Self-care: Orangutan seen apparently treating wound Channel News Asia
How to tell good industrial policy from bad Gillian Tett, FT
Climate
Measuring the Doughnut: A good life for all is possible within planetary boundaries Journal of Cleaner Production
Wildfires rage in Russia’s Far East due to dry, hot weather Anadolu Agency
Warmer weather starts to affect energy demand, more extremes likely in 2024: EU climate monitor S&P Global
Water
We need the water companies of England to be nationalised Funding the Future
Pandemics
Emergence and interstate spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) in dairy cattle (preprint) bioRxiv. From the Abstract: “. The movement of asymptomatic cattle has likely played a role in the spread of HPAI within the United States dairy herd. Some molecular markers in virus populations were detected at low frequency that may lead to changes in transmission efficiency and phenotype after
evolution in dairy cattle. Continued transmission of H5N1 HPAI within dairy cattle increases the risk for 10 infection and subsequent spread of the virus to human populations.” Commentary:
It went from Texas to Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Idaho.
Kansas to South Dakota.
Areas that get more infected cattle will have more opportunities to get to know that reassortment means interspecies transmission and pandemic potential.https://t.co/RZOpyQctzF pic.twitter.com/pAvvRkeznO
— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) May 2, 2024
Mobility, just as Taleb said.
Tracking bird flu virus changes in cows is stymied by missing data, scientists say STAT
Avian Influenza A(H5N1) U.S. Situation Update and CDC Activities CDC. Interesting bullet point:
Assess the severity of illness and transmissibility of the virus under different scenarios by infecting ferrets and assessing the outcome. Ferrets are used as a model for people because they get sick and spread influenza viruses in a manner similar to humans.
Airborne Transmission of Influenza A/H5N1 Virus Between Ferrets Science.
Transmission of lethal H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b avian influenza in ferrets (preprint) Research Square
* * * SARS-CoV-2 Viral Shedding and Rapid Antigen Test Performance — Respiratory Virus Transmission Network, November 2022–May 2023 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC. From the Abstract: “During November 2022–May 2023, among persons infected with SARS-CoV-2, sensitivity of rapid antigen tests was 47% compared with RT-PCR and 80% compared with viral culture. Antigen tests continue to detect potentially transmissible infection but miss many infections identified by positive RT-PCR test results.” Four years in….
Found: the dial in the brain that controls the immune system Nature
The Canadian State Is Euthanizing Its Poor and Disabled Jacobin
China?
What does China really mean when it calls on other countries to be ‘rational’? South China Morning Post
Wall Street Journal cuts Hong Kong staff, shifts focus to Singapore Al Jazeera
Japan’s “Wasan” Mathematical Tradition: Surprising Discoveries in an Age of Seclusion Nippon.com
Myanmar
Myanmar stops men from working abroad as war intensifies BBC
India
Amit Shah: The quiet, feared strategist behind Modi’s rise BBC
Syraqistan
Police Arrest Rabbis Near Gaza-Israel Border at a Rally to Highlight Starvation NYT
Excerpts on the nakba from the documentary Tantura:
🇵🇸🇮🇱 How Was Israel Formed?
These men who took part in the Nakba will tell you:
"He grabbed a woman, young and good looking, went into a house, prepared a bedroom and wanted to fu** her."
"The girl came back half dead, like a rag."
"One guy raped there a sixteen year old girl… pic.twitter.com/hjFQgcNwJX
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) May 2, 2024
AIPAC Halts Campaign Fundraising for Republicans Who Voted Against Emergency Israel Aid Haaretz. Via the handy @TrackAIPAC.
Top House Democrat ‘Deeply Worried’ About Israel’s War Strategy in Gaza Foreign Policy
* * * Abu Ghraib: Iraqi victims’ case against US contractor ends in mistrial Al Jazeera
Africa
Duelling rail projects hint at intensifying contest for Africa’s critical minerals SS&P Global
European Disunion
Emmanuel Macron’s urgent message for Europe The Economist
Not one Italian soldier will ever die in Macron’s name: Deputy premier Anadolu Agency
* * * Gaza protests: French students demand an end to ties with Israeli universities France24
Dear Old Blighty
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine is ready for a just peace — not Russia’s version of one Politico
Defence Intelligence of Ukraine official says Kyiv can’t win on battlefield alone: such wars end in treaties Ukrainska Pravda
Russia says it will not participate in any event promoting Ukraine’s peace formula Anadolu Agency
* * * Azov Brigade fighter exposes conscription situation: “No one wants to join the Army these days” InfoBrics
Here’s What Ukraine Needs in Missiles, Shells, and Troops to Win. It’s Completely Doable RAND
Ukraine has right to use UK weapons to strike targets in Russia – UK Foreign Secretary Ukrainska Pravda
In Ukraine war, China is helping tilt momentum in Russia’s favor, top U.S. spy says NBC
* * * The clash over whether to commandeer Russia’s frozen assets FT
Biden Administration
More on H.R. 6090:
Also, comparing current Israeli policy to that of Nazis is exactly what Einstein et al did in this letter to describe the Israeli political party precursor to the Likud pic.twitter.com/JmqNcY6V9n
— rodrigo peligro (@rodrigo_peligro) May 2, 2024
Text of H.R. 6090 plus other resources in yesterday’s Links.
Groves of Academe
The Real Scandal of Campus Protest Boston Review
* * * Dartmouth encampment:
College clarifies stance on professor Annelise Orleck’s arrest The Dartmouth
Campus encampments live updates: Protests yield mass arrests The Dartmouth. Alert reader Petal was present and took some pictures. This shows the scope of the protest:
The cops moving in at night:
Petal also made a video showing the absurdly disproportionate police response. Unfortunately, I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to click through: Dartmouth police response. Lovely New England green they’ve got there….
Columbia encampment:
Columbia crackdown led by university prof doubling as NYPD spook The Grayzone
UCLA encampment:
Just like “the Ghost of Kiev”:
Firstly, while several accounts have cited this as a precipitating event for the Jewish mob attack on the protest encampment, did the Jewish mob themselves cite this as a motivating factor? No, they cited a different lie, the claim that Jews are blocked from attending classes. pic.twitter.com/OwwkYc66nV
— Trevor Sutcliffe (@TrevorSutcliffe) May 2, 2024
* * * Stupidest timeline:
Speaker Johnson calls on the FBI to investigate campus protesters, because when he was at Columbia last week, he noticed many of the tents were the "same color make and model." Just breathtakingly idiotic and sinister. "Matching tents" = predicate for FBI investigation? Really??? pic.twitter.com/1RRdAhs1do
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 3, 2024
I wonder if the spooks put this idea into Johnson’s head….
Digital Watch
EDITORIAL: The kings of AI thought they could take words for free. Nope. Orlando Sentinel
MMT
From the documentary “Finding the Money”:
This is absolutely priceless. And probably the most frightening clip you'll ever watch on the people in charge of the US economy.
Jared Bernstein is literally the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the main agency advising Biden on economic policypic.twitter.com/1b31FPFPCQ
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 3, 2024
The Final Frontier
NASA orders studies from private space companies on Mars mission support roles TechCrunch
Zeitgeist Watch
A World of Pure Imagination The Gauntlet
Realignment and Legitimacy
Active Clubs: A new far-right threat to democratic elections Al Jazeera
Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups Wired
Green, advocates unite to support short-term rental bill as end of legislative session nears Hawaii News Now
Class Warfare
Survival of the Wealthiest: Joseph E. Stiglitz on the Dangerous Failures of Neoliberalism Joseph Stiglitz, Literary Hub
The 6% Solution? Matthew Klein, The Overshoot
US carriers illegally hiring Mexican drivers to haul loads, sources say Freight Waves. If you really want to solve illegal immigration, start with firms.
Young workers respond to a shape-shifting economy, new worries Al Jazeera
Steel plant falls in West Virginia, but no one hears a sound Washington Examiner. Wierton.
We can have a different web Citation Needed. Well worth a read.
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
244 comments
Comments are closed.
‘Censored Men
@CensoredMen
🇵🇸🇮🇱 How Was Israel Formed?
These men who took part in the Nakba will tell you:’
Jimmy Dore did a review of this a coupla months ago-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWka3LDmsIk (8:10 mins)
The IDF guys committing all the atrocities in Gaza right now? In fifty years or more time they will be talking about what they did while laughing about it like these mfs are doing.
That video needs to be played everytime an old American liberal starts reminiscing about socialist Israel that Netanyahu somehow singlehandedly messed up.
Israel was always a genocidal settler colonial State organized on the same lines as those in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. It just had the misfortune of still having some living victims who have decent immunity to smallpox and measles, speaks, excellent English, and have the tools needed to document their oppression.
