Dear patient readers,
We are light at launch. Please come back at 7:45 AM EDT for a full ration.
6-week-old boy dead after family dog attacked him in crib, Tennessee family says 7ABC. Paul R: “Holy crap. I wonder if dogs also get covid and become aggressive.”
ANALYSING CENTAURS, NYMPHS, AND GODS: CARL JUNG AND FRIEDRICH CREUZER Antigone
AS ‘BIRD FLU’ IN CATTLE RAISES CONCERNS FOR MILK SAFETY IN THE US, SCIENTISTS CONFIRM THAT PASTEURISATION EFFECTIVELY INACTIVATES INFLUENZA VIRUSES University of Glasgow (Paul R)
#COVID-19
San Francisco, CA is about to hit the highest wastewater level of the entire pandemic at their bigger wastewater site. This is a major red flag and something we need to keep an eye on. If I was the CDC I would be doing extra variant sequencing there ASAP. pic.twitter.com/VrIHXu899d
— Data Report (@CovidDataReport) June 3, 2024
Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic BMJ (Paul R)
Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths Telegraph
China?
US risks ‘forever’ trade war with China Bloomberg
China to retaliate if Europe raises EV tariffs Asia Times (Kevin W)
China ready to ‘forcefully’ stop Taiwan independence: Defence minister Aljazeera
Goodbye inhalers? Chinese trial offers potential one-shot asthma cure Interesting Engineering. Chuck L: “First insulin and now asthma. China’s derailing Big Pharma’s gravy trains.”
India
Modi on course for India election win with weakened mandate Financial Times
South of the Border
Peso falls as Claudia Sheinbaum wins Mexico presidency by landslide Financial Times
Mexico’s next president will have to boost tax take to pay for social programs Reuters (Robin K)
European Disunion
ECB Rate Cut Will Be Rare Bright Spot in Troubled Euro Region Bloomberg
French far right has big lead over Macronists in European election, polls show The Local
Over Dead Bodies for a Profit German Foreign Policy (Micael T)
Old Blighty
Keir Starmer to declare Labour as ‘party of national security’ Guardian (Kevin W)
"Politics, like business, can select for psychopathic traits": https://t.co/J7qSuCpAzG https://t.co/LljcE6ifwE
— Chris Dillow (@CJFDillow) June 4, 2024
Energy bills ‘to remain high because of delays to nuclear plants The Times
Gaza
To Save Time, Biden To Drop Next $320 Million Cash Directly Into Ocean Babylon Bee (Chuck L)
* * * Tzipi Navon, ex-aide to Netanyahu’s wife, fantasized about avenging non existent beheaded babies by skinning Palestinian militants alive, ripping out their nails, cutting their genitals off, cooking them and feeding them to captives
“Save their tongues for last, so we can enjoy… https://t.co/QgE7LsDUEj pic.twitter.com/gdXaIrZlqH
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 1, 2024
‘The New McCarthyism’: NY Hospital Fires Nurse for Empathizing With Gaza Mothers Antiwar.com
* * * ‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 241: Israel contradicts Biden over ceasefire proposal Mondoweiss. My guess is the Israel government is figuring out how to blow up the deal while pinning blame on Hamas. That won’t be easy. Mind you, the hard right wingers have no such compunctions but I am not sure they have the numbers.
Arab foreign ministers say important to deal with US Gaza proposal seriously, positively Arab News
Gaza ceasefire plan turns into deadly game of survival BBC (Kevin W)
Alastair Crooke: How the West Must Change Judge Napolitano, YouTube. An important discussion of how Saudi policy on Palestine, set by the king, can’t be changed until there is a new king, and current policy does not allow for the sort of Israel deal the US keeps talking up.
Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war CPJ (BC)
Lebanon’s Hezbollah says strikes Israeli bases as clashes intensify New Arab
Gaza Protests
What I Saw—and Learned—at a New York City Student Walk-Out for Palestine Corey Robin (UserFriendly)
Queens College president had police waiting at gates of commencement Lucy Komisar
October 7 survivors are suing pro-Palestinian groups. But what is the aim? Al Jazeera (Kevin W)
New Not-So-Cold War
Scholz must explain change of course on use of arms against Russia — lawmaker TASS (guurst)
US close to ‘fatal’ miscalculation – Moscow RT
The New Theory of Ukrainian Victory Is the Same as the Old American Conservative (Kevin W)
First strike capable: why Russia is indifferent to damage to one or another ground based radar installation Gilbert Doctorow
PJH sends:
Today I read a BlueSky-tweet by Atte Harjanne, who is the leader of the Green Party’s parliamentary faction in the Finnish parliament. He published a blog on support for Ukraine, in which he says (https://atteharjanne.fi/2024/06/03/tukea-ukrainalle-on-ryhdistettava/, Finnish original follows):
Thirdly, it is necessary to prepare for the sending of Western troops to help Ukraine on the ground. Supporting Ukraine also in this way is fully in line with the UN Charter. Western forces could act in Ukraine as trainers, as I wrote already in January, as technical and maintenance support, as an aid to the air defense of civilian targets to fight Russian missiles and drones, or to protect the borders against Belarus or Transnistria. This would enhance Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and free Ukrainian troops to the front without Western and Russian forces meeting on the battlefield.
Such deployment of troops should be carried out in the widest possible cooperation between Western countries. If Finland were to participate, the forces would be assembled in a similar way to crisis management operations.
EU DECEIT, FRENCH PROFITEERING IN THE NEW GRAIN SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA John Helmer
Note the last story about a Zelensky purchase proved false. So if this is another tall tale, it suggests a concerted effort to dirty him uP;
‼️♨️‼️Zelenskyj bought one of the biggest casinos in Europe
Turkish media reports that Film Heritage Inc. acquired the Vuni Palace hotel-casino located in Kyrenia, a city on the northern coast of Cyprus. Film heritage incl. registered in Belize and owned by Vladimir Zelenskiy… pic.twitter.com/nXxafU2RCI
— Peacemaker (@peacemaket71) June 3, 2024
Syraqistan
Several are killed after Israeli air strike targets Syria’s Aleppo TRT World
Imperial Collapse Watch
U.S. Retrenchment from the Middle East Is Long Overdue Daniel Larison
Ukraine War rips veil off of US weapons superiority Responsible Statecraft (Bill B)
The F-35 Will Now Exceed $2 Trillion As the Military Plans to Fly It Less GAO Blog (Bill B)
Deaf and Blind: The Maladies of American Diplomats ScheerPost (Micael T)
Trump
Buzz Kill: The Trump Conviction Presents a Target-Rich Environment for Appeal Jonathan Turley
Rand Paul Warns Of “War In The Streets” Coming From Trump Verdict Modernity
Which Movie Will It Be? James Howard Kunstler (Chuck L)
Why Trump continues to defy electoral gravity Fred Luntz, Financial Times
Biden
Biden ducks strife at Democratic National Convention with Zoom nomination Washington Times
Will Biden’s new border restrictions sway voters? The Hill
Jury is chosen in Hunter Biden’s federal firearms case and opening statements are set for Tuesday Associated Press (Kevin W)
FirstEnergy, the center point of a bribery plot, could officially beat the rap this summer Clevelend (Carla R)
Our No Longer Free Press
How School Shootings Are Changing the Design of American Classrooms Wall Street Journal (Dr. Kevin)
Oil alliance OPEC+ extends collective crude production cuts into 2025 CNBC (Kevin W)
Extreme weather and Red Sea crisis are driving up the prices of commodities OilPrice
Antitrust
Microsoft could be about to write a fat check to stave off cloud antitrust complaint The Register
The Bezzle
Toyota apologizes for cheating on vehicle testing and halts production of three models Associated Press (Kevin W)
A commercial real estate crisis is hiding in plain sight The Hill
Google Can Keep Your Phone If You Send It In For Repair With Non-OEM Parts Android Authority
Class Warfare
CEOs made nearly 200 times what their workers got paid last year Associated Press (Kevin W). Note these metrics understate CEO earnings, so the ratio is even worse. Bill Lazonick and others have described how long form.
French authorities continue to expel homeless people from Paris ahead of Olympics Anadolu Agency
Antidote du jour. carycat: “An occasional visitor to my backyard”:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
231 comments
Comments are closed.
WE NEED HELP
(melody borrowed from Bonny Dundee an old Scottish tune)
Our army has lost our economy’s broke
Hamas are the heroes of all Arab folk
Hezbollah is poised to take all Galilee
And the Houthis sink ships that approach from the sea
We’re stealing the West Bank as fast as we can
Chasing out Arabs is our only plan
We’ve flattened all Gaza and chopped down their trees
We need help with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis!
We’ve left all of Gaza with nothing to eat
We’ve killed tens of thousands they still won’t retreat
We’ve turned off their taps and electricity
If we have to we’ll kill every creature we see
We’re stealing the West Bank as fast as we can
Chasing out Arabs is our only plan
We’ve flattened all Gaza and chopped down their trees
We need help with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis!
The world wants our leaders in criminal court
But we can defy them with U.S. support
We’ll drag the U.S. into war wait and see
For we own all their Congress and their nominee
We’re stealing the West Bank as fast as we can
Chasing out Arabs is our only plan
We’ve flattened all Gaza and chopped down their trees
We need help with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis!
We sink peace proposals we scuttle all talks
The USA Congress is full of war hawks
Each one who’s elected needs AIPAC monies
If you beg for our money get down on your knees
We’re stealing the West Bank as fast as we can
Chasing out Arabs is our only plan
We’ve flattened all Gaza and chopped down their trees
We need help with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis!
We’re stealing the West Bank as fast as we can
Chasing out Arabs is our only plan
We’ve flattened all Gaza and chopped down their trees
YEAH!
We need help with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis!
Antifa, your songs are particularly brilliant this week! Respect!
Marvelous meter! Don’t know the tune but I can hear it anyways!
“To Save Time, Biden To Drop Next $320 Million Cash Directly Into Ocean”
Personally I prefer the traditional method of setting all those millions on fire and throwing it up into the air.
‘Make it rain, baby!’
Will no one think of the adult entertainment industry? Think of the quality and quantity of “up close, personal” dances that adults across the country could enjoy. Even that creepy lone wolf character drinking tall boy PBR…\sarc
It’s truly a sunk cost.
