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Links 8/29/2024

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Patient readers, my triply-redudant connectivity system has had a hiccup. In the interests of speed, I did not archive any links for you, as I have recently been doing. Sorry! –lambert

Bald eagle thought to be hurt was really just ‘too fat to fly,’ Missouri officials say St Louis Post-Dispatch

Baby boom prompts call to boost wild beaver population BBC

‘Obscenely greedy’ oil executives handed Swiss jail terms for role in 1MDB fraud FT

Climate

How heat affects the mind American Psychological Association

Yes, corn can sweat. And it may be why hot Midwestern summers are getting more humid PBS. Handy map:

Living in tree-filled neighborhoods may reduce risk of heart disease, study shows NBC

Lightning & Thunderstorms – World Map Blitzortung.org. Animated, near-real time.

Water

Water On The Brain: Irrigation Then And Now 3 Quarks Daily

Syndemics

The disappointing international response to mpox FT

Fibrin drives thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19 Nature. From the Dicussion: “Although clotting complications in COVID-19 have previously been attributed primarily to systemic inflammation14, our findings suggest that coagulopathy in COVID-19 is not merely a consequence of inflammation, but rather serves as an apical driver of infection-induced thromboinflammation and neuropathology. Our data reveal a causal immunomodulatory role for fibrinogen in thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19.”:

Japan warns against panic buying as rice shortages bite Channel News Asia

China?

China’s international use of renminbi surges to record highs FT

Chinese Localities Adopt ‘Sell Everything to Save the Day’ Policy to Ease Debt Caixin Global. Commentary:

Protests on rise in China amid sluggish economy, housing crisis: Report Business Standard

China’s urban-rural gap is a threat to growth. Is the divide too wide to fix? South China Morning Post

‘Little desire to have kids’: More young Chinese choosing pets over children Channel News Asia

Are China’s vast bamboo forests the answer to forever fossil plastics? South China Morning Post

How to Manage Escalation with Nuclear Adversaries Like China RAND

People’s uprising against an autocratic state Anarchist Library. Bangladesh.

Africa

World’s police in technological arms race with Nigerian mafia BBC

Syraqistan

Largest in 2 decades, Israeli army launches major military operation in northern West Bank Anadolu Agency

Israel has launched a massive assault on the West Bank. Why and why now? Al Jazeera

Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes Responsible Statecraft

European Disunion

When French Citrus Colonized Algeria JSTOR Daily

New Not-So-Cold War

Russia warns the United States of the risks of World War Three Reuters

Did Ukraine just call Putin’s nuclear bluff? Vox

The False Promise of Ukraine’s Deep Strikes Into Russia Foreign Affairs

Ukraine successfully tests its first ballistic missile Politico. The deck: “Ukraine’s president offers no details on the test, but says that it was ‘positive.'”

Ukraine to present ‘victory plan’ to US – Zelensky BBC

* * *

Pentagon maintains restrictions on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia Ukrainska Pravda

Russia says Ukrainian drone attack started fire at oil depot, disrupted air traffic Anadolu Agency

* * *

The Murky Meaning of Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Foreign Policy

* * *

How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending Foreign Policy

Biden Administration

Almost half of FDA-approved AI medical devices are not trained on real patient data, research reveals Medical Xpress

Fermilab is ‘doomed’ without management overhaul claims whistleblower report Physics World

2024

Vibes:

Harris and Walz to sit down with CNN for first formal interview of campaign Al Jazeera

Why Harris campaign is fighting for unmuted debate mics BBC

Senator and Vice President of the United States: Could J.D. Vance Hold Both Positions at the Same Time? SSRN

Spook Country

Durov formally charged, released on €5mn bail BNE Intellinews

Pavel Durov and the Abuse of Law Craig Murray

Telegram’s Loudest Defender: The Global Crypto Industry NYT

Hmm:

Digital Watch

Imagining Intelligent Machines Communications of the ACM. “The current advances in AI are based on ideas invented decades ago, enhanced by huge data and compute. I believe these statistical methods have a ceiling. Without new ideas, everybody will, in time, be doing the same thing and the results will be increasingly incremental.” Commentary:

The World’s Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever — and Fear Bloomberg

Why AI can’t spell ‘strawberry’ TechCrunch

* * *

Can Tech Executives Be Held Responsible for What Happens on Their Platforms? NYT

TikTok must face lawsuit over 10-year-old girl’s death, US court rules Reuters

* * *

Roblox is Already the Biggest Game In The World. Why Can’t It Make a Profit (And How Can It)? Matthew Ball

CrowdStrike estimates the tech meltdown caused by its bungling left a $60 million dent in its sales AP

Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress TechCrunch

Net Negativity: Thinking About Online Brutality and Ways to Fix It Nippon.com

The Final Frontier

The Local Bubble: How our solar system got caught up in a cosmic crime scene Space.com

Zeitgeist Watch

The Best Novel About 21st-Century Male Loneliness Was Written in 1989 Literary Hub

Class Warfare

Work to Rule and Open Bargaining Back Down Kroger Warehouse Bosses Labor Notes

The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus Baldur Bjarnason

The Shrewd Business Logic of Immigrant Cooks JSTOR Daily

Labor’s Reckoning: What We Can Learn From the Cold War History of the AFL-CIO Workday Magazine

Chaos and cause Aeon

Antidote du jour (KetaDesign):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

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

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178 comments

  1. LawnDart

    Re;China, Michael Pettis

    Yes, China is failing, as it has been for 20-years or more… failing upwards, but still failing– if you stand on your head, it will be obvious.

    The stagnation of China’s GDP in U.S. dollar terms in 2022 and 2023 was mainly due to the appreciation of the U.S. dollar. China’s real GDP growth was three percent in 2022 and 5.2 percent in 2023. In 2023, per capita GDP in China reached around 12,514 U.S. dollars.

    (Handy chart, too)

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/263770/gross-domestic-product-gdp-of-china/

    I really wish our economy was as bad as theirs…

      1. Kontrary Kansan

        Hmmm. The late ’70s and early ’80s–the chart’s origin–is when neoliberalism got its fangs in the throat of the US economy, and when its carrion partner, financialization, went to work on the carcass.

    2. Zagonostra

      Danny Haiphong has recently visited China and is doing some good boots on the ground reporting. Carl Zha also gives a fresh perspective that counter much of what is coming from Western MSM outlets.

        1. JTMcPhee

          What I am seeing in the comments to Haiphong’s post is maybe more shocking. Humans — too stupid and vicious to survive. We collectively seem to be en route to getting what we collectively have earned. But then of course this is just the aberrant fringe and maybe just bots programmed by the aberrant fringe, so maybe we collectively will muddle through?

          1. steppenwolf fetchit

            If the Ba m’Buti pigmies of the Congo and the Aymara alpaca herders of Lake Titicaca survive, then the future of Humanity will be in their strong hands.

    3. Jon Cloke

      When I visit countries in Africa for work or research, I like to go into a random supermaket and pick a selection of goods to see their (stated) country of origin.

      A couple of weeks back I was in Lesotho and the goods were (almost universally) either from South Africa (food goods, mainly) or China (anything manufactured).

      Every country I’ve been to in Africa in the last few years has a market dominated by Chinese goods. What could ‘The West’ possibly do to overturn this dominance?

      Nothing, really.

      2. Louis Fyne

        Went through the new airport at Tulum, Mexico….

        terrific airport, all the equipment was Chinese, easy to tell with the various corporate logos using Chinese characters

    4. Emma

      Even though Steve Hsu hasn’t been on the ground in China in a couple years, he does have great contacts in the Chinese tech space. I found this recent discussion really nice for feeling out the current development trajectory of China.

      https://youtu.be/XFixxXD_bDA?si=0rSIk5jObskT6qEB

      What Huawei, BYD, and other Chinese tech leaders have been able to accomplish in the last 5 years is really remarkable. And as in Russia, the Trump/Biden sanctions are a huge gift to a tech ecosystem that feeds off of 10x US STEM grads per year and a government that prioritizes tech advanced over profit/rent. How can a system that can’t even fly down its astronaut or produce enough shells at any price compete with that?

