Call Your Local Wizard Slate (Anthony L). I wonder why Terry Pratchett never picked up on this angle….maybe because it was once reality.
Remembering D-Day: Key Facts and Figures About the Invasion that Changed the Course of World War II Military Watch
Remote Amazon tribe finally connects to internet — only to wind up hooked on porn, social media News.com.au (Paul R)
Black Hole Flyby London Review of Books (Anthony L)
The Grit That Makes the Pearl: An Interview With Paul Theroux Collidescope (Anthony L)
H5N1 bird flu detected in SF, first in California city wastewater SFChronicle (Paul R)
Whether Bird Flu Is on the March Misses the Point MROnline (Anthony L)
If You Love Being Alone, There’s Nothing Wrong with You. OK Doomer (Kevin W). Important.
#COVID-19
THE SOCIALIST RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC Socialism 2024
Anthony Fauci, the Wuhan Lab Lie, and the bipartisan war on public health WSWS
Climate/Environment
IEA: The World Will Struggle to Triple Its Renewable Energy Capacity by 2030 OilPrice
China?
A New Chinese Exclusion Act Nation
South China Sea: Philippine troops accused of cutting Chinese fishing nets near Second Thomas Shoal South China Morning Post
India
India election result 2024 live: Will form next government, says Modi Aljazeera
Why India’s Modi failed to win outright majority BBC (Kevin W)
Markets & Adani down. Indians rejected Modi's #BillionaireRaj?
"quality of employment has deteriorated in 12 of 21 major States & UTs,as the proportion of workers in regular or salaried jobs declined between July 2022- June 23" https://t.co/hhYdmxbz43https://t.co/frBSnM6Elo— Albert Pinto (@70sBachchan) June 4, 2024
European Disunion
Punish Hungary to ensure EU’s future – bloc presidency holder RT (Kevin W)
‘Vote or face war’: Poland PM’s stark warning ahead of EU election BBC (Kevin W)
Old Blighty
Number of students coming to schools hungry, without proper clothing rising in UK: Survey Anadolu Agency
Gaza
Israeli ground forces launch new incursion into a central Gaza refugee camp Arab News
Gaza live: Israeli killing of policemen decried as attempt to create chaos Middle East Eye
Israel and Hezbollah Move Closer to Full-Scale War Wall Street Journal
Iran’s allies in Iraq are firing at Israel. Could that trigger a wider war? Reuters (Robin K)
There is a measure of desperation in Biden’s ceasefire plan Aljazeera
Why the ceasefire proposal Biden announced for Gaza has stalled Middle East Eye
US House passes legislation to sanction ICC over Gaza warrants bid BBC
New Not-So-Cold War
The Kremlin may rest easy: Europe is a paper tiger Gilbert Doctorow (guurst)
SITREP 6/4/24: Global Turmoil Trends Bearish for Ukraine Simplicius
Gazprom badly hurt by Ukraine war, says company-commissioned report Financial Times
Russia has taken out over half of Ukraine power generation Financial Times
Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat Sputnik
I had doubts about this report yesterday, on Twitter re-reporting some Turkiye press accounts. Looking a smidge more real. The idea of investing in Turkiye-aligned North Cyprus seems goofy unless there is a money laundering angle:
🚨UPDATE: The Government of Cyprus is investigating the purchase of Vuni Palace Hotel and Casino in northern Cyprus by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s company Film Heritage Inc in May 2024. https://t.co/J1QkO5WZOp pic.twitter.com/KLHrOKjSXL
— Aussie Cossack (@aussiecossack) June 4, 2024
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Trump
One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after verdict: Reuters/Ipsos poll Reuters (furzy)
DATA: Trump Surges With Black Voters, Up 15% Since Manhattan Conviction National Pulse. Rasmussen poll, which is considered right wing. Rasmussen shows Trump national lead falling.
Jim Jordan proposes “defunding” Trump prosecutors Axios
Wisconsin attorney general charges three former Trump associates in plot to overturn 2020 election
Guardian
Biden
Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping Wall Street Journal. Holy moley. Knives are out. This is above the fold. There used to be something of a code of omerta. It has to be really really bad for this many to talk.
Foreign policy becomes a liability for Biden’s campaign as he heads to France Politico
The new average daily ceiling of 2,500 over the course of a week, which when exceeded leads to closure, already reached:
Biden issues new executive action: Much of southern border to close at midnight https://t.co/GgCty4RQOA
— POLITICO (@politico) June 4, 2024
UN expresses deep concern over new US asylum restrictions France24. Note this outcome reflects in large measure decades of negligence about having even remotely adequate measure.
Joe Biden’s worries grow as Hunter Biden’s trial begins Politico
Our No Longer Free Press
A Landmark Victory for Physicians and Patients – and the First Amendment – by the Fifth Circuit Today in AAPS v. ABIM AAPS (IM Doc). Important.
From KK via e-mail:
And a climbdown:
A statement from George Clooney pic.twitter.com/YJpOkJwTS5
— Clooney Foundation for Justice (@ClooneyFDN) June 3, 2024
Moscow comments on Scott Ritter passport seizure RT (Robin K). Ritter gets a comment from Lavrov and Peskov, so he’s now famous in Russia. The US really can’t let him go there now.
AI
AI Hype The Walrus (Anthony L)
What I learned from the UN’s “AI for Good” summit MIT Technology Review (furzy)
“You Are My Friend”: Early Androids and Artificial Speech Public Domain Review (Anthony L)
The Bezzle
“Not your mom’s Facebook:” Inside Meta’s plan to win back the youth Axios (Kevin W)
Class Warfare
Fed President Neel Kashkari just learned that normal Americans prefer a recession over high inflation…
“I don't understand. How can inflation be worse than a recession? In a recession you lose your job. Inflation is paying higher prices, but you still have a job.”
God help us. pic.twitter.com/5QVTQkQQQ3
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 4, 2024
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (Chuck L). Aaaw!
4 types of tigers in the same photo: Golden Tiger, Snow White Tiger, Bengal Tiger and White Tiger pic.twitter.com/D55k0KWLG7
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 4, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
213 comments
Comments are closed.
GOSH, I MISS
(melody borrowed from M.I.S.S.I.S.S.I.P.P.I. by Bert Hanlon and Benny Ryan, 1916)
My Dad went in at Omaha in 1944
An old school antifascist he spent 40 months at war
He saw the German death camps and bodies left in trains
He watched his men drive bulldozers to bury their remains
Well, that was eighty years ago and what does this year bring?
We’re shipping bombs to Israel to do the same damn thing!
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Congress funds forever wars we bomb and terrorize
We’ll do shock and awe on you the whole thing televised
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Israelis bomb the hospitals where wounded go for care
They’ve flattened all the houses toxic dust is in the air
They’ve turned off Gaza’s water and won’t let the world send food
They’re starving any Arabs who have not been barbecued
When you kill everyone in sight we call that genocide
Each bomb that lands on Gaza is American supplied
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Congress funds forever wars we bomb and terrorize
We’ll do shock and awe on you the whole thing televised
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
The USA was said to be a city on a hill
A place of peace and progress open freedom and good will
Solving human problems always opening new doors
But all we’ve done since ’48 is launch a lot of wars
We’ve shipped off all our factories and only kept a few
The ones that build our weapons which gets billed to me and you
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Congress funds forever wars we bomb and terrorize
We’ll do shock and awe on you the whole thing televised
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
We have a thousand bases places spread around the globe
Black sites and our secret labs that no one gets to probe
Our dollar’s only paper now not backed by gold or oil
Our farms are giant factories extracting cash from soil
We manufacture billionaires who vacuum up our wealth
Monopolies put on the squeeze and write our laws by stealth
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Congress funds forever wars we bomb and terrorize
We’ll do shock and awe on you the whole thing televised
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Congress funds forever wars we bomb and terrorize
We’ll do shock and awe on you the whole thing televised
Gosh, I miss the US being the good guys
Me too. Pretty sure we never really were the good guys, but I remember how I was taught that as an indisputable fact as a schoolboy. The idea rang so true then. I wanted to believe. So I did. Good times.
Good job. thanks.
“If You Love Being Alone, There’s Nothing Wrong with You.”
Just as an amusing bookend to this interesting article that could be re-titled ‘Extroverts are Going to Kill Us All’, here is one called “15 Married Men Confessed What They Look Forward To Doing When They’re Finally Home Alone”-
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/men-revealing-very-specific-things-121602093.html
There are already 1.1k comments on it.
It’s a fun article but it says “Nobody will say this part out loud, but it’s pretty clear. They want you to prefer mild electric shocks over solitude as well. They can’t understand why you prefer a Friday night alone with a book.” Reading a book isn’t being alone with your thoughts; it’s occupying your mind with someone else’s thoughts. Reading or listening to speech (an audiobook, say) replaces your thoughts with something else. Being confined alone with books sounds quite nice, being confined with only my own neurotic ruminations rather less.
There was an article linked here a year or two ago about how the younger generation is finding it intolerable to be alone. That they will make up excuses to visit a friend even though they should be studying for a test. How they are constantly inter-reacting with their mobiles or ear pods and get stressed if they are taken away. An interesting experiment would be to select a large variety of people of different ages and the like and individually take them to the middle of a desert where it is stone quiet to see how they react to it.
I won’t be so crass as to put links to it but my University of Technology Sydney public lecture in 2010 showing that it was the younger Aussies that disproportionately valued human attachment out of the five core elements of quality of life is still there on YouTube (but the published research is probably the better take on it anyway).
I considered mentioning this to the “happiness score breakdown” link the other day but at the moment I’m having to pick my moments for any potentially heavy discussion thanks to the docs putting me on a lot of morphine :(
Geez TF, hope you get a good turn soon. Perhaps some new ideas will flow out of your prescribed pain management. Careful with that stuff. And stash some away.
Had some dental surgery and they prescribed 15 and 10 vicodins each time they monkeyed with my mouth and I used 2, and I understand black market prices for such white pills are around $10 per, and if I was an enterprising sort, could slightly offset oh so expensive DDS work.
But in the drugs defense, they make an excellent addition to my backpacking Rx kit.
Many thanks. I can only manage to stash some if I eat nothing so not a great choice! But heigh-ho, will await next load of scans.
Carry on Flynn, dammit.
If this is relevant and n=1, I’ve found weed to be very effective at controlling pain and nausea. No need to reply to this.
Thanks but the pain is weird – terrible abdominal but no nausea. I’m thinking another long COVID related autoimmune thing causing massive inflammation…..the main alternative is worse.
Right, off to the GP (yet again) now.
My son had bad abdominal pain with no nausea for months, secondary to an acute GI infection from swimming in dirty water on Dartmoor. He also became lactose intolerant. Both things resolved eventually. He is not unable to keep food down after a swim in the Dart on Sunday. We swam throughout the pandemic without trouble and now twice in a row we’ve had issues.
His pain was up and to the right of his navel. Where is yours?
Thanks Revenant. Interesting – pain in same place. GP was good – testing for H. Pylori etc and endoscopy and ultrasound next.
She also looked at my (4th since 1st COVID infection) massive vein burst in forearm. I sensed the “oh another long COVID symptom thing – tell him I’ll talk to the haematologist but they’ll do squat” factor. Yep.
They’re happy to diagnose Long COVID round here but have all been primed to automatically follow-up with “but there’s nothing we can/will do”. In the meantime, more morphine so I can eat without feeling like my abdomen’s being sliced open whilst I wait for the procedures.
My son graduates from HS in two days. Next week, when grandma goes home and it all settles down, I’m dropping him in the high desert for four days of solitude. He’s excited about it.
Congrats/Felicidades/Mazel Tov to your son and to you. High school graduation is a beautiful moment, and his meditation in the desert will be formative.
My Grandfather (born 1911) used to spend time alone in the Steens (very high desert?) with his mule, his dog, and a rifle when he was 11.
My son is a pilot in Redmond, OR (the “high desert,” I guess), but I don’t think he spends much time alone.
I’m alone most of the time in the low desert of eastern Washington because my wife is a school teacher.
I sub teach. I seldom take high school assignments anymore, given that in the classroom, the students are often intent on isolating themselves, with buds in place and phone in hand. A demoralizing sight. Yes, they are “together,” but in the physical sense only. And are they doing their work? Infrequently. Many have admitted that they would rather read/scroll on their phones and get an “F” than to set their phones aside to do some of their work. The students are not supposed to be playing on their phones, but, to my knowledge (having subbed in perhaps ten high schools during the course of about eight years), the regular teachers rarely confiscate a phone. Perhaps one positive way to view the situation is that the (high school) classrooms are generally very quiet, unlike in middle and elementary schools, where phones are verboten (in the classroom, anyway) and the kids benefit as a result. Yes, the noise level in the younger level schools sometimes goes through the roof, but I will take that any day over the you-could-hear-a-pin-drop of high school.
Ever notice how similar smartphones are to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Liable to send us apes into fits of rage when touched?
Human see-human do.
Lol.
Social media’s infinite scroll has become the stimulation pedal for our ape brains. We scroll and scroll and scroll, hoping for a zap of emotions and dopamine release.
At the same time the scroll shows us an endless glossy image of happy and successful “peers”, making us doubt our own performance and worth.
I think old man Clarke had the right idea when he said he stayed off the web, as it was like trying to drink from a firehose. Then again he had the money etc to retire to Sri Lanka…
I enjoy solitude. I care little for the digital age. I prefer the company of cats and children to that of most adults. The causes for my ruminations exist whether or not I paying attention. Waiting for the shoe (shoes?) to drop is a hard habit to break, but I figure I’ll hear it when it falls.
I like solitude with others, where there isn’t a chance of seeing another hiker when we’re off-trail together.
Broke my scapula 25 years ago when backpacking solo 20 miles into the back of beyond, and it was pretty much the end of solo endeavors for yours truly.
Not sure I can add much to the debate, but I spend a lot of time in silence with just my thoughts. It’s some of my best time – even when life in general is very good. I used to read avidly, but it’s pretty rare these days. I don’t have a TV or watch on other devices. At other times I do listen to a lot of music, typically music without words. I’m generally sociable though – I don’t try to avoid people.
I’ve grown to appreciate the solitude and a reliable social calendar ( it’s frequently open ). Before this article I was considering this as a thought exercise dating back to my summers at a NC beach adjacent job, during my college years. Frequently alone on days off but work was very busy, during the height of beach tourism; quite often the schedule was 6 days per week, Sunday being the off day.
After college days, I would walk 18 or even 27 holes of golf, at cheaper municipal courses or a local goat track. I enjoyed playing partners or just being a solo golf playing fool, with dreams of breaking the magical score of 72. Managed to break 80 at the height of any such playing. Never diagnosed with the spectrum or Asperger’s but lately I wonder if it is so. Extroverts can’t handle the solitude of a quiet weekend, my experience has been but others mileage may vary.
The OKDoomer article somewhat conflates isolation with solitude, but generally I’m on board with it.
I’m very happy to spend several days a week with zero to minimal human interaction, partly because I get a lot done, partly because by the time I get to the end of the week, I’m a bit tired of all the human interaction I’ve had (much of which in my work can be emotional and high stakes [purportedly]). Some of my solitude is spent with other people’s thoughts in my head (e.g., books, as noted above), and some of it is just listening to my inner voices.
Not to mention isolation as a lab rat in somebody’s CV project.
I like being, if not alone then with a small group of carefully chosen people. But society will not allow me to withdraw, even though i pay all my taxes etc without fault.
“US House passes legislation to sanction ICC over Gaza warrants bid“ – rules-based order in action.
Insert laugh track here. Once again, we are not a serious country.
Ritter has been famous in Russia for a couple of years now. There aren’t many visible American dissidents sympathetic to Russia, so they tend to stick out. I’ve long contended that Tucker Carlson is more popular in Russia than the US, everyone here knows about him.
Ritter is a convicted sex offender, and it wasn’t a one-off. He is also a former U.S. Intelligence officer.
The U.S. does not restrict sex offenders from leaving the country. However, it is my understanding that a number of countries do restrict entry. One site in particular, has Russia with mandatory jail time and monetary fine. Different sites do show different lists.
He is, fbow, a former intelligence officer. At least some Russian officials when asked, did note this.
So, the U.S. can likely stop him on security grounds, and would doubly want to avoid having him (of all people) added to the list of captives in Russia.
Then why didn’t the US stop him when he went to Russia in January? Why is now so different?
High profile warning to other journalists and interested parties from the US and the west to stay away from the St. Petersburg forum to drain it of legitimacy. Betcha he gets his passport back soon after the conference is over.
Yesterday I saw him speak some on this. Sabby Sabs (who I’m not so thrilled with, she can be sloppy with her facts) played a piece from another site but clipped where he went into his conviction. He is required to notify some authority (not identified) 21 days in advance of foreign travel, he did so 28 days in advance in the most recent incident. But there was some sort of conflict with the length of his stay, it was not clear to me exactly what that was.
Captive? Have you been paying attention? He’s one of the last they’ll use as a hostage.
The Russians didn’t detain him or bar him from the country, American DHS agents took his passport and prevented him from leaving the country.
Ritter’s sex offense is that he went to into an 18+ adult chatroom and chatted someone who represented themselves as 17 years old. He thought they were just role-playing. Pedophiles are generally kept away from the general prison population but Ritter served his time with the genpop. According to him, he showed his rap sheet on the first day and nobody ever bothered him about it. I didn’t think Russians would be seriously concerned about an entrapment crime that happened entirely in another country.
It’s still a reckless and stupid thing to do when he had a bull’s eye on his back (as opposed to being a protected Zionist like Jerry Seinfeld, who openly dated a 17 year old when he was 38) but most whistleblowers have a reckless streak to do what they do knowing it’ll probably destroy their lives, rather than keep their head down and keep collecting paychecks.
Ritter’s conviction is typical of the way lawfare is used in Amrika to shut people up. Didn’t work on him so they are seizing his passport. Looks like USA playing by Hitler/Stalin rules now. What’s next? Internal Exile? Internet privileges revoked? Or just a simple accident.
This what democrats mean when they say “protect our democracy”
What’s next? Traci Lords will accuse him of having sex with her in 1984.
Yep, he got caught doing crazy things and the person on the other end of the camera was an officer pretending to be a 15 year old kid. But he was tried and convicted back in 2011. I don’t think that particular issue has anything to do with the current fracas resulting in his losing his passport. Wouldn’t surprise me if it gets brought up again a lot if he he gains any traction in the media.
And it also won’t surprise me if the people who bring up that point are all on Epstein’s list…
Ritter has several long explanations about that “sex offense”. If you have not listend to them then go and do that. If you did and you keep insisting on puting this as a description of Ritter, then you have an agenda, and it is not good.
Thanks for that comment, Kouros The focus on Ritter as a sex offender has been at best a distraction and at worst an attempt to discredit him entirely.
“Remote Amazon tribe finally connects to internet — only to wind up hooked on porn, social media ”
This one has interesting parallels with homeless activists in America. An activist thought it would be great to bring the internet to remote villages. When it didn’t work out so well, the activists fall back on “It’s ethnocentrism, white people thinking they know what’s best.” And that excuse seems a little weird, because it was definitely white people who thought it would be great to bring the internet to remote villages. The white people are the ones that want to sell things to people in remote villages, as well as spy on those people. Obviously it’s not just ‘white people’, but I’m going on with the activist’s wording.
In America we have homeless activists screaming about criminalizing homelessness and demanding cities setup meth camps where people can overdose, attack passers by, etc. When that situation becomes a disaster, “home owners just hate looking at homeless people.”
I think TweetX has just updated their corporate policy on porn and nudity, allowing more of their content to be broadcast.
The digital demons are in a colossal battle with the analog angels and it looks like the former are getting the upper hand, even penetrating “remote Amazon tribes.”
About that…
https://x.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1798038009952256453?t=xxlCyruHtbBCg65WTqLGGQ&s=19
Yeah that would be funny
Working as intended.
Who woulda guessed? heh heh heh
>Anthony Fauci, the Wuhan Lab Lie, and the bipartisan war on public health – WSWS
All I can say is that “Leftist” sites like WSWS and Jacobin are no longer sites I visit.
There is not a shred of evidence to substantiate any of the wild claims made about EcoHealth Alliance or Daszak, and all major papers published in credible scientific journals indicate that SARS-CoV-2 began spreading among humans through a spillover event at a wet market in Wuhan, China…
More so than ever before, organizations like EcoHealth Alliance must be fully funded in order to closely monitor and respond to the threat of emerging infectious diseases, which will only accelerate as climate change deepens in the years ahead.
Yes, that “not a shred of evidence” stuck out to me too.
There is absolute evidence that there is a virology lab in Wuhan. There is also absolute evidence that this lab worked on bat coronavirus. There is absolute evidence that there was US funding involved with the research done at this lab. There is absolute evidence that Fauci was involved with the organizations providing the funding. There is also absolute evidence from the outset of the pandemic that scientists were concerned that covid-19 resulted from a lab accident – we’ve seen those emails.
If covid-19 was the result of zoonotic origins, and thus could have jumped species pretty much anywhere, it would have to be an astounding coincidence for the jump to have occurred in the very city where a lab was doing research on this same type of virus. That is the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
There was a case in Italy in November 2019 which well predates Wuhan, blowing a huge hole in your theory. But oddly that is just about never mentioned in the US press:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/latest-on-coronavirus-outbreak/italian-woman-had-covid-19-in-november-2019-study-says/2106032
And there are tons of flights between Italy and China due to the garment biz.
And if you had been paying attention, many labs do research on bat coronaviruses. Bats are extremely interesting for virus research because they live on top of each other and are infecting each other all the time, leading to rapid evolution. But bats also have extremely robust immune systems which further makes them very useful objects of study.
Excellent retrieval, Yves. I wish Taibbi took this seriously and would trim his pandering to China hawks on the issue. .
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-01-22/Coronavirus-found-in-multiple-countries-months-earlier-than-in-Wuhan-XfTTs6HacE/index.html
January 22, 2021
Coronavirus found in multiple countries months earlier than in Wuhan: studies
By Liu Wei and Cao Qingqing
A panel of World Health Organization (WHO) scientists has been conducting origin tracing of the coronavirus since January 14 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the COVID-19 cases were first reported. They will cooperate with Chinese scientists to conduct more fieldwork after completing local quarantine requirements.
Both WHO and China have stressed virus origin tracing is a serious and complicated scientific issue, which should be conducted by scientists and medical experts.
As a matter of fact, the coronavirus was detected in different countries months before an outbreak was reported in Wuhan, according to studies and media reports around the globe.
1. Blood sample in Italy – September 2019 …
My first inkling of how bad Covid might be came via a vis a group of LA skiers who were in Italy…
https://www.insideedition.com/patient-zero-lost-most-of-his-fingers-to-covid-19-caught-on-ski-trip-last-year-now-hes-back-on-the
Thanks Yves. I do remember the reports of early cases, and while your link notes the November 2019 case in Italy, it also says –
“The first COVID-19 outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China, in December last year — although Chinese authorities have admitted that there were cases dating back to November, raising doubt over the transparency of the official data made public.
A separate study conducted in Italy last year suggested that the coronavirus may have been circulating in the country as early as September 2019.”
Lots of vagueness there, and we are talking about documented cases. Clearly there could have been some spread going on before anything was documented. I may have missed it, but I don’t remember anyone searching for zoonotic origins in Italy, just in China and settling on the wet market.
The best explanation I’ve seen is this one from NY Magazine, which I first saw here at NC and I believe was posted in links one day – https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
TL;DR: This gives a well documented account of how there was a zoonotic jump of the coronavirus from bats to humans in China which caused a few human deaths. It discusses exactly what you said about bats living on top of and infecting each other causing viral evolution which can lead to spread to other species. Samples of this virus were then taken to the Wuhan lab for further study. I don’t believe those facts are in dispute at all. The speculation comes with what happened after that. But I do think the author makes a decent case of zoonotic origins, followed by a lab accident during study.
That article made sense to me, and I have never seen anyone try to debunk it. Mostly it’s just been ignored. If it has been discredited and I missed it somewhere though, I’d love to check that out. But given the reluctance of both Chinese and US officials to discuss this, we will likely never know for sure.
If you read the article, the virus was sequenced from the 2019 case. This is not as ambiguous as you suggest.
Anybody know if that was in vicinity of Wuhan?
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/2/20-4632_article
February, 2021
Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in an Oropharyngeal Swab Specimen, Milan, Italy, Early December 2019
By Antonella Amendola, Silvia Bianchi, Maria Gori, Daniela Colzani, Marta Canuti, et al.
Abstract
We identified severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 RNA in an oropharyngeal swab specimen collected from a child with suspected measles in early December 2019, ≈3 months before the first identified coronavirus disease case in Italy. This finding expands our knowledge on timing and mapping of novel coronavirus transmission pathways…
And to clarify a little, my beef here was with the article in links today saying there was not a shred of evidence. I’m not trying to prove any theory here, because I really don’t know and remain agnostic. I’m just saying there has been evidence for both theories and I found the WSWS article’s handwave to be a little disingenuous.
Which supports the Fort Detrick theory
Yves, we have never seen this the same way.
The emergence of a pandemic is a flukey thing. The fire gutters and smoulders and then suddenly catches in the right circumstances.
Wuhan is unlikely to be place where conditions were just right for first human to human transmission of a naturally zoonotic bat infection. There are no bats of the types hosting sarbecocoronavrius in Wuhan. There are possibly no bats at all in a global urban centre! (Excluding ones in laboratories).
The nearest bat caves are thousands of kilometres away in SW China, where the Wuhan Virology Institute went prospecting for them. They didn’t look in Wuhan!
It is possible there is a chain of bushmeat distribution that could bring an infected bat or human into Wuhan from the deep countryside but there is minimal evidence of that kind of bushmeat trade (bit pangolins and other red herrings were traded in the famous seafood centre).
More to the point, that chain would indeed be a chain: why didn’t coronavurus emerge at an earlier link, at smaller towns and cities where byshmeat traffic would be proportionately higher than in central Wuhan? Occam’s razor suggests coronavirus emerged in Wuhan because it originated in Wuhan.
There are several viral research laboratories in Wuhan, including one neighbouring the seafood centre where experiments in serial passage of virus in animal models was conducted. Only WIV had a BSL4 facility, its standards were criticised by foreign partners, other facilities handling viruses at WIV or elsewhere in Wuhan were BSL3 or even 2! And the dangers of sarbecovirus research were not fully appreciated / respected throughout the world: a lot of academic bioscience gets done in facilities one or more biosafety levels too lax in strict theory because most Universities simply don’t have BSL4 lab space and careers need advancing….
For me, accidental release in Wuhan is most likely. But this could have created a subcritical population of early patients, some of whom travelled, and led to early cases in Italy. There are claims that Wuhan and WIV experienced outbreaks of illness in early autumn (there are also Chinese claims that US soldiers participating in the October Wuhan military games may have released it deliberately, if we are being evenhandedly tinfoily).
Finally, there is a lot of doubt cast on the “impossible” coronavurus cases that predate the official start. I have no trouble believing that recorded history is not all of history! There could have been patients circulating earlier. But I agree with critics that there needs to be excellent proof that the labwork is clean and not a false positive in these early cases. I have not been looking for any papers that show this but there was no knockout study one way or the other during the pandemic.
Anyway, I don’t think early cases, proved or not, can corroborate either lab leak or natural theories. The patients and timing tell us nothing about the origin, unless we expand the search to outside of China!
