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Links 5/28/2024

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Australian scientists discover ancient ‘echidnapus’ BBC

Scientists reveal the brain’s surprising role in regulating the immune system PsyPost. Paul R: “Wonder if this could be related to immune dysregulation due to covid.”

‘A catastrophe’: Greenpeace blocks planting of ‘lifesaving’ Golden Rice Guardian (Kevin W). Note sustainable ag experts like Timothy Wise disagree, pointing out that there is no evidence of health benefits of golden rice and that it has negatives for farmers. And Vitamin A is cheap. Why not distribute pills directly? It’s done all over Africa with ivermectin.

US, European nations consider vaccinating workers exposed to bird flu Reuters

#COVID-19

Climate/Environment

At least 15 dead after severe weather carves path of ruin across multiple states in the South Associated Press

The Holy Trinity: Getting a grip on energy, materials and civilisation Rachel Donald (Micael T)

China?

China ‘Blockade Simulation’ Exposes $5 Trillion Global Danger Bloomberg. Your humble blogger has said for years that China does not need to and therefore was highly likely not to invade Taiwan. All it needs to do is blockade. Taiwain is dependent on imports, particularly of food and energy.

US-China Tensions Flare-Up Over Submarine Cables; Beijing Accuses Its ‘Key Adversary’ Of Subsea Espionage In Indo Pacific Eurasian Times

Biden Doesn’t Want You Buying an E.V. From China. Here’s Why. New York Times (Kevin W)

China tariffs won’t make America great again Asia Times (Kevin W)

Africa

Who is behind the coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Anti-Spiegel (Micael T)

European Disunion

Mapped: Europe’s rapidly rising right. Hard-right forces are gaining ground ahead of next month’s European Parliament election Politico

German Minister admits ruinous home heating ordinances were merely a “test” to determine “how far society is prepared to go in terms of climate protection” eugyppius (Micael T)

Habeck and shock therapy: “Sorry…” Nachdenseiten. Micael T:

Does the EU leadership do anything not out of spite or to not worsen the life of the citizens? The depth of malicious intent, if not pure evil, of the Western economic and political elite is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Borrell referred to the question of the 3. World war as a “philosophically” Anti-Spiegel. Forgive the machine translation hiccups. Micael T: “Philosophy is not blurting out stupidities.”

Overtourism in Spain: residents have had enough, as protests erupt in Mallorca, Ibiza and the Canary Islands South China Morning Post

Gaza

Israel faces wave of condemnation over strike on Rafah camp Financial Times. Lead story. A sign the Lobby is losing its hold on the media.

UN Security Council set to meet over deadly Rafah strike Arab News

Rafah massacre: how Israel bombs displaced Gazans in their tents Mondoweiss

Deadly strike on Rafah a tragic mishap, Netanyahu says BBC (Kevin W)

Despite ICJ order, Israel pushes 1 more additional fighting brigade into Rafah Anadolu Agency

Far-right Israeli settlers step up attacks on aid trucks bound for Gaza Washington Post (Kevin W)

Israeli airstrike kills 35 in Rafah after Hamas launches rockets at Tel Aviv Guardian (Kevin W)

How Israel twists antisemitism claims to project its own crimes onto Palestinians 972 (Dr. Kevin)

Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry Guardian

Shipping rates spike as businesses expect more Red Sea attacks Financial Times

‘We are divided’: unity in Israel fades as war in Gaza approaches ninth month. Guardian

New Not-So-Cold War

About EW… Andrei Martyanov (guurst)

SITREP 5/26/24: NATO’s Yipping Chihuahuas Strain Their Leash as Russia Gears Up for Next Wave Simplicius the Thinker

NATO to ‘institutionalize’ arms support for Kiev at US summit — secretary general TASS

Six Nato countries plan ‘drone wall’ to defend borders with Russia Financial Times

“Protective Shield East”: Poland to build new €2.3 billion eastern wall WSWS. Micael T: “To keep desperate EU citizens from fleeing to a prosperous Russia?”

Vladimir Putin on Irakli Kobakhidze’s statement regarding the threat: there are many EU commissioners and often they say irresponsible nonsense, which causes sadness Interpress News. Micael T: “‘Sadness’ – ROFLMAO. Russia really look at EU politicians as poorly raised children who keep farting in the church.”

Western businesses backtrack on their Russia exit plans Financial Times. Lead story.

Caucuses

Georgia’s PM accuses president of treason for opposing ‘foreign agents’ law Telegraph

Syraqistan

After Ukraine and Gaza, the forgotten crisis – Syrian refugees euobserver

Single-sourced accounts should be taken with a fistful of salt:

IRAN INCIDENT, PERSIAN PUTSCH — EVIDENCE THAT PRESIDENT RAISI, FOREIGN MINISTER AMIR-ABDOLLAHIAN WERE MURDERED John Helmer. Helmer speculates in the other direction.

Imperial Collapse Watch

U.S. Opposes European Plan to Censure Iran Over Nuclear Work Wall Street Journal. Phil U: “Did hell freeze over when I wasn’t looking?”

The spectre of nuclear conflict, once again… The Hindu

The brink of dissolution: Neurosis in the West as the levee breaks Alastair Crooke

Trump

7 states where Trump could expand the map in November The Hill

Bragg and the Jackson Pollock School of Prosecution: Why the Trump Trial Could End With a Hung Jury Jonathan Turley

Hoo boy:

Biden

Pete Buttigieg Ridiculed for Joe Biden’s $7.5 Billion ‘Massive Failure’ Newsweek (Kevin W)

AI

Google’s AI Feeds People Answers From The Onion avclub

The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think Nomea (Micael T)

AI and 3-D printing are changing the fashion industry’s sizing standards Globe and Mail (Dr. Kevin)

YouTube has now begun skipping videos altogether for users with ad blockers Android police (Kevin W)

The Bezzle

HBO’s MoviePass doc is a snapshot of how C-suites kill companies The Verge (Micael T)

Class Warfare

The ‘extraordinary numbers’ signalling years of pain for renters Sydney Morning Herald

The Shocking Price Of U.S. Homes Explained — You Won’t Like It Forbes (Kevin W)

Retiring abroad can mean more bureaucracy than bruschetta. But it’s growing in popularity CNN (Kevin W). Note the big cohort is older people with some money but who are or fear being squeezed by health costs

Antidote du jour. Upstater: “5 very hungry bluebirds. Sorry guys, no bugs or worms to regurgitate! ”

And a bonus:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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159 comments

  1. Antifa

    PIGEON POOP IN THE PARK
    (melody borrowed from Englishman In New York  by Sting)

    Covid cost us years of pain and fear
    Two plagues at once we’ve never tried
    This bird flu binness it will leave a lasting mark
    From the pigeon poop in the park

    We saw it coming now it’s overdue
    Where can we go run and hide?
    From Djibouti to Denmark
    From the pigeon poop in the park

    (whoa) flu is avian, influenza avian
    From the pigeon poop in the park
    (whoa) flu is avian, influenza avian
    From the pigeon poop in the park

    It will kill half of us I’ve heard it said
    There’ll be vaccines any day
    Your eyes turn red then we don’t see you for a while
    Or at all if you should pass away

    (whoa) flu is avian, influenza avian
    From the pigeon poop in the park
    (whoa) flu is avian, influenza avian
    From the pigeon poop in the park

    Panic and anxiety will spread through our society
    Hospitals all swamped and overrun
    It’s not garden-variety this flu inspires some piety
    Should you rise from your bed — by God you’ve won!

    (musical interlude)

    The CDC must surely have a plan
    That Covid mess was their dry run
    We need new remedies deployed soon as they can
    Some medicine for each and every one

    It will kill half of us I’ve heard it said
    There’ll be vaccines any day
    Your eyes turn red then we don’t see you for a while
    Or at all if you should pass away

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day
    There’ll be new vaccines here any day

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day (whoa, flu is avian, influenza avian)
    (From the pigeon poop in the park)

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day (whoa, flu is avian, influenza avian)
    (From the pigeon poop in the park)

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day (whoa, flu is avian, influenza avian)
    (From the pigeon poop in the park)

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day (whoa, flu is avian, influenza avian)
    (From the pigeon poop in the park)

    There’ll be new vaccines here any day (whoa, flu is avian, influenza avian)

    1. The Rev Kev

      It’s the visual equivalent of a keylogger – which Windows already comes with. It will slow down your computer by taking continuous snaps through more background processes and will clutter your hard drive with these encrypted images. Who asks for junk ideas like this?

      1. flora

        And it will never, ever phone home to the MS mothership and download all your screen images data for the mothership’s AI programs. MS swears it won’t. ( pinky swears? ) / ;)

        As for who asks for junk like this, … heh.

        1. QuarterBack

          More likely, MS will commandeer some of your CPU/GPU cycles to create a dossier of you to send back for fun and profit. “None of your personal data will leave your system.“

      2. timbers

        “Who asks for junk ideas like this?”

        The CIA FBI NSA etc (BLOB) and the billionaires they work for.

        If only America had a court. A highest court of law. A highest court, that would make decisions based on law and The Constitution…just as for example The Constitution prescribes. And this hypothetical highest court, would read that Constitution and make wise and accurate rulings true to the words in the Constitution in plain sight to every human being on earth, decisions like “Presidents can not kill people” “Presidents can not start wars” or “Government agencies can not spy on citizens w/o a warrant showing just cause.”

        And this hypothetical highest court would issue arrest warrants of Presidents and anyone else engaged in violating the Constitution…people like FBI agents, CIA top leaders and field workers…who do not follow what is written in plain sight in the Constitution.

        But no. America does have a highest court that does this.

      3. digi_owl

        Nobody, but the personal computing worlds are ruled by duopolies.

        And we pinch our noses and accept their sewage because the powers that be, who themselves have so many layers of assistants that hey never have to deal with it directly, has made said duopolies mandatory for participating in everyday life.

        1. Vandemonian

          “… but the personal computing worlds are ruled by duopolies.”

          Not quite, digi_owl. There’s a bunch of free thinkers, refuseniks and anarchists out there who are following a third option.

          The Linux ecosystem is seen as a viable option by these people, and I’m one of them. I’ve been using Ubuntu for more than a decade.

                1. flora

                  edit: working link. (darn those colon marks. ; )

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

                  per Wiki:
                  VirtualBox may be installed on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris. There are also ports to FreeBSD[5]…. It supports the creation and management of guest virtual machines running Windows, Linux, BSD, OS/2, Solaris, Haiku, and OSx86,[7] as well as limited virtualization of macOS guests on Apple hardware.

    2. jefemt

      The AI that will save us all, improve lives, create jobs, eliminate pesky labor, whiten our teeth and eliminate body odor. I am stunned by the amount of energy (carbon based) this is taking and will be taking- for what end? Color me skeptical. But boy oh boy is AI the next Big Thing, or What?

      And I steadfastly maintain that my data is worthless- ask anyone who knows me. “Investors” or gubmints monetizing the data on the margins are truly Idjuts. Big Tent, Big Tribe: the Idjut.

      Punch line from a story recounted of the street trolley MTA operating in greater Boston (Brookline). Observed by a dearly departed friend — must have been in the 1930’s? First gen Irish immigrant driver, after dowager puts in INEXACT change, which stops the trolley from moving until the central support comes out to re-set. Everybody knows….
      To the audible collective sigh-&-groan of the passengers: ” Oh, I hope I haven’t inconvenienced everyone!”

      From the driver-in heavy Irish brogue: “Ah, lady, you couldn’ta fucked it up more if you’d taken a shit in it!!”

      1. digi_owl

        It is rarely about the individual, and about the aggregate.

        It is the kind of statistical malpractice that we have seen repeatedly since McNamara tried run the Vietnam war on numbers.

        Though there is always the risk of them pulling an Cardinal Richelieu on our asses.

    3. scott s.

      From what I’ve read, this is limited/directed towards Windows on ARM, which I think is the left-over from the attempt at Windows Phone. Not applicable to Windows on x86, at least for now. For me, at least PC = x86, but I suppose anything not “Apple” might be called a PC.

  3. Sam Adams

    RE: Retiring abroad can mean more bureaucracy than bruschetta. But it’s growing in popularity CNN (Kevin W).
    There is the other side of this beyond healthcare costs: some of us feel unsafe in the USA. Not now, but in 1933 unsafe. Every month it seems more Americans are armed, angry and lashing out randomly.

    1. Neutrino

      Some ex-pats I know said that they could live more cheaply abroad, and that was more of a motivator than the cost of healthcare. Their quality of life increase is a bonus.

    2. griffen

      Moving overseas the logistics must be very precise as in the leading example, couple moving from NC to Portugal. I’d suggest learning the language first but that’s just my opinion. Every example from that article, and a parallel piece ( retirees working longer or working again ) also on CNN, featured higher costs in the US for healthcare and moreso from the second article it was the inflationary cycle which has really dinged best laid plans.

      I can’t fathom locations in Mexico offering less in the way of violence, but maybe I’m focusing on the violent anecdotes as reported.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        Anecdotes as reported. The North is a problem as the cartels exploded with NAFTA wrecking the small farms, hence stories about Tijuana, but where the bulk of the population lives in the Yucatan is another matter.

      2. Frank

        I studied in Guadalajara back in the day.
        I never felt threatened or witnessed any violence.
        “If it bleeds it leads.”

    3. Mark Gisleson

      I went deep country and couldn’t be happier. Rural Red State America is the new Bolivia. Plenty of food and you can shop by mail (if you still shop but srsly, think about cutting back to necessities only).

      Everyone here speaks English and I have yet to encounter a single Proud Boy. No healthcare but I’ve never felt healthier.

      2. Lena

        I sincerely hope you are able to stay healthy. Being seriously ill, especially with a rare condition, far away from a major medical center is not a good experience. As someone told me, “You don’t want to be a neurosurgeon’s ‘interesting case’ because he’s never seen it before.” No, you certainly don’t. At that point, you may or may not be able to travel to get quality care (if treatment is even possible) depending on a variety of circumstances, finances being one of them.