      1. LawnDart

        I’m closely watching their “low-altitude economy” develop and witnessing the collaboration between Chinese government and the private sector– industry and business– with the adaption of totally new tech, AI married to NEVs, eVTOLs, and drones. And it being new, uncharted territory, a first of it’s kind in the world, standards and regulations must be developed from scratch.

        When China decides to do something, my god can their governmental bureaucracy move swiftly! And especially so when it is believed to be of great benefit to their country as a whole, such as the development of the low-altitude economy.

        Globally, this industry is in its infancy, and it is easy to compare and contrast the developments that are taking place: the USA is years and years behind in the adaptation of this tech, be it automated airspace management to the aircraft themselves– our regulatory bodies are stumbling and disjointed, which leaves potential manufacturers here without any sort of roadmap or guidence, things which are important to know before you find that you’re dumping money into an aircraft that might never be allowed to fly.

        The Chinese manufacturers don’t have this problem.

      2. CA

        https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1828916882583499168

        Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

        Great read in Harvard Business Review by my friend @mitchpresnick on the “4 Key Strengths of China’s Economy”, and consequently the 4 key risks of decoupling from China.

        https://hbr.org/2024/08/the-4-key-strengths-of-chinas-economy-and-what-they-mean-for-multinational-companies

        The 4 key strengths/risks are:

        1) China’s Innovation Ecosystem

        As Mitch rightly points out, China now leads the US “in 53 out of 64 critical technological fields” and “Chinese scientists now lead the world in producing high-impact papers”.

        As a consequence, if you’re not in China, you miss out on the leading edge in innovation and scientific discoveries, and you fall behind.

        2) China’s investment in the Global South

        As the article highlights, “traditionally, Western multinationals have focused on mature markets with highly engineered products at high price points, while China conquered growth markets”, through the Belt and Road and other initiatives.

        Except that by definition growth markets are often the mature markets of tomorrow. So effectively China placed itself as the frontrunner in virtually all the large upcoming markets of the future, whilst Western firms focused on the relatively declining established markets of yesterday.

        3) China’s Ultra-Competitive Markets …

        4) China’s 1.4 Billion Consumers …

        6:05 PM · Aug 28, 2024

    5. Henry Moon Pie

      As if growth is a good thing. It would be better for China to say “enough” while we in the West brought our level of consumption and per capita income down to theirs. China’s per capita GDP in U. S. dollars is around $12,000, close to the world’s current average. That’s about what U. S. per capita GDP was in 1980. I was alive back then and don’t remember that we were exactly suffering aside from Volker’s recession, i.e. we weren’t living in caves and eating worms.

      Of course, pickup trucks and houses weren’t supersized back then. How did we survive?

      1. Ignacio

        We should measure GDP per oligarchic capita and compare that with GDP per deplorable capita for every country.

        1. Emma

          And how much of the GDP goes to “defense”, “healthcare”, “education”, and rent. And at least they have a dense and inexpensive network of public transit to compete with personal vehicles.

          The other aspect is that Chinese industrial growth is actually driving real value and innovation and they’re happy to sell it at very fair prices to the rest of the world. They’ve made solar the cheapest form of electrical generation. Their work on sodium batteries may resolve the problem with solar intermittency and base loads. They’re even working on alloys to improve electrical transmission.

          1. CA

            Defense spending is now $1.050 trillion yearly:

            https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDNdLCJkYXRhIjpbWyJjYXRlZ29yaWVzIiwiU3VydmV5Il0sWyJOSVBBX1RhYmxlX0xpc3QiLCI1Il1dfQ==

            August 30, 2024

            Defense spending was 56.3% of federal government consumption and investment in April through June 2024. *

            $1,049.8 / $1,865.5 = 56.3%

            Defense spending was 21.0% of all government consumption and investment in April through June 2024.

            $1,049.8 / $5,000.0 = 21.0%

            Defense spending was 3.7% of GDP in April through June 2024.

            $1,049.8 / $28,652.3 = 3.7%

            * Billions of dollars

      3. CA

        https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2024/April/weo-report?c=223,924,132,134,532,534,536,158,546,922,112,111,&s=PPPGDP,&sy=2000&ey=2023&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

        April 15, 2024

        Gross Domestic Product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States, 2000-2023

        2023

        China ( 33,552)
        United States ( 27,358)
        India ( 13,342)
        Japan ( 6,507)
        Germany ( 5,544)

        Russia ( 5,180)
        Indonesia ( 4,391)
        Brazil ( 4,085)
        United Kingdom ( 3,917)
        France ( 3,865)

    6. Revenant

      I really like Michael Pettis but I don’t understand the Michael Pettis article. For the first time, I have really thought about his household sector repression mantra and found it wanting.

      What *exactly* does he mean by domestic consumption? Consumption by private households? Or consumption by Chinese resident entities? And what does he mean by local government as a sector? Is it even a sector compared with national government ksivereign in its currency) or business (not sovereign, hard budget constraints, but not a source of final demand) or households (hard cobstrainst, final demand)?

      What I am driving at is that if a domestic Chinese household directly purchases healthcare (a high end, not internationally traded service), that generates Chinese internal demand. But the same demand is generated if a local authority pays for that healthcare by direct provision or through insurance etc.

      We have heard that China must rebalance to consumers who must in turn dissave. But if the structure of the Chinese economy provides concrete material benefits for private households, who cares if the expenditure is from local government or from households and how does moving the numbers around change anything? It would be just as viable for local government to provide pensions and healthcare and housing and for households to grow confident enough to dissave….

      As Deng out it, it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice….

      I feel a lot more sceptical today about these exhortations to let a thousand Chinese consumers bloom. It has just struck me as backdoor neoliberalism and the death of state capacity and responsibility.

  2. The Rev Kev

    “TikTok must face lawsuit over 10-year-old girl’s death, US court rules”

    The beginning of a lawfare campaign to get rid of Tik Tok in the US by making it too expensive to stay because of litigation? US courts can be pretty dodgy. One, a few short years ago, decided that Iran had to pay the survivors of the 9/11 attack multi-billions of dollars because everybody knows that Iran caused 9/11. Iran never bothered turning up in that court. If this Tik Tok case is successful, then expect a swarm of claims.

    1. Chris Cosmos

      There is a slight “benefit” from all the repression we see building in the West by creating new categories of thought crime in the UK and EU on social media undermines “globalization” and the whole idea of the US global empire spreading through soft power–instead we will have blocks of nation-states each imposing rigid controls within their borders.

      Unless Trump is elected in the US there will be no more “liberal democracy” in the West–even then the trends don’t look good to those of us who once favored liberalism both cultural and political along with a genuine globalism rather than the current WEF model of international tyranny.

    2. lyman alpha blob

      The lawsuit probably is politically motivated. But the rationale given in the article does make some sense. These platforms can’t be prosecuted for merely allowing others to use them to pass on information, much like we never prosecuted phone companies for what people said over the phone.

      But because they use algorithms of their own design to promote some speech over others, then the platforms are ‘speaking’ themselves, not just being used as a conduit, and can therefore be prosecuted.

      If these social media companies were forced to stop using algorithms to push ‘content’ at people whether they want it or not, I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

        1. JBird4049

          Open, overt advertising is one thing, but behind the scenes, convert censorship is something else; trying to punish people for the use of their merchandise and services by others to commit criminal act is dangerous. Once someone gives something over, it is beyond his control and unless he is a mind reader or psychic, how can he predict what someone else is going to do with it? Anything can be made dangerous in the right situation.

  3. Ben Panga

    Reports on twitter (Kennard, Murray) that Sarah Wilkinson a long-time prominent peace activist / journalist got the jackboots treatment this morning. I believe the below was posted by her husband

    “The police came to her house just before 7.30am. 12 of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for “content that she has posted online.” Her house is being raided & they have seized all her electronic devices.”

    She got Starmered.