This is watchmaker hypothesis. It’s much more comfortable to think humans are in control than admit that we don’t know as much as we think we do.
1t took 15 years with SARS to find the biological chain. I doubt as much effort is being applied along those lines as now. Bat meat eating has been restricted by law in China since SARS-1. Chinese go to Indonesia to eat bat and I suspect there is an illegal import chain from there and probably other countries too. The joke about people in Wuhan is they are the most voracious exotic food eaters in China: “They will eat anything with four legs except a table.” So it would be a big target for any illegal meat imports, including bats.
The staff at the Wuhan lab proper were quickly tested for Covid after the outv. None had or had had it. One would expect otherwise.
The watchmaker hypothesis is the insistence that a complex intricate system must have an intentional holistic design, that it cannot arise out of generative processes. Hence Dawkins’s book, the Blind Watchmaker, insisting that evolutionary processes can take that role with indifference to what they are evolving.
I am not asserting that.
I am pointing out that another good heuristic, Occam’s razor, suggests that given the outbreak in Wuhan of a human to human transmitted sarbecovirus with remarkable sequence homology to previously assayed wild-derived sarbecoviruses collected thousands of kilometres away in Yunnan and stored and experimented upon in that city, it is more likely that the virus escaped the lab locally (by accident) than the virus jumped by serial passage, without sparking intermediate outbreaks or leaving any trace of mutation in the viral lineage of this, from Yunnan to Wuhan.
Given the subsequent secrecy and removal of sequence data from scientific databases etc., it is fair to ask what was really going in at WIV and other laboratories in Wuhan and with Ecohealth and NIH funding. It would cost them nothing to be transparent and might help reduce suspicion.
My own view is that they were producing gain of function mutants AND using serial passage in animals to examine reproduction fitness, possibly at other sites in Wuhan, all probably for defensive reasons (I really hope for defensive reasons!) and they got careless. I don’t think they knew a lot about Sars-2 nor were dekiberately weaponising it (because we don’t know much now after four years).
There are allegations about US funded laboratories in the Ukraine that are concerning, too….
You have an unstated assumption, that as many have maintained, that the outbreak in the Wuhan market was the origin. Even if accurate, all you have is a correlation, the proximity of the market to the lab…when as I informed you, none of the lab staff had Covid early on. You don’t have a mechanism. And correlations generally are considered to be weak proof
The notion that market was the origin has been repeated so often that it is treated as fact, when in reality there were cases not recognized as Covid before that.
https://health.ucsd.edu/news/press-releases/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china/
See in particular from a write-up of a different study:
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/first-covid-19-case-could-have-hit-china-oct-2019-study-2021-06-25/
There is more like that if you bother looking at that, but the media has not seen fit to amplify it, so it is as if it does not exist. I have seen this sort of thing repeatedly in my days as a consultant and made clients lots of money by tracking down what had been said in the news in areas of interest and determining what was actually the same underlying fact but had been repeated many time, but similarly important facts had died after first appearance. The repeated “fact” was treated as vastly “truer” due to the amplification despite merely being repetition of a single quote, data release, or other sighting.
So it appears possible, in fact probable, that someone who would now be called a superspreader got Covid and went to the market. That alternative blows a big hole in your theorizing.
There is also absolute evidence of significant repression of evidence and a coordinated campaign of disinformation and demonization of anyone questioning a zoonotic origin. One wonders why this was the case if there was nothing to hide.
Not that I trust the Republicans at all to shed any real light on anything. They will simply use this to play partisan games and blame the Chinese and/or Democrats. On the other hand, the WSWS defense of Daszak and EcoHealth demonstrates total blindness at the other end of the spectrum. This is typical for them; once the party line on an issue is determined, then everything is black or white for them. No nuance, complexity, or complication allowed.
Yves does make an interesting point about evidence for earlier exposure. I recall that there were some making this argument for the US as well. I personally don’t think that undermines an artificial origin necessarily. It seems to challenge the official narrative to me. But it is definitely one of the many interesting issues that seem to be neglected in our desire to just move on.
I have a longer comment in moderation, but I do think this article, which I first read after it was posted at NC, makes a good case of zoonotic origins followed by a lab accident – https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
There is sufficient evidence for alternative scenarios that involve transmission and mutation of SARS-2 from bats to foxes/raccoons/minks to human beings without the intervention of mad scientists. See my older comments here and here.
We know that this *could* happen, and that such transmission *has* happened with other viruses. “Alternative scenarios” are possible. That’s not the issue. The issue is that unlike earlier cases when this source was discovered rather quickly, in the case of SARS-2 this source or sources have not been found. So while there is “sufficient evidence” that this *might* be the case, there is no evidence that it *was*. On the other hand, there is considerable circumstantial evidence for why a lab leak origin is *plausible* (see, for e.g., the NY Times editorial posted in Monday’s Water Cooler). I’m not saying it did happen. But I am saying the implications of your “mad scientist” comment are irritating.
In addition, there *is* clear evidence for everything lyman alpha blob lists above. So any “conspiracy theory” smear needs to address those issues as well.
That article was by a TDS sufferer (or an AI trained on them). It said Trump attempted a coup on Jan. 6.
These people are nuts. Don’t even know what a coup is.
Denninger’s overheated counter to the WSWS’s rant.
So About Fauci
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251428
that is an epic rant, and totally in line with what I know about the pandemic.
Thanks for that link; epic, indeed.
I tried pointing out Fauc’s rat-f****** with AZT and Bactrim during the AIDS epidemic to relatives and got blank stares. That treacherous cretin put his ego and scientific career above public health back then, and he hasn’t changed in 30+ years.
Well said. A high school friend was very active in Act Up so I never had any respect for Fauci in Vaccines Only Act II.
Re: So about Fauci
A quibble : I hardly find his point about masks coherent, nor correct.
What is the natural source, like in a bat or pangolin with the bug in its flesh/dung?
Asking again 4 years on
Thank God nobody has mentioned ferrets. We must not mention ferrets.
“Moscow comments on Scott Ritter passport seizure”
The article says that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated ‘He is a former intelligence officer, so he may be subject to certain restrictions on traveling abroad.’ He must have forgotten the fact that Scott Ritter visited Russia only in January of this year where he went to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kherson and Chechnya where he was given the privilege of addressing thousands of Chechen fighters in a central square in Grozny.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said something that was ominous in relation to this. He said ‘We are now an enemy country for them – much like they are for us’. For a long time after this war started Putin called countries like the US ‘partners.’ Then it descended to ‘unfriendly states’ or ‘opponents.’ Now it looks like the Russian are just calling countries like the US enemies. Already Putin said in January that ‘The point is not that they are helping our enemy, but that they are our enemy.’ This is not good. Not good at all-
https://www.rt.com/russia/598772-peskov-us-russia-enemy/
Lets make sure we get as much Russian propaganda up as we can: aka Zelenskyy buying hotels.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-rumor-says-ukraines-001900679.html
Well there was also the Egyptian journalist who reported that Zelensky’s mother-in-law purchased a $5 million luxury villa in Egypt. Unfortunately he was beaten to death in murky circumstances so I guess that we will never know the truth here now-
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231227-egypt-journalist-found-dead-after-exposing-luxury-villa-owned-by-zelenskyys-family/
But don’t forget that well north of $200 billion has gone to the Ukraine and that country was rated as the most corrupt in Europe before the war. It stands to reason that Big Z has managed to pocket a fair chunk of it and is in no danger of dying in poverty.
Betcha over there it’s 20% for the big guy.
Zelensky is a dead man walking. There’ll be no comfort under the veranda.
Lets make sure we get as much MSM fact checking, and (pre-)debunking as we can. The less important the thing is, the more the fact checking is needed.
Claim:
Ukrainian former President Vladimir Zelenski wears only one shirt.
Rating:False
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a wide choice of shirts to wear.
All of them green. :)
Disinformation alert (sarcasm), Rev, Zelensky was recently reported to be wearing a black shirt. You can even buy one on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/President-Volodymyr-Zelensky-Ukrainian-Tee/dp/B0B3CWCFXD
How did the Russkies get to you?;-))
“How did the Russkies get to you?;-))”
By way of Van Dieman’s Land.
Yeah, I have seen that black t-shirt and for him it serves as a tuxedo for formal wear occasions.
“Rating:False
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a wide choice of shirts to wear.”
Obviously! There are the everyday green T-shirts and the dress green T-shirts with the iron crosses on them. Whomsoever made that claim clearly has not been paying attention.
According to your link the original story came from a Turkish TV channel, so wouldn’t that make it Turkish propaganda. Though the channel in question is an opposition channel that the Erdogan government has accused of being linked to the Gulenist movement, so plot twist, perhaps its American propaganda ;).
Ahh, a link to a “fact check”. Similar to GA election shenanigans, the greater pattern strongly suggests that this likely occurred.
“Let’s make sure we get as much Russian propaganda up…”
This is a false accusation, meant to intimidate those who post on Naked Capitalism.
One more like this and you will no longer be welcome here. I have no tolerance for attacks on the site.
Zelensky is reported to be worth over $800 million. To put it in context, Tucker Carlson is worth only about $400 million. $800 million in a poor country for a media figure whose shows have no market abroad smells to high heaven of a big chunk of his wealth not being earned legitimately.
And these stories were sourced to media, not just Twitter fare, and I indicated pretty clearly that they looked questionable.
Last time I noted a link of this quality it disappeared in a heartbeat with no comment. I don’t normally bother commenting on your pet issues ( I remember Ozone) because you get like this.
I have contributed to your site for a very long time. But I can move on.
I might have missed it but I didn’t read about Mexico’s violent election cycle in yesterday’s NC article on Some Initial Thoughts on Mexico’s Genuinely Historic Election Posted Nick Corbishley. I did not follow the Mexican election and I am only now starting to dig a little deeper.
Mexico’s current election season has become the deadliest in its modern history, with the assassination of yet another candidate for the general elections on Friday after Jorge Huerta Cabrera, running for a council seat in Izucar de Matamoros, Puebla state, was murdered at a political rally. Cabrera is the 37th candidate killed ahead of the election slated for Sunday…
Claudia Sheinbaum, the ruling party’s hopeful, is anticipated to win the presidential vote, potentially becoming Mexico’s first female president. However, the escalating violence has cast a shadow over the election.
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/another-mexican-candidate-killed–raising-figure-to-37
That was an oversight on my part, Z, and an important one that I have since rectified. Thanks for bringing it up.
Federal Reserve bank District president. Don’t the poors and the plebes appreciate the excellent outcome of jobs and record unemployment? Okay gasoline and eggs are really tough, but I’m not sure what else is exceedingly higher today vs 2019, by example? Great economy! \sarc
I’ve long thought or considered that a President of a Fed reserve bank would be somewhat smart enough to know better, and take to account what he or she does not experience themselves or via their peers. Also when considering their better than average incomes, and modern living or travel is likely first class, though maybe not at world class level. It’s like there is a term to describe it.
He’s not wrong that the average person’s preference for low inflation over low unemployment is rooted in the fact that high inflation hurts everyone but high unemployment hurts just those who lose the jobs lottery. And screw those guys they’re probably just lazy.
Not so sure that “everyone” is feeling the pain of inflation. The top 10% and especially the 1% are not likely all that impacted. Most probably haven’t seen the inside of a grocery store in quite awhile. However, a recession would do serious damage to stock portfolios and assets owned by the top income folks. These days a recession and a cut in consumer buying will not have the impact on manufacturing jobs that it once would have had when we actually made things in the USA. I’m not wishing for a recession by any means, but the tone deafness of the Fed President is something.
Too bad people don’t realize there’s another mechanism to reduce inflation: increasing taxes. LIke Russia is doing to rein in inflation.
That said, would the US be able to increase taxes without tripping us into a recession anyway? I think Russia can get away with it because I don’t believe they have a bubble forming under their economy – theirs is a classic overheated economy. In contrast to the US: is the US an overheated economy?
The US was already in a bubble in asset prices even before Covid. But that wasn’t reflective of an overheated economy by any means. If we’re in an overheated economy now it’s due to Covid. But did Covid really create a “new normal” for us? Or are we reverting back to norm?
Personally, I think we’re reverting back to norm. It’s no different than if Russia stopped needing to prosecute their war – their overheating economy would cool as well. Not that we’re stopping the prosecution of a war per se. More like the war that was inflicted upon us by Covid itself has subsided. In which case, let the economy cool on its own accord.
As far as the legacy asset bubble that we were in, it was only made more pronounced by Covid.
Unfortunately there’s no way for that to cool to a soft landing. Any cooling in asset prices will create a recession. And I don’t think the Federal Reserve really has any control over that – control has been overtaken by the euro-dollar market. And the euro-dollar market will eventually give up the ghost such that this bubble pops. In which case we should be getting ready for that – in a way as if another war was going to be inflicted upon us.
Aye, but raise taxes on whom?
We could raise taxes on all the people including CEOs making bank on their inflated stock. Taxes when they get their stock options and fees for selling and buying stocks to start. Removing all the tax cuts of the past forty years would be next. If people really cannot live on just a five or ten million dollar portfolios, I would question both their lifestyles and their financial acumen.
The problem with have is not only the decreasing taxes on the wealthy, but also the vacuuming of all the wealth from the majority of Americans to a small, very wealthy class of oligarchs. Even ten million dollars for such people is not much at all. For the actual billionaires, it is couch lint.
Right, just start calling capital gains income,
Well I am surprised that anybody would prefer recession to inflation in policy making but that’s the entirety of inflation-targeting Philips curve economics. :-( I wish Kashkari would denounce that more.
Perhaps it is more understandable that the man on the Clapham omnibus hopes to sacrifice others to balance his books but that cut-throat behaviour ends up cutting your own throat. Like sacrificing liberty for security, you will have neither. You will have to live with the threat of unemployment disciplining you and your wages will never be raised to catch up. Workers are better off embracing inflation and labour shortage, to increase their share of profits.
It is only better to prefer unemployment for others to stagflation, where there is the worst of both worlds, inflation and labour in excess.
“It is only better to prefer unemployment for others to stagflation, where there is the worst of both worlds, inflation and labour in excess.”
Only – if – it’s slavish to orthodox economics and cornerstones like the IS-LM/NAIRU/CB IR fiddling as being empiric. The thing is its not a logical or rational debate when the squillinaire class can set up gate keeping orgs and call it an education with a side so social network reinforcement.
Per se Russia has completely overhauled its financial/taxation system and now reaping the benefit of it even in the light of Atlantic machinations e.g. its in control, even with all the latter attempts to throw a spanner in it.
From TomDispatch:
David Vine and Theresa Arriola, Dropping the MIC
https://tomdispatch.com/the-military-industrial-complex-is-killing-us-all/
“Remembering D-Day: Key Facts and Figures About the Invasion that Changed the Course of World War II”
We see D-Day now as a great success but at the time they thought that it could go either way and success was not guaranteed. Before the actual invasion, General Eisenhower sat down and penned a short note to be issued in case that the landings were a military disaster and the Allies forced to pull back out. This is what he wrote-
‘Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
https://www.npr.org/2013/06/08/189535104/the-speech-eisenhower-never-gave-on-the-normandy-invasion
Talk about the loneliness of command. Can you see a modern general sitting down to write such a note? A Petraeus or a Hodges would have started a witch-hunt to pin the blame on some subordinates.
Also the “course of the war” had already been changed by Russian victories and the Allies were attacking a Germany that was on the path to defeat. Perhaps such a massive effort by the US and UK did puncture the notion by some in Germany that a non unconditional surrender was possible.
There as also the Italy invasion that had been going for 6 months by that time.
I like Ike!
I was raised by his troops
Had D-Day failed the Allies would not have had the leverage with Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to agree the ‘shape’ of post-war Germany and the Red Army would not have met the Americans on the Elbe but, likely, have kept going west to overrun the whole of Germany and been the ‘liberators’ of France, Holland et al. So while it might not have changed Germany’s defeat the success of D-Day did change the ‘shape’ and future of post-war Europe.
“the Invasion that Changed the Course of World War II”. Stopped Western Europe turning Socialist. Americans and Russians would have met somewhere in the Alps.
Read an article about 25 years ago in regards to a cameraman who had been parachuted in and dutifully recorded the D-Day proceedings from an isolated position and got great footage, and on D-Day plus 1, gave the film to a ship going back to the UK, and that was that, he never heard of what happened to it.
For the record, I’ve seen that GI Joe get shot and fall down in the one combat film of D-Day, approx 743 times now.
I don’t know what to believe when I dive deeper than high school history class on the details of WWII.
I came across the book below, which is heavily footnoted and documented, and along with other alternative/revisionist history of the period, my understanding is, at best, still developing.
Critical Mass: How Nazi Germany Surrendered Enriched Uranium for the United States Atomic Bomb
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Mass-Germany-Surrendered-Enriched/dp/0975985310
Even constrained by the narrative structure of a movie, the landing scene in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is probably very close to simulating the real thing. Masterful. It should be required watching for all the miserable chicken hawks who so nonchalantly send young men to die. Then add a viewing of Dr. Strangelove for “comic” relief. Or not.
I was told by a Nisei friend, who lost his right arm to a machine gun on Omaha Beach, the scenes in “The Greatest Day” were superbly realistic.
What’s often ignored is the need for a second landing in southern France / Operation Dragoon to relieve the pressure in the northwest. This was a combined US/French operation with the US troops (VI Corps/Lucian Truscott) being the most combat experienced troops in the theater.
Weekend at Rehoboth Beach? Article today in the WSJ, about Scranton Joe and far too many anecdotes from those mean Republicans, how dare they pick on our strong vibrant leader! Four more months, er Years I say (!). \sarc
Doddering old man against doddering less-old man. From a Don Henley song, “they’re beating plowshares into swords, for this tired old man would be elected king…this is the End of the Innocence…”. America in 2024. Holy crap are we ever screwed up.
The guy was frail and displaying symptoms when I saw him up close(as in 6ft away and closer) for 45 minutes at a town hall 5 years ago. It was glaringly obvious. August 2019. What if the MD(s) examining him said “Nope, his brain’s toast. Not fit to continue serving.” What would happen then? What kind of upheaval and craziness would break out? What MD would willingly step onto that landmine? Can you imagine? And people on Team Dem know better than to say the emperor has no clothes. They’d go to their graves before admitting it, no matter how bad it got.
Biden was lucky that when he was campaigning for the Presidency, that because of the Pandemic he was able to campaign from his basement and did not have to attend multiple monster rallies.
Yeah “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping”?!? Behind closed doors, in front of cameras, in public appearances, etc. Where has Biden not shown signs of “slipping” in the last five years? The difference now is his value to TPTB is ending and they’ve decided they can stop the gaslighting and calling sundowning “gaffs”.
My opinion has been that the plan all along was to anoint a suitable successor at the convention…can’t have any of those primary races where someone offers so called populist solutions that people will vote for but which are opposed by party apparatchiks.
We’ll find out soon enough…
I was of the impression that they thought the problem more imminent than that, hence Dean Phillips. He, from their perspective, would have been perfect for the job, and all they would have had to do was pass the baton in the usual fashion. Doing it at the convention for someone like Newsom or Pritzker will be a little blatant, even for them.
Three brands of the same name “nutters”. You, dear voter, get to “choose” between not one, not two, but three candidates who have each lost their marbles. Make America Grate Again vs Make America Wait Again vs Make America Fel family blog Again. Good times.
Re: Why the ceasefire proposal Biden announced for Gaza has stalled
Well, duh? Of course they’re suspicious, because it didn’t. In other news, I am suspicious that if I jump out of a plane without a parachute, I may end up like Wile E. Coyote.
That’s the problem with basing something on lies. It gets you through the next moment, or maybe a couple of days, then the lies collapse on themselves.
Their plan is to keep lying with MSM help for so long that you’re gaslighted into thinking this is all normal and Orange Man Bad, Putin bad, Khamas bad…
The subterfuge might have worked had it been paired with a private threat of cutting off all support for their war, but clearly Biden did not go the whole nine yards. All they had to do was postpone the war until after the election… I suspect that the appearance of Netanyahu in Congress may have had something to do with it. Netanyahu has already said he is fine with Trump’s reelection, and doing a stump speech for Trump in front of Congress may have been what made Biden step down from such measures.
Is everyone still pretending that Netanyahu didn’t bat down the Biden ceasefire proposal mere hours (minutes?) after it was announced? I don’t think I’ve misread anything here. The proposal was an ex-Parrot on arrival. What’s left to discuss?
Yeah, I’ve been confused about this as well. Unless I missed something (a possibility), this was DOA and there isn’t anything to discuss.
I think they’re so used to lying with impunity that they really think they can just bluff and BS their way to solving an intractable problem.
I’m probably overthinking it, though. If you proceed from the basis that both Netanyahu and Biden are genocidal monsters, then it makes sense that they would throw smoke to distract and confuse.
The real question is why does the press let them get away with it? Also, there are other Arab nations that could callout the BS besides Turkey. They’re likely captured vassal states so that is not going to be good for them if they do call it out.
The msm press is overwhelmingly stupid or nepo babies, very right wing too even if they enjoy broadway.
There is befuddlement by this lot that people are outraged. “Why would anyone care about a foreign non white person?”
In the case of Biden, the msm suffers from TDS. If they are mean to Biden, Trump will serve McDonald’s at briefings.
You have to admit, though, that this has to be one of the most surreal lies ever by a US president on an allegedly important foreign policy matter.
Netanyahu wasn’t his usual blunt self in saying no, instead he reiterated his conditions, which if you understood much of anything, did = no. Team Biden got the press to flog that as him being on board.
This is one of those cases, with an election coming, where the purpose of having a peace plan is to be seen to have a peace plan. International politics being what it is, even in a non-election year, the US will be expected to have a peace plan because it’s always involved in everything, everywhere. In an election year it’s much worse. The plan doesn’t have to be realistic, acceptable or any of those boring things, just somewhere visible out there, with a life-span that will get it to November. In other words it’s theatre.
The thing that I can’t get over, though, is how Biden insisted it’s an “Israeli” plan when Israeli government clearly was not even consulted
“With a life-span that will get it to November”? Not sure it lasted a weekend. No way Dems aren’t unpacking back-up plans now that conviction didn’t sink DJ Trump like they’d fantasized.
“Israel and Hezbollah Move Closer to Full-Scale War’
Probably this is only Israeli chest-thumping. They are still chasing after Hamas units that are not only refusing to surrender but who are re-occupying areas that the Israelis have left. But here is the thing. Hezbollah is another creature altogether. They have tens of thousands of missiles, many of which are guided, and at the best of times the Israelis would be hard pressed to stop them But these are not normal times. Israel used up, according to one report, about half their anti-air missiles fending off Iran’s attack. And at that the Iranian missiles still got through. So how would Israel deal with all those Hezbollah missiles? What if Hezbollah targeted all the Israeli air bases? That would put the wind up the Israelis. Or the naval bases. Or the infrastructure. For the Hezbollah missiles forces, Israel is a target-rich environment.
The strategy of looking to take on a stronger opponent while losing your current struggle reminds me of something.
Me, too.
Hopefully the us is bluffing re China. But Net might think he has to keep a war going to stay in office. I wonder if this strategy might lead to a major Israeli defeat that makes 2 states possible, there seems to be a lot of tough guys in the neighborhood.
I dunno. Reading the latest Simplicius, he points out that Bibi is proceeding apace with his war because he knows WWIII is in play and his sins will quickly be forgiven once the average schmuck in the street gets the memo.
A big attack that hits Israeli air bases and infrastructure would be just the thing to gin up sympathy for Israel in the US and take that nasty genocide off the front page. And raise Netanyahu’s standing as a war president who must be supported “at all costs.”
Yes, The Cradle and Electronic Intifata have been talking about this angle as well. It seems that the neo-cons didn’t even care about pretending to not commit genocide anymore because they committed to blowing up the world.
What happened to those red calves that the Third Temple people were planing to sacrifice? Let’s bring that back to the apocalypse mix.
Thanks for the AAPS v ABIM link. Good news.
The Court held that there is a constitutional “right to hear”….“This landmark ruling will be cited nationwide for decades to come,” Mr. Schlafly observed.
From Jonathon Turley about the MSM, specifically WaPo, losing their audiences.
“Let’s Not Sugarcoat it … People are Not Reading Your Stuff:” Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at Post
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/04/lets-not-sugarcoat-it-people-are-not-reading-your-stuff-post-reporters-outraged-after-publisher-drops-truth-bomb/
The Washington Post is doomed because it will never change. It will refuse to. So if it folds, how many will be sad to see it go? Right now it is just a tool of the establishment and full of tools itself.
Now? The CIA Times has always been liner. The real problem is DC is so stupid and msm is completely reliant on “trusted sources” (friends pushing an agenda), there is no reason to read that rag.
Sports betting has put me off, but the Post used to have a decent sports section (though the non local population population doesn’t care about the local teams as much as having their favorite team come to town) and metro section. It’s just a waste now.
I seem to remember Mr. Kashkari from my analyst days back in the 1990s. I quickly pegged him as a bagman for TPTB. During the 2008 GFC he quite literally personified that descriptor. He serves the machine
If I had my druthers, folks like Fed presidents would be proscribed from serving in any corporate capacity with any institutions that fall under their mandate. Like being on the BoDs of banks in their jurisdiction. It just smacks of collusion.
Our financial industry is foetid and corrupt and cancerous and gangrenous and at this stage is focused on looting and pillaging the remaining scraps of the cadaverous remains of the American economy. It will continue until it cannot. And all of the rest of us will pay the price.
This is the best video I’ve seen for explaining simply economic news that requires context.
Even though I’ve spent 10 years trying to understand economic concepts and economic reporting, I don’t feel like I’ve gained much mastery of the subject, if at all.
I’d really appreciate it if knowledge people could review this 11 minute video to see if any of the simplified reporting is in error. If it’s not an error, then this woman may be an undiscovered source for making sense out of complicated economic reporting.
Lena Petrova, BANK FAILURES: $517 billion in unrealized losses; $9.3 Billion in bad loans will spark a crisis
https://youtu.be/YUbzv8r_88Y?si=XAR5n4qqUjdOucUS
I watched it and she has some interesting claims about both commercial and residential real estate, both of which I’ve heard but have no real expertise to say if she’s right or wrong. Someone like Yves or Wolf Richter would be better able to discern how serious of a threat this is. Wolf to my understanding thinks that while office CRE will be a huge ongoing disaster, it will stay contained as the bagholders are mostly pension funds, insurance companies, and not big banks.
I will say that I have a favorite author over at Seeking Alpha (crowdsourced financial site) and he has been warning for several years that the US banking system is not safe. He seems like a very thoughtful guy and he’s bearish on the overall US stock market to the point where he is expecting a 13-21 year bear market!
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4696049-big-banks-are-pressuring-the-fed-to-loosen-protection-for-depositors
Thanks for the link.
The unrealized losses are mostly on ‘risk free’ mortgage bonds. It’s as if regulators and bank execs forgot everything before 2008. The S&L crisis and similar was a massive failure in asset/liability management. Bank of America posted an unrealized loss of over $100 billion in 1Q23! From owning low interest rate bonds.
‘Unrealized’ means the poor results will be amortized over years. You might also ask what the banks were doing with bond assets instead of loans. And also issuing bonds. Ask the regulators.
Anyway…I would look for weak spots in ‘shadow’ banks private lending, mortgage rents, etc. Where you wont see it is structured finance, which wont occur until all the 2008 crowd is pensioned off. Losing money on ‘safe’ mortgage bonds…was just business. Losing (again) on a toxic CDO would get you fired at best, if not jailed. Capital…not bad…credit…not bad….interest rate management…pathetic.
Thank you, Yves.
Further to that Anadolu Agency link about schools and pupils in Blighty, this does not apply to Ukrainians. Uniforms and other clothing, transport, housing and even private school fees are paid by local authorities for them. Many of these Ukrainians speak Russian only.
When asked if Palestinians could enjoy the same privileges, local authorities say Ukrainians are refugees, but Palestinians are not. One then asks if that distinction is like an immigrant and an expatriate, British readers will understand the reference. Er, um…
I was informed that a full 150 of jockistan’s full time civil servants are reassigned to the cares of ukranian incomers.
Their job is,primarily, to browbeat local authorities into accommodating them.
I would have a guess that this is less than those caring for the indigenous fucked up.
For non uk readers, expats are people who arbitrage sun, sea and civilised behaviour against being surrounded by cranky foreigners.*
*EG wide boy in tenerife telling me he could never go back to london ‘coz all them immigrants’.
Immigrants, they’re just out for themselves.
“Iran’s allies in Iraq are firing at Israel. Could that trigger a wider war?”
Reuters does not mention it but these were the same forces that fought ISIS so successfully. But why would their attacks trigger a wider war? The Hezbollah attacks haven’t. But more to the point, the Israelis have been constantly bombing these forces for years now in Iraq and killing their commanders. And now that these Iraqi forces are hitting Israel back, Reuters suddenly gets a case of the vapours?
“Fed President Neel Kashkari just learned that normal Americans prefer a recession over high inflation…
‘I don’t understand. How can inflation be worse than a recession? In a recession you lose your job. Inflation is paying higher prices, but you still have a job.'”
So much better to work and still not be able to afford anything, than to not have to work and not be able to afford anything. How did this rocket scientist become a “Fed President”?
Didn’t have a national debt of $34 trillion when that 70’s inflation hit, thus we had to get our house in order and inflation was limited to around 20% and then we beat it down for decades…
We are already at 20% yearly inflation in terms of everything I purchase with car & house insurance leading the way, save gasoline which waxes and wanes and is about the only item you’ll see when driving on the road that has a visible price showing.
What behooves us to not go the heavy inflation route, where that $34 trillion might have the buying power of $34 billion if we willingly debauch the buck majorly?
It will be retirees (I’m not retired but projecting 10-14 years out, I hope to) who bear the burden. Inflation destroys anyone on a fixed income. A $34 Big Mac pencils out if you’re making $100/hour. Not so much if you’re drawing down savings.
Best protection for retirees is the fact that hyperinflation will bend the big banks over a table and drive a bus into a certain orifice. Given how powerful they are, the odds of them letting that happen are near zero.
I figure that in the 2 years before finally unlocking my Social Security annuity this year, that I lost 35-40% in buying power waiting for it to kick in.
Hence why I am not going to retire for both financial reasons but, health and mental reasons. The idea that I would put myself into a position where I think notional price in markets is some sort of foundation considering everything that has happened before and post the GFC is nuts.
wasn’t Volker the one that beat the 70’s inflation down – WWVD now?
He’s about 6% down now…
Best i can tell, the Fed people fear recession turning into depression turning into deflation. Because that way leads to a complete seizure of economic activity.
The problem right now is that price inflation is rampant even as wages are static.
This suggests runaway borrowing (aka private bank money printing). But that would be impossible to these people, as borrowing is just moving existing money around. With a bit of multiplier effect on top through fractional reserve mechanics.
“How can slavery be worse than recession? In slavery, you still have a job…”
He’s right to be confused though. No one ever thinks they’ll lose their job, so they say “yeah sure, recession, I’ll be fine and prices will cool off.” And yeah, maybe 50%+ of people will be okay (esp. if you’re retired and getting money coming in from Social Security and have medicare – and please don’t nitpick on me on these b/c, yes, while their not as good as they should be, they are something people can rely on in recessions). But another 40% will see income cut but maybe still have employment. And then the remaining 10% are on the dole. That’s 2009/2010.
If you’re in that 10% who lose their job, everything stops. Money income stops, health insurance stops, all positive financial planning stops.
So yeah, color me confused too. The Fed guy has it right this time.
Since you reference the GFC and the recession which followed. Yeah I wonder if a clarifying thought or suggestion is necessary here. A recession that didn’t include a global financial systemic meltdown may be the scenario the average American has in mind for this thought experiment. I know personally the recession did not end until I regained professional employment in late 2010; even with a reasonable severance it does not last, in particular if your job was erased or ixnayed in mid 2009. And unemployment benefits are not a great windfall.
I think this sorta gets back to the original thought proposed above, being unable to afford anything is an intractable problem.
Reading the above, a thought came to me:
Biden is becoming Amerca’s Boris Yeltsin.
But on really good drugs, instead of vodka.
And we all know how that turned out.
Remember that Yeltsin sent tanks to shell the Russian Parliament to save “mah dimucrasy.”
At least Boris Yeltsin selected Putin as his successor.
Yeltsin was younger, in better shape when he was installed, and an alternative to the gerontocracy.
Biden is the gerontocracy’s very incarnation.
No disrespect, doc. You’re super lucid. Biden’s like a senile , gibbering Mafia capo.
With a side order of Brezhnev?
Brezhnev was much more lucid and did a lot of good until the last few years, when his senility caught up with his pretense of it. Biden is more like Chernenko. (I was going to say Andropov – the man was pure establishment, insanely overhyped among the elites and the intelligentsia and committed to incompetently belligerent policies at home and abroad – but again, he was still in a better shape for most of it.)
I agree with Michaelmas that Yeltsin wasn’t much like Biden, by the way. The man was a completely different flavour of bastard, the dynamic self-interested populist who broke ranks with the elite to overthrow it.
Woodrow Wilson is probably a more apt comparison. Racist, brain dead womanizer with messianic complex who gins up the censorship apparatus and high strung security state purely for political self-protection, while goons in his cabinet run amok on citizens. Both even had greatly exaggerated academic reputations. Replace “Palmer”, “McAdoo”, and “J. Edgar Hoover” with “Blinken”, “Garland” and “Mayorkas” and no one will bat an eye.
Wilson described the masses as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish”. Billary shortened that to “deplorables” and Joe was happy to plagiarize the concept if not (for a change) the exact words.
Perfect! Wilson even comes with his own airborne plague and world war.
Plus, for extra credit, Wilson was President of Princeton College for eight years. So, add “Academic” to his ‘credentials.’
The consummate PMC politico. The “results” follow naturally.
Catch a wave and you’ll be sweltering in this part of the world
Don’t be afraid to try the greatest heat around (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
Everybody who tries it once
Hopes the grid don’t go down a bunch
You turn the a/c on to reduce the daze
And baby that’s all there is to the climate change craze
Catch a wave and you’re sweltering in this part of the world
Not a fact, cause it’s been going on so long (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
All the deniers still going strong
They said it wouldn’t last too long
They’ll eat their words with a fork and spoon
And watch ’em they’ll hit the road and all be sufferin’ soon
And when they catch a wave they’ll be hurtin’ all over the world
Catch a wave and you’re in a SPF-666 world
So take a lesson from a top-notch mountain boy (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
Who knows every escape ploy
But don’t treat it like a toy
Just get away from the exposed blacktop turf
And baby avoid some rays on the sunny surf
And when you catch a wave you’ll be sweltering in this part of the world
Catch a wave and you’ll be looking for another part of the world
Catch a Wave, by the Beach Boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLgWbH-qhVo
At eye doctors office they still have the garbage from CDC up. Symptoms of Corona virus disease 2019. With what’s not right for today. And stop the spread of germs, all hand washing.
Really expended a lot of effort teaching people the conveniently wrong information. No wonder no one accepts it’s airborne.
Article says nothing about the LLM chatbot department. Facebook is already injecting LLM chatbots into user feeds. I haven’t read anything about the age market segment properties of this yet. If anybody knows a good link on that topic I would be interested to see it.
I haven’t seen yet anywhere that twitterx has gone back on their plan to whack-a-mole out all chatbots or if they misrepresented a plan to replace rogue chatbots with their own.
WSWS seems outraged for poor, abused by Congress Fauci. An alternative view.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/faucis-reappearance-is-awkward-for-both-candidates/
Neither article mentions Fauci’s handling of the AIDS epidemic. That’s unfortunate. Seems there are parallels between then and now, imo. From HuffPost in 2014, updated 2017:
Whitewashing AIDS History
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/whitewashing-aids-history_b_4762295
The echoes of that period were strong with me.
Desperate, inappropriate medical measures in response to the ununderstood, fearmongering and then… institutional amnesia.
The differences are in the long term effects, but we are transfixed in the short term now.
Tattoo artists are staying afloat by the skin of their teeth, reporting a “downturn” in demand for ink.
The primary culprit for the “tattoo recession,” body mod enthusiasts believe, is debt-burdened clients who cannot afford to splurge on costly art, namely Gen Z and Millennials.
“Over the past year, I have observed a decrease in the number of individuals seeking tattoos, largely attributed to the rising inflation rates in the United States,” Brooklyn-based tattooist Barry Hua told Business Insider. (NY Post)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I noticed very few tattoos on college players in the NCAA final 4 tournament championship game, which was my indication that the days of illustrated men and women were finally coming to an end.
I have been telling my daughter (18 now) how tatt’s are for old people, SO not cool anymore. Not that she has the money for that shite, but what kills me is how people will sit for 10s and 20s of hours for it all.
Besides the costs, the visible tattoos that have been around are showing their age.
As far as basketball, does Steph Curry have any visible tattoos? LeBron has been an old guy for a long time, but Steph is who all the guys in the NCAAs pretended to be when they learned they could shoot. I believe Luka Donic is inked, but he would have been a LeBron guy when he first started to play well.
The NBA thinks Edward’s on Minnesota is the future, so watch players in 10 years to mimic him.
The WSJ article is interestiing, my guess is that a number of plutocrats are uncomfortable with the Lawfare being waged against one of their own, they may despise Trump but he is one of their own by virtue of his wealth.
When Kathy Hochul said the quiet part out loud “If you aren’t Donald Trump you don’t have anything to worry about” the message was “Even you guys better get in line or you will get hurt”.
Senility versus Virility 2024!
Orangeman’s Lament
Well, you wake in the mornin’
You hear the work bell ring
And they march you to the table
You see the same old thing
Ain’t no food upon the table
Ain’t no pork up in the pan
But you’d better not complain, boy
You get in trouble with the man
Let the midnight special, shine a light on me 3x
Let the midnight special, shine an everlovin’ light on me
Yonder come Miss Nikki
How in the world did you know?
By the way she signs those bomb shells
And the clothes she wore
Umbrella on her shoulder
Bible in her hand
She’s come to court the Israelites
She wants Armageddon, man!
Let the midnight special, shine a light on me 3x
Let the midnight special shine an everlovin’ light on me
If you’re ever runnin’ for Prez
Well you’d better do right
You better not fornicate
And you better not falsify,
Or the D.A. will grab ya
And the boys will bring ya down
The next thing you know, boy, well you’re prison-bound!
Let the midnight special, shine on me!
Let the midnight special, shine an everlovin’ light on me!
“The Midnight Special,” by CCR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNiUfwHJF6E
Well done!
I’ll admit to having a dream last night that Donald & Hunter were cellmates, although I’m not certain who got top bunk.
They’ll have to flip a coin. Will Melania do conjugal visits?
I’m not sure if he wrote it (it was a prison work song) but The Midnight Special was first recorded by Leadbelly in 1940. I grew up listening to it on a 78.
Thanks. All this stuff is readily find-able on the internet, but I came across an article that explained the meaning of “Midnight Special.” It was a train that would come by the prison in Louisiana around midnight, and the light from the locomotive would light up the prison yard, to the delight of the inmates.
Interesting conversation with eye doctor. They were a critical care center early, so had to stay open in 2020. Staff member was positive so they all tested. He was positive no symptoms, had to isolate for 14 days. Played golf for two weeks with buddy, took a long bike ride day after testing. Said always felt great. Had it twice he said.
He has an occasional persistent cough. He didn’t 18 months ago.
It’s fun people don’t take public health seriously. Said friend never got COVID from him that he knows of.
I mentioned asymptomatic spread. For what it’s worth.
Oh other part. No one he’s seen has had any eye damage from COVID that he’s seen in any of the people that were critical care in hospital.
RE: Today’s bonus antidote du jour
Can you imagine being the person tasked with trying to get those four tigers to sit there for the photo?
And they all looked so prettily at the camera too!
MetaChatAI has told me that tigers are both famously collegiate and easily domesticated, ideal subjects for hallmark cards.
A human heart goes out tonight
Yes, a First Son on a red stop light
I see a scene, so cold it echoes in blue
Oh those twisting GOP tongues they are after you
Wop bop a lu bop Son, you gotta move up
Flip flop fly
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
Of what a story dreams to buy
Don’t need a knife to violate your parole
It’s all so insane
When the other man has none
You don’t need a gun
Can’t play Russian roulette, no fun
I don’t need a gun
I just need someone
I don’t need a gun
Blood red lights a domination street
Yeah, just need your condemnation and I feel that heat
Yeah, you can drive me through
That red stop light
With a whiplash smile, Woahhh!
Wop bop a lu bop First Son you gotta move up
Flip flop fly
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
Of what a story dreams to buy
Don’t need a knife to violate your parole
It’s all so insane
I say when the other man has none
You don’t need a gun
Can’t play Russian roulette, no fun
I don’t need a gun, yeah I just need someone
I won’t need a gun
Oh yeah
You will always be crying yeah
Oh you will always be dying
Oh you will always be dying
Daddy-o tried to fight the dying fight
Jill Biden she’s always crying
Hunter he cried who slapped the John, John, John.
Yes and me, I’m movin’, movin’, movin’, movin’ on.
Yeah to be someone
I don’t need a gun
Don’t Need A Gun,by Billy Idol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMJNygR3Fc
Always loved Billy Idol. Steve Stevens is a highly underrated guitar player, IMO. I think he played the rhythm track on “Beat it” by M.J.
I recall that there was a large Military games event in Wuhan in October 2019 that was attended by many Western and European countries. There has been some conjecture that the virus was circulating there at that time and that this was a potential vector for the spread of the virus. Lots of smoke pointing to the research at Wuhan lab being playing a part of the origin but, no gun.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/
Rumors Turkey maybe leaving NATO? All I can find is this:
Turkey Does Not Want NATO To ‘Take Part’ In Ukraine War: Minister
https://www.barrons.com/news/turkey-does-not-want-nato-to-take-part-in-ukraine-war-minister-94f22d35
Türkiye Contemplates NATO Exit in Six Months, Says Patriotic Party Deputy Leader
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/t%C3%BCrkiye-contemplates-nato-exit-in-six-months-says-patriotic-party-deputy-leader/ar-AA1lhNRw
Turkey has the largest army by far compared to the rest of NATO, and by many estimates, the most competent army.
But they have the Swedes! Who needs the Turks when you have heroes of Poltava on your team! (Any info to the contrary about Poltava is Russian disinformation.)
It’s the meatball connection.
BTW, Turks won’t leave NATO as long as Greeks are there. As far as Greeks are concerned, USA puts them in the “Orthodox basket” together with Armenians, Georgians and Serbs, which doesn’t bode well for them at all.
RE: Whether Bird Flu Is on the March Misses the Point
I had a very difficult time reading this link. I am not sure whether I should blame my ignorance and inabilities or the inabilities of the author of this post to express clear thoughts.
The gobbldy-gook nature of the “writing” could be an artifact of the piece being produced mainly by ShatGPT.
> Moscow comments on Scott Ritter passport seizure
An own goal. Global South will see US as weak & panicking because of this.
“As the far right surges, Europe heads towards its Donald Trump moment
If the polls are correct, this week’s European Parliament election will reorder the Continent’s political landscape”
https://www.politico.com/#:~:text=As%20the%20far,Continent%E2%80%99s%20political%20landscape
Um, what if the so-called ‘far right’ are simply people tired of the PMC class, the clueless credentialed in govt, the reigning neoliberal economics making regular peoples’ lives harder and poorer? The 99%. The Yellow Vest or Jilet Jaunes protests come to mind.
I believe you are describing much of the far right’s voter base. The people they’ll be voting for are something different, though.
The article, AI is a False God, has me thinking about digital assistants that know everything about you. My thoughts immediately go to the wealthy who surround themselves with servants — who know everything about their masters and mistresses.
The wealthy gamble that servants knowing their ins and outs is no threat because they are paid to be discrete, would find no such work elsewhere if they tattled, etc. They spill their guts in front of servants as an expression of power.
This dynamic is stripped from the AI-as-assistant gambit. The assemblage or bundle of our life is hoovered up by a corporate server to be quantified, mapped, harvested of insight. We have no idea how it will be used or power to compell discretion. The complexity of the insights it is possible to draw is likely beyond our current end user supposition. (A recent warning fable for me was the drug dealer caught by AI spotting his stop-start movements around a city in an impossibly complex — for humans — trawl of GPS data from a city-worth of phones.)
In this sense the AI-as-assistant is quite a misleading label, hiding more of a horror story to do with a vampire pushed into our homes with not even so much as a “permesso”, who we must relinquish everything to.
I noticed my computer was running slow the other day and the taskbar hosted a logo I didn’t recognise. Hovering the mouse over it, I read the word “co-pilot”. My blood ran cold. Of course I immediately searched online for how to permanently disactivate it and found a tweak involving a registry edit but the computer’s performance still suffers and my mind itches, wondering what is going on around me as I type.
Under one advisory thread on disactivating co-pilot an Internet denizen admonished: the whole system is built around this now, better to accept it; it is the future, and who can resist the future??
But a future we cannot resist is a coup, and who are the plotters?
D-Day. June 6, 1944. Remembering history.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day
per Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings
Seldom if ever mentioned in the accounts of the D-Day invasion was the Operation Tiger, an April 28, 1944 preparation/rehearsal exercise for the D-Day invasion that ending in disaster. No wonder Eisenhower drafted a D-Day “in case of failure” statement prior to the actual invasion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Tiger
And yet they went ahead.
Operation Overlord:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord
Lest we forget.