        1. FredW

          There are numerous studies that report that health care is much cheaper (i. e., 1/3) in some countries that are overall less expensive than the US.

          1. Lena

            Yes, I am aware of that. But how many of those countries with cheaper health care have major medical centers with a team of highly experienced neurosurgeons and other neuro specialists as well as the technology necessary to perform surgery on a complex deep skull based brain tumor that is compressing the brain stem and the lower cranial nerves and herniating into the spinal cord? Asking for a friend who doesn’t want to emerge from surgery as a vegetable or not emerge at all.

        2. Mark Gisleson

          Not to be too cynical, but I’ve chosen to live 30 minutes from the nearest hospital. More important, I live alone and no longer have a phone.

          Whatever comes my way, I’m prepared to live…and die…with it.

  4. Bugs

    “German Minister admits ruinous home heating ordinances were merely a “test” to determine “how far society is prepared to go in terms of climate protection”

    That’s nothing – I’ve been looking into replacing my 10 yo 4×4 Toyota and I just found out that any new vehicle that emits more than 198g/km CO2 is subject to a €60,000 eco tax malus. Yes, that’s the number. More than the cost of the vehicle. Of course, an EV that uses much more CO2 than that in its manufacture and eventual junking gets a bonus. I’m not against EVs but I’m sure as heck against enforced stupidity and innumeracy.

    1. Neutrino

      That Yes, Minister character decided to test citizens. Surely, there are more tests for the unawares, more hurdles, more unknowns to subject the objects to duress. Accountability for thee, not for Yes, Minister Me!

    2. jefemt

      Reminds me of the Gilets Jaunes protests… as I understand it, this whole notion was a big part of the genesis of the protests.

      If we each individually DON’T change, de-grow, voluntarily, and gubmints back off top-down regulating for fear of reprisal, it is hard to NOT extrapolate that we are self-immolating-and-extirpating in our FreeDumbs.

      Mr. Happy

  5. zagonostra

    >US, European nations consider vaccinating workers exposed to bird flu – Reuters

    The decision on how and when to use the vaccine will hinge on evidence of increased transmission, severity of disease, cases in people with no link to a dairy farm and mutations in the virus, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah said.

    In other words the same people/group/institutions that made the decision on how and when to use the CV19 “vaccine.”

    I found the title to the article telling. “Nations” will decide what “workers” will and will not be subjected to. It’s not the political leaders in consultation with workers and citizens, but “Nations” will decide. The authoritarian/dictatorial mandate coming from above will tell you Mr. and Mrs. Citizen what to do, think, and say (it’s mind-blowing fact that Germany outlaws a phrase, “…river to the sea” ), Most will see this phrase, and not bat an eyelid…we’ve become insouciant about our own enslavement.

    The CDC must surely have a plan
    That Covid mess was their dry run
    We need new remedies deployed soon as they can
    Some medicine for each and every one

    It will kill half of us I’ve heard it said
    There’ll be vaccines any day
    Your eyes turn red then we don’t see you for a while
    Or at all if you should pass away.

    Antifa [5/28/24]

    1. The Rev Kev

      ‘it’s mind-blowing fact that Germany outlaws a phrase, “…river to the sea” ‘

      Have they outlawed the phrase “…from the river to the river” yet? Inquiring minds wish to know. As for the new vaccines that will be coming in-

      ‘Resistance is futile.’

        1. GramSci

          The more pressure, the less curren(cy?), the more resistance. Until the music stops?

    2. Mikel

      Are they talking about actual sterilizing vaccines this time?
      Can anybody answer that?

      Or will it be lies about sterilization again?

      Or will it be therapeutics rebranded under the term “vaccine” as is popular now.

      1. jefemt

        The medical definition of vaccine was re-defined with the covid shots by the US regulators.
        Silly old notion: sterilization being implied with the word Vaccine…

        One and done– what kind of a business model is THAT? We need to create an annuity stream, make it a S L I C C – a feature, not a bug!

  6. timbers

    The Shocking Price Of U.S. Homes Explained — You Won’t Like It

    And now, our government is doing the same thing described in this article again – with car vehicles. The reasons and circumstances are different, but the result is the same. America makes less cars because reasons created by government, and is also preventing/heavily taxing/banning buying less expansive foreign make cars.

    It’s like a group of leaders met in Washington, and the topic was “How can we totally f*ck working folks and drive them into complete impoverishment?” And now we are seeing what they decided to do.

    And they prance around telling use we are dumb for not seeing the economyis the best ever.

    1. jsn

      They’re so infantilly disconnected from reality they haven’t realized you can’t finance and sustain an empire off a foundation of the impoverished and diseased.

    2. Mikel

      “America makes less cars because reasons created by government..
      They don’t do sh – – they aren’t paid to do and spend most of their time fund raising.
      Let’s always get THAT straight first or nothing will ever be fixed.

      And of this goes back to my point that manufactured scarcity is key to a rentier economy.

    3. griffen

      Caught an interview with a CA based McDonald’s franchisee this morning on CNBC, and the discussion opened on the hyped plan for a value meal offering for $5 or so, and the planned roll out later in June. Quickly pivoted to an inflation discussion about wage increases, input cost increases and all manner of regulatory or insurance increases. I thought the franchise owner operator laid out his best approach forward, which is to avoid throwing a “pity party, with seating for one” and fighting back to either hold or increase market share. He could rightly argue against the California legislation that mandated the $20 per hour minimum wage or how it was rightly unfair that Panera received a pass on having to also pay that state minimum.

      By his anecdotes alone, his restaurants show less customer traffic combined with customers opting for lower priced offerings. Customers having to pay attention routinely, it’s like a theme on consumer spending for retailers and restaurants.

      1. OA

        I dont understand how Panera expects to hire anyone when the entire industry is paying significantly higher. Its a bizarre political carve out as it flies in the face of basic economics. Traditional carveouts–like avoiding taxes–dont face market pressure

      2. Socal Rhino

        I saw an interview on CNBC with the head of Raising Cane’s, a newer chicken chain in California. He dismissed the angst over the $20 minimum, saying they would continue to pay more than the minimum to minimize turnover and retain good staff. He also said his chain would continue to staff at higher levels per store than the norm to ensure customer experience and avoid staff burnout. They are profitable and growing.

    4. jefemt

      I seem to recall reading there are 14.5 Million mostly empty second/vacation homes… so there is not a 4 million unit shortage, there is a 9 million home SURPLUS.

      Magikal Mr. Market mis-allocating resources?!? (clutches pearls…)

      1. earthling

        This is a problem that doesn’t make it into too many charts, but it’s a real and growing thing which is keeping a lot of people out of homes (yes I know some are not suitable for family housing, but it still takes a LOT of properties out of the availability pool). If anybody has a link to this data, would love to see it and be able to reference it in discussions.

      2. Glen

        Very good point, I remember that there are 6 to 7 empty homes for every homeless person in SF. I suspect similar is true in all of the major US metros. But Obama made it clear in the GFC that housing prices were not going to be allowed to collapse so the everybody with free money from the Fed bought up all the homes.