Or, they can just buy another F-35, same end result.
Ledger Joker best Joker?
KLF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid
Do dogs get covid?
https://vetmed.illinois.edu/pet-health-columns/coronavirus-pets/
But don’t worry too much – the Mayo Clinic assures us
[emphasis added]
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/expert-answers/can-pets-get-coronavirus/faq-20486391
And they claimed getting women into politics would sooth the savage beast…
Old slogan: I’m gonna get medieval on your a**.
New slogan?
To parrot a phrase from Commodus, nearer to the end before his staged fight with Maximus. Seems that viciousness and outspoken, malicious revenge upon stated enemies is equally a trait among men and women after all.
“You shall watch as I bathe in your child’s blood! Am I not merciful!?”
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?
China’s secret plan for destroy the West appears to be: finding cures for chronic diseases to destroy pharma profits, cost effective EV and renewable power to destroy fossil fuels profits, cheap drones that Ukrainians prefer over American drones costing 100x as much to destroy MIC profit.
Once they crack $5,000 stackable tiny home production, puts together an universally accepted $10 per credit online education curriculum, and puts out watchable movies, America will no longer have an economy.
Yeah, if i had (grand-)kids i would be joking to them about learning Chinese.
Tom Lehrer’s song:
almost… it’s
“In German oder Englisch…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro&ab_channel=TheTomLehrerWisdomChannel
It’s a hard language to learn. I’ve been studying for a total of 8 years, and although I’ve really stepped it up the last two years or so on top of living in Taiwan, the amount of words, compound words, slangs and idioms you have to know in order to be able to read and watch a wide variety of materials is just staggering. It also does not help that I am closer to tone deaf than not, because although Chinese has “only” 4 tones as opposed to 7 tones in Cantonese, for someone who is tone deaf, 4 is like 3 too many :(
China’s secret plan, if it has one, appears to be focused on improving the material situation of the country, improving and increasing education, devising new technologies – they have built and are running a thorium reactor for generating electricity, and growing trade and manufacturing.
The US/West is spending its money and effort on protecting what it’s already accumulated (aka endless wars), letting spending for future growth go by the wayside. Less money for education, for new research in new areas, for infrastructure, and general well-being. The current leadership seems stuck in the 1990’s era thinking about the world map and economics. / my 2 cents.
Yes. But that plan isn’t secret or targeting the West.
It was a tongue in cheek comment, but seriously, the only evidence of ‘Chinese aggression’ reported in the West appears to be stuff they purportedly do to their own people, some minor territorial disputes with neighbors (nothing like the US sending DEA agents into Mexico or openly plotting coups in Peru and Pakistan), and selling us cheap stuff that we really need (EVs and photovoltaic panels).
The real ‘secret plan’ is, as you say, just stepping aside and watch the West destroy itself.
re: Chinese aggression. Look at what is happening in the South China See wrt the Philippines, VN, and other small nations bordering that sea lane.
Another example of Chinese aggression-
https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1784123161392668938
You make my point about the US/West spending its fortunes on protecting what its already got and for endless war.
That does not undercut my point that a rising China is flexing its sea muscles in the South China Sea and has been doing so for several years now. Trying to rest control of that vital trade sea lane from the West. Declaring the West’s Law of the Sea treaties/agreements do not really apply to China at all. etc. Oak trees were once acorns, as the saying goes.
I could be wrong, but I still think that China’s presence in the South China Seas is to force western forces to concentrate on them there rather where they would be normally operating – just off the Chinese coastline itself. The Chinese keep the pot simmering there and it makes the west become obsessed with this region like a bunch of cats with a laser light. Meanwhile it gives the Chinese breathing room to develop their coastal defenses.
Two articles on China’s violation of Law of the SeaTreaty:
The first from 2016 center-right view.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/07/14/how-the-u-s-must-respond-to-chinas-rejection-of-south-china-sea-court-decision/
The second from 2020 about the ongoing dispute.
https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/singha-agarwal-south-china-sea/
Imo, China is slowly trying to claim control of that vital trade sea route…as a rising manufactuing/trading power likely would do.
adding: The West sending its manufacturing to China starting in earnest 30 years ago and allowing China into the WTO created a rising prosperous China. The Western wealthy manufacturers thought it clever to outsource manufacturing for cheaper labor costs. Said Western wealthy manufacturers couldn’t see anything, and outcome beyond the possible profits to be made. Neoliberal thinking at its highest and finest.
And the neocons thought it a great idea too as they figured that the rising billionaire class in China would eventually take over power, like they have in the US, and they would be willing to sell the whole country down the Yangtze river – to the western corporations & billionaires. That the place would become just another neoliberal hell-hole. Yeah, didn’t quite work out as they planned.
Rev, that’s funny ’cause it’s true. I remember neolib George S. was outraged that China’s leadership wasn’t playing ball the way GS thought it should. Billionaire myopia at its finest. / ;)
The ChinaGov wants to strip mine all the fish out of the
China Sea and strip mine all the oil and gas out from under it, pjlus anything else of value they might find there.
Binary leftists please to think that “America bad” equals “China good”.
In the decades to come, after America has become a fading memory in the whole East/South East Asia region, China will emerge as the most hated nation in East, SouthEast and South Asia. That’s just a purely amateur layman’s intuition-based prediction, to be sure.
Maybe, but in the meanwhile some countries in the region are reaping the benefits of cooperating with China, just witness the newly built High Speed Train in Indonesia, whereas America has nothing to offer.
China is flexing its sea muscles in the South China Sea,
and Persians in the Persian Gulf.
Russians are flexing their land muscles in Novorossiya,
and Malorussia, and Belarus too.
Only USA flexes it’s muscles in all the seas and gulfs,
and everyone’s backyard,
declaring that no law really apply to USA at all,
not to mention the arcane rules of the rule based order.
I anticipate that in 5 years, we will all be paying tributes to our entirely just and holy Yemenese overlords. I’m looking forward to afternoon qat breaks myself.
More satire. / ;)
About that…
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1788784323090579579
Thanks for that. But gawd. It sounds like the South China Seas are the Balkans of the Pacific with their multiple territorial claims.
Ancient maps? Really? Isn’t that Isr’s claim? And if modern Italy wants to reclaim modern France, what then? Sorry to be abrasively satircal, but sheesh….
Official maps from the 1850s (and later) seem pretty germane for determining ownership of a territory to me. But I’m open to hearing about your alternative solution for determining territorial boundaries. Do you think, as the Filipino government appears to think, that ownership is determined by whoever manages to wreck a boat on a sandbar?
Ah, abrasive satire returned. very good. / ;)
WTH
Similar things have been done by other countries, eg pouring concrete over shoals (I think) to turn them into “islands,” or at least, transform geographic features artificially in some way to strengthen territorial claims. So it’s only slightly less absurd.
I’m not saying that the Chinese are absolutely in the right here, but the research does suggest that their claims are quite strong and they are not behaving in an unjustifiably aggressive manner. I’m more sympathetic to Vietnam’s claims since they don’t appear to be entirely oligarchic, but claims by Bong Bong Marcos? By a country that decided to bring back another Marcos?
Anyways get back to me when the US ends its illegal sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela.
Geopolitics ain’t beanbag, as they say. / ;)
adding: and yet, the Western so-called great and good billionaires cannot understand their errors which let China into the Western Panama Canal transportation hub or into Aftrica’s central mining/important earth elements zone. The error is in the West, imo. Relaxed, confident hubris meet eager, striving, large middle kingdom.
The Empire’s (Washington’s “Blob”) plan with Russia/China/Iran is to force them to spend large amounts of money on national security. Washington believes it “won” Cold War I by forcing the USSR to spend more and moe money on arms to counter the Empire. People tend to think that Washington is irrational–it isn’t. They want to increase international spending on arms as well as the US–it’s all about the money. The US flush with other people’s money (so to speak) has unlimited resources to spend on the military and the covert ops community (which is also involved in profitable underground enterprises). This plan may not work well with China but it will and is slowing China’s plans.
What can piles of “fiat” money do when the productive capacity is gone up in smoke and the workforce has moved away, retired, or died? In many fantasy books and movies, performing magical acts comes with a cost. In the US, the magical thinking has no barrier… it is just faith based.
You can’t spell faith w/o fiat being involved.
True, but while Yahwe provided mana to wandering Israelis maybe was ust the season), I don’t see any evidence of 155 mm shells popping out of thin air…
And re: endless wars. The other day I was watching an epic fight between male grizzlies. It was territorial, there was a long leadup with many opportunities to back down, but once they had made contact you could see how they couldn’t easily disengage, to disengage was death, so each had to continue to the end, there was no way to even admit defeat and escape. It was quite pitiful, painful and sad to watch. And so utterly stupid and unnecessary. In the end, they were both so mauled, muscles ripped and skin hanging off the bone, so bloody and broken, exhausted and in pain, there was no way either of them could have survived. I’m not even sure if their dicks were still attached to reap any rewards of whatever territory they were fighting over. And here we have the US trying to pick a fight with multiple stronger bears at once.
As I’ve said in another comment–other countries do not have unlimited funds to spend on the military the US seems to have that ability since it is now a one-party state. We also have to understand that losing wars is a business model–the worse a war goes the more arms the oligarch-owned and run MIC must sell the more profit it makes. It has worked very well for the USA–Vietnam was the model (the US deliberately extended the war it knew it would lose).
Other countries do not have the world reserve currency.
“…other countries do not have unlimited funds to spend on the military the US seems to have that ability…”
Seems to have. Seems is doing a lot of work there. The military now takes up over half of the federal discretionary budget, and is rising. How long is that sustainable, especially now that we are starting to lose the reserve currency? Without the ability to coerce other states into giving us their resources that income will start to fade, and we will be put in the same position as the Soviet Union trying to keep up with their empire.
Just last week, Senator Wicker’s proposed 55 billion dollar increase to the defense budget caused a small uproar*, and one has to wonder how much longer they can continue losing wars for fun and profit before non-discretionary social stabilization programs here at home have to start being cut to provide for them.
