Yellowstone National Park calls for more bison in new plan Montana Free Press
Landslide leads to ‘catastrophic failure’ of popular Wyoming mountain pass highway Fox Weather
UPDATE: It has gotten a lot worse. WYDOT has announced a long term closure due to “catastrophic failure” https://t.co/BJoN8CcZvd pic.twitter.com/xGiDyW0Was
— Ski Town Broker (@SkiTownRE) June 8, 2024
Arrokoth the ‘space snowman’ probably tastes like sweet soap Space.com
Climate/Environment
Heatwave ravages Mexican wildlife, howler monkeys hit hard Anadolu Agency
SCIENTISTS WORKING ON DESPERATE PLAN TO REFREEZE ARCTIC Futurism
Marxism, the Land, and the Global Working Class Jacobin
World’s flying again and jets are burning fuel like it’s 2019 Bloomberg
Pandemics
From the World Health Assembly, some important developments Croakey Health Media
India
India’s New Government Faces Job Creation Challenge The Diplomat
Inequality hindering India’s march towards a developed nation The Tribune
At least nine killed after attack on bus in Indian-administered Kashmir Al Jazeera
Japan
Japan’s economy is shrinking, although slightly less than previously thought AP
Unlike the yakuza, Japan’s latest crime menace is anonymous and faceless The Straits Times
China?
China’s ride-hailing industry hits saturation point in more cities, triggering warnings from local governments Channel News Asia
‘Rearing stinky water’ becomes a fad among students in China despite safety, health risks Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
Palestinian death toll surpasses 37,000 as Israel kills 283 more Palestinians in Gaza Anadolu Agency
Rescued Israeli Hostage: ‘Our Greatest Fear Was Israeli Planes’ Haaretz
“In the Prime Minister’s office they told me: replace the diskette, there will be no deal here” Ynet News (machine translation). Commentary:
Israeli Colonel Doron Hadar was the commander of Israel’s military negotiation unit with 27 years of experience, which included some of the most sensitive negotiations and prisoner exchanges (some probably still secret). Last week he retired, and this weekend Israel’s YNET (a… pic.twitter.com/JFSNk9T6On
— Alon Mizrahi I without equality there’s no freedom (@alon_mizrahi) June 7, 2024
Israel war cabinet minister Benny Gantz quits Netanyahu’s government Al Jazeera
Ben Gvir excitedly awaits Gantz departure to reclaim sway over government The Times of Israel
***
Colombia halts coal exports to Israel over Gaza war The New Arab
Pipeline v genocide: How Turkiye can legally block oil exports to Israel The Cradle
Israel’s fiscal deficit widens to 7.2% Globes
***
“Back from the West Bank.” The Floutist
***
US, Saudi Arabia close to finalising draft security treaty, WSJ reports Straits Times
Two Vessels Catch Fire After Missile Strikes Off Yemen’s Aden Reuters
Iran’s Guardian Council approves six presidential election candidates Al Mayadeen
Gaza Protests
Gaza solidarity camp established across from White House Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
Rigor mortis on the Western front: a brief comment on the EU Parliament elections Gilbert Doctorow
Europe swings to the right — led by France Politico
Macron gambles on snap election after crushing loss to French far right in EU vote CNN
Jonas Elvander: A far-right EU is no contradiction – and it has a history Brave New Europe
New Not-So-Cold War
MAJOR: Russia Officially Becomes World’s 4th Largest Economy, Passing Japan Simplicius the Thinker
Biden, France’s Macron Reach Agreement On Using Russian Assets For Ukraine Reuters
***
Chechen Leader Says Russia Seized Village In Ukraine’s Sumy Region AFP
Russia appears to make headway in key Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar Reuters
Ukrainian warplane fires weapon at target inside Russia for first time Sky News
Updated map of #Russia‘s regions hit by attack UAVs or where such UAVs have been reportedly intercepted. With the range of #Ukraine-launched UAVs now at some 1,500 km, more regions in western Russia will be vulnerable for strikes:
4/4 pic.twitter.com/ZeS9um8ceF
— Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) June 9, 2024
***
The Western public want the war in Ukraine to end, but downplay Russia’s role in the WWII victory, polls find bne Intellinews
No longer trying to ‘avoid World War III,’ Biden floats nuclear arms race Aaron Mate
Bill to Compensate Radiation Fallout Victims of Atom Bomb Tests Allowed to Expire Military.com
Uranium fuel planned for high-tech US reactors a weapons risk, scientists say Reuters
While Washington was coming up with sanctions, Rosatom for the first time applied the technology of purification of spent nuclear fuel, or crystallization refining. This is a more efficient and safe technology for separating materials from spent nuclear fuel (SNF).
🧵 pic.twitter.com/LYVYaCg9wM— Neznakomaya❤🇷🇺 (@TomatkaP) June 10, 2024
Old Blighty
‘Misfit in Moscow’ takes aim at UK’s failed Russia strategy Geoffrey Roberts, Responsible Statecraft
Starmer Wars: The Labour Party and British Foreign Policy Transform Review
80th Anniversary of D-Day
Which country do British voters think did the most to defeat Nazi Germany? (5-6 June):
The United Kingdom 42%
The United States 12%
France 6%
The Soviet Union 6%
Canada 3%
Poland 3%https://t.co/z8ryBfGuqS pic.twitter.com/Vjqyh97RIH— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) June 7, 2024
BREAKING/
This is a scandalous moment in UK medicine.
Over 80 Fellows of @RCPhysicians have just declared their lack of confidence in the College.
Why?
Because they believe its stance on physician associates (PAs) is recklessly failing patients.
Pls read – this matters. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/jWUF5SNnQW
— Dr Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) June 9, 2024
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
Banks See Risk in Dependence on Big Tech’s AI Capabilities PYMNTS
Spook Country
Patrick Lawrence: Scott Ritter Silenced by Liberal Authoritarians Scheerpost
Biden
Hunter Biden’s trial is just a political ploy to protect Joe — and the compromised DOJ New York Post
What if it’s Biden who refuses to leave the White House? The Hill
Trump
Trump vows to end taxation of tips at sweltering Las Vegas rally Guardian
Trump probation interview set for Monday after hush money conviction NBC News
The Supremes
Trump immunity, abortion weigh on Supreme Court before summer recess Axios
Democrats en déshabillé
Bipartisanship or Republican meddling? AIPAC is biggest source of GOP donations in Dem primaries Politico
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored? New York Times
AI
AI-brained Dutch robot dog goes solo on drug hunting tests in a first Interesting Engineering
War on Cash
Want to pay cash? That’ll cost you extra Wall Street Journal
Imperial Collapse Watch
In the Market: How the US is daring the world to find a dollar alternative Reuters
Antitrust
Monopoly Round-Up: The Harvey Weinstein of Antitrust BIG by Matt Stoller
Groves of Academe
Why are America’s elite universities so afraid of this scholar’s paper? The Guardian
Class Warfare
Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit The Register
DISPLACED TO DEATH Texas Observer
Sports Desk
The “Hot Hand” Is Not a Myth Nautilus
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
163 comments
Comments are closed.
“Landslide leads to ‘catastrophic failure’ of popular Wyoming mountain pass highway”
By coincidence, I had just finished watching a video clip of this highway collapse just before Links came online-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dbiv4r/a_critical_highway_linking_idaho_and_wyoming_has/
Two comments were interesting-
‘I live near this. Jackson Hole priced all their workers out of the housing market, so a ton of people commute over this pass every day. Now they have to drive an hour and a half each way to go around.’
And
‘It’s more than just those caught in the landslide. People that work in Jackson, especially teachers, have just about all been priced out of Jackson Wyoming and are living in Idaho. Teton County Schools aren’t out til next week and it’s tourist season. So everyone’s commute just increased to over 1.5 hrs from Victor. Happens a lot in the winter with icy roads but not expected in the summer.’
Yeah, it’s true. I’ve driven that pass a lot. It’s essentially a commuter route back and forth to Jackson for the mere mortals that can’t think of affording a place to live in that town, so they live in Victor or Driggs on the other side of the Tetons, although they’ve become pretty pricey in the past five to ten years. The road is frequently closed in winter, so most know the drill, but this looks like they’re going to be spending a long time commuting for a long time. Summer is super busy there, since Jackson is the gateway to Teton NP and Yellowstone further north. It’s going to be real hard getting service in that town on any level. Betcha the super rich build slave quarters on the ranch for the help.
Cheney lives near the base of that pass road in Wilson, btw.