        Solution is obvious, home prices need to come way, way down. Homes should not be an investment; homes are where your family lives.

    5. Mikel

      And another thing about the housing: it has to be factored in that the housing they are talking about that has been built over the most recent decades and how much of if is associated with the costs of building McMansions?
      So is it housing needs that are being addressed or the highly marketed, wild expectations that are being considered?
      Kind of the same with transportation needs.

    6. flora

      Forbes only talks about one of the two main problems. The writer left out the corporate landlord problem driving up prices and rents. The writer skipped over the Wall St. corporate landlords part. odd. / ;)

      60 Minutes segment from 2 years ago, utube, ~13+ minutes.

      Lack of new construction and corporate landlords contributing to skyrocketing rent

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwxYvQVU5g

    7. flora

      re: “and is also preventing/heavily taxing/banning buying less expansive foreign make cars.”

      To your point, Toyota has a small, new, $10k, no-fills, flatbed pickup truck based on the Hilux model. It won’t be available in the US.

  7. none

    Do you know that Netanyahu’s real name is Mileikowsky?

    Wait, 1) there’s no list in that post, there’s a link to a video. 2) Web search immediately finds that the name change was done by Bibi’s father, Benzion Mileikowsky (later Netanyahu), who emigrated from Poland to Mandate Palestine in 1920. Bibi is a monster but one with the same name as he was born under. Also, those name changes are apparently traditional when immigrating to the region. So that tweet appears to be crap.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzion_Netanyahu#Biography

    1. Aunty Semenite

      So the making up a fake Semite identity is customary? Not exactly the awesome debunking you hoped for, Sunshine. They steal everything from the Palestinians, their ethnicity included. What despicable monsters they are.

    2. rob

      just because the name change was done for the father of bibi, doesn’t seem to change the fact that these europeans, came to palestine and began pretending that they in fact “belonged there”, and had a special relationship to the land, and in fact god “promised it to them”.
      sure the guy could/should have said that the family name was changed before bibi was a baby… but changed it was.
      And the fact that the zionists are frauds, still is the truth.
      So what is your point?

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        See my addition. Bibi’s father continued to use both his Polish name and his Zionist name after he was in Israel, including in published pieces. Wikipedia is silent on whether he changed his name legally but his behavior says not, and Israel may not have been a stickler about that. Wikipedia does state that Bibi adopted Netanyahu, which is consistent with the father not having done so on a regular basis.

        So there is a general point, the one you make, that the Europeans pretended they were locals of sorts. But it appears the father only kinda-sorta hewed to that practice.

        1. Keith in Modesto

          I’m sorry Yves, but you may have misconstrued that Wikipedia article. It is stating that Bibi’s grandfather continued to use both his Polish name and his Zionist name and that Bibi’s father changed his name to Netanyahu. Or maybe I am misunderstanding things. You should reread the article.
          I think the general point is still valid, but if someone uses this “Bibi changed his name” as some kind of gotcha, it will backfire and discredit that person and whatever larger point they are trying to make.

      2. R.S.

        Adopting new names, either legally or as something like lifelong aliases, used to be very common among the first waves of settlers. I know that it still happens: I saw guides on “choosing a Hebrew name” for those immigrating from the former Soviet Union, and used to know several guys who did change their first names. Changing surnames is AFAIK way less common now. Another aspect was of course language. European Jews spoke either dialects of Yiddish or the languages of the countries they came from. Modern Hebrew was revived and recreated (one may say somewhat artificially) as a language for the revived Jewry. To be honest, the longer I think about it the more I see something cultish about the Interbellum Zionism.

    3. timbers

      Interesting. My guess is Medhurst’s larger point is that their backgrounds put these Israeli leaders firmly in the “settler-colonialist” category which your analysis also confirms. As in, much of The West is based on the settler-colonialist tradition of wiping out and exterminating the indigenous peoples and taking the land they inhabited.

      1. Kouros

        Much of the West? I hope you exclude Europe from this calculus. North America, South America, Australia and NZ where the actual places colonized, with settler-colonists.

        And Northern Ireland. The Scots and the Irish and the Welsh were kind of culturally genocided by the English, maybe not entirely by force. However, Western Europe is being now resettled by waves of immigrants resulted from US imperial wars, and western economic policies in ME and Africa.

        As for Central Europe, the last big immigrant flux there was over 1000 years ago, with the Magyars/Hungarians… Tatars(Mongols) and Turks were beaten back, slowly.

        1. Snailslime

          Well, a considerable part of Germany is the result of genocidal medieval settler colonialism (the original “Drang nach Osten” that Hitler wanted to emulate and revive) that systematically ethnically cleansed, enslaved (it is a common misconceptions that there was no chattel slavery in medieval europe, not true) and outright exterminated the slavic tribes that previously lived there over a course of centuries.

          The name Prussia for example is derived from that of a slavic tribe that was eliminated from the face of the earth by the Teutonic Knights (who notoriously for a nice financial contribution allowed aristocracts from all over Christendom to go on safari with them and butcher the heathen Untermenschen for fun, and a guaranteed place in heaven I guess).

          1. Giovanni Barca

            The Prussians were Baltic not Slavic, their language was akin to Lithuanian and Latvian. The Pomeranians and Kashubians were and Wends/Sorbs/Lusatians are Slavs. None were altogether exterminated, the Prussian language survived past the Reformation. And Sorbian is still spoken today though endangered. Pomeranian and German nobility intermarried in the Middle Ages, like the minnesanger Witzlaw von Rogen. There was a great deal of assimilation. Just as there was in Britain.

    4. jefemt

      Watch it — 5 minutes. It’s not rocket surgery- of COURSE the european settlers were not the original inhabitants of the Levant. We all want to belong….
      The bigger, unstated point is what those settlers are doing, in terms of taking and taking and taking, and repressing and repressing and repressing.

      I can’t believe the latest war has been going since October.

      The good news is, when Trump gets elected, he will help Bibi , ” finish The Job”. sarc.

    5. Yves Smith Post author

      That is NOT what Wikipedia says. You misrepresent the entry in the hope no one will challenge you:

      After Nathan took the family to Mandate Palestine (aliyah) in 1920, the family name was eventually changed to Netanyahu. After living in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Safed, the family settled in Jerusalem. Benzion Netanyahu studied at the teachers’ seminary and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although his father was a rabbi, Benzion was secular.[4] His younger brother, mathematician Elisha Netanyahu, became dean of sciences at the Technion. It was a common practice for Zionist immigrants at the time to adopt a Hebrew name.[5] Nathan Mileikowsky began signing some of the articles he wrote “Netanyahu,” the Hebrew version of his first name, and his son adopted this as his family name.

      So the father “adopted” Netanyahu as a late name, did not use it consistently (he only signed some of his articles as Netanyahu) and it was Bibi who “adopted” it as his family name.

      Better trolls, please.

      1. Revenant

        Also, Bibi has gone by multiple names, some quite different from Netanyahu, including when he lived in the USA. Think of the Zionists like actors with stage names. Politics is Hollywood for ugly people and Zionism is Hollywood for evil people.