I am more and more convinced that Americans would not recognize socialism if it rescued their ass from destitution…
Well, in a heartwarming piece at David Sirota’s Lever:
The Homeowners’ Rebellion
Folks at trailer parks typically own the homes but not the land or the infrastructure and with the increasing buy up by wealthy investors that has become increasingly tenuous.
A nonprofit group called ROC USA helps manufactured housing residents buy their own parks.
State subsidies can assist.
We managed to buy ours. In ca there’s a tax advantage for mobile home park tenants buying the land, they get to keep the previous owner’s tax rate.
Good for you! I have several dear old friends in parks where rents have gone up significantly even while conditions deteriorate, due to the sharks having bought them up with the eye to grift.
Respectfully, but the “settler colonialism” bit has always struck me as a Chomsky-ish dodge and a way to project back onto the West responsbility for what are inherently Jewish crimes against humanity.
The notion that the US somehow controls Israel has been demonstrably wrong since at least 1992. And yet well-meaning goyim in the US continue to chant this nonsense about Israel being an American puppet as if it were self-evident.
This unwitting attempt to run cover for genocidiares is seen for what it is outside the occupied West. And as the Rambam is said to have said: people’s patience has its limits.
That’s what Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hamas, Iran, and the Iraqi Resistance say. And as people who battled Israel for decades and need to get it right for their very survival, they should know.
And the point is not that Israel is an American puppet and somehow blameless, but that Israel literally could not survive to the end of this month if the US fully withdrew its support and followed international law.
Settler colony describes a type of colonization where the indigenous population is replaced by an outside population through some form of ethnic cleansing. It has nothing to do with what country is sponsoring the colony. The Zionists started with Britain, flirted with the Third Reich, occasionally played footsie with the French and the Soviets, and eventually settled down with the Americans while still maintaining friendly relationship with Russia. None of the sponsorship changes altered its fundamentals as a settler colonialist state.
Those IDF guys doing what men have been doing since whenever which is solving problems with rocks. That would be the rock in their hand, the rock between their legs, and the rock between their ears. Makes one pine for a global matriarchy. I need to reread “The Flounder“.
Makes one pine for a global matriarchy
of course one led by that pacifist matriarch Golda Meier
And aided and abetted by Hillary Clinton and Viktoria Nuland.
Let’s not forget Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. Especially Albright.
Then there’s always Thatcher, of course.
Yep, who can forget her perfidious invasion of Spain and France?
Madame Nhu?
Sheikh Hasina, Indira Ghandi, Isabel Perón…
Clare Boothe Luce deserves a mention.
For sure. I knew what I was stepping in when I typed that. Never the less……
The point is no physical attribute–gender, skin color, whatever–is a stand-in for character or predictor of behavior. Identity politics is an effective tool for controlling people because of our “hooray for my tribe” mindset.
Pretty sure the idea of a matriarchy and weaponized gender politics are two different things, one having existed for all of humanity, the other since, idk maybe Hillary Clinton. Perhaps you should have a go at Günter Grass’s “The Flounder“.
Thanks for the lecture.
“The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula Le Guin examines sex and gender pretty well and might consider it for reading – follow it with “The Dispossessed” and then “The Word for World Is Forest” – all incredibly insightful works by Le Guin
Don’t forget Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, Annalina 360 Baerbock, and so many prime and defense ministers of Europe, all gleefully shoving bundles of Ukrainian men into the fire they lit.
Matriarchy ain’t the solution to war mongering.
Catherine de Medicis, Bloody Mary, Lady Macbeth….
Power selects strongly for sociopathy, not gender, although sociopaths are disproportionately male.
Still, when a non-sociopath gets power, the sociopaths look up longingly and think to themselves “I could get me someathat…..”
The life and death of Henry VI of England is most instructive.
Let’s not forget Madame Mao.
Makes Drew Barrymore pine for a global matriarch Kamala Harris, since Albright alread went back to where she rose up from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_my-LUea7c&t=107
Kamala is a bridge too far. I surrender.
So many distaff leaders of ill reputation, here’s a good one…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden
I do wonder, if USA had won in Vietnam, some vets would sit there now laughing about napalming villages.
Then again, we already have the “it was worth it” response to the Iraq invasion. Though perhaps not from the soldiers crossing the sand.
I’m guessing that historians have collected a lot of talk from our soldiers and private bounty hunters about our own genocide of native Americans.
Speaking of which, there is some buzz all about Blood Meridian coming to your screen. That’s not going to be a big one on date night.
Just need to find the right date…
Israel usually censors such stories. Here is one that got through. The “technical error” they refer to was censoring with a black overlay in the PDF, just like the Calipari report.
Last week I was wondering which uni would be the first to agree with protesters and divest from Israel. It looks like that honor went to Brown Uni which divested on Monday.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/brown-university-divestment-vote-encampment/
I had to search for it, tho…
Pitzer was the first. They have been campaigning for years and got it through maybe 3 weeks ago.
It may have spurred on both the tent protests on other campuses and led to the heavy handed repression. Pomona College (which is also part of the cluster of colleges that share physical plants and classes with Pitzer and have a joint sports program) students had tried to take over an administrative building shortly afterwards with similar demands and were met with pretty heavy handed police repression.
Evergreen State (Rachel Corrie’s school) has also announced divestment plans.
Brown’s first move within the Ivies makes sense. I’m not aware strong MIC ties or ties to Israel. One of their Palestinian students was paralyzed by a hate attack for wearing a keffiyeh.
Brown is looking at Columbia and thinking “Who’s going to send their kids to a school who sicks the cops on their students?”.
It’s not the American students as much but the international students who warrant watching. Current US propaganda is pushing towards an inevitable attack. Then watch out.
Good point because international students pay full fare.
Unless they’re Israeli, in which case Columbia gives need blind grants package of about $60K to such students, all of whom are Jewish despite Israel having about 2 million Palestinian ‘citizens’.
Columbia typically caps its grants package at about $35K per year based on need.
I did not know that. Damn.
In addition to the discrimination and genocide, I wonder if Ukraine and Gaza had also dinted American prestige in terms of perceived power. A lot of rich foreigners are sending their kids to American schools because they perceived the US as ‘the best’. But if we can’t produce enough weapons for Ukraine, can’t produce a single non-embarrassing high profile politician, can’t keep the homeless off our streets, then is it worth paying $400,000 USD for a four year degree here?
Probably the thinking will be not on the worth of the degree, but if the connections will still be worthy in the turbulent future…
America still has plenty of soft power around the world, don’t worry.
They could be making those connections in Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran. And those connections may be much more useful than future EU English speaker or Raytheon PowerPoint presenter.
‘Soft power’ is mostly optics, so it can switch on and off very quickly. Really nothing in the last 5 years hurt America’s brand more than seeing American homeless encampments. But it’s possible that the soft power of American freedom and democracy just got fully killed by images of police thugs at Columbia, Emory, IU, and UCLA.
And just wait until the world findsout that Hollywood is a hotbed of Zionists who donate to violent settler groups and funded the UCLA ‘counterprotesters’.
When rich families around the world stop sending their kids to Yale or Stanford, then we’ll see.
I thought rich Asian kids go to Stanford because it lets them drop classes anytime before final exams. It’s *much* harder to get into any first tier Chinese universities and presumably TokyoU or Seoul National University.
Had a friend who went into Yale as a pro-Palestinian socialist Jew. She always emphasized that it is ‘The Yale Corporation’.
I think you will find that a Stanford degree will still open a lot more doors than a degree from any Asian U.
There is a reason that foreign students’ parents willingly pay full freight.
By the same token, you don’t see westerners flocking to Asian universities.
I’m not denying that attending a high prestige Western University has been good for networking, especially for students who always intended to stay in the West or work in Western companies after graduation. I’m saying that the value of this benefit is now changing and may be quite different in 5-10 years.
Furthermore, a lot of these overseas students aren’t necessarily coming from billionaire or centimillionaire families, but simply have sufficient savings and resources to support one or two promising children through western education. They may not make those kinds of financial sacrifices once the benefit decreases.
The curriculum in Asian universities would be too hard for most of them and 95% of them can’t pick up the language to a sufficiently proficient level. And the weather really sucks in most Asian cities. Still, if I was a student today, those offers of free schooling from Shiraz and Mashhad universities would look pretty tempting for someone who always admired Persian culture and Persian people.
Just realized that the last para above makes no sense without clarifying that I was talking about Western students flocking to Asian schools. While I could see it work for people who are genuinely excited about Eastern culture and good at languages, it’s simply too hard for most Western students including most diaspora kids who might go to Mandarin class once a week and know some basic phrases in their parents’ or grandparents’ dialect at home.
