Newly found seamount reveals spaghetti monster and other rare ocean creatures CNN
What Was the First Recreational Drug? Gizmodo
Climate/Environment
Who Owns Power in the Energy Transition? Climate + Community Project
Environment: The climate crisis is a health crisis Pearls and Irritations
Pandemics
An even more contagious COVID strain is ‘just getting started’ amid California wave Los Angeles Times
Kansas COVID-19 spike coincides with unexplained tuberculosis infections Kansas Reflector. Commentary:
Here it comes. We are in so much trouble.
“Unexplained tuberculosis infections,” except multi-drug resistant tuberculosis was circulating in Kansas last year. Since 2020, we’ve known SARS-CoV-2 reactivates TB.
TB increased 26% among US children under age 5 last year. It’s… https://t.co/smTm6FF02r pic.twitter.com/FiJQPhXDyx
— Laura Miers (@LauraMiers) August 31, 2024
Japan
US Bandwagoners and Hawks: Who are Potential Japan PM Candidates? Sputnik
China enters Japan waters days after air violation protested Kyodo News
As Japan seeks record defense budget for fiscal 2025, experts warn of militarism resurgence Global Times
China?
China’s factory activity remains in contraction amid weak economic momentum South China Morning Post
WHAT IS AN ITALIAN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP DOING IN THE INDO-PACIFIC? War on the Rocks
European Disunion
French left seek backing for Macron impeachment Le Monde
Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Thomas Fazi, Unherd
Putin, cash and guns prompt ‘explosive’ rethink of Swiss neutrality Politico
Poorer countries that receive more from the budget than they put into it “need to understand that the world where they get an envelope of cohesion funding with no conditions [attached] . . . is gone,” said one EU official briefed on initial work for the 2028-34 budget
— Henry Foy (@HenryJFoy) September 1, 2024
Syraqistan
Renowned Surgeon and Lead Author of New Lancet Study Tortured by Israeli Military Drop Site News
“Yes, it is possible to achieve total victory… There’s a finite amount of people in Gaza”
Aired two weeks ago on Channel 13 news. The speaker is panelist Abir Kara – a politician, businessman and a thug, who previously served as a Member of Knesset as part of Bennett’s party. pic.twitter.com/mnPj5qjwbM
— B.M. 🇵🇸🗝️ ↩️ (@ireallyhateyou) August 31, 2024
Israel recovers bodies of six captives held in Gaza Al Jazeera
‘Israelis are frustrated, but do they want to stop the war? Not exactly’ +972 Magazine
***
‘There was no mercy, even on children’: trauma in the West Bank after Israeli raids The Guardian
***
Hezbollah’s Beirut Airport Powder Keg Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Inside The Telegraph’s ‘discredited’ Beirut airport Hezbollah weapons allegations The New Arab. From July 4, still germane.
“We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way’” Alastair Crooke
***
US soldiers injured in raid during ‘non-combat’ mission in Iraq Responsible Statecraft. The deck: More evidence that America is at war without saying it’s at war, in the Middle East.
***
Turkey ready to discuss pulling troop from Syria, but terms not yet agreed — Lavrov News.az
Why Turkey is accelerating towards normalisation with Syria The New Arab
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s collapse in Donetsk accelerating even further, so rapidly compared to past 2 years that some pro-Ru milbloggers think it may be an AFU ruse. If Ukraine doesn’t have another trick up their sleeve, we’re seeing the consequences of the Kursk invasion that so many predicted https://t.co/tIz6A8HbSL
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) August 31, 2024
Россия не белая и пушистая: Russia is not white and furry Gilbert Doctorow
White House rejects plan to send F-16 maintenance personnel to Ukraine, WSJ reports Kyiv Independent. “…the Biden administration is hoping European countries will take partial or even full responsibility for maintaining Ukraine’s recently-delivered F-16s.”
***
Exclusive: Russia payment hurdles with China partners intensified in August Reuters. Interesting timing.
Turkmenistan Surpasses Russia in Gas Exports to China The Times of Central Asia
Closing the backdoor: The new TurkStream is here. Can the West stop it? Politico. See NC here.
Old Blighty
Britain on the Brink Wrong Side of History
South of the Border
Brazil bans X RT. Commentary:
Another elected official in Brazil — a Congressman — telling Moraes to go fuck himself, proclaiming that he’s using a VPN to access and post on X, and that he will continue to do so.
Congratulations to Brazilians engaging in collective civil disobedience for their freedom:🇧🇷 https://t.co/5pbtrwShAB
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 31, 2024
Or maybe Brazil saw Musk and X interfering in Venezuela’s elections alongside the NED and CIA and decided US hegemony dressed up as “free speech” won’t be tolerated…
A nation’s information space must be protected as carefully as its physical domains – its borders, shores and… https://t.co/pMoBkbN28f
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) August 30, 2024
Spook Country
Macron denies inviting Telegram founder Durov to France Anadolu Agency
How US union leaders worked with the CIA to undermine democracy Red Flag
Biden Administration
Palestinians Seek US Appