you like for Chinatown, but it is Zionism that has all the power and the corruption].

    6. Skip Intro

      Without the encampment, you wouldn’t get the spectacle of cops unleashed on their future bosses and landlords, and without the photogenic police rioting, it just wouldn’t be newsworthy.

    7. Kouros

      A Clockwork Orange session with the eyes forced open to watch Gaza being razed and Gazan being killed and starved would help you overcome this feeling of terror. Get rid of the pain by applying a bigger pain to replace it… It would also be an exercise in empathy.

    8. Feral Finster

      So you are mad at people protesting a genocide because meth heads live in tents as well?

      Am I reading this right?

      1. Michaelmas

        You love watching young people being “roughed up by police” ?

        Jake’s syntax was slightly unclear, so he may have meant he loved seeing the tents being roughed.

        Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

    10. neutrino23

      It seems useless to protest by setting up camps and blocking traffic. Go to the House of Representatives and get them to cut off funding. That is the lever of power. Use it. The Bay Bridge can’t affect funding for Israel.

    11. Milton

      In a way, I agree only to the point that encampments are probably not the way to go. To really get the monied classes attention, the students need to boycott classes and all actives dealing with student life on campus and that includes having all student athletes agree to not participate in sports. Can you imagine the dread athletic directors would experience knowing that a single football game at UT or OU or a basketball game at UNC would cost them millions. I’m sure once a couple of these strikes are successfully pulled off, you would find Obama meeting with all parties trying desperately to reopen the money tap with some shitty (morally) compromised solution.

  19. The Rev Kev

    ‘Marx Engels Lenin Institute
    @MarxEngelsLnin
    The miserable career of Nikol Pashinyan only makes sense if you see his employers as being the US imperialists. His only real mission is to create problems for Russia in the region and if Armenia is destroyed in the process the imperialists will barely blink. Any Armenians who think that they are actually being invited to join the “wonderful” world of the EU are being manipulated to a horrific degree. There will be no EU membership, there will be no NATO membership and by the time Pashinyan is finished you’ll barely even have a country. The imperialists do not care about Armenia or Georgia or Ukraine or anywhere else they’ve sought to weaponise in their proxy wars. We can only hope that the patriotic Armenians who understand this can prevail against the wretched Pashinyan clique.’

    Because Pashinyan has isolated Armenia from the one country that can protect them – Russia – Azerbaijan is now taking bite size snacks from Armenia and disputing a village here and a patch of territory there. The EU and NATO may make all sorts of promises to him but they are not in a position to do anything to defend that country assuming that they were even interested. Maybe the idea of the west is to set that country on fire like they have done elsewhere and leave it up to Russia to deal with the wreckage. The guys at the Duran were saying that Pashinyan has staffed his government with people from NGOs. Imagine my surprise. /sarc

    1. vao

      Maybe the idea of the west is to set that country on fire like they have done elsewhere and leave it up to Russia to deal with the wreckage.

      My understanding is that Iran has a strategic interest in keeping an open trade route through Armenia and not being completely hemmed in by Turkey and Azerbaijan — which would happen if these countries occupy Southern Armenia to join the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan, or dismember Armenia altogether.

      In other words: for the USA, it is probably as much about creating a serious problem for Iran as it is to overextend Russia — whatever the consequences to Armenia.

      1. Ignacio

        In the Armenian mess I believe it is impossible to make clear distinctions of factions. Not only within Armenia, but within the Armenian Diaspore too, or even within the so called “imperialists” meddling in the region. For instance, I believe that many in France aren’t at all that happy with Pashinyan making al these concessions to Azerbaijan.

        1. Ignacio

          … (sorry for self reply this is just continuation)

          and for these reasons I believe you are exactly right: the only objective is destabilization and conflict in the region. Foreign interests cover their noses while urging Parshinyan concessions to Azerbaijan.

      2. Ignacio

        For the reasons stated above I think you are exactly right: the only objective is to destabilize the region and create conflict.

    2. Feral Finster

      NATO and the EU certainly will do nothing to upset Turkey, whom they want to keep on-side.

    3. Ignacio

      Pashinyan himself, if he has amassed enough of the money provided, probably doesn’t care about the future of Armenia though I guess he must ensure that the Armenian diaspora is kept aligned with the very same imperialists just in case. The situation is, to say the least, complex. Within the Diaspora the negation-ism of the Armenian Genocide under Pashinyan’s administration isn’t helping to make any friends.