      2. Keith in Modesto

        Maybe I’m misreading the Wikipedia article, but I think that Benzion Netanyahu is PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s father and Nathan Mileikowsky is his grandfather.

        1. Giovanni Barca

          I want very much for Bibi and every other war pig to meet the fate described in that wonderful shard of heavy metal chiliasm, War Pigs (Black Sabbath, 1971) but the name change thing, while yes kind of cultish, is a mark of commitment to a new identity, isn’t it? No different than Kwesi Mfume or Malcolm X (or Malik el Shabazz al Hajj) or Kareem Abdul Jabbar. While I agree that Zionism is fraudulent and worse (and Bibi is a king prawn of fraud), I don’t think the name change is anywhere near the worst part(to be clear I am not suggesting the gentlemen taking African or Muslim names are frauds.). In exchanging Slavic-Yiddish names for Hebrew ones, these Israelis are exchanging one Jewish name for another. Did they “belong” in Poland? (The original Polish lands that is, pre 1648.) Or Russia? I think the belief that they did not was sincere. That they didn’t belong in Palestine either didn’t seem to occur to them.

        2. Jeff W

          …I think that Benzion Netanyahu is PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s father and Nathan Mileikowsky is his grandfather.

          The info box of the Wikipedia article for Benjamin Netanyahu says so directly. So, when the article for Benzion Netanyahu states that “his [Nathan Mileikowsky’s] son adopted this as his family name,” the son referred to is Benzion Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu’s father.

          1. Keith in Modesto

            I hope that Yves Smith will correct her statements here in the comments.

      3. Procopius

        Errr… Bibi is not Nathan’s son. Nathan’s son is Benzion, Bibi’s father, if I’m reading the quotation correctly. It was he who “adopted [Netanyahu] as his family name.” Not that it makes any difference. The Jewish settlers who started arriving in the 1890s are the same as the barbarians who settled in the Roman Empire, and eventually changed it. With less slaughter.

    6. elissa3

      Khazaria. There is a lurking point about identity and its origins in this video as it relates to the Zionist narrative/mythology. It was explored many years ago by Arthur Koestler in his book, The Thirteenth Tribe.

  8. SocalJimObjects

    MoviePass … those were the days, I actually bought a tablet in order to become a member and even with the additional cost, it was very much worth it. I think I must have watched an average of 6 to 8 movies a month, partly because there were plenty of cinephiles in my social circle, and at the same time AMC also started showing foreign movies and the offerings on Netflix were subpar. I definitely wasn’t surprised when MoviePass started to show signs of circling the drain.

    I also remember that sometime before MoviePass arrived on the scene, I used to be able to buy movie vouchers that you can exchange for tickets at prices substantially cheaper (25%?) than theaters would charge for normal tickets.

    1. digi_owl

      “the offerings on Netflix were subpar”

      That comes back to Disney et al refusing to renew the contract and instead set up their own competing services so they could pocket whatever percentage Netflix was taking from the total.

      And the bosses wonder why the pirates are back with a vengeance.

    2. Socal Rhino

      I like the Criterion Channel for movies. May lean too “artsy” for some tastes, but not entirely.

      1. turtle

        Criterion movies are great. Another tip for anyone not familiar, Kanopy is offered for free by many public libraries in the US, and they carry a significant selection of Criterion titles.

      2. Late Introvert

        Criterion is excellent. My library has lots of them on DVD still. And there is always Hoopla for streaming. I don’t enjoy monthly payments, but if I did have the money it would be Criterion. Tarkovsky for the win.

  9. The Rev Kev

    ‘Moon of Alabama
    @MoonofA
    The presidency of Georgia is largely ceremonial, not executive. This French woman (yes, look it up) playing a Georgian president is calling for regime change. That’s treason.’

    You could see that she was not enthusiastic reading this manifest. Probably the EU just handed it to her to read. When you listen to it, it sounds like the plans for the EU to take full control of Georgia by deconstructing the justice system and having Parliament get a big say on what happens in that country. And I was reading that she had the hide to call the Georgian President being guilty of treason. She also says ‘To rebuild trust, we need a new political reality: a distinct unity, different elections, a different parliament, and a different government!’ but what she really needs is a different electorate as the people back the government. This whole thing is about getting into the EU but who the hell wants to go into the Hotel California these days? I think that there are some sour grapes with the US/EU too as, according to the Georgian President, there has been constant demands to send both weapons and troops to the Ukraine to fight the Russians but Georgia has been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt for it-

    https://www.rt.com/russia/598312-georgia-troops-ukraine-conflcit/

    1. JohnA

      Georgia has not even got a border with an EU country. Nor had England or Ireland, I hear you say. For sure, but you can see France from Dover, and Ireland is a lot closer to Brittany than the distance across the Black Sea to Bulgaria and Romania from Georgia. Crazy aspiration

      1. digi_owl

        “but you can see France from Dover”

        The way they behave in Westminster, i am sure they wish they didn’t.

        1. JohnA

          After Brexit, the Conservative minister for transport amazingly admitted to his surprise that most EU-GB trade went between Dover and Calais, where there have been massive disruptions and multihour queues for both the tunnel and ferries, due to the increased paperwork involved.

      2. Ignacio

        One has to pray her/his country doesn’t turn to be strategically important for the globalists. Better go unnoticed if possible.

    2. lyman alpha blob

      Loved how the Telegraph article in links above claims the foreign agent law will be “forced” through on Thursday. You might think that means some military coup with a gun to the president’s head, but instead it’s the democratically elected parliament, which already voted democratically in favor of the law, overruling the veto of their French-but-pretending-to-be-Georgian president, by using a legal democratic procedure.

  10. Captain Obvious

    China ‘Blockade Simulation’ Exposes $5 Trillion Global Danger Bloomberg. Your humble blogger has said for years that China does not need to and therefore was highly likely not to invade Taiwan. All it needs to do is blockade. Taiwain is dependent on imports, particularly of food and energy.

    Those that didn’t relize that China can block an island, have been trying to defeat Russia by doing it to a peninsula.

    1. SocalJimObjects

      Not just food and energy, but also labor. Taiwan is currently facing a shortage of nurses, and the island relies mostly on foreign labor to take care of the older generation. If war were to break out, the Indonesian government will charter a couple of ships to ferry out the Indonesian caregivers, factory workers, etc. Other governments like the Vietnamese will likewise do the same and the economy will just collapse.

      Western people here in Taiwan are mostly of the PMC variety and they think that enacting a successful blockade is beyond China’s capabilities especially with the high possibility of the United States joining the fray, and yet when war breaks out, these people will be the first to leave. Despicable.

  11. Carolinian

    Since I rarely go to theaters any more I admit to knowing nothing about Moviepass and the above HBO review didn’t change that. Here are the details that are indeed head spinning.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=moviepass

    Presumably theater owners were willing to go along as a traffic booster and on the well known principle that theaters make all their profit on concessions anyway. But post Covid the theaters themselves seem to be struggling and weren’t all that healthy before. Will the long time and “greatly exaggerated” reports of their demise finally come to be?