One of my clients offers services to prep Chinese kids for entry into Harvard/Stanford/Yale or any other decent American/Canadian universities. Their parents are willing to fork out huge money over 3-4 years because they know that their children will not get a place in Tsinghua and Peking U, and so would rather send them overseas than see them going to local universities that rank below the tenth place.
You would think that. But the richest schools have basically all turned into PE funds with the annoyance (due to their stupid charter) of having to teach students. The alumni money is nice but really they only need to catch a few whales and they can compensate by licensing their brands for hospital systems, sports TV revenue, online extension classes, EMBA courses in foreign countries and such.
Maybe Columbia will shed its pretense of teaching students directly and just get a nice licensing fee (‘overhead’) for foreign school OEMs churning out ‘Columbia’ graduates.
Yes, and PE needs to be put to the curb. Will this be the end of the current American university model?
I think we’re hitting that no matter what. American university education has in 40 years from something people can work off with summer jobs and maybe 10 hours per week at a bookstore, to costing more than the average pre-tax household income. Meanwhile there’s been a shift from tenured faculty to using grad students and adjuncts to teach most of the courses, while the full profs are on a grants getting and publication treadmill. The students are increasingly channeled to pre-professional tracks where they’re just there to pick up a credential. They used to at least teach the kids how to think and write, but now it’s not clear they offer even that.
Online courses and degrees have increasingly become massive cash cows for brand name and no name schools alike. Meanwhile, things like MIT OpenCourse and YouTube offer far superior pedagogy than the vast majority of college courses.
I think that the future is some kind of low cost (I would prefer completely free to students and government subsidized) online credentialing process where students are test to ensure they did the coursework and can understand the material, and maybe instructors will be paid based on their teaching ability. This is obviously harder for engineering and the sciences, but perhaps that field will move more into simulations at the undergraduate level. Maybe we can all do more individual courses throughout our lives as needed.
I’m hoping for a return of apprenticeships and guilds.
Me too. Everything, or even most things, done through screens is absolutely frightening to me.
online credentialing process where students are test to ensure they did the coursework and can understand the material
All online? All coursework and the teacher-student relationship happens through the medium of a glowing screen the majority of the time?
that field will move more into simulations
This techno language is so off-putting to me. The world has passed me by.
Columbia has always had a very close relationship with government. Many highly ranked officials and former officials in the White House hail from there, or have connections there, and it’s also one of the most welcoming to those exiting via the revolving door.
The current repressive actions arguably form an important part of the curriculum there: if you want to remain well connected and on the right side of power, there are lines you don’t cross, and if you break that rule the gloves come off.
For those that learn the lesson and want to enter politics, it’ll also be a useful resume filler down the road. They can talk emotionally about their experience during the Gaza protests and everything it taught them about standing up for what you believe in, while signing off on a round of drone strike assassinations or funding for the latest warlord of convenience in the Middle East.
Not the first time that Brown Uni has shown good judgment. It is where Mark Blyth teaches. :)
That isn’t wasn’t I read. The protesters got a vote on divestment which hasn’t happened yet. Is a vote scheduled at a date and time?
Yes, to quote my AI, ““The university has not endorsed the divestment proposal,” Mr. Clark, the Brown spokesman, said in a statement. “Whether it’s for or against divestment, the vote will bring clarity to an issue that is of longstanding interest to many members of our community.””, from the Times. Never the less, establishing a formal discussion is progress. People will have to go on record.
Yeah, this was covered in last night’s water cooler. Brown agreed to a vote in October. They haven’t divested a thing.
Brown is stalling for time. Smart move on the university’s part.
Buy off protesters with half-measures and vague promises of possible future action that may never be fulfilled.
Per several commenters, I was incorrectly misled by headlines, should have done further due diligence. Technically, Brown hasn’t divested (yet), the admin agreed to put it to a corporate vote and on having achieved that the students took down their tents pending the outcome. So as several have correctly observed, the uni hasn’t actually divested yet, it will be put to a vote. Thank you to Craig H, mrsyk and Dr John Carpenter for pointing this out, I missed yesterday’s Water Cooler discussion around it. Sorry for jumping the gun.
Hey hope springs eternal. It’d be nice if they had divested rather than sell them a vote months from now, if it even happens.
The Establishment are very good at these types of games. Naturally, if the protests really were directed by an outside power, they would have been directed not to let themselves be bought off so easily.
Maidan provides a prime example. Yanukovich tried all those things, but the CIA had other plans and wasn’t going to play fair.
I thought Evergreen U in WA was the first.
That Arnuad Bernaud twitter excerpt from the documentary Finding the Money is priceless. Some days everything seems so hopeless but to see Jared Bernstein floundering to answer the question “why borrow money when we print it” is a perfect example of the naked emperor. I see that it is to be officially released today on May 3rd. I do not have access to Apple+ streams but hope to see and hear more excerpts from it. Those who live in NY, DC, LA, SF, and Portland will be able to attend special showings according the their Website Finding The Money. It loads slowly, possibly from much interest?
I agree with what you say. But to tell you the truth, when I was watching that clip, I did wonder if he had been at the receiving end of multiple Covid infections. It would explain a lot.
I’m with you, Rev. My glee at his floundering was tempered by that thought, and then I began to wonder how widespread cognitive deficits like that are among our already ideologically-addled elites. The way to cover being muddled is to, in Dubya’s words, be a Decider, to fall back on more primitive problem definitions. Boom.
I got my family blogging age wrong to a clinician last year. On particularly bad days my Long COVID makes me wonder “is this what certain forms of dementia feel like?”
I’ve noticed multiple YouTubers make mistakes that never would have been made or make it through editing pre-2020. Just like the mysterious rise in alopecia post 2020 I am noticing a bunch of potential neurological issues among people I know or see online. Anecdata I know but….
The circular rhetoric in the clip reminded me of Kamala on her best days.
With the Janet Yellen quote earlier this week about how amazing the consumers are continuing to spend on a split screen with the Starbucks implosion, we are just being treated to a feast of blabbering boobs.
I have never felt so concerned in my life that the country is in the hands of complete morons. I hear a lot from the Biden supporters “Trump just cannot win, why, he is totally the far worse of two evils”. I am learning in real time the clinical signs and symptoms of cult members. Most if not all of them are members of our professions and managerial class. I wonder if they know how much such statements are giving their listeners a huge insight into their IQ? I certainly do not trust in the intellectual rigor of many if not most of my own colleagues the way I did.
Your concluding sentence made me think of the Dunning–Kruger effect, which I first learned about from a NC link.
…a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities…the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
As for Yellen and Bernstein, if their talk is not an insight into their IQ – for they are certainly smart enough in educational terms to earn a PhD and rise through the bureaucratic ranks – then an insight into their character and belief systems. Shorter, are they really this idiotic or are they “cult” (neoliberal) members who need better improv acting skills when lying to the public? / ;)
They fit into that esteemed class that chants:
We know it works in theory, but does it work in practice?
Maybe we can run some tests on the lab rats to find out.
Which test are they on now and when and how does it end?
Taleb “IYIs”, intellectual, yet idiots.
Lets not forget Economist Thomas John Sargent
“I especially love the way this Nobel laureate “explains” rational expectations:
There are so many people out there, and it is so difficult to know how each one of them thinks about the future. So let’s just assume they think the same. Problem solved.
And that absolute nonsense reasoning rendered this guy a ‘Nobel prize’ in economics!”
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/?s=Thomas+John+Sargent+
Just insane – o to watch these pole turtles assert with authority yet per Sargent say they won’t change because they ***believe*** or cannot accept anything other than what they think e.g. they choose an ex ante perspective and that is it …..
Sorry just have to add … best bit is when he says some of the things MMT says are confusing ….
Out of all the Monetary camps past and present MMT is still the only one that took the time to ***Describe*** sovereign currency after leaving the gold/hard standard. Zero Ideology, Zero Ego, Zero ex ante historical white washing, it has been attacked from the very beginning because it threatens the ideological agenda of some powerful people and how they want to shape society for their self serving needs …
I’m left wondering if it’s not so much the competence of our PMC class that caused so many problems but it’s composition.
The change in composition (over the past 25+ years) is the substitution of experience for credentials.
Managers who rose from the factory floor to the commanding heights (who knew what had been tried before and failed) were replaced by fast tracked university graduates with the latest theories, and a god given superiority, all because of a piece of paper.
How few are the businesses nowadays that still promote from within?
Does not look like cognitive deficit to me. Just a shill steeped in a bullshit narrative of fractional reserve banking, Fed looting and the rest of the financialist dog crap, floundering to construct, on the fly with a camera rolling, some shit to explain the inexplicable. Why do “we” have to issue bonds that pay interest to banks, etc. when “we” can just print as much as is needed? Uh… “but we issue bonds,” QED. Pure “assume a can opener” realism.
Mending Wall
BY ROBERT FROST
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
I’m reminded of Playboy interviews where interviewees let their guard down. My thought is Bernstein believes this doc is a joke and at the same time hasn’t been asked a real question since his undergrad days when he took a non econ class.
At a DC cocktail party, he can just go “oh I hear you’ve been talking to comrade sanders.” When he had to answer a question formed by someone with IQ easily triple of the morning Joe gang’s collective score, he can’t function having spent his life steeped I DC parties and economics propaganda.
This is also my impression, although cognitive decline is also possible. He has probably never had to consider or answer basic economic questions and owes his position to the influence of good schools and political donations. I wonder what the documentary is about and what slant it takes towards MMT. I would like to read Dr. Michael Hudson’s take on it as it’s unlikely I will see it anytime soon.
Same. Was already thinking of Tony Blair cuz he’s been in the news lately so this song back in my head.
https://youtu.be/nUtikPtdT-s?si=yrmrK6osF51dxvop://
That founding reminds me of the stumbling at the 2 minute mark. (Blair being asked about the Bloomberg group and accidentally telling the truth and then trying to cover.)
(Musician Martin Noakes is a talented but troubled man. He may be full Q or worse by now.)
Its the Stephanie Kelton one. My guess is Bernstein showed up to show the kids about Bidenomics!
With the exception of Price/Quantity the subject of “money” is not a subject studied by the Economics profession.
Oh, I forgot…there is Money and Banking…fractional cash.
> Jared Bernstein floundering to answer the question
I find it a bit odd that JB doesn’t immediately default to the standard reply that “printing is inflationary.” It’s as if he knows that that answer is not a good answer, so he doesn’t deploy it, but he doesn’t have a convincing alternative explanation.
FWIW, my understanding of the answer is that the primary function within current arrangements of Treasury bond issuance is not to “obtain money”, but to soak up reserves in the banking system (that are created by ongoing Federal spending) in order to allow the Central Bank to control the short-term interest rate. If there are excess reserves in the banking system, the overnight interbank rate will fall to zero as banks compete to realize some return on their excess reserves (though it should be noted that at some point after the GFC, the Fed devised an alternative policy, direct payment of interest on bank reserves, that can be used to control the overnight interbank rate).
That isn’t hard to understand or say. Maybe the CEA has Long COVID.
The Bank of England sent out a bulletin that explains in detail how MMT works.
It’s the same reason that the Fed Gov issued bonds during the civil war when the US was issuing greenbacks, which was a true asset backed currency. In theory, the Fed Gov could have kept printing greenbacks and issued no bonds, simply letting the banks and other winners hoard the greenbacks. I think they were smart enough to know two things:
1) they needed to swap bonds for surplus currency, so the hoarders could hoard the bonds instead and at least get a yield
2) by swapping bonds for currency, that allowed them to put a lid on how much greenbacks they were printing into the economy. There was a lid on the “float”.
In both cases, it reinforced the value of the currency.
The Union issued around 25 million Troy ounces of monetized gold coins during the Civil War, compared to absolutely nothing by the Confederacy.
I’ve seen analysis that the Lincoln Greenback pretty much held par with gold during the civil war (whatever the par rate was declared back then). Even to when the Lincoln Greenbacks were retired out of the economy.
I have no idea whether and how that correlated with gold coins coming to market into the economy.
The value of a Greenback $ versus a CSA $ waxed and waned, with the early advantage to the Johnny Rebs and then as they started going downhill, so did their money, backed by nothing.
It was backed by the state and then that went poof and so did the currency mate, same story throughout history regardless of being backed by some metal, some thought was worth more than others regardless of utility …
The story of the greenback is eternally fresh. If you read Spaulding’s account, mostly lifted from The Congressional Record, you’ll recognize all the personalities, although the names continually evolve.
And to finish that thinking, we don’t have an asset-based currency like the greenback. So the Fed Gov is not printing the currency. The Fed Gov has to “acquire” the currency. And there’s only two options: taxes and issuing bonds. At least the Fed Gov has the ability to print bonds.
As far as printing the currency is concerned, that occurs in the private marketplace. The “float” in that case is a function of the private sector going deeper into debt, essentially naked shorting the currency into existence. This happens in the US banking system and also the shadow banking system – the point being it’s outside of the control of the Fed Reserve, since the Fed Reserve only manages the reserves of the US banks.
As long as there’s enough currency float for the Fed Gov to swap expiring bonds for new bonds (at either higher or lower interest) and for the Fed Gov to issue bonds to cover a bow wave of increased spending not funded by a corresponding bow wave of taxes, then the Fed Gov can keep this going in perpetuity.
Thanks for these explanations of the money / bond issue.
I have to disagree. The printing presses at the several mints roll day and night. “The currency” is the notes and bills that most people call “cash.” The government does not “acquire” the currency through taxes and bonds. It takes currency out of circulation through taxes and bonds.
A currency does not have to be asset-backed to have purchasing power. That comes entirely from the faith of the people using the currency. Actually, that’s also true of asset-backed currencies. Why does gold have a high price? Because of the faith of the people who love gold.
Additionally the gold market is a narrow pipe and only a few have the ability to buy it in quantity, everyone else is just churn seeking unearned profit/yield or fear based. Not really a great social asset which assists in getting humanity past all the dramas these days …
Those printing presses are printing the equivalent of M0. Any thoughts on M2 or M3?
Basically the central bank thinking, at least politically, has changed little since the founding of the Bank of England.
Merchant gold in, bank notes out.
Audit that merchant and other gold, as so many have requested. Then see how many countries got antsy for repatriation and have voted with their feet. So many that could, did. Others on the wrong side experienced some friction in the system.
The gold is a distraction.
Banking has not worked that way for ages, if ever.
New money today is created each time a credit card is swiped, each time a mortgage is approved, etc etc etc.
But the politicians still think and act as if there is some merchant lent/deposited gold at the basis of it all. And that is why they fret over the national debt, while the cumulative private debt, that they blatantly ignore as just a transfer from savers to debtors, is what is bleeding the households, and thus the overall economy, dry.
I understand the credit creation process, and am looking at the national interests that signal discomfort with the current regimes in the US and UK. Declining trust in those, and others supporting international cooperation, is a crude but effective lever to force recognition.
“How to tell good industrial policy from bad” Gillian Tett, FT
I’m probably going to read this later, but expectations are low. This is the FT based out of the hyper-financialized UK now deciding to explain how to tell good industrial policy from bad.
Gillian Tett is pretty good.
Soros really does need to invest in companies that make tents in varied colors :)
Jared Bernstein clip: His stammering response could also be interpreted as someone trying NOT to reveal something. He acts like he doesn’t understand the question.
The dude: well like, the government prints money, and like, people borrow money, man. It’s really pretty simple. And like hey at least I’m housebroken, man.
JB: “the govt definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money … by selling bonds …:”
He’s plainly confusing “lending” (by Treasury bond purchasers) with “borrowing” (by Treasury through its bond issuance). Later he works out that it’s the non-govt sector that “lends” to the govt by purchasing govt bonds.
IMO he seems a bit confused; it takes an IMO unreasonable amount of time to work out the right words.
I am impressed that he didn’t deploy the “printing is inflationary” trope, as that is a standard anti-MMT line. Maybe that line is wearing thin even among its partisans.
“In Ukraine war, China is helping tilt momentum in Russia’s favor, top U.S. spy says”
Ex-torturess Avril Haines doing her part to create the legend that the Ukraine would have beat Russia but darn it, China provided the Russians with all the gear that they needed to turn the war their way. Expect to hear this a lot in the coming months, especially if the Ukraine collapses. They have to say this or else people will say that it was the Neocons that actually caused this disaster and taking responsibility for their actions has never been a trait of Neocons. But then she goes one further. She states that if the US decides to sanction China, that China will not be in a position to retaliate because of the state of their economy. With her testimony, she is egging the Biden regime on to placing more severe sanctions on China to show them who is the boss. Yeah, let’s see how that works out, especially in a election year.
No, the Ukraine “situation” has nothing to do with the idea that western weapons are produced for profits, that NATO devised ‘order of battle’ for the “counteroffensive” was woefully inadequate, that long lines of supply are challenging, that NATO propaganda is fiction……
What would it look like if China were openly supporting the Russian SMO?
Losers need a scapegoat.
I believe it was John Kennnedy that said,” Victory has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.”
Something like that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco I think. I think it’ll be the blame game of the century after Ukraine goes down completely.