* https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4699346-sen-wicker-money-alone-wont-fix-our-military/
The other problem is that power projection is far more expensive than defense. To project power, you need “treasure ships,” expensive, vulnerable, and not that effective. If you are spending $100 to “dominate” a faraway country for every $1 they spend, even seeming “infinity” runs out fast, even if your spending is not extremely inefficient due to grift and industrial shortcomings, or if the other country (the one you are trying to pick fights with) has enormous control over inputs into your MIC.
Eventually, the gravy train will slow down and perhaps come to some kind of saner equilibrium. But how people feel about the subject the Uniparty will do as it pleases as long as the bribes and threats wear out–but I don’t see that happening any time soon. Remember, the whole Empire with all the vassal states are still on board the train for a variety of reasons including a highly sophisticated rewards and punishments system. We are nowhere near a substantial political movement that could stop this. All candidates for POTUS, for example, have stated they favor war, war, and more war anyplace it can happen.
A drastic economic downturn might begin to slow the train down but I see little evidence of that either.
“Eventually the gravy train will slow down…”
It is beginning to look like eventually has arrived. I was just watching yet another of Judge Napolitano’s interviews, this one with Matt Hoh, where he is saying that the grapevine is full of rumors that Turkey will seek to join BRICS and leave NATO. The NATO rumors have been there for a while, but their seeking to join the SCO was common knowledge last year.
When NATO loses its’ second largest military and all commerce through the Dardanelles is lost to the BRICS, how much longer must we wait to see that the entire ship of empire is flailing? POTUS candidates can rail about US supremacy all they like, but we only represent five percent of the world population and it looks like everyone else is already moving on.
Uniparty and RFKJr are war pigs, but you have 3 or 4 other genuinely anti-war choices for president and I urge you to consider voting for one of them.
No. We don’t. Not in the US system. Not in any meaningful way.
Your comment confirms my assessment that you’re not in the US or a US citizen. Thanks “Emma” for making that clear. / ;)
Why are you fixating on me rather than the discussion? As it happens, I am an US voter and I even live in one of Lambert’s battleground states.
I happen to think that people who aren’t willing to vote and support for a better choice that is offered, don’t get to then complain about the lack of choice. Maybe it won’t be enough and we’ll have to try something else, but it seems better to give it a try first.
Why are you shifting the goalposts? / ;)
(“an US voter….”) / heh
Congratulations, you unmasked me as a poor grammarian. I hope that brings you endless satisfaction.
It sounds like you continue to consider me a liar. So I don’t think further engagement on this or other topics will be productive. I will endeavor to avoid responding to your comments in the future and hope you will do me the kindness of the same.
“Congratulations, you unmasked me as a poor grammarian…”
Never ever, I think you are a splendid thinker and grammatical as a writer can be.
“Congratulations, you unmasked me as a poor grammarian…”
Please know that I always take delight in reading you. I make a habit of saving articles on Chinese ecological advances because of you…
Thank you for the vote of confidence, though I have to say that my phone typed grammar are often quite embarrassingly full of misspellings and bad grammar. Still, I hope the content is interesting.
I don’t think of myself as a China booster, as I find quite a bit to disagree with on official policy (especially on Covid reopening). Still, it’s an inspiration to the rest of the world that a better world is possible, as well as bringing an exponentially better life to its 1.4 billion people.
I will say that it’s even making great strides in the culture influence sphere. I used to think that with a few prestige exceptions, Chinese drama and movies tend to be quite terrible. But last summer I watched Tencent’s production of The Three Body Problem and it was great. I’ve been following CCTV and Tencent’s documentary channels on YouTube and they just show a great diversity of Chinese cultures and natural environments. Hopefully they’re reaching more people and bringing more awareness that China isn’t some sort of blue filtered regime but full of interesting and likeable people just living their lives.
Ad hominem and unwarranted serial hostility alert. Not sure why, but a couple of years ago I was targeted by a frequent poster here and accused of being a plant or a bot, and it just about ruined it for me. My dad had just died of Covid, and I had to re-register, not the offender.
Flora, you don’t know who Emma is, why she’s here nor what she’s going through. Please be civil.
I understand, and will think of you and your father.
Ben,
I appreciate your comments and for sharing your experience, and I’m so sorry that you had to go through all that during a time of great personal loss. I will certainly keep you and your father in my thoughts. I lost my dear grandmother during the COVID lockdown (not from COVID but her care was greatly complicated by the lockdown and overwhelmed hospitals, and she might have recovered from her illness otherwise) and it’s still very painful to think that she died scared and mostly alone. It’s one thing to debate the appropriate way to deal with COVID, but to have people deny your suffering in that way is just unconscionable.
Luckily or unluckily for me, bad grammar and poor proofing is my normal mode. Spellcheck killed off my fairly vestigal abilities on that front and phone typing has really unmasked me as a very bad grammarian, LOL. But as it’s become oddly specific and personal, it’s better to just disengage.
Yes! That is Jill Stein’s pitch. She is the only serious anti-war, pro-planet, pro-people candidate running. As I see it, one’s only choices are to vote for Stein, or withhold consent from the duopoly by not voting. It would be a dramatic statement if–say–60% of eligible voters refused to vote in the 2024 election, making a point in the process that the choices on offer are between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.
Let’s stipulate that the US business model is to lose wars. To that end, congress, the key stakeholders, will happily fund any and all military projects, ventures, inititatives and regardless of balance sheet, (lack of) health, (lack of) performance, (lack of) governance, (lack of) risk management. The product, the business, namely weapons and war, are next to useless and repeatedly shown to be so, but that’s ok with the stakeholders, they’re not in it for results, as long as the value is going up they’re holding, not shorting. They’re the Tesla of stocks, held aloft by believers. There’s no transparency, the company feels no obligation to be transparent to stakeholders about anything at all, transparency is considered bad for business.
Let’s also stipulate that other countries have a different model, call it the existential model. Their stakeholders are serious about the balance sheet, expect hard results, expect performance, expect good governance and risk management, expect transparency to stakeholders, they expect the product to work.
Now give the first company an infinite supply of funds, give the second only a limited supply, and have them compete against each other.
Insofar as one company is pretending to fight wars and losing them, but not actually or really fighting wars against any real competition, the model might work and be profitable. Insofar as one company with dodgy product might go up against another company with functional and superior product….can dodgy win even with infinite cash?
Probably not, but given nuclear weapons and the sheer physical difficulty of invading America, I think the US can afford to lose any number of wars until something else does it in. I suspect elite awareness of this impunity (as well as lack of significant consequences for foreign misadventures in domestic politics) may explain why it has come to adapt this model.
“The End of History” rotted minds. Besides the usual rot associated with writes with no turnover, they were heavily propagandized about living in a golden age. Until they are removed or made uncomfortable, there is no reason for them to change course.
One of the leading advocates of the Iraq War is president while Ritter has had passport revoked.
My family has a few members with pretty severe asthma so I am always interested in reading about new treatments. I saw an article about a week back on this and 1) this has still not been even phase one tested on people, 2) the treatment involves genetically modifying certain T cells to kill off immune cells that cause asthma attacks but may have other important functions in the immune system and 3) it’s “personalized medicine”, meaning that a specialist lab would have to whip up a batch of the treatment for each patient, and that costs about $400k per dose. So I don’t think that this is right around the corner for the average person with asthma who uses a corticosteroid inhaler to prevent attacks. Lastly, I’m not an MD, just a former microbiology student so ymmv.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2432859-asthma-treated-in-mice-using-offshoot-of-car-t-cell-cancer-therapy/
Thanks for your comment. Some of my extended family members have asthma. The article sounded a little too good to be true, imo.
Thanks for the info! Yeah, I figured this was far from being a silver bullet, since the mechanisms for most chronic diseases include multiple factors. Still, gene therapy seems like an area that’s becoming more accessible for public use. I always suspected that the longevity of some of our more evil billionaires and politicos was dire to their access to advanced gene therapy for cancer and such that the rest of us don’t even know about.
Granted my high school days were decades ago, but as I recall being taught then… at least in Rome’s early expansionary years many of the peoples the “conquered” may not have necessarily been unwilling. As I recall the way it was taught then… Roman rule often meant lower taxes so many people in the defending army didn’t necessarily mind the cost of loosing.
Don’t forget that Roman money was the ‘Worlds Reserve Currency’ in every place they conquered.
Computers really speeded up the debasement process. Pity that you can’t quite collect a tray of debased dollars the way you could for denarii.
Plus, you could hoard the good denarii, with mostly silver, for the metal. There really is no “good dollar” to keep now.
I guess we can still horde ‘good’ coins, assuming they haven’t all been melted down already for their metal content.
“The F-35 Will Now Exceed $2 Trillion As the Military Plans to Fly It Less GAO Blog (Bill B)”
I become more and more cognizant of a lost decade of sorts. I was looking over a timeline of fighter planes, and it struck me that most of those in service today was introduced in the 80s or earlier. Even the F-35 is nearing 20 years since first flight!
We are looking at one, maybe two, decades of western near standstill.
Not really a standstill. More like a treadmill of forever upgrades that are never used in real combat with a peer. Maybe that’s why we and NATO want troops on the ground and on bases, because there’s nothing like an actual fight with the enemy for a proper education, and Russia is getting it in spades right now, while all we do is shovel all of the West’s arms into the losing battlefields of Ukraine and the international arms market. I’ll bet a lot of the people in the MIC are excusing the failures of these weapons, like the Patriot, on the dumb Ukrainians, and maybe they’re right.
Yeah but the F-35 is a whole new level of complexity. It has a shorter range, a smaller bomb load, its software isn’t really working and who knows what vulnerabilities that it has. Hmm, I can see it now. So Putin would be touring his underground command bunker – in case of WW3 – when his eye would be drawn to a switch with the sign above it saying ‘F-35’ and nothing else. So when he asks a nearby captain the purpose of that switch, is told that in case of war that switch would be flipped and all F-35s in the world would simply shut down. When Putin tells the captain how impressed he is with it, the captain sheepishly replies that they got it half price off of Alibaba.
The Russians would be better off to leave the F35s unmolested; they would weaken the enemy a lot more that way.
They just need to keep jamming its radar, and the pilots will be busy hitting the reboot.