    1. SocalJimObjects

      Maybe I was on a different plan, but for me and my friends Moviepass worked the following way (before 2018):
      1. Moviepass sends you a physical card.
      2. You use said card to pay for movie tickets at concession prices.

      In other words, theaters had nothing to do with the service. If you think that’s insane, you are not alone, we all thought it was bonkers too, but our thinking was we were simply burning VC’s money so we did not think very much of it.

  12. Christopher Smith

    So Israeli officials threaten the ICC prosecutor, bomb a refugee camp after being ordered by the ICJ to cease fire, breach the demilitarized zone created by the treaty with Egypt, prevent aid from reaching the Palestinians, and .. no consequences for any of it. Huh, I wonder why the keep doing what they are doing. “‘Tis a mystery!” as you say around here.

    1. Mikex

      And my local paper this morning (part of the USA Today group) with the giant headline on page 1: “PRESIDENT BIDEN TO ISRAEL: ‘PROTECT CIVILIANS’”. Wow Joe, what a hero. I’m sure they will start doing it now that you told them.

        1. paul

          It’s to be a beachfront property without people, for a people without beachfront property.

          1. digi_owl

            You would think that with 160km of coastline, there would be more than enough already. All this to add 30 more, evil is perhaps the only word that fits.

            1. The Rev Kev

              Except by having that 30 kilometers, they will be able to claim all those oil and gas fields off shore which will help pay for this war while crowding the Palestinians out from any such claim.

      2. Christopher Smith

        Indeed. Anything short of cutting off military aid is lip service (and duplicitous lip service at that).

    2. GF

      NPR this morning mentioned very briefly that two Hamas commanders we also killed in the massacre at the tent refugee camp. So it seems a little collateral damage is no big deal. Also, no independent verification presented for commanders’ demise.

  13. Carolinian

    Biden admin fuzzy think and the NYT reporters who support him

    They include climate concerns. Administration officials say Chinese factories, which tend to be powered by fossil fuels like coal, produce more greenhouse gas emissions than American plants.

    There is also a central economic reason to deny China a monopoly: ensuring that electric cars and trucks will always be available, at competitive prices. The Covid-19 pandemic drove home the fragility of global supply chains, as critical products like semiconductors became hard to get from China and other Asian nations that the United States relied upon. Prices for consumer electronics and other products that relied on imported materials soared, fueling inflation.

    Biden officials want to avoid a similar scenario for electric vehicles. Concentrating the supply of E.V.s and other advanced green tech in China would risk “the world’s collective ability to have access to the technologies we need to be successful in a clean energy economy,” said Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden’s national climate adviser.

    Meanwhile Detroit is pulling back from EV and will continue to rely on giant pickups (legion on a recent road trip) for their profits. And dedicated EV makers like Rivian are struggling as Tesla under the erratic Musk seems to itself threaten “the world’s collective ability to have access to the technologies.” The article says Biden wants to ensure

    that electric cars and trucks will always be available, at competitive prices

    even while admitting that US EV are too expensive for very widespread adoption.

    And finally there’s the question of whether the US is even ready for that widespread adoption given the grid problems and others mentioned here recently. At the end of the day it’s all just PR like everything Biden.

    1. Jason Boxman

      In regards to EVs, so far “and then there was a miracle” doesn’t seem to be working. So much for EV adoption saving the world and permitting a continuation of neoliberal capitalism forever.

    2. neutrino23

      I’m not sure that American EVs are “too expensive.” Yes, the prices are high but it is because everyone wants to sell upmarket. There is not enough profit in making small, economical EV cars. This is a replay of the 70s when small Japanese cars entered the US market. GM and others tried making small cars but they were crap because their hearts weren’t in it. They wanted to make muscle cars and Cadillacs.

      EVs are great when right sized and paired with some rooftop or neighborhood solar power. We drive a plug-in Prius and we buy one tank of gas a year (or less) and because of our solar panels and battery we produce more electricity than we consume on a yearly basis. True, this is one anecdote, but it shows this is practical in the real world. This as a political and imagination problem, not an engineering problem.

  14. The Rev Kev

    ‘Eric Feigl-Ding
    @DrEricDing
    “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate” — Trump promising to ban requirements for all childhood vaccines — and promising to sicken and injure countless kids with preventable diseases.’

    Sicken and injure countless kids? I thought that that was the job of the mRNA vaccines? /sarc

  15. The Rev Kev

    “Mapped: Europe’s rapidly rising right”

    ‘Hard-right forces are gaining ground ahead of next month’s European Parliament election.’

    It has been said that nature abhors a vacuum which leads me to the following observation. That map show the status of the hard right in central & eastern Europe which I suppose is fair enough. So what they need next to it is the same map but showing the status of the Left in the same countries. And by that I do not mean the imitation Left that we have these days that have the same policies of the hard right (e.g the Greens in Germany) but actual leftist parties that Jeremy Corbyn himself would be comfortable in. My guess is that there would be hardly anything on the map and because of this empty space, the right just moved in there instead as nobody else could be bothered.

    1. digi_owl

      Because you get decried as xenophobic right-winger the second you voice any kind of misgiving with the pillars of the EU idea.

    2. Ignacio

      This is the typical call for the electorates to “behave” and vote for any of the PMC-trusted organizations (parties if you like) as the only legitimate political options.

  16. Will

    Some good news. Union leaders showed up yesterday to the anti-genocide encampment at the University of Toronto to pledge their support for the students. Promised to be their human shield so that the students could continue their protest. Friday, the school had served a trespass notice on the protestors and there was widespread concern the cops could roll in Monday morning.

    https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/we-will-be-your-human-shields-why-unions-are-showing-up-in-force-to-support/article_562a3da0-1c62-11ef-91f5-2f4615a0758e.html

    1. Bugs

      I read this the other day – it’s a devastating takedown of the whole Artemis boondoggle and if there was ever a project that deserved that epithet, this is the one. Should be in Links or WC because this article is extraordinarily detailed, up-to-date and better written than any other account I’ve seen.

      The kicker here is that it will take something like ~10 SpaceX Starship cryo fuel flights just to put enough liquid oxygen in orbit at their propellant depot in Earth orbit (yes!) to be able to fuel up and send one SpaceX Starship HLS Lander to the Moon, while the other SLS/Orion flight goes there on a separate giant rocket, from a separate launch site and has to (maybe, they’re not sure yet!) dock with an (entirely unneeded) space station – and none of this has been built or tested yet. And this is supposed to happen next year!

      Plus – Blue Origin is also going to make their own lander and fly it to the Moon as well later on, because, well, who knows!

      Here’s the permanent link https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

      1. Ranger Rick

        The idea is that once Starship works, those ten refueling flights are basically free for the cost of gas. I don’t think anyone really appreciates yet what having a completely reusable rocket is going to mean for both routine space launches and the cost of getting things into space.

        1. urdsama

          Except that so far SpaceX has lost three rockets, is massively behind schedule and has already spent around 70 percent of its funding budget.

          This was a grift from the start. The NASA head who awarded the contract (can’t remember her name at the moment) now works for SpaceX.

