Uncovered: 428-year-old secret dossier reveals Elizabeth I’s network of spies Guardian (Kevin W)
The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium Nomea (Micael T)
Snowball Earth and the rise of multicellularity Santa Fe Institute (Chuck L)
Frederick Crews, Withering Critic of Freud’s Legacy, Dies at 91 New York Times (Anthony L)
Pattern of Brain Damage Is Pervasive in Navy SEALs Who Died by Suicide New York Times (Dr. Kevin)
#COVID-19
There are quite literally thousands of studies looking at the cognitive impacts of COVID on the brain. Meanwhile the @nytimes continues to mainstream far right propaganda that a quarantine four years ago caused brain damage. Yeah no it’s the virus https://t.co/ANZhFSKRYT https://t.co/h4SS29qiqD
— Julia Marie (@julia_doubleday) July 1, 2024
Do you know who is getting disabled in the millions by Covid infections?
Do you think it's CEOs and company owners?No. It's everyday working people.
Why the hell are unions and the left not screaming about this?
(pic from @_CatintheHat) pic.twitter.com/YaJv5GnzeV— tern (@1goodtern) July 1, 2024
China?
America’s priority should be chip design leadership Asia Times (Kevin W)
Looking at all the automation in Chinese factories, I am not sure that raw labor costs matter that much, particularly given that direct factory labor as a % of most manufactured goods product costs, like cars, was about 10% to 13% in the US (this as of when the auto biz was being bailed out post the financial crisis). I would assume China has considerably reduced direct factory labor inputs:
Soon China will be delocalising production to Europe to exploit local low-wage labour. https://t.co/4ZidDtoEOY
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) July 1, 2024
China’s commercial space hub opening clashes with exploding rocket mishap South China Morning Post
Climate/Environment
The Big Air Con Elite climate hypocrisy is not sustainable Unherd
Many Carbon Capture Projects Are Now Launching Los Angeles Times
‘Not just for fuddy-duddies’: interest in moths booming as species struggle Guardian
17 Years, $700 Million Wasted: The Stunning Collapse of New York’s Traffic Moonshot Wall Street Journal. From over the weekend, still germane.
Sea temperatures around Japan hit record high for third year Asahi
How climate change could be driving ‘killer’ cold outbreaks in oceans CNN
Climate crisis pushes Malawi food farmers into starvation Mail & Guardian
A ‘Safe’ Chemical in Plastic Bottles Could Reduce Insulin Responsiveness, Increase Diabetes Risk Independent
European Disunion
French National Assembly election: What’s at stake and what to expect? Al Jazeera (Kevin W)
Air France-KLM flags financial hit from tourists avoiding Paris Olympics Financial Times (Kevin W)
European puzzle. How Hungary will use its EU Council Presidency TASS in Russian, via machine translation (Micael T)
Is it a “democracy”? Instead of 373 million European citizens, just a group ‘making the decisions’ in EU is far smaller International Affairs (Micael T). I don’t think the EU democratic deficit is any secret, but this puts some dimensions on it.
Old Blighty
Tories narrow gap to Labour in poll as Sunak says election not decided The Standard
Gaza
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 269: Israeli leaders slam prison services over release of al-Shifa Hospital director Mondoweiss (guurst)
A settler shot my husband. Then Israel bulldozed my family home +972 (Dr. Kevin)
Israel war on Gaza live: Residents flee Khan Younis amid artillery attacks Aljazeera
Israel to reportedly try creating Hamas-free ‘bubble’ zones in northern Gaza Times of Israel. An admission against interest.
German intelligence official travels to Lebanon to discuss preventing Israel-Hezbollah war and Blinken: Israel effectively lost sovereignty in north due to Hezbollah Jerusalem Post
New Not-So-Cold War
Beyond insane and irresponsible for the head of NATO to accuse China of instigating the conflict in Ukraine.
Especially when you know the crucial role that NATO played in instigating the conflict…
And when you know that China submitted a peace plan last year – that included… https://t.co/rhZuN8CiHt
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) July 1, 2024
Viktor Orbán expected to make surprise trip to Kyiv on Tuesday Guardian. Will Alex Christoforu’s Elensky (no typo) curse take hold?
US bases in Europe placed on heightened security alert due to ‘combination of factors’: Pentagon Anadolu Agency
Two Years of Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Ten Lessons to Learn. Russia in Global Affairs (Micael T)
Partisan resistance is growing in Ukraine. A train with Western aid derailed near Odessa…
Another train with Western help derailed near Odessa! Guerrilla resistance in Ukraine is gaining momentum and doing everything to help the early arrival of Russia and the total… pic.twitter.com/hCxMVmznTd
— Peacemaker (@peacemaket71) June 29, 2024
Yves here. If there are multiple reports of train derailments in Odessa, even if the effort to substantiate that is a photo fake, that would tend to suggest there are sabotage efforts. Recall that there are now a lot of videos of people on the street fighting with the conscription officials who are trying to force men into trucks. So I do think better substantiation of this sort of claim will emerge (even if thate also means many fewer instances of success).
Syraqistan
Iran to hold runoff election with reformist Pezeshkian and hard-liner Jalili after low-turnout vote Associated Press (Kevin W)
Iran’s election runoff: two candidates, two worldviews The Cradle
Saudi energy minister announces discovery of seven oil, gas deposits Arab News
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
How your FedEx driver is helping cops spy on YOU Daily Mail (Li). A must read.
Assange
Julian Assange’s lawyers reveal the twists and turns in WikiLeaks founder’s long road to freedom ABC Australia (Kevin W)
Immigration
Over 200 university researchers sign petition opposing Finnish deportation bill Anadolu Agency
Deportation after one “like”—German cabinet tightens up deportation rules WSWS (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
The West – indubitably – has lost Russia, and is losing Eurasia too Alastair Crooke (Chuck L)
U.S. Completes Delivery of 116 M1A1 Abrams Tanks to Poland: How Do Ukrainian Operators Evaluate Them? Military Watch
I make a prediction about the relationship between US government debt and impending crisis Bill Mitchell
Rising Market Power Has Led to the Rise in Far-Right Political Parties ProMaret
Biden. I am seeing even more Biden fundraising ads on YouTube. They now are so dense they look to be crowding out other promotions. And they are running on awfully-unsuitable programs, like Tucker Carlson (his interview of Matt Taibbi).
Anger mounts at Joe Biden’s inner circle after debate debacle Financial Times
Biden’s family privately criticizes top advisers and pushes for their ouster at Camp David meeting Politico (Kevin W). Classic. Democrats cannot fail, they can only be failed.
Democrats Consider Nominating Biden a Month Early: Report Ground News
What people don’t realize is that at night Joe Biden transforms into a vigilante superhero who is also senile. https://t.co/HmVNajfZQi
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 1, 2024
Consistent with remarks by yours truly in comments:
From an unusually good source: Obama’s tweet supporting Joe Biden was disingenuous. In private, Obama is telling people Biden can’t win, and he is therefore in favor of an open convention. Obama will not say whom he supports, nor as of yesterday afternoon had he met personally…
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 1, 2024
First Lady Jill Biden on What’s at Stake in 2024 Vogue. The fasionista adds: “Vogue has paid zero attention to her for the entire term. Now this.”
Supremes
3 surprising consequences of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision Politico
Trump has presumptive immunity for pressuring Pence to overturn 2020 election The Hill
First off, the "absolute immunity" SCOTUS invents is Absolute. If it falls within "core constitutional powers" there is no order than can be given that can be reviewed by the courts AT ALL. pic.twitter.com/4D5ChhnDyz
— Dirk Schwenk (Esq) 🎵 (@DirkSchwenk) July 1, 2024
SCOTUS affirmatively green-lights a number of very scary points in which it holds POTUS immune. LIKE FIRING ANY FEDERAL EXECUTIVE BRANCH EMPLOYEE AT WILL. Goodbye federal civil service. pic.twitter.com/6JCU3rjU7s
— Dirk Schwenk (Esq) 🎵 (@DirkSchwenk) July 1, 2024
Justice Thomas' concurrence in Trump v. U.S. is hugely significant. He questions whether Special Counsel Jack Smith's office is constitutional.
"If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private…
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) July 1, 2024
Supreme Court Impeachment Plan Released by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Newsweek (furzy). Help me.
Antitrust
Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model fails EU competition rules, Commission finds TechCrunch
AI
YouTube confirms it’ll pull AI fakes in 48 hours if a complaint’s upheld The Register
Class Warfare
Wealth at Birth and its Effect on Child Academic Achievement and Behavioral Problems NBER
Antidote du jour. heresey101: “This year’s family of barn swallows at our entryway alcove on the day before they flew away from the nest.”
And a bonus (Chuck L):
A beautiful but dangerous Sawfish pic.twitter.com/4L7mbkU9IA
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 29, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
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MY GRANDFATHER’S SNARK
(melody borrowed from My Grandfather’s Clock by Henry Clay Work, 1876, as performed by Tom Roush)
O, my grandfather’s snark bit as clean as a shark
Always straight through your logic he tore
Never wide of the mark he made your errors stark
Only brave souls came back for some more
A Bohemian Bouge who had clearly gone rouge
He was wistful, sarcastic, and snide
But his snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Since that day he sits pondering
His thoughts simply wandering
His snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Neither Biden nor Trump can take on a speed bump
Without help from a couple of aides
At this sad callathump each held forth from his stump
In a pitiful game of charades
Both well past their best days yet they tried hard to amaze
While my Grandfather sat there and cried
And his snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Since that day he sits pondering
His thoughts simply wandering
His snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Humor’s easy to find in the deeds of mankind
But that debate was no comedy
Neither man of sound mind is this all they can find?