Always wondered if, in a way, F35 turned out to be Russia’s revenge on USAF: my understanding is that some of its technologies are derived from Russia’s: for example, the troublesome vertical takeoff feature (for the Marines, at least) comes originally from USSR’s failed Yak-141 fighter, if I remember correctly.
UK Harrier Jumpjet was the first VSTOL aircraft in serial production in NATO.
“…the captain sheepishly replies that they got it half price off of Alibaba.”
OMG!!! LMAO!!! Sadly there is a real possibility that this is basically true.
Physics are a problem. Then US procurement procedures are broken.
In the case of the f35, we are building Swiss army knives when they work, but the scale of the US air forces means we can invest in specialized production. Do I need a machete or an absurdly sized pocket knife so I can open a bottle when I’m done? The f35 was a marine brass wet dream, not a reasonable design.
It’s not a case that we can’t build better planes, but living up to a fantasy is the driving force, not a sensible defense structure. Then we half a–ed drones, partially it was seen as the be all and end all until people realized the signals could be hacked.
If the pentagon did not have the F-35, when the Harriers retired the Marine Corps would have no need for the Navy’s large “landing” ships!
For USAF, someday the wing boxes on F-16 will crack! F-35 is suffering similar engine issues to early deployed F-16, only now the alternative engine is not designed! Fortunately, F-35 has less history of becoming a lawn dart…….
There was a rumor going around second half of GHW Bush term that wonder weapons would only do low rate until all the bugs were worked out. Maybe helped Clinton!
Other GAO reports on the F-35 suggest the DoD decide how they want to sustain (did DoD get ‘data’ to do needed repairs, or decide economic repair strategies? Supply chains??) the weapon system, decisions should have been made 20 years ago!
The blog notes the F-35 is in “full rate production”, but the DoD testers have not finished the tests to send a “beyond low rate initial production report (BLRIP) as required to congress. DoD and Lockheed don’t follow rules, aka laws. LRIP is usually limited to 10% total fleet!!
The USAF has refused to sign receiving documents on 90 F-35’s: a soft ware upgrade keeps failing, that upgrade is needed to try and fix the F-35 with a “block 4 build”.
Worse the new stuff hung on F-35 needs cooling which drags on the engines making them inadequate and run hot which is bad for reliability, and a new engine is needed!
F-22 is late 80’s technology, was planned to replace the F-15. late 60’s tech but we could only afford 180 of them so late 60’s tech is going to be around to cover for F-35 of decades.
Master of long line of boondoggles!
Israel regularly uses F-35s which seems the only place the plane is in active combat–are they complaining?
How is the IDF “poster child” for F-35?
Hamas has no air defenses. IDF operational tempo is low! Most of their targets are close, and their ELINT prepares the air space.
They have to use them; make headlines, they get them virtually free and have access to all the “high” technology.
Have they retired any F-15’s and F-16’s?
Didn’t the US ship over a whole bunch of F-35s a coupla months ago? My guess was that it was easier for the US to ship them new F-35s rather than do repair and deep maintenance on the F-35s that the Israelis were using.
Yes.
If Lockheed contractors cannot keep 50% of IDF or US airplanes flying add 50% to primary aircraft inventory!
F-35 in US operations has a dismal full mission capable rate and a very low partial mission capable (has one or more mission capabilty down but can fly) rate. GAO tracks this annually!
Almost like that was the plan from the start, as apparently Lockheed also need to send contractors to Norway to help maintain the F-35s there.
The 98% cost overruns were in part 0aid by reducing “supportability analysis”, which stopped analysis to trade off between quality/robust reliability and repair plans.
They have contractors because 20 years in there is no set of product support assets.
A GAO report last year described this failing.
Lockheed will send techs, but that does not assure the plan is maintained to plan, or keep mission capability.
This type set of problems is fairly common as seen lately in Ukraine
F-35s have flown over Syria that has some AD systems. Just sayin’.
Hasn’t Russia agreed not to shoot down Israel’s aircraft attacking Syria? And aren’t most aerial attack missiles etc launched from Israel’s air space?from Israel
A lot is learned watching F 35 fly.
Why give US a mission failure to fix?
US learned a lot from Serb shooting F-117
‘US learned a lot from Serb shooting F-117’
Yeah, they learned to cancel the whole F-117 program.
Israel applied for special permission to install their own software on F-35. And still they prefer to use stand-off weapons against any adversary with any resemblance of an air defense system.
The F-22 Raptor has never had a combat kill. Yet it proved itself when it destroyed a Chinese weather balloon and thereby protected the entire country. The F-35 seems more capable than the F-22. $2 trillion is a small price to pay in order to protect us from future weather balloons.
You are all thinking of the F-35 program as a way to develop an airplane. That is 1960’s thinking. The F-35 was a program to shift funds from the US government to contractors in many states and a trap for cyber spies who either sell US intellectual property or try to build their own Concordski to bad specifications.
We saw this business model years ago in an automotive example: Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation
>ANALYSING CENTAURS, NYMPHS, AND GODS: CARL JUNG AND FRIEDRICH CREUZER Antigone
Calling Dr. Michael Hudson…how does Creuzer’s definition of symbol comport with the concept of money?
In the first chapter of the Symbolik, Creuzer introduces his theory of the symbol. The symbol is an expression of early man’s immediate experience, from which mythological and artistic forms are derived….This primary symbolic essence could be found within the spiritual nature of mythopoeic man. Creuzer, in the introduction to the Symbolik, demonstrated the essential qualities of the symbol. On ontological grounds he defined it as the embodied/incarnate idea (verkörperte Idee), which manifests itself in tangible form, and points to the Divine.[4]
The post Jungian German psychological theorist Wolfgang Giegerich makes an interesting case that the soul has become money.
If Mesopotamian money had any symbolism, it was of an entire system. There was a price schedule of MANY commodities — that could be used to pay the palace sector. It was a system of relative values reflecting the range of normal activities.
You’re the FN GOAT, DOC!!!
📕 🐐
HUDSON HAWK STRIKES AGAIN!!!
#HUDSON2028
The UK elections are turning into a sad joke being played on the British electorate. They are voting left to turn out a right wing conservatives, and will get an even farther right, mroe conservative, more war mongering party for their trouble. The Stupid; It Burns. Might be time to do more reading on the collapse of the USSR again.
More evidence that “New Labour” and the “New Democrats” are mirror images of each other. This article reads like the DNC’s playbook for recruitment of NatSec candidates. And as you point out, the Conservative/Republican response is always yet more macho posturing which only ratchets up the war-mongering.
As the political theater becomes ever more insane, the chances of geopolitical disaster continue to increase.
A variant of that is playing out even places operating on proportional representation. The largest parties ends up being in the pocket of the monied, and thus neolib is the policy either way.
The political assassination of Corbyn by the UK establishment just keeps on paying dividends to them. The Return on Investment must be colossal already. Imagine of Labour was being lead by Corbyn right now?
That would have required a bloodbath of a civil war in the party in order to cleanse it of Blairites, and Corbyn taking a clear stance on Brexit.
Basically the guy never expected to get elected party leader, nor did anyone else. He had been throwing his name in the hat on a lark for decades.
I read or heard somewhere that Sunak “doesn’t want to be a wartime Prime Minister”. If that is true, then Sunak probably called early elections so he could throw them to Starmer and let Starmer be the wartime Prime Minister.
Zelensky’s real-estate extravaganza, from the twiXt by the so-called Peacemaker.
Turkish media reports that Film Heritage Inc. acquired the Vuni Palace hotel-casino located in Kyrenia, a city on the northern coast of Cyprus.
Kyrenia is in the Turkish-occupied pseudo-republic of North Cyprus. Even Zelensky isn’t loony enough to invest gazillions in a non-recognized statelet, controlled by Turkiye.
This doesn’t pass the sniff test.
I am sure that Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian elite have feathered their nests. I am sure that the Azov gang and Right Sektor have done the same.
I just tend to doubt that Zelensky’s big investment is going to be to buy up all of the Starbucks outlets in Transnistia.
It only makes sense as a potential place to shelter if absolutely everything goes wrong, since there are no extradition treaties in force. No country but Turkiye recognizes Northern Cyprus. No recognition, no extradition.
He could run his joint like Rick’s Place.
And Blinken could drop in occasionally to play his guitar there. Does Victoria Nuland sing?
Line out, next shooter.
I usually can get your references but you’ve stumped me here.
When a craps shooter rolls a 7 after establishing a point, all bets on the layout lose, and the stickman typically says that phrase.
Vous avez de l’esprit, cher Monsieur.
Aparently she can:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrMnLgYDr-0
A dynamic duo performing covers from Young and Springsteen?
File under Imperial Watch Collapse: this essay was written in 1976, 26 pages,pdf.
The Fate of Empires
and
Search for Survival
https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
John Adams: I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John, you say that like it’s a good thing!
The author manages to stay analytical, despite his clear preferences:
> (T)he vast expansion of the field of knowledge achieved by the Age of Intellect seemed to mark a new high-water mark of human progress. We cannot say that any of these changes were ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
The removal of opinion attached to stage is adjacent to Taleb on Progressive v Conservative. The note here: the Regressive direction of the last four years, from federal collapse on abortion rights, to the rollback of DEI offices now occurring at major universities.
Re: James Howard Kunstler
A lot of the time, he seems to have a pretty decent head on his shoulders, then out of nowhere he shows how susceptible he is to right-wing propaganda BS. Here, he waits until the very end to tell you, in so many words, that he believes there was “widespread vote fraud” in 2020, and that BLM and Antifa are “Democratic Party shock troops.” smdh.
Well, turns out I think the same as him now. go figure. The Dem estab isn’t what it once was, imo.
“widespread vote fraud” in 2020, can that idea be dismissed with the shake of the head? Imho, no. Corporations are people, fundraising shills are a constant part of our daily soundtracks, unverifiable electronic election systems, and impossibly enormous amounts of money are raised and then disappear into the impenetrable darkness of the campaign overlords, all set in a cultural setting that emphasizes winning at all cost, and there is no shame in cheating, only getting caught.
If you would like some documentation I would aim you at Voter GA, a nonpartisan watchdog with oodles of documentation regarding clear voter fraud 2020 GA general election. Grab a cup of coffee.