An interesting and purely speculative scenario occurred to me. How many work-in-Jackson people have been driven out of Jackson’s “class apartheid” housing prices and have been forced to live in the “social class Sowetos” of nearby Idaho? How much money do they all have to pay, collectively, to meet their living and survival expenses in Classoweto, Idaho? Is that money, collectively, less money or more money than the amount of money being steadily raised by Sanders in his rolling repeat ” small donors” campaign? If the Sanders rolling-small-donor campaign raised more money per month at its height than all the work-in-Jackson residents of Classoweto, Idaho collectively need for their collective secure survival, than what if . . . . all the Sanders small donors got the band back together and all began raising that money again and donating it the people of Classoweto to meet their survival needs while boycotting their jobs in Jackson, and keeping those jobs boycotted until Jackson was tortured into providing affordable housing for every work-in-Jackson resident of Classoweto, Idaho?
If it actually worked, it could be an inspiring victory, showing Classowetans all over America what can be done to any particular Jacksohannesburg with enough concentrated strategy-informed pain focused on one “schwerpunkt”, as John Robb at Global Guerillas likes to call it.
We had a pretty similar looking road disaster en route to Cedar Grove (a Yosemite-like cathedral of towering granite as you descend to the valley floor along the Kings River) last year during the atmospheric rivers and damage was so bad they didn’t reopen the road until today, hopefully they’ll have punch and cookies for the grand re-opening ceremonies when we arrive…
I think i’m on my 5th Superintendent for Sequoia NP and I never really said boo to any of them previously, but that was then and this is now and the current guy on the job is a fine fellow and he was relating all the difficulties of getting massive damage on mountain roads fixed, with only so many companies that can do the work, along with getting the money to be able to do the work.
The damage I saw was epic. there’s a little Sierra burb called Hartland @ 4,500 feet and fairly tranquil Eshom Creek runs by it, and we drive through about this time last year and a few miles ahead there’s road closed sign and a fallen tree behind it to emphasize the point, as pipsqueak Eshom Creek had cut a 60 foot wide swath between pavement sections on either side with a yawning 30 foot drop in the middle. I couldn’t believe it~
A couple of motorcyclists rode around the fallen tree and looked down at the chasm, and the timing was right, so I offered $5 for one of them to Evel Knievel it, with payment up front-naturally.
Would have been tough without a ramp, was the general consensus as they demurred my offer.
The road beyond the chasm goes to the Whitaker’s Forest
https://forests.berkeley.edu/forests/whitaker
Here in the South we solved the servant housing problem by building them picturesque tiny houses out behind the family plantation, er, homestead. Sounds like in Jackson Hole the workers will have to do what they do in other tony resorts: live in their cars.
Oh, I’ll bet there’s plenty of mattresses in the covered beds of pickup trucks out there.
Just finished reading this:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51801180-billionaire-wilderness
which was fairly heavily excerpted in the High Country News a couple years ago. I sent it back to my pal who lent it to me, with a brief note apologizing for all the pages stuck together by my frequent barf-reactions. The author, Eastern Idaho born-and- raised, is a sociologist at Yale. Hegained access to interview- ironically- due to the Yale sheepskin and being as local as one can be when one isn’t ‘of means’.
It is an eye opener on many levels.
It’s nothing really new. Every time I see the Tetons, I’m stunned that Rockefeller actually owned a big part of it. There’s a whole contingent of rich and powerful Republicans who go back generations. Remember James Watt, raygun’s Interior secretary? “I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.” That guy was a real prize. He was from Wyoming, too, but, the desolate eastern ranching territory. But he was the privatizing water boy for the rich landowners and miners.
That James Watt was a real piece of work. When Interior Secretary, he tried to stop the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. His Wikipedia entry is also worth reading to see what the guy was all about-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt
Its a reminder that “personnel is policy”. Since there is no way to prevent someone being elected President of the US in 2024, an interesting thought experiment might be the following . . . . which President would give us which personnel pursuing which policy?
In all fairness, that thought experiment deserves to be run for Kennedy, West, and every other Third Party Hopeful, as well as the two brand name candidates.
The US Senate gets ‘advise and consent’ privilege on Cabinet level appointees, so it’s the down-line personnel who will actually be implementing policy.
They also bought a lot of St. John in the usvi. We stayed at Caneel Bay for two weeks for our honeymoon. It was a gorgeous special place. It was leveled by hurricane Irma. It has yet be rebuilt from what I understand. It is part of the Virgin Islands National Park.
Ironic, this is the same Jackson Hole the Fed people have their yearly shindig. This year August 22-24.
Jackson Hole has an airport for those folks.
Patrick Lawrence: Scott Ritter Silenced.
Worth every word. A good analysis and synthesis. A “litmus test” to consider: “I have had countless conversations over many years in which the question considered has been “Is this as bad as the 1950s?” The matter has been especially vital since the Russiagate fiasco began during the Clinton–Trump campaign season in 2016. It was in the ensuing years that the authoritarianism implicit in American liberalism from the first burst upon us like some weird grotesque out of a Dr. Seuss book.”
As you know, brethren and sistren, I consider it to be Scoundrel Time in the U S of A. It’s McCarthyism in an altered state. Or, one may argue, a new variation of endlessly inventive fascism.
Meanwhile: Euro elections.
A few notes from the Chocolate City.
I will allow our “betters,” ahem, Germany and France and such Up North, to have various meltdowns. Here in Italy, Meloni’s claque of rather corrupt nonentities held its ground. The Partito Democratico gained slightly (although in an SMS to a friend of mine, a former commie who voted Santoro, I referred to it as le macerie (the wreckage) of the PD, and she had voted Santoro).
Sinistra Italiana, which had hovered around the 4 percent cutoff point, did well, somewhere near 7 percent.
In the Euro election, I voted Five Starts. (Yes, and Bugs will take me to task.) One candidate, Danzì, was an incumbent who was one of the few in the EuroParliament to vote against the rearmament bills. So she deserved some support. Another was a talented young man, Piedmontese—and Five Stars, in spite of its flaws, has attracted some talented people.
In the regional election for the council of the Undisclosed Region, natch, I voted Sinistra Italiana. We’ll see what the makeup of the new council ends up being. The president as “good manager” of the region one. He’s inoffensive, but he is also Forza Italia (yes, ghosts of Silvio…).
Up north, the neoliberals are having a meltdown. Am I truly supposed to care about the travails of Macron?
Re Ritter–apparently the State Department was asked about it and said it was “a private matter.” And unless I’m mistaken Ritter himself hasn’t detailed their claimed justification, if any, which seens to reinforce speculation here that they used his sex/entrapment case as an excuse and that is probably something he wouldn’t want to talk about.
But I agree that bully boy Joe and his minions have all the same impulses as the McCarthy crowd. They are both petty and incompetent.
How could something like this be a “private matter”? Good gawd. I say it was just the opposite. It was a very public warning to others that there will be consequences if one wants to travel to Russia or have any sort of relations with the country.
I agree that they probably targeted Ritter because he will go to the grave as Sex Offender Scott Ritter, and that’s an easier sell for our MSM propagandists, but he’s been open and honest about his conviction. He’s not hiding anything. Here he is on Jimmy Dore the day after they took his passport: https://youtu.be/vAHyB-gpCFE?si=6lsPhOKl6-5MgNYS He talks a lot about the sting and aftermath.
Btw, has the MSM even covered this incident in any way?
He did talk about it, on jimmy dore’s channel a few days ago. It was the first time I’ve heard him openly discuss it.
For me the main (and sad) result was that the conservatives won big in the EU. The turn to the right seems to be more noticeable in the north. The results in Spain not worth mentioning but the counting reflects roughly 52% per the “right wing” and 44% per the “left wing”. When participation is low the right wins. In Spain municipal and some regional elections were set before to coincide with EU elections. Not this time and this resulted in lower participation I guess. I voted for the most fringe left party which of course didn’t get any seat. Saved the mortadella slice for better use!
Everything changes to remain the same, politically speaking.
When participation is low the right wins.
A truism, but again, the causes of the low participation were usually the non branded right wing winning on policy.
For me the main cause for low participation is that EU parliament has very little power and it’s very reluctant to use the little it has.
It’s main task seems to be totally moronic votes on who’s the legal president of Venezuela or Russia.
That’s because the left wing isn’t allowed to win.
I guess that the centralists co-opting and wrecking left wing parties over the past few decades was not such a bright idea after all. Despising the cenralists and with no left wing to follow, that only left people with the right to vote for. I guess that like the US Democrats back in 2016, the centralists had figured that people had nowhere to go with their votes – until they did.