  20. digi_owl

    “Abundance, capitalism and climate change Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality and More 3.0”

    Seems like an somewhat odd take on communism as a concept.

    To me at least it never seemed like some horn of plenty for hedonistic consumerism. More like the observation that industrial capitalism already produced enough to cover the basic needs of the masses. But due to the profit motive of the capitalists, the distribution of the output was badly lopsided. Thus you had devastating poverty in one borough, and nauseating opulence in the next.

    Also, we should never forget that Marx wrote based British and Germany industry. The communism that Lenin and Stalin tried to implement in Russia instead started from agrarian serfdom. We have yet to see communism take hold in a already industrialized nation the way Marx envisioned.

    1. jefemt

      Seems to me we have never seen utopian Capitalism nor Communism in their pure form. Systems get gamed, authoritarians, cronies, and thugs take over. Greed, power, and a well-suppressed sharing and compassion genetic trait that is generally exhibited by toddling humans in their early years.

      There’s always that one kid in the sandbox… acquisitive, tenacious… sometimes they BITE!

      We are some kind of animal!

      1. Kouros

        This is why in The Culture universe imagined by Iain M. Banks, you have some super duper AI brains just steering on the straight and narrow the humanoid population of the Galaxy (Earthlings not yet making the cut).

        A nice description of an futuristic oligarcho fascist world in the “Surface Detail”, where a planet’s elites devise a virtual hell where opnents minds are imprisoned, so that the population believes in divine punishment if they oppose the powers that be.

        The virtual hell is hosted on the biological mycelia servers of another oligarch (Google), on a different planet. The Culture Communists end up bombing the “servers” farm… while, if I remember correctly, the oligarch gets a nice tattoo…

        Branko ultimately is an economist, not a politician, and cannot see that the Soviets/Bolsheviks have just went for the uniparty devoid of actual democracy – the sobiets were one of the first enemies of the Bolsheviks. They kept the name (Soviets) but that was just a mummy. If WWII wouldn’t have happened, the collapse of the Soviet empire would have happened much faster.

        China’s pragmatism and push to keep the political control tight, with rumors that the workers will get a seat at the table, in a bit more meaningful way than the German system, must have sent chills through the American plutocrats and their bought government.

      2. Procopius

        “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.”
        ― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

        Adam Smith was not a great admirer of wealthy people.

    2. Alice X

      ~Also, we should never forget that Marx wrote based British and Germany industry. The communism that Lenin and Stalin tried to implement in Russia instead started from agrarian serfdom.

      Marx noted a Russian communal tendency in agrarian soviets (councils) and even learned Russian to study it, IIRC. Lenin destroyed the soviets (yet kept the name) and Stalin collectivized the agrarians. Off the top of my head, which I hope is still attached. What’s in a name? Emma Goldman (famously?) noted: There’s no communism in the Soviet Union.

      3. hemeantwell

        The range of options available for Soviet development were drastically limited by the breakdown of the alliance during 1918-19 between the more industrially-based Bolsheviks and the more agrarian Left Social Revolutionaries. It’s a mistake to see that breakdown as simply preordained by centralist tendencies in the Bolsheviks. WWI and the ensuing civil war created pressures and tensions, e.g. over signing the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany, that invited authoritarian “resolutions” and seemed to require them under military threat. For that matter, we shouldn’t leave out the whirlwind leading up to the October revolution, in which bourgeois democratic parties aligned with coup plotters, e.g. Kornilov, and gave good reasons for them being kicked out of the political arena.

        1. Alice X

          ~It’s a mistake to see that breakdown as simply preordained by centralist tendencies in the Bolsheviks.

          The vanguard party of the proletariat, was more than a tendency, it was the basis of the Bolsheviks, as Lenin enunciated in What is to be Done? (1902). It led to the split yielding the Bolsheviks (the minority) and Mensheviks (the majority) in Russian revolutionary thinking. It was explicitly centralist. Both Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky (who later changed sides) critiqued the thesis.

          As for the grotesque Brest-Litovsk agreement, Trotsky (the lead negotiator) remarked at its conclusion whether the Russian people would accept it. I’ve always wondered how he would have known since it was on the same day (January 15, 1918) that the elected Constituent Assembly was shut down by the Bosheviks, who had only polled 25%, on its first day.

          1. hemeantwell

            My understanding of Lenin’s view of the party now draws on Lars Lih’s work, particularly his Lenin Rediscovered. Lih takes us through the debates leading up to the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in impressive detail, spending time examining correspondence, parsing through the terminology of the time and, most importantly, making it very clear that Lenin held Kautsky and the German SPD in the highest regard until WWI, something which I’d never appreciated. Lih raises serious questions about the validity of Trotsky’s and Luxemburg’s criticism. In part this is because he makes a strong case that Lenin’s optimism regarding the potential for proletarian revolutionary consciousness arising from abominable material conditions made him believe that it was crucial for the party to orient and invigorate itself with organically militant workers who would contain bureaucratic tendencies that would detach the party from workers. I realize that sounds kinda Luxemburgist, but Lih makes the case. I highly recommend the book.

            1. Alice X

              Thank you and right you are, but in the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, 1906, which sought to reconcile the two factions, the Congress elected the 4th Central Committee made up of three Bolsheviks and seven Mensheviks. That’s what I was thinking, not knowing much of any Russian. The reconciliation didn’t hold as the Bolsheviks held their own Congress in 1912 and expelled the Mensheviks altogether. I make no claims on being an expert.

              2. Revenant

                And thank you in return. I never knew there was a period when the Bolsheviks were in the minority in institutional terms. Very Tea-party….

    3. Alice X

      Milanovic brings up Marx’s The German Ideology and the much more famous Critique of the Gotha Program. Lenin leaned heavily on the latter in his seminal State and Revolution, with the phrase of the withering away of the State, his most anarchistic work. The State never did any withering. He was unaware of the former much earlier work, which was only published in 1931. If he had been, he might have understood its central thesis: capitalism creates the alienation of the producer (the worker) from their work’s product. He might not have launched so aggressively into Taylorism, which produces the exact same alienation. In other words, State Capitalism.

      I’ve long grappled with the Gotha Critique, as I can’t quite come to terms with how Capitalism evolves into Socialism, which then evolves into the two stages of Communism. There are a multitude of takes, I find Michael Hudson’s statements on the evolution to socialism compelling in that the Owners themselves would come to believe that having the State provide social services would be advantageous in that they could pay workers less. If I have that right.

      But yes, the Milanovic piece is rather fuzzy. My 2¢.

      1. CA

        https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/abundance-capitalism-and-climate

        April 25, 2024

        Degrowth advocates therefore might have a valid point when they argue for an end to capitalism if they believe that climate change can be stopped only if society is stationary. Stationary society, end of capitalism, and abundance are logically consistent.

        — Branko Milanovic

        [ The point however is that socialism as the Chinese are showing does not give way to degrowth or a stationary society, but rather to ecologically sound growth. ]

        1. Michaelmas

          CA: The point however is that socialism as the Chinese are showing does not give way to degrowth or a stationary society, but rather to ecologically sound growth.

          Are you honestly serious?

          Because here’s the actually-existing China .

          Scroll down and take a good long look.

        2. CA

          “The point however is that socialism as the Chinese are showing does not give way to degrowth or a stationary society, but rather to ecologically sound growth.”

          Surely and wonderfully so, no matter any prejudiced Western efforts at vilifying China. There is a reason why China leads in every clean energy category, why China leads in greening, why China leads in clean transportation, why China leads in de-desertification, why China is spending more than 150 billion yearly in water conservancy, and on and on…

          1. Michaelmas

            CA: Surely and wonderfully so, no matter any prejudiced Western efforts at vilifying China.

            Have you ever actually been there?

            In the real world, the currently-existing pollution is part of the currently-existing China. Meanwhile, claims about how “China leads in every clean energy category, etc,” remain claims about a notional future China that does not yet exist .

            Yes, the Chinese have done unprecedented things and, forex, now have longer life expectancies than Americans. Yes, they may lead in ‘clean energy.’

            But part of the Chinese industrial miracle was a devil’s bargain whereby they undertook to let the West import precisely its most polluting activities to China. For just one example, the lithium mining that underlies the Chinese battery technology story —

            https://phys.org/news/2023-11-china-lithium-boom-fragile-tibetan.html

            In fifty years China will still be living with some of that pollution, unless there’s either global climate collapse or else some novel remediation technology no one has yet developed.

      2. Michaelmas

        Alice X: But yes, the Milanovic piece is rather fuzzy.

        Everybody here is being overly literal about the piece, I think

        What Milanovic says makes sense as a quite interesting theoretical — indeed, science-fictional — argument about communism and progress, without any reference to any actually-existing communism.

        In much the same way, for example, as in physics Maxwell’s demon is an interesting theoretical argument, without any relevance to actually existing physics.