>The Canadian State Is Euthanizing Its Poor and Disabled-Jacobin
I clicked on the story and thought I’d have a look around since the only time I visit Jacobin these days is when NC links to an article. I didn’t find one story on the Campus protests. Maybe I didn’t rummage around enough. I would have thought that this is in the Magazine’s bailiwick. Is the magazine Zionist controlled?
I’m glad they are concerned about the poor and disabled, I’m more concerned right at the moment about Israel killing the poor and the disabled and the country of my citizenship abetting and funding the killing. I’m concerned about the implications of HR6090 on my 1st Amendment rights.
Why is Jacobin not all over the Student protest?
Probably the same reason that The Real News Network just kicked Chris Hedges off. None of these alt media outfits, except for the tiniest ones like Mintpress News (who are visibly struggling and it hurts me to see them have to focus so much on fund raising to stay afloat rather than focus on news coverage) and one person shops like Caitlin Johnstone, are heavily reliant on deep pocketed funders to make their ends meet.
Message from Chris Hedges regarding Real News.
https://twitter.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1786174508434403483
The people who want the story to be that the Palestinians are the evil genocidaires with the Israeli Jews as the always and ever genocided innocents are putting pressure onto the writers and publishers who dare to challenge it. There are any number of ways to do so.
The Real News was threatened with losing their tax free status after Chris Hedges called out Genocidaire-in-Chief Joe Biden. Honestly, I am glad that I did not vote for that monstrous man.
Here you go. Report by Branko Marcetic.
Thanks for the link, it took me to Jacobin and after digging in a little more, I think you meant to link to below article.
What is curious about the article is it doesn’t talk about what the students are protesting against, genocide in gaza. It predictably brings it back to to “union organization” and how the students can learn from “effective mass movement.” Like mandatory vaccination, when I lost all respect for Jacobin, I think the magazine is stuck in a time warp and has lost credibility with erstwhile “Leftist” like myself.
The current student protest wave is a reminder that the shop floor isn’t the only important site of struggles for social justice, as the bravery and courage of student activists facing immense repression has breathed new life into the movement for Palestinian liberation. But to build an effective mass movement for Palestine, we’ll need strategic leverage. We can start with the unions.
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/labor-palestine-student-protest-solidarity
“Why is Jacobin not all over the Student protest?”
Because when push comes to shove, they will fall in line and dutifully vote a straight Team D ticket.
Why the lack of concern for the euthanizing or more accurately the murder of vulnerable Canadians? Surely, we can walk and chew gum at the same time?
I can bloviate on eugenics for a long time, but aside from rare outliers like the occasional newly born ill infants in the United States, I know of no official policy for murder anywhere until the Nazis started their Aktion T4 program. I can mention the legal sterilization in large numbers was done from about 1900 to the 1970s of the poor, disabled, and of felons in the United States and continues illegally and surreptitiously through today, but not sanctioned murder. Unlike civilized Canada. I guess that they got enthusiastic.
Aside from knowing that there was strong support for eugenics in Canada during the Twentieth Century, I really do not know much about Canada’s efforts because I have focused on America and Germany. They were the biggest supporters and practitioners of it after all. I should rectify that lack.
And again, we are talking about the state murdering the most vulnerable people among us. You best damn well should be concerned for you, your family, friends, and neighbors as they
mightwill be next. The number of disabled people of working age has increased over 25% in the past decade after all. If they will not pay for their medical care, what do you think will be done? And no, saying that it is only the Canadians is beyond an excuse. What the United States does, so does Canada, and the reverse is true as well.Measuring the Doughnut–
This study seeks to determine whether Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut” is achievable at projected population levels and current technology. Raworth takes the inner ring of the “doughnut” as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member states in 2015 with the outer ring established by Rockstrom’s, et al. 9 Planetary Boundaries. The doughnut measuring study does not use the sustainable development goals but instead uses a three-level low, basic and high universal consumption calculation to measure the inner ring.
Spoiler alert: it is possible to “live within the doughnut” according to this study with a world population of 10.4 billion if the following are true:
1) ALL live at the low consumption level (includes a vegan diet) that provides basic needs but no luxuries;
2) a complete shift away from fossil fuels as a power source is accomplished;
3) agriculture is transformed from an energy consuming, pollution spewing process to a more labor intensive farming using permaculture, food forests, etc.
This is exactly the kind of study we should be doing to determine how we can get to Limits to Growth’s Stabilized World option that avoid biosphere overshoot and civilizational collapse. As the study itself points out, the possibility of “living in the doughnut” does not tell us how to transition from Business as Usual to a Stabilized World. That very substantial challenge is currently being modeled by Julia Steinberger, Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis.
The world is well past the crisis point. Since we have waited so long to address our Overshoot problem, it now requires considerable sacrifice and lots of hard, often physical work to salvage some sort of livable planet from the mess we have made by growing both population and consumption well past reasonable limits. Degrowth is coming. The only question is whether we will do it in a somewhat controlled and just fashion or will we continue with Business as Usual until food and other production crashes and brings civilization down with it.
The study is lengthy, but it’s an eye-opening and sobering read.
Basic problem is always “YOU need to do this sacrifice, I have needs!”
Which invariably becomes the powerful imposing sacrifice on the weak…
via “emergency” bipartisan legislation. Happening in real time on the Gaza protest camps.
Good morning HMP. Sobering and probably a day late and a dollar short.
Ya, but a guy can dream. That does seem the only liveable option and therefore won’t happen.
Cue the resource wars of extermination.
>Here’s What Ukraine Needs in Missiles, Shells, and Troops to Win. It’s Completely Doable RAND
Estonian paper proposes is feasible, under the right conditions…But the path to victory is far more costly
Yeah! And under the “right conditions” I could be king of the world. Estonia? They have less people than a large city in the U.S., ~1.5M. Why is Rand pushing an “Estonian Plan?” Victory? What would that look like, a charred cinder of a planet smoldering in radioactive fallout? The delusional head space these decaying oligarchs live in is hard for me to fathom.
After reading that, I want some of the coke they’re buying in the parking lot at the RAND building.
Just coke? I would add acid or mushrooms.
RAND brand runs rampant on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, two programs that they contribute to as both major funder and as “expert opinion” source. Tune in if you like this sort of MIC driven fantasy narrative, but put your hot beverage down first.
When I see RAND featured more prominently, I think late-stage desperation and excuses. Then brace for some dysfunctional policy solutions.
RAND is doing such a good job at bringing down NATO and the Imperial west. Keep up the good work, I say.
Because the sociopaths who run the West would get us all killed rather than take the loss in Ukraine.
Note the change in messaging over the last few months.
To get a job at RAND nowadays obviously demands a negative IQ and a belief in fairies
The RAND piece on what’s needed to “win” in Ukraine is delusional, since it makes zero mention of how many tanks, IFVs, and howitzers are needed for those minimum 14-21 brigades. Likely because they don’t exist, and can’t, in any reasonable amount of time. And all those missiles are useless if you don’t have mobile and protected troops underneath them to secure your gains.
Sure, but that’s only if you insist on reading the words as they are written. The ‘win’ RAND is pushing for is providing justification for continuing $50B tranches of funding for our defense industry. Notice how they focus on the “one” factor (air defense missiles) that are a) achievable and b) don’t require much in the way of manpower. This is just a kayfabe talking point generator that congress critters can wave about to justify themselves to their voters.
They have not consulted with that Charap fellow from RAND…
They substitute tanks for think tanks, the fools.
>In Ukraine war, China is helping tilt momentum in Russia’s favor, top U.S. spy says NBC
They just can’t let it go. Propaganda 101, if your gonna lie, lie big and repeat, repeat, repeat…
Russia also has remained focused on trying to influence and interfere with America’s elections, she said. Asked by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, if there were signs of increased activity by Russia aimed at the November election, Haines said “We continue to see them focused on this and increasingly so.”
Gawd, when will one reporter finally ask, what is your evidence of this meddling?
If a reporter actually asked such a question, then they would find that by the time that they got back to their office that their stuff would have been cleared from their desk into a cardboard box which would be sitting between two security guards waiting to escort them out of the building.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/business/media/campus-protests-russia-china-iran-us.html
May 2, 2024
Campus Protests Give Russia, China and Iran Fuel to Exploit U.S. Divide
America’s adversaries have mounted online campaigns to amplify the social and political conflicts over Gaza flaring at universities, researchers say.
By Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu
An article on a fake online news outlet that Meta has linked to Russia’s information operations attributed the clashes unfolding on American college campuses to the failures of the Biden administration. A newspaper controlled by the Communist Party of China said the police crackdowns exposed the “double standards and hypocrisy” in the United States when it comes to free speech…
The ears on the cat in today’s Antidote du jour are certainly distinctive so I went digging into the via link to discover that it is a American Curl. Remarkably, ‘The first American Curls appeared as strays on the doorstep of the Rugas in Lakewood, California in June 1981. The black female, named Shulamith, gave birth to a litter of cats with the same curled ears, and so became the ancestor of all American Curls today’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Curl
The British Shorthair also has a similar history from going to back alley cat to a popular breed-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Shorthair
One wonders why the Politico piece is titled “Ukraine is ready for a just peace” rather than “Ukrainian leadership ready to fight to the last Ukrainian !” given that the money quote is “But now, he said, there’s no compromise solution to this war. “We have reached a point where you can no longer decide to sit down and negotiate. Why ? Because this war isn’t about territory of Ukraine. This is a war about the rules under which you and we will live, and Russia will live.””
Seems the NATO position is ‘no country has the right to stand up to the death of a thousand cuts’ of a NATO puppet moving US Navy Aegis vertical launchers into east Donbas!
In his latest book Glenn Diesen quotes a few good theories and opinions on how a hegemon eventually breaks all the laws and agreements – that is the nature of a hegemon – and all it finally has left is rules and values to stand up for.
>A World of Pure Imagination The Gauntlet
My first thought was that this would have been a better title for the Rand article.
What the author writes below with respect to climate change is just as applicable to political change. We know the Constitution is being battered from the National Security State’s spying on citizens, suspension of Habeas Corpus after the passage of the Patriot Act, to the most recent attempt to suborn the 1s Amendment via HR609O.
To me this interaction is a microcosm of the social attitude of climate denial that makes it impossible for us to properly address climate change. My friend grew up as a liberal Democrat, “believes” in climate change, yet when thinking about her own future, the climate catastrophe is not in the picture. It will affect others, surely, but it won’t impinge on our own lives.
“Rutgers students counter anti-Israel agitators on campus by waving American flag, chanting ‘USA! USA!'”
Those Rutgers students nailed the optics exactly. They show themselves to be patriotic Americans while the group opposing them are waving the flag of an actual foreign country. And that is never a good look for the oppo – ever.
Started to watch a video of a student encampment at Sydney Uni here in Oz when wouldn’t you know it, this sky news started to interview a Zionist Karen who tried to harass those students. She was so brave, don’tcha know for braving all the antisemitism that was never there. She was not even part of the uni but just wandered in wrapped in an Israeli flag to get a reaction. There might have been a student or two talking to her but all the other people surrounding her were professional photographers with huge lenses. I see on the net that somebody has made a compilation video of all these Zionist Karens. They should add her.
Wouldn’t ‘Ruth Less’ be a better moniker for a Zionist Karen?
Her elder sister, Queen Polly Esther would like a word, when she returns from Persia.
Teff Lona maybe?!
“I see on the net that somebody has made a compilation video of all these Zionist Karens. They should add her.”
It all sounds like a situation for South Park to handle.
Oh God, please yes.
We need to compile a list of all the people to criminally charge and more importantly, civilly sue into bankruptcy and chase out of their institutionally important positions where they’re allowed to tip the balance in favor of their Zionist regime. Control of money and institutions is a necessary step to wrestle actual control back to the people.
But I also want them to suffer horribly, and the best way to do that is by taking away the source of their control.
I am not sure about the legal situation in North America, but if you try to set up an organization to do that in Europe, you might run afoul laws regulating the constitution of databases with personal information.
Meaning: you might have have to declare the database to an official body, justify its existence, and allow people about whom you are compiling information to access the information, demand to have it corrected or possibly deleted. With fines if you do not comply with regulations. All depending on the purpose of the database, the kind of information in it, how it is used, and who can access it.
Basically: checking with a lawyer first would be recommended.
I am not stating this to discourage you — but life is indeed very difficult for activists resorting to non-violent means.
Frank Zappa’s Jewish Princess seems almost quaint at this point. Spin Frank, spin.
That is absolutely the correct framing that the kids should take. What is happening in Gaza is a crime against humanity, but the specific demands have always been asking *our* government (and schools) to stop giving money and support to the genocidal Israel in contradiction of the ICJ ruling. While solidarity with Palestinians is important, this position is primarily about our rights as sovereign citizens of our countries.
Anyone who is against legitimate protest is literally a foreign agent working for Israel, to abrogate the rights of Western citizens. Any government official who takes this position is acting in sedition. This needs to be used to unite everybody and persuade cops and military and local governments to stand side, when the time comes.
It may be time to show up at the counter protesters side with signs that read;
“I Support Israel and Their Mass Murder”
Or maybe;
“I Guess I Have To Support This Mass Murder Now”
Or
“Israel is just better at …”
A t-shirt may suffice.
Tactics 101 is to message your disgust with USAgov policies by waving the biggest USA flag you can find amidst the protest group, maybe augmented by sign My Flag My Rights. Watch your counter-opposition’s heads explode in confusion.
Sounds like an outside agitator.
Good Links today. Liked the Stiglitz.
Re the students I see Trump has said they all should be chased out–maybe sent to military school the way he was and become a brave soldier like him oh wait.
Think I’m going to vote for Stein as I have in the past.
PCR testing. utube, ~11 minutes.
COVID Diagnosis with PCR | Misinterpreting results | Cycle threshold explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_1Z8cSXI-Q
When I read there are fragments – fragments of flu virus in cows’ milk it doesn’t alarm me. But that’s just me.
heh heh, those fragments are so tiny. Never you mind Wuk’s “450,000 vectors”.
450,000 Bessies in a CAFO, 450,000 cows…
…you infect one with bird flu, then 450,000 cows are culled
“culled”. Followed by, see rising hamburger prices in the grocery stores. Beef shortage. Win-win or something. / heh
On the backroads to Highway 180 & KIngs Canyon there is the infrastructure in place for 100,000 cows, fences, chutes, barns-the gamut. Most of it dates from the 1940′-50’s, and i’ve never seen more than 100 cows in total in say a 30 mile drive.
You can only grass feed em’ for about half the year and then feed becomes really pricey, thus the cow rapture in the foothills~
Wait… what… 100 cows vs 450,000 cows/head of livestock? I’m confused. / ;)
450k dairy cows and 100 range cattle
Don’t they need to get aerosolized and inhaled, to enter the body?
The digestive tube is practically and theoretically outside the body…
Some may recall about 65 years ago the delivery of polio vaccine orally via sugar cubes. Very popular with kids. The polio virus was water borne, so delivery of the inactive virus vaccine orally made sense. As for the avian flu virus fragments in milk, maybe they could act as a serendipitous vaccine? Too good to be true, but wouldn’t it be nice…
Columbia becomes third Latin American nation to cut diplomatic ties with Isr. , from Foreign Policy:
Bogotá Cuts Ties With Israel Over ‘Genocidal’ War in Gaza
Colombia is the third Latin American nation to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel since the Israel-Hamas war began.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/02/colombia-israel-diplomatic-ties-gustavo-petro-gaza/
“The Canadian State Is Euthanizing Its Poor and Disabled”
It would be one thing if people were deciding to take up this option for themselves. But I have read of government workers aggressively pushing this option on people and I only became aware of this when I read of this Canadian vet that was injured & returned home and you had these medical goons trying to push her into making her final exit.
The neoliberal cult sees human beings as reduced to nothing more than homo economicus, human beings reduced to an economic function needing management by the managerial class, the PMCs. That Canadian vet became a state cost, therefore…. This is an insane ideology this neoliberalism. Insane. Inhuman. And it’s running the show at the WEF and in most Western countries right now. / my 2 cents (The rest of the world thinks the West has become “strange.”)
I’m probably being too harsh of the Canadian version of neoliberal “there is no alternative” ideology. After all, they are sending the army door-to-door in a small town to conduct health and welfare checks. That’s a good thing, right? / ;)
From Rebel news:
Canadian military to conduct door-to-door wellness checks in small Ontario town
Soldiers will be door-knocking in the small town of Goderich this coming weekend to simulate ‘wellness checks’ on the residents.
https://www.rebelnews.com/canadian_military_to_conduct_door_to_door_wellness_checks_in_small_ontario_town
I agree with the article’s argument that medically assisted suicide in a neoliberal capitalist states is deeply problematic, since it pushes individuals to “escape” into death because of inadequate support and care from the society.