Fwiw, the observation in the US this time has been that Trump been building leads hugely among less likely voters but trails by a good margin among the likely voters (there have been reports on this, based on polls, on CNN website and New York magazine, but can’t find the links at the moment.). Of course, at least in terms of the voters, who exactly are the right and the left is a bit of complicated question now. (Altho that was always true in Europe, too, no? Gauche Lepenisme has been a thing, as I remember from French polling data.)
It’s “ins” vs “Out” instead of Left vs Right or even Reds vs. Blues. That’s very dangerous for the Ins because there’s a lot more Outs.
That was the plan, the capitalist ruling class is fine with both centrist-right and right-wing parties. They also do great under Fascism. Its the left that they are always really worried about.
DJG, you’re obviously closer to the ground on Italian politics and if she voted against the rearmament bills, that deserves support. I never said that I didn’t support 5 Stelle, I just haven’t see them able to govern and hold onto a constituency long enough to apply policy.
Wrt la Belle France, I’m disappointed that my spouse and I were the only 2 LFI votes in our little village. RN got 33, LR 2, Greens 2, PS 2. We’re surrounded by fascists lol. But the entire French election map looks exactly like that result except for the cities, bien entendu.
My spouse was going to vote for the Animalist party but had a grim realization in the voting booth that her vote might actually count and switched to LFI. I’ve heard it said before that people change their minds in the voting booth and here you have the concrete proof. But our votes did indeed count because LFI beat the surveys by almost 3% because this is a national vote, not a district vote.
I do think the French left will manage to reform the NUPES coalition for the upcoming parliamentary election. That leaves them with an absolute maximum of 30% and the (sad) possibility to join the Macronists in a red-blue unity government to block Marine Le Pen becoming prime minister. There’s no way the Left wins outright and imho there’s no way the Republicans and the Macronists have enough votes to form a majority or even a blocking minority.
If Macron is trying to prove the dubious point that a centrist head of state can work with a right-sovereignist government, I think we’re in for some strange times indeed. He can not really do much to stop legislation, especially since he’s demonstrated over his term just how easy it is to resort to using a constitutional loophole to push through totally unpopular “reforms”.
Vivement le mois de juillet ! Vive le peuple français !
Since its the Democrats leading it this time, we could call it DemoCarthyism. Or maybe ClintoCarthyism.
We could also call it Liberal Fascism, which is a word I am beginning to see here and there and which should perhaps be given several launches to see if it can go viral and enter the language.
>Marxism, the Land, and the Global Working Class – Jacobin
What Marxism posits is a global class — the global proletariat — that has the power to wrestle an already global and socialized production system from capital and repurpose it toward the needs of all of humanity. Isn’t this actually what the ecological crisis requires? We need a species or planetary scale of social control over production so that we can both serve human needs and maintain a habitable planet.
Are these people for real? Moribund Marxism, that’s all Jacobin offers up. Not once did the article mention the U.S. Military as being the largest polluter nor that the Nord stream pipeline caused the largest single release of methane. The only “global” power I see is the “globalist.” They are the F$&*ing problem.
You want to talk about “repurpose” of capital toward “the needs of all humanity,” Really!? Where is the humanity of soldiers hiding in a truck carrying humanitarian aid in order to kill starving Palestinians? Ecological crisis? There is a moral crisis that dwarfs it going on right now Jacobin. Get your head out of historically dead philosophies.
[Troops hid inside aid truck for deadly US-Israel operation in Nuseirat]
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/25347
I’m no fan of Jacobin but given the largest economy on Earth is a Marxist state (whether one considers it purely in a nominal sense or not) the ideology might not be so dead. But in regards to the piece it’s a perfectly adequate summary of the Marxist thesis of dispossession. I’m not sure what made you so angry about it. It the lack of mention of imperialism is jarring, I concur, but this is Jacobin, hardly a radical outlet.
From experience, the DSA types who write for the Jacobin have an aversion to ‘M-Ls’, Marxist-Leninists, whom they view as beyond the pale, and with whom they associate the term ‘imperialism’. Many are focused on electoral efforts; a level of comfort with the status quo is required for this, and the entry price for electoral politics is to be ‘imperialism-compatible’: you at least have to never mention the 500lb, nuclear war-risking, genocide-enabling, environment destroying elephant in the room. Then you can be as radical as you want about advocating for rent control, and be shouted down and ignored by the more legitimate suits.
Its called the “purity fetish” on the left, where supposedly left-wing individuals can only accept perfect attempts at revolution (the ones that always fail) not ones focused on taking control of the state (the ones that have a chance of succeeding). Its as if they are some “limited hangout” to sheep dog people away from real change!
The piece is yet another Jacobin swipe at ecosocialism and the vision of a humanity more connected to the Earth. Check out this line:
This is a ongoing battle, led in part by Huber, the article’s author. I agree completely with zagonostra. This is a Moribund Marxism, or as the article I linked above called it, a “barren Marxism.”
Not many of the proletariat are engaged in the kind of labor that was predominant in Marx’s time. All the anthropology about the socializing effects of the shop floor are largely irrelevant if not just plain wrong.
Huber and his romantics are refusing to acknowledge one important fact. This current agricultural production system is killing us with its disruption of both the carbon and nitrogen cycles. It’s headed for collapse despite Bill Gates’ efforts to replace Nature with his own sick invention. When it does, a lot more people are going to have to engage in raising food. The good news is that it will be better food after a while. The bad news for Dr. Huber is that the new additions to the agricultural force required by a transition to a low energy, low input way of growing food will hardly be thrilled by his visions of a collectivized system, one of Marxism’s most embarrassing episodes. If Huber hasn’t noticed, globalism is dying. Climate impacts are localized just as ecologies are localized. There may be a Earth-wide biosphere, and some aspects, like the concentration of CO2, are fairly universal. But obtaining the needed calories in El Salvador is much different from getting the required food for survival in Iowa. There will be no vast, global planning system directing Iowans to grow more corn while encouraging Mexican farmers to grow cotton.
Huber’s and Marx’s great proletarian revolution is not coming. So much has changed in the last 150 years that Marx’s vision and especially prescription is anachronistic. In essence, Huber is a Marxist fundamentalist raising against those who would stray and “creatively” interpret the sacred text to adapt to drastically changed circumstances.
Thank you. It was in a book recommended here at NC, The Enchantments of Mammon, which treats capitalism as the enlightenment religion that replaced the Church, where I first saw a critique of Marx that hadn’t occurred to me before.
The book notes that marxism calls for the proletariat to take over ownership of the means of production. It also notes that marxism takes for granted that means of production and does not really question whether the existence of polluting factories created by the industrial revolution is really something we should be aspiring to continue. It just assumes that things will be better for the majority if workers own the factories, but at this point it’s fairly clear that toiling in polluting factories for the better part of one’s life in order to produce things that by and large aren’t really necessary isn’t doing the average person or the planet as a whole any good.
This seems an utterly inaccurate description of Marx’s actual work.
It probably is – I was just getting at the one point about the industrial means of production maybe not being the best idea regardless of what economic system it runs under. I haven’t read Marx himself extensively, but from my limited engagement, I do tend to agree with him.
I have not read them, myself (although I tried many times), but I have read that the book, Capital, is in three volumes.The first volume, among other things, shows that the price of commodities is dependent on the price of labor. The second volume proves that the first volume is wrong, but I do not know what he replaced “the labor theory” with. The third volume then goes on to prove that the second volume is also wrong. Again, I do not know what he replaced it with. I do know that I decided anyone who needs three different definitions of “value” does not have a clear understanding of the world, although I agree with so many things that he taught.
Thanks Henry, I wish I had seen your reply before reading the vacuous article
The only thing I ever read ” by” Marx was the Communist Manifesto which I had to read decades ago in college. At age 67 and getting not-any-younger fast, I have limited time left to read things. Any book by Marx I read means I have to forego reading a book about agriculture by someone other than Marx, for instance. And with the pressure of time pressing ever harder, I have to make choices. So I will have to let Marx go unread, so I can read a few of the other things which I also want to read before it is too late.
Anyway, if Marx wanted me to read his books, he would have given them pictures, or at least charts, diagrams, graphs and tables.
So what little I know about Marxism is gained from synopses and extracts, here and elsewhere. To the best of my limited knowledge, Marx hated and despised peasants, and hoped for the abolition of their culture and lifestyles, and their reduction to ” rural factory worker equivalents” on vast Socialized megafarms run as “open air factories”. Am I wrong to think that is what Marx wanted “for” the peasants, to “unleash” the “productive forces” in the countryside?