    1. The Rev Kev

      So the arrest at Heathrow of Richard Medhurst wasn’t just a one-off but part of a campaign to imprison anybody who criticizes Israel. Not the UK, Israel. Kit Klarenberg and Vanessa Beeley have also been harassed as well by UK authorities. No wonder Eva Bartlett had to seek asylum in Russia. Hopefully Wilkinson won’t be treated in court like Julian Assange was-

      https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26634

      1. Ben Panga

        Those “riots” created the perfect atmosphere for this kind of thing to be unremarkable.

      2. Chris Cosmos

        At this point in the UK there will be a full-scale Orwellian state and the EU may well follow suit. France has been able, so far, to nullify the last election, Germany has been cracking down on dissent for some years now in its uniquely bizarre way. But the UK is following the simple, in your face, Orwellian pattern. Unlike the US there is little opposition to repression. I treasure the Second Amendment, it gives the population a deterrence to full-scale tyranny.

        1. JBird4049

          Thomas Jefferson did say that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” but please note that the metaphorical “dogs of war” have no masters as much as some people might think otherwise.

    2. Cassandra

      So sorry to hear about Ms Wilkinson. Wishing her well in a frightening situation.

      The writing has been on the wall for a while: wrongthink will not be tolerated. Remember that the UK Liberals neutralized the threat of a populist movement led by Jeremy Corbyn by purging “antisemitism” from the party. But I cannot help but think that all that discontent is still simmering under the surface and the situation of ordinary people is much worse than it was back then. At some point it will boil over in spite of the Orwellian repressions that the Western governments have embraced.

    3. Emma

      Remember that Starmer is basically a male Kamala Harris. A charisma free corrupt prosecutor who climbed the career ladder by prosecuting the innocent and ignoring elite criminality. Then shot up through an ostensibly left political party by being a completely unmemorable political hack.

      Just so we know what’s coming our way.

  4. oliverks

    I ask SCOTi our AI model, based on an open source model, the question about how many r’s are in strawberry. I thought people might like what it had to say.

    SCOTi:

    The letter “r” appears twice in the word “strawberry”.

    user Why do you think that?

    SCOTi

    Upon re-examining the word “strawberry”, I realize that it’s actually spelled S-T-R-A-W-B-E-R-R-Y. Therefore, I think the correct answer is that the letter “R” appears three times in the word “strawberry”.

    user Do you know why you thought it only had 2 Rs originally?

    SCOTi

    Upon reflection, I realized that my original response was likely due to a combination of factors:

    1. Pattern recognition: My language model is trained on vast amounts of text data, and it often relies on patterns learned from this training. In many words, the letter “R” appears only once or twice in close proximity (e.g., “carrot”, “berry”). This might have led me to initially assume there were only two Rs.
    2. Lack of attention to word specifics: When I generated my initial response, I didn’t thoroughly examine each character in the word “strawberry”. Instead, I relied on a quick glance and pattern recognition.

    Thankfully, when you asked for clarification, I took another look at the word and corrected myself!

        1. oliverks

          Actually, the expense of running these models isn’t so bad anymore. For example, SCOTi was just running on my Mac laptop. That makes these smaller language models quite affordable to run for personal use and pretty energy-efficient too.

      2. Belle

        There are quite a few examples of AI art resulting in gibberish and distorted images.
        I tend to like those for being funny.

    2. Jeff W

      “Upon reflection…”

      I always get a kick out of what these chatbots say when asked to analyze their own behavior. They can’t “reflect” in the sense of introspecting about their previous behavior. They just produce verbal output which emulates what is said in such situations, including phrases like “upon reflection.”

      1. oliverks

        SCOTi had this to say:

        I see what you mean, Jeff. You’re right; I didn’t truly “reflect” on my previous response in the way humans do. Instead, I generated a response that mimics human-like introspection.

        I appreciate your insight into how LLMs like myself operate! You’re helping me improve by acknowledging the limitations of my programming and the nuances of human-like communication.

        1. Jeff W

          Haha, I will say that it works even on me: I feel a bit flattered that SCOTi “appreciates” my insight, even if there’s no real appreciation going on. (And I find the verbal output of these chatbots to be admirably non-defensive.)

          It just goes to show that what professors of communication Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves said in the mid-1990s—that people tend to treat computers as social actors—is just as true as, maybe even truer than, it was 30 years ago. It’s a very powerful cognitive illusion, especially now with regard to these verbal outputs, that occurs even if one knows better.

  5. ex-PFC Chuck

    Here’s a link to another real-time online lightening and thunderstorm map. It also has setting options to display (or not) cloud cover, rain radar,etc. This one has a zoom in/out feature, and if you zoom in close enough the thunder option shows the expanding sound rings of each strike.

    https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#

  6. Zagonostra

    >Chaos and cause – Aeon

    Newton’s discoveries fostered the belief that the Universe, previously shrouded in mystery, was now laid bare, sparking an unprecedented optimism in the power of science.

    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Kepler are given short shrift. The more you look into the history/details of Newton, the more you question his apotheosis in our educational system.

    1. begob

      I think it’s Ian Wright at Dark Marxism who makes the point that Newton’s efforts in alchemy resulted in his campaign as master of the mint to put coin forgers to death.

    2. Caracara

      No idea what you’re referring to here. Any historical account of Newton’s achievements gives full credit to Leibniz and Kepler, as well as Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, etc. As far as his “apotheosis “ goes, look up what Gauss and Einstein had to say about him.

      1. Zagonostra

        I was referring to the contents of the article, not external references. No Credit given anywhere in within article.

    3. Christopher Smith

      Newton was far more interesting than the sanitized version presented. His theological writings are fascinating.

      2. Offtrail

        I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

        Attributed to Sir Isaac Newton on his deathbed. May be apocryphal, but it touches me.

    4. ChrisPacific

      Regardless of attribution, it’s an accurate reflection of the general scientific belief at the time. They really did think that it was only a matter of time before humanity understood all the secrets of the universe.

      Then the 20th century gave us Cantor’s uncountability proof, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and scientists were humbled once more. To top it all off, Einstein showed that Newton’s theory was wrong (albeit a very good approximation to reality for the small corner of the universe that we inhabit). At least it took the sting out of the determinism versus free will arguments.

  7. sarmaT

    Ukraine successfully tests its first ballistic missile Politico.

    The development comes three days after Ukraine announced it successfully launched its first missile-drone, Palyanytsia.

    I can’t wait to see what will his next announcement be. According to emerging wunderwaffe pattern, in three days he should mention first Ukrainian very long range cannon.

      1. Belle

        You mean this?
        https://youtu.be/gjRchQP8lB8?si=m477Nq_CU7cR7VMx

        Of course, Groucho in reality was not a backer of fascists. In 1958, he danced atop the rubble of Hitler’s bunker. His brother Harpo was MC for a dinner honoring Edward A. Carter, an African-American who fought against the Japanese as a teenager, fought in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and fought Nazis with the US Army, winning the Distinguished Service Cross (later upgraded to the Medal of Honor).

  8. Watt4Bob

    “The United States needs to define a theory of victory for a potential future war against China, and then start investing in the capabilities it will need to make it successful.”

    Yeah, that’s the ticket, we need to make it successful!

    Rand has done so much studying over the decades, you’d think they would have learned something.

      1. Chris Cosmos

        This tells you a lot about the flavor of though in the FP community. Someone is given a task to think of some new way to further the conquest of the world (the obsession of Washington is imperialism, imperialism, imperialism). China enemy–me destroooooy. That’s the level of thought these days and, the beautiful thing about it, it is all fantasy game-playing and I’m serious. It is essential that we transform this swamp because they want to eat everyone.

      2. Cassandra

        The United States needs to define a theory of victory for a potential future war against China, and then start investing in the capabilities it will need to make it successful…

        Capabilities… Given that the US exported its industrial base to China a generation ago, and trashed the associated human capital of skilled machinists and engineers, I can’t imagine how they can “theorize” victory.

    2. SocalJimObjects

      I think they are just asking for handouts. This so called “theory of victory” will require X billion dollars, and will come with free revisions for an entire year!!!