    3. The Rev Kev

      Thanks for that link which I have bookmarked for closer reading. The truth of the matter is that Artemis is being politically pushed so that the US can claim huge chunks of the moon for mining exploitation. And around each mining region will be a bigger security zone so that more of the Moon can be claimed. If they wanted to do it cheaper, perhaps they should have dug out the old plans for the Apollo rocket and built them again while updating the electronics. Don’t know what would happen if a Russian or a Chinese rocket landed within 100 kilometers of an Artemis rocket. Our first space war? I would be glad to contribute the pew-pew sounds.

      1. digi_owl

        The very name says it all, this is a PR thing drenched in DEI.

        And given its similarities, the outcome will likely, and sadly, be much the same a Challenger.

        1. Michaelmas

          digi_owl: The very name says it all, this is a PR thing drenched in DEI

          Get a grip. DEI? Seriously? In the Greek/Latin pantheon, Artemis/Selene is identified with/as the Moon. So, right in line with Apollo, Titan, Mercury, etc. —

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

          … Artemis (/ˈɑːrtɪmɪs/; Greek: Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. In later times, she was identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon.

          The Cegłowski piece is decent and intelligent analysis, unfortunately.

  18. The Rev Kev

    “NATO to ‘institutionalize’ arms support for Kiev at US summit — secretary general”

    ‘According to Stoltenberg, the budget has not been agreed yet. The secretary general said earlier that it was necessary to create a permanent NATO military fund for Ukraine worth $100 bln a year.’

    Stoltenberg is gunna freak when the Russians finally take down the Ukraine because this will trash that plan of his. It’s very simple this plan. Force all those NATO countries to kick in billions each and every year, even if they have to strip down all sorts of social services spending. And that money will be mostly sent to MIC companies who will kick back a certain percentage to people like Stoltenberg and von der Leyan. That which reaches the Ukraine will be washed and “commissions” will be sent back to the appropriate people like Sam Bankman-Fried did with the money that he sent to the Ukraine. So here you are talking about a revenue stream of corruption like what was done with Afghanistan. But Afghanistan fell and it looks like so will the Ukraine. Oh well, there is always Taiwan.

    1. ilsm

      In the newest money spree to Kiev passed by bi-partisan US congress….. $20 billion is laundered through USEUCOM in Ramstein: everything from bullets through rations, fuel and a lot of ‘directing’ US reconn assets to kill Russians and break up their economy!

      What Kiev really needs is warm bodies.

      When do “EU boys go off and fight for what Kiev boys ran to the EU to avoid?”

    2. bwilli123

      Russian analyst, Rostislav Ishchenko on the positioning for the upcoming WWIII
      (via google translate)

      The West is gathering a “Great Army”

      ..”Don’t think that Western generals don’t know their strengths and weaknesses. It is unlikely that they are going to organize grandiose tank battles in Ukraine or wage a positional war with Russia along the lines of the First World War. The task is simple – raise the stakes to the limit and put Russia before a choice – be the first to start a nuclear confrontation or agree to peace on American terms…”

      https://ukraina.ru/20240528/1055325533.html

      1. The Rev Kev

        The Russians won’t have to start slinging nukes. After a week of fighting, the West’s “Great Army” will be out of ammo, maybe sooner if the Russians bomb those thousand kilometer supply lines. And the choice of the words a “Great Army” are a bit on the nose as that is too much like Napoleon’s Grande Armée which marched into Russia in 1812. The bulk majority of them are still there today.

        1. digi_owl

          Gets me thinking of the claim that they found German and soviet remains when digging trenches in Ukraine. F those lands have seen more than its fair share of war.

    3. digi_owl

      Stoltenberg is looking to get out of the NATO job. He was itching to go even before the SMO kicked off, but was “asked” to stay on.

  19. QuarterBack

    Re the dangers of AI, I would submit that the most likely severe dangers would come from the human side. I see two serious threats:

    Monopoly – The tech sector often follows Winner-Take-All results. The tech giants are expert at leveraging proprietary rights, acquisitions, partnerships, and regulation to block competition. There is already major efforts to regulate access to AI code, hardware, and data under the flag of AI Safety, and similar unprecedented attacks on the “dangers” of open source software development. This is cynical power grab to establish the largest regulated class gap in modern history. If successful, the AI giants will end up replacing large swaths of human labor, and will have proprietary ownership of how the new AIs can be used or modified.

    People like Sam Altman love to express how AI is a gift to humanity. If they truly believe that, then they should be embracing open source, and promote free licensing to the public of the fruits of this giving tree. Instead, their actions have been to urgently call for a select few of trusted individuals (that just happen to be them) to own and control this powerful capability.

    Deniability – As weapons systems become more and more AI empowered, war crimes will be able to be perpetrated without accountability. Attribution of atrocities will be laid upon the disembodied AI. War crimes tribunals will be replaced by bug reports; mere glitches to be edited out — until next time.

    1. Michaelmas

      Agreed on these ugly scenarios, both of which are precisely what’s been worrying me alongside some unprecedented surveillance possibilities.

  20. KLG

    I have not had time to read all the comments, so apologies if this as already been noted.

    Regarding Golden Rice as an advanced technical solution to a problem that has low-tech solutions, I attended an international meeting where this was first discussed. It took up most of the air in the room, because it was a breathtaking concept when plants were first being manipulated using recombinant DNA. Those were the days! Golden Rice would save the world, along with Roundup Ready commodity crops such as corn and soybeans. Yes, Golden Rice was a good idea in theory. But it is not now nor has it ever been clear that golden rice will work for several reasons:
    (1) Is there enough beta-carotene in Golden Rice to be absorbed from the diet efficiently?

    (2) How efficiently will the beta-carotene in Golden Rice be used as the precursor of vitamin A in those who eat it?

    (3) How efficiently will Golden Rice be distributed to those in need if it does actually work, other than as a lucrative commodity crop for the usual suspects in Big Ag and Big Food?

    Relevant links are here and here. I am not aware that these have been rendered obsolete, but caveat emptor.

    Low-tech solutions would include:
    (1) Sustainable agriculture that produces crops such as sweet potatoes/yams and orange squash varieties in areas where vitamin A deficiency is a life-threatening problem, especially among children.

    (2) As noted at the link, providing vitamin A to those in need works. Alfred Sommer of Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (before it became the Bloomberg School of Public Health) showed that a single-dose of vitamin A solved the problem for pennies per child. The logistics are simple (vitamin A is a stable compound) and the cost is minimal. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin and one dose lasts a very long time.

  21. Mikel

    “Your humble blogger has said for years that China does not need to and therefore was highly likely not to invade Taiwan. All it needs to do is blockade. Taiwain is dependent on imports, particularly of food and energy.”

    But China has to be closely monitoring the results of Israel, in its way, blockading food that affects large populations.

    1. Emma

      The Chinese could set up blockades similar to what Israel had for Gaza from 2006 to 2023, with practically non-existent international pushback. They don’t even have to blockade food or medicine, just fuel and industrial feeder stock.

