Stonehenge’s enigmatic centre stone was hauled 800 kilometres from Scotland Nature
40 Years Of Summer Solstice At Stonehenge: From Anarchy To State Repression To ‘Managed Open Access’ Eurasia Review
Rolling stones (excerpt) Times Literary Supplement. The deck: “Was Stonehenge a great communitarian project?”
The IRA and the challenge of remaking America’s economy FT
The world will lose $4.7 trillion of revenue in the next decade to tax havens. How did we get here? The Business Standard. Commentary:
A lot of folks, including a lot of folks in the financial sector, think the Trump corporate tax reform ended the incentive to "offshore" profits.
For pharma at least, the data is clear: it didn't.
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) August 15, 2024
Climate
‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating Guardian
Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect Quanta. The deck: “Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.”
Scottish isles may solve mystery of ‘Snowball Earth’ BBC
* * * Feasibility of peak temperature targets in light of institutional constraints Nature. From the Discussion: “A robust insight from this work, however, is that focusing on cost effectiveness without consideration of institutional feasibility and regional differentiation leads to important biases in benchmark scenarios.”
Revealed: Growing data centre demand cancelling out green energy progress Business Post
* * * The world laughs at Britain’s heatwaves – they really shouldn’t Independent
Don’t underestimate the cost of the green transition Gillian Tett, FT
America Has a Hot-Steel Problem The Atlantic
Syndemics
Outbreak of mpox caused by Monkeypox virus clade I in the Democratic Republic of the Congo European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
2 Mpox Cases in Oneida County, 1 Case in Otsego County WKTV
* * * Will bird flu be the next pandemic? Vaccines are prepped, just in case USA Today
* * * The association between prolonged SARS-CoV-2 symptoms and work outcomes PLOS One. From the Abstract: “Despite the end of the federal Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 and efforts to “return to normal”, policymakers must consider the clinical and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s employment status and work absenteeism, particularly as data characterizing the numerous health and well-being impacts of Long COVID continue to emerge.”
Water
All of Earth’s water in a single sphere! USGS. From 2019, still germane.
China?
Chinese commercial bank chairman killed, stabbed in office, ex-subordinate held: report South China Morning Post
China’s spending slump weighs as e-commerce giant Alibaba misses estimates Channel News Asia
China’s embrace of rail and EVs stalls holiday petrol demand The Business Times
China’s Huawei is reportedly set to release new AI chip to challenge Nvidia amid U.S. sanctions CNBC
Myanmar
China supports Myanmar junta plan for fresh elections: Foreign Minister Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
Land allocation approved for first new West Bank settlement to be built since 2017 Times of Israel. Commentary:
The Israelis are eliminating one of the last Christian Palestinians strongholds in the West Bank and the place I chose to stay when I was researching the Palestinian Christians in From the Holy Mountain. It is a place with an incredibly ancient history, a cradle of Christianity,… https://t.co/QSXVovzUzd pic.twitter.com/tS3XR9A64G
— William Dalrymple (@DalrympleWill) August 15, 2024
US says West Bank attacks by ‘violent settlers’ are ‘unacceptable and must stop’ after 1 killed Anadolu Agency
We Served on Israel’s Sde Teiman Base. Here’s What We Did to Gazans Detained There Haaretz
Dad Jokes 3 Quarks Daily
Dear Old Blighty
Into the Void New Left Review
New Not-So-Cold War
Symposium: What does Ukraine’s incursion into Russia really mean? Responsible Statecraft
Ukraine has called Putin’s nuclear bluff The Telegraph. The deck: “Timid Western leaders must seize the rare opportunity offered by Ukraine’s bold masterstroke.”
What’s the real aim of Ukraine’s Russian offensive? The Spectator
Ukraine gambled on an incursion deep into Russian territory. The bold move changed the battlefield AP
Putin Has Victory in His Grasp Anastasia Edel, NYT
* * * Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Is a Turning Point in the War Foreign Policy. The deck: “The biggest impact is the destruction of Vladimir Putin’s narrative for victory.”
Ukraine’s Incursion Into Russia Flips the Script on Putin NYT
* * * The Bitter Lees of Overreach The New Kremlin Stooge
Russian car loans, food halls booming BNE Intellinews
South of the Border
CNN’s Fraudulent Analysis of Fraud in the Venezuelan Presidential Election Dissident Voice (pjay).
2024
Journalists Defend Kamala Harris’ Lack of Interviews (video) Glenn Greenwald, YouTube
Democrats Need to Stop Trashing Palestinian Voters if They Want to Win The Nation. Commentary:
Biden, Harris celebrate deal to lower drug prices in first joint public appearance France24
Antitrust
Monopoly Money Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At?
The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
Matt Yglesias Is Wrong About Lina Khan’s Record Revolving Door Project
Campaign Address in Portland, Oregon on Public Utilities and Development of Hydro-Electric Power Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The American Presidency Project:
[FDR:] When I became Governor, I found that the Public Service Commission of the State of New York had adopted the unwarranted and unsound view that its sole function was to act as an arbitrator or a court of some kind between the public on the one side and the utility corporations on the other. I thereupon laid down a principle which created horror and havoc among the Insulls and other magnates of that type.
I declared that the Public Service Commission is not a mere judicial body to act solely as umpire between complaining consumer or the complaining investor on the one hand, and the great public utility system on the other hand. I declared that, as the agent of the Legislature, the Public Service Commission had, and has, a definitely delegated authority and duty to act as the agent of the public themselves.
Spook Country
The National Endowment for Democracy:What It Is and What It Does Ministry of Public Affairs of the People’s Republic of China
Digital Watch
Google’s AI Search Gives Sites Dire Choice: Share Data or Die Bloomberg
Civil rights advocates oppose bill creating a foundation to aid NIST’s AI standards work Inside AI Policy
Supply Chain
Tanker markets shrug off escalating Middle East tensions S&P Global
The Olympics
Imperial Collapse Watch
“We Need to Reclaim Our Republic and End Our Damn Empire” (video) Lawrence Wilkerson, Schiller Institute, YouTube
Class Warfare
Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan Tablet Magazine
The Wealthy Are Bringing Big Money and Luxurious Lodges to Maine’s Lakes WSJ
The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology Quanta
Antidote du jour (RicciSpeziari):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
DOWNRIVER
(melody borrowed from Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Well . . .
What she lacks now in public prose, y’all
A skill Kamala’s bereft of Lord!
When she can’t remember which word’s right
She freaks and delivers silly verbal shite
Verbal spew—standin’ in the bright lights!
Teleprompter fallibility, oh!
Leaves her with no words that she can see
Suddenly she feels she’s drowning underwater
Reaches for one word grabs at another
Word salad spew is the best she can deliver
Well . . .
(musical interlude)
Convention vote is gonna go sideways, oh!
Delegates will seize their chance to swap her
DNC decides she’s not their drover
Gonna see some big time backroom brokers
Chicago’s gonna see Harris sold downriver
Well . . .
Send her home . . .
Great song– I am not foreseeing HW-WH 2024 being undone next week. But if it were to happen, heads exploding everywhere would make Independence Day seem quiet!
Maybe the “electorate” behaves like a school of fish, self-rounded up into a bait ball by the presence of predators? The whole thing turns as one, in a “new” direction, the collective hoping instinctively that the in-gathering on the changing vector might preserve the mass, while individual fishies get slashed and eaten as sacrifices to gluttony?
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/bait-ball
And the predator adaptation? https://www.flipscience.ph/flipfacts/bait-ball/
Of course factory fishing, the ultimate predatory looting of the commons, leads very often to virtual or actual extinction of the bait species…
Does not matter a whit to the predator, what the “preferred policies” of the baitfish might be.
Why am I recalling the net behavior of the folks over at DKos?
RE: “Don’t underestimate the cost of the green transition”
I will probably not phrase all this elegantly, and much of this is well articulated throughout NC. At most, you can have two out of three of the following: (1) the same way we live now, (2) relatively low energy prices, and/or (3) the climate the way we’ve had it for the foreseeable past.
There is no way to have say a net-zero world and the same energy prices. It simply can’t be done with the technologies we currently have available, the ramp up in construction that would have to take place, etc. in the timeframe people discuss.
Also, policy makers, and economists, are really bad (probably worse than that) in addressing structural changes and how they ripple through the system. Let’s take one example: property insurance. All the models they use say rates need to be orders of magnitude higher for the risk of loss. The politicians, in personal lines where rates are regulated, would never allow them to go to the right level. The net results are reductions in availability and under insured property. These are not one-offs, these are increasingly systematic. There are large volumes of coastal commercial real estate that has reduced their coverage limits due to price; i.e., they are significantly under insured. When, not if, the right storm hits they damages will disrupt the regional economy, there will be mortgage failures that will flow into banks, and so on. We already do significant bailouts when these storms hit.
Or, what happens as global agricultural and water systems change? Already happening.
So, Tett’s piece is a bit of a hodgepodge in my view. But the reality is much starker and there is really no way out.
Tangential to the article and this green transition… politically speaking how does the reality of daily life and daily strife contrast with how our the most celebrated and highly compensated of athletes, entertainers and elites invest in their little hobbies, personal causes, and so forth. Maybe some of them really do pay heed and at a minimum, attempt to keep a lower carbon footprint but come on…they ain’t flying commercial airlines if at all possible.
I grant you this article below is highly specific and focused…but the very rich aren’t just different it’s like an alternate reality has sprung to full view since about what, circa 2010? The article discusses a fairly new electric boat racing series.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/14/monaco-hosts-e1-a-new-racing-competition-using-all-electric-boats-.html
I think most of the people at the top see what you see. It’s part of the reason “AI” is being pushed so heavily, as it’s the last bit of hopium they can push to keep the global industrial Ponzi afloat.
Maybe we “get lucky” in that stochastic gradient descent discovers something truly remarkable. The bleak reality is though that even if we can discover some brilliant solution, we still require the industrial capacity to put it into motion, which I am skeptical of. Even worse is when you understand that this “Hail Mary pass” results in planetary ecocide if it doesn’t pan out.
And even if “AI” could solve these problems, the fruits of its silicon labor would be so concentrated in a few people and corporations as to throw us into a feudal cyberpunk dystopia. So for 99.9999% of people, it’s lose-lose either way.
The entire enterprise is to rip off culture and science and regurgitate it as if the machines thought of everything.
What the past decades have shown, there is always another bubble around the corner.
“Weird” is the current buzzword. It certainly sums up a lot in that article about UK climate. We Brits are famous for our complaints about the weather, but we really do have reasons to do so this year. Average temperatures are absolutely normal. Variance is off the scale.
I started paying attention to what the Uk climate was doing in 2009 when I moved to Sydney. I lived there for 6 years and saw climate change up close and personal. I also saw the lack of protection against it: I lived practically in Sydney Harbour. No A/C necessary historically due to sea breezes (but 1 day a year in year one, it was up to 10 days by the time I moved back to Europe).
Starmer should be paying attention to the weather (instead of the other rubbish he seems overly bothered about). Climate change predictions are that we in UK won’t see MASSIVE changes in average temperature. But people like me pay more attention to the variance. I remember how within two years I acclimatised to “NSW syndrome” and the appalling drafts below my unit door became an issue (when they were never so in UK). People notice stuff.
Re: ‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating (Guardian)
Anecdata from my location in coastal Vietnam is a real feel of 45C yesterday. It’s been stupidly hot here for weeks and it’s very hard being outside for long between 11am and 4pm. My Aircon can’t cope that well and I’m sweating even with it on Turbo mode.
Climate change feels less and less of an abstract threat and more of a terrifying new reality that will get worse fast. Really hope that’s just my fearful mind talking.
You’re not wrong. NC and other sites have talked about the catastrophic effects of minor increases in “wet bulb temperatures”. in the +/-30 degrees latitude area.
We are facing the possibiity that the area of Earth where 70% of the population lives will be officially “unviable without A/C and therefore massive investment in bad stuff”.
One way or another I think our global population will be back to 1 billion within 100 years.
Indeed.
Friends tell me “not to worry, a tech solution will appear”.
Maybe Elon could pitch some mega project to block/redirect the sun using smoke and mirrors.
\s
‘We are facing the possibiity that the area of Earth where 70% of the population lives will be officially “unviable without A/C and therefore massive investment in bad stuff”.’
I still think that in a lot of places, moving underground is a viable option to get away from the heat though some sun exposure will be needed for getting a dose of sunshine for Vitamin D production. Underground water cisterns would also help stop evaporation of the same but the main problem is what are you going to grow to feed all those people and how far away will it come from?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230803-the-town-where-people-live-underground
And if we got back down to about 1 billion people in the world, would that be so bad? That was where we were in about 1800 and we got along fine.
Mushrooms?
Klaus Schwab would say ‘Vee must eat zee bugs!’
Still, having only 1 billion rather than 9 billion people means far more land available to feed the remainder.
>And if we got back down to about 1 billion people in the world, would that be so bad? That was where we were in about 1800 and we got along fine.
I guess the question is how are we getting back to 1 billion and how fast?
Pandemics?
” Vaccines ” gone bad?
Nuclear war?
Mother Nature/Climate change accelerating?
all of the above
Soylent Corporation Has The Tasty Answer!
“And if we got back down to about 1 billion people in the world, would that be so bad?”
No, but the getting there might be. My conceptual brain thinks it’s for the best. My empathetic/emotional brain shudders at what this process will look like from the inside.
I used to have romantic visions of collapse/rebirth along the lines of the (to me very beautiful) “Earth Abides“. I don’t any more.
A virus killing 90% of us seems preferable to how climate change and it’s companion conflicts and disasters would do similar.
George Stewart is one of my favorite authors and Earth Abides is such an interesting premise, the world mostly without us…save a human here, a human there.
What if the ending came without a sound, and produced beautiful auroras that wowed us thousands of years ago no doubt, when electricity was but a distant gleam?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240815-miyake-events-the-giant-solar-superstorms-that-could-rock-earth
That I could be at peace with Wuk. You have a lovely way with words btw.
well Wuk i’ve been wondering just that, here in Michigan all the solar activity providing such nighttime beauty provides wonder – a CME will eventually cause some serious trouble too – all the auroras and northern lights that are happening this solar cycle reminded me of CME’s –
a big one will eventually hit us and it will be a fatal blow to the electronic world we live in, and the electrical interdependence is increasing geometrically –
we missed a big hit in 2012 – https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/ –
a glancing blow hit Quebec in 1989 – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geomagnetic-storm-march-13-1989-extreme-space-weather/ –
a full on one in 1921, but we weren’t quite all electric – https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2020/05/12/the-great-geomagnetic-storm-of-may-1921/ –
and of course the infamous Carrington event in 1859 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
Re: ‘We should have better answers by now’, My short form, first cup of coffee response is “You should read Arctic News.”
We are choking on forest fire particulates again this morning (Not that this will make you feel any better Ben, sorry).
From the article. …the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next. ahem. No, the alarming acceleration of temperature rise says the “experts” were wrong or unwilling. This “who could’ve known” theme is dishonest at best.
Good news, the author seems to have learned about albedo.
Horrifying opening chapter of the excellent read “Ministry of the Future”, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is a heat event—
Really appreciate Terry Flynn’s observation of variance versus averages. People do notice stuff, and variance is a wonderful encapsulation. My problem, as I age and mis-remember, is second guessing increasing instances of anomalous variance weather events, versus, “am I mis-remembering the olden days?” Pretty confident weather is Weirder, and it is warming, and it is anthropogenic, and we are the Anthropocene. Is that Woke?
Yardsticks for such an event as the Big Heat we’re facing are few and far between, but I take solace in reading of what went down in the Little Ice Age, where the earth cooled by a measly .3 C, and we are 5x that on the other end now, ye gads!
You might want to put on a sweater while reading of the crazy shit that went down, all of the rather frozen flavor, yikes!
And there used to be around a billion of us back in the day, incredibly isolated from one another, the Incas weren’t hep to the Romans or the Hutus or thrice-a-versa.
When you drive to Fox Glacier on the west coast of the South Island in NZ, you’re going through rainforest, and every now and then you see a sign that says the glacier was here in 1856, drive another mile and it was there in 1914, and so on, until you get to the approach to the glacier, where we were last there in 2010.
You had to walk a mile and a half to get to the point where you could get onto the glacier itself, which was bordered on both sides by impenetrable thickets of greenery-twas quite a scene!
Here we are a scant 14 years later, and there aren’t any hiking options, although you can heli-hike, as the glacier has receded so much, foot travel is too dangerous from near the base of it.
Franz Josef Glacier is in the vicinity and also came down into the rainforest, all because of 1 degree Fahrenheit difference cooler.
Closer to home, all of the present glaciers in the Sierra Nevada were formed during the LIA, and most are fading away, a late 19th century photograph versus present day can be shocking, the disappearance.
Every year in the highest Sierra, we get a snowpack of say 20 feet and it dutifully all melts off in the summer without fail, pretty much,
All it took to make permanent glaciers was a crummy degree cooler Fahrenheit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
I visited the Athabasca glacier in 1994. The yardsticks indicating its extent (and retreat) were sobering even back then. I wanted to shake the nearest Canadian and say WTAF?
Of course we Brits started this whole race to the bottom.
Thank you, Terry.
Starmer is not going to do anything. Just before, after a presentation by Ed Miliband at a shadow cabinet meeting, he “exploded that he hated tree huggers”.
To be fair to Starmer, he’s always been a right wing authoritarian. It was only a majority of Labour activists not paying attention, “comme d’hab”, as we say in French.
In addition, Starmer can’t. Why? Well his philandering, including appointing one mistress and former party official to the Foreign Office, will be all over the media.
Thanks Colonel. I knew the writing was on the wall the minute Labour trotted out the “Starmer defence” aka his record as Director of Public Prosecutions and what he did in the riots (around 2011?) (24 hour court hearings etc).
The man is not worthy of his hero’s name at all.
“US says West Bank attacks by ‘violent settlers’ are ‘unacceptable and must stop’ after 1 killed”
This headline could have been published anytime over the past several decades but the Israelis never listen because there are never any consequences. They will just sit there taking more of the West Bank secure in the knowledge that no matter if the US wags their fingers at them or not, the flow of money and weapons never slows.
The Biden administration will do nothing about it.
They’re too busy playing their assigned roles in the Kabuki Theater of phony ceasefire negotiations, with only one side at the table.
Can we nominate these clowns for “best actor/actress” in the Emmys?
At least there are elements of the policy-making community in the US that notices this kind of stuff. I love the word “unacceptable” because, of course, it’s been acceptable for decades. Israeli leadership and society wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians and Washington and its vassals want Israel’s ethnic cleansing/genocide agenda to go slow so the Empire doesn’t look like what it actually is.
Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Is a Turning Point in the War Foreign Policy. The deck: “The biggest impact is the destruction of Vladimir Putin’s narrative for victory.”
Remember kids, always shoot at the narrative. The column of tanks passing you? You can safely ignore them, when the narrative is dead, they will freak out and run back.
Ah memories: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60061473.amp
Oh wait never mind: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gdjjlydp4o
Memory hole especially acute these days. BBC had another
fawningnonpartisan article this morning that seems to have been pulled that ran “Kamala changed her positions on the issues. That’s normal.”They’re not lying. It’s very normal. Sad to say
I hear the Judge Napolitano channel has been suspended from Youtube for a week. He doesn’t seem to maintain channels on the other platforms – his latest vids on Rumble are 2 months old.
Probably a good thing. He needs to have parallel platforms. If a Twitter-like expose of censorship ever emerges I speculate people will be astonished at the perfidious level of Deep State involvement…it’s a damn shame that there is so much good content like music lessons, documentaries, and lectures only to be found there. Otherwise, I would have long ago abandoned it.
Same happened to Alexander Christoforou about a year or so ago and he was suspended for a week as well. Somebody went into the several hundred videos that he had made and found one minor bit where what he said was up to interpretation so YouTube took him of the net – which meant that he had a strike to his name.
It seems that the authoritarians are desperate to suppress any dissent now that we’re in the home stretch for the 2024 elections.
Hopefully Judge Nap will migrate over to Rumble. Do we know how many FBI agents are working for Google?
‘Do we know how many FBI agents are working for Google?’
Couldn’t that be also reworded as-
‘Do we know how many Google workers are working for the FBI?’
As we discovered when Musk took over Twitter, the links between it and the security services & White House were incestuous and I would expect this to be true of Google as well.
Oh, of course, maybe that’s the better way to look at it. One giant, incestuous circle of conspirators. Racketeering to deny Americans their First Amendment rights. Where is Fani Willis to look into it?
They gave you the big clue right at the beginning when they decided to call themselves Alphabet Inc
When people learned that the FBI had a desk at Perkins Coie, or was it the other way around, a subsequent question would be:
Where else?
and then Why?
and What TAF!?
“Desperate”? “Successful” comes to mind. Looking at “news” on the internet ain’t what it used to be. I’ve been paying close attention to what google news offers me for a long stretch now, more specifically what it doesn’t show me. Dissent from the narrative has all but been eliminated at this point. You’d think that this comedy of the absurd Kamala! the Musical should lift the veil for some, but we will never know from reading about it on the internet.
well…i stopped even trying google news a long while ago…even for monitoring purposes.
and since my bookmarks are habitually in chaotic disarray, i rely on my memory to remember where to go to get useful-ish news regarding whatever region or topic.
i reckon this serves as a sort of memory exercise, too,lol….”use it or lose it”, etc.
having said that, i did wander through the google news search recently…for something that happened in texas(i think that last hurricane)…and the returns were frelling laughable…even for so innocuous a subject as “that big storm in houston”.
stuff about misinformation, what kamalamadingdong said, how terribly evil trump is…just a whole bunch of stuff that wasnt anywhere even close to what i had actually searched for.
Judge Nap is one of my go-tos and wondered why suddenly no programs
yesterday — he usually mentions any vacation etc.
yup, time to move to Rumble
via ‘x’ – looks like Judge Nap will post a statement this a.m. (8/16)
https://x.com/Judgenap/status/1824267265321079051
Larry Johnson posted on Sonar21 that Judge Nap is still on BitChute. I tried BitChute and his videos are available there.
Nap has an X file, https://x.com/Judgenap, and reportedly is also current at Bitchute though I’m not smart enough to navigate to it.
Last YouTube post was a criticism of Our Lord AIPAC, so was that the trigger for the cowardly “one week time out?”
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/aQetMqjWsWgC
Thx
>Land allocation approved for first new West Bank settlement to be built since 2017 Times of Israel. Commentary:
No anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism will stop the continued development of the settlements. We will continue to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state, and establish facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission and God willing I will continue with it as much as I can.”
“Land allocation” my arse, unmitigated theft. Yes, continue to fight the “dangerous idea” that justice is the basis of all legitimate governments/states and that ALL peoples have Natural Rights, even goyim and Muslims.
The Israelis don’t look at it as theft because they are convinced that the land (form the river to the sea) belongs to them–this is theology speaking not reason. We should all realize this now that Israel is a religious state and there is no way a “two-state” solution is even remotely possible. We must remember also, Israel does not ship each Palestinian out of their enclaves (or kill the outright) because Washington forbids it (at the moment). But, to me, it’s coming. The technique Israel has used since the collapse of Oslo has been, as one Israeli woman put it so elegantly, they will make life in Gaza/WB a “living Hell” for the Palestinians so they will just find a way to leave voluntarily. So we either support the Israelis or the Palestinians or wait to see how the fight turns out.
Which made me think that the Jewish jokes might get a makeover in the future. With such bullying attitude they will not be able to make these kind of jokes:
“Three Jews are driving through the Black Forest in a horse-drawn cart. As the road winds around a curve, they find that a large tree has fallen and blocks their path. They pull their cart over to one side and study the log. Then they sit down and begin to discuss how to deal with the situation. They adduce the theology according to Mishna; they cite Maimonides and even Spinoza; they consider the social and political implications… This goes on for several hours, until another cart comes around the curve and stops at the log. The burly German coachman leaps off the cart, walks over to the log, puts his shoulder under it, heaves it aside, and continues on his way. As he disappears down the road, one of the Jews turns to the others and sneers: “Kunshtuk—mit gevalt!” (“Big deal—he used force!”)”
From the link “Three Dad Jokes” of today…
“Will bird flu be the next pandemic?” Take a look at Parvovirus B19, AKA Fifth disease, or slapped-face disease. It used to be rare in immunocompetent adults, but it’s spreading among them now. https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2024/han00514.asp
Into the Void – New Left Review
True to form, atrocious writing style, stale rhetoric, and obsolete concepts that inspires nobody outside the “left’s” narrow bubble.
But beneath British pogromism still lies a universe of misery which it is the left’s historic task to negate. Successful strategies for doing so are in short supply. A-to-B marches, of the type which now take place in London every month, can be a useful way to assert a political line.
Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Is a Turning Point in the War Foreign Policy. The deck: “The biggest impact is the destruction of Vladimir Putin’s narrative for victory.”
The Swedish author of the article writes that “we know Putin sometimes shows a distorted view of reality” without knowing that his view is more, much more, distorted.
The object of the Kiev assault across the Russian Federation border may be a lot of things.
The effect is to shift the headlines. Kiev assault news and trepidations are diverting coverage of Kiev loses in Donbas and Lughansk.
End of day same outcome as cluster munitions on a beach….. with a lot more Kiev equipment and bodies expended.
Putin doing a lot better with border security than Harris in US!
The problem for the West is these types believe this is a war on narratives while the real action in the ground, the reality, doesn’t merit the slightest consideration.
> Putin Has Victory in His Grasp
>> Ukraine and Europe won’t be the biggest losers of this war, though. In any alliance, the brunt of responsibility is carried by its leader.
>> Depending on who’s in power in Washington, this reputational disaster
Tens of thousands of bodies, half a million casualties, and the Disaster/Destruction of note is to Narrative/Reputation.
Callous disregard. Depraved indifference.
“distorted” as opposed to, say “dishonest”. An interesting choice by the author.
What I find extraordinary is the western fixation on “narrative” as though narratives win wars. You don’t need a “narrative” for victory, you need tanks, guns, aeroplanes and trained soldiers, all of which Russia has, and all of which Ukraine increasingly hasn’t. It simply reinforces my opinion that western elites are totally pig-ignorant about war and conflict, but comfort themselves with the belief that their PR is better. Tom Lehrer got it right as usual, sixty years ago, talking about the Spanish Civil War. “They may have won all the battles/ but we had all the good songs.”
Maybe it’s because “narrative” and a giant ocean off of each coast has had a reasonably high success rate? IDK, who can explain what goes on in, say Antony Blinken’s noggin?
It has a bit of logic in it. If you talk Russians into voluntarily throwing their weapons away and dissolve Russia, then you have won. Of course the problem is when you are not as much great world totalitarian and manipulator as you think you are.
On the other hand, we may ask who they are actually trying to con? That Putin whole strategy to win the war is to create narrative that he will win the war and trick the world into believing it, is itself is just narrative created by people like Bildt. And to be fair, this constant juggling of narratives is working quite well for them, professionally and financially. So who cares who ends up physically owning Ukraine? They have their money and nice narrative explaining how they got them.
“And to be fair, this constant juggling of narratives is working quite well for them, professionally and financially.”
And years will pass and they move on to the next lies, still comfortable after failure after failure.
This is a good/must read… Martyanov posted.
https://thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com/2024/08/14/the-bitter-lees-of-overreach/#more-6027
Which, as it happens, Lambert already linked to, under the heading “New Not-So-Cold War”…
So sorry. Did you read it?
And where they cannot create a narrative, there will be a memory hole… Nakba 2.0 will be as often mentioned in the future in the West’s narratives as Nakba 1.0…
The Kursk stories sound like the Kamala stories–something to do with the letter ‘K’? Alternative reality is fun and easy to do at home. Real life is such a downer.
Our library has a copy of Servant of the People–Zekensky’s former acting gig–on their foreign shelf. I have to resist the urge to check it out and deface the cover. But maybe we too should start hiring actors for the POTUS job since professionals have enough work ethic to actually learn their lines and not need cue cards. The Repubs have already been doing this with Reagan as the prime example but the Dems surely can do better in their choice of empty suits.
Watching the TV news tonight, it was one steady victory march of the Ukrainians into Russia. The war has changed course and Putin is so embarrassed about all his failures. But even I can recognize a fire sac when I see one. The Russians are evacuating civilians not only for their own safety but because of the Ukrainian propensity to attack civilians. You can guarantee that the Russians will be hunting down any Ukrainians in this cleared area and will not allow those units to simply disengage and flee south. Meanwhile the Germans, Canadians, British and Americans have individually told the Ukrainians to use their supplied military requirement in invading Russia and have go at them. This is really bad karma that the NATO nations are building up for themselves and when this war is over, the Russians are going to extract revenge on them all. No, not an invasion of Europe but they will make sure that all those countries experience a lot of grief. Believe that!
My guess is Putin is pissed because USA/NATO is forcing him to hit them HARD. Not just some slap in the face. Who knows….maybe a coordinated hit on NATO facilities with “Axis” hit on Israel. That will certainly spin them out. PEACE!
It seems to me that the official Russia is having a propaganda heyday: the motherland has been invaded and “the wrath is rising like a wave”. Apparently the number of volunteers are doubling up in the recent days.
As well as the demands of there not being Ukraine anymore when the dust settles. At the moment it seems there will be no negotiations, just surrender. But moments come and they go. In the end, I still think this Kursk adventure will cost Ukraine more, one way or the other.
The Wealthy Are Bringing Big Money and Luxurious Lodges to Maine’s Lakes- WSJ
The influx of money shows no sign of slowing. The Maleys said they recently turned down a substantial unsolicited offer for their lake home because they didn’t want to move.
How nice for the Maleys. Meanwhile I received this in my email yesterday. Thankfully, I only use my “Firestone” credit card to get discounts. But I feel for someone whose car breaks down and can only make payments on credit balances. The gap between the “Maleys” and the unwashed masses gets wider and wider.
Dear XXXX
Credit First National Association (“CFNA”) is making changes to your CFNA Credit Card Agreement. The following is a summary of changes that are being made to your account.
Your variable Annual Percentage Rate (“APR”) will be increased to 34.99%. This includes an increase in the margin to calculate your variable rate APR. The margin will be 26.49%. Your APRs may increase but will not exceed 34.99%.
A Penalty APR of 39.99% may be applied to new and existing balances as described in the Revised Terms section below.
What? People actually thought low interest rates ever “trickled down” to the masses?
Low interest rates only “trickle down” (and especially fast) when it comes to interest on your savings.
Shameless, making loan sharks blush! ☺️
As the WSJ article noted, Maine has a long tradition of its residents going “upta camp” in the summer – lots of people have had very small lake properties for years. Just modest little getaways that working class people could afford.
I was recently at one of the lakes noted in the article, staying at a state park in a tent. We took a look at real estate prices while there, and there are no more “camps” affordable by the working class. Today, you’ll pay $500K for a falling down shack and closer to a million for something not in need of immediate repair. Friends of mine who have had camps in their families forever are now getting squeezed on taxes as the property valuation on these camps skyrocket and are finding it very difficult to hold on to them. “People from away” are the only ones who can afford these properties now.
This from the article really sparked my ire –
“Maine has been the bargain for a long time and it’s now being discovered and everyone wants a part of it,” he said. “You can’t blame them.”
Yes, in fact I can blame them, and I do, 100%. And now thanks to this WSJ piece, the problem will likely get worse. Just notified yesterday that after a new revaluation, property taxes would be going up 25-30% or so this year in my town. Increased valuations have been driven by out-of-staters grossly overpaying for Maine real estate now that everybody can “work from home”.
Really wish all the Massholes with too much money would stop “discovering” Maine and stay in the area they’ve already ruined.
>Really wish all the Massholes with too much money would stop “discovering” Maine and stay in the area they’ve already ruined.
Well, like locusts, they’ve finished with Vermont and decided to head up there…
My extended family lives in VT, and they’re all feeling the squeeze too.
The fact that the rural people I grew up with know how to handle a firearm much better than the flatlanders, who can’t even drive on the dirt roads they put their mcmansions on without winding up in the ditch, is a consolation.
This is the story of my family camp. The rich need to own everything. Those who can’t perform economically within the framework of society can take a flying leap. What are those two rules of neoliberalism again……
Loan Sharks are legal now?
The wealthy bringing their deep pockets to what was previously lakes and recreational areas of Maine. Heaven help if they get a Marty Byrde in their midst! \sarc
Spoilers on the series Ozark not withstanding, this is or it surely seems so, occurring increasingly in what could be once described as sleepy or less populated tourist areas. Retirees have a lot of wealth, not terribly surprising the opportunity to either downsize or fully relocate from bigger metro areas. Similar dynamics have been in play since ~ 2011 in western NC and Asheville. Albeit the dynamics at play in this region roughly an hour away from where I am, are moderately different, given attractions for tourism and many Americans within a day’s drive to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Rumor has it after Tucker Carlson had his ugly fly shop moment in in Livingston Montana at THE Dan Bailey’s with another Dan Bailey, he ended up in Maine.
BrOligarchs gotta go bro somewhere…
https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2021/jul/26/the-worst-human-being-man-confronts-fox-newss-tucker-carlson-video
The article says-
‘Dan Bailey, posted the video of the encounter in a sporting goods store’
Though no fan of Tucker Carlson, that makes it sound like a set-up for clicks and likes.
A friend has a place in vicinity of Moosehead Lake. Beautiful country, big lake and a trophy “catch and release” trout river! Great day hikes, too! About 90 minutes from the exit off the Maine Turnpike! Probably 4 to 5 hours to Boston. We are all retired, but he still uses it as second home.
Winters are becoming less remote with more winter activities!
My “situation” is to go up there with him to fish the rivers.
Different “situation” and I would be there.
I found this recent Maureen Tkacik story in Cory Doctorow’s links:
«The private equity firm TPG sold the underlying real estate to MPT in 2013 for about $87 million, meaning the [now-failing] hospital owed annual rent of just under $7 million in the early days.»
https://prospect.org/health/2024-08-13-let-them-eat-invoices/
Further:
… «But because MPT is both Steward’s biggest creditor and the source of most of the funds Steward used to hire its bankruptcy lawyers and advisers, its $8 billion in spectacularly bloated lease obligations linger like a noose around the necks of its hospitals.»
How to get rich through bankruptcy.
Divide and conquer, modernized. :(
Private equity delenda est!
Re AI safety bill, be on the lookout for the term “socio-technical standards” in more grant announcements.
file under Big Brother.
Turley’s latest:
Want More Freedom of Speech? Try Less Government.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/15/want-more-freedom-of-speech-try-less-government/#more-222356
“Public health leader, who is also a former elite athlete, investigates COVID management at the Olympics”
The authoress – Dr Bronwyn King – ‘is a former elite swimmer who worked as a Team Doctor with the Australian Swimming Team for ten years, and is also a special advisor on clean air for the Burnet Institute.’
But more to the point, she knows what is at stake through personal experience. She suffered two bouts of Covid which last year left her a shadow of what she used to be. You read the following article and you can see how Covid really did a number on her-
https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/i-was-a-shadow-of-myself-how-long-covid-changed-dr-bronwyn-king/
The point of the Ukraine attack is clear. Yes, they wanted to capture the Kursk nuclear station but they failed and that won’t happen. What has succeeded is clear now with the wealth of stories on how the Ukrainians have “turned the tables” on Putin (note they never mention “Russia” because they need the simplistic comic book villain scenario). Now the Empire’s propaganda artists want to gin up even more support for the hopeless cause of Ukraine and in that sense the Ukrainian project has been re-invigorated and there will be more public support for throwing more billions into the hopeless cause and pockets of oligarchs as massive numbers of people die. Something had to be done to get Palestine off of the front pages.
> Into the Void New Left Review by Anton Jäger
This article is a response to Richard Seymour’s article in NLR from two days ago (Dreaming of Downfall) that we discussed in Links comments yesterday. Its critiques are remarkably similar to ours, down to almost every point, albeit dressed up the in the flowery verbiage that I guess is NLR’s thing. It seems unlikely Jäger read our comments so I guess the shortcomings of Seymour’s thing are just that obvious.
But if you put the two together and don’t mind gratuitous left-theory styling, the combined picture of they present might not be too bad. Links to both are in this comment.
Sorry, I didn’t set this up at all. It’s about the
Riots in England and Northern Ireland.
Seymour’s article is worth a read for a summary of what’s been happening but we here in NC comments and, it seems, Anton Jäger found its explanations inadequate.
this tidbit:”Added to that economic backdrop are other, more twenty-first-century factors: the falling price of cocaine, which is no longer merely consumed in law firms and nightclubs but also at sports matches and in pubs; the suppression of British football hooliganism, which has siloed more young men into the milieu of the far right – a world that mainly exists online, but in which nocturnal terror squads provide at least a fleeting sense of social collectivity.”…made me stop and get up and wander about the house.
eurohooliganism that seems to go hand in hand with futbal….as social pressure relief valve…like on the side of a water heater.
and then this:” Rather than a fear of the other, anti-Muslim feeling is a fear of the same: someone in a position of equal dependence on the market, yet who is thought to be more effective in shielding themselves against its onslaught.”….
is something ive seen first hand in both the Mexican American community in which i am an honorary member, as well as the Palestinians i knew, way back when.
ive spoken of this many times…both those cohorts remind me of my (very white) grandparents, and their parents…cohesive, working and living and helping together…plowing everything back into expanding their capacity as a whole.
with the Latin Americans i know, this is more true the closer they are to recent immigrants.
with the Palestinians i knew, it was true no matter how long they’d been here.
these separate realisations made me admire greatly both cohorts.
…as well as to apply such lessons to our own penury.
i can see how this ability and willingness to charge forward in the face of penury…rather than sink into meth addiction, Klan membership, or mere wife beating…might make some of the po white folks a bit jealous and uneasy,lol.
You can just truncate the headline to “Matt Yglesias is Wrong” and it will be evergreen. Also works for Noah Smith.
“Journalists Defend Kamala Harris’ Lack of Interviews’
Going by memory here but didn’t Biden pull the same stunt back in 2019? That months passed with no interview forthcoming from Biden? At least journalists back then had the decency to note how many days had passed since Biden gave an interview which got really embarrassing. Or then again, maybe he was not embarrassed as he knew that he had the race in the bag.
I’m content to not watch her strangle the English language, merely utilizing only her vocal chords.
Maybe trot out KamalA HarrIs in her place, how could AI do any worse?
A soulless machine with a faux-cheerful facade covering it’s inhumanity, a bad facsimile of human personality, and no grasp of actual reality, spewing out meaningless verbiage and occasionally descending into insanity. How could AI compete with that?
I have a friend who can 99.8753% of the time, give the perfect smile in a photo. She told me she spent a lot of time looking at the mirror to get it just right.
Now imagine if in lieu of that perma smile on Kamala, she had a sourpuss look on her grill, yikes.
Is she Canadian?
Cali gal.
Didn’t HRC set the precedent here? Going to ground for six weeks or more? I recall arguements with friends who thought it was justified because the misogynistic press would trash her. Maybe it’s the new dem way!
The MSM acts like a wholly-owned subsidary of the Dem estab, imo.
Disclaimers needed on news programs.
Before the demise of Equal Time, thanks Ronnie, there was a semblance of truthiness.
Regarding narratives – I have consistently heard the argument that Russia is very sensitive to the disposition of it’s neighbors since it has a large and difficult to defend border. And so this Kursk incursion actually validates that narrative, and the fact that they are using NATO, weapons, equipment, and perhaps even mercenaries and ISR is further validation.
Near the end of the article on covid in Fortune magazine we have this quote:
Why is the word “may” used? It all seems very weak, since it can be said that 100% of people “may” develop long covid.
perhaps the word “may” is used in the sense of “have permission to”.
Whose permission? I don’t know; maybe the CDC’s /s
> CNN’s Fraudulent Analysis of Fraud in the Venezuelan Presidential Election Dissident Voice (pjay).
The author didn’t understood the problem.
> Biden 81,268,924 51.31%
> Trump 74,216,154 46.86%
> Total 158,383,403 100.00%
>
> If you multiply the percentage given for Biden 51.31% times the total number of votes, (158,383,403),
> the result is 81,266,524, which is different from the total reported by the FEC above (81,268,924).
That’s not the problem. It’s the other way around. If you are taking 2 supposed random numbers, the shares of the sum shouldn’t be round numbers. If the shares are round, the 2 numbers are (very likely) not random. But in case of an election count, they should be. In the Biden example the share is 51,3115152…%, not 51,31% (or anything like 51,3100001 or 51,309999)
But in the Venezuela election case it’s:
> Maduro 5,150,092 51.1999971%
> González 4,445,978 44.1999989%
> Others 462,704 4.6000039%
That’s a problem. If that are the real numbers of the election, it is indeed looking very unlikely.
But are they the real numbers? The guy claiming fraud based on those figures is using reported numbers rounded to one decimal place, however I have no idea where those numbers came from. I have also seen other reported totals rounded to two decimal places, which seems more normal. No idea why toals have been reported slightly differently by different sources. What I do find extremely difficult to believe is that in an election with 10 candidates, somehow around 2/3 of votes preferred Gonzalez which is what the opposition is claiming, despite being openly backed by the US govt. which has been absolutely vicious towards Venezuela for over a generation now. If Gonzalez’ backers and CIA friends are going to claim fraud, maybe make your own purported numbers a bit more believable.
I just ran across this article from last year where Tim Canova discusses irregularities that happened during his primary run against known primary rigger Debbie Wasserman Schultz a few years back – https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/why-i-had-to-leave-the-democratic
What struck me about that article were the similarities between what happened to Canova several years ago and what Maduro’s people have claimed recently in Venezuela. I had been somewhat skeptical of Maduro’s claims of a DDoS attack right before the election, but apparently the same thing happened to Canova. If true, it almost seems like there might be some sort of playbook these people are running to get their desired election results, will of the people be damned.
There are, theoretically, many ways to steal elections particularly in the USA. I vote as a ritual, I have no idea if my vote “counts” or is deleted or is augmented. The bits and pieces of craziness (always unexamined by the MSM) around US elections would, in an honest less corrupt society be cause for a close examination. But the big dogs in te eda no longer report on such things–ever notice how there are now no Pentagon scandals.
“Will bird flu be the next pandemic? Vaccines are prepped, just in case” USA Today
Here they go again.
No mention if any of the shots are sterilizing vaccines.
And the rat’s can’t wait to start censorship of anyone who asks the question.
Bet not a damn thing learned.
“Pluralistic: The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street (14 Aug 2024)”
‘Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff…. Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in “cheater” sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates.’
Probably 7-11 has the same sort of tactics. Over twenty years ago when they were talking about setting up a chain of 7-11s in Iraq after the US invasion of that country at a business conference, they casually let it drop that one fully-stocked 7-11 could put 30 local stores out of business. So the question is how did they know that it was so many.
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancels pianist’s performance after dedication to journalists killed in Gaza -Guardian
So anybody that’s had a loved one or friend murdered by Israel can’t publicly say anything.
It’s not going to stop until those upholding this censorship and degeneracy are held accountable.
The same is happening with those that support Russia here in Oz. Near the beginning of this war an artist painted a huge mural of a Russian and Ukrainian soldier hugging each other as wanting peace. This was in south Melbourne. The local Ukrainian community were outraged at this and officials backed them so not only did this poor guy have to apologize on social media but he was forced to remove that mural-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/melbourne-artist-removes-mural-depicting-russian-and-ukrainian-soldiers-hug-20220905-p5bff3.html
Personally I would have said **** them if they can’t take a joke.
“Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancels pianist’s performance…”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/08/citibank-climate-protest-new-york
August 8, 2024
Cello-playing climate activist arrested at New York Citibank protest as crackdown escalates
Second activist also arrested during ‘summer of heat’ protest against second largest financier of fossil fuels
By Nina Lakhani – Guardian
New York – A 63-year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York.
John Mark Rozendaal, an adjunct music instructor at Princeton university and Alec Connon, director of the climate nonprofit group Stop the Money Pipeline, were arrested for criminal contempt in the public park at the bank’s global headquarters as the crackdown against nonviolent climate protesters escalates…
Re Doctorow explains it all on big box stores and Wright-Patman–while Reagan era relaxation of the rules undoubtedly has had much to do with the sheer behemoth quality of Walmart, one should point out that it’s hardly confined to the retail sector and that the financial sector will always be the true villain of the ’80s.
And the obsession with Walmart ignores Kmart, Woolco and other earlier attempts by the former dime stores to upsize and add huge parking lots for an increasingly suburban America. By this means our downtown was dead long before Walmart finally showed up. It’s the car that killed those small stores and the big box was a response to changing lifestyles. Making it only about political manipulation puts the chicken before the egg.
Plus Doctorow does finally get down to this
“Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers’ rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.”
The urge to dominate isn’t confined to the bigs but can also take place among the smalls so simplistic explanations don’t take in the whole picture.
from Consortium News:
Scott Ritter: The FBI’s Raid on Peace
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/16/scott-ritter-the-fbis-raid-on-peace/
I’ll add this quote from James Madison:
“The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
― James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787
and a longer quote on the same topic:
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
― James Madison, Letters and other writings of James Madison
—–
And of course, imo, war is very, very profitable for the Military Industrial Complex, the MIC.
Scott Ritter: The FBI’s Raid on Peace
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/16/scott-ritter-the-fbis-raid-on-peace/
Time to re-read what James Madison wrote about the dangers of war.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1824014722884059377
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released quite the explosive report on the US’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), explaining how under the cover of “promoting democracy”, it has “long engaged in subverting state power in other countries, meddling in other countries’ internal affairs, inciting division and confrontation, misleading public opinion, and conducting ideological infiltration”.
In short, it’s subverting democracy, the exact contrary of what it says it’s doing…
https://fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/wjbxw/202408/t20240809_11468618.html
The NED has long been infamous for doing this kind of stuff but there are a few things in the report that are really explosive:
1) Meddling on an enormous scale in Ukraine
The report claims that the NED “provided $65 million to the Ukrainian opposition during the 2004 Orange Revolution”. They also write that “during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan, NED financed the Mass Media Institute to spread inflammatory information. NED also spent tens of millions of dollars in the use of such social media platforms as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram to spread disinformation, heighten ethnic tensions in Ukraine, and stir up ethnic antagonism in eastern Ukraine.”
2) “Taking Mexico as a major target country for infiltration”
As the report details, the NED has financially supported numerous organizations like “Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) and the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), and obstructed the electricity reform in Mexico”. They also write that “in 2021, the Mexican government sent a note to the US government condemning NED’s funding of anti-government organizations in Mexico as ‘an act of interventionism’ ‘promoting a coup.’ ”
3) Interference in Serbia’s elections
They write that “in April 2022 and December 2023, Serbia held its presidential, National Assembly and local elections. NED interfered in the entire election process, and went all out to root for pro-US opposition candidates in the run-up to the elections. In May 2023, after two consecutive shooting incidents in Serbia, NED-sponsored human rights groups and pro-US opposition organizations staged mass demonstrations to demand the resignation of the Serbian government.”
4) Instigating the recent protests in Georgia against the government for its foreign agents bill
They write that the “NED funded the establishment of three local NGO groupings in Georgia at the beginning of the 21st century to organize demonstrations in capital Tbilisi. In May 2024, NED rallied support for and instigated protests in Georgia against the foreign agents bill.”
5) Supporting “Taiwan independence” separatist forces
They write that the NED co-hosted events with Taiwan’s separatist Democratic Progressive Party, “tried to mobilize ‘democratic forces’ to open up the ‘frontline of democratic struggle in the East’ and hype up the false narrative of ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow'”.
Needless to say, all of this is a complete violation of the UN Charter: they violate both the principle of sovereign equality that guarantees each state’s right to freely choose and develop its own political, social, economic, and cultural systems; as well as the principle of non-intervention in the domestic matters of other states. And I’m not even mentioning the violation of the victim states’ domestic jurisdictions…
5:26 AM · Aug 15, 2024
Karl Sanchez on his blog, karlof1, published this document a couple of days ago. As CA says, it lays it out pretty clearly.
The UN Charter? No serious player pays any attention to that or, in general, international law. We live in a different international situation than that envisioned after WWII. There is only one law–whatever Washington decrees and the rest is just theater.
Actually people pay attention to it, or more precisely at the many ways the US and the West have trampled on it. Russia, China & Co are clinging to the tenents of UN Charter as a goal to achieve, forever undermined by the US & Co…
The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
― James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-16/the-rich-can-t-sell-their-art-so-they-re-borrowing-against-it?srnd=homepage-americas/
The Rich Can’t Sell Their Art, So They’re Borrowing Against It
Art sales have slowed but lending is up at the major US banks
Clients look for ways to unlock liquidity while keeping art
Another example of how over-inflated asset prices are needed to keep the hyper-financialization afloat.
It’s a system that is bankrupt of real ideas ( or strangles the best of ideas) that benefit most people in societies.
I have some book that came out in the 90’s, and it has prices of fine art through the 20th century, and a presently valued $100 million painting might’ve run you $50k in the late 40’s, to give you an idea of the ultimate bubble, if you’ll allow me to frame it in that manner.
By the way, for almost nothing, you can reproduce any painting digitally where from 20 feet away, most couldn’t tell the difference.
So it’s like tulips then.
Poor Banksy can’t even keep a tag up for a week before some culture vulture is cutting off a portion of wall to later sell for millions. In the film Banksy Goes to NY this is exactly what happens. Sadly nobody wants the bad graffiti which hangs around for years on our bridges and housing projects.
…the Krylon School efforts have never really appreciated in the open market
I’m old enough to remember when Banksy was actually subversive rather than a fawned on “national treasure” for middle-class Guardian readers.
The number of news stories about his basic stencil cats and rhinos over the last week or so has been wild.
Some culture should never become mainstream.
As I mentioned recently, I’m old enough and regional enough to have a friend who knows Banksy and got to chat all sorts of stuff with him before he was famous and was outed in the media (and believe me the MSM totally know who he is). I don’t give his name because I legitimately never gave a damn so never committed it to memory but plenty of people with Bristol connections could. But that reduces the number of clicks on websites…..
There’s a reproduction service that will copy your, say, Basquiat that hangs on your wall. The original is then safely stored in a warehouse. I think the source is the film ‘The Price of Everything.’ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7475540/
When asked the ideal viewing distance for his paintings, Mark Rothko replied “Eighteen inches.”
A future edition could show the prices of those coveted Hunter pieces. ROFLMAO 🤪
The Doges cheating @ poker with Burisma rendered on black velvet is anticipated to appreciate the most.
Maybe pro sports ownership is the largest bubble though?
The LA Rams sold for $19 million in 1972 and are worth around $5 billion today, that’s a sweet 250x your investment
Any old SFH 3/2 in LA fetched $30k in 1972, now worth a million clams or about 33x.
You did much better on the gridiron~
“Ukraine has called Putin’s nuclear bluff”
The reason that nuclear deterrent worked for many decades is because these weapons were once used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in recent years, people expect that they won’t get used anyway. I think that almost invites actual use again at some point, to restore the deterrent.
I think use of nukes is quite likely in the coming years.
“We Need to Reclaim Our Republic and End Our Damn Empire” (video) Lawrence Wilkerson, Schiller Institute, YouTube
The US ‘leadership’ is dangerously insane. It is clear many would choose nuclear war over acquiescing to a multipolar world. What do you do when dealing with such madness? I wonder if it would be wise for countries like Iran or China to intentionally provoke a world financial crisis by closing the Straights of Hormuz or in the case of China and other countries just cutting all trade with the US. It would cause everyone pain of course, but it is better than nuclear annihilation. It would concentrate minds and might dislodge the current neocon leadership in the US. I guess there is a risk the deep state would still use nukes in a fit of rage. It angers me greatly that the ‘elite’ in my country are so deluded, incompetent, soulless, and corrupt that I have these thoughts. It affects my sleep.
A recent post by KLG on NC, Reflections on the War on Work as a War on Workers, lamented that we no longer have a multi-polar country, much less a multi-polar world. The gigantification (and crapification) at the national and world scales seems to have gone hand in hand.
i frequently think about china cutting off trade with the united states. because with our lackluster industrial capacity, it would screw us big time. but then it’s like, how do you convince all the other states to go along with it? i’d imagine we’d see something like russia selling oil to india so india can sell it to nato to get around sanctions. also, cutting off things like shein or temu wouldn’t really work, because dropshippers would just start buying it and selling it on a markup under a different name at a greater scale. don’t get me wrong, china cutting all trade with the us would hurt us, but how feasible is it in reality?
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
― James Madison
Ukraine has called Putin’s Nuclear Bluff
“ America’s massive superiority in conventional weapons means it could cripple Russia’s war machine inside Ukraine without needing to use nukes itself and without needing to set a boot or fly a plane outside Nato territory. “
Are they speaking about Rapid Dragon ? Could any knowledgeable readers comment on this capability? It would explain a whoooole lot.
I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to refer to. Given the constraints, they must be talking about missiles fired from Poland or Rumania, and thus with ranges of hundreds of kilometres, but which ones currently fielded in overwhelming numbers and proof against Russian counter-measures and anti-missile systems, I have no idea. Does anyone?
The quote is a bit specific, with them referring to systems that require neither boots on the ground (anywhere near a battlefield), nor planes flying outside NATO territory (contra planes flying in NATO territory?). If they meant conventional (merely non-nuclear) they would have left it at conventional.
The video in the link details a cruise missile system fitted to cargo craft (standard c130 eg.), capacity: 45 missiles, with 1,000km range. Standard plane drops pallets of missiles out the back like an airdrop, parachute and all, then using simple gravity, the missile falls out of its container and initiates the mission. All from standoff distance. I imagine it was developed to subvert China’s coastal defense.
“Standard plane drops pallets of missiles out the back like an airdrop, parachute and all, then using simple gravity, the missile falls out of its container and initiates the mission. All from standoff distance. I imagine it was developed to subvert China’s coastal defense.”
This is absurd, completely absurd. Not comical, because there is a madness to such thinking, but absurd.
I don’t think America has superiority there. Perhaps in how advanced certain systems are, but that is not what wins wars. It’s manufacturing, logistics and endurance that wins.
lol.
that particular bright idea(“rapid dragon”, really?) would immediately make all cargo planes in a given AO legitimate targets…much like the F-whatevers currently being sent to 404, since Russia cant know what its armed with.
nukes? sling shots? flyers that say “russia bad”?…better safe than sorry…take the thing down.
it also occurs to me….ive seen lots and lots of c-130’s out here…going somewhere, doing something…in the near 30 years ive been here.
they are very slow moving aircraft…and they dont normally fly all that high…unlike, say, the couple of b-52’s ive seen overhead…which are exceedingly high up(and still as loud as the trumpets of doom)
That would be a large AO. So I’ve got one vote for Wunderwaffen :)
I live fairly close to a naval air base and they seem to be flying training exercises more often recently.
I don’t think they have any specific wunderwaffe on mind, it’s just the good old Western ubermenschen wiping the Eurasia floor with mongol untermenschen. Only this time, instead of three months to the Urals, it will be two weeks max and to the Baikal at min.
No it can’t cripple anything. I don’t think people realize how deeeeeeeply corrupt the Defense Department is (along with many others particularly Homeland Security). War in the US is about moving money from taxpayers to contractors who may or may not produce a bangs for the bucks. Many people in gov’t aren’t completely sure that if the POTUS pushed the nuclear button that the system would actually work so there’s a lot of distrust of US capacity.
https://x.com/cecilie0019/status/1824079749779730643
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Watching German general analysing battle of Kursk on YouTube wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card.
I’ve previously mentioned a pesky lightning strike conflagration called the Coffeepot Fire, and for 3 days they threw at least a few million at it with what looked like a circa 1940 aerial battle in the skies overhead, Chinooks, 4 engine Hercules, P-39’s (no, not really-just seeing if you’re paying attention) and a host of other firefighting aircraft and helicopters hit it pretty hard, but the fire is located in as close to vertical as a dirt slope that can hold pine trees can be, and hasn’t burned since the Grant administration or perhaps Fillmore, it’s been awhile.
Hopes to squash it par avian have been dashed and it’s largely unfightable on the ground, so now the strategy has changed and no more aircraft drops of water & Phos-Chek retardant, so they’ll fight it from easier perimeters once the fire spreads, now at nothing like Park Fire numbers-a 97 acre weakling.
In theory i’m leaving for Burning Man next week, but what if it burns here, man?
https://www.ourvalleyvoice.com/2024/08/15/coffeepot-wildfire-in-sequoia-national-park-grows-to-100-acres/
I feel extremely fortunate to have visited Stonehenge before there was any kind security way back in 1966. I was 14 years old at the time but recall the sense of awe very clearly. A friend of mine was there in the 1990s and bribed a guard $50 so he could walk among the stones.