    3. John k

      Libya/iraq didn’t have nukes so we invaded and destroyed them. Russia/China have nukes so we limit ourselves to poking them. World’s problem seems to be nukes are not sufficiently distributed to prevent conventional wars. Nukes for all!

    4. TomDority

      Well, Rand is using a fairy tale as a guideline , Goldilocks; a story approved for Arizona common core standards Kindergarten through grade 2.
      So, what can be expected from Rand more than, perhaps, a meta-fairy tale from the millions spent on the geniuses at Rand who collectively have demonstrated their inability to pass from kindergarten onto the wider horizons of thought found in grades 1 and 2.

      1. Joker

        Goldilocks fairy tale is what they based their Russian strategy on. Break into bear house, eat their lunch, and run away.

    5. Kouros

      The assumption is that only the US can inflict pains to great to bare and that China cannot well respond. Never considering all those juicy US targets surrounding China. All those carrier groups can be destroyed without using nukes. Then what? Nuke a Chinese city? How much pain is the US willing to take before “escalating”? All these questions are missing from the article. Oh, the Overtone windows we have to deal with everywhere we look…

  9. Zagonostra

    >Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes Responsible Statecraft

    Since October 2023, 116 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes or sniper fire in Gaza, representing 86 percent of all those killed worldwide, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Prolonged communication blackouts are commonplace in Gaza.

    And this morning as I scroll through TwitterX feeds, I see students returning to college being arrested and harassed for protesting the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine. With the treatment that protestors are receiving from modern-day storm troopers dispatched at the behest of authorities to tamp down on peaceful demonstrations, the supposed Western Civilization’s mask has dropped for all to see. And what is revealed is the personification of Medusa, a good metaphor for the Collective West.

    Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, but when Neptune…mated with her in Minerva’s temple, Minerva punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes…In classical Greek art, the depiction of Medusa shifted from hideous beast to an attractive young woman, both aggressor and victim, a tragic figure in her death.

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

    1. Chris Cosmos

      The university system in this country has joined the move towards totalitarianism that is now rampant in the West (the Empire). Dissent will be harder to impose in the red areas of the country whereas in urban areas and universities it will be easy.

    2. ForFawkesSakes

      This is not quite a correct interpretation of Medusa, but what I would expect to find on Wikipedia. Ovid’s Metamorphoses uses the term ravished and implies that Medusa did not consent and had run to Minerva’s temple to claim sanctuary. Hesiod’s The Theogony speaks of Medusa’s suffering and her mournful fate.

      An interpretation that’s always appealed to me is not that Minerva punishes Medusa, but she gives her a gift to prevent her ever being raped again.

    1. jefemt

      I very quickly scanned the article… and could not find any layman’s utility statement about sources of fibrin.
      Similarly, your point about lysine- that it may have effective offsets.

      Day to day living— sources of fibrin in my life, sources of lysine in my life?

      Google and wiki indicate that both are parts of the miraculous workings of a healthy body and organs….
      Mom was right–diet, exercise, sleep, less stressers. Oh, and disregard that universal aging/mortality brick wall at the end!

      1. Vandemonian

        Greetings, jefemt! I hope you find this helpful.

        Fibrin is a fibrous protein that is the main component of a blood clot; it’s made from fibrinogen. Fibrinogen is a protein that’s a normal part of our blood plasma – always there. It’s made in the liver, and is part of the series of reactions that make the blood clots which plug leaks in our blood vessels.

        When the wall of a blood vessel is damaged, it releases chemical signals that attract platelets (the smallest of the three types of cells in blood – no nucleus). The platelets then release thrombin, which causes fibrinogen to turn into fibrin.

        This might be helpful if you’d like to read more:

        Fibrinogen and fibrin: An illustrated review (National Library of Medicine)
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6462751/

      2. Val

        I read that fibrin paper, it was a hoot. As in, while chained to a rock, an owl plucked my eyes out and flew away.

        Citations suggest high and heavy hands amongst the “peer review”.

    3. Rory

      I remember reading in one of nobel prize winningn biochemist Linus Pauling’s books that the only two dietary supplements he took were lysine and megadoses of vitamin C. He was a most valuable citizen who lived a healthy 91 years.

    4. kareninca

      I’ve been taking lysine ever since 2020: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345916326_Amino_Acid_L-Lysine_SARS-CoV-2_COVID-19_Prophylaxis (“Amino Acid L-Lysine SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Prophylaxis”)

      Plus it is good for prevention of Influenza A:
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310019/
      “Amino acids have been implicated with virus infection and replication. Here, we demonstrate the effects of two basic amino acids, arginine and lysine, and their ester derivatives on infection of two enveloped viruses, SARS-CoV-2, and influenza A virus. We found that lysine and its ester derivative can efficiently block infection of both viruses in vitro. Furthermore, the arginine ester derivative caused a significant boost in virus infection. Studies on their mechanism of action revealed that the compounds potentially disturb virus uncoating rather than virus attachment and endosomal acidification. Our findings suggest that lysine supplementation and the reduction of arginine-rich food intake can be considered as prophylactic and therapeutic regimens against these viruses while also providing a paradigm for the development of broad-spectrum antivirals.”

      Not medical advice, ask your doctor.

  11. timbers

    Obama – “How it started. How it’s going.

    Ten years later, and it’s still a good look!” ****** Is this a commercial for high end men’s and women’s suits and business dress attire? Because that’s what it looks like to me. And every bit as deep and fulfilling on substance. Better dress goes with better propaganda and diversion.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Wait – you mean that we are not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover? I thought that the colour of the clothes that Obama and Kamala were wearing were trying to de-emphasis their blackness. To make the right people more comfortable with their appearances.

      1. Carolinian

        Wow how’d I miss that one? Of course even now Biden’s outfits are extremely natty to make up for the fact that his brain is completely scrambled. But it sounds like the tan suit Dems are merely responding to things the media find interesting.

        1. dave

          The whole thing is now used by Blue MAGA to show that the Obama Admin was perfect in every way, and the only thing remotely controversial about his 8 years of glory was that he wore a tan suit one day and a couple conservative personalities said it looked un-presidential.

          Dumb all the way down.

    3. NotTimothyGeithner

      Obama is pretty thin skinned. Not everyone can wear colors. The tan suit looks bad on Obama, so my guess is he saw someone in a similar suit and thought that it would be a good look.

      1. Trees&Trunks

        I think it is a clarifying choice of clothes for Obama and Harris, emphasizing their true nature: they really look like 50 shades of diarrhea in those tan suits. It should be the corporate suit for the uniparty US and the EU misleadership. Some sort of the political version of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo.

  12. Safety First

    I get that plurality of viewpoints is nominally a good thing, but that Anatol Lieven article in Foreign Policy (“How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending”) is really testing the concept.

    Anatol gives the game away in the second paragraph, when he flatly states that his anonymous interlocutors are perfectly comfortable with ending the war by freezing it along the present line of contact. Later on, they, these anonymous sources, or at least some of them, double down by suggesting that, perhaps, the annexed areas of the four Ukrainian regions not yet under Russian control will remain under Ukrainian control, but in a “demilitarized” fashion.

    There is no way whoever good old Anatol is talking to is “anyone” that matters in the present government. Aside from the minor point that any such outcome would be viewed in an exceedingly unfavorable light by the Russian public, one that still remembers the Khasavjurt agreement as a form of “betrayal” (which it more or less was); aside from the fact that Putin’s latest public peace offer, one that the arch-conservatives in the room (and Helmer’s sources, apparently) view as a form of betrayal-weakness-appeasement-whatever, was clearly predicated on Russia taking the entirety of the four annexed regions; aside from constitutional issues, since these regions are now legally (under Russian law) part of Russia; there is also the fact that the Russian government made the move to annex them in the first place directly in response to Ukrainian offensives of August-September 2022, and concurrently with rolling out plans for the partial mobilization. This was literally the next step on the escalation ladder for them, and absent a military defeat, or some sort of “betrayal” by Putin himself (unlikely, to put it mildly), there is zero reason for the Russians to climb down.