Here is an article by an “Indigenous Person” ( of color to lend the necessary flavor of political correctness and wokeness, comprehensively rejecting the very idea of Missionary Chauvinist Cultural-Imperialist EuroWestern Marxism having something of value to offer to his people. And here is the link.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/news/revolution-and-american-indians-marxism-is-as-alien-to-my-culture-as-capitalism/
I’m surprised that you would offer a view on the scholarship of someone you admit you’ve never read. Marx did not hate peasants; his Eurocentrism aside and acknowledged (the idea of there being an ‘Asiatic’ mode of production, &c.), his work should be engaged with before being criticized, like anyone’s. Many have opinions on Marx, but few have read him.
Marx hated and despised peasants, and hoped for the abolition of their culture and lifestyles, and their reduction to ”rural factory worker equivalents” on vast Socialized megafarms run as “open air factories”.
[ What nonsense. But when determined not to know things, a person will not know things and even resent what could be known. ]
Say what? / heh
adding: I do love the gentlemen musicians garb of ice cream colored white jackets here. * Go figure.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I38Kw-oG0kE
You’re right, I’m pissed off and disgusted. I’m more knowledgeable than your average proletariat on Marxist Ideology having spent years reading source texts, listening to lectures by David Harvey, and listening to economist like Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson. It’s the genocide more than the ecocide, which has been going on since Neil :Young was singing about “Killing mother nature in the 1970’s” (After the Goldrush) that has me despairing of any real ability for the “Left”, the supposed radical Left, of stopping empire, Zionism, and savagery that comes along with it.
I imagine that getting evicted and sleeping on the streets is a 500lb elephant for the multitudes who face that reality.
It’s the Jacobin, a DSA vehicle. Many come in roundabout ways to Marxism, like myself. When I first began to educate myself (I am a high school dropout), I read a lot of modern history, with an eye out for biases; I intended to, as much as possible, take in only information, and leave the development of attitudes towards it til after I had a broader awareness. I had similar reactions to yours when learning about US military atrocities; as much as anything, the irresponsible, disconnected criminality of our ruling class propelled me to a search for solutions. In doing so, it became increasingly clear to me that the roots of US dominance, and consequently of US impunity, lay in economic phenomena. When writing for other Marxists, as Jacobin does, a level of familiarity with history and current social trends is often assumed. I think that is why the piece which has evoked for you such a strong response was not filled with factoids such as the US military being the world’s largest institutional carbon emitter, or moral judgements about American imperialism enabling reckless, violent regimes: we know, and we’re focused on the solutions.
Jacobin isn’t even a DSA vehicle, but that of one of the more conservative DSA factions.
People’s Front of Judea, or Judean People’s Front?
Oh god, not that hoary old joke again.
If people gave that ‘comedy’ bit even a few seconds thought, they’d realise how reactionary/imperialist it is. What else would you expect from Oxbridge comics who, eh, ‘borrowed’ heavily from Irish/UK genius Spike Milligan?
Please put the peoples front stuff to bed.
It’s interesting to me how WSWS and Jacobin are always sniping at each other editorially when both of them are so feckless. WSWS is particularly burdened by TDS and Jacobin by its seeming lack of awareness. Both of these organizations strike me as astroturf sheepdog Democrat ops, just like Common Dreams, In These Times, Bleeding Heartland and just about every other “liberal” outfit. They’re purely designed to keep the notional left inside the Democrat tent, to siphon off the energy and anger of the left and channel it right back into the same corrupt outfit that created the problems in the first place. I always read these articles with the greatest possible skepticism.
WSWS is true Trotskyist, they hate any actual real socialism as in China (Marxist-Leninist!) and cosplay at being revolutionary. Many of the Trotskyist groups are also heavily penetrated by the security services. The DSA are cosplaying at being socialists.
Surely, this is what “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is about:
https://english.news.cn/20240610/611c130578234ec18cca6292f9669b96/c.html
June 10, 2024
Cooperation with China boosts rice harvest in Cote d’Ivoire
ABIDJAN — On May 31, farmers in the Guiguidou area, Divo Province in southern Cote d’Ivoire, gathered around several brand-new agricultural machines, chatting with one another about how to use them against a backdrop of newly planted rice seedlings swaying in the wind.
“This time, we provided a batch of agricultural machinery to Cote d’Ivoire, including rice selectors, combine harvesters, rice milling machines, and 10 tons of rice seeds,” said Guo Changyou, chief of the 11th Chinese Agricultural Technical Assistance Mission (MATAC) in Cote d’Ivoire, at the handover ceremony of agricultural equipment and rice seeds.
“We must take care of this gift because we produce millions of tons per year during the 2 cycles. With this donation, we will be able to improve our performance,” said Alain Beugre, president of the Guiguidou Rice Farmers Cooperative.
In 1997, the Guiguidou area welcomed the first MATAC which supported local farmers in rice cultivation, repaired and maintained water conservancy facilities, and trained talents in the rice industry.
After nearly 30 years of unremitting efforts by Chinese agricultural experts, the rice varieties in the Guiguidou area have been optimized with ever-increasing quality and harvests of rice…
Chinese agricultural specialists were so successful in Madagascar, that the newly printed currency of Madagascar portrays a field of Chinese hybrid rice in the background.
anthrodynia
n. a state of exhaustion with how shitty people can be to each other, typically causing a countervailing sense of affection for things that are sincere but not judgmental, are unabashedly joyful, or just are.
– The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
The new definition says ‘cruel’ and is more wordy, and therefore lacks the piquancy of the original.
I always knew there had to be an actual word for what people used to call “irony poisoning” in past decades. It reflected in pop culture as a deep boredom with cliches that, by subverting expectations so frequently, became the expectations instead.
“US, Saudi Arabia close to finalising draft security treaty, WSJ reports”
‘The possible deal, widely telegraphed by US and other officials for weeks, is part of a wider package that would include a US-Saudi civil nuclear pact, steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state and an end to the war in Gaza, where months of ceasefire efforts have failed to bring peace.
Approval of the treaty, which the WSJ said would be known as the Strategic Alliance Agreement, would require a two-thirds majority vote in the US Senate, a threshold that would be difficult to achieve unless the treaty were tied to Israeli-Saudi normalisation.’
And in those two paragraphs is why this deal will never go anywhere. Netanyahu will never agree to the establishment of a Palestinian State as he has spent his whole adult life fighting that idea. And ordinary Israelis will never accept it either. They want those Palestinians gone and not with their own state. Nor will Netanyahu agree to end the war but wants it as an open ended campaign till he dies of old age or something. Even if you get this double-miracle to happen, the US Senate will kill it stone dead. How am I so sure of this? Watch this brief video to understand why-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/BMgzhpX2lH2z/ (1:13 mins)
It sounds a lot like Zelensky’s phony “peace summit” about to happen in Switzerland. A fake deal, missing one of the two parties to the conflict. Where is the Palestine representative, let alone Hamas?
Lately the US seems to be performing anatomically impossible acts on the notion of diplomacy.
I’m starting to look forward to the Swiss peace conference to tell you the truth. I already have popcorn ready to go in the pantry and will await the shouting and recriminations after it starts. Anybody want to lay a bet that Zelensky will demand both money and weapons from all the countries attending? Normally a peace conference is run by the hosts in search of a solution which means the Swiss here. But this one appears to be running out of Zelensky’s Presidential Office which was why Russia was never going to get an invite.
I’m kind of amazed that thing hasn’t been cancelled yet.
Free trip to Geneva for attendees. Critics can be called traitors. Otherwise they have to answer questions about:
-health
-housing
-education (ask a kid to do basic math…well, there is always liberal arts, not trades they need high school math to do well)
-transportation (evs are going to destroy the used car market)
-climate/energy
The neoliberals are much safer there.
Yeah, but nobody is going. It’s absurd.
If they cancel it now, it will mean that the whole world will see that it was never a peace conference at all but a big ra-ra session to support Zelensky and the Ukraine – in that order. Nothing to do now but grit their teeth and get through it as quickly as possible.
Heard rumors of it being relocated to Canton, Ohio or Geneva, Wisconsin, to a more neutral location.
Just so long as it is a place with plenty of booze, hookers and blow, they should be right.
Thank you, all.
With regard to Switzerland, last week, some senior bankers met federal government officials and urged that the country maintain a strictly neutral stance and avoid getting into these stunts and further weakening of neutrality. Swiss neutrality is self serving, of course.
Thank you, Colonel. I am afraid that it is too late for the Swiss as Russia regards them now as an enemy country. I guess that throwing away that self-serving neutrality after two centuries was not such a bright idea after all.
Meanwhile, here is Lindsay Graham saying the quiet bit out loud-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ezyL1TVN7N6Q/ (50 secs)
Nice to know the latest justification for wanting Ukraine as a colony that our war mongering imperial cheerleaders have been sold.
Any body want to ask Lindsay how those”assets justify spending over five times that so far, especially since Russia and China already have or have access to those minerals. And looking back to Iraq, does that mean when the Ukrainians tell tell the Americans to get the F out we will invade and occupy for twenty years and leave with nothing but trillions of debt spent on this project?
I swear Lindsay, and McCain, tell me the American military has been running on fumes and delusions for far longer than the quarter century I had been saying.
Self-serving neutrality is the best kind. The selfish motivation makes it more trustworthy.
The corollary: never trust a selfless ideologue. They’ll happily kill us all and fatten grifters along the way.
This only works as long as you share the same opinion on what kind of behaviour is in the other person’s interest. Stalin famously thought that Hitler wouldn’t invade the Soviet Union while it was at war with Britain, and look how that turned out.
“Swiss neutrality is self serving, of course.”
Of course it’s self serving :)
The entire country is just one large Bank and, as we all know, Banks are neutral about everything… except money/profit no matter how or wherever it is found.
What with Scholz actually coming out and saying “there will be no peace talks at the Global Peace Summit”, this looks to be one of the supremely entertaining shitshows of the year.
There will be a mandatory donation of weapons at the door, kind of like the way some fundraisers ask for canned goods at a food drive.
Price of admission to Peace-sky Summit-sky:
1 Javelin: gets you cheap seats
2 Abrams: Mid-level package, including meet and greet with top ranking Azov members. Better view of the stage.
F16: VIP package. Meet and greet with the Z-man himself. Dream date with top OnlyFans model from Kiev.
I’m guessing Biden thinks he’s the Saudi king as well as the prime minister of Israel? I’m sure the “Saudis” who’d been in these “negotiations” are as Saudi as the people who came up with “Israeli” ceasefire proposal were Israeli.
There was a little snippet in the news yesterday about the expiration of the US dollar peg agreement with the Saudis. How does that play into the security treaty? Wasn’t the peg tied to security, too?
“Heatwave ravages Mexican wildlife, howler monkeys hit hard”
Maybe those Mexican howler monkeys should think about what some of their Senagal chimpanzee cousins are doing – taking cover in caves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dcfrvd/due_to_climate_change_chimpanzees_have_begun_to/
‘Sub-Primate?’
Re: WH Protests
‘
They really did a nice job. Calling out Biden’s lies, all of ’em, including the fake “red lines” like Rafah, where, as Caitlyn Johnson put it, Bibi took Joe’s Red Line and not only crossed it but performed an act of digestive elimination on top of it.
And the solidarity camp sounds like some of them aren’t going away anytime soon. Much to the chagrin of Joe’s pollsters.
I saw a cartoon of Bibi and the “red line,” it was a red carpet leading inside Congress where he was giving a speech to his star of David flag-waving employees who were on their feet giving him a standing ovation that would make the Canadian lawmakers who gave 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka a standing ovation very proud.
Perhaps one could say that Netanyahu was slowly oozing under the red line in order to say he wasn’t “stepping over” it, and to give Biden that out.
” You see, he oozed under it. He didn’t step over it, and that’s what counts.”
At a company I’m familiar with, a bunch of people went to a conference recently. People are already sick, at least half a dozen, someone claims that they’re strangely tired. Multiple people relayed that this is just what happens, even though this was unprecedented before 2020. Another person blamed being a parent. No one suspects COVID, clearly.
Now, public health’s failure is complete.
I can only imagine how long this can continue; I guess until we have substantial disability, since people don’t seem to accept that the world is somehow different.
Hearing a new one on Covid – possibly coincidence, maybe new crackpot “gotcha.”
Dismissing concerns about Covid or advice to test by saying “we’ve known about viruses for 100s of years” or “this isn’t the first time people have caught viruses.”
Jumping over the 100s of years mistake, it’s odd to hear this nonsense from people I believe know that rabies and herpies, for instance, have different outcomes.
‘Dismissing concerns about Covid or advice to test by saying “we’ve known about viruses for 100s of years” or “this isn’t the first time people have caught viruses.”’
I wonder if people said the same back in 1919? And we know how that one worked out. Mass graves in Philadelphia for a start. But that first statement is demonstrably false as the first virus – or suspicion of its existence – was only in 1892-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427559/
For the olds, the world is different, for the youngest generation ( gen alpha? ) this is normal. Working 2 or 3 part time jobs, living in your car, being sick all the time, getting your medical care only through the internet, this is the world they know.
let us not divide the old from the young in our thinking about who are suffering in neoliberal hell. there are many elderly in USA whose world is different from your young gen’s “normal” only in that they are too old to work, and are working anyway or have only a social security pittance and are homeless. they are dying alone and unremarked without adequate medical care. noting also the dire needs of these “olds” would seem more constructive than comparing generations.
While not in the USA, I am one of the olds too old to work in my occupation anymore and struggle to get adequate medical care.
For me, suffering this neoliberal hell is not normal, as I have experienced different and know it could be different.
For the youngest, suffering this neoliberal hell is all they have experienced, hence normal for them.
thank you for explaining your point, which i missed.
i wish you the best as you walk through the struggle, alongside me.
Well, people are kept mass-marinated in a 24/7 total sensurround mass propaganda campaign to the effect that the world is somehow the same. It takes a measure of social bravery to say out loud to a roomful of propagandees that the world is somehow different.
Thanks for The Guardian on the Columbia Law controversy. One wonders whether Turley–Mr. Free Speech–will be weighing in on this censorship example. I’m not holding my breath.
file under AI:
GodAI is my co-pilot. What could go wrong? Tucker on twtr.Rep. Thomas Massie on how the government has mandated a kill-switch in new vehicles sold after 2026. The kill-switch will monitor driver performance and disable cars based on the information gathered…
https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1799769986162168214
All I can say is that I am glad that there is no possibility ever of any hacker finding this kill switch and then shutting down cars all over the country at the same time. That would be terrible that. And we all know, after all, that the software that cars use is probably the most secure on the planet.
You prompt further investigation.
https://www.musclecarsandtrucks.com/biden-infrastructure-bill-vehicle-kill-switch-2026/
https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checkers-are-gaslighting-you-on-the-feds-vehicle-kill-switch-mandate/
Per the latter link the law doesn’t say “kill switch” but does mandate the possibility of vehicle disablement–presumably by the car itself using an algorithm. While it’s claimed to be about drunk driving and probably wouldn’t contact the authorities since car radio communication can be disabled it does suggest a requirements that cars, like Kindle ebooks, become something you only own notionally while a higher power is calling the shots. Naturally all kinds of bad consequences of this surreptitious law come to mind but then it is a product of the chowderheads–bipartisan chowderheads–in our Congress.
In any case the devil would be in the details which aren’t yet known.
I don’t think the devil is in the details at all. If I buy something, it’s mine. Period.
Property rights mean squat if they only apply to corporations and the wealthy.
Well I agree but the larger point is that Congress is mandating or claiming to mandate drunk driving vaporware since it’s unclear how such a system would work or could work. I believe there are already addon devices where convicted drunk drivers have to breathe into an onboard breathalyzer for the car to start. The objections are to the idea that driving behavior (being recorded) can pass judgment.
In other words it’s a computer law from people who think there are a series of tubes. Or it really is Big Brother.
But Congress does have the justifiable power to make laws about car safety. When we drive it’s not just our lives that are at risk.
I thought that when this was first proposed, it was going to “keep us safe” from high speed car chases arising from carjackings, and the potential innocent bystander injuries resulting therefrom.
Also makes repos for car loan nonpayment easy, painless and absolute.
How are they going to tell the difference between drunk driving and, say, a medical emergency during which someone might be driving erratically? How many times has the story been told of a man driving crazy trying to get his wife, who’s giving birth, to the hospital? Could be kinda “counterproductive,” or even life-threatening if the car is rendered inoperable under some not-so-unusual circumstances.
I suppose AI will work it out…
With all the surveillance tech, there appears to be a mission to drive ALL the joy out of life for the masses.
The same effect may come from the incessant advertising interruptions and distractions.
I’ll sarcastically suggest that is one way to keep pumping out pills for “depression.”
Great interview despite being over 2 hours long.
Really liked the discussion of aipac, with Massie saying that he thinks he’s the only member of congress who doesn’t have his own personal “aipac person”…
That should vastly increase the demand for pre-2027 vehicles; new, used or otherwise. Some investors or investor groups who are in a position to buy hundreds of thousands or millions of cars over the next 3 years and store them for resale beginning in 2027 may well find a huge market for them if news of the “kill switch” causes a vast revulsion throughout the car-buying public. That would be a very risky speculative investment , of course. But it might be a risk some people would take.
It would also be good for the car repair business and the replacement parts business . . . as millions of people struggle to keep their pre-2027 car alive in order to avoid having to buy a 2027-or-later car with a kill switch in it.
Some people might even try figuring out how to strip the kill switch out of any 2027-or-later car. Right to remove the kill switch could be elevated to being part of right-to-repair. People wanting to do that might want to get ahead of an Federal Conspiracy to hard-time felonize removing the kill switch from your kill-switched car.
SCIENTISTS WORKING ON DESPERATE PLAN TO REFREEZE ARCTIC Futurism
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yo VIP, let’s kick it
Ice age, ice age baby
Ice age, ice age baby
Alright stop, collaborate and listen
Ice age is back with brand new cold convection
Something grabs a hold of land tightly
Flow like a frozen wave daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know
Turn off the soil and on ice what can you grow?
To the extreme, it’ll rock the MIC like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax an ICBM like a candle
Dance, go rush to the money that go boom
I’m killing your brain like a poisonous nuclear mushroom
Deadly, when I play a climate zugzwang melody
Anything less than the best is a felony
Love it or leave it, you better gangway
You better hit bull’s eye, the atmosphere don’t play
If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it
Check out the free freezers while the ice floes hit
Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla
Now that the climate change party is jumping
When the frozen kicked in, with all that oil pumping
Quick to the point, to the point, no faking
Cooking MICs like a pound of bacon
Burning them, if you ain’t quick and nimble
I go crazy when I hear there goes a symbol
And hi-lo temps with a souped up tempo
I’m on a roll, it’s time to go Han Solo
Yo mankind, let’s get out of here
Word to your mother
Ice, ice baby, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice Ice Baby, by Vanilla Ice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOQtzxPnoY0
One of your classics!
Beautiful, but now I have that song stuck in my head along with the image of Mr. Ice dancing with the 1990 Dallas skyline in the background.
good work maestro – btw – SCIENTISTS WORKING ON DESPERATE PLAN TO REFREEZE ARCTIC Futurism – this seems like an idea straight out of Kim Robinson’s book Ministry for the Future
Refreezing the arctic may be a lot easier once the AMOC shuts down.
Nuclear winter would help a lot as well.
It’s not nice to fool mother nature!
There is a moral crisis that dwarfs it going on right now Jacobin . . . The only “global” power I see is the “globalist.” They are the F$&*ing problem. .
The problem is people. People are, in fact, bad by nature. It is useless to appeal to someone’s ‘humanity’ because this is what humans are. You can’t appeal to a man’s ‘better nature’ because he may not have one, so your best bet is to try to appeal to his perceived self-interest and hope he’s not deranged.
Only chimpanzees can be as nasty, possibly because they are also the most closely related. It is conjectured that human cognitive ability evolved faster than any means to manage the delusional destructive psychological pathologies that came with it. Evolution only rewards survival but always flies blind, and always with the risk of blundering horrifically . . .
“Do you believe,” said Candide, “that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
“Yes, without doubt,” said Candide.
“Well, then,” said Martin, “if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?”
“Oh!” said Candide, “there is a vast deal of difference, for free will . . . ”
And reasoning thus they arrived at Bordeaux . . .
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” John Connor asked. “People, I mean.”
“It is in your nature to destroy yourselves,” said The Machine.
Le monde comme il va: one must pity the children, knowing they have no future.
Sarah Connor:
No Fate But What You Make.
Professor RatJack:
Everyone Fights. No One Quits.
😉
There are, broadly speaking, three views on this:
1.That man is basically ‘evil’, greedy, irrational, and violent.
2. That man is basically ‘good’, a social creature reliant on cooperation.
3. That the incentive structures placed around man determine, to a large extent, the range of choices he has; he is neither good or evil, but exists in a system not of his own making which he must navigate, his future choices informed by his judgment of the results of past choices.
For support for #1, see Hobbes Leviathan (and Hannah Arendt’s commentary on same in Origins of Totalitarianism)
For support for #2., see Visions of Compassion, Davidson and Harrington
For support for #3, read less, and talk to people more.
Personally, I lean towards a mixture of numbers 2 and 3. Homo Sapiens Sapien, being a mammal, and being dependent upon others for a long while after birth, rather than hatching from an egg and having to find food, seems to me a social being. We even find our sense of self through others. The idea that we are rational, self-interested decision-makers has not, in my view, been borne out by history or social life, in either its’ pro-capitalist or marxist variants.
Thank you!
Of course humans are social, but they do seem ill-adapted for living in large groups, which they end up doing in any urban society (civilisation). This results in all kinds of aberrations. I’d quibble with social and cooperative behaviour being the same as “good”. Many of the worst human behaviours are social. One might call witch hunts and the like a form of corrupted sociality, I suppose.
That said, I share Mikhail Bulgakov’s outlook, or at least the one he made the Devil express with reference to Muscovites circa 1930: “They’re normal people. They love money, but that was always the case… Yes, they’re careless. But compassion also sometimes visits their hearts. Ordinary people. Overall, they remind me of the old ones. It’s only the apartment question that has spoiled them.”
People are “spoiled” by different problems and pressures, but there is a goodness that never quite leaves them either. No one has yet been able to reform them, and no one has managed to ruin them completely either. Bulgakov had feared the Bolsheviks might, for a time; then, having lived under them for a few years, he realised that they failed and the “new people” were the same as the old.
…. If men were angels
& vice versa.
Israel besides AIPAC watches US politics. They know what Biden is. He had red lines with Manchin too.
Biden is subservient to old white men in suits, always has been. It’s his essence. Besides his disdain for non white, Biden has been convinced Israel is a valuable strategic asset as understood by the white men in suits. Netanyahu knows this. The high profile resignations of tge war cabinet could have even been made knowing full well that they will be able to reset the clock and boss Biden around.
As an IT veteran, I have to approve replacing the diskette.
Good Stoller on the “Weinstein of antitrust”
Your swamp critter in a nutshell? Although hypocrisy–going on about the sacredness of the law–is usually part of the mix. But here’s suggesting the above attitude is all too common among our oh so entitled elites. “Only the little people pay taxes.”
A bracing article. Wright is someone who embodies the libertarianish, hard to come up with an appropriately disgusting name, philosophy with the student body and anyone else he can squeeze. Sociopathologies all around, rationalizations in the academy and the boardroom. He is not an outlier.
“Uranium fuel planned for high-tech US reactors a weapons risk, scientists say”
‘A bomb similar in power to the one the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 could be made from 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) or less of 19.75% enriched HALEU, the article said. “Designing such a weapon would not be without its challenges, but there do not appear to be any convincing reasons why it could not be done,” it said.’
Got that right. Anybody heard of John Aristotle Phillips? Back in the 70s he was at Princeton and his grades were failing. So to save himself, he worked on a term paper on how to build an atom bomb using public records. His professor said that his design would probably work and he gave it an ‘A’ before it was classified. And this all happened half a century ago-
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/college-student-designed-an-atomic-bomb-for-school-project/
I like the critique offered by a comment on Slashdot illustrating that this is actually about Iranian uranium enrichment:
> The “Hot Hand” Is Not a Myth Nautilus
>> By selecting attempts that come after a hot streak and computing a proportion over this subset, we have unwittingly introduced a negative bias into the estimate of the rate of success that could counteract a hot-hand-induced positive effect.
What’s remarkable is that Tversky didn’t catch this. Similar to the statisticians who faceplanted going after * Marilyn after she actually stepped through the combinatrics.
Despite my criticism of Kahnemann earlier this year, the cognitive bias researchers have done work of great value to understanding humanity. They defined the boundaries within which they are criticised. It’s like they said ‘Hey guys, you notice the sun comes up every 25 hours? We could measure that!’ and the response is “You Wrong, it’s distributed every 23 to 25 hours!”
I’ll diverge two roads here. The first is that ‘Fooled By Randomness’ is pretty much a review of cognitive bias research through Fat Tony’s lips. Still, Taleb is an excellent mathematician, especially on counterintuitive quirks.
The second path is more travelled: sports and leadership and stats. The Boston Celtics are in the Finals again, but this time Brad Stevens has reshaped the culture, and it shows in the statistics. Stevens was a numbers guy at Eli Lilly who coached at Hinkle Fieldhouse, two NCAA finals appearances later and he was coaching the Celtics. But with Danny Ainge as boss, the culture was toxic. ‘He’d trade his own grandmother’ meant that players hunting contracts were selfish in hunting shots (points translates to dollars at contract time). Their best player was Jason Tatum, salty about not being named MVP despite not making his teammates better, their other best player Jalen Brown was stagnant. Stevens couldn’t get through to them as coach. In 2022, he took over from Ainge, turned over 80% of the team and the replacement coach, surrounding the remaining three players with known hard workers with calm heads. Now they are the best team in basketball, Tatum isn’t worried about points but is elite in setting up his teammates, and Brown has become unguardable when he needs to be. Best team in basketball, and it happened fast.
* Ask Marilyn: Tests for AIDS and Drugs: How Accurate Are They? Parade, 3/28/93, p. 24).
The people who did the initial study calling the hot hand a “myth” really need to get out more. Not much of an athlete myself but I did shoot pool frequently back in the day. There were times I’d look at the ball and couldn’t line up a straight shot from two feet away and others when I could pull off long bank shots and set up the next one with my eyes closed.
Also, Go Celtics! This team is really a pleasure to watch.
So did I, but the circumstances in which I engaged in that introduced a lot of lurking variables, from my physical condition to my level of concentration. I suspect this is less applicable to the real money players.
Teamwork, takes work.
Libertarianism doesn’t work so well in sports. All those individual maximizers missing the bucket on team performance.
The “hot hand” happens when you are “in the zone.” Being “in the zone” happens on rare occasion when the game you are playing in seems to be going in slow-motion, but you are going in fast-motion. Occasionally it just all falls perfectly together…even for scrub players. You go back to the bench and your teammates start giving you the side eye. They usually don’t say anything because you are happening in your space and they don’t want to screw it up for you because they have been there also. It’s just a thing. Some thing for statisticians to mess with and screw up. There is a reason we used to call it sadistics.
“Inequality hindering India’s march towards a developed nation”
India may be in competition with China but so long as they tolerate hundreds of millions of their people living in poverty as well as their Caste system, then they will always be at a disadvantage in competition with China. The odd thing is that both India and China are supremely Capitalist countries but how they have done it has led to two different results in development.
One is beholden to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the other is not. We don’t consider this to be a coincidence.
It’s called neo-colonialism, where the old masters leave, but before that they make sure the new “independent” country will remain in debt to the institutions controlled by the old masters and do their bidding even against the national interest.
“One is beholden to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the other is not. We don’t consider this to be a coincidence.”
China has not relied on a capitalist financial system to direct growth, which has allowed the Chinese socialist system to be so dynamic, responsive and resilient to change for so long.
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/12/ever-since-i-became-an-adult-in-1980-i-have-been-a-stopped-clock-with-respect-to-the-chinese-economy-i-have-said-alw.html
December 1, 2015
China’s Market Crash Means Chinese Supergrowth Could Have Only 5 More Years to Run
Ever since I became an adult in 1980, I have been a stopped clock with respect to the Chinese economy. I have said–always–that Chinese supergrowth has at most ten more years to run, and more probably five or less. There will then, I have said, come a crash–in asset values and expectations if not in production and employment. After the crash, China will revert to the standard pattern of an emerging market economy without successful institutions that duplicate or somehow mimic those of the North Atlantic: its productivity rate will be little more than the 2%/year of emerging markets as a whole, catch-up and convergence to the North Atlantic growth-path norm will be slow if at all, and political risks that cause war, revolution, or merely economic stagnation rather than unexpected but very welcome booms will become the most likely sources of surprises.
— Brad DeLong
Never forget that Brad DeLong used to work for the US treasury, so his work is affected by extreme bias and hatred of the Chinese government.
Notice use of the prejudiced word “rule” to describe a Chinese presidency:
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/04/must-read-i-do-not-understand-china-but-it-now-looks-more-likely-than-not-to-me-that-xi-jinpings-rule-will-lose-china.html
April 5, 2016
I do not understand China. But it now looks more likely than not to me that Xi Jinping’s rule will lose China a decade, if not half a century… *
* http://www.economist.com/news/china/21695923-his-exercise-power-home-xi-jinping-often-ruthless-there-are-limits-his
China already had a larger GDP than America in 2015, and China has grown significantly faster than America in every year since and is growing significantly faster than America in 2024. After the dire forecasts of 2015, China actually ended severe poverty among the 1.4 billion, but after all the growth and ending of poverty and dramatic increases in technological productivity, Brad DeLong among other prominent Western economists, failed to notice and have repeatedly demeaned the Chinese political-economic system.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1oQb4
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, United States and United Kingdom, 1977-2022
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1oQbj
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, United States and United Kingdom, 1977-2022
(Indexed to 1977)
“The odd thing is that both India and China are supremely Capitalist countries but how they have done it has led to two different results in development.”
This is an interesting assertion, but importantly incorrect. When the Chinese describe their political-economic system as “socialist, with Chinese characteristics,” it is helpful to assume the description is a careful one. China is not “supremely Capitalistic” and this explains just why development has been so successful for so many years.
Remember that the most prominent of supremely Capitalistic economists have been incorrectly forecasting a China collapse for years. They have been wrong because they fail to understand that China is actually socialist.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=175Kc
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and India, 1977-2022
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=175Kl
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and India, 1977-2022
(Indexed to 1977)
“Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?” New York Times
“…Driving behavior analysis, or telematics, as the insurance industry calls it, could be better for consumers, leading to personalized rates that are more fair. Plus, if people have to pay more for their risky driving, they may drive more cautiously, leading to safer roads. But this will happen only if drivers are aware that their behavior is being monitored….”
Another example this is a rentier economy far removed from supply/demand narratives.
Probably sold as a “safety measure” to car buyers/owners. All these helpful, helpful smartphone and car preinstalled onboard apps. / ;)
Or sold as an “experience.”
“To enhance your (fill in site or software) experience, allow us to share and sell your personal information. This includes technical identifiers, like your IP address and cookie IDs, but does not include things like personal emails or contact information.”
You can even get ‘experienced’. Oh, how you can get ‘experienced.’ / ;)
I was surprised to see such an article in The Hill. Wondered who wrote it as I was reading the article. Turns out it was Douglas MacKinnon who worked under Reagan and Bush I. Makes sense, these words would never come from a democrat.
He talks about Biden’s cognitive abilities to the point Biden can’t process losing so he will be the one who won’t leave the job instead of Trump, as the democrats have said will happen. He then finishes the article with this;
Hahahahaha! The clown show in DC isn’t interested in fixing **** for us serfs. What planet are you living on?
Well, that’s what I was thinking, too.
It read like a bunch of clever contrarianism trying to hide and cover up the memory of the Trumpists trying to set aside and take over the 2020 election. It also tried to divert attention from the side-full of people agitating for civil war . . . which Tony Wikrent devotes some attention to every Sunday over at Ian Welsh’s blog. ( Tony Wikrent’s Weekly Wrap).
It reminded me of something Colonel Lang once said over at his blog in a different context some years ago in reply to a comment he published so he could reply to it. And this is what he said: ” That’s very clever. I don’t like clever. “
For those who want to know more about this.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/10/glenn-greenwald-briahna-joy-gray-on-her-firing-from-the-hill-after-criticizing-israel/
It’s worth noting that, from Forgotten Ally, the Chinese nationalists kept the Japanese pinned down in China from the early 1930s. Keep a portion of the Japanese military engaged in China certainly aided the United States in its island hopping strategy towards directly attacking Japan. This is more forgotten than Russia’s role in the conflict, I think.
Errr,,, it was mostly the Eighth Route Army (Communists) who fought the Japanese after the “agreement” with the Kuomintang. The Nationalists spent quite a lot of effort continuing to attack the Communists, some effort to attack the Japanese. Of course, I may be influenced by Communist propaganda in this assessment, but I remember the Cultural Revolution. Those were hard times.
A very sad tale
‘Tranq’ Turns More Illicit Drug Users Into Amputees
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/tranq-turns-more-illicit-drug-users-into-amputees-954d74e8?mod=us-news_lead_pos2
reminds me of krokodil or whatever it was called, that swept through Russia about 10 years ago
Was Clark seeking “tranq’ on the illegal drug markets? Or was he getting ‘tranq’ without even knowing it, as a secret gift secretly included in whatever he thought he was buying, put there by the same generous people who put fentanyl in the various-other-opiates supply without disclosing it?
I drove by the Sebastopol Farmer’s Market yesterday and saw a crowded booth set up by the RFK/Shanahan campaign.
They have a ground game in Sonoma County.
Saturday I saw my third Political Bumpersticker, 2 Biden/Harris and one RFK to date.
I wonder how soon we’ll see a campaign to change the name of “Hummus”, it sounds a LOT like Hamas and we certainly don’t want to encourage sympathy for terrorists.
Freedom Goop ?.
“Butt Butter” describes its appearance, but reminding people about what they are force fed daily might not be the best approach.
I believe Goop is already taken. Or did you know that ;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goop_(company)
Brand Extension, to go along with Conscious Uncoupling, the Mideast Version.
“Which country do British voters think did the most to defeat Nazi Germany? (5-6 June):
The United Kingdom 42%
The United States 12%
France 6%
The Soviet Union 6%
Canada 3%
Poland 3%https://t.co/z8ryBfGuqS pic.twitter.com/Vjqyh97RIH”
Holy Oswald Mosley, Batman!
Benny and the Gantz
Hey kids, shake it loose together
The death toll’s hittin’ numbers that are bound to change the weather
They’ll kill the red heifer tonight, so stick around
You’re gonna witness fraud in the factum from State Dept. clowns
Oh Bibi and Ben-Gvir have you seem them yet?
Gaza looks so spaced out
B-b-b-b-b Benny and the Gantz
Oh but he’s punched out from Murder, Inc.
He’s tired of the war machine
You know he’s in cahoots, blood on his suit, don’t wanna face tribunals in Lichtenstein, oh …
B-b-b-b-b-Benny and the Gantz
Hey kids, plug into the favorites
Maybe they’re old, but Benny keeps ’em ageless
Few Gazans will survive, so, let us keep on keepin’ on
Gonna fight Hamas out in the streets until the next ice age dawns …
Oh Bibi and Ben-Gvir have you seem them yet?
Gaza looks so spaced out
B-b-b-b-b-Benny and the Gantz
Oh but he’s on the train out of town
He’s tired of the war machine
You know he’s in cahoots, blood on his suit, don’t wanna face tribunals in Lichtenstein, oh …
B-b-b-b-b-Benny and the Gantz
(Sung to the tune of “Benny and the Jets” by Elton John.)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-gantzs-departure-an-opportunity-to-stop-the-humanitarian-policy-in-gaza/
Lindsey Graham
https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1799832487285465244
Ukraine has trillions of dollars worth of critical minerals in their country.
Vladimir Putin cannot be allowed to access that money and those resources because he will share it with China.
It may be a sign of desperation that they’re now having to openly state the truth.
It was never about freedumb, or the Ukrainian people.
It was always just about the money.
Is it about the money? Or is “the money” being floated as a last desperate excuse? Graham is only now mentioning “the money” when he sees that the antirussianitic racist antirussianite antirussianism is not the selling point he spent years thinking it was. And which is still the real point of the excercise for Graham.
It reminds me of Obama late in the game trying to sell “China” as the reason for his TPP when every intelligent person knew that his real reason was ISDS and its Korporate Kangaroo Kourts, as well as the International Free Trade Conspiracy’s long-range goal of exterminating every last vestige of industrial or even artisanal thingmaking in America. And since every smart person knew this, invoking “China” did not help Obama sell TPP.
Funnily enough I think Graham has convinced himself that this is the reason. I don’t think he gets that Ukraine was mostly about getting access to Russia’s resources. Because our oligarchs won’t benefit otherwise. That they should fear Russia, but not because it is trying to destroy us but because they are more than capable of defending themselves from us. But that Russia as the big bad is really a PR story to justify our bad actions.
Video of Chinese drive-through EV battery-swap station
https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1799796279163404358
Drive onto a platform and mechanical arm slides under the car to remove and replace the battery. Looks quick and convenient.
The whole process can take as little as 5 minutes. More info on Chinese company Nio here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/ev-battery-swapping-china-rescue-us-revolution-2024-2
This was mooted long ago, but here in Europe, and I suppose in the US too, we are all individuals and we each want a unique car with unique battery which require unique spares that must be sourced from unique suppliers when they break, or better still, be thrown away and recycled in a unique process using energy sold by unique middlemen who have to buy it from a handful of entities that control all of it―stuff that the things we evolved from died and fossilized themselves for, and material that was created billions of years ago in supernovae and accidentally accumulated on the planet we evolved on. And everyone must have a power drill, and a leaf blower, and television where it is demonstrated for what precise function all these things we need were designed for and what particular accessories they will not function without and how incredibly useful and ergonomic and climate end environment neutral they all are, and, above all, how happy we will be with all our unique things.
I remember reading once long ago about how when America was first pre-industrializing and then early-industrializing, that every screwmaker and boltmaker and nutmaker made their own special types of screwing threads and no-one’s thread matched anyone else’s thread.
Then an early industrialist-engineer whose name I forget began a crusade to get one universal thread type adopted by and across all threadmakers. I don’t know if he made it all the way, but he got close, to the general convenience of everyone involved. Here is a link about “standard screw pitch” in the US and Canada . . . the ” Unified Screw Thread”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Thread_Standard
Perhaps all the non-Tesla carmakers ( because Elon Stench would never agree) could get together and settle on a “Unified Battery”. That would make ” Unified Battery Swap-in Swap-out” possible and then easy to do. And bigger cars needing ” more battery” could use multipacks of the One Basic Standard Battery.” After all, most car companies do design their cars around the same basic gasoline. Or diesel.
That’s what I was thinking. Might make recycling easier too. BI article says a lot of people buy the lower capacity battery then swap it for a higher capacity battery that fits in the same space when they take a longer trip.
I personally know enough individuals to whom this description of their wants does not apply to see this as a great overstatement of the case.
In any case, all pretenses otherwise to the contrary, it is not consumer choice, of which little is allowed in any case, that drives these decisions, but the need to valorize an ever-increasing mass of capital. And I think Meszaros was right when he suggested that in this phase of capitalism an ever-increasing level of wastefulness is the path of least resistance.
the article on texas homelessness, is pretty much from the same type of results as stated in this article.
https://news.mongabay.com/2010/02/how-free-trade-has-devastated-africas-farmers-and-poor/
How free trade has devastated Africa’s farmers and poorby Jeremy Hance on 15 February 2010
A push in the mid-1980s for Africa to embrace free trade to aid its economies backfired in many of the continent’s poorest countries, argues a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Africa was pushed to rollback government involvement in development and instead to rely on the private sector: government services shrunk, cash crops were pushed over staples, while tariffs and subsides were abolished. The insistence on free trade was meant to spur economic growth, but instead undercut traditional agricultural systems that had worked for centuries, eventually leading to a food crisis, which left millions hungry, caused multiple food riots, and destabilized governments.
“Many of these reforms were designed to make countries more efficient, and seen as a solution to failing schools, hospitals and other infrastructure,” explains co-author Laurence Becker, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. “But they sometimes eliminated critical support systems for poor farmers who had no car, no land security, made $1 a day and had their life savings of $600 hidden under a mattress.
“These people were then asked to compete with some of the most efficient agricultural systems in the world, and they simply couldn’t do it,” Becker adds. “With tariff barriers removed, less expensive imported food flooded into countries, some of which at one point were nearly self-sufficient in agriculture. Many people quit farming and abandoned systems that had worked in their cultures for centuries.”Traditional poor African farmers simply couldn’t compete in the global food market against heavily mechanized, subsidized, and corporate agricultural systems.
Rather than aid Africa’s farmers, the emphasis on free trade undercut local food production for a quarter of a decade, according to the study, placing increased reliance on imported rice. Then in 2008 global rice prices doubled leaving millions of Africans—who spend much of their income on food—hungry”…
Fine post on free trade; thank you.
Here is the PNAS study in question:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0905717107
March 25, 2010
Neoliberal policy, rural livelihoods, and urban food security in West Africa: A comparative study of The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali
By William G. Moseley, Judith Carney and Laurence Becker
Abstract
This study examines the impact of two decades of neoliberal policy reform on food production and household livelihood security in three West African countries. The rice sectors in The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali are scrutinized as well as cotton and its relationship to sorghum production in Mali. Although market reforms were intended to improve food production, the net result was an increasing reliance on imported rice. The vulnerability of the urban populations in The Gambia and Côte d’Ivoire became especially clear during the 2007–2008 global food crisis when world prices for rice spiked. Urban Mali was spared the worst of this crisis because the country produces more of its own rice and the poorest consumers shifted from rice to sorghum, a grain whose production increased steeply as cotton production collapsed. The findings are based on household and market surveys as well as on an analysis of national level production data.
“French parties hold emergency talks with possible allies for snap election”
“Analysts have said an outright far-right majority is unlikely, partly because voters often use European elections as a low-cost way of delivering a kick to the incumbent government, and things may well turn out differently in a parliamentary election.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/10/france-braced-election-far-right-surge-macron
Moon of Alabama on X has just (in the last couple of hours) reposted a couple of comments. -a.v.