  21. Wukchumni

    How Did Ötzi the Iceman Get His Tattoos? Archaeologists and Tattoo Artists Unravel the Mystery Smithsonian Magazine
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    With younger adults who are illustrated men & women, I can ascertain their visual net worth approximately with what is on display, and tats aren’t cheap. My 19 year old nephew has $1700 worth on his lower leg proclaiming ‘Soccer Is Life’, why not just get a t-shirt made with that wording, and it’d have more effect than onlookers trying to figure out the message a few inches from the ground.

    I can tell you the exact day I visited Ötzi the Iceman, it was September 14, 2001. We had been hiking hut to hut in the French Alps when 9/11 happened, and didn’t find out about it until 9/12 when we walked back to Pralognan-la-Vanoise, and a very different world from say 9/10.

    I remember leaving our checked bags at the railway station in Bolzano, and 3 Carabinieri rifling through them, i’ve never seen security as tight as tick as it was in the days after 9/11, a bit crazy.

    The Iceman had only recently cometh to the museum, and he wasn’t all that impressive, looked like a jackknifed unwrapped mummy, but his gear-oh my gosh!

    I think he singlehandedly pushed back the Copper Age by 1,000 years with his axe festooned with a copper head, and his hat was kind of similar to a beanie, but think of one woven in a tiny village in Bolivia.

    I urge a visit in Bolzano to see him, if you haven’t been.

    1. digi_owl

      Had he died anywhere else, it is likely anything metal had been reuse/reforged and the rest rotted away.

      In the end we date things based on what got left in dung heaps and undisturbed graves.

      1. Wukchumni

        I enjoy stuck-in-time places and people, with Pompeii & Herculaneum being quite a magnet to my steely gaze.

    2. Benny Profane

      That’s a cool museum. Then get on the road and drive the Sella Ronda. You will not be disappointed.

  22. The Rev Kev

    “The war in Ukraine could reach a decision point by the NATO Summit. Policymakers need to prepare now.”

    By the time the NATO Summit rolls around, those policymakers will have a whole raft of proposals ready to be considered. In the same time, Russia may end up being at the Dnieper river. I love this bit from the Atlantic Council-

    ‘some analysts today are indeed coming to the view that the war in Ukraine is heading for a negotiated settlement. In such a hypothetical settlement, Ukraine would preserve its sovereignty and independence while Russia keeps its territorial gains in the east, plus Crimea.’

    That may have been true at the Istanbul negotiations but it is no longer on the board. The Ukrainians themselves with their western backers removed it. Right now the Russians are advancing on all fronts and the Ukrainians are having to retreat. And when the Russians steamroll them, the Atlantic Council will have a major panic attack which I very much look forward to. I should go out and get in some more popcorn.

    3. vao

      The war in Ukraine could reach a decision point by the NATO Summit.

      I have the feeling that I have already seen similar headlines about the war in Ukraine “reaching a decision point” several times in the past couple of years.

    4. CA

      “The war in Ukraine could reach a decision point by the NATO Summit. Policymakers need to prepare now.”

      What should also be mentioned is that while NATO was actively preparing to move to the Russian border in Ukraine from 2014 on, NATO was preparing to move to the Russian border from Georgia in 2008. Georgia simply attacked Russian peace-keeper protected and Russia bordering Ossetia on the opening eve of the Olympics in 2008. The difference was that Russia decisively ended the Ossetian invasion in days and destroyed much of Georgia’s military.

      2. Milton

        Seems that the Olympics are now a take off temporal point with which to wage color revolutions or military offenses. I guess are betters feel that the locals from {put country to be exploited here} will be whipped up in a patriotic fervor and ready for some serious action.

    5. CA

      https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20gorbachev.html

      August 20, 2008

      Russia Never Wanted a War
      By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

      Moscow

      THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?

      Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

      The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.

      The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

      The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements….

  23. Carolinian

    Re local journalism–I just learned that the downtown building that once housed our town newspaper is slated to be torn down. Apparently nobody still works there. The newspaper still exists and has a couple of local reporters but the editorial likely takes place somewhere else. I can get more local news from the website of the town’s TV station than from our ostensible print outlet.

    It’s not like it was ever a very good newspaper but the soon to crumble building seems symbolic of something.

    1. Wukchumni

      Drove by the Visalia Times-Delta building last week, wondering why they needed such an imposing structure when their scribes main headlines are almost always in regards to local high school sporting events?

      https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/

      The LA Times building is also way to big for the job, similar to their physical newspaper, there isn’t much there, there.