Disclaimer, I am most definitely not “right-wing”.
This link cites claims made in 2019 (!), 2020, and 2021. One would need to evaluate the investigations, court cases, and analysis of these claims that have taken place since then.
Here are a few links. They include additional links and video.
“Ballot images” vs “ballots”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/05/23/missing-ballot-images-fulton-county-georgia/73688622007/
“Tru-Vote geo-tracking”
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-elections-true-vote-ballot-stuffing-199113b47bc2df79c63fdf007cd23115
“likely illegal ballots”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/a-pro-trump-voting-expert-was-questioned-about-his-data-it-did-not-go-well-for-him/
(As far as point #1, it is the case that GA uses BMD’s for in-person voting, not hand marked ballots. However, the vulnerability which that presents wasn’t, afaik, the subject of any lawsuit or other disputes, which focused on the counting rather than the marking.)
Oh but they were. Once you dig in, you will see that these court cases are about an ongoing battle over its unverifiable electronic voting system, provided by Dominion. You’re “no law suits” claim may be accurate as by Trump, but this battle pre-dates it, is rich in litigation pressed by people who would like to see quit of Dominion, and is bipartisan as, over time, the “victims” turned from red to blue. Also, as noted here often, Trump has lousy legal representation. Your first link is a “fact check”. I shouldn’t have to say any more, but notice the first words in its reasoning a false claim are Election officials said. That’s not going to cut it. Consider your sources.
As noted in the “fact check” the ballots are counted, not the images. The GA 2020 presidential ballots were hand-counted in addition to 2 machine counts. In the link you provided, in the first section (“What We Found”) and the following 15 point list, voting equipment seem to be referenced only once, though I didn’t dig further into any items except the 3 I noted.
The disparagement of public workers – election officials (in this case state board members appointed by Republicans and Democrats, and the elected Republican SoS), election workers, and election volunteers – that is so much a part of voter fraud accusations is, in my opinion, one of the least credible components of these accusations.
I take care in NC comments to cite known sources, sources with links to other information, and, if on occasion it’s not a widely known source, something about whatever I’ve found as far as bias. The “fact check” has links to a public meeting of the GA Election Board, biographic information about the speakers, the report of the 2020 post-election audit, and mainstream news reports. NC readers are more than capable of evaluating the pros and cons of these sources, as they are of Voter GA and its founder, and of the analysis of Dominion equipment and vulnerabilities, in general and specific to GA referenced here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/links-6-17-2023.html#comment-3897910 . Mileage may vary among us.
The post-election lawsuits in 2020 weren’t initiated only by Trump. I’m skeptical of the proposal that the problem was that somehow a sitting president, his campaign organization, a national political party, Republican state AG’s, conservative advocacy groups, and private citizens were unable to obtain adequate legal representation.
Hi marym. As always I appreciate your work in driving the Freightliner Of Reality on bumpy roads with scattered debris. (And yeah, my Mom is a librarian.)
To keep things balanced I wanted to share some more fun from Georgia elections.
Vote Flipping Claims Underline Urgent Need to Fix Voting Machines
Voting Machine theme
The Georgia NAACP filed a complaint Tuesday claiming that some voting machines recorded votes incorrectly in the state’s closely-fought and high-profile governor’s race. According to the complaint, filed with the office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, some votes cast for Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams in Bartow and Dodge counties were recorded initially for her Republican opponent, Kemp.
Democrats are now going there on ‘stolen’ elections
Voter suppression theme based on decades old state law passed by state Democrats but wielded now by Republicans
And now even some big-name Democrats are using similar language, alleging that the Georgia governor’s race will be “stolen” from them, too. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has said the “election is being stolen from” Democrat Stacey Abrams. Hillary Clinton has said Abrams would have won “if she’d had a fair election.” And on Wednesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) went so far as to say, “If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it.”
The lawsuit challenging Georgia’s entire elections system, explained
Machines and suppression
To resolve this, the plaintiffs propose a number of reforms, including ending the use of electronic voting machines without a paper trail and stopping purges of infrequent voters, and asks that these changes be implemented prior to the 2020 election. The suit also requests that Georgia be placed back under preclearance requirements, which required a federal judge to approve proposed statewide voting measures to ensure they did not harm minority voters. Georgia was freed from this supervision in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.
How Voting-Machine Errors Reflect a Wider Crisis for American Democracy
The cherry on top, from the The New Yorker
Those machines are still in service, despite their well-documented problems. A lawsuit to compel Georgia to use paper ballots in the November midterms fell short in September, when Judge Amy Totenberg, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, ruled that there was not enough time to get a paper-ballot system up and running. But she also wrote that the plaintiffs had shown that Georgia’s voting machines posed “a concrete risk of alteration of ballot counts that would impact their own votes.” Totenberg added that “given the absence of an independent paper audit trail of the vote, the scope of this threat is difficult to quantify, though even a minor alteration of votes in close electoral races can make a material difference in the outcome.”
Hi rowlf – I was hoping you’d weigh in. Unfortunately for GA in 2020 they replaced the DRE voting equipment used in 2018 with BMD equipment instead of a system using hand-marked ballots. The link below is about a potential switching problem with BMD’s. If the text on the printed ballot reflects the voter’s actual choice but the scan code is switched the voter wouldn’t know. It would be detected on a full recount, as GA did in 2020. If the printed text and scan code were both switched, and the voter didn’t notice it this wouldn’t be detected on a recount. It seems unlikely it would have gone unnoticed at the top of the ballot in a critical election, in any large numbers, but it’s a big flaw with BMD’s, along with the specific technical vulnerabilities referenced in my previous comment. GA is one of the few states that now rely widely on BMD’s rather than hand-marked ballots for in-person voting. Abrams, and Democrats generally, have done some good work in addressing voter suppression, but manage to make a mess of things anyway.
https://news.engin.umich.edu/2020/01/new-study-finds-voters-not-detecting-ballot-errors-potential-hacks/
In my fourteen years here in Dogpatch I don’t remember the voting machines being changed. A large greyscale touchscreen that needs a plastic key-card and prints out a ballot with selections and a QR code. You then take the ballot to a counting machine.
Maybe other counties got the newer machines.
Always good to hear from the real world instead of what I find online. Verified Voting for 2018 shows all counties using DRE (what’s entered electronically is what’s counted) with no paper, although your first link says some counties have paper for voter verification. Then for 2020 it shows all counties using BMD’s (touch screen voting, paper for both voter verification and counting). There’s lots of reporting about GA converting in 2020. That was supposedly why they planned a full hand recount of the presidential election as their audit. So it’s interesting that your experience was different.
https://verifiedvoting.org
A good NPR program describing curing ballots in Georgia
Ira Glass
From WBEZ Chicago, This American Life. I’m Ira Glass.
Kim Hood
Raise your hand if you are in Georgia, ready to start curing ballots and fight for every vote.
I’m not skeptical whatsoever. Agree to disagree, and thanks for taking the time to write about it.
The “vote fraud” is the bought and paid for candidates that won’t debate outside of rigged debates. Just for starters…
But indeed, I also notice when the simple AF culture war talking points leak out of commentary.
I am agnostic, so to speak, on “widespread” voter fraud–but I do know the voting system in the US is deliberately constructed to make fraud easier than in other countries. Last I heard the US system is rated as pretty low compared to other systems. I certainly don’t think I can be assured my vote counts the way I voted. It might and might not.
After the 2000 election fiasco there was a lot of talk about reform but little was done and don’t get me started on what I believe was documented fraud in 2004. Mark Cripin Miller wrote convincingly on the subject.
Indeed. Anybody remember Michael Connell?
I have mentioned here many times that I participated in a hand recount of votes casts on the “good” machines – the ones that scan the marked paper ballots – and found that the machines undercounted votes because they weren’t able to read what voters had marked properly.
The worst thing Trump did was claim the election was rigged and then provide zero evidence to back it up, and not ask about the source code of the various machines, etc. Now anyone who does question those things is linked to Trump and labeled a “conspiracy theorist”.
There is all kinds of evidence that those voting machines, which remember were the solution to the hanging chads of 2000, are very susceptible to fraud. And if they can be hacked, then they have been hacked. Bet on it.
Kunstler has always been anti Arab and anti black. He couches it some look-how-clever- I am language and has always carried the Israeli water.
I have continued to read him over the years to see what line of bullshit of the week Israel is currently pushing. He shut up pretty quick about the October rebellion when the lies were disproven and then whined about antisemitism and Biden out to destroy Israel.
I find him a contemptible POS.
As commenters pointed out in yesterday’s Water Cooler, Kunstler also regularly promotes the right-wing rhetorical strategy of conflating extreme liberal idpols, the Wall Street shill Obama, WEF globalists, and the CIA Democrats with “the left,” “Marxists,” authentic leftists like Piven and Cloward (yesterday), and apparently a general commie plot to control the US and the world. Old school Birchers would be proud. As a map of political reality this is about as obscurantist as it comes.
And YET… I agree with almost everything in this Kuntsler post today. Go figure.
‘BBC News (UK)
@BBCNews
Starmer says he is prepared to use nuclear weapons’
This sort of sentiment is par for the course in the UK for people wanting to become the Prime Minister. When Liz Truss was asked if she would resort to nukes, even though it would mean global annihilation, she replied ‘I’m ready to do that’ to the applause of the audience. As Prime Minister, Truss had access to a nuclear bomb shelter. Was that true of the people in that audience too?
https://au.news.yahoo.com/audience-liz-truss-ready-press-nuclear-button-unleash-global-annihilation-103552126.html
I like your new word for less brain cells than fingers on one hand, ‘sentiment’.
When running for the office of Prime Minister, it is recommended to have a higher IQ than your shoe size.
Rev, in the US, where shoe sizes go all the way up to ’12,’ the recommendation is to have an IQ higher than your waist measurement. In inches. None of this fancy metric stuff for us plain-talking Yankees!
EU shoe sizes run in cm, I think, so I’m automatically more intelligent (43) when I go to Spain.
UK shoe sizes are one less than US ones. Hence a US 9 is a UK 8.