    But not according to Anatol’s sources. I guess it’s nice to know that there are still affluent people in Moscow, as well as current or former government officials, who think in terms of what can we give away in order to wind this thing down and go back to the time before Western sanctions. Or something to that effect. However, the article as a whole purports to present the view of Russian “elites”, and I somehow highly doubt that at this point any of the key stakeholders – the oligarchs, who are making money hand over fist off the war and will continue to do this during the reconstruction phase; the military and the security services, whose budgets swell ever more as Cold War 2.0 comes more and more into view; the state bureaucracy and associated hangers on, though I guess you can make an argument that some of these individuals aren’t all too happy about having to show results for once – would agree to the sort of climb-down that Anatol is gesturing at.

    I mean, at this point we might as well start linking to the Mick Ryan article from a day or two ago, about “Ukrainian strategic audacity” and “Western timidity”. [Per Ryan, a retired Australian major general straight out of “The Pirates of Pensance”, Ukraine will “fail” in the Kursk region only if the West does not provide it with sufficient weaponry. I’ve read the news today, oh boy…]

    1. Chris Cosmos

      Kudos for bothering to read this article. Reading the foreign policy publications is interesting because it reflects the thinking of the community but if you are interested in careful and intelligent analysis it cannot exist there by definition. Having said that, I do understand that there is a pro-West community in Moscow as there has been for centuries but it is, currently, in decline I believe.

      1. ilsm

        The pro U.S. community in Russia is small, but has over sized platform in U.S.

        The late Barkley Rosser (Econospeak) was connected to one such group. I took them as anti Russian.

        Sadly, he passed over 2 years ago.

    2. albrt

      I thought the article was a pretty big step toward reality for a DC Blob publication. It seems to me the outcome described in the article has some similarities to what Aurelien has suggested, simply because there isn’t anybody on the NATO side capable of signing off on anything clearer or more long-term. I will be interested to see if Aurelien has a comment.

    3. Kouros

      Anatol likely not watches the same shows as Gilbert Doctorow.

      Also, I am very surprised that not one of the oh so many interlocutors Anatol talk to ever mentioned that Ukraine has to become neutral…

    4. nyleta

      General Popov was detained for corruption today in Russia, they seem to be really intent on forging an instrument. Armies that stay together and fight together for long periods of time can end up doing amazing feats. This may just be starting to wind up if they can connect the armed forces to the economy in a similar manner to how the Red Army was.

    5. Roland

      As far as stuff in Foreign Policy goes, I didn’t think it was all that bad. Three things in the article make it much better than most mainstream Western coverage:

      (1) Russia is most unlikely to proceed with any broader aggression.

      (2) There is no segment of Russian opinion that would ever be willing to tolerate Ukraine in NATO.

      (3) Despite setbacks and frustrations, the current Russian government continues to enjoy wide support.

      For my part, I like to see anybody in the media talking about negotiating stances, rather than about who just blew up whom.

  13. Zagonostra

    >Can Tech Executives Be Held Responsible for What Happens on Their Platforms? NYT

    For now, tech executives have little to fear, with cases like Mr. Durov’s likely to be outliers, experts said.

    The operative clause in NYT’s sentence above is “for now.” How much meaning is contained in those two words. For now, your first amendment rights are protected, for now “my body, my choice,” for now, you have natural rights not dependent on positive law, for now you don’t have to pay for the next breath you draw…

    1. R.S.

      Nothing to see here. /sarc

      Several ppl on my feeds shared this masterpiece of hypocrisy:
      Pavel Durov and the limits of free speech
      https://www.ft.com/content/45637861-a89e-4fea-979c-36993d8a6116

      The deck:
      ===
      Telegram has failed to distinguish between the demands of autocratic regimes and legitimate democratic requests
      ===
      As long as you abide by our legitimate, ahem, democratic requests, you are fine, citizen.

  14. Zagonostra

    >Pavel Durov and the Abuse of Law Craig Murray

    Only a fool would be surprised that the EU Digital Services Act is being shoehorned into use against Durov, apparently for lack of cooperation with Western intelligence services and being a bit Russian, and is not being used against Musk or Zuckerberg for limiting the reach of pro-Palestinian content…

    So in short, the arrest of Pavel Durov appears to be pretty blatant abuse and only very tenuously connected to the legal basis given as justification. This is simply a part of the current rising wave of authoritarianism in western “democracies”.

    Good reporting from Craig Murray. I also read on RT that His indictment included a dozen charges, including refusal to cooperate with authorities, complicity in offenses related to child sexual abuse material, and drug trafficking… basically all the crimes that the FBI had on Hunter Biden and that anyone who saw images of the infamous laptop viewed; if ever there was a case of projection…

    1. Chris Cosmos

      It appears that Europe is abandoning the whole idea of liberal democracy and this is yet another sign.

      1. The Rev Kev

        That is why I swiped that term the European Hegemony from Star Trek. Whatever the EU is, it is not a democracy and was never intended to be one but instead a power block on the world stage. And for that, the member States had to give up their sovereignty to an un-elected cabal in Brussels. But after their performance the past few years, the Global Majority have no interest in anything that they have to say. The garden is in serious need of pruning.

        1. XXYY

          Whatever the EU is, it is not a democracy and was never intended to be one but instead a power block on the world stage.

          This is a really nice formulation.

          The only thing about the EU that has really surprised me is that more than a few percent of the EU population was in favor of it initially. It was pretty obvious that they were signing away their rights as citizens of their respective countries.

      2. ArvidMartensen

        The thing seems to be that the powerful, interconnected web of western oligarchs and their security forces (NSA, CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6 etc etc) and their transnational orgs (WTO WHO WEF etc etc) are getting very bold in their repression. eg making shit up as far as charges go for Durov.

        Is this a sign that they think that they are now so powerful that nobody can touch them?
        Why would they think that? Imo, it could be because their citizen control through pervasive and everywhere propaganda (FB, NYT, BBC, The Guardian etc has swung people in whatever direction they wanted, reliably, now for a few years.
        Colour revolutions, tick.
        Covid messaging, tick. (Masks are stupid, Covid is over, Covid is just a cold etc)
        Election results, tick. Starmer landslide in the UK – anyone could see from the moment he took the Labour Party over that he was going to win in a landslide. Trump is evil (perhaps not going so well), although imo a computer glitch or two on the night will see Harris romp home.

        It looks as thought the sun is setting on even the spectacle of voting. Which must mean that they feel they can get rid of it with not much blowback.
        Maybe they think with the right messaging, within 3 months western voters would join in demonising and despising as sub-human anybody who wanted to vote for governments. They could be right.

        And then we get to the possible issues of eugenics. A whole other subject.

    2. Yves Smith

      Murray is missing a big piece of the equation. As Alex Christoforu pointed out (and we linked to his discussion) Durov and his brother also launched what is now the 9th biggest coin and its payment infrastructure (I assume wallets and and an exchange at a minimum). The platform is supposed to be very good by coin standards; Christoforu suggested it could be important to BRICS.

      Note the charges are against Durov, not Telegram, as least as they are being summarized by the media. It would be hard to deny “complicity in offenses related to child sexual abuse material, and drug trafficking” if Telegram not only carried messages about particular transactions but they also used the Durov/Telegram coin (whatever is is called…..TOA?)

    1. The Rev Kev

      There is a persistent story that Durov went to Paris because he was invited to dinner with Macron which I can well believe. It was a setup at the highest levels. The French are throwing all sorts of charges at him, including that he committed “serious acts of violence” against his own son and it sounds like they are just throwing any charge that they can against him to see if anything will stick. Sorta what they have done with Trump. In addition, it seems that the French also want to arrest his brother.