  22. CA

    https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1795365898456588694

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    Absolutely incredible article, revealing that the head of Mossad personally threatened the physical safety of the International Criminal Court prosecutor and her family: “You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry

    Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry

    4:06 AM · May 28, 2024

    1. Benny Profane

      Not much different than twelve U.S. senators threatening ICC judges AND families with sanctions if they went ahead with actions against Israeli officials. Except they did it IN WRITING!

      Eh, nice court you got dere. Shame if somethin happens to it.

  25. IMOR

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2024/05/27/the-shocking-price-of-us-homes-explained—you-wont-like-it/?sh=3adb615451ff
    Gee, without massive waves of “reckless lending”, builders and banks haven’t been able to count on a sufficiently robust set of borrowers/buyers to support sufficient housing starts!
    …because we’re four or five decades in to every single financial, legalk, tax, and social policy decision removing real income from most people and depositing it in the maw of olutocrats, corporations, and their parasitical pmc servants. No one couldda known!

  26. Alice X

    I will never unsee the tweet of the man holding the child whose head has just been blown off. Little doubt by a bomb made in the USA.

    1. britzklieg

      Beyond sickening… that video needs a warning. I wonder how those who can find and are willing to explain the “legal” justification for killing children in war would respond?

  27. The Rev Kev

    “‘We are divided’: unity in Israel fades as war in Gaza approaches ninth month’

    Should have been expecting this. I am sure that the Israelis thought that it would have all been over by Hanukkah but apparently Hamas did not get the memo. It must also rattle them as they are now realizing that they are being isolated on the world scene because of their actions. For nearly eighty years they have been able draw on sympathy over the Holocaust but that account is running dry these days. They may make all sorts of public pronouncements but nobody believes them anymore because of the constant lying. So maybe now they are asking themselves what lies ahead. Hamas is actually winning by the classic guerilla tactic of not losing and trying to kill your way to victory is just not working. Of course it does not help that the people most rabid about the war are the same ones who are adamant about not actually fighting it. That is going to leave divisions long after the war is over. In short, the Israeli public were keen to see this genocide happen but as the war is grinding on, are realizing that there is an enormous bill accruing for it and one that will have to be paid.

    1. Vandemonian

      For a moment there, Rev, I had a “Back to the Future” brain flip to the 70s, and thought you were describing what went wrong with the Vietnam adventure.

  28. Jason Boxman

    Pandemic sickness report. At work someone’s kid is out sick, second time in a few weeks, a coworker and partner sick, and another employee out sick just that I know of. I’ve never seen so many people sick so much in my professional career as I have this year. Boggles the mind. The longterm implications of this are less than great.

  29. Tom Stone

    A minor footnotse on the history of Censorship and repression here in the USA:
    The first crack in the FBI’s facade was not the break in at the Erie PA office ( Which was HUGE), it was Rex Stout’s book “The Doorbell Rang” which centered around the revelations of Fred Smith’s “The FBI Nobody Knows” which was not easy to find out about, let alone get your hands on before Stout’s book came out.
    My Father had a copy given to him by Bob Treuhaft ( He also was given an autographed copy of “The American way of Death” by Bob’s wife Jessica Mitford Treuhaft).
    This was not a book you’d leave on your coffee table unless you wanted FBI agents asking your employer about your political leanings…
    One of the more amusing revelations of the Erie break in was that the FBI had infiltrated the League of Women Voters looking for RUSSIAN SPIES!!!
    All that is old is new again, harder.

  30. Dornbirn Panther

    The EU is a disgrace and an affront to the concept of popular sovereignty. It’s working exactly as intended, unfortunately.

    Micael T’s comment in the links is something I ask myself on a regular basis. It is difficult not to despair at the state of things on this continent. I wonder if Europeans have a breaking point or if they’ll simply let themselves be driven to ruin with barely a whimper.

  31. magpie

    In the latest chapter of the ridiculous “Gaza Pier” propaganda exercise, said pier has now been photographed washing up on the Levantine shore.

    See here.

    Now imagine the disparaging, condescending criticisms you’d hear if this pier were a Russian effort.

  32. Gregorio

    re: Google’s AI Feeds People Answers From The Onion
    This actually gives me some hope. It’s much less insidious to feed us cutting satire, than corporate media propaganda masquerading as ‘news.’

  33. Eclair

    Mornings, I wake up and, after the first blissful haze wears off and I begin to think about what new adventures are ahead for the day, a jolt hits me. Much like when you are becoming accustomed to life without someone you have loved.
    And, I want to go back to sleep.
    I am living in a nation whose ‘leaders’ are supporting, at worst a genocide, at the least, an ‘extermination’ of an entire group of people whose major crime has been that they occupy a slice of land that another set of people, more skilled in aggression, wants.
    A nation whose sabres are rattling against Russia and China, the latter being the country that makes almost all of our ‘stuff.’
    A nation whose leaders are just fine with tens of thousands of their citizens living on the streets and in their cars. Who see nothing untoward in having more incarcerated people per capita than almost every other nation. (El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda?)
    Whose child mortality rate is appalling for the wealthiest country in the history of the planet. And it is increasing.

    I am living in, by definition, an evil nation. An ugly nation. An uncaring nation. Is this what it was like in 1930’s Germany? (Except they had trains.)

    If I can’t go back to sleep, can I at least sink into a comfortable state of denial? Nah. I’m gonna go read Naked Capitalism.

    1. Daryl

      > I am living in, by definition, an evil nation. An ugly nation. An uncaring nation. Is this what it was like in 1930’s Germany? (Except they had trains.)

      I feel the same way. In the past it was hard for me to imagine how such things unfolded, now it’s easy. I’m not enjoying being a witness to history.

      1. Lena

        My ‘inner jukebox’ these days keeps “Where Do the Children Play?” by Cat Stevens and “When My Morning Comes Around” by Iris Dement in constant rotation. Seems like a bad sign.

    2. steppenwolf fetchit

      Was Germany an “uncaring nation”? Weren’t the NaziParty vote totals going back down when von Hindenburg and the German Upper Class finagled Hitler into the Chancellor position?

  34. steppenwolf fetchit

    So, if elected, Candidate Trump would ” not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate”.
    Does he means specifically a Covid mRNA para-vaccinoid mandate? Or does he mean any vaccine mandate of any kind for any disease . . . such as for measles, mumps, flu, etc. etc. etc.?

    Someone in the media should ask him to get specific about that, if anyone in the media was even smart enough to understand the question I just posed. Perhaps Trump is just pitching for the RFK Jr vote. And if elected he’ll forget all about it. Or if reminded, call it fake news.

    But what if he gets elected and remembers it and really means it? And means it for all vaccines against all diseases?

  36. Willow

    Was Raisi’s death a queen sacrifice? (Something Shia are more inclined to in their reverence of martyrs) To purposely put Iran in a weakened position so Sunnis in Türkiye and/or Egypt have no choice but to raise up and take the lead for Gaza instead on relying on Iran? (It is the more numerous & globally dispersed Sunnis who need to rise up and overthrow the West not the Shia) Which would be more in accordance with Helmer’s speculation.. and would match the oddities of the event.

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