Yet in my personal experience — a family member passed away in a medically assisted suicide — I believe, this should nonetheless be an option in extremely selective cases. My family member was suffering from ALS (which is also mentioned in the article), yet what was not mentioned was the indescribable suffering that a person with ALS has to endure. My family member described the condition as pain all over the body and as being contorted and trapped. In his view, no amount of care could alleviate his suffering. Perhaps some people could accept that but he could not. As a family, we stayed with him during the last year of his life and he was “comfortable” as much as he could be. Nonetheless, he believed it was his time — he did not want to continue to the end, because he knew that in later stages the disease becomes even more painful and he would eventually die when his chest muscles became too weak for him to breathe…
“The clash over whether to commandeer Russia’s frozen assets”
The guys at The Duran were saying a day or two ago that just talking about trying to steal Russia’s money has caused gold to be repatriated from the US and T-Bills to be cashed in. Confidence in the international banking system is now getting wobbly at the thought that the US and the EU can at a whim confiscate the assets of another country on quite flimsy justifications. And all that gold and money is now heading east as the calculation is that China is not crazy enough to do the same thing. They are actual old-fashioned capitalists in the east.
The same weekend the House passed the FISA extention (with new “improvements”) they passed the REPO Act. This report was written before the final vote.
House to vote on what to do with the billions of dollars of frozen Russian government assets
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/house-to-vote-on-what-to-do-with-the-billions-of-dollars-of-frozen-russian-government-assets/ar-AA1nme1r
Meanwhile,
RU, in a tit-for-tat, or “what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander” :
JPMorgan Says Its Russia Assets May Be Seized After Lawsuits in Russia, US
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2024-05-01/jpmorgan-says-its-russia-assets-may-be-seized-after-lawsuits-in-russia-us
The US govt has now officially weaponized the dollar, yet expect the dollar to remain reserve currency forever. If the geniuses running US foreign policy were duck hunters I’d describe their actions as shooting their pants cuffs instead of the ducks. / heh
I’d feel sorry for Goldman Sachs, it’s corporate governance and it’s major stockholders, but they actually have some power over Congress and the President. That they didn’t nip this ludicrous idea in the bud the first time one of the idiots brought it up not to mention use their media time to ridicule it and the people broaching it…well it’s their own fault.
Insularity, aka bubble thinking, taken to absurd levels.
A purported UK newspaper headline from back in the day: “Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off.”
The Boston Review piece on student activism was very good, but it left out some important Class War history and behavior on the part of universities at the turn of the 20th century and more recently.
https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2010/09/michael-fiorillo-at-nyc-educator-blog.html
Two things killed the hobbyist web, security and liability.
Security went from some scriptkiddie poking around to organized for profit hijackings and extorsions.
Liability went from ISPs providing hosting services as part of the service, to even Google nuking everything you upload at the push of an automated message from the MAFIAA. While FBI redirecting domains to a scary looking boilerplate message. All thanks to that lovely piece of toilet paper known as the DMCA.
Could it be that Johnson is fearing a (tent) color revolution?
Again and again it seems like the western political class is reenacting Macbeth.
Is it just me, or has that dude morphed from Ned Flanders into a Bond villain?
A treacherous bible thumping cretin, as Frank Zappa might have put it.
I keep thinking that one day we’ll get one politician in a position of power who isn’t compromised, blackmailed, or just plain evil.
Not sure it is possible while playing by the rules, because they seem specifically written to make it impossible.
Zappa’s line here suits Johnson to a “T”
Criminal saints with a heavenly mission
A nation enraptured by pure superstition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QGm46YbrU
To quote another one from that excellent album (and I was lucky enough to see that Zappa tour, which I believe was the last he did before he passed away) –
Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk
I posted above about Zappa and now this. Eyebrows required.
Bless his part…
Gotta laugh to keep from crying.
He’s a bit like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. Came in breathing fire & promising to shake things up and before you knew it, she was a loyal daughter of the EU and all in on a war against Russia. Johnson is the same and he may as well join the Democrat party to make it official.
I guess some quiet CIA functionary showed up late one day at his office and informed him of what was at sake for him personally if he rocked the boat too hard.
Hey Critter!
That’s the tent they had at Target. Mystery solved.
…and there’s always that one colour nobody wants that ends up on markdown…
Even more white hot stupid trying to demonize the Columbia protestors – one cop claimed the heavy chains they found after breaking up the building occupation indicated outside professionals must be involved, because no mere student could possibly possess such equipment.
Turns out the chains were bike locks that could be purchased at the campus store – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEHa3chXP2o
They know they are lying. It does not matter, since they know that nobody of influence and authority will question those lies.
Hilarious. I am on a college campus. I have one of those chains: The Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboud It chain. They work. (I’ve lost 3 bike to thieves when using a standard bike lock, which are easily defeated with large bolt cutters I learned. Got tired of that.)
https://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-York-Fahgettaboudit-Chain-1415/dp/B08Q9QQ3KG
Am I a suspect for having a said Fahgettabout It bike chain on campus? / ;)
Kryptonite locks are useless as well. A thief can break them in seconds. I witnessed this in NY – so did the bike owner, who tackled the thief at the traffic light. The NY technique was to use 2 locks of different types, as thieves usually specialized in one type of lock.
Whoa! Tough gang of bike thieves ya got there. Professional even. / ;)
Long ago in Chicago I lost a kryptonite locked bike to thieves with freon.
Not that tough. The owner who tackled the thief and retrieved the bike was a small woman. The thief thought fleeing was better than fighting for the bike.
adding: I suddenly have a much greater appreciation for Bike Snob NYC’s blog posts. / ;)
“Could it be that Johnson is fearing a (tent) color revolution?”
No.
The CIA is not going to topple Biden.
“Again and again it seems like the western political class is reenacting Macbeth.”
Yes, they will go full Reichstag Fire it that is what it takes to keep their perches.
Today’s REIT-wreck du jour is Federal Realty Investment Trust.
It sports a crummy 4% dividend yield, which is about 125 bps less than you could get just putting your cash in ultra-safe 6-month treasuries and rolling them when they mature.
Down 3% on a day when the overall market decided to party like it’s 1999. And pull up a five year chart, kids! Well off its pre-pandemic, ZIRP nation high of $140/share. You’re not even getting paid for the risk your assuming.
Caution: Capital destruction at work!
– ‘Police Arrest Rabbis Near Gaza-Israel Border at a Rally to Highlight Starvation’ – NYT
When I read this headline and its source, it immediately struck me that I couldn’t be sure whether the rabbis were protesting starvation or celebrating it. Could have been either one, though the “police arrest” part provides a broad hint. I guess rabbis protesting starvation policy would be “antisemitic” today.
“Kevin O’Leary warns student protesters are ‘trashing’ job chances by fighting police, vandalizing school” FOX
A good number of students may feel like their job prospects are trashed anyway.
The bigger joke is a two parter. Leary wasn’t likely to hire any of them anyway, but let any one or more of them have a successful entrepreneurial idea that Leary could grab onto and he wouldn’t care if they really were Russian or Palestinian agitators.
He is about as principled as Biden on any given day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-side-effects.html
May 3, 2024
Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?
All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.
She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.
“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch.
The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths. Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects. And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses.
Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600.
Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.
“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added…
But then they move on to the required “safe (mostly, sort of) and effective” mantra. Can’t let the rubes know they’ve been duped (I should know, I was……)
~Student Protests
Meanwhile in Michigan:
No arrests signal ‘hands-off’ approach as tents for Gaza came to 3 Michigan universities
Anybody seen the video of James Carville ranting at young people for not lining up behind Joe Biden? I think that it was the student protests which must have triggered him. By the Due Dissidence guys-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9jjtJYeqIE (15:22 mins) – some language
I don’t know how James Carville started out in life, but when I first saw him in the early ’90s as a Clinton type, he was a weasel (no disrespect to the lovely little animals).
Except for Mother devotees, I can’t imagine how Democratic partisans can actually stomach the guy. He was actively feeding, his wife and Shrub crony, Mary Matalin info on the Kerry camp.
Affection for Carville is a big indicator of how little people pay attention. I could say the same for affection for the Clintons, but Carville should be far easier for people to understand.
He is a paid operative. He used to work for the highest bidder.
He is married to someone who is philosophically opposed to everything he indicated he believed in. And they got together while working on opposition campaigns.She works in their supposed area of expertise more than he does. He has become more of a talking head, commenting on rather than managing campaigns. But rumors are any firewall between him and his wife is nonexistent in reality.
Harder for people, because it requires remembering what Carville is said is how ineffective or flat out wrong his advice usually is.
But he is still trusted by the MSNBC, NYTimes and friends crew.
He on TV. TV man good.
There is old Simpsons where Homer is discredited on tv, and his response is to question, “could tv be wrong?”
People who applaud Carville who aren’t dyed in the wool Mother loyalists are more brain addled than Homer Simpson.
“But he is still trusted by the MSNBC, NYTimes and friends crew.”
He is trusted because he has no principles other than power, and tribal loyalty as a means to power.
Much like the MSNBC, MYTimes and friends crew.