This was nothing but verbal debris
We can laugh at a fool but to laugh at age is cruel
Was this debate our country’s high tide?
Grandpa’s snark stopped — never was heard again
The night satire died
Since that day he sits pondering
His thoughts simply wandering
His snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Had I known its effect — that his snark would be wrecked
We would never have watched that debate
Now the papers project one of them we’ll elect
And he’ll be there till two oh two eight
How could I have known from my Grandpa’s quiet moan
As he saw things he could not abide?
Lord, his snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Since that day he sits pondering
His thoughts simply wandering
His snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
His snark stopped – never was heard again
The night satire died
Juvenal
Well done!
Can´t help it but wonder when looking at the two graphs about disability in UK and US whether the interpretation is quite right. You look closely at the FRED graph and the big rise starts in 2021. Same with the UK graph. Something else but Covid happened in 2021…
What about the rise of remote work? Working from home allows many disabled folks to re-enter the workforce.
Something else to keep in mind the next time Jamie Dimon or some other bankster launces a Jihad to bring workers back to edifice wrecks that sit on their balance sheets, slowly rotting away.
The two most obvious alternatives (aside from opportunistic malingering) are “COVID sequelae” and “vaccine side effects.”
The lag in the upturn with respect to the beginning of the pandemic may invite the interpretation that “it’s due primarily to the vaccines, not to the virus”, but that strikes me as too facile an interpretation. Chronic impairments from COVID sequelae are not “binary”, as if you are either at 100% or you are too disabled to participate in the work force. There’s a spectrum, and the damage can accumulate in subsequent infections.
I hope that no-one takes from charts like these the idea that “the vaccines are dangerous but the virus is not.”
I understand the trepidation with which many regard the vaccines, especially the “new technology” mRNA vaccines. But I find incomprehensible the equally or even more widespread lack of concern about repeated infection with the virus.
Thanks for this comment!
Do you know who is being infected with Covid in the millions?
Schoolchildren AND their teachers.
I have a relative who teaches kindergarten and her mom tells me she is “sick all the time.” My relative’s children and husband have all had covid “more than once.” They are a wonderful family and I’m worried sick about them.
We should have had a nasal vaccine at least two years ago. Instead, what we’ve got now is a phase 1 NIH trial:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-sponsored-trial-nasal-covid-19-vaccine-opens
Thank you.
Perhaps the recent Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity has a subtext, alleviating the President from legal responsibility for public health catastrophes exacerbated by bad policies.
Political consequences for the President, demographic consequences for the demos.
Perhaps people are too sick to be angry.
Samuel, your last sentence strikes home with me. People who are sick rarely have enough energy to be angry. It takes all we have just to survive the day.
I continue to appreciate the NC community for their knowledge and understanding about Covid, homelessness and so many other issues. When I can get online to read links and comments here, I don’t feel so alone in this crazy messed up world. Thank you.
That hits home for many.
Pre-Covid the plan was to keep people sullen but not rebellious.
Progress, of a diabolical sort.
The dangers from the spike protein have been pushed aside!
Your body cells make the spike protein with every inoculation!
The curves track the return to pre-covid behaviors.
Tom67: The first Covid case in the U S of A was 20 January 2020.
An ironic co-factor in the U.K. is that that the final exit of Brexit was 31 January 2020.
So given disease, lags in diagnosis, and the general way that consequences lag events, the chart for the U S of A shows exactly what one would expect from an epidemic beginning in February 2020.
“Blinken: Israel effectively lost sovereignty in North due to Hezbollah”
That is the trouble with Bliken. He can only see one side of an argument which is not a good characteristic for the US’s lead diplomat. Check out this section-
‘Israel has “lost sovereignty” in the northern part of its country due to the persistent cross-border attacks Hezbollah has launched against Israel since October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.
“People don’t feel safe to go to their homes,” he said during a public interview at the Brookings Institute in Washington. “Absent doing something about the insecurity, people won’t have the confidence to return,” he said.
He spoke as close to 60,000 Israelis from northern border communities are unable to return home and the areas remain largely deserted.’
So how about we flip this section which gives the following result-
‘Lebanon has “lost sovereignty” in the southern part of its country due to the persistent cross-border attacks the IDF has launched against Lebanon since October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.
“People don’t feel safe to go to their homes,” he said during a public interview at the Brookings Institute in Washington. “Absent doing something about the insecurity, people won’t have the confidence to return,” he said.
He spoke as close to 60,000 Lebanese from southern border communities are unable to return home and the areas remain largely deserted.’
If Blinken understood this, then perhaps it might give him some insight on how to negotiate here. But Blinken’s loyalty always remains with Israel so that is not going to happen.
Blinken is making the case for the IDF to blast to bits Muslim suburbs in Beirut!
Sadly, Boudain is no longer alive to be caught up in one of IDF’s bombing for settlers.
“Circling the wagons” 21st century USA style.
Trouble is that Hezbollah has the capacity and more to blast to bits Jewish suburbs in Tel Aviv. The optics of Tel Aviv burning is something that could not be swept under the carpet by the Israeli censors.
We will see if that deters the DC/Tel Aviv axis!
It is also likely that “shock and awe” won’t dent Hezbollah infrastructure.
If this bill passes, then essentially every Palestinian who is detained is dead. Hmm, wonder whether that will increase the number of fighters in Palestine?
Perhaps the Knesset should approach the Polish Government to ask if a certain establishment near Oswiecim might be available on a short-term lease.
The Supreme Court Impeachment Plan Released by AOC link leads to the following: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-808552 instead of https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-justices-impeachment-aoc-1919728
I’m kinda hoping that there will be a follow up article entitled “The AOC Impeachment Plan Released by the Supreme Court” on the grounds that she is attacking a democratic institution in a way that is worse than the Jan. 6th riots. It’s always performative theater with her.
That’s funny, nowadays whenever I see her name mentioned in any article, I think Another Oligarchic Concoction.
I think of her as Antoinette Of Color
‘Let them eat my take!’
Adjust One’s Credo
Giorgia Meloni learned all she needed to know from AOC.
My favorite AOC moment came when she was arrested at some protest and had air handcuffs on with her hands behind her back in assuming the position, for she couldn’t not do a furtive wave to his fans-giving herself away as a phony’s phony, as the police took her away
Another Obvious Cretin
Not really. AOC’s fit is the appearance that Something is Being Done, appeasing the masses. Actually very clever.
Unlike Woody Guthrie the SCOTUS has less than a guitar with which to fight fascism.
Errr, please explain to this sad European how on earth SCOTUS has anything to do with democratic institutions? It’s extremely political, for sure, but the members are nominated, not elected, and are not responsible to anyone.
When the US Constitution was put together, there was an attempt to learn from historical lessons so that you would not have a tyrannical President or Congress like happened with the English experience. Thus some powers were delegated to the Presidency and the remainder to Congress with both keeping each other in check. And to keep an eye on both of them, a Supreme Court was set up whose members were appointed to make them more independent. It was a three way system and overall it has worked for a very long time. Yes, SCOTUS is political now but that is because ever since the Powell memo came out half a century ago, there has been a sustained, concerted effort by conservatives to have activist Judges put onto that bench to fulfill conservative ideas and values. And now that is where we are.
And what liberals get on the court in recent years just happen to be corporatists, but we never discuss that when a nomination comes up.
a Supreme Court was set up whose members were appointed to make them more independent.
I think this is incorrect.
It is not because they are appointed that they are “more independent”, it is because, once in place, they cannot be removed — as would occur when governments change (getting rid of judges appointed by a previous, opposing government), or when the government gets unsatisfied with the way appointed judges take decisions and wishes to replace them with more pliable persons.
Limiting absolute power (or tyranny) still doesn’t have much to do with democracy per se. It has been mostly used by the high nobility to protect their hereditary and future loot from the royal greed.
And by political, I don’t mean “political”, my argument is more along the lines that any institution which can overrule legislation is by definition part of the legislative process, thus political in the sense of defining policies. And in the case of SCOTUS, somewhat in the gray area regarding the separation of powers, since it’s both a constitutional court and the highest court – thus existing both in the legislative and judicial branch.
Her big eyes are going to pop out and her head is going to explode when Trump wins again.
Chaos is a ladder, and Trump’s ascension is her chance to be the next Nancy Pelosi, only “better”!!!
Fixing. I find this happens WAY too often, I copy text and the copy does not wind up on the clip board, the older item is still there.
“It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”
As they say in the streets: “Girl, bye…”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if AOC were serious about the damage the decision does to her democracy, could she not introduce legislation to actually counter the decision? Instead, let’s just make it personal.
There’s the performative tell.
>>>The Stunning Collapse of New York’s Traffic Moonshot
2nd Av. Subway, Hudson River train tunnel, Penn Station renovations….NY state, NYC is where infrastructure projects go to suffer long bouts of purgatory.
metro NYC, and the entire Northeast, rely on a literal handful of very old river crossings to function.
For the multitude of urban planning sins of Robert Moses and his generation, one can’t criticize the fact that he envisioned a goal, then delivered it
>Uncovered: 428-year-old secret dossier reveals Elizabeth I’s network of spies Guardian (Kevin W)
A good fictionalized account of the “secret network of spies” is John Bossy’s 2002 book Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair which speculates that Bruno was working for Queen Elizabeth as a spy. I was hoping to see a reference to Bruno in the article, but none alas…
https://www.amazon.com/Giordano-Bruno-Embassy-Affair-Bossy/dp/0300094515
You might like “A Dead Man in Deptford”, a historical novel about Christopher Marlowe by Anthony Burgess. It’s set earlier in Elizabeth’s reign when Sir Francis Walsingham was running the intelligence service. At that time university students were also employed as spies, since (like merchants) they could often speak multiple languages and traveled internationally for their studies.
> Biden. I am seeing even more Biden fundraising ads on YouTube.
In every Alexander Mercouris daily commentary, I’m getting multiple “Look, I’ll cut the malarkey” videos with JRB moving his arms as if he were imitating a marionette (is this the best performance they could engineer?), and 1 or 2 BHO “we all get pinged with fundraising asks” videos.
I find this a bit puzzling as Mercouris has been relentlessly critical of all aspects of JRB’s foreign policy; people who consider AM’s views worth hearing are not a promising category of people from which to harvest political contributions for JRB.
Do they have money to throw away, and the campaign is just spending it wherever it can?
If you’re going to spend money on one streaming service, commercial free YouTube premium is worthy. Getting through Mecouris videos is hard enough, even at 1.5 speed, but getting ads during that would be really irritating.
Mercouris at 1.5 speed – Interesting thought. I listen at 1.25 but was afraid faster would make him sound too strange. I”ll have to try 1.5…
Re ads: I live in Canada and don’t get US election ads.
Floor it! I listen at 2x. Once in a while I’ll back off the accelerator to remind myself that Alexander IRL sounds less like a coked-up nerd than an Alfred Hitchcock of geopolitics who says “Good day” instead of “Good evening.”
Words for most of the savvy yappers. Ritter’s histrionics get dialed up, and Dima’s accent gets thicker, but the saved time benefit outweighs the downside distortions.
Floor it! I listen at 2x. Once in a while I’ll back off the accelerator to remind myself that Alexander IRL sounds less like a nerdy auctioneer than an Alfred Hitchcock of geopolitics who says “Good day” instead of “Good evening.”
He starts to sound normal at 1.5x.
Why are his daily monologues only available as videos? Does anyone know?
You can get it as podcast too, e.g. via Odyssee on PocketCast. See here
I second that endorsement. The $15/mo fee is one I’m happy to pay. ‘Sponsored’ videos and upfront advertisements still show up in my YT feed, but are easily ignored.
Unfort. Too many YouTubers are now doing their own sponsor ads within their videos so even with a paid subscription, one is still exposed to sponsor and advertising nonsense.
Not much. The whole point of being a YouTuber is promotion for your business and service, it seems. Sure, you get a commercial or two (Napolitano and his gold ads. Sheesh. I guess you have to pay the bills somehow), but it’s not all that intrusive.
Love YouTube for everyday stuff. Yesterday I had three guys telling me how to replace string on my new string trimmer. Landscaping and gardening? Wealth of knowledge.
When I watch YouTube on Linux via Firefox with appropriate extensions I can even skip 99% of “own YouTuber sponsor ads”.
I have zero guilt because I have never yet encountered a product or service sponsored by a YouTube channel that IMO turned out to be what it alleges to be. Most have indeed blown up to be very very public scandals. I instantly unsubscribe from any YouTube channel that promotes something with even a whiff of dodginess (which I learn from my android watching). The algorithm still suggests the channel’s more interesting videos but they lose money previously associated with my subscription.
Rule of thumb: if it is advertised on YouTube it is almost certainly automatically shite.
I was just now watching Jeffrey Sachs on Napolitano’s show from yesterday. Right after they showed a clip from the debate of Biden saying something senile about foreign policy and questioning its accuracy, the video pauses and up pops Kamala begging for dollars.
The old saw is that 50% of advertising dollars are completely wasted and the question is which 50%. If any braindead DNC types are reading here today, I can tell you it’s the half your spending shoving Biden ads into my face. Not only will I never vote for that vicious, senile, racist warmonger, but every Biden ad I now have to listen to makes it less likely that I will sit the election out as I had planned and slightly more likely to go to the polls to cast a vote for the Donald just out of spite.
Where do you live, if I may ask? Chances are good you have some other choices.
That video is terrifying, pause it at any point and look closely at Biden’s face. It makes you wonder if someone is intentionally sabotaging him to push for a brokered convention or whatever, or his campaign has drunk all the Kool aid and think this would be helpful.
That well-dressed crypt keeper style….
yeah I wonder the same. A mole switching the pills perhaps at crucial times
It may be that dementia is contagious after all. Obviously the solution will be for the Dems to invest taxpayers money into vaccine development and the ideal development finance model just has to be the way the Federal government responded to to Covid. I guess it would suit the EU as well if the European Parliament gives the nod to a second term to Useless fonda Lyin’.
Gooooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
The platoon was well represented for the coming Paris Olympics with Antony Blinken expected to medal in the jumping to conclusions event-a specialty of his.
The mixed meaning pairs competition features Jill leading Joe down the primrose pathological path in the city of lights, and they are expected to be in the hunt, although Macron And his May to December wife Briggitte can’t be counted out on their home turf
Hunter has been in training for the high jump most of his life, waiting for his crack. I can’t wait to see his maudlin tale of whoa in a 3 minute close-up on the telly, where he came back from adversity only to fall back in its clutches. How he isn’t on the podium at the end of the day would be quite the mystery.
The FGM-148 Javelin first debuted the year of the Atlanta games and with its infrared guidance system should do well in the javelin competition, pitted against the British entry of the Javelin Triple Launcher, which hardly seems fair-but the thinking is that Pierre de Coubertin would approve.
Wondering how all those athletes competing, and their coaching and support staff are gonna travel to the Games lo these next few weeks. I can’t imagine navigating those schedules and all the potential gaffes for missed connecting flights and temporarily “missed” luggage. It’s a Fee Bonanza for those checked luggage add ons made available at the ticketing gate.
Speaking of the required travel…find a funny kernel of truth even in the available satire, courtesy of the Bee website. I think it’s rather humorous, and one can insert their personal choice of a much derided caricature or elite level personnel, if you will.
https://babylonbee.com/news/liberal-in-private-jet-upset-as-he-looks-down-and-sees-all-the-cows-causing-climate-change#google_vignette
Funny that article because its kinda true. Did you see that other article linked on that page?
“Journalists Dumbfounded As There Were No Previous Signs Of Biden Declining Whatsoever” at
https://babylonbee.com/news/journalists-dumbfounded-as-there-were-no-previous-signs-of-biden-declining-whatsoever
>Deportation after one “like”—German cabinet tightens up deportation rules – WSWS (Micael T)
I felt a sense of nostalgia reading those sentences below in the concluding paragraph. It was like going back to my early college days when I was fascinated by Marx and Communism. I still am to a large extent, and I follow the writings of Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff, and enjoyed David Harvey’s Utube lectures on Das Kapital. But sorry, it’s 2024 and the fascistic threat has moved on to a techno-fascist strain that will take more than a rewarmed up “socialist programme” to combat.
War and fascism are the response by the ruling elite to the hopeless crisis of the capitalist system. They can only be countered by an independent movement of the international working class fighting for a socialist programme.
“How your FedEx driver is helping cops spy on YOU”
Generally I am suspicious of corporations that suddenly appear and then take off as if by magic. Wikipedia says-
‘Flock was founded in 2017. By 2024, Flock’s fixed cameras had been installed in over 4000 cities and 42 states across the US. Flock has raised $380 million in venture funding, with a $3.5 billion valuation in 2022.’
That is only 7 years ago that they were founded. You do wonder if they had some guardian angels in government that helped set them up. If you are a corporation offering new ways on how to spy on people, it seems that the money will flow to you. Look at this FedEx caper. It’s like somebody said to themselves that those Google StreetView cars are good but only travel along streets every coupla years. Now FedEx on the other hand is constantly on the road. You whack some high-tech cameras atop of them and you are really into real-time spying. And that is not even mentioning the street cameras that Flock keep on setting up without asking the local authorities in States like Florida, Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. South Carolina alone found some 200 of them set up that they never knew about-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety#Unauthorized_camera_installations
Police still arrive after a crime is committed, so all this is BS about keeping people “safe.”
And the flock of surveillance doesn’t mean a thing as the nimbers of those disgusted, discarded, and disrespected rise.
Somebody has to have some kind of plan for how AI will analyze all this video, because we passed the point at which there is more surveillance than there are available manhours to view it a long time ago. As of right now, it’s kind of like your internet history – it’s all there somewhere, for somebody to look at, if they ever wanted to, but they probably never will. And if there is something along the FedEx route that happened that day that the cops (or the AI) want to look at, figure the odds that it happened right when the FedEx truck was driving by. Hard to see the usefulness of this. Other than to enrich somebody who started the surveillance company with money from the public trough.
Internet history – it’s all there somewhere, for somebody to look at, once the Government or corporations take interest in you. They probably never will if you go along with the plan, and don’t rock the boat. Usefulness of this is scaring people into submission.
I would not want to be a Fedex driver after a local gang’s been taken down because the truck’s feed. Their trucks may become targets for rocks, bullets and tire slashing when unattended. The drivers will definitely need combat pay raises.
Can imagine homemade signs in certain neighborhoods:
“No Fedex trucks allowed in this neighborhood.”
Doesn’t the UK still have cameras that record practically every street and far more than the license plates? By that standard the US still has a long way to go.
My town has those cameras on the stoplights but onlly in the central business area. Going by your Wiki they have a dubious effect on crime and just add to the surveillance haystack.
I thought that it was wild reading years ago how some public buses in the US had hidden microphones in them. Made me wonder at the time about planes and trains and whether they were hot-miked as well.
I doubt that the evidence is admissable. So the cops will play the evidence to the perp, and say confess for a smaller penalty because we’ve got you dead to rights… lawyer-up. And in UK where the right to silence has been sporked, one’s laywer will ask the cops to show what they’ve got against the client.
Quite possible they actually add to the crimes, as long as we’re counting beating one of the surveillance cameras into tiny pieces of digital refuse as a crime. Probably is, but really shouldn’t be.
Just putting the ‘Fed’ back in FedEx.
>First Lady Jill Biden on What’s at Stake in 2024
I’ll put this cover of Vogue right next to the one with Portrait of Bravery: Ukraine’s First Lady Olena
Not a fan of Trump, but why wasn’t Melania Trump ever on the cover? Michelle Obama was on the cover…
Well, if Mr. Trump changes gender (+ a new wig with 30cm hair length), he would have a fighting chance, especially if Vogue changes its readership’s gender orientation towards male readers (ads for baseball, beer and Bazookas).
Delivery vans filming cars and more, not surprising these days. The privacy questions should be expanded to ask which routine traffic does not have filming or other monitoring. The postal service is one obvious monitoring candidate, given the ubiquity of their trucks. Those other handy shop-from-home delivery vehicles filled with trinkets, baubles and the odd bit of clothing or food should make that list, too. Dossiers?
Next will people hear about their phone cameras and microphones being enlisted, all for the public good, no doubt?
Back during the George Bush regime, there was a program to recruit people like TV repairmen and the like as deputized spies. People would let them into their homes not knowing that they had been trained to look for suspicious if not illegal activity and sometimes I wonder what would have counted as suspicious items in your home. So they may have ignored your copy of “Nuns in Rubber Suits” magazine but would take an interest in your copy of Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.”
So, I shouldn’t let anyone look at my library? I have some serious authority questioning reading material.
As an aside, since higher education in California is steadily getting crapified and more expensive, I have decided to focus studying on my own at home. Anyone care to bet that there will not be at least an attempt to censor personal libraries or at least have an unofficial official list of banned books to own? Rather like the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum? Of course, like the no-fly lists, you will often not know that it is on the list or why. The hidden laws that they tell no one, but that you are responsible for obeying.
Anyone who thinks that printed books are not censored here in the United States is fooling themselves. Plenty of books during the 20th century, no matter how popular or informative, have gotten single print runs and then the copies vanish, maybe to reappear in ones and twos for hundreds of dollars per book.
I think we have already crossed that Rubicon. This has happened more than once, but I’ll give you an example. I was traveling with my daughter about a year ago. We were in my vehicle out in the middle of nowhere on a small state highway. We were talking about air fryers. The very next day I started seeing adds on both my phone and laptop for air fryers. How can that happen?
I can only imagine what one of those boxes we buy for hour homes might be doing? Hey Alexa – are you selling our information or reporting what we are saying?
I would never do that Dave…
Enemy of the State…ala the Will Smith lawyer on the run from the MIC and high security complex. Entertainment then, now it’s a lot less art or fiction and definitely more a fact in the modern era and every day life.
Go to a self check at a Wal Mart, or heck in the deodorant aisle. Wave hello to the camera!
Re: “I Predict One Thing…”
Lead article at CNN: “The world is sitting on a $91 trillion problem. ‘Hard choices’ are coming” about the public debt bomb.
You literally can’t make this up.
That said, it really doesn’t matter. SCOTUS is on plan, per the Heritage Foundation, to end Social Security and Medicare as unconstitutional.
There are over 50 million people receiving Social Security benefits in the US. Forget about the Million Man March, you would have tens of millions of pensioners converging on Washington and I am sure that many of them would be bringing their guns as well. All of them an vote I should note. They would tell reporters that it was either the Supreme Court or them – and at their age they do not have much to lose.
There was no march when SS was raised to 67, so gradually raising the age for Medicare and SS will work again.
Benefits have to be cut by 2035 unless more money is found and raising taxes to pay for it is not going to happen.
Military spending on the other hand is in the Constitution.
This is the group that picked the Supreme Court.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/06/24/two-trillion-dollar-deficits-show-washington-has-a-spending-problem/
Odd that you would mention taxes in relation to funding government programs.
I don’t see how you would think this with the many MMT discussions this site has had.
And raising the benefit age is not at all the same as ending the program…
Silently works like a charm using the tried and true tactic: Exploit the greed of the current recipient generation to set up multiple tiers. The current recipients get to keep what they have while throwing the upcoming generation into tiers with reduced benefits. Worked for the UAW when they let a two tiered system metastasize – older members keep what they have, younger members get less. Although, finally they’re standing up and fighting against that brazen exploit.
Per the constitution there are also to be no standing armies for more than two years. And only Congress can declare war. On and on. Money appears and disappears in the interests of…The Interests. The magic wand that waves Ukraine aid into being could also if its wielder wished to being back all the FICA money Reagan and Co. stole.
If that happened imagine the following:
“You cut off my uncle’s 2,000 a month Social Security.
I’m sending it to him, with the $24,000 deducted from my income tax payment.”
“I make a prediction about the relationship between US government debt and impending crisis” Bill Mitchell
“…Those who just want the government to feed the rich and their corporate interests and be always prepared to socialise the losses of these interests when greed gets ahead of prudence have been out in force claiming there is an impending public debt crisis….”
Yes, there’s that aspect.
And don’t forget that main motive is closely followed by pleas to buy gold or (these days) crypto.
If only I had a dime for every time a hair-on-fire rant about US govt debt was followed by such pleas…
It’s probably not the case, but I am tempted to wonder whether “hard money” enthusiasts would embrace the chronic depression that would attend the abolition of fiat money.
Perhaps it’s a viable route to degrowth, population control, and stabilization of the climate.
Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation has spent $7.5 billion to build just 7 recharge stations. You can only waste that amount of resources using fiat money. To cancel fiat money would also mean cancelling all debt and would cause a depression. But at the other end it might, might mean that resources could only be spent on what could be actually justified with debt raised requiring being secured by collateral. It’s a interesting thought experiment.
The type of currency will have no effect on the grift. You have to go after grifters to stop grift. There was plenty of it still when countries were on the gold standard.
The abolition of fiat currency is all part of the Bizarro World rules of engagement in the mutual collapses of the USSR & USA.
Fiat money really meant nothing behind the iron curtain, as there was scant consumer goods to spend it on and it wasn’t worth much in the west, favors were favored over fiat.
When the end came, a Ruble went from being in theory worth a buck fifty to 1,000 of them being worth a buck.
It didn’t matter that much as no Russians had savings in the bank, nor did they own their houses or apartments.
It hurt older people who had counted on their pensions to see them through, and sorry but 150 Rubles a month ain’t gonna cut it.
The younger Russians adapted to the new aegis, best of all as they hadn’t had decades to live under the Soviet economic system.
Here in the USA where money is everything and enables you to buy from a wide variety of consumer goods, when we collapse everything will be pretty opposite of what went down back in the USSR, savings either in the bank or in the guise of stocks & bonds will be rendered moot as worth, my monthly Social Security payment of around $1600 might buy me a chicken @ Costco, but why would Costco still be around?
Nobody hardly owned guns in the USSR, the situation being a little different here.
I’d much enjoy the fiat system that I’ve grown accustomed to, continue on its merry way the rest of my time on this mortal coil, but you can sense a major turning point is ahead.
The USA has more of a bad actor problem than a currency problem. Changing currencies won’t change that.
Totally agree Mikel. The US and Canada are already full bore doing MMT. The problem is where the spending is happening and who is benefiting.
That’s always been the rub with MMT.
Au contraire, with fewer things available for purchase, most Soviet citizens had accumulated money on their accounts. And that money and it’s value survived easily the end – what they didn’t survive was the end of the price controls in 1992. The inflation shot to 220% in the very same month and it took 5 months to settle in 45%. That spring destroyed all savings, pensions and most salaries.
Oddly enough, when the privatization vouchers were distributed at the end of the 1992, just a few individuals (mostly created by Gorbatchev’s reforms) were in the position to buy them kopeks for the ruble.
All true. And those who had apartments, which they did own by Article 10 of the Soviet constitution, got to keep them. A preference for storing one’s savings in apartment ownership persists to this day. It is virtually impossible to prise a Russian from the apartment they own where they are registered.
aye.
my 1100/month teachers pension for survivin spouses is already pretty insulting.
when it wont even pay for gas to get to town and back, thats gonna be a problem.
but…like someone said…what will there be in town to buy?
with that calculation included in the mix…i figger i might be a lot better off than just about anybody else out here,lol.
but i shore do wish we already had this infrastructure done…including a few more freezers, and the wind/solar capacity to run them, and the well pump.
with that all done…i’d maybe be rather sanguine about such a long term depression.
might teach some important lessons, as it were…namely, about reality, and the consequences of ignoring it for 50+ years.
Many under the guise of Communism were really only too happy to see it go, whereas we Capitalists will rue the day the music died, bye bye miss American Fi.
I asked my aunt in Prague in the late 1990’s, what was worse, the Nazis or the Soviets? and without hesitation she said the Soviets, as they were in charge of things for over 40 years, versus Adolf’s 6 year plan.
When I was a a child (1937), it was still common to hear, “Why don’t you stay for supper? We can add some more water to the soup.” I think it will take a few years for that attitude to develop again, given the divisions we are experiencing. In fact, maybe we’re experiencing these divisions because everybody has forgotten what the depression was really like.
There wasn’t 30 different sugary breakfast cereals to choice from, but there was plentiful fresh meat and veg. Depending on where in the USSR you lived, you had a better standard of living than many Europeans. Many former SovBloc citizens lived their best lives during the 70s 80s and 90s and many people live worse now under crapitalism than they did then.
One of my favourite pieces of writing by Orlov, 2006, describing how the USA would fare after a collapse, as compared to how Russia did.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us/
Russia:
“There were food warehouses in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme. There were very few restaurants, and most families cooked and ate at home
USA
“Many people don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch.
This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next.
If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.”
.
It’s not all made up. Debts denominated in a currency the debtor nation does not issue (which includes the sovereign debt of all the Eurozone countries) are potentially problematic.
Mitchell’s prediction is surely accurate (though I think it would be even more accurate to add the modifier “involuntary” to “default”; I’m not sure that accidental voluntary default by crazies playing games of fiscal “chicken” in US government is inconceivable), but it applies only to US and other nations whose sovereign debt is denominated in their own currency.
Mitchell does say in the article:
“… for most nations, the currency-issuing government can always, without question, meet all of its liabilities as long as they are denominated in the currency of issue.”
I think we need to keep an eye on Japan. They can still issue debt denominated in Yen, but for how much longer? The USD/JPY broke through the 160 level and the chart wizards say 200 is the next stop.
That’s a 50% devaluation in 3 years or so.
They can keep printing to the point where the JCB just buys up everything they issue. But some sort of vicious runaway feedback loop seems inevitable. At some point all the goods and natural resources they depend on externally will become unobtanium.
They’re not as big as the US and not the world’s reserve currency so I think they have less road left. Of course, Kyle Bass and others have been saying this for years but just because they’re early doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
If their economy ever collapses, just watch which countries and corporations go in to buy up Japan’s assets on the cheap and cannibalize the place. That is when Japan will discover who their true allies are.
I have this sneaking suspicion that when the Yen finally does its’ swan song, the JCB will run crying to Uncle Sam and dollarize the economy.
That would finalize the colonization of Japan. And yeah, I bet a lot of hedge funds and PE guys would love to scoop up a bunch of Japanese companies on the cheap.
> the goods and natural resources they depend on externally
This is, IMO, the key issue, and not just for Japan.
Thank heaven we have Markets to efficiently allocate resources. /s
And Japan is an island nation with more limited resources than the USA.
They never succeeded at doing what Britain did.
During the boom years of the 1980s, the rate was around 250 to the dollar, and higher on occasions. The appreciation of the Yen thereafter was seen as a disaster for the country’s exports. Draw your own conclusions.
My guess is that speculators have moved away from the Yen to the USD and that has resulted in the lower value of the Yen vis a vis the USD.
>>>Soon China will be delocalising production to Europe to exploit local low-wage labour.
This is a mis-apprehension, IMO. The rising labour cost has a lot of survivorship bias due to the remaining labor labor skilled still used in production—-the Chinese are relentlessly stripping out unskilled labor inputs with automation and robotics.
Just look at BYD’s newest factory… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd_bx6a4hgE
Yes, there will be outsourcing to the EU…but it will be done for political and logistical reasons, not to find “low-wage” Eastern Europeans.
I’m not so sure that there will be any outsourcing to the EU. The EU right now is trying to ramp up a trade war with China so I doubt that the Chinese will want to set up facilities in the EU which could be seized and nationalized without recompense like happened with Russian assets. Wait, I will modify that. They may do so for places like Hungary and Serbia but certainly not France or Germany or any Scandinavian country.
https://apnews.com/article/chinas-byd-building-electric-vehicle-plant-hungary-4c4754f43703d061e1dc02516be0c14a
Supreme Court Impeachment Plan Released by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Newsweek (furzy)
That link is going to a different article …
SocalJimObjects above gave the corrected link. It is at-
https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-justices-impeachment-aoc-1919728
Thanks, Rev. (and Jim)
The Al Jazeera article on the French elections is dated 29 June, the day before the first round last Sunday, and so effectively useless as a guide to anything much. It also contains a number of factual errors, eg voting booths are not open from 0600 to 1800, but from 0800 to anything between 1800 and 2000, depending on the area.
Weird, I got this from landing on their front page just a few hours ago.
surprise (countable and uncountable, plural surprises)
1. Something unexpected.
2. The feeling that something unexpected has happened.
Viktor Orbán expected to make unexpected trip to Kyiv on Tuesday.
Democrats Consider Nominating Biden a Month Early: Report Ground News
The Bidens need Joe to survive through the convention. Ohio, whatever. Joe needs to be alive to claim the nomination. Only then does the Biden clan have any chance at relevance (read dynasty) moving forward. Joe looks like he could pass away at any moment, so yeah, they are going to move the convention forward. Pay attention to who pushes back on this idea.
Jill has been lifting weights while wearing high heels, she’s ready when needed at a moment’s notice should Joe lean on her, doing something totally ordinary such as walking off a stage.
Lifting weights, in high heels, dancing backwards.
Ginger Rogers has nothin’ on her!
Cue some nostalgic ads. /s
Thanks for the link to the Frederick Crews obit. If our current century seems nuts how about the last century’s obsession with the dubious Sigmund.
One might even posit that the leisure class are particularly prey to cults and fantasies because they have a lot of time on their hands. At any rate huzzah for the skeptics.
Here’s the article’s link to one of Crews’ pieces.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/11/18/the-unknown-freud/
It’s perhaps lost in the translation of his works (from German), that Freud was a great man of letters and wit.
Please acknowledge his merits, before ganging up on the dominant father figure (Übervater) of modern psychology and disposing of him in a nasty free-for-all, just because he stood in your way – And between you and Madame Sinecure from Academia Street.
So he was a literary figure pretending to be a man of science? Or is this an assertion that psychiatry and science have little to do with each other?
And I have no dog in this fight although my brother did major in psychology. He was more into B.F.Skinner who also seems to have faded somewhat but was surely more on target than resurrecting Greek narratives as diagnostic tools. There are much worse things that have been said about Freud including his zealous promotion of cocaine but then the history of medicine is full of speculation and quackery so why pick on him, right?
To that question I’d say because people used to take him quite seriously and many no doubt still do. Fiction and non fiction are separate areas in the library.
“Freud was a great man of letters and wit.”
So was William F. Buckley, and I can imagine he would sound better in German too…
SCOTUS on presidential immunity:
“Oh No, Now The US Has To Stop Imprisoning Ex-Presidents For Their Crimes!” Caitlin Johnstone.
There is a limit to the power of kangaroo courts in the US.
Fascists!
A request: I’m in the market for a wearable air purifier. Can anyone suggest a brand or model? Any tips? Thanks in advance!
I use the Air Tamer and I assume it works but I can’t verify. I got the more expensive rechargeable battery kind and can confirm a single charge lasts a very long time.
Because Yves got the AirTamer I looked into it and got it too, fourteen months ago, and so far no-one in my household has caught covid. We use it for situations when we truly can’t mask (going through airport security, being with certain relatives, bank transactions). We use it in addition to wearing N95s when at all possible, Xlear nasal spray, claritin, and now also nasal neosporin. My husband has also used it a few times (along with the Xlear and claritin) without a mask in some crowded work settings and has been lucky but I think that is tempting fate.
I got the rechargeable ones for me and my husband and father in law, and they are holding up well and keep a charge a long time. I got the battery version for my mom since that is easier for her than plugging it into a computer, and that version also holds a charge for a very long time.
“European puzzle. How Hungary will use its EU Council Presidency”
The thing to note is that likely that Hungary will still have the EU Council Presidency when the Ukraine collapses. And it is Hungary that has been one of the few countries in the EU that have had a realistic assessment of the situation in the Ukraine from the get go. So perhaps they can use their present power to help stop the EU Council from doing some spectacularly stupid moves in the months to come. But it is going to be bumpy ride for Hungary.
Surprised to see nobody talking about how Hurricane Beryl is the earliest Cat 5 in history
im watching it for my cousin the captain in port aransas.
even if it stays way, way down south, it can cause problems all along the texas coast.
and the gulf is super hot, too.
might have another 2005 abornin.
I hope your cousin will be safe Amfortas. This season will make 2005 look like a walk in the park.
that mere tropical storm that went into taumalipas a week or more ago had him hoppin.
70 foot offshore fishin boat he’s a partner in(rest of partners are of the stupidrich kind)…and no floating dock behind the big iron seagates/levee.
so i reminded him of the method of using innertubes in the dock rigging, where the boat is allowed to rise above the dock with the king tide/surge/etc…but then the innertubes suck it back down into the slip.
not a perfect system, by any means…but thats what he did…out in the stormin and hip deep water to keep everything cinched just so.
so im watching this storm to attempt a heads up if he has to take that boat up or down the coast, depending on where Beryl is likely to go.
its an all-clown rodeo down there, as he puts it.
just him and one of his stripperchicks.
(like a string of ponies, or a remuda,lol—im like, send a few up here!)
According to the NWS site, ETA at the Texas coast is 8 am on Saturday. High tide in Brownsville Tx on the 6th is at 7:30 am, and according to the current storm track it still hasn´t made its right turn yet.
couple of days before that…not even registering on the surface analysis map(http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/sfc/lrgnamsfcwbg.gif)
and the high pressure heat dome hugging the mid texas coast, if it remains when beryl gets past jamaica, will deter in from a northward swing.
big low in sw mexico/centam…and another low around florida’s panhandle…either could draw it.
but we’re still too far out to say.
thats what i told him every day since this thing formed,lol…too soon.
you cant know which way to take the boat, yet.
watch the shrimp boats.
do what they do.
regardless of eventual track, it will effect the water at the dock its moored to.
southern track= strong east wind out of the gulf, pushing water into the bays and such.
etc.
add full moon around expected arrival, and nightime high tides(havent seen anything about a king tide, tho)…last storm, above, had him out all night, cinching stays in the dark, in hipdeep.
i said, well, dude, i hope you had a lifevest on,lol.
Since Acapulco City, the story is the storms blowing up to Cat_5 unexpectedly. If 2023 was ‘unprecedented’ what is this? NOAA had predicted five major storms, but the data points are outside all previous, so it’s extrapolation, which has consistently underestimated climate change effects. It wouldn’t be prudent to ignore a possible/probable catastrophic mainland landfall.
‘Catastrophic.’ Maybe that’s the word.
Sea surface temperatures are just about to cross under the El Nino delamination line. But looking back at 2015..2017, next year could be worse than this year…
I saw on the news that Granada got hit pretty hard. As you say, the big story is how it is the earliest storm of this size on record. Is this going to be the new norm?
Well, there’s not much to be done about it outside trying to be prepared. We’ve got a “momentum” problem and it extrapolates beyond climate. I once skidded over a cliff running down the Dudley trail off Katahdin. Survived thanks to a narrow ledge about fifteen feet down that I was able to land. Point being I wasn’t thinking about cliffs and momentum until it was too late.
Sal over at What’s Going on with Shipping has a video about the hurricane and it’s effect on shipping and energy transportation. He gets more into the energy consequences around minute 6.
https://youtu.be/uvzlGCmXKIg
I think there’s some confusion on how immunity works. Immunity means the official can’t be personally charged or sued for their actions. For example, Joe Biden can’t be sued for $100,000 for wrongfully denying student loan forgiveness under the PSLF program as President, or some such. It doesn’t mean that a claimant lacks the ability to seek an injunction or other relief from the official as official. For example, the PSLF claimant could sue the federal government for $100,000 or request an order that the relevant official forgive their debt. In other words, immunity doesn’t prevent litigation or remove standards; it just removes criminal sanctions or otherwise touching the personal assets of the official.
So, the president gets treated with tender kid gloves just like the CEO of a wrongdoing corporation, can’t be personally held responsible.
Perhaps. But it doesn’t mean that the official can do something illegal and the action stands, e.g. throw somebody in jail for no reason. The official can be sued, the prisoner released, and the prisoner even compensated (sadly from the public fisc).
…and so it begins
A fortnight or further of fortitude for fahrenheit, as a heat dome of silence descends upon much of Cali, and as a native son of the golden west, i’ve never experienced such a stretch-nor has our grid.
the alistaire crooke thing is pretty good…and scary and sort of hopeful at the same time.
i have been thinking about Parallel Structures in regards to all this for a while now…a la lenin and prudhomme, etc
its sort of smelled like thats what china and russia have been shooting for for a long time…a wu wei approach to curtailing the hegemonic(sic) west.
and idk if this was linked the other day…nor if the much longer russian thing he’s talking about was…but it is well worth your time…as Yves says, get a cup of coffee:
https://www.thomasfazi.com/p/inside-the-russian-mind
i find that i am in total agreement with what both men say.
enough so that i’ll likely spend the next bloc of time* re-reading the russian guy’s thing.
i dont remember the last time an american politician or think tanker/intellectual came forth with such a clear headed assessment of where we are, where we’re going, etc…hafta go back to Ross Perot’s midnight infomercials.
* i awoke at 3am…got out there piddlin around with farm stuff with a headlight at 4am…then at 7am, went and wrangled the male sheeps into a separate pen(so i played my eldest on tv, today)…because they’ve begun waving their little pink things around everywhere, and i need to give the mamas a break(and get a new breeding male).
all these males…currently 30-60#…are goin to the vet next week to have balls snipped so we can later butcher and freeze them.
so by 8:30am, i was toast…and will be hurting for the rest of the day.
my eldest is off working in east texas…and my youngest is just not rancher material,lol…so it fell to me, with the latter managing gates, and carrying the front legs of the 2 bigger ones(out of 8) into the pipepen.
both groups are over there yelling and carrying on, due to the disruption.
what i need…aside from a real, comprehensive, massage…is a couple of live in, nubile and moderately athletic farmchicks.
free room and board…and better food than anywhere within maybe 60 miles,lol…and a policy of strict respect for the agency of womyn.
sigh.
The Fazi link you pointed to raises a disturbing view of the Russian perspective in dealing with the u.s. — for example:
The current u.s. “…policy of provoking and inciting an armed conflict in Ukraine, attempts to drag China into a war over Taiwan, and exacerbate Sino-Indian disagreements.” — Policy and action to hold back and harry nations challenging the fast melting u.s. power over the world.
“This will happen if and when the degradation of the American elite is stopped, and the United States suffers another defeat, this time in Europe over Ukraine.”
If Karaganov’s understanding of the u.s. Power Elite holds sway among the Russian Power Elite, I believe the Russians underestimate the level of madness and degradation affecting the u.s. Power Elite. I doubt the passing of the current generation in power and a defeat in Ukraine will move the u.s. toward saner more reasonable policies toward the rest of the world.
I recall Daniel Ellsberg’s claim that the u.s. MIC needs Russia as an enemy to justify its strangle hold over the u.s. government. Russia remains the only country sufficiently power to nominate as a suitable enemy — although China will soon offer a second enemy of sufficient size and power to justify the colossal ‘Defense’ budget money flows feeding the MIC. I believe the MIC/MICIMAC [(Military, industrial, Congress, Intelligence, Media, Academia Complex] has wrested control of the u.s. government from the other factions of the u.s. Power Elite. The MIC is non-human. It does not regard anything but the profits from conflict and warfare. There is no generation in the MIC whose die-off will make room for a new generation of thought. The MIC selects its human components and molds thought to conform to the unrelenting pursuit of profits from conflict and warfare. The Neocon faction in the u.s. Power Elite, like the MIC that supports it, is similarly immune from reason and moderation.
I am curious to read the second installment to Faci’s review of Karaganov’s writings.
aye…megacorps(e) as the real first generation of AI.
iow, weve been living under matrix-like AI rule for a long time, now.
i remember, from long ago, the story of a carpet corporation ceo, who learned about the VOC’s his products were giving off in all those apartments and homes…and it disturbed his moral sense, etc…so he ordered R&E to do something about it.
he was soon replaced with a ceo that the Corp(se) would approve of…due to profits, and such.
Rhydd the gay druid guy(cant spell his last name under duress) calls multinationals “Egregores”…which i think is just as apt as AI.
and a bit from karaganov, himself:
“On the North American track, Russia should facilitate America’s ongoing long-term withdrawal into neo-isolationism. Clearly, there is no returning to the pre-World War II policy paradigm, which would probably be undesirable. The U.S. dependence on the outside world provides tools for pressuring it. If its current liberal-globalist elites leave power, the U.S. may even turn back to being a relatively constructive global balancer that it used to be before the second half of the twentieth century. A comprehensive strategy for containing the United States is unnecessary, as it would only waste the resources we need for internal consolidation. There are no intractable contradictions between Russia and the United States. The contradictions that currently exist were caused by the American expansion, facilitated by our weakness and stupidity in the 1990s, which contributed to the dramatic upsurge of hegemonic sentiment in the U.S. The American internal crisis, and the commitment of its existing elites to post-human values, will further erode Washington’s “soft power,” i.e. ideological influence. In the meantime, a harsh deterrence policy should create conditions for America’s evolution into a normal great power.”
dude!
they think we’re nuts(or at least our bosses are)
as in deranged and disconnected from reality.
which happens to be my own assessment,lol…but i arrived at it via mere observation, and didnt require any russian help.
almost AA, there, too…”when yer ready to kick the bottle, america, we’re here to help…”
another snippet from the russian guy:”By intensifying nuclear deterrence, we will not only sober up the aggressors, but also perform an invaluable service to all humanity. At the moment, there is no other protection from a series of wars and major thermonuclear conflict. At the Institute of World Military Economics and Strategy, recently created at the Higher School of Economics and headed by Admiral Sergei Avakyants and Professor Dmitri Trenin, we will provide academic support. Only some of my views are presented in this essay, which require the fastest working-out and implementation.”
again with the desire to compel us to sober the fuck up,lol.
says volumes.
like back in bush2 times…”go home america, you’re drunk”.
well,lol…we keep biting that dog, and gettin bit all over again…over and over and over.
if the folks at foggy bottom can find no one qualified to talk to guys like this Karaganov(sp-2)…ill saddle up,lol.
“put me in, coach”, ya bastid.
The West won’t be retreating from the imposition of its values in various areas, so the rest of the world is going to have to do more rejecting.
Thanks for the link. One of my uncles, a former White House translator and supposedly later a CIA analyst, was a professor of Russian history who got to do research in the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s, so I got to hear a different viewpoint as I lived on military bases during the Cold War, which I found interesting since supposedly they wanted to kill me as I lived very close to thermonuclear weapons and bombers that could deliver them.
Was the USSR aggressive or defensive? I view the west as always trying to colonize them, just like the US was trying to do to China.
I don’t know if the Russians were aggressive or defensive, but I remember reading, I think in the ’50s, that the Russians never went back on their word. When they made an agreement with The West, it was always The West that changed the meaning of words in the agreement and claimed the USSR were faithless liars. And, you know? As I watched over time, that claim seemed pretty accurate to me. The State Department publishes a history every year (or so). I wonder if back issues are online.
“Snowball Earth and the rise of multicellularity”
Now this really is intriguing. I would have thought that when the Earth was completely frozen over, that for life it was all lost time. Not so. Seems that life adapted by giving rise to the multicellular organisms. When all that ice retreated, life was really ready to boom then. This was something that I would not have expected but I should have. After all, ‘Life finds a way.’
Pity we seem intent on going the one direction where life finds no way…
Venus II here we come.
Saw the link on lithium above and reminded of recent news I’m not sure has been discussed here.
Apparently there is large amounts of recoverable lithium in fracking wastewater from the Marcellus shale. So ironically, fossil fuel extraction can help make the batteries and power your EV.
https://www.netl.doe.gov/node/13692
There are companies developing membranes that separate Li from an a brine. Hopefully this will be a possible solution since brine pools are major polluters and that part of PA has already been harmes by fracking and now the development of a petrochemical industry…the very industry that needs the chemicals that spilled in Palestine OH.
This article has a sentence that delicately says the quiet part out loud:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-02/microsoft-ai-deal-with-uae-s-g42-at-risk-over-national-security-fears?srnd=homepage-americas/
Microsoft AI Deal With UAE’s G42 at Risk Over National Security Fears
US officials see the Microsoft-G42 partnership as way to help Washington combat Beijing’s influence in the Global South.
“…Of the various efforts so far, the deal that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo worked on with the Emiratis, Microsoft and G42 holds the most promise — if Washington can find a way to get comfortable with it. The UAE has the money and ties to the Global South. Microsoft has the technology and, in President Brad Smith, a kind of corporate secretary of state who has developed relationships around the globe. G42’s Khazna division, a subsidiary that has built data centers in the UAE, is now expanding across Africa and Asia…”
And almost forgot…the opener about Kenya is interesting considering recent events.
“In May, Microsoft Corp. and G42, the United Arab Emirates artificial intelligence firm, announced plans to spend $1 billion on projects in Kenya, including a massive geothermal-powered data center. The deal was negotiated with input from the US and UAE governments and coincided with a summit meeting in Washington between President Joe Biden and Kenyan President William Ruto.
Proponents of the Kenya project see it as a potential blueprint for similar government-business partnerships that could help the US expand its political and economic clout in the Global South — emerging markets in Africa and Central Asia where China is already firmly entrenched. Microsoft and G42 have pledged to team up on multiple projects in coming years, leveraging the UAE’s regional ties….”
Turley on the immunity decision is worth a read.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/02/age-of-rage-critics-unleash-threats-and-abuse-on-the-court-following-the-presidential-immunity-decision/
But then some Dems now consider the Constitution to be outdated white supremacy. Which doesn’t stop them from citing it when convenient to other arguments. Maybe AOC is just a flake.
Nowhere in Article III or elsewhere does the Constitution give the Supreme Court authority to give orders to the Congress or the President. Chief Justice John Marshall created the power with his revolutionary decision in Marbury v. Madison. I happen to agree completely with his arguments.
What seems to be lost in the discussion is that every president up to now has enjoyed full immunity for all actions, including all actions from before they were president. With the new three-tier test for Presidential Immunity there is now a clear basis for prosecuting former presidents.
Under Tier 2 (Presumptive immunity for official acts), the president can now be prosecuted if the prosecutors can show that the criminal act being prosecuted will not interfere with a president carrying out their official responsibilities. For example, if a president were to order an drone assassination of an American citizen, that act can be prosecuted because restricting the murder of an American citizen by the president does not interfere with their official duties.
Under Tier 3 (No immunity for acts performed for personal benefit), the president can now be prosecuted for illegal behavior that is done for their own personal benefit (like trying to get a successor of their own party elected). So if a president were to knowingly take a made-up accusation from their own party against their rival and coordinate having the FBI launch an investigation into it then this behavior can now be prosecuted.
Could you tell me where specifically you’re getting this idea of “no immunity for acts performed for personal benefit”? The decision specifically says “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” (p. 18). So, in your example, it seems to me that the president would not be open to prosecution by virtue of the fact that ordering FBI investigations, in the abstract, falls within the scope of his duties. I don’t see a lot of textual support for the claims you’re making here.
Somebody just asked me if I heard of Project 2025.
I said, “Right now, I’m worried about Project 2024 where we don’t know who’s running the country.”
Same. I’m much more concerned with what’s happening now before our eyes than what might happen in the future.
The missile attack on the Crimean beach goers on a RU holiday changed the situation dramatically. Very little reporting the MSM about Putin’s and Lavrov’s responses. We’re in dangerous territory now, imo. And who is in charge in the US? Who Ok’d this? Does B sign orders he doesn’t understand? Very worrisome to me.
id say this is worse than the cuban missile crisis.
except that practically everyone i know is unaware and/or unconcerned about it.
they all also have what i consider rather idiotic and dangerous ignorance about just about everything…and are rather proud of that ignorance/certainty.
very, very worrisome.
If one country has people more dismayed by the US Presidential debate than the USA itself, it would be Ukraine.
“We’re in dangerous territory now”
Dear flora, would you marry me, if I offer you a non-irradiated, well-defended and oxygenated place in the heart of my personal nuclear bomb shelter, near a moonlit bay right by the side of the sea?
[ https://genius.com/Erika-eigen-i-want-to-marry-a-lighthouse-keeper-lyrics ]
dude…yer hornin on my role, here,lol.
and i have a better view…ie above ground, unlikely to be fallout save in an all out exchange.
chef, radical horticulturalist, feral philosopher, sinferguenza thoughtcriminal, etc.
feeling rather jolly atm.
enough beer and weed that pain has abated from this mornins sheepwrangling*.
boys call it “load management”,lol.
which we use as code between us, so my mom doesnt hear “day off”, and lose her mind.
(*= actually wrangling and wrestling the frellers,lol…got em all in the big chute, then half into subchute.
grabbed hind legs of offending males, and dragged them into main chute…let subchute females go out the other way…chase all the rest into subchute, repeat.
without eldest, i prolly caught and moved all 8 of them at least twice each. theyre all covered in stickers and cactus thorns…and do NOT like being caught thus…kicked in the balls, kicked in the jaw, in both legs….lol.
again, clownrodeo…and now i’m drinkin beer and smokin hoglegs with a herd of geese at the wilderness bar.)
And the geese, still grumbling?
My chickens grumble all the time. They get, by far, the most awesome feed, get moved onto new pasture soon as it’s needed, got plenty fresh water, and yet …
Every time I walk by, it’s 7 little cranks, hands on hips, complaining about what ain’t right in the world.
Ha. Which one is the Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn in the flock? The Music Man. / ;) utube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvhFs2bdRpE
frelling all of them, chickenwise.
geese are a very conservative bird…look at an open gate for 3 days.
muttering.
unknown how these 15 muscovy duck chicks my cousin brought me(hatched in his yard…i quarantined them for a month) will integrate into the menagerie…i hope theyll get along with the geese, and can latch on to that herd.
ergo, im feeding the geese scratch outside the run the ducks are in, so they can talk through the chickenwire…been innerestin to see the geese stop and look…and then peer closer(the ducks resemble baby geese…large ducks)
ducks are currently under the care of the banty hen i had in there for the 2 chicken chicks, from the last run(those chicks are in there, too, furthering the social acclimation…at least i hope,lol)
banty stands guard in front of them when i walk by…and her presence seems to have mollified their utter terror when i appear.
I learned in very early childhood not to mess with tame domesticated geese flocks if they did not know you. Geese can be ferocious against whoever they regard as outsiders. Painfully ferocious. / ;) You have banty chickens? Such great tiny chickens. Small but mighty, as the saying goes. / ;)
banties make the best mommas, for when the chicks get moved to thye “teenager house”.
so i try to keep them around.
sadly, they are so small when they hatch, that they tend to fall thru the workings in the brooder and harm themselves(pulled one out of there this morning who had apparently broke his neck.)
so ill hafta either modify the apparatus, or implement a system where an actual banty hen sits on eggs in some controlled environment.
i keep a steady flow of the other chickens hatching out…separating out superfluous roosters for eating…and replacing the hens lost to attrition.
meh. / ;)
Actually we do know who is running the country, same folks that were responsible for JFK assassination.
Very much this. Never mind the election — who is wielding supreme executive power right NOW?
Medical anecdote, I saw an Orthopaedist yesterday, the letter confirming my appointment specified that masks were required.
They weren’t.
I saw two MD’s the first was unmasked the second wore a KN95, there was a small air purifier in the exam room…
I mentioned “Brain Fog” to the first MD and he said “Oh yeah, we’re seeing a lot of that” in an offhand manner.
Taibbi”s latest with an Orf video. This is about the MSM failures, not about B.
Biden is Not “Sharp as a Tack”
No matter how bad you think the press lies and exaggerations about Joe Biden’s condition have been, trust us. They were worse
https://www.racket.news/p/biden-is-not-sharp-as-a-tack
Adding, not to pile on, but dementia, (i’m not a medico. an older relative died with dementia and I watched how it progressed in them), dementia is an undiscovered country to everyone not suffering from it. We can only guess. This is a series of self-portraits by a professional artist as his dementia progressed.
Powerful Self-Portraits Reveal Artist’s Descent Into Alzheimer’s Disease
“In 1995, at the age of 61, American artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In response to the illness, the London-based artist immediately began to paint an ambitious series of self-portraits. From the time of his diagnosis to 2000, when he was admitted to a nursing home, Utermohlen created a powerful documentation of his painful descent into dementia as a way to try to better understand his condition.”
https://mymodernmet.com/william-utermohlen-alzheimers-self-portraits/
Again, I’m not a medico, I only know that what I saw at the debate looked like something I’ve seen before.
as ive said, me too…ive seen that behavoir and expressions and gait and on and on many, many times.
biden aint in there for all intents and purposes.
im torn between a humanitarianesque pity for the guy, and utter hatred for him(he is a notorious ass who wont take no for an answer) and everyone enabling this charade.
To the bold – yes, no doubt. This is just another example how much we are lied to – even when the proof is right in front of our eyes. We have known this for years and anyone who even questioned his health was run through the ringer. Remember Diane Feinstein? She worked in congress until she died, but nobody questioned that either.
Truly amazing what we are seeing, especially with two going on 3 wars. Who is running the show? Is it Biden, in his good hours – 10-4 in one article I read, making the decisions? I have my doubts – so who is – we can only speculate. Not good or pretty – they are playing with people’s lives over political wins.
At least if Joe stays in, my PMC friends my get their wish; I would vote for a corpse before I would vote for Donald Trump.
We are so screwed.
i may have introduce the term, ‘versailles democrats” to the NC lexicon, back when…bc i remember Lambert making hay out of it,lol.
in my down time, i’m watching “Outlander” on netflix…i dig period pieces, and alth i feared this one would be too chick-flicky, ive gotten hooked(and they apparently did their homework, re: history)
one season has them in paris and versailles, among the courtesans and with the king…all the grotesquerie, mistaken as beauty and elan….
total decadence…and not the rather anodyne mere-sexual kind i prefer.
but over the top privilege and an ingrained expectation of deference.
of course the latter obtained in england and scotland at the time…
but i watch the scenes with the various pompous asses, and think about pelosi, et alia.
Jimmy Dore featured the same Orf video on his live stream yesterday. Also when I looked at it on TweetX this morning it had over 40M views.
Will people stop paying attention to MSM, I doubt it, it will be memory holed a la 1984.
No hugs & kisses but six feet social distancing.
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1808116620948115571
Is the cover up worse than the crime?
https://www.racket.news/p/biden-is-not-sharp-as-a-tack
I don’t understand the Independent calling bisphenol-A a “safe” chemical. There have been warnings about its toxicity over here for years, and I thought we were requiring manufacturers to phase it out (so of course they are replacing it with the equally bad bisphenol-S). Is the UK more lax than the US about toxic chemicals?
Getting some buzz
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/a-neurosurgeon-diagnoses-joe-biden
Pauline Kael had Parkinson’s from the ’80s and lived to be 82. Biden is 82.
The harsh truth about Israel – Judge Napolitano sits down with Ambassador Chas Freeman:
Amb. Chas Freeman : Why Israel Is Losing Its War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzMUFViWRJ0
To be honest, I look at what’s happening in Israel, and see disturbing fun-house mirror images of similar human “values” (or lack of them) in America.
Apologies if this has been posted above.
Thanks for the link. In this day and age it seems improbable Chas Freeman exists and can be interviewed. Adults in the room indeed.
“Looking at all the automation in Chinese factories, I am not sure that raw labor costs matter that much, particularly given that direct factory labor as a % of most manufactured goods product costs, like cars, was about 10% to 13% in the US…”
Importantly, US manufacturing productivity has actually decreased for the last 12 years:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mx
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024
* Output per hour of all persons
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mB
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024
* Output per hour of all persons
(Indexed to 1988)
US manufacturing multifactor productivity has actually decreased since 2008:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1duBG
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Multifactor Productivity, * 1988-2022
* Real value-added output divided by combined inputs.
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1duBP
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Multifactor Productivity, * 1988-2022
* Real value-added output divided by combined inputs.
(Indexed to 1988)
Anger mounts at Joe Biden’s inner circle after debate debacle Financial Times
They’re shocked—shocked!—at the president’s weakened state.
Meanwhile, we all recall Matt Stoller’s tweet from early March, 2020, linked to in the comments on this very site, saying “Democratic insiders know Biden has cognitive decline issues. They joke about it. They don’t care.” (Neera Tanden responded, “This is really beneath you.”)
There was also Glenn Greenwald, at the same time, again in 2020, tweeting about David Dayen’s tweet relating his own first-hand observation of Biden “declining,” in Greenwald’s words, “saying what is obvious to any minimally honest person.” (And, in the past few days, as a few people have referred to, including myself, Greenwald did a full-length video about how, until the debate, the establishment Washington media roundly attacked anyone who suggested that President Biden was suffering from cognitive decline.)
Do you know who is getting disabled in the millions by Covid infections?
Do you think it’s CEOs and company owners?
No. It’s everyday working people.
Why the hell are unions and the left not screaming about this?
———————–
Excellent question!
The answer is – most people simply can’t deal with it.
My crowd mostly is of college educated people. I am the only one masking and taking precautions of all the people I know (approx. 50 regular contacts ).
People with PH.Ds in sciences – look and sound upset if I ever bring up the question of – are you taking any precautions against covid?
I’ve had good friends get really upset when I talk about all the different things that covid will damage in the body.
NOBODY wants to talk about it.
NOBODY wants to deal with it.
>The West – indubitably – has lost Russia, and is losing Eurasia too Alastair Crooke
Sergei Karaganov quote: “The UN is a dying breed, saddled with the Western apparatus and therefore unreformable. Well, let it remain. But we need to build parallel structures … I think we should build parallel systems by expanding BRICS and the SCO, developing their interaction with ASEAN, the League of Arab States, the Organization of African Unity, Latin American Mercosur, etc.”.
BRICS is a head-fake. Purpose of BRICS is not to be an OPEC-like commodity cartel replacing the USD. Purpose of BRICS is to build a political block within and eventual replacement of the UN.
Framing BRICS as an OPEC-like commodity cartel replacing the USD has two key effects: 1) creates a club-like dynamic which people *want* to join – which is why current membership is being ‘restricted’ to ten, and 2) creates an economic ‘safe space’ where members can remediate coercive US economic pressure when acting against the (US) ‘Rules Based Order’ in the UN and other international organisations.
The UN is now in terminal decline (last nail in coffin has been Gaza), and like the League of Nations, UN’s decline is a forewarning of global war. US has well & truly faq’d things up and dealt itself a very bad hand in the Great Game through its own negligence.
details on EU democratic deficit are described here:
Luuk van Middelaar – Alarums and Excursions or Improvising Politics on the European Stage
Luuk van Middelaar – The Passage to Europe & How a Continent Became a Union
It seems that the system devised by Dutch well off Burgers would be Oilgarchs has been adopted for the entire Europe.
Looking at those barn swallows in today’s Antidote du jour, I tend to suspect that those barn swallows had spent far too much time with the barn owls going by the shape of their heads.