    2. griffen

      Watching a few episodes on History channel on the food and beverage industries and the periods of booming ingenuity and also growing consumption trends can be surprisingly interesting, in a facts and historically nerd like way. Merely a tangential item to file with older building tear downs.

      Tied houses were featured on an episode yesterday, discussing the boom of the American beer industry which centered in the Midwest. Pabst and Schlitz were neck and neck.

      https://citytoursmke.com/tied-houses-in-milwaukee-what-were-they-and-where-did-they-go/

    3. Not Qualified to Comment

      the soon to crumble building seems symbolic of something.

      My wife began her journalistic career in the last days of hot-metal presses and was for many years a sub-editor for whom the primary function was to check and correct for publication the spelling and grammar of the pieces submitted by the reporters, and perhaps re-balance them, and to write headlines that accurately and succinctly reflected the subject of the story.

      No-one laments the demise of the hot-metal press – molten lead is nasty stuff in a number of ways – but sub-editors are almost entirely gone too – after all, they were expensive – and far too many newspapers now are riddled with spelling errors, bad grammar, non-sequiturs and often unconscious bias beneath misleading headlines because the articles are published as the journalist submitted them.

      Any very few people seem to notice, which is also symbolic of something.

  24. The Rev Kev

    “Will Human Soldiers Ever Trust Their Robot Comrades?”

    I sometimes think that Pentagon planners have in mind the Terminator films when envisioning what future warfare will look like – and that they will be Skynet. Not sure how that would work in practice. With the Russians for example, they have a massive amount of electronic warfare gear with the result that about 80% plus of Ukrainian drones get knocked out of the sky. So what effect will that have on all these robots?

    1. digi_owl

      I seem to recall the very idea of Skynet is a military system gone rogue.

      Never mind that USA almost started WW3 when someone left a training program tape in the computer…

    2. CA

      https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-04-28/China-releases-world-s-first-electric-running-humanoid-robot-1tas7wKQeUU/p.html

      April 28, 2024

      China releases world’s first electric running humanoid robot ‘Tiangong’

      China’s first self-developed general-purpose humanoid robot “Tiangong” was unveiled at the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area on Saturday.

      “Tiangong” is also described as the world’s first full-sized humanoid robot capable of running solely on electric drive.

      Developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Company, the robot can maintain a steady speed of six kilometers per hour. The robot is an independently developed humanoid robot platform poised for broader industry adoption.

      The robot has an open source and compatible scalability. With such characteristics, other robot enterprises and scientific research units can directly study home services, industrial manufacturing and other industry applications according to the personalized needs of the market and users. It can further promote large-scale commercial applications.

      Tiangong stands at a height of 1.63 meters and weighs 43 kilograms. It is equipped with multiple vision perception sensors. It boasts a processing power of 550 trillion operations per second, with high-precision inertial measurement units and 3D vision sensors. In addition, the robot is equipped with high-precision six-axis force sensors to provide accurate force feedback….

      1. digi_owl

        On that note, did you see the latest out of Boston Dynamics?

        If need be i guess it could grab a knife in each arm and go weed whacker on some unfortunate humans.

    3. Michaelmas

      Rev Kev: …the Russians for example, they have a massive amount of electronic warfare gear with the result that about 80% plus of Ukrainian drones get knocked out of the sky. So what effect will that have on all these robots?

      Electronic jamming is precisely the reason that the direction of development is already towards slaughterbots run by autonomous AI, which will be insulated by shielding from such interference.

      And that would be exactly what leads to a scenario like Skynet/Terminator or, more horrifyingly, Philip K. Dick’s 1950s story ‘Second Variety.’

      So you ask: what effect it’ll have on all those robots? That is what effect it’ll have, and in this case maybe the Pentagon planners aren’t wrong.

  25. Wukchumni

    A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization Grist
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~
    By far my largest investment is in reliable surface water, and being at the base of the Sierra Nevada is as close as it comes to certainly in that regard, not to mention plenty up top too. Maybe i’m 39th in line for water, as opposed to most of the 39 million in the state who are often dependent on somebody else’s H20.

    There was a very good reason the Sierra foothills were the most populated region for Native Americans in the state-they figured it out, too.

    When i’m out and about thrusting one leg in front of the other and then alternating back and forth repeatedly, it helps to have things to look for, and I’m a big fan of natural springs-which are pretty common, and in drought years later in the summer-often the main source of water coming down from on high, you can tell by the temperature whether its spring-fed or not. It comes out of the ground around 40 degrees.

    I’ve walked to all of the headwaters here, and take Kaweah Gap for instance, everything on one side of the pass goes to the Kern River and everything on the other side heads here to the Kaweah River, with just inches of difference at the pass being the determining factor in where it goes.

  26. Yeti

    “No, young adults should not live in fear from coronavirus.”
    So true but not in the sense Howard says. Maybe he should criticize your health system rather than contrarians. We here in BC were locked down in March 2020, the same month that overdoses doubled compared to the year before. By the end of the year more people died from OD’s than Covid-19. Most of them in the 20-40 age bracket. The mean age of death from Covid-19 was 84 compared to 44 for overdoses. Since the beginning of the pandemic there have been just over 200 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the under 30 cohort in Canada.
    Typical of SBM the vaccines were to be the saviour of society yet more died of Covid-19 in 2021,22 than 2020. To this day the only recommended treatment if you have tested positive is stay home, rest and take Tylenol. Go ED if you can’t breathe. Remsesivir is still on our recommended list of treatments, as is paloxovid. Search “vacc” and it comes up 28 times in this article. If you search past articles on alternative treatments such as vitamin D, Zinc, Hydroxychloroquine and the one I can’t mention you will find reasons not to take them. That there are no RCT’s justifies their use. If it is not from the PIC beware is their mantra.
    Some interesting concepts in this edition of Vejon Health.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF1POEBnw8Y

  28. hunkerdown

    Is the GNOME Foundation Going to Go Bankrupt in 1 Year? Bryan Lunduke. The dek: “It looks that way. And their only known plan to fix it involves a ‘Professional Shaman’ & ‘sustainability, diversity, and inclusion’. Seriously.”

    It took about 12 years for Microsoft to undermine the FOSS world by DEI-fying it. And here another moral vulture capitalist, in the style and tradition of Mozilla’s de-Eichification, comes for a major Linux desktop environment.

    1. digi_owl

      Lunduke is not the most reliable narrator, but Gnome has felt a bit like FUD since its founder was very much a Microsoft fan. Even got aqui-hired by them in the end…

  29. Emma

    Justin Podur’s latest Sitrep goes into both the state of the resistance/invasion and what’s happening on the University campuses.

    https://youtu.be/hpY1Li5e4O0?si=Xs_uAscxf5K-Bu8Q

    I think universities/colleges may well emerge very different on the other side. Even before COVID, many were already alarmed by the growth of the administrative layer, the poor career perspective for academics, and the lack of affordability for students. But the capricious and unethical actions of the college administrator now is kicking the contradictions up another notch.

    1. Vandemonian

      Perhaps universities could start proving knowledge and wisdom, rather than credentials. Has the time come for a version of Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University?

  30. scott s.

    “The Louisiana Town Where a Traffic Stop Can Lead to One Charge After Another ProPublica”

    Spent a couple years during Covid in nearby Marerro. Jefferson Parish is split by the Mississippi, creating East and West Jeff (though geographically should be N-S). Gretna is one of just a couple incorporated cities in West Jeff and is a notorious speed trap. One other city, Westwego, also does its share of speed stops. The other two cities, Jean Lafitte and Grand Isle are way away from NO (“down the parish” as they say). That Gretna is something of a “county seat” probably has an influence. Historically Gretna was a railroad town, but in the later 19th century New Orleans annexed the rail yard, creating what’s now known as Algiers.

  31. flora

    The real enemy. / ;)
    Due Dissidence guys on Jimmy Dore. utube, ~12+ minutes.

    WTF Is WEF Leader Klaus Schwab Talking About?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPSVluu_dc8

    Klaus is just repeating the cybernetics stuff he’s been told by others. He’s a saleman, imo, a salesman of an insane set of ideas like transhumanism, and distructive idea’s like ‘it’s 2030 and you will own nothing.’ (Well, his group will still own something, maybe everything if all goes according to their plans. heh.) See Norbert Wiener’s 1950 book ‘The Human Use of Human Beings.’

  32. CA

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/nyregion/college-protests-columbia-campus.html

    April 29, 2024

    Universities Face an Urgent Question: What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?
    Pro-Palestinian student activists, many of whom are Jewish, say their movement is anti-Zionist but not antisemitic. It is not a distinction that everyone buys.
    By Katherine Rosman

    [ Jews then are incapable of explaining what is anti-Semitic, unless the explaining Jews are Zionists. That is just the way in which British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was attacked. Jews could not defend Corbyn unless they were Zionists who were attacking Corbyn.

    This strikes me as important to understand. ]

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