As pointed out on the Trillbillies podcast, if this is all so crucial and dangerous to Carvile, why then did he marry one of the other sides top shooters? How anyone could take this person seriously is beyond me.
an aside about Carville per Wikipedia:
“Beginning in the mid-1990s, Carville worked on a number of election campaigns abroad, including those of Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, during the 2001 general election (in which Blair was comfortably re-elected), and with the Liberal Party of Canada. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Carville
If you’ve wondered why the main UK, US, and CA left of center party election ads and memes sound so much alike, word for word is some cases, there’s your answer. / heh
The Real Scandal of Campus Protest
I was 19 and attending engineering classes at Oklahoma State University when the first Persian Gulf “War” and was the only student protesting in front of the library every day with 2-3 teachers and librarians with my “No Blood for Oil” sign. Oddly enough we were completely ignored by the students and administration. I was really disappointed that not one of my fellow students ever asked us why we were out there holding signs in freezing January weather.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16Twa
January 4, 2020
Labor Force with a disability, * 2010-2024
* Age 16 and over
(Indexed to 2010)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17ENT
January 4, 2020
Labor Force men and women with a disability, * 2010-2024
* Age 16 to 64
(Indexed to 2010)
Just because the disability rates gone up 28% for men and 44% for women in fourteen years…
RAND hasn’t shown this type of dry sense of humor since the days of Hermann Kahn!
“…It’s Totally Doable!
A discussion paper published by the Estonian Ministry of Defense tallied the materiel likely required. Ukraine needs defense against missiles and aircraft most of all: the Estonian plan states that 4,800 anti-air missiles are needed annually. Meeting that number would require the entire annual production of anti-air missiles from the United States (3,600) and the remaining NATO production (estimated at 1,000).
That’s not all—even more air defenses are needed to defend Ukraine’s cities and troops:”
Any time the Lithuanians try to gain ground by letting their batshit top general out of the cellar to say a few words, Estonia casually laps them!
Thanks for the chuckle.
Those two just talk. Latvians are building trenches.
https://t.me/intelslava/58920
Africa
Russian troops enter base housing US military in Niger, US official says
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/russian-troops-enter-base-housing-us-military-niger-us-official-says-2024-05-02/
Sounds like Niger has decided whose “help” they prefer. Hopefully having the Russians next door helps the US troops find the keys to their humvees and they get the hell out of where they are clearly not wanted.
The Jared Bernstein clip. OMGGGG! If the failure of this class is due to corruption and/or incompetence and/or stupidity, I must say that stupidity is quickly overtaking the other two as the primo cause.
Blighty stuff (apologies for thread-jacking). Main section of infamous “red wall” that Boris captured in 2019 is going back to red. East Midlands is about to call victory for Labour in new Mayoralty vote (PA already called it). Traditionally very blue boroughs have gone red.
However all those suburban parliamentary seats forming a “donut” around Nottingham should give Starmer pause for thought. Counting not completed but the combined Tory+Reform counts in these boroughs are beating Labour counts.
If Starmer decimates the Tories at the next general election he will owe Nigel Farage a pint. In more encouraging news, the Liberal Democrats are being hammered. We have long memories around here and it seems that plenty of us won’t forgive them for enabling austerity. Hahaha. Good riddance.
The Greens came THIRD! Wow. They are the only party with some policies based on MMT and some understanding of money (though they ALSO include a load of contradictory nonsense so I voted for them through gritted teeth).
Reform came 4th and the Lib Dems a distant LAST (6th place behind an independent who nobody has heard of). I hope Count Binhead does well in London.
Sometimes there is karma.
The green tents are due to a sale at WalMart, ~30 bucks. Not everyone had one laying around, and these are students, so the cheapest available tents were got. Stupidest time-line, indeed.
I’ve seen quite a few $200 tents in photos of encampments, along with $30 Wal*Mart cheapie models, the latter being the most popular with homeless.
Regarding the demise of Weirton Steel–I didn’t realize that many people were still employed there! At it’s peak, around 14,000 worked for the mill, not to mention associated businesses such as the coal mine, coke plant, oxygen plant, trucking, etc. Weirton Steel supplied city services, utilities, the local hospital, community center and library, and built many of the original houses. The guy who owned the coal mine also owned the local bus company, so once the mill began to collapse, the entire area crumbled, like a thread pulled from a web. My grandfather was a ‘mill man’ and my dad worked there for 40 years. Last time I was there, in 2005, my sister-in- law’s son was happy to be working part-time nights, loading trucks, for sub-minimum wage (legal in WVa). Recently, I heard they were arrested for selling drugs.
“Emmanuel Macron’s urgent message for Europe The Economist”
WWIII is coming, or, if you prefer, it will intensify.
And it doesn’t matter what the Italian premier says. Italy and the rest of NATO (ex US) will be roped in, enthusiastically or not. Because European solidarity or something.
The US will enter at a later date, if a nuclear exchange has not already happened by then.
France has officially sent troops to Ukraine.
We keep hearing that further escalation by the West is reckless, that it is impossible, that it is a bluff. The West is not bluffing, and they escalate anyway.
https://weapons.substack.com/p/france-sends-troops-to-ukraine/comments
The sociopaths who rule the West have already invested so much into Ukraine that they would sooner blow us all up than lose. If this does not convince you, then I do not know what would, short of the nuclear exchange that is surely coming.
No, for the last time – I am not happy about this. But it does not matter what I want. The only question that our rulers ask is “what can they do to stop us”? And the answer is – not all that much.
As expected it seems to be the Foreign Legion, specifically members from Ukraine and nearby, that are going.
I really do not get why Macron has become so insistent on this, given that he tried to be the mediator while BJ and Biden was gung-ho on keeping the fighting going.
It doesn’t matter what motivates Macron. His orders count just the same.
To quote late Carl Sagan: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If there were any NATO troops in Ukraine in official capacity, we would have the whole Ukrainian propaganda machine in overdrive and the NAFO goons would wet themselves.
You wouldn’t need to dig it up from self-publishing corners of the internet from some random dude who made the same claim already over a week ago about Finnish and Polish troops.
So, nah.
I hope you are right. We’ve heard similar cope at every previous western escalation, though.
Yea, officially. French government uses comment section on some random dude’s Substack to officially announce going to war against Russia. Troops that just ran away from Niger, because their fresh croissant supplies were cut off, are now going to Ostfront in order to take on Rooskies and scare them into submission. What a time to be alive.
I still don’t get why people get their knickers in a twist about this. I’d say there’s too many soyboys, and too few men who learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. I say, bring it on.
I’ve just been reading the Shardlake books by CJ Sansom, and what is striking is how Henry VIII destroyed the English economy by engaging in failed foreign wars. And things just got worse aftee he died. So I think NATO isn’t going to stop, until the USA and Europe are in ruins. We’ve a long way to go.
Who cares? Those troops will make precisely zero difference in conventional terms.
I don’t have the time to delve into all the news from all sources regarding the campus protests, but is it just me or has the ACLU completely dropped off the face of the Earth from what I’ve encountered so far? No comments about or getting involved in these protests? At least the National organization?
I’m so old I remember they used to wade right into these issues knock down drag out. I recognize they are a shadow of their former selves , actually maybe a caricature at this point but jeez, all I hear are crickets.
The ACLU are a Team D sockpuppet.
I’ve noticed I rarely get fundraising lettters from them when the D’s are in the majority but when an R is a president, it they control the house or senate,, it’s nonstop carpet boom ing in my mailbox. Trees hide in terror. The USPS financial situation must improve on the ACLUs mailing efforts alone
The ACLU of Indiana announced it will file a lawsuit against IU for violating the first amendment rights of protesters banned from campus for one year after their arrests.
On April 26th, the day after more than 30 peaceful protesters at Indiana University Bloomington were arrested by Indiana State Police with riot gear and snipers, the ACLU of Indiana issued a statement condemning the actions of the IU administration and the ISP. They asked those arrested to reach out to the ACLU of Indiana to advocate for their rights.
Today, the ACLU of Indiana filed suit against IU for violating the First Amendment rights of three plaintiffs, including a tenured professor and a graduate student assistant instructor, who are among about 60 protesters who have been arrested at IU. More plaintiffs are expected to be represented by the ACLU of Indiana in coming days.
I don’t know what might be happening with the ACLU in other states or at the national level.
Regarding Speaker Johnson – let us pretend that every one of the protests was organized and funded. We know for a fact that organized protests are illegal, right? Like those in 2013-2014 in Ukraine?
How about like the one on capital hill on 1-6-21? Johnson was behind that one, but for the Palestinians being murdered by zionist jews and westerners, to hell with them.
And if you have the time, johnson can find it for you in his bible. To hell with them.
To hell with him. Johnson should spend some time and effort to find a chamber pot stout enough to hold all his kkkrap.