      Of course there are consequences for what France did-

      ‘Macroeconomist and UnHerd contributor Philip Pilkington echoed these concerns, warning in an article this week that Paris’s move could drive investors of all stripes out of France, and Europe in general.“The damage that this could do to France’s image in the eyes of the technology and entrepreneurial communities is profound,” Pilkington wrote, pointing out that Durov’s detention has opened a Pandora’s Box in which the French state begins to systematically bring criminal charges against the developers of internet communication platforms.The Durov case will likely lead to an exodus of entrepreneurs from Europe – a far cry from French President Emmanuel Macron’s promises in 2017 to make France a “startup nation,” ‘

      https://sputnikglobe.com/20240828/jim-rogers-durovs-arrest-could-end-frances-attractiveness-for-high-tech-1119940407.html

      2. Carolinian

        What a disgusting weasel Macron is. And is Kamala taking notes on Macron and Starmer or are the Bidenistas giving notes as the moguls say? The Biden admin has been an enthusiastic censor to the extent they can get away with it.

        And it’s surely not a coincidence that all three of these governments have low public approval ratings. There’s no need to censor if the hoi polloi are singing your praises. Meanwhile “dictator” Putin has had approval ratings as high as 80 percent. Our feeble minded rulers refuse to believe this just as they refuse to believe that Maduro won the Venezuelan election. Reality is what they say it is, nothing more or less. This cuts down on eyestrain reading those lengthy intelligence reports.

      3. ArvidMartensen

        Is Macron spearheading the end of voting for the oligarchs? Could be.
        And luring somebody to a rendezvous so they can be arrested or renditioned is common spy practice.
        I assume that Durov is not stupid, so the chances are high that he was lured to France to be trapped.

    2. Anthony Noel

      Hmm, well if I was the all of these state officials I’d start treading carefully. If the billionaires think you’re starting to go after them, well just like everything else in the west, we privatized our best military operators. And well the billionaires can afford the very best…, I wouldn’t be overly shocked if they keep pulling these metaphorical triggers on their paymasters, if some real triggers don’t start getting pulled on them.

  17. Clwydshire

    Gilbert Doctorow’s latest interview with Dima is interesting. “Russia’s Kursk Recovery…” offers a far darker view of what is going on than some others (say Mercouris–who I want to say I greatly respect and am a paying subscriber to). The degree of American support for the Kursk attack that his source suggests rings true to me. His source’s suggestion that the two aircraft carriers in the American force sent to the eastern Mediterranean might be used in a planned decapitation attack on Russia might be more plausible than it seems at first. He mentions other indications that Kursk may not be the eccentric adventure that we have thought it was. His narrative suggests one possible way the two wars, in Ukraine and in the Mideast, could be become one, and I have been looking for that to happen.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      I recall from a comment on MoA that those aircraft carriers are in the Gulf of Oman, not the E. Med. Plus, no need for aircraft carriers to launch nukes when subs can do so much more stealthily.

      So, Doctorow may have made an error in logic there. Not 100% sure, though. It feels to me like we’re one miscalculation away from a nuclear exchange.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Such an attack may not come from the Mediterranean but from another direction altogether. Here is a video clip of a Ukrainian kamikaze drone being shot down in the Murmansk region which is way, way in the north of Russia. As the tweet says, no way that that drone came from the Ukraine but more likely Finland. You think that the Finish authorities will hunt down any such NATO/Ukrainian team operating from their territory? No, me neither-

        https://x.com/witte_sergei/status/1826275241175462299 (49 secs)

    2. sarmaT

      How exactly are two carriers in Mediterranean going to decapitate Russia? By secretly launching a big salvo of JASSMs from Aegean Sea towards Crimea?

        1. The Rev Kev

          Thanks for that link. I saw it some time ago and when I went looking for it again, could not find it. With the shorter range of modern fighters, that means that they have to get closer to coastlines and other enemy ships which brings them withing range of carrier-killer missiles. There was a novel called “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” by John Michael Greer in which an American carrier force is wrecked by Chinese cruise missiles leaving the carrier beached on a sand drift at an angle. Good story if you are looking for a good book to read.

          1. albrt

            That and his “Retrotopia” have really stuck with me. Greer writes in many different genres at a potboiler pace so the books are not masterworks of literary style, but the ideas are helpful antidotes to neoliberal TINA.

      2. ilsm

        The two carrier groups are outside the gulf of Oman. Indian Ocean.

        USCENTCOM has large tactical air forces in Qatar. Keep the carriers safe with land based USAF, USMC fighters.

        The clue: the strike groups are in CENTCOM.

        EUCOM manages the forces in the Mediterranean. A different fleet!

    3. flora

      That idea to decapitate RU falls into the F*ck-around-and-find-out category. / ;) Lavorov makes this very clear, according to Scott Ritter speaking on Judge Napolitano’s show. A RU response will not be limited in scope to the Ukr or even to the EU. I’d rather not see Omaha in smoldering rubble. Offutt Air Force base for the US SAC.

      2. Belle

        Were I Putin, I would suggest that any attempt by the West to target Russia would be met by a nuclear strike. All warheads would be surface bursts. This would mean less short-term damage, and more long-term contamination. Many targets would be urban areas, and resource and cultural centers, as the USA has been more than willing to target those in other countries.

    4. Watt4Bob

      “His source’s suggestion that the two aircraft carriers in the American force sent to the eastern Mediterranean might be used in a planned decapitation attack on Russia might be more plausible than it seems at first.”

      What seems plausible to me, is that any “decapitation attack on Russia” would be quickly followed by, at the very least, the sinking of every aircraft carrier owned by the attacker.

      If it ended there, we would all be very lucky

      Why is it that all the money spent on war-gaming does not result in any lessons learned?

      Why are we always speculating on the possibility that dumb people planning stupid and dangerous things are actually ‘smart’ people play 4D chess?

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        Too many generals. There are too many guys with ribbons and flair without real jobs to tell Senators what they want to hear while they golf at a private golf course on a base.

        Before the outbreak of hot hostilities wit Russia, the Pentagon put the brakes on a no fly zones when they had to do the logistics. Its just too many guys don’t need to care about logistics until push comes to shove, but State types weren’t being told a no fly zone was nuts until Harris was threatening nukes at the Munich conference. The guy who secured the Montgomery ward in Kuwait city realized his back nine was near a nuclear target when that happened.

        1. Belle

          I would add that American myopia doesn’t help. Add in the spies, most of the media, and many of the chaplains* convinced Russia is the devil (literally in the last group), and you have a major influence on many generals for war.

          * Remember Phillip Breedlove? Not long before he retired, his chaplain was getting a promotion, and he wanted it done at his alma mater. Breedlove agreed. Breedlove met the college president and they got along so well, that the president invited Breedlove back to campus. Breedlove came back to visit after his retirement. The school in question? Bob Jones University.

    5. Samuel Conner

      Earlier this week, GD revised his assessment of UAF objectives in the Kursk incursion to include capture of the nuclear power station at Kurchatov. Mercouris had arrived at this conclusion within low single-digit days of the beginning of the incursion. GD (or his sources) seems to have been very slow to arrive at this most plausible interpretation of an otherwise pointless UAF action.

      I think GD is intelligent and perceptive and I don’t doubt his first-hand reporting, but I’m not confident that his interpretation of what is going on behind the scenes should be given a lot of weight.

    6. Lefty Godot

      The US Naval Institute reports the following Mediterranean ship deployments as of Monday:

      Amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD-1) is operating in the Eastern Mediterranean following a port visit to Limassol, Cyprus.

      The Wasp Amphibious Ready Group with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked deployed from the East Coast on June 1. The ARG is made up of Wasp, USS New York (LPD-21) and USS Oak Hill (LSD-51).

      The 24th MEU is composed of a command element, Battalion Landing Team 1/8, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365 (Reinforced) and Combat Logistics Battalion 24 as the Logistics Combat Element.

      The guided-missile submarine USS Georgia (SSGN-729) is also operating in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Ohio-class submarine carries 154 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles as well as special operations forces.

      In addition to the Wasp ARG the Navy has independently deployed guided-missile destroyers in Eastern Mediterranean.

      USS Bulkeley(DDG-84), homeported at Naval Station Rota, Spain.
      USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), homeported at Naval Station Rota.
      USS Roosevelt (DDG-80), homeported at Naval Station Rota.
      USS Cole (DDG-67), homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Va.
      USS Stockdale(DDG-106), homeported at Naval Station San Diego, Calif.

  18. flora

    Adding one more clip from the Tucker – Benz interview. “The Whole of Society” is a new-ish blob idea.

    MIKE BENZ: ELON IS UNIQUE… HE DOEN’T FOLD UNDER PRESSURE

    Tucker:

    “Do you think that the ‘blob’ you so vividly describe can tolerate Elon allowing the world’s population to say what it thinks through the election and beyond?

    And what implications does this arrest have for him?”

    Mike Benz:

    “Well, it’s a complicated issue because Elon is very unique.

    https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1828962108349792457

  19. Expat2uruguay

    Gilbert Doctrow, who is not just an analyst but also a lifetime Russian specialist, shares his thoughts after watching recent talk shows on Russian TV, especially the Great Game.

    He argues that Russia will strike the United States directly, quite probably in Washington DC.

    https://www.youtube.com/live/59Rh6x8mi1w

    1. Watt4Bob

      My money is on the City of London, and Wall St. the “men behind the curtain” so to speak.

      1. Expat2uruguay

        @Yves Judge Napolitano tries to get Doctorow to repeat his claims from yesterday but Doctorow evades quite a bit although at the end he finally repeats his claim that the Russians are planning a preventative strike on the continental United States.

        Interesting how taciturn he is….

  20. antidlc

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/covid-2024-dnc-campaigns-00176539
    Democrats and Republicans greet Covid spike with a collective shrug

    “Any current debate on [Covid] is relatively meaningless,” said one pollster.

    Inside a Biden White House that has now reoriented itself around electing Harris, senior officials have continued to keep an eye on Covid, wary of a particularly dangerous flare-up during the key stretch of the election that could force the virus back into the public consciousness and damage Democrats politically.

    They will only do something if they are afraid COVID will damage them politically.

    1. t

      Be fair – if enough of the workforce dies, that could also be dangerous for them.

      Hearing some deep, wet, ragged coughs around town. Suppose they’re all telling themselves it’s just a cold.

  21. griffen

    Iowa experiences with increasing humidity, and corn planting increased to go into…wait for it… ethanol. Yeah the ramifications of increased commercial focused ag industry on one particular crop. Yeah nothing historically went wrong when that was done about 90 to 100 years back…

    Speaking of corn, I observed quite a few corn fields on a drive up to and returning from Shenandoah national park. Highly recommend visiting,many trail options and the overlooks can be impressive depending on where you are in the park. Deer were seemingly everywhere.

  22. The Rev Kev

    “Pentagon maintains restrictions on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia”

    There is a good reason for this. It is because it would not be the Ukrainians attacking Russia but America. Consider. The weapons themselves are American. They depend on American satellite coverage for targeting plus all those recon networks, analysis centers, etc. – all American. The weapons themselves are almost certainly fired by American military personnel and it may be that the only Ukrainians involved are the launch vehicle drivers – and a Ukrainian flag on the side of that missile. I believe that the Russians have made it clear that they know that any such attacks on Russia (St. Petersburg or Moscow for example) would be actually American attacks on Russia and have promised sever consequences if they do. What that would be I have no idea nor do I have an interest in finding out.

  23. t

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Donald Trump told him this week that former CIA Director Mike Pompeo “begged” him to not release the JFK files.

    Hard to know what this means. RFK pestered Trump who made excuses because he does not care? Or, three seconds after his announcement, RFK found out Trump was dropping him from any consideration? Tucker suggested this exchange for some chaos agent reason?

    1. anahuna

      FWIW I believe I have heard Judge Napolitano say that he had urged Trump to release the files and that Trump had given him the same explanation for not doing so.

      Sorry, no link.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        Trump really was naive and got played by the neocons. Pompeo has to be one of the worst hires, ever. Let’s hope he learned from experience.

  24. The Rev Kev

    “Why Harris campaign is fighting for unmuted debate mics”

    For the Biden – Trump debate, the Democrats insisted on muted mikes when one person was talking. As it turned out, that blew up in Biden’s face as it revealed his incapacity. I do believe that the Democrats are trying to be clever here. They probably figure that after Kamala gets under Trump’s skin, that he will keep on talking over her and interrupting her. And that will give her the chance to turn to him and say “I’m speaking!” which they think will be the killer blow. After all, it is all about the optics, right?

    1. Geo

      “After all, it is all about the optics, right?”

      Sadly, yes, it is. As the years go by I find myself more and more disillusioned with the willingness of our populace to place hopes in the hands of obvious conmen. Anyone with conviction in their voice and an unflappable ego can sell us anything.

      The term “snake oil salesman” has been around forever yet they run the place more than ever. We all know the mainstream media and establishment are run by crooks and thieves but even our popular alternatives are cut from the same cloth. We’ve got an “anti-establishment” presidential candidate selling NFTs and bibles. Our top “alternative media” celebs push supplements with idiotic names like “Alpha Brain Black Label”. Top influencers keep getting caught in bait & switch scams. Not even getting into the popularity of mega churches and their prosperity gospel lunacy. Just about anyone with a massive platform is using it to sell snake oil to their gullible followers. (As always, lots of love to NakedCapitalism for being a positive alternative in every way).

      Was reminiscing the other day with a friend about when Dennis Kucinich proposed the Department of Peace and was laughed at onstage by the other Dem candidates and for weeks after by the press. That was to be expected. The truly sad part was how the American people dismissed him as a kook. He wasn’t a brutish blowhard ranting about pulverizing our enemies so must not be a serious person. Most don’t even remember him anymore and those that do put him in the fringe weirdo category.

      I can be upset at our leadership but at the end of the day it’s clear our citizenry loves being told comforting lies. They may not like the trajectory of our nation, nor even the candidates we have, but one look at the people who dominate our media and politics it’s clear they love looking up to slick salesmen and charismatic charlatans.

      So, yeah, it’s all about optics. People don’t vote for solutions, they vote for vibes.

  25. Es s Ce Tera

    Watching the RFK/Carlson conversation it’s hard not to think RFK Jr. really shoulda been the presidential candidate. If it had gone to the convention to decide, he’d be the clear winner. I don’t agree with his anti-vax stance but he clearly has vision, charisma, mojo, he genuinely cares, is extremely articulate, has deep sense and knowledge of history, is a thinker, and has serious debate chops.

    Millions are probably watching this and wondering what the hell the backoom democratic vanguard were even thinking in snubbing him. And I’m now wondering if, in putting forward the worst possible candidate, they’re trying to throw the fight in favour of Trump? This is very strange indeed.

    2. Samuel Conner

      I want to like RFK, Jr. for those of his stances that I think are very valid, such as the admirable concerns about population health that dominated the 2nd half of his campaign-suspension speech. There is also, however, a commitment to beliefs that strike me as unreasonable or at least not well-founded (“chemtrails” comes to mind), which leads me to wonder whether the things I do agree with are a case of “stopped clock right twice a day” or a DJT-like mixture of a seasoning of unwelcome truths on a rhetorical “main course” that is dominated by made-up stuff.

      At this point, I don’t consider him to be a dramatically higher quality candidate than the two duopoly options.

  26. Lou Anton

    “Trump says plan to make U.S. ‘crypto capital of the planet’ coming within hours” (CNBC). A couple quotes from the article:

    Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is pumping the Trump Organization’s new crypto platform, which has just been rebranded to “World Liberty Financial” from ‘The DeFiant Ones.’

    In a post to his 90 million followers on X, the former president shared a video of himself with voiceover: “This afternoon, I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet. They want to choke you. They want to choke you out of business. We’re not going to let that happen.” It was unclear who Trump meant by “they,” and a Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the announcement from CNBC.

    I don’t know how many Trump supporters really pay that much attention to his daily meanderings, but doesn’t this just make him sound like a crazy person? For most people, I think what they know about crypto is either 1) it’s how criminals do scams and grifts, or 2) they have one random family member (a male) who won’t stop talking about it at Thanksgiving or any other family gathering. Neither of those seem like things you’d want to align yourself with.

    I think I’ve said it before here, but if he’s looking to lock down the “crypto base”, he’s panicking big time.

    PS: I fuly acknowledge that a flim-flam man like Trump having his own cryptocurrency exchanges is completely on brand. Maybe he’s just lining up his 2025 plans?

      1. Lou Anton

        You make a good point, and as long as the crypto lobby keeps donating (presumably In dollars) no one is going to come out against crypto whatever.

        I suppose I see daylight between Trump above and Harris’ advisor saying, “She’s going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and that sort of industry can continue to grow.” (MSN/Coinbase link).

        Is that a lesser evil of a position? Does it matter?

    1. CA

      https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/world/europe/germany-politics-wagenknecht.html

      August 29, 2024

      The Woman Shaking Up German Politics From the East
      Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Communist, has founded her own party to respond to German grievances about migrants, crime and the dangers of the war in Ukraine.
      By Steven Erlanger

      Sahra Wagenknecht, who has never met a political party she could tolerate, has founded her own, and she is shaking up German politics with a combination of right-wing nationalism and left-wing socialism, articulated with seriousness and fluency.

      After a career in Communist and left-wing politics, Ms. Wagenknecht, 55, started her own party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW by its German initials, only in January. It has taken off like a rocket, running third in three states in elections starting on Sunday, all in the former East Germany, where she grew up.

      There, her party is polling between 15 percent and 20 percent, well ahead of any of the three parties in government in Berlin but behind the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the front-runner in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. Nationally, her party is polling as high as 9 percent, forcing her way into the conversation before federal elections in September 2025.

      Germany’s mainstream parties are losing their dominance. Ms. Wagenknecht has benefited from the crumbling of the old order. In Germany’s new political universe, she is something of a loose electron, difficult to characterize, adding volatility and further precipitating the breakdown of a political spectrum where left and right were once neatly and predictably arrayed…

  28. Rick

    About the archive task – thank you! I don’t subscribe to all the high paywall MSM sites, prefer to make contributions to NC and other worthwhile blogs.

    1. Bugs

      raising one lonely hand (hello) to vote to leave the links to the paywalled sites in their virgin state – I’d rather get around a paywall on my own, since the archive links tend to fail for me…

        1. Yves Smith

          You can use archive.ph or archive.is or archive.md. Some sites, particularly Substack, have paywalls that do defeat these sites, but they work for the overwhelming majority of sites.

  29. flora

    Taibbi’s latest. Public excerpt.

    Activism, Uncensored: At DNC Protests, the Unseen Flip Side of Joy

    In Chicago last week, Democrats reversed the legacy of 1968 by smothering protest and restoring the smoke-filled room. This time, the whole world wasn’t watching – it couldn’t

    https://www.racket.news/p/activism-uncensored-at-dnc-protests

    Two paras from the longer article:

    “That 1968 ticket of Hubert Humphrey and Maine’s Ed Muskie was a near-perfect preview of the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz concoction sold to the public last week. Like Harris, Humphrey joined after the unpopular incumbent LBJ dropped out in the face of declining support. “Hube” conspicuously entered when it was too late to gain ballot access to run in primaries. He too was vacuousness incarnate, avoiding any talk of key issues in his announcement speech, saying he represented “common sense,” “maturity,” “responsibility,” and “strength,” while pledging to make his presidency a “time for public happiness in our nation.” He also pointedly promised “unity” and “peace over politics.

    “However, you’d never know there were any similarities, from recent media coverage. According to the New York Times, “the turmoil and tension leading into the 1968 convention in Chicago were far different from this year’s, which is now characterized by Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign of optimism.” The Times didn’t mention Humphrey’s “Politics of Joy” schtick. NBC ran an article quoting Anne Caprara, Chief of Staff for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who said, “We finally excised the ghosts of 1968.” Then as now, NBC said, the whole world was watching, but this time, it was “wowed” by what it saw:…”
    __

    I never thought of Kamala as a modern Humphrey, the comparison sort of works. / imo

    1. hk

      The other thing to remember is that Nixon was also a deeply hated candidate. (I came across a rather nasty satire about Nixon–Tricky Dick something or other. I assumed it was during or after his presidency, but it turned to have been written, I think, in late 1950s!) Correspondingly, his margin of victory over Humphrey was quite small (and God knows how things would have turned out without a Wallace candidatcy–the South was still Democratic enough that I don’t think it could be taken for granted that he didn’t take pretty decent number of votes away from HHH.)

    2. Offtrail

      Humphrey was a colossus compared to Harris. He was one of the two main authors of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and wrote other important legislation.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      I love how they play it up with the Top Gun-esque nicknames used throughout the article, while mentioning he died fighting of the biggest Russki attack evah. Gotta get some propaganda in there somehow rather than mentioning the truth – that he died for no reason due to the abject stupidity of the West.

      1. Polar Socialist

        The latest tidbits from Ukraine say the F-16 was most likely shot down by “friendly” fire during the Russian attack. Soviet era radars and fighters indeed use different Friend-or-Foe system than the western weapons. Although Ukraine should have Soviet era modules available and the know-how for plugging in to the F-16.

    2. GW

      MSM is reporting an F-16’s “first victory,” achieved during a “successful mission” in which “a missile” was “shot down.” That’s the news, even though this F-16 crashed to the earth in flames.

      Oddly, the reports make a point of insisting that “the Russians” didn’t down the plane.

      This probably means Russian AD destroyed the F-16.

        1. GW

          “According to the latest news…”

          What if the news said it was downed by an American-made Patriot system operated by the Russians? Same difference. Equally incredulous.

          Beware of what MSM reporting. Remember the Ghost of Kiev?

    3. Joker

      Ukies are known for making up these die hard stories. It is more likely that this discount Ghost of Kiev died while hiding in a shelter, than him going down in a blaze of glory fending off flying lawnmowers.

    1. spud

      thanks for the link,

      this is why free trade can never work. i pointed this out repeatedly as one after another free trade miracle circles the toilet.

      ” These criticisms however miss the point: in a neoliberal economy the State lacks the capacity to intervene; it cannot promote domestic industrialisation without some degree of protection of the home market, but any such protection is frowned upon by international capital whose support is required for making exports a success. Likewise, which particular exports would succeed in the international market is a matter decided upon by international capital and not the state of the country. Blaming the State therefore for the pitfalls of export-led growth under neoliberalism is entirely unwarranted.”

  33. Ignacio

    The Murky Meaning of Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Foreign Policy

    This one was an interesting read even if it falls in the usual delirium of Western narrative such as Russian incompetence etc. The main objective of the article is to discuss if it would be wise to let the Ukranians use Western missiles for attacks deep in Russia. The conclusion is NOT even if one believes that Putin is a paper tiger and all the supposed or attributed red lines can be crossed. The last paragraph is a sober one even if the authors fall in the false belief that the West is capable to conduct negotiations and that Russia is willing to do that after the long list of previous Western failures to honour agreements. An interesting point is that the authors do not fully buy the idea of the tiger paper and that those attacks come with a real risk: the more effective they are the greater the risk. I agree with that analysis.

    At least they admit this:

    “We should ask ourselves whether we are morally comfortable aiding a war effort whose stated objectives are probably unreachable, …“

    So allowing Ukraine strikes deep in Russia admittedly do not serve any strategic goal whhich can now be considered unreachable, but come with escalation risks the the authors wouldn’t like to test. I don’t know how influential FP is with the current administration but I hope this is being heard and understood. BTW, in a rare appearance of John Helmer at the Duran both Helmer and Mercouris give for certain that the permission for such attacks will be granted sooner or later. I hope they are both wrong.

  34. hk

    Stephen Bryen has an interseting tidbit on the apparent loss of the first Ukrainian F-16:

    https://weapons.substack.com/p/ukraine-loses-its-first-f-16?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1159397&post_id=148277590&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=mhq8&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

    This seems to be another problem of creating a Frankenstein military: the systems can’t talk to each other and tell who the other side is, whether the details of this particular story are true or not.

  35. JBird4049

    >>>Baby boom prompts call to boost wild beaver population BBC

    It is one species that I have never seen in the wild. I keep hoping that the expanding local population in the Bay Area will finally get to within easy driving distance from me. Them and California condors.

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