Liz Truss, the Vera Lynn of the 21st century:
There’ll be lettuce and laughter
And pork pies ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free…
Re the fired nurse story
And who is Ken Langone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=ken+langone
I like Home Depot but if one is allergic to plutocrats then the company’s founders and their financier Langone definitely fit the bill.
I can in no way verify this, but years ago I heard through some well-heeled NYers that it was Langone who brought the hammer down on Eliot Spitzer when the latter was NY governor and threatening to do something about corruption. I had seen Spitzer give a lecture on the topic at a law school while he was still AG, and my impression was that he was serious about it and not just giving lip service.
On Biden’s fake ceasefire:
Imagine that your two neighbors get into a dispute. Neighbor 1 flies a giant “MAGA” flag in their yard. Neighbor 2 doesn’t like that, trespasses into their yard and tears it down. Then Neighbor 1 retaliates and sets Neighbor 2’s prized vegetable garden on fire.
Rather than pursue legal action, they agree to mediation. But instead of getting the two parties in a room together to talk, the mediator just dictates terms to both parties without seeking any of their input.
Making it even more complicated, the mediator doesn’t deal directly with either party, but goes through other neighbors to relay the terms to A and B.
Would you call that legitimate?
I must be getting old. the way this used to work was getting both parties to meet at Camp David, or Dayton, OH (Serbia/Bosnia war accords.) Hamas doesn’t seem to have a country to safely negotiate from, so Qatar is equivalent to their neighbor but we know that these Arab countries are now wussified shells of their former theocratic selves and captured by neo-liberalism. Except, maybe Iran.
Instead, we get this charade. It’s a dirty game and if anyone can shine some more light on it I’d be gratified.
I’ve done at least one mediation as a go-between, and as an actor in training sessions, there was one year where multiple law-student teams went that direction. I can’t decompose the increase in the tactic from the organizations shift to being an arm of the courts. (This when the courts realized they could dump the docket to mediation and were willing to pay for the privilege.)
When people really hate each other, it doesn’t necessarily help to have them in the same room together.
Hamas is not a government per se but considered a terrorist org by Israel. And they’re seemingly using Qatar as a “base” for safety of their officials. And both sides have vowed to destroy each other, so it certainly isn’t a situation where you can get everyone in the same room.
But the weird thing is that it looks like Biden is making plans without consulting the legitimate government of Israel, rather than relaying the Netanyahu government position to the other side.
This is a recipe for failure, and they have to know that. So my conclusion is that it’s all political posturing. Then there is the problem that the US is supplying the weapons that Israel uses in targeting and killing civilians so they’re not a disinterested party or even a non-combatant. This absurdity produces headlines like “Israel can’t agree to its own peace plan.” A more honest take would be: “Israel can’t agree to American plan force-fed on Hamas.”
This Kabuki theater will likely continue until the war ends on its’ own, with Netanyahu either achieving all his goals of total victory or it becoming a stalemate and him realizing that it’s better to stop and regroup. I don’t see any way to solve this through negotiations. A lot like the Ukraine situation – one side needs to lose, badly.
Part of a mediation intake process is determining if the parties are operating in good faith.
I only rejected a couple of cases, but I would label this one:
Not Suitable For Mediation.
Even worse in this case: even the mediator is working in bad faith, vis a vis both parties in dispute. Biden wants to beat down both Hamas and Netanyahu (but only Netanyahu, not Israeli state, as if they were different, at least as far as Palestinians are concerned.)
From Sputnik via The Automatic Earth: (No link so the comment doesn’t get snagged)
Illargi comments: Next up: Doug Macgregor.
Scott’s due for another 15 min.s of fame it seems. Nothing can make his rants look as appealing as his actually being made a political prisoner by the genius clan at Foggy Bottom who brought us such hits as the Iraq war, but have not heard of the Streisand effect.
“Scholz must explain change of course on use of arms against Russia — lawmaker”
Scholz always was a weak leader and here I think that it was a matter of him not wanting to be that guy that was not willing to go along with the US, the UK and France sending and using their missiles to attack the Russian Federation. Just the other day he and Macron were giving a joint outside press briefing when Macron pulled out a map showing the reach of French missiles into Russia proper and challenging Schulz to send his missiles as well. It was an ambush and Schulz was reduced to giving a wishy-washy reply. When Biden said that US missiles were going to be used against Russia, Sholz buckled knowing that it would be Bundeswehr personnel manning and directing those missiles at Russia. Those American, British, French and German missiles now make them officially a party to this war.
Certain facts about border policy are being ignored by both sides of the media and most independent sources.
1) According to a court finding in 1980 USA law is clear that any foreign person on USA territory can start the due process proceedings for an asylum claim, regardless of how they may arrived on USA soil.
This law is still on the books.
No policy change proposal that I have information about addresses this fact in any way.
2)Asylum will be granted if a person can prove that they are persecuted for any of the following, race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
The number of people on this planet who fall under one or more of those categories is a very large number.
If it is only 1% of the world population that would be upwards of 70 million people.
I suspect that the percentage is significantly higher than 1%.
3)The inability of the Mexican government to do anything about the fact that at the lowest border checkpoint level individuals can make a months salary in two minutes by letting people through.
4) There is no place that the border wall is less than 2 meters inside USA territory.
(See 1 above)
There are quite a few papers claiming to show the Covid vaccines lowered mortality and hospitalization. Also many claiming a modest reduction in long COVID. I have not dug deeply into things like who funded them etc.
It is also clear that there are significant side effects. I am familiar with reading biomedical scientific papers and I must confess the net benefits or harms of these vaccines is hard to sus out. A situation that likely has been intentionally exacerbated by Pharma etc.
That BMJ paper is not good news. However the vaccines end up netting out, righteous anger is justified.
The most recent studies I have seen show that mRNA vaccines decreased covid mortality and hospitalization, but didn’t decrease all-cause mortality. I believe it is due to vax-generated spike proteins persisting or landing in the wrong place.
One of IM Doc’s huge beefs about the Covid vaccine studies was that the early data on Pfizer saw an increase in all-cause mortality. He said in his day, any drug study would have been halted until they got to the bottom of it. There has been a continued failure to track that as study endpoints. I would be interested to see your studies, since on the top of that, as we’ve said repeatedly, the US data on who has been vaccinated is unreliable top to bottom, with many multi-vaxxed patients showing in EMRs as completely unvaxxed, and it being impossible to correct those records (attempts to revise they get revised back).
I’m pretty certain I read it here. I’ll dig around, as I try to hold on to important links. I don’t think it was ‘just’ IM Doc’s keen observations. I think this mortality effect was a reason that the EU pulled back on vax recommendations for the ‘young healthy’ cohort. I haven’t managed to get to the article linked above.
I saw it (after a quick search) on the NIH web site. It was the addendum to the Biontech submissions. I looked a month later and could never find it again. Page 11, table 10 showed more deaths in the treatment group.
All I’m coming up with at the moment is:
Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs
And
Persistence of S1 Spike Protein in CD16+ Monocytes up to 245 Days in SARS-CoV-2 Negative Post COVID-19 Vaccination Individuals with Post-Acute Sequalae of COVID-19 (PASC)-Like Symptoms
Which don’t address mortality directly.
This is exactly correct.
While the rest of the world was celebrating the fact that the vaccines were working so splendidly well, that Pfizer had broken the study and given the vaccine to the placebo arm, those of us who know about such things were left shaking our heads and a nauseated feeling. YOU JUST DO NOT DO THAT. It is the only way available to follow side effect and safety issues. This seems to me to be ESPECIALLY TRUE in this kind of rushed environment. Pfizer et al knew exactly what they were doing – and it was not for humanitarian reasons.
Then several months later, possibly a year, came the forced release of their prelim results even before they broke the study – and indeed there were more deaths in the medicated arm compared to the placebo arm. In other words, they had an inkling there may be something wrong. In any kind of rational ethical culture, at that very minute a fully functional IRB system would have demanded a FULL STOP. Then the onus would be on Pfizer to fully evaluate each and every death in both arms. After investigation, this would have been presented back to the IRB to determine if the study could convene again at each local institution.
It must be noted – the deaths in this trial were not COVID related. Ergo, it is even more important for a full accounting.
And also – The IRB system that had for generations protected subjects and the public alike was turned off in this event because of warp speed and the emergency declaration.
Had they done this correctly, even today – we would have a fully unvaxxed placebo arm – where we could be seeing if there were any of these issues occurring.
This whole thing gives me a very sick feeling.
Or the vax helps Covid not kill you in the initial infection but doesn’t stop it from giving you heart attacks and strokes a few months down the road. That rise in excess mortality didn’t start for the countries that kept Covid out and vaccinated everyone until they let it in (see Australia), and (apart from a few respirator-wearing weirdos like me) everyone has had it now so there’s no control group.
Countries that originally had low covid and high vaccine rates have mostly all eventually had covid spikes at some point so they’re not as helpful as they once were (and always issue of different counties have different vaccine schedules and different Covid vaccines.)
I have seen many estimates of Covid mortality much higher than the excess mortality of about 3 million calculated in the BMJ publication. Were those inflated?
Nevermind, just 47 countries
That paper in a disgrace to the BMJ. It makes a few asinine claims about vaccine problems supported by approximately zero evidence and then goes on to what seems like a fairly reasonable discussion of of the difficulties of estimating excess death rates and end up saying there is basically no evidence that non-vaccination efforts have had no effect. I guess they have never heard of China (PRC), Taiwan, New Zealand, or Australia.
Re Responsible Statecraft–this is a full reprint of an article that was paywalled on Andrew Cockburn’s site. It goes into considerable detail about how the Ukraine business corruption that is undermining their defense against Russia. Good thing then VP Joe Biden was so zealous in stopping corruption in our unlikely client state. Oh wait.
As for all the GPS weapons–useful against low tech third world victims….Russia not so much. As someone has pointed out not all of Russia’s tech wiz engineers went to work for Silicon Valley.
This will be a game changer or not.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/ukraine-f-16-pilots-graduate/
And it seems like there is a Greek Air Force F-16 trainer already in Ukraine to help train them. I’m sure that the F-16s will prove to be a game changer in the Ukraine. This time for sure. /sarc
I’m just curious to the over/under line in Vegas on how many missions those planes fly before being shot down…
It will be a game changer, for all three of them.
From the hill on commercial real estate…
The demand for some commercial properties also suffers from post-COVID inflated commuting and out-of-home meal costs in addition to actual and perceived spikes in urban crime caused by criminal justice “reforms” championed by liberal district attorneys and some elected officials.
Is it me, or is that bolded just a swipe out of nowhere,presented without evidence?
It is an opinion piece,and like some other things, everyone has one.I think it’s going to be harder to justify the gigantic bailout this time so I expect badgering the fed to lower interest rates will be the go to. I’m sure there’s “smart people” looking tirelessly for a way to dump the losses on someone else because the administrative staff of kajillionaires may suffer if their bosses are made to take losses. Think of the poor personal chefs/shoppers, the personal trainers, and dare I say it, the secretaries (h/t lanny breuer)
Yes, it is a swipe with no evidence to back it up.
It’s not like many people say, gee, I would really like to go to the office but I’m worried about that Soros D.A.
If the boss mandates it, you show up or find another job. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why office occupancy is stuck well below pre-covid levels, and this ain’t one of them.
It isn’t all bleak news on the CRE front, there’s an amazing opportunity for a TV comedy show called:
‘Office Space’
Boston:
https://crimeresearch.org/2024/05/boston-mayor-michelle-wu-supports-not-prosecuting-shoplifting-larceny-disorderly-conduct-receiving-stolen-property/
Manhatten:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-district-attorney-crimes-prosecution/index.html
And everyone knows the SF story. The small Mom&Pop stores are being crushed by these changes, the small stores still left standing. Even we in my small uni town are champing at the bit to un-elect our recently elected DA who stopped prosecuting many crimes because reasons. Small business owners are at their wits’ end trying to make any profit in this environment. (The big Wall St. outfits, are OK, however.)
Aren’t derivitives also ‘insured’ by the government after Dodd-Frank?
How big a loss is that, isn’t it like Quadrillions?, and would it be FDIC covered or some other agency?
No, no, no no. They are now subject to central clearing.
“Ukraine War rips veil off of US weapons superiority”
As this article mentions, the Switchblade drone, the M-1 Abrams tank, Patriot air defense missiles, the M777 howitzer, the Excalibur guided 155 mm artillery round, the HIMARS precision missile, GPS-guided bombs, and Skydio drones have all proven a dud as far as game changers are concerned. They are gold-plated technological wonders that have not stood the test of battle in the Ukraine. But there is one thing that I have not read. All those weapons? Those are the ones that the US military use themselves. How do ordinary soldiers feel about those weapons now, especially when there are already noises about the US actually fighting China before long. And you can bet that the Russians have shared all that they have learned about these weapons and how to defeat them with the Chinese.
Meanwhile the Russian troops have been improving their tanks in the field to help against drones and it works. They’ll calling turtles because of the way the look.
Here is a two part article by Guy Mettan in the Floutist Substack about the other side of the front line, ie the Russian side. Guy Mettan “is an independent journalist in Geneva and a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva. He has previously worked at the Journal de Genève, Le Temps stratégique, Bilan, and Le Nouveau Quotidien. He subsequently served as director and editor-in-chief of Tribune de Genève. In 1996, Mettan founded Le Club suisse de la presse, of which he was president and later director from 1998 to 2019. ”
Part 1:
https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/report-from-donbas
Part 2:
https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/in-ukraine-a-war-for-memory
These articles are written in a style that all war correspondents should emulate. Lots of information in them that I haven’t seen written about anywhere else concerning the return to life as “normal” before the Maiden coup. Amazing what Russia is doing already to rebuild.
I didn’t give the public health establishment credit where it’s due: On COVID, they were aggressive and effective at promulgating droplet spread, and teaching the population that this is the method of transmission. I’d forgotten, but everywhere you went, that you could still go, at least in Boston, there were signs warning people to stay 6 ft apart. At grocery stores, they had those stupid little circles for where to stand, and the stupid arrows so everyone would walk in the same direction; what a great education campaign that the only risk is someone spitting in your face. No wonder people reject masking; how often do people spit in your face or sneeze on you? This messaging was uniform and educationally effective. Imagine if we taught people about airborne transmission — of which there is solid evidence public health knew, certainly WHO, likely CDC, clearly Trump — where we might be.
You would prefer people standing 1 foot away and breathing in your face?
‘Antidote du jour. carycat: “An occasional visitor to my backyard”’
Is that a falcon? From the shape of it’s head it sure looks like one. If so, it would be wild you have one to come visit your backyard and carycat must be lucky indeed.
probably one of these
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sharp-shinned_Hawk/id
Gooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
The chief had called the platoon together under the heat dome of silence in the west, and we slowly baked in the atmosphere, ‘good thinking 99’, when reality was more like 107 in the shade. Missed it by that much.
Bidenomics is great, Krugman edition again
No, it’s people like Krugman dismissing people’s lived experience.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/opinion/biden-economy.html
Morning, today’s forecast calls for blue sky
Sun is shinin’ in the sky
There ain’t a Russian drone in sight
It’s stopped rainin’, everybody’s in the play
And don’t you know
It’s a beautiful new day? Hey
Runnin’ down the avenue
See how the sun shines brightly in Kyiv city
On the streets where once was enmity
Mr. Zelensky is hiding here today, hey
Mr. Zelensky please tell us why
You had to hide away money in Cyprus for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Mr. Zelensky please tell us why
You had to hide away money in Cyprus for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey Volodymyr with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, Mr. Zelensky’s casino down there waitin’
And today is the day we’ve waited for
Mr. Zelensky please tell us why
You had to hide away money in Cyprus for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey there, Mr. Stand Up Dude
We’re so pleased to be with you
Look around, see what you do
Everybody smiles at you
Hey there, Mr. Stand Up Dude
We’re so pleased to be with you
Look around, see what you do
Everybody smiles at you
Mr. Stand Up Dude, you did it right
But soon comes Mr. Kinzhal Might creepin’ over
Now its hand is on your shoulder
Never mind, I’ll remember you this
I’ll remember you this way
Mr. Zelensky please tell us why
You had to hide away money in Cyprus for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey there Mr. Zelensky
We’re so pleased to be with you (sigh)
Look around see what you do (lie)
Everybody smiles at you
Mr. Blue Sky, by ELO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuJIqmha2Hk
https://english.news.cn/20240528/12d8a7bd5bc841b99f25a8aa42f7a6d8/c.html
May 28, 2024
A single infusion leads to long-lasting remission of asthma in mice: study
BEIJING — A team of Chinese scientists have developed a promising therapy using genetically engineered immune cells, which has been shown to induce long-lasting remission of asthma in mice following a single injection.
Asthma, the most prevalent respiratory disease, affects about 300 million people and causes more than 250,000 deaths annually. Pharmaceutical innovators are advancing the development of a long-acting therapy designed to provide patients with enduring symptom relief with a single administration of medication.
The study * published on Monday in the journal Nature Immunology reported an encouraging animal experiment result, in which a single infusion of genetically engineered immune cells in mice led to sustained repression of lung inflammation and alleviation of asthmatic symptoms, without any conditioning regimen.
Researchers from Tsinghua University engineered chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells to target and eradicate eosinophils, a type of white blood cell that plays an important role in asthma patients.
CAR-T therapy has already been used in the cancer treatment. It tends to harvest immune cells called T cells from a patient’s blood and then genetically modify them in the lab to produce special structures called chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) on their surface.
The altered T cells are then reintroduced into the patient, where the cells’ new receptors enable them to recognize and latch onto cancer cells to neutralize them.
In the new study, the engineered cells have demonstrated sustained functionality for a minimum of one year, and can also prevent inflammation in the airways.
These data show that asthma might be pushed into long-term remission with a single dose of long-lived CAR T cells, but the potential therapy still requires further clinical trials to test its safety and efficacy in human patients, said the researchers.
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-024-01834-9
Chinese advances in mathematics, science and engineering stem from a focus on research that amounts to twice the research spending as a share of GDP of G7 countries.
Research of high-quality is being done in China, which is just what Chinese investment spending was supposed to allow for. The new Nature.com Index of high-quality research publications for February 1, 2023 through January 31, 2024 is out * and China accounts for 3 of the top 5 science publishing institutions. Seven of the top 10 science publishing institutions are Chinese and 10 of the top 15…
* https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/generate/all/global/all
Peso falls as Claudia Sheinbaum wins Mexico presidency by landslide Financial Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hyperinflation took the Peso from 12.5 to the $, to 3,300 Pesos to the $ in the 1980’s and 1990’s, which corresponds perfectly with the great increase in Mexicans immigrating to the USA, as their money was worth 1/264th of its previous value against the almighty buck, wiping out the middle class there.
To use the long perspective, a Peso was equal to 1 Dollar 110 years ago, and now the rate is 18,000 Pesos to the $. (the New Peso came out in 1993 where 1,000 old Pesos equaled 1 New Peso)
I was sort of shocked to read the other day that the JPY has fallen 50% against the dollar since 2021. Ran over the charts and yes, the math is correct, 103 in Jan. 201 vs. 155 now.
(I think that means it takes 155 Yen to buy a dollar vs. 103 in Jan, 2021)
Not as spectacular as the Peso collapse, but will we see waves of Japanese immigrants? Given their lack of natural resources I don’t see how inflation cannot be running wild there. I’m sure there is a variable I’m missing … massive state subsidies on energy and food?
Japan has a large USA military presence there, Mexico not so much.
So no need to immigrate because they’re de facto a Territory of the U.S.
Allows them to keep their own currency kind of like a pet is allowed a favorite chew toy.
If we are to defend Taiwan from Middle Kingdom’s desires, we can’t do it without an aircraft carrier of sorts like Nippon.
Japan invaded China in 1931 and marauded and massacred through the country for years. The suggestion of Japan, which has never apologized for the deaths of millions of Chinese, ever again going to war against China, though likely meant to be ironic, may rather be needlessly offensive.
As if Japan really has any say in the matter…
As if Japan really has any say in the matter…
[ Ah, now I understand. Thank you. ]
There has been no significant inflation in Japan. Neither energy nor food are subsidized.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=18M3l
January 15, 2018
Real Broad Effective Exchange Rate for United States and Japan, 1994-2024
(Indexed to 1994)
Appreciate the data. It just seems contrary to everything I understand about economics. A barrel of oil is priced in USD at least in the West so they have to pay 50% more than a US consumer does for any thing petroleum based.
Smarter financial minds than I such as Kyle Bass have been calling Japan a bug in search of a windshield for years but I guess that bug has some serious windshield avoidance skills.
Japan has a large trade surplus, which makes paying for imports no problem. Japan was the largest car exporter, until recently being passed by China. However, cars are among all sorts of other valuable exports.
Japan’s case is probably more complicated. It used to be north of 300 yen to the dollar. Gradually the yen strengthened. It was 180 or so yen to the dollar when I managed a small office there. To me ~150 yen to dollar sounds like a strong yen. The yen continued to strengthen to where it was ~90 yen to the dollar. At the time everyone was wringing their hands about the strong yen.
To have it fall back to ~150 is not a collapse, but it must be distressing for those on the wrong side of the trade. It makes everything in Japan cheaper for foreigners so will increase exports. I’ve heard that Japan is now awash in tourists availing themselves of the cheap(er) yen.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=M3Yz
January 15, 2018
Real Narrow Effective Exchange Rate for United States and Mexico, 1980-2024
(Indexed to 1980)
….a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet
https://nypost.com/2024/06/04/sports/tucupita-marcano-banned-for-life-four-others-suspended-in-gambling-probe/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why wouldn’t all pro sports players be as susceptible to gambling as the public?
They see the same ‘Bet $5, get a bonus $150’ nonsense in all the TV commercials for the various online bookies…
Saw that headline earlier today. There are all sorts of epic team chants and mottos, don’t these athletes get that betting online on any amateur or professional is a red line of demarcation? Don’t gamble in Vegas, or bet online but feel welcome to cheat on steroids or PED.
Notre Dame. Play Like a Champion.
Alabama. Roll Tide.
UNC-CH fans to Duke. Go to Hell.
Duke fans to UNC. Go to Hell or their alternative, “DDMF”.
> First strike capable: why Russia is indifferent to damage to one or another ground based radar installation Gilbert Doctorow
Nobody wants a nuclear war, neither Russia nor the West. So my read is that Russia feels confident that a nuclear attack on Russia is off the table. Hence the reason they’re not bent out of shape about the ground based radar installation. And that in itself is a message to the West I think, that Russia is communicating that it understands the ground rules for this game.
The game is a game of chicken. To use this limited war (to use Mearsheimer’s language) as an opportunity to escalate. When nuclear war is off the table, you can keep on escalating.
If I had to guess, Russia is feeling its oats and doesn’t think it’ll lose in this game any classic sense. But if it does, it always has a trump card – to declare game over, “I tire of this game”. At which point we’re now back in the broader game of MAD through nuclear war and any deliberate next step risks that. And I think Russia will clearly communicate when that transition happens. So again risk is mitigated. And normal peace through MAD returns.
But you only want to play the MAD card when you have to. You don’t want to squander it willy nilly. So in that vein I don’t think the US and West would want to squander the MAD card on behalf of Ukraine. I think the US and West want to save that card for when they really have their backs up against the wall. I think it only happens after article 5 is triggered. Not immediately after – I can imagine the US and the west wanting to play the game of chicken after article 5 is triggered. But at some point, enough losses and NATO will declare game over, “I tire of this game”.
So I don’t see the US and the West having an ability to climb down from their tree before article 5 is triggered. So one option for Russia, if it feels it can decisively win a game of escalation is to see if it can do so without triggering article 5. And then Russia can reach game over the old fashioned way at its leisure.
By the way, this is sort of akin to the game played by dems and GOPs when they play the game of chicken over defaulting on the debt. Defaulting on the debt would be their equivalent to MAD – nobody wants that. But they have the problem that there are no other cards to play in their game of chicken. Their only card is to pretend they’ll actually risk defaulting on the debt. So they pretend that risk of MAD (defaulting on the debt) is at play and put on a show for the masses to see what deal making they can get away with.
If only there was a way to equip the dems and GOP with cards to play in their game so they can inflict some actual pain on each other while they’re playing chicken. And then when they get it out of their system they can declare, “I tire of this game”. It would make for a better spectacle and it would save us from the deceit of their deal making to save us from MAD.
P.S. If only Russia and the US/West would play their games like Bond/007 and his arch nemisis does in the “domination” game. From “Never say never again”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeiG5zsTLy8
Same with the dems and GOP.
plenty of manipulation going on vis a vie Uk organic wheat, or rather Polish org wheat bought by Ardent (and likely Grainmillers too) sourced from Uk with fake chain of custody. Killed org wheat market in US, turned it all into chicken feed. less than half price. Let it be understood that Russia grows a lg wheat crop and exports the most of any country in the world. https://en.portnews.ru/news/363672/
Did it kill the whole market or just the UK organic commodity export market? At the consumer level here in the USA I have no problems finding organic wheat products on the grocers shelves. Many are not price gouged either.
I think the OP means Ukrainian rather than UK wheat.
39 seconds of a kid making fun of his dad’s long winded speech in Congress…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/republican-congressmans-son-steals-show-on-house-floor-hamming-it-up-for-cameras/RCRIHJWW5FD6FCCEWAOEF2ZV4I/
Genocide Joe expressed ‘boundless love’ for hapless Hunter…
…not quite ironclad
Rubio’s Coastal Grill employees took to social media over the weekend, lamenting dozens of California restaurant closures that took them by surprise.
“Former employee after today,” wrote Thesil58 on Reddit on Saturday, June 1. “They legit told us this morning when we showed up for work that today was going to be our last day. No severance, no warning, nada. I’m not sure exactly what locations are going, but it’s a ton of them.”
The Carlsbad-based chain known for its fish tacos said it was closing 48 restaurants in California, blaming the state’s business climate.
https://www.ocregister.com/2024/06/03/rubios-closes-48-restaurants-in-california-citing-business-climate/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
$20 an hour minimum wage combined with out of control inflation in food prices, why wouldn’t most other similar restaurants be in the same boat?
Well since not all restaurants in that part of the market have closed, it’s safe to say that something else is going on…
They will close restaurants before they reduce their profits.
I call BS. Whenever a business closes a site they use the chance to blame whatever they like. They are not testifying under oath. More likely the landlord was raising the rent. Or maybe they only made 12% profit instead of the 20% they were aiming for.
They did it rather all of the sudden, and 48 different locations means a lot of landlords.
Something smells fishy…
The article you linked says they declared bankruptcy in 2020 and have been steadily closing restaurants ever since.
Are you a small business owner? Do you know the environment? Property insurance costs rising? etc.
“In a blog post published on its website, Seattle-based Amazon said that the Federal Aviation Administration has given its Prime Air delivery service the OK to operate drones “beyond visual line of sight,” removing a barrier that has prevented its drones from traveling longer distances.
With the approval, Amazon pilots can now operate drones remotely without seeing it with their own eyes. An FAA spokesperson said the approval applies to College Station, Texas, where the company launched drone deliveries in late 2022.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/amazon-gets-faa-approval-allows-expand-drone-deliveries-110678714#:~:text=In%20a%20blog,in%20late%202022.
“China’s announcement of its intention to enforce a law that would arrest foreign nationals venturing into waters it claims in the South China Sea (SCS) may be the trigger for a direct military confrontation with the United States. The regulation, known as the Administrative Law Enforcement Procedures for Coast Guard Agencies, will come into force on June 15, 2024.”
https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/sleepwalking-toward-wwiii-in-the-south-china-sea/
“New research finds that the top 1% of American companies control 90% of US production-related assets and account for 80% of sales revenue. This means a relatively small number of companies are responsible for the majority of US economic activity.
For these companies, planning – particularly the coordination of activities across global supply chains – represents a significant strategic focus. Americans rarely think about the importance of planning, but it plays a crucial role not only in the availability of consumer products but the economy overall.
https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/us-economy-more-centrally-planned-than-you-think/
There was a weird piece written by Krugman back in early oughts (I think it was titled something like “death of the man in gray flannel suit” or something) that made a related point, although it was more about how US economy in 50s and 60s was no less centrally planned than that of USSR, except that the US planning was by corporations. The article disappeared into the ether for a long while since it was actually adapted from a speech that he gave on a junket to Enron and he scrubbed everything related to Enron after that that corp got disgraced (might be back online somewhere now…)
” Burkina Faso has been named the world’s most neglected displacement crisis by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) for the second year.
In its annual report, released Monday, the NRC said the West African country saw a record-high 707,000 new displacements in 2023, driven by escalating violence and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Nine out of the 10 most neglected crises outlined in the report were in Africa, with Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali, and Niger holding the second to fifth positions respectivel”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/03/africa/burkina-faso-most-neglected-crisis-intl/index.html#:~:text=In%20its%C2%A0,fifth%20positions%20respectively
“Fauci said there was a “disconnect between the health-care system and the public health system” during Covid-19 in the US. Specifically, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could not demand information from local agencies, which caused a lag in sharing data.
“We were at a disadvantage,” Fauci said, adding that the CDC is working on ways to fix this pain point.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/03/politics/fauci-testimony-house-hearing-covid-19/index.html#:~:text=Fauci%20said%20there%20was,fix%20this%20pain%20point.
> US close to ‘fatal’ miscalculation
Next few weeks post European elections are going to be interesting (Chinese curse).
China scares the world with “plans” for the production of tens of millions of shells
In the past few days, a video from an ammunition factory has curled up on the Chinese Internet. It demonstrates the manufacture of shells for the needs of the recently completed United Sword-2024-A exercises and, among other things, indicates that the power of the 155-mm production line is 15 thousand shots per day. Thus, more than 50 million (!) Can be manufactured with ease in a year such shells.
For comparison, a plant in the US state of Pennsylvania produces about 10 thousand 155 mm shells per month, and, consequently, more than 100 thousand annually…
https://www.nakanune.ru/articles/122197/
Just in from the wilderness, pulling up the rear; does anyone have information that the famine in Gaza has abated?
Sadly, it has only intensified: