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Links 7/18/2024

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Colorado rattlesnake “mega den” gaining national attention via webcam for citizen science The Colorado Sun

Near-extinct crocodiles make comeback in Cambodia BBC

Wall Street Senses the Barbarians Are Finally at the Gates Bloomberg. Commentary:

Has private equity become a Ponzi scheme? Unherd

Boston 25 is shrinking. You won’t be surprised to learn that private equity is to blame. Dan Kennedy

Climate

With CO2 Levels Rising, World’s Drylands Are Turning Green YaleEnvironment360

Global Economic Governance: What’s “Growth” Got to Do with It? Ann Pettifor, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

World’s largest uncontacted indigenous tribe spotted evading loggers in Peruvian Amazon Anadolu Agency

Water

Alarming study suggests drought side effect is killing off key underground species: ‘We know so little about them’ The Cooldown

Syndemics

Bird flu could become a human pandemic. How are countries preparing? Nature

An H5N1 pandemic is inevitable — here’s why. Canada Healthwatch

U.S. bird flu response builds on lessons learned from COVID (interview) Mandy Cohen, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cohen: “We have not seen a human-to-human transmission of this virus.” But see 2005; 2006.

GISAID: The Plot Thickens Avian Flu Diary

China?

China halts nuclear arms talks with US over Taiwan support Al Jazeera

WTO says China is backsliding on key reforms and lacks transparency on subsidies South China Morning Post. Commentary:

‘New model for human civilisation’: What is so unique about China’s style of modernisation? Channel News Asia

Inside China’s Psychoboom JSTOR Daily

Bangladesh shuts universities, colleges indefinitely after protests turn deadly Channel News Asia

The Koreas

Korean Nuclear Stocks Soar on Multibillion Dollar Czech Deal Bloomberg

Syraqistan

Israel’s military will begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men on Sunday. It could rattle the government AP

Why does Israel step up its attacks when Gaza ceasefire talks advance? Al Jazeera

Pro-Israel lobby smells blood in coordinated lawfare against media critics Pearls and Irritation

Dear Old Blighty

The King’s Speech: a half-baked hotchpotch that delivers something considerably less than a vision Funding the Future

The Muslim Vote Craig Murray

Same Blade New Left Review

New Not-So-Cold War

Germany plans to halve military aid for Ukraine BBC

TurkStream instead of LNG: Gazprom floods Southeast Europe with pipeline gas (Google translation) Berliner Zeitung

Donald Trump will demand Russia-Ukraine peace talks if re-elected, claims Viktor Orbán FT

* * *

​​Trump on easing restrictions against Russia: We’re forcing everyone away from us Ukrainska Pravda

J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up NYT

Why JD Vance will be good for Europe Unherd

Ukraine clears law on suspending debt payments, resumes formal bondholder talks Reuters

* * *

Total of 144 combat clashes occur on battlefield in Ukraine during day, with hottest situation on Toretsk front Ukrainska Pravda

Russia’s retreat from Crimea makes a mockery of the West’s escalation fears The Atlantic Council

Dysfunction Sidelines Ukraine’s Parliament as Governing Force NYT

* * *

Russia Is Using Lawsuits to Fight the West’s Sanctions Foreign Policy

The President and part of the opposition in Georgia will challenge the “foreign agents” law in the Constitutional Court JAM News

Reimagining Russia The National Interest

2024

Biden says he would drop out of race if diagnosed with ‘medical condition’ as pressure from Democrats grows Independent. Commentary:

And:

Hubris; nemesis.

* * *

The Donald Trump Interview Transcript Bloomberg

* * *

RNC 2024 Day 3 updates: JD Vance touts working class roots in debut as VP nominee ABC

Mass deportation line Politico

* * *

Trump Seizes on Crypto as ‘Wedge Issue’ as Donors Cheer Him On Bloomberg

Bitcoin hits 1-month high of $66,000 amid hopes of Trump’s pro-crypto stance Anadolu Agency

SPAC = Special Purpose Acquisition Company:

* * *

A Blind Spot and a Lost Trail: How the Gunman Got So Close to Trump NYT. Commentary:

FWIW:

* * *

The changes in vibes — why did they happen? Marginal Revolution

Supply Chain

Maersk says Red Sea shipping disruption having global effects Hellenic Shipping News

Healthcare

US Health Care Now Unaffordable for Nearly Half of Americans Newsweek

Nasal Sprays Reduce Sick Days From Respiratory Illnesses in High-Risk Patients MedPage Today

Zeitgeist Watch

“It’s All Just F*cking Impossible:” The Influence of Taylor Swift on Fans’ Body Image, Disordered Eating, and Rejection of Diet Culture Social Science and Medicine

Crowdfunding Regulation (PDF) SSRN. From the Discussion: “Crowdfunding, a groundbreaking financial mechanism, has gained substantial traction in recent years as a means of raising capital for various ventures, projects, and enterprises from a diverse group of individuals or entities. The rapid evolution and widespread adoption of crowdfunding have raised critical regulatory considerations to ensure investor protection, market integrity, and the overall stability of the financial ecosystem.”

School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget. ProPublica

Class Warfare

Amazon Prime Day ‘major cause of injuries’ for workers, Senate finds CNN

You Can Never Have Too Much Money, Happiness Researcher Finds Bloomberg

What Happened to Ancient Megafauna? Nautilus

Antidote du jour (Brian Dell):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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172 comments

  1. Antifa

    In the land of the obese
    Will wonders never cease?
    A starving Gaza waif
    Can’t be rendered safe
    AIPAC funding would decrease

    Miss Lindsey Graham the Senator
    Demands we drain our powder store
    This princess will get off her toosh
    To play the role of Scaramouche
    And launch a splendid little war

    Putin met Xi in Beijing
    Two excellent friends designing
    A world not possessed
    By the ghouls of the West
    Who do not get to say a damn thing

    Mitch McConnell’s now Senate Minority
    Yet he still grants AIPAC his authority
    By brief calculations
    Their humongous donations
    Mean they get what they want as priority

    Ted Cruz heard that Houston got stormed
    Or so he was promptly informed:
    ‘It looks like Hiroshima’
    So Ted rang up FEMA
    To explain that the climate has warmed

    When the USS Roosevelt bombs Beirut
    They’ll be flying straight into a big crapshoot
    When your carrier sinks
    From Hezbollah’s highjinks
    Can you swim in your sailor suit?

  2. The Rev Kev

    “Maersk says Red Sea shipping disruption having global effects”

    ‘Maersk warned on July 1 the coming months would be challenging as disruptions to shipping via the Red Sea continue.’

    By disruptions I am sure they mean attacks. About two days ago an uncrewed suicide boat hit the tanker Chios Lion causing a spectacular explosion that must have been felt all the way back to Lloyds of London-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2jLU7Qcuk (1:05 mins)

    1. ChrisFromGA

      That isn’t going to just buff out.

      At a very minimum that ship is likely out of commission for a while, as it will need a thorough inspection of the hull to look for structural damage.

      There was a report yesterday that a crude tanker capsized in the Gulf of Aden … unclear whether the Ansar Allah took credit.

      1. MicaT

        What Maersk ment is that a huge number of ships are going around the southern tip of Africa instead of Red Sea.
        But its winter meaning huge seas which has caused damage and further delays waiting for calmer seas before many ships can go around. And it also physically slows them down.
        That’s according to a number of sites.

    2. k

      In best Opie Taylor voice:

      “Gee Pa, does this mean Floyd’s gonna raise his prices again?”

  3. schmoe

    The Pearls and Irritation article was worthwhile but had this:

    “Mary Kostakidis has instead been using conspiracy material from the far right, as I show below.
    In what I think are egregious examples, in a tweet post about Jeffrey Epstein, she endorses a billionaire Jews and Mossad conspiracy as posted by Keith Wood. . .”

    Believing that there might be ties between Epstein and Mossad is “an egregious example” of “conspiracy material”???

  4. Victor Sciamarelli

    It should be obvious by now that the RP is no longer the party of the Mitch McConnell types. It’s not even the same as it was in 2016. I think nothing makes that clearer than Trump’s choice of Mike Pence in 2016 is wildly different from J D Vance today.
    As the democrats double down on the PMC vote, and the likes of Kamala Harris, I think they and their supporters need to better understand the appeal of Vance and the republican shift toward working class issues, trade, and foreign policy.
    A recent interview at Unheard With Oren Cass, an associate of Vance, is worth watching.
    Oren Cass, The philosophy of J. D. Vance
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WuKDboLUZM0

    1. Amfortas the hippie

      And it occurred to me, jawin w my youngest on 4hr drive to lubbock, yesterday:
      Could a lot of vance’ parrotting of traditional gop yelling points be a sop to confuse the reagan dead enders and lindseys of the gop?
      Save for his zionism, such righty pablum contradicts a great deal of his past stTements.
      Punchinh iran would gel w his israel fetish, but he seems intelligent enough to know that they r now mil allies w rus y china…
      Lotsa ink in the water

      1. Pat

        I, for one, think that is entirely possible.
        Whatever Vance is, the MSM and most of the political class do NOT have a handle on him. He is obviously smart, observant, and socially adept. You don’t get where is otherwise. But both his background and early experience means he also has a clearer understanding of multiple social classes and what drives them then most if not all of his current circle of colleagues and associates. We probably won’t know what is the front and what is his actual end game until much farther down the line. Mostly because we don’t know if not throwing the former working class now deplorable out was a cynical ploy to use or an innate understanding of the coming end times of the Private Equity and multinational corporate class. I’m willing to hold out hope for the latter until I’m proved wrong.

        1. Victor Sciamarelli

          Nicely said. In the Unherd interview Cass was remarkably articulate. He spoke of a new conservatism and what he described was nothing less than a political realignment which Vance is a part of.
          They reject Reagan and Reaganomics, want the RP to be the party of the working classes, they redefine trade and foreign policy, and are ready to take on the rentier class. And for some reason, which I don’t yet fully understand, by choosing Vance Trump is supportive of the movement. And the Dems should be concerned.
          Compared to the nonstop Biden-Harris word salad, Cass is worth a listen.
          Note also Teamster president Shawn O’Brien spoke at the RNC convention.
          See Glenn Greenwald as well:
          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTkTff6EA4&pp=ygUPZ2xlbm4gZ3JlZW53YWxk

      2. danpaco

        My “Spidey Sense” is tingling with regards to JD.
        He’s a political boardroom creation. Bootstraps back story- check, military- check, bestseller- check, Yale law- check, Tech something or other- check, high power connections- check….
        He will be the competent one in a trump administration.

        2. Icecube12

          When I read Vance’s Wikipedia page after he was chosen, I was reminded of Obama. Parents divorced, raised mostly by grandparents, goes to a small school followed by Ivy league law. Editor of law review, encouraged (by Amy Chua in Vance’s case) to write a memoir at the ripe age of 30ish. Those memoirs combine familial pain and abandonment issues with societal issues (race for Obama, the forgotten rural middle and working classes for Vance), and the reception to the memoirs helps propel them to the senate. Then they are suddenly raised to the national stage. Of course Vance had the marines whereas Obama had his community organizer story. Obama had the state senate and academic career whereas Vance had venture capital. One had liberal/progressive flavoring whereas the other was seasoned to be fit for a variety of conservative talking points.

    3. Lee

      A number of talking heads have hypothesized that Vance will rally members of what, in a 2014 survey, Pew Research described as The Party of Non-voters, the largest plurality of all eligible voters. This was also an important hoped for source of votes for the Sanders campaign. Alas, the Dems found it beneath them to stoop and pick up all that power, choosing instead to leave it just lying in the streets.

    4. .Tom

      Thomas Frank described this trend already in What’s the Matter With Kansas. For a while he was taken seriously in liberal media but over time the Team Blue lost interest class politics and refocused on morality. Frank stuck to his arguments and by the time The People, No! and Listen, Liberal came out he had been excommunicated.

      The disingenuous, manipulative tradition that Vance is a part of (and Trump too) is not remotely new and is very well documented and discussed. Team Blue doesn’t want to know about it.

      2. Rebecca Martin

        The fact you feel it is “manipulative” shows how out of touch you and the Dems are.

        1. Yves Smith

          One more like this and you will be blacklisted. This is a personal attack and not on here.

          Larry Wilkerson, a highly experienced insider who served at senior levels Republican administrations, has criticized Vance’s character, describing repeated instances of political opportunism, describing him as being a Cassius, with a lean and hungry look, and “energetic to a fault”. So you are seriously off base to depict .Tom as “out of touch” and hewing to partisan views.

    5. IM Doc

      I received the surprise of the week this AM when I showed up for work.

      I have 4 employees – all millenial. One is an Indian immigrant. One Latino. 2 Whites. 2 men and 2 women.

      Every single one was a Hillary/Biden voter.

      We have a daily AM meeting – and one of them started this off – “Would you all think any less of me if I voted for Trump? I will not talk about it all the time – but I REALLY liked that guy last night.”

      And then it became obvious that all 4 are having similar thoughts. These kids are in the generation that is bearing the brunt of all these bad decisions that seem to have really taken off the past 4 years. They have noticed – and they are not remaining quiet.

      I must say it was good to hear someone finally talking about bringing the jobs back home and doing something about our neglected hinterlands. And at least they are talking about policies and the future – all the Dems talk about is the evil Trump, the past, the stuff that matters to no one.

      1. .Tom

        I don’t think there’s a chance that a 2nd Trump admin will do what he’s talking about. First, I don’t believe he means it, given his choices when he was in office. Second, even if he has changed his mind and means it this time, I don’t believe he has the political and administrative skills to do it, given his lazy and incompetent performances when he was in office. Successfully going against empire, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the oligarchy would take someone of exceptional skills with a huge electoral mandate and ongoing popular support. It’s possible but I don’t believe Trump is the man for it.

        Otoh, I am glad that this kind of discourse is actually happening. It was useful that O’Brien’s speech for the Teamsters gave Team Blue something to think about.

        1. Amfortas the Hippie

          Perhaps trumps the julius, while vance is octavian.
          (Amforts shudders)
          The latter seems pretty comptent to me, having read everything i could find in th last few days.
          As ive said, his israel fetish sickens me(as much as that of rfk)…and the rest, i find a lot to like…but like pat, above, i withhold ultimate judgement.
          The folks yelling fascist are largy at least pseudofascist themselves, after all

          1. Amfortas the Hippie

            And unrelated bildungsroman…
            Im on texas tech campus atm, w my youngest…doin orientation.
            Pockets full of tree and grass seeds and a couple of what i discern are native lubbock rocks for Tam’s grave.
            Prolly stop and grab a chunk of the Caprock on way home.
            Biggest adventure off farm since cancertime

            1. griffen

              The Red Raiders…when last I lived in the Dallas /Ft Worth metro the bank job I had was largely filled with various Big 12 alumni. I do think many were of the banking school education offered at Texas Tech. I worked along side a pretty blonde who attended school in Lubbock or either she was from Lubbock. Nice, generally decent people to work with.

              The bank job was low on excitement…summer afternoon hours could just drag on but the office setting was pleasant. More a headquarters office, and not a retail bank location. I watched Hell or High Water,don’t think I’d do well at all in a robbery situation.

              I’m certain the native rocks will make a nice marker, or an addition to a memorial marker already in place.

        2. Leftcoastindie

          I find it interesting that people think that Trump would actually try to bring jobs back. I wonder what leads them to believe that … maybe having all of his bling made offshore or maybe it’s his use of illegal labor in his hotels or maybe it was his bringing in illegal workers from Poland to work on his construction projects, who knows.

          Another tell the crowd was awfully quiet while the Teamster president ran off his wish list of union priorities.
          This reminds me of Reagan in1980. He wooed the white working class with his racist nonsense and jingoism and we have paid dearly for it ever since.

          1. Adam Eran

            Reagan didn’t have to woo the working class. Jimmy Carter deregulated trucking and airlines, throwing the unions under the bus as he did so. Teamsters endorsed Reagan.

            Reagan just took Carter’s deregulation initiative, and attacks on unions, a little farther.

        3. Richard

          “First, I don’t believe he means it, given his choices when he was in office.”

          There is always a question about Trump, what he believes, with what understanding, to what depth, etc. etc., and thus what he will do.

          I don’t think his first four years in office gives us much predictive help.

          First, he didn’t know what he was getting into. Someone somewhere (here?) suggested he thought government would be like business. He gives instructions. Staff follows up. In reality, not exactly.

          Second, he was forced to put so much effort into defending himself, he never got around to a positive program, other than tax cuts, the one issue on which the Ds weren’t determined to block him.

          Third, he has gone through hell for the last 3+ years, and come out stronger. The assassination attempt is just the last and most spectacular. Alex and Alexander likened him to a classical Greek hero. I don’t know about that, but I’ll bet he has learned something from it all.

          Of course, he may well lose for one or more of all the well-known reasons, in which case this whole discussion will be irrelevant.

      2. Bob Tetrault

        But Trump’s Infrastructure Week, his bringing jobs home, all that talk was just talk. Joe has put our money where his mouth is: Infrastructure, reshoring chips, supporting unions in a real way.

      3. Roger Blakely

        RE: The changes in vibes — why did they happen? Marginal Revolution

        IM Doc could have been commenting on today’s link. The article makes his point.

    6. John k

      Imo working class appeal is what trump is looking for.
      Dems have ignored their most powerful issues long enough that somebody else finally picked one up. Will be even more powerful if reps actually do something. Imagine m4a… or even modest expansion: lower to 55 (I think Hillary mentioned that), prenatal care (protection for the unborn!), hospital care for pregnancies (the unborn!), maybe kids thru 18.

  5. The Rev Kev

    “Russia’s retreat from Crimea makes a mockery of the West’s escalation fears”

    For the Ukrainians the destruction of the Kersh bridge remains their obsession as if the whole war depended on whether it stands or not. But for Neocons, the obsession remains Crimea as can be seen in this Atlantic Council article. There is no other place that they talk about so much. Last year’s offensive had the aim of cutting off the Crimea so that it would fall to the Ukrainians and I am sure that this idea was pushed by Washington as were other pre-war attacks. I guess that they figure that if they can take Crimea, this would lead to Putin’s fall and him being replaced by a more western-friendly regime leading to the Ukraine winning. Whatever.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      That article was chock-full of horse manure. Certainly, it had neo-con ghostwriting all over it.

    2. sarmaT

      Obsession with Crimea have aways been a part of the Great Game. Ukrainians, Neocons, et al. are just walking in the ol’ limey footsteps.

    3. eg

      That article is delusional, drawing as it does conclusions out of all proportion to the significance of the naval theatre in this conflict. Someone also ought to ask the author what significance, if any, similar land-based Houthi interdiction of the Red Sea implies — the spluttering contortions that would draw from the Atlantic Council on the heels of this article ought to be wondrous to behold …

    4. Phariah

      People at “national interest” have feces instead of a brain inside their head. “Russia has no one to turn to other than the west” “Russia and China are enemies”. What about the rest of the planet ?! India, ASEAN, Iran/Turkey ?… that’s the same crap biden said in 1997 Atlantic council meeting, mocking Russia/China approachment, do these swine who write there have no memory at all ?

    5. Kouros

      The author doesn’t seem to see the parallels between Russia retreating to regroup, from Kherson and Kharkhiv, to save people and materiel, and removing vessels from Crimea?

      The war is also a land war, where Ukrianians are loosing bigly. When that war is over, the ships will return to Sevastopol. I am sure if Russians will think that unless Odessa is taken, Crimean bases will always be in danger, they will do that.

    6. Polar Socialist

      I guess the Ukrainians forgot to tell the news to the Black Sea Fleet. As far as I can tell the local news in Sevastopol warned people on 16th and 17th that the fleet will have smoke deploying exercises in the Sevastopol bay but there’s nothing to worry.

      The Ukrainians could even have used Ukrainian (at least as much as they can) as the current commander of the Black Sea Fleet is a “fellow Ukrainian”, born in Sevastopol, Ukraine.

  6. ChrisFromGA

    New Biden campaign slogan:

    “Four more weeks! Then, it’s Harris Time!”

    [Best heard in a voice like Kamala’s, followed by: “ha-ha-ha-HA-HA-HA!!”]

    2. Wukchumni

      Harris pols show her doing well versus the Don, for like the rest of us-nobody can understand what she’s saying, and it’ll be difficult for Trump to retaliate.

      2. griffen

        Rhetorical barbs will in high fashion. It’ll be hard to distinguish the varying word salads available to the US citizen….hoo ray America. \sarc

        Trump. The significance of the passage of time is hugely significant.
        Trump. I too am hugely unburdened by what is, was or has been.
        Trump. If I’m going to be a tree, it will be a splendid oak tree.

  8. The Rev Kev

    “J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up”

    Could it be that J.D Vance is an occasional reader of Naked Capitalism? Because what he says is very familiar to readers here. And what he says is true. That the maths does not add up for the Ukraine. He seems to be a very mixed bag though. Most of this article is just common sense but then he will say something like this

    ‘While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.’

    Is he serious? Without the United States, there would have never been a war in the Ukraine. There would be no Neo-Nazi presence in that country, the NS2 pipeline would still be operational. the economies of the EU would not be in taters and hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive. So who is he trying to kid?

    1. ilsm

      For Germany and France “considerable” describes the large donations compared to their available assets.

      He got the human resource deficiencies part of Kiev war right and the article was written last April 2024!

      Vance seems to have a view toward logistics in his USMC experience. Good point he used “materiel” wrt shortages. Materiel includes the big stuff like gun tubes which US also has none to send as Ukraine wears them out.

      Vance could have gone deeper in what the US does not have/give enough.

      One point I have observed is to get Kiev built up to an “air land battle” suite of materiel would require a USAF deployment half again the size that was done for Desert Storm. In a much more challenging supply locale.

    2. Benny Profane

      He’s just being diplomatic. Like his shift at the end advocating a defensive strategy to make negotiations possible. That’s “fantastical” too, especially when the money we sent them for bunker building vanished in thin air, and even the Russian rookie reservists were blown away at how easy it was to get near Kharkiv. He’s a lone voice in both houses, and probably doesn’t see more than pocket change from the MIC, but soon he will be a heartbeat away with a 79 year old boss who is really out of shape and, I must say, looks somewhat shattered from his ear job.

      1. John k

        Nothing wrong with your ptes having a sense of mortality. Refreshing from Biden thinking he, and we, are invincible.

  9. Wukchumni

    Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
    With the reign of Kamala
    Wash away Joe’s sorrow, wash away his shame
    With the reign of Kamala

    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    Everyone is unhelpful, everyone is of like mind
    On the road to Kamala
    Everyone is plucky, everyone is of like mind
    On the road to Kamala

    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    How does the right shine
    In the rise of Kamala?
    How does the right shine
    In the rise of Kamala?

    I can tell my sister by the deer in the headlghts look in her eyes
    On the road to Kamala
    I can tell Hunter is screwed by the look in his eyes
    On the road to Kamala

    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah

    How does the hard right shine
    In the rule of Kamala?
    How does the hard right shine
    In the rule of Kamala?
    Tell me how does the hard right shine
    In the rule of Kamala?
    (Tell me how) How does the hard right shine
    In the rule of Kamala?

    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, word salad, ooh-ooh-ooh, yeah
    On the rule of Kamala
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, yeah
    Shambolic-Kamala
    Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh, yeah
    On the rule of Kamala

    Shambala, by Three Dog Night

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWrMpV1vy0

  10. ambrit

    The Nautilus piece on megafauna extinctions is another shot in the continuing war between the Gradualist and Catastrophist camps in palaeontology. Strictly speaking, palaeontology ends at the time of the major megafauna extinctions, roughly 11,400 years ago. That date coincides with the end of the Younger Dryas period.
    The Gradualists posit that increasingly large bands of Terran humans hunted the big furrys to extinction. However, before the Modern period, such events were not common. Consider the population differences alone. Several million Terran humans in North America, which is a high figure given the evidence, versus tens of millions of megafauna. Secondly, hunter gatherers seldom hunt their main prey species to extinction. The early Terran humans were not as unsophisticated as all that. Natufian culture sites, an early transitional phase of Terran human culture, from pure hunter gathering to mixed hunting and agriculture, show evidence of domestication of food and ‘helper’ animals. Consider also that the mass extinctions in North America all happened at the same time, the Younger Dryas, along with an evident near extinction of the Terran human populations. The extinctions were not restricted to North America. Mass bone sites of megafauna species have been found in Eurasia as well as North America. Whatever happened, it was a world wide event.
    The Catastrophists suggest that some extreme event caused the megafauna, and in North America, Terran human, near extinctions. The evidence for this hypothesis is well laid out by the members of the Comet Research Group.
    See: https://cometresearchgroup.org/
    This is a Rabbit Hole well worth diving into.

    1. Wukchumni

      Consider the Moa, the largest of megafauna in NZ, a 10 foot high Emu of sorts that would have the NBA in a tither, were they not all killed and eaten in a century by the Maori utilizing crude weaponry and most important, burning them out of their hidey holes.

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

    2. The Rev Kev

      Fully agree here. That megafauna must have needed a lot of calories to get by on each and every day but if the climate shifts leading to the loss of the habitat that supported them, then they are all out of luck. And like you pointed out, humans nearly went out because of the the Younger Dryas which lasted about a millennia. It stands to reason that many species were also pushed to the edge or even over it. If humans hunted them to extinction, it would have been like sweeping up the fag ends.

      And that link was interesting as they may have a point. Fairly recently they discovered a meteor crater here in Oz. They missed it up to now as the damned thing is over 520 km in diameter – about 323 miles. It is colossal and god knows what the world wide effects of that must have been like when it hit. The article says that ‘is likely responsible for triggering the large-scale glaciation and mass extinction during this period, an event which eliminated about 85% of species’–

      https://johnmenadue.com/planet-killer-worlds-largest-asteroid-impact-crater-discovered-in-deniliquin-australia-pic/

      1. Milton

        Only problem is that these same magafauna lived through at least 6 glacial advances and retreats. The only difference being, the presence of humans at the time of the beginning of the last retreat. It’s OK to admit that people’s, other than modern humans, were responsible for large-scale extinctions. It’s kind of what we do.

        1. ambrit

          The quibble here is that the Younger Dryas event was orders of magnitude more destructive than a simple glacial advance or retreat. Look at the “black mat” found in many locations exactly at the beginning of the Younger Dryas period. It is a clear sign of massive fires and related disasters. It is, as far as we presently know, unique in the later Pleistocene. To be clear, not all mass changes in conditions are caused by catastrophes.

    3. Amfortas the Hippie

      I remember reading…seems like a long ti.e ago…abt glass spherules embedded in mammoth tusks at tho e bonefields…indicating a comet strike on the laurentide ice sheet

      1. ambrit

        Yep. That and nano diamonds in the Black Mat layer, (which starts off the Younger Dryas strata.)
        Those bone fields were so plentiful that the marketing of dug up mammoth and mastodon tusks was a major export market for Tsarist Russia.
        “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

      1. ambrit

        The entire two to three hour show of Hancock and Carlson on Joe Rogan is worth watching.

  11. Mark Gisleson

    “Korean Nuclear Stocks Soar on Multibillion Dollar Czech Deal Bloomberg”

    Initially misread this as meaning that North Korea had incorporated its military and you could now invest in nuclear warheads. Silly misreading but if that were the case it would be interesting. Buying and selling stocks in nuclear armaments would be the ultimate scorpion-frog river crossing private equity ethical quandry.

  12. Mark Gisleson

    Since I went to the work of looking it up, I thought I’d share:

    OED definitions : Hotchpotch – a mixture of things, espc a stew. Hodgepodge – a variant but also a “clumsy mixture of ingredients” Hodge : name for a typical English agricultural laborer, a rustic.

    Hotchpotch was new to me, altho I may have heard it conversationally thinking hodgepodge had been said.

    1. Cetzer

      Did you know, that 80% of Texans can’t enunciate the words ‘Hodgepodge’ or ‘Hotchpotch’ even if their lives depended on it, e.g. they were accused of murder and their only alibi was a waitress, who testifies: He (the customer) literally ordered: “Some filthy Hodgepodge…”

      1. Wukchumni

        I read somewhere that at least 68% of stories about percentages of enunciation in Texas are quite pronounced.

  13. L.M. Dorsey

    Apropos of nothing, perhaps, except this peculiar bit of synchronicity. Something about the ruling had been buzzing around in the fog between my ears for some weeks:

    At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity etc.

    This morning it finally dawned what it was. One hundred, fifty-four years ago today, July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council promulgated the definition of papal infallibility (search July 18, 1870).

    Here’s John Paul II giving it the now usual explanation in an audience on March 24, 1993:

    Infallibility is not given to the Roman Pontiff as a private person, but inasmuch as he fulfils the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians. He also does not exercise it as having authority in himself and by himself, but ‘by his supreme apostolic authority’ and ‘by the divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter.’

    Cool, hunh?

    P.S. And since Anton Scalia still presides over the court as a malignant absence, those of you who, like me, memorized tranches of the Baltimore Catechism at the age of seven may find this an engaging summertime read, George Kannar’s “The Constitutional Catechism of Anton Scalia”.

    Or not.

    Cheers.

    1. Es s Ce Tera

      Infallibility and teaching is a deadly combo, and is arguably the primary reason for the fall of Catholicism worldwide. Imagine saying you can’t be wrong or mistaken about anything you’re teaching, especially with modern historical theology and biblical scholarship revealing so much that we didn’t know during the apostolic period and middle ages when the church was largely formed.

      Likewise, applying this to the role of president – why would they attribute infallibility, specifically using that very word, to this role? What a strange word to use.

      I think you’re onto something, the supremes have given the president the same infallibility Catholics attribute the Pope. And perhaps also given the president more infallibility than the pope.

      Thank you for sharing that precious thought bubble, this is worth exploring. And I wonder if it puts the president and Pope in conflict now that Catholics must recognize the infallibility of the president versus the Pope.

  14. CA

    [ If large manufacturing exporters run large, persistent trade surpluses, that is the evidence you need that they are subsidizing their manufacturing sectors at the expense of their trade partners.

    — Michael Pettis ]

    Since among the 10 largest economies, Japan and Germany have had by far the largest, most persistent trade surpluses, we can conclude that Japan and Germany are subsidizing manufacturers at the expense of trade partners. China has had a relatively small trade surplus, much of which is due to sanctions that prevent China from buying needed and desirable products.

    1. jsn

      Yes, but Japan and Germany do it to the benefit of Western investors, so according to the Rules Based Order that’s okay.

  15. The Rev Kev

    ​​”Trump on easing restrictions against Russia: We’re forcing everyone away from us”

    If Trump become President, I think that he is in for a coupla surprises. So he probably figures that he can force the Ukrainians to negotiate by chopping their money – which is true. With the Russians, he probably figures that he can get the Russians to negotiate by promising to lift sanctions. I don’t think that Congress will let him and between now and November, they may try to make aid to the Ukraine Trump-proof. But for the Russians they will not be interested unless larger issues are dealt with at the same time like NATO threats to Russia, nuclear missiles stationed in Europe, etc. The sanctions sting but they have learned to live with them. Certainly they will not settle for a conflict freeze as that would be in effect a Ukrainian victory. So Trump may be out of his depth here if he tries to handle it like one of his real estate deals.

    1. Benny Profane

      You seem to imply that Ukraine is operating from a position of strength. Seems to me that their military is on the verge of collapse, with an average age of 43 and some say they are losing hundreds, maybe thousands a day. Just Trump’s election will probably change the whole dynamic, and if Zelensky persists, he may lose much more than an ear tip.
      The end of Wars of attrition are like bankruptcy. Gradually, then suddenly.

      1. The Rev Kev

        I meant the opposite actually. The Ukraine is slowly collapsing like you said and just last month they lost 55,000 men in casualties which is totally unsustainable. So maybe Trump may want to salvage what he can out of this situation but there are of course two provisos. One, that he is the President come January of next year and two, provided that there has not been a total collapse of the Ukraine before then.

        1. John k

          Imo he might be lucky with timing. 2k men/day will stop soon. 2-3 months? Surrender seems likely with or without military mutiny. Just need a russ leaning general to run the place, write new constitution etc. 6 months could see nothing to talk about.

    2. nippersdad

      Trump’s pulling out of the INF is going to be a real sticking point for them. He is not used to crawling, but once Russia starts to manufacture intermediate range nuclear capable missiles it is going to be hard to miss that he was the guy responsible for their proliferation and all the dangers that accrued to that decision. Especially insofar as the very first recipients might be Iran and Syria. It won’t help that he was also the guy who pulled us out of the JCPOA.

      Nothing will say fail quite so well as a lateral move that could harm Israel during his term. AIPAC, Miriam Adelson and the Kushners would not be pleased.

      1. JustTheFacts

        Or he might get China to the table and work on a international ban on intermediate range missiles so that it’s not just a treaty that only binds Russia and the US. The agreement could also require Russia & China to lean on their friends (Iran, North Korea, etc) to not develop such missiles too. And that might be exactly what Russia wants, since it has been giving missiles to their “Israel-equivalents” (little countries aligned with them that behave aggressively and rather recklessly like NK or the Houthis and who bark louder than their size) in order to pressure the other side.

    3. Samuel Conner

      > With the Russians, he probably figures that he can get the Russians to negotiate by promising to lift sanctions.

      I suspect that from the RF perspective, lowering barriers to reintegration of RF economy with Western economies through lifting of sanctions might actually be regarded to be undesirable, a step in the wrong direction on the road from “rules-based order” to “multipolar world.”

      I can’t imagine what “deal” DJT could offer to VVP that would induce him to trust “agreement incapable” US ever again.

    4. Yves Smith

      I do not think the Azov types will allow negotiations. They recently threatened Zelensky. Even if Russia accepted him as an interlocutor (na ga happen), the neo-Nazis will kill him or run him out of the country. Then they’ll install someone even less legit but more to their liking.

      So this continues until the neo-Nazis run out of people they can force to fight or the public turn on them and kills them.

      1. Revenant

        If geopolitical security trumps sanctions, then perhaps Trump will do a Nixon and, in the way it took Nixon to go to China, it will take Trump to recognise the SCO. A NATO-SCO treaty of non-aggression, arms control etc.

        Perhaps this is why Putin has proposed a BRICS Parliament? It solves the problem of “who picks up the telephone when I call Europe” and the problem of not negotiating with evil Putin. The USA and EU sign a deal with BRICS parliament for new security architecture….

        NB: I know BRICS and SCO are different, the common point is to give Trump a not-Russia with which to make peace and claim a victory. Of course, the real victory may be the permanent t consignment of EU to USA sphere of interest. I see an Irony Curtain descending across Europe….

    5. Es s Ce Tera

      I wonder what anyone can put on the table which would concretely and measurably move the West away from rabid Russophobia hatefests and propaganda incitement, more toward a lovey peacenik world commune. How do you get whole countries to stop hating a particular group, send them for DEI training? Seriously, though, before the SMO we saw Russia wanting to end the Ukrainian anti-Russian language laws which made Russian-speaking Ukrainians enemies of state, that’s a good concrete move. People shouldn’t be hating on anyone just because they speak a language or come from any particular cultural or ethnic group, that’s moronic but also why we have human rights laws in the first place, which the West has seemingly forgotten.

    6. Richard

      Rev K: “So Trump may be out of his depth here if he tries to handle it like one of his real estate deals.”

      Maybe. But maybe his “plan” is just a placeholder, that is, a reasonably acceptable proposal given current conditions/opinion, but nevertheless definitely indicating a change in direction.

      The actual plan? We’ll see.

  16. Jason Boxman

    From A Blind Spot and a Lost Trail: How the Gunman Got So Close to Trump

    But in the aftermath, when the F.B.I. was able to finally access Mr. Crooks’s cellphones and other electronic devices, agents could see that he had searched for images of Mr. Trump as well as President Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and even F.B.I. Director Christopher A. Wray.

    Someone here was on to this a few days ago, sorry I forgot who in the comments, and suggested that maybe this guy just wanted to go after someone, and it didn’t necessarily need to be Trump. Interestingly, that seems like it could be the case. It hadn’t occurred to me at all. Prescient.

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        Like Arthur Bremer.

        And then Nixon, via Colson and Hunt, planted McGovern literature in Bremer’s apartment.

        In May of ’72, before Wallace was shot, polls showed a margin-of-error race between McGovern and Nixon with Wallace running as a third-part candidate, basically the same close race the took place in ’68 when Humphrey was the D candidate. Shooting Wallace created the Nixon landslide.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      I’d like someone not in the F.B.I. to assess those devices with an eye towards whether or not they’ve been tampered with since Saturday.

      Starting to feel like I’m living in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, but a Brazil in which the secret rulers are the other members of Monty Python.

  17. Pat

    “Has Private Equity become a Ponzi scheme”? Seriously?

    At its heart, considering the people who operate the parasitical, asset stripping fraud known as Private Equity, they always had to be a Ponzi scheme. It was always about making masses of money for a small group of ‘founders’ at the top of the organization, as long as the asset stripping was lucrative they could be generous and give some money out to the ‘investors’ in them, but if that get hard everything including the new investment money would have to go to those at the top. They need transfusions of blood and funds.

    1. Wukchumni

      I think it’s fair and proper to mention that in theory all Mr. Ponzi was doing was making arbitrage on the difference between international postal rates, and he didn’t go about wrecking post offices all over the world and closing them down in his attempt.

    2. Mikel

      Quite a few things going on that shouldn’t pass the smell test. From this type of Ponzi behavior to high flying companies with self funded demand (funding their own customers).
      At least it seems that way to me…it could be just business as usual.

    3. ArcadiaMommy

      I explained how a typical PE deal works to my father (his pension fund is heavily invested in PE).

      His response: “Oh it’s a bust out.” Very apropos where the mob takes over a struggling business and extracts payments for “protection”. Payment extraction then liquidation, such as via arson. Very Good Fellas/Sopranos.

  18. fjallstrom

    On the Trump assassination attempt, I have been thinking about Georg Elser and his failed attempt at assassinating Hitler and his closest circle.

    Elser stands out, because other assassination attempts (and there were many) usually included an organised group – often military – and many were prevented before the fact by Gestapo. Elser acted alone, used his diverse work experiences and access to explosives through a quarry he worked at. For two months he visited the pub were the assassination was to take place and at night built a secret door and carved out a pillar and filled it with gun powder and a home built detonation device controlled by a clock.

    He eventually set the timer and left for Switzerland. However, Hitler left early and Elser was arrested at the border. He eventually confessed, but despite torture he never pointed out any accomplices or foreign masters. He withheld to his death that he was motivated by preventing Hitler pulling Germany into a new great war.

    My point is that a lone assassin, if he works alone, keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t write about it, can very well attempt an assassination. The majority of assassination attempts are not lone assassins, but it does happen.

  19. jsn

    China’s Psychoboom: “Nor could participants openly connect their psychological distress to underlying social, economic, and political causes such as racism, sexism, or bigotry, as doing so would implicate the shortcomings of their government and its belief system.”

    More to the point, “social, economic, and political causes such as racism, sexism, or bigotry”, collapses political-economy into a distinctly NeoLiberal format whereby the wealth-stealers in China’s state capitalist system can get those they’re stealing from at each other’s throats just like in the rest of the capitalist world.

    Sparks of Woke in the CCP capitalist kindling.

    1. hunkerdown

      Pritzker, eh? Related to the trans-pushing Illinois oligarch family, or just a coinkydink? Looks like the latter.

    2. britzklieg

      From Julian Assange’s intro to Kennard’s book “The Racket”

      “The public perception of the American empire, at least to those who have never seen the empire dominate and exploit the wretched of the earth, is radically different from the truth.
      Those manufactured illusions, ones Joseph Conrad wrote so presciently about, posit that the empire is a force for good. The empire, we are told, fosters democracy and liberty. It spreads the benefits of western civilization.
      These are deceptions repeated ad nauseum by a compliant media and mouthed by politicians, academics and the powerful. But they are lies…
      In the late stage of empire, the image sold to a gullible public begins to entrance the mandarins of empire. They make decisions not based on reality but on their distorted visions of reality, one colored by their own propaganda.
      Blinded by hubris and power they come to believe their deceptions, propelling the empire towards collective suicide. They retreat into a fantasy where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war. They become the purblind architects of their own destruction.
      The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of US military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating cliches spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.
      The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with the question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil.”

      1. Chris Cosmos

        Last night at the Republican Convention there was a definite hawk-like presentation of national security as security for the Empire not the country of the USA. This goes against the theme of the Trump/Vance vision of “America first” that marks a major and profound change in the career of the USA as the “shining city upon a hill.” I agree that the USA could be and should be such a “city” but is not even close to that as long as the Empire is maintained. Last night proved that the RP is still dominated by imperialists with, interestingly, Israel at the center. So those looking at the RP ticket with hope are on the right track but don’t hold your breath on peace breaking out in the world because the leadership at the top focuses on realism rather than fanatical neoconservatism at the top of the DP.

        Trump should and probably will simply declare that the US military has been debilitated and needs a raise in the military budget (mollifying the MIC etc., in other words go on a war footing without having to actually go to war) and pledge undying support for Israeli genocide/ethnic cleansing that is and will be ongoing it seems because the Israelis are bent on their project to expel the Palestinians from the WB and Gaza. Some scheme will have to be invented for doing so since that is the only logical path to peace. Israelis will not even consider “two-state solution” which has been a bogus proposal since the Clinton administration sabotaged the Oslo Accords back in the day. BTW, I’m opposed to the Israeli Government’s actions but it is what it is and they have dominion over Washington, ultimately

  21. The Rev Kev

    “Germany plans to halve military aid for Ukraine”

    To shut people up about this, they shipped a bunch of military gear to the Ukraine just the other week-

    ‘The package included 39 pieces of various heavy armor from the stocks of Germany’s military and of its defense enterprises, Merkur reported, after analyzing government data. Kiev received ten more Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks and 20 more Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), among other extra donations, the outlet said.

    According to open data published by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, the total number of Leopard 1A5 tanks and Marder IFVs delivered to Ukraine has grown to 50 and 120 respectively.

    Other heavy equipment included in the latest delivery involved various engineering and mine-clearing vehicles, according to the report. The package also included 55,000 155mm artillery rounds, according to the government data.

    It also showed that Berlin plans to send, by an unspecified date, 85 more Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine, as part of a joint project with Denmark. The future deliveries are also to include 20 additional Marder IFVs. Merkur reported that Berlin had planned to provide Ukraine with up to 80 Leopards by the end of 2023 but fell behind schedule as the nation’s defense industry struggled to find spare parts for the armor pieces.’

    https://www.rt.com/news/601114-germany-secret-arms-package-ukraine/

    Then Scholz probably told Macron to suck on that one, baby.

    1. Jason Boxman

      Maybe they read Vance’s opinion piece from earlier this year? It’s the most sensible thing I’ve read from a politician in a long while. I guess if he runs in 2028, we might have a candidate that’s into foolish foreign adventurism? I haven’t delved into anything else about him yet, as my opinion ultimately isn’t relevant to the elite anyway. But curious to see nonetheless, as it is against the Washington Consensus, that Russia, if not stopped, will soon occupy all of eastern Europe. Because reasons.

  22. Wukchumni

    World’s largest uncontacted indigenous tribe spotted evading loggers in Peruvian Amazon Anadolu Agency
    ~~~~~~~~~~
    I’m somewhat convinced uncontacted humans such as these poor souls who just had their first Kodak moment, are the hope for survival of the species-everybody else on this orb being hopelessly connected at the hip to one another with an IV drip of crude.

    p.s.

    Now that they’ve been despoiled in such a way, how long before said tribe members swear off bow & arrow and apply for jobs @ Amazon as box fillers?

    1. Cetzer

      Uncertain they would survive a nuclear winter and be able to reproduce themselves afterwards, if showered with ‘hard rain’¹. Some people say that the Southern Hemisphere could get off lightly, but I wouldn’t bet Oppenheimer’s skull on it.

      ¹They might not understand radioactive contamination

  23. CA

    What is important to understand is the influence of and intense militarism characterizing the Robert Menendez approach to foreign policy over many years:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/nyregion/senator-robert-menendez-bribery-conviction.html

    July 16, 2024

    Menendez Convicted of Corruption in Broad International Conspiracy
    Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, was found guilty of bribery, conspiracy, extortion, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent.
    By Benjamin Weiser, Tracey Tully, Nicholas Fandos and Maria Cramer

    Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a powerful Democrat who once led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was convicted on Tuesday of participating in a vast international bribery scheme, in which prosecutors said he had accepted gold, cash and other payoffs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for political favors abroad and at home.

    A Manhattan jury returned the verdict after deliberating for about 13 hours over three days in Federal District Court. Mr. Menendez was found guilty on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, honest services wire fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent for Egypt.

    The verdict made Mr. Menendez the first United States senator to be found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign power and the seventh to be convicted of a federal crime while in office…

  24. CA

    Relevently, Sue Mi Terry is married to Washington Post national security columnist, Max Boot:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/nyregion/sue-mi-terry-cia-south-korea.html

    July 16, 2024

    U.S. Accuses Former C.I.A. Analyst of Working for South Korea
    Sue Mi Terry, a North Korea expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, was charged with acting as an agent for Seoul after leaving the intelligence agency.
    By Claire Fahy, Jesse McKinley and Benjamin Weiser

    Sue Mi Terry, a prominent voice on American foreign policy, had a refined palate, a love for top-shelf sushi and a taste for designer labels. She liked coats by Christian Dior, handbags by Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton, and Michelin-starred restaurants.

    And, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, she accepted such luxury goods and other gifts in exchange for serving the South Korean government in Seoul.

    Ms. Terry, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst and a senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is accused in a 31-page indictment released Tuesday of a yearslong effort to assist South Korean spies. The indictment says she even introduced the spies to congressional staff members, an action that she described as “bringing the wolf in.” …

    1. The Rev Kev

      Thanks for that. I saw a similar story about her earlier but did not know that she was married to Max Boot. I wonder if he will get dragged into this. I certainly hope so.

      1. pjay

        Amen. As with Menendez, every once in a great, great while the corruption becomes a little too blatant and one of these political prostitutes gets slapped down. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving a**hole, but I wish it would happen a lot more often.

  25. Wukchumni

    {31 hours 57 minutes, 2 seconds}

    …Joe Biden diary notes

    ‘Mark to Malarkey!’

    ‘Jill had got us seats for the Sphere, and I know how reluctant she is to have me be out in public-lest I screw up somehow, but damnit! I wanted to see the Eagles and then I got Covid again.’

        1. ChrisFromGA

          It’s another Tequila Sunrise for Pelosi, as she wears out the shoe leather getting the herd of Donkeys on the Defenestration Bus.

            1. ChrisFromGA

              “Dear Joe,

              Please accept our invitation to dinner.
              Time: 6PM, Saturday July 20
              Place: Nancy’s Beach House, by the pier.

              Hugs,

              Nancy, Barack, Chuck.

              PS: Please wear your cement shoes!”

    2. Cetzer

      “then I got Covid again”
      Just imagine, these tests could be easily modified¹ to detect dementia or even a slight proclivity for corruption…

      ¹By the Withermen

  26. rudi from butte

    Orlov on/with Nima asked a question I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now…..

    “Americans MUST ask the question Is the USA even remotely Reformable and will/would any effort to Reform it
    cause it to Fall Apart?”

    My guess is it would fall apart…fast.

    1. Socal Rhino

      I would love to hear Michael Hudson opine on this topic. Can you manage a path back from financial capitalism, short of a collapse and starting over (reboot the machine to restore factory settings). Maybe he’s covered that in one of his books.

      1. TomW

        FWIW, you could look at the US steel industry as a demonstration of what is possible. It’s a mixed bag. There are 4 major firms that are financially sound and largely profitable. The US electric arc furnace mini mills are efficient and much cleaner than the world average. The remaining integrated mills use direct reduction of iron which is relatively clean. The remaining workforce is small, as companies are highly automated. Nucor is non union (among others) but workers are reasonably well paid. So it will never be like it was. But imo, it is pretty good.
        Another example is textiles…yet woven carpet is done on a capital intensive basis. It’s heavy, and never got off shored.

    2. Wukchumni

      But isn’t the entirety of the Golden Billion in similar straits to us, albeit in different ways?

      I think we are on the verge of profound change, a new world order whether you want it or not. How the deal goes down is open to interpretation, and most of my business life I dealt in objects rarely larger than a few inches-and we were just a few inches away from who knows what in Butler, Pa., had the deal gone down there.

      It’s a country largely full of people who went out and got all armed and dangerous on account of an unflappable foe-us.

      Most in Big Smokes have hardly ever used their weaponry, and your clue that festivities will be starting soon, is when Wal*Mart sells uniforms for either side in hues of red & blue. Select locations are also offering limited edition uniforms-look Zouave!

    3. rudi from butte

      Here is an excellent Interview. Highly recommend . Fascinating.

      https://www.rt.com/shows/worlds-apart-oksana-boyko/599761-technology-changing-world-sovereignty/

      “Most Western intellectuals would agree that technology is changing the world in which we live, with one caveat: it’s somehow supposed to keep in place the old hierarchy, with the West dictating and taking advantage of most economic and political decisions. How far will it to go to fight the inevitable? To discuss this, Oksana is joined by Warwick Powell, an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology.”

    4. Chris Cosmos

      I don’t think the USA is about to “fall apart” anytime soon. What, hopefully, will fall apart is the US-centered Empire. This will take time to gradually move away from the unltra-radical-neoconservative military project–which is inevitable since the US military is no condition to rule over the entire planet anymore. Washington will have to accept multi-polarity which should, in my view, bring a renaissance to the USA in may ways. We are a far too vigorous country to just fade away. Had Trump actually been killed then we would have possibly seen a gradual breakup of the USA into regions and states to some extent. Washington is a cancer on the nation anyway.

      1. rudi from butte

        What does the USA have to offer the world today? Not to mention it is entirely dependent on the world and it’s control of the world. That’s the model. That’s the point. If the USA was sitting on a pile of natural resources I’d be a little more sanguine. It’s not.

        1. Chris Cosmos

          USA has a kind of lock on establishing much of the world’s conceptual frameworks, i.e., movies, rock/pop music, popular culture. celebrity worship and so on. It also leads the world in alternative news and information. Americans who are relatively alert are willing to break with the mainstream whereas people in Europe trust authority far too much–Americans are more skeptical.

          The USA also has a highly developed Deep State that controls much of the news particularly its framing in much of the world. Why do you think the European media marches in lock-step to Washington’s views. Even if the US is weak militarily (it is) its clandestine services are still strong and, because of their close links to organized crime in various countries, can assert power.

        2. Giovanni Barca

          The US isn’t Japan or Nauru. There are quite a few natural resources under Uncle Sam’s fair land. Now as with anywhere else their extraction may be environmentally nasty and economically dubious but there is iron, copper, coal, petroleum, lead, graphite, lithium, silver, gold, kaolinite, fluorite..
          There is also water. There may even be some remaining productive soil.

    5. Cetzer

      As a EU citizen I can assure you, that the EU isn’t reformable¹ at all. The European Parliament has just voted for Miss ‘Death.to.Reform’, alias Ursula I, Empress of Europe – and she actually got more votes than at the beginning of her reign. So don’t expect the EU to serve as a scouting party for the USA, finding a royal road towards a sustainable existence².

      ¹It might be very well inflammable, if the Euro notes’ value goes up in smoke after Christine Lagarde confesses, that she would do anything for a crooked ounce of gold
      ²It better be XXXL with air condition and flavor enhanced

  27. The Rev Kev

    “Russia Is Using Lawsuits to Fight the West’s Sanctions”

    This is unintentionally hilarious. The West slaps on tens of thousands of sanctions and basically cancel-cultures Russia. They did not care what international laws and treaties they broke because when they won. all that would be forgotten or negotiated away. Well they didn’t win and now the Russian Federation is taking all those powers to court where the law is clearly on their side. When you listen to Putin, he is a very legally minded person so it looks like they are going to use the law to punish the west severely for all the illegal stunts that they pulled. Good luck to them I say and somebody pass the popcorn.

    1. Chris Cosmos

      Well, maybe–but the West no longer recognizes the rule of law as a foundation of its civilization or as a basis of international affairs. So, in the short term, anything Putin might want to do will go nowhere very quickly.

      At this point, sanctions have been already been woven into the international economy so those who profit from it (like India) will be reluctant to give up the money made by middlemen. It will take maybe a decade for Washington to return to a more realist foreign policy and then sanctions are likely to be lifted as multi-polarity sinks into the consciousness of Americans and Europeans.

  28. CA

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-07-18/Chinese-researchers-find-new-gene-enhancing-wheat-yields-1vkmD5g6nzW/p.html

    July 18, 2024

    Chinese researchers find new gene enhancing wheat yields in saline soils

    Chinese researchers have decoded a novel salt-tolerance gene in wheat, resulting in yield increases of 5 to 9 percent in experimental varieties grown in saline-alkali soils.

    The study findings * have been published in the journal Nature Genetics.

    Wang Meng, corresponding author of the study, from the Institute of Soil Science (ISS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said that China’s primary wheat-growing regions coincide with high occurrences of soil salinization. Spring marks a crucial growth period for wheat, characterized by jointing and grain filling, yet it aligns with peak soil salinity, severely impacting wheat growth and yield.

    Researchers from the ISS, Northwest A&F University and Qingdao Agricultural University analyzed over 500 wheat varieties and lines cultivated for years in saline-alkali fields and identified TaSPL6-D, a transcriptional suppressor of critical salt-tolerance genes in wheat.

    The research team found that due to natural genetic variation, there exists a natural variant of TaSPL6-D, termed TaSPL6-D-In in landraces, which loses its ability to suppress key salt-tolerance genes in wheat.

    Using a molecular-assisted breeding method, researchers introduced TaSPL6-D-In from a landrace into a leading wheat cultivar, successfully improving the yield in saline-alkali soils.

    Zhao Zhendong, an academician with Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Cao Xiaofeng, an academician with CAS, both said that this research provides pivotal design targets for advancing molecular breeding in salt-tolerant wheat and other crops.

    * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-01762-2

    1. JustTheFacts

      So we’ll use that. Irrigate more. And get even more saline soils. Great. Story of Mesopotamia, aka Irak. There will also be more people around to starve when that happens.

      It would have been better if they had found genes of plants that could remove the salinity from the soil to restore it.

      1. CA

        “So we’ll use that. Irrigate more. And get even more saline soils…”

        Just the opposite, actually.
        Just the opposite.

        The saline-alkali soil resistant crops that China has developed and is growing are enriching the soil. The Chinese crops are being used in parts of Africa now. What China is doing in terms of soil enrichment is marvelous.

        Madagascar has just issued new currency with a background of fields of Chinese hybrid, in gratitude for Chinese agricultura assistance.

        What China is accomplishing in agriculture is marvelous.

        1. JustTheFacts

          Please provide a source for “ saline-alkali soil resistant crops that China has developed and is growing are enriching the soil“. I’m curious and hope you’re right.

    2. CA

      https://english.news.cn/20240401/fbf5cd146aa847aabde41a96c4e6f798/c.html

      April 1, 2024

      Spring farming in saline-alkali land boosts China’s food security

      * Saline and alkaline soil covers more than 30 countries in the world, with a total area of over 900 million hectares. China has about 100 million hectares of such land, of which around one-third is available for utilization.
      * Such soil is notoriously difficult to farm, typically producing low crop yields, but technological advances in agriculture mean that Chinese farmers are increasingly able to put it to good use.
      * Over the years, China has persistently promoted the comprehensive treatment and utilization of saline-alkali land. With the application of science and technology to treating the soil and developing new crop varieties, this land is being transformed into a “new granary” for the nation….

      1. TomW

        There is a tendency to assume diffusion of technology only proceeds in one direction. Personally, I would like to see the adoption of Chinese low cost future EV’s back into the US.

        1. CA

          “I would like to see the adoption of Chinese low cost future EV’s back into the US.”

          Agreed, however even with Chinese electric vehicles being kept out of the US, there are cuts occurring in EV production in and for the US:

          https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/18/business/ford-electric-vehicles-canada.html

          July 18, 2024

          More Gas Cars and Trucks, Fewer E.V.s as Automakers Change Plans
          Ford, General Motors and other automakers are slowing investments in electric vehicles and doubling down on more profitable gasoline cars and trucks.
          By Neal E. Boudette

  29. Tina Tourniquet

    Al Jazeera: “Why does Israel use leverage during negotiations while Hamas dithers?” — The same reason Hamas carries children while crossing the street. — The “asymmetric” in “asymmetric warfare” should translate to Arabic considering the rich history in geometry. Al Jazeera is obviously referring to the interception of Mohammed Deif, who had the blood of murdered thousands on his hands prior to 7 Oct, civilians blown-up in cafes and buses.

    Reporters know when they ask a Hamas “commander” how old he is, and he says nineteen, they can’t print that in Qatar, although it’s accurate. As if Hamas’s wanton violence was just as senseless as it was naive. That maybe Al Jazeera gave shark-eyed sororicidal lunatics, Hamas, an undeserved air of legitimacy. And, no, I don’t want to hear what Scott Ritter says.

    1. britzklieg

      Scott Ritter says Israel is defeated and likely finished as a Zionist state.

      Hamas won.

      If true, the world will be a better place.

      1. Chris Cosmos

        I agree with Ritter on most things but I see no evidence Israel is defeated. As long as Israel rules over Washington Israel will not be defeated. I used to think that Trump used the Zionists to assure he would not be assassinated–but since the nearly successful assassination attempt on him that, at least, seems to have been state-sponsored, I think he may be less inclined to be so rah-rah on the Israel-first project. Who knows?

        1. britzklieg

          Here’s the link, from this morning, with Garland Nixon. Sounds convincing to me, though I don’t put it past Yahoo to use Isarel’s not-so-well-kept secret nukes… in which case Israel would disappear. And should the US choose to support that action, we all would, imho:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxQQP_jCSRs

          1. Chris Cosmos

            Despite the obvious genocide Israel still controls the Washington establishment. The US has made it clear to the Iranians that they would join Israel in slaughtering Iranians and people in Lebanon’s south. On the other side, I think that the US deep state has warned Israel not to go too far too fast. I think ethnic cleansing and genocide will be, as it has been for some time, going to continue but in slow motion for now. The US does not want a war with Iran despite its worshipful attitudes towards Israel just as the US does not want war with Russia over Ukraine.

    2. Alice X

      Hamas is a liberation outfit and entirely legitimate as such. Your disparagement is off base.

  30. CA

    “The same reason Hamas carries children while crossing the street…”

    I had to read this several times before I understood the shameful horrid prejudice.

  31. Will

    Extremism in Israel’s armed forces seems like it was a long term project.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/18/national-religious-recruits-challenge-values-of-idf-secular-elite

    “ About 40% of those graduating from the army’s infantry officer schools now come from a national religious community that accounts for 12 to 14% of Jewish Israeli society and is politically more aligned with Israel’s right and far-right political parties and the settler movement. Critics charge that its growing influence – including from the more orthodox portion known as Hardalim – is pursuing its own agenda within the army.”

    Twenty years and still going with the potential to take on the most senior positions in the military within a few years.

    1. Lena

      That interview was difficult to watch. I’m from Appalachia and lived through a version of the same trauma Vance did. I score 9 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test. Vance’s book rang true for me but I don’t agree with a lot of the conclusions he drew from his experiences. Although Appalachia is a very diverse area with people from various backgrounds, many will be able to identify with him. I don’t know what kind of VP he might turn out to be (I haven’t been able to follow the Republican Convention) but his story growing up is the real deal. He hadn’t been talking but a minute or so into the interview before I was was crying, reliving my own story.

      1. CA

        “I’m from Appalachia and lived through a version of the same…”

        Understood completely; always helpful and poignant.

  33. Wukchumni

    Most all of the water that rushes by us on the 5 forks of the Kaweah River is destined for the Friant-Kern Canal and Ag use in the Central Valley.

    Evaporation rates must have been something fierce as of late during our torrid fortnight under the auspices of the heat dome of silence, or in combination they are madly draining out reservoir Lake Kaweah out, as its about half gone already.

    Usually they drain it later in the summer, but i’d take the water now too, versus losing our to climate change making off with it.

  35. spud

    pettis believes in the fairy tale of comparative advantage!!!!! ROTFLOL!!!!

    we hope that the brics restore nationalism and sovereignty, which are fundamental for liberty and freedom

    today’s internationalism and globalization is a war economy.

    Bill Clinton started it all with his anti-labor moves and that linkage between international interest that sort of conceals the class interest

    Marx: “If free traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder. These same gentlemen also refuse to understand how one class can enrich itself at the expense of another.”

    Marx was also very aware that in order to develop, states must play a major role. They must implement tariffs to protect their infant industries from competition against which they are not yet able to stand up.

    ” free trade is just too silly to teach.

    The free trade theory assumes that everybody gains from trade and that all trade is voluntary and it’s all a choice free market and that an absence of tariffs is going to make economies more equal and more competitive.

    And that’s just the opposite of how the world economy actually works, because the real effect of free trade is that the dominant countries all became dominant by protecting their industry.”

    And the real result of free trade is when countries are forced into a trade deficit, their currency is going to decline and then they have to go to the International Monetary Fund that comes in and it imposes austerity and specifically anti-labor policies.

    The IMF’s role is to aim at what Bill Clinton aimed at when he invited China into the World Trade Organization.

    You want to keep a pool of labor, what Marx called the reserve army of the unemployed, not in the United States, but in the non-industrialized countries that basically are kept devaluing the price of labor throughout the world.”

    adam smith and marx knew this well, keynes came around eventually: You want to build up your productivity by technology, and often this requires protective tariffs and capital controls and subsidies to new capital investment, research and development.

    Marx was very clear that national independence was a prerequisite to development for the reasons exactly that you have recognized.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/imperialism-how-the-struggle-of-both-classes-and-nations-creates-our-world.html
    ———————–

    1. PlutoniumKun

      No, Pettis does not believe in comparative advantage as it is described in standard econ textbooks.

      In fact, he wrote a book which among other things criticises the concept and its centrality to conventional Free Trade arguments – its called Trade Wars are Class Wars.

      Karl Marx didn’t write much on international trade, but he did seem to consider it to be a good thing – so far as I’m aware much of Marxist trade theory actually builds on David Ricardo rather than rejects his writings.

      1. spud

        Marx and Engles were dead set against free trade. and predicted free trade would collaspe capitalism. they predicted over production. Pettis seems to insinuate, that china should be self regulating for their own good, complete nonsense. markets are not self regulating.

        https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-communist-manifesto/i-bourgeois-and-proletarians#summary-129692

        Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeoisie has reduced all relations between “man and man” to “naked self-interest” and money. Free trade has come to dominate society and has made exploitation more open and “shameless,” whereas before it might have been veiled by religion and political “illusions.”

        Marx and Engels are generally dismissive of religion, deeming it nothing more than a “veil” that hides the exploitation between oppressor and oppressed. Now that the bourgeoisie is the dominant class in society, this “veil” has been lifted, and nothing is important except for money. This applies both to the bourgeoisie, who seek to accumulate ever-increasing wealth, and the proletariat, whose oppressed position means they have sell their labor in order to make enough money to survive.

        Active Themes
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        Quotes

        The bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels claim, has removed the dignity from work. Even physicians, lawyers, priests and poets are just “paid wage-labourers” now. Family, too, has lost its sentimental value and become another money-based relationship.
        Work is no longer meaningful except in terms of its profitability. Even science, for example, is only useful insofar as its innovations can further the bourgeoisie’s profiteering. By reducing all relations to “self-interest and money,” the bourgeoisie has removed the meaning from work—and, by extension, people’s lives.

        Quotes

        The bourgeoisie has to constantly revolutionize the “instruments of production” in order to maintain its dominance. But in doing so, it changes everything about society too. Marx and Engels suggest that this keeps society in a constant state of “uncertainty and agitation.” And the need for a constantly expanding market means the bourgeoisie spreads over the whole surface of the globe.
        In order to keep making profit, the bourgeoisie has to look for ways to do things bigger, better and faster. The instruments of production—things like tools, factories and infrastructure—are in a constant process of renewal. The bourgeoisie capitalist system is based on competition, and even the slightest improvement can give one business the edge over another. Competition also drives the bourgeoisie to conquer markets far and wide, both to maximize profit and to prevent any competitive advantage for someone else.

        Quotes

        This global expansion destroys “national industries,” and has meant that nations no longer use their own materials but instead draw them from the “remotest zones.” The bourgeoisie’s products have spread all over the world and created “new wants” that can no longer be satisfied by what is contained within a given nation. Instead, there is a move towards “universal inter-dependence of nation,” both with materials and intellectual creations.

        Instead of individual nations with individual cultures and systems, the bourgeoisie makes this individuality increasingly meaningless and impossible. This creates a precarious connection between nations, with one depending on another for a given material.

        Here, capitalism is also explicitly linked with desire—it’s changed the way people see themselves, and made them long for bourgeois products.

        Furthermore, this expansion means all nations get drawn into “civilization”—on the bourgeoisie’s terms. The cheapness of bourgeois goods makes them irresistible; Marx and Engels liken these “commodities” to “heavy artillery,” forcing nations to comply or face extinction—become bourgeois, or cease to exist.

        Marx and Engels use the word “civilization” lightly. They don’t necessarily think capitalism is more civilized, but that it presents itself in that way in order to make its dominance seem logical and inevitable. Because the bourgeoisie is so good at bringing down the costs of its desirable goods, nations face the choice of joining the system or being excluded. Part of the bourgeoisie’s skill is to make exclusion seem like a terrible

        Quotes

        Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeoisie has brought about greater urbanization and an increase in population. This has meant a shift in society towards cities rather than the countryside. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, it’s almost made less “civilized” nations dependent on the bourgeois nations.

        The industrialization brought about by the bourgeoisie concentrates jobs in urban environments, where the factories are built. This leads to a move away from agricultural society to an industrial one dependent on larger and larger cities. The inequality doesn’t just play out on a city/country level—it plays out across different countries too. The more “successfully” bourgeois nations dominate those that are yet to catch up, entrenching inequality around the world.

        Marx and Engels point towards the bourgeoisie’s revolutionary “productive forces.” These range from the “application of chemistry to industry and agriculture” to technological advancements in transport and communications.

        The bourgeoisie doesn’t do away with agriculture—in fact, it doesn’t do with anything that can help turn a profit. Instead, it takes something like agriculture, which used to be a way of life, and makes profit its sole purpose. Agriculture will continue to grow as long as there is more profit to generate—whether or not that’s at the expense of land, animal, or human welfare. Capitalism is undoubtedly productive, but Marx and Engels fundamentally disagree with its motives.

        Bourgeois society had its foundations in feudal society, in terms of the means of production and exchange. At some stage, say Marx and Engels, the feudal way of doing things—especially in relation to property—became restrictive. The feudal system’s fetters had to be “burst asunder.”

        This passage restates that Marx and Engels see history as a series of class struggles. The bourgeoisie grew out of feudal society—or outgrew feudal society, to be more accurate.

        In place of the restrictions of the feudal system came free market competition, bringing its own social political changes to match. Marx and Engels believe that a similar process of change is starting to bear down on the bourgeoisie itself—its gigantic means of production and of money-based exchange have grown beyond its control, like a “sorcerer no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”

        The bourgeoisie has become too successful for its own good, and it has laid the foundations for its own destruction. Capitalist bourgeois society is likened to a magician because, seemingly out of nowhere, it has completely changed the world in a way that has never been seen before.

        ——————–

        Marx knew free trade would doom capitalism, its why publically he embraced it, but his writing tell us why he embraced the foolishness publicaly.

        marx knew free trade was the quickest way to collapse, and he was spot on.

        https://www.sott.net/article/297254-Karl-Marx-was-right-capitalism-seeds-its-own-destruction

        “Marx warned that in the later stages of capitalism huge corporations would exercise a monopoly on global markets. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe,” he wrote. “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” These corporations, whether in the banking sector, the agricultural and food industries, the arms industries or the communications industries, would use their power, usually by seizing the mechanisms of state, to prevent anyone from challenging their monopoly.

        They would fix prices to maximize profit. They would, as they [have been doing], push through trade deals such as the TPP and CAFTA to further weaken the nation-state’s ability to impede exploitation by imposing environmental regulations or monitoring working conditions. And in the end these corporate monopolies would obliterate free market competition.”

        HE WAS SPOT ON!!!!!

  36. Matthew G. Saroff

    Unherd’s hed, “Has private equity become a Ponzi scheme?” is a Betteridge’s Law violation.

    It’s true.

    If I could post an image here, (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT ADD THAT FEATURE!!!) I would have posted the “Always has been” meme.

  37. .Tom

    Matt Kennard was interviewed on the J*mmy D*re Show (Youtube 32min). It’s very good and lacks the subjects that JD is known to get wrong.

    The first 3m30s is JD reading from the foreword by Chris Hedges (excellent). The next 3m30s is Kennard stating why he wrote the book (also). Take it from there if you like.

    I’ve enjoyed reading Kennard in Declassified UK and his appearance on Conter’s podcast.

  38. Mikel

    “The changes in vibes — why did they happen?” Marginal Revolution

    There are big problems in the world that are caused by policy produced by people with an agenda. The problems are not caused by negative thinking.

  39. Tom Stone

    With Mandy Cohen in charge at the CDC ( Center for Disease Communication) we can be assured that the Avian ‘Flu Pandemic will be dealt with as competently and professionally as Covid 19 has been.
    Bless her heart.

  43. Aurelien

    Craig Murray’s piece on the Blackburn elections on 4 July is interesting because I think it’s the first sighting of a problem with which continental Europe is already familiar: the political organisation of the Muslim vote. Murray, I think, was naive in imagining that Muslims would vote for him because of his stance on Gaza. He may have thought he was using them, but they were using him. These communities are highly organised, led by their religious dignitaries, and have very clear reactionary political objectives. I anticipate the first Private Member’s Bill banning the teaching of Evolution in schools before too long.

  44. MartyH

    Georgia’s Parliament representing the people passed the NGO reporting law. The professional politicians working with the EU don’t want transparency. The NGOs are doing the paid outrage thing. Pick a side. I have plenty of popcorn.

    On Jam News: I just struck if from my newsfeeds. Highly EU/Anti-Russia biased. Feels too much like a propaganda outlet.

  45. Ann

    “The rapid evolution and widespread adoption of crowdfunding have raised critical regulatory considerations to ensure investor protection, market integrity, and the overall stability of the financial ecosystem.”

    So, large amounts of money going to places that don’t adhere to The Narrative ™ are beginning to get under someone’s skin? By crackee we can’t have that. We must regulate this into extinction. Pronto.

  46. Javier

    That YaleEnvironment360 article has all the typical fallacies of global warming denialism, particularly of the “CO2 plant food” type. Do you guys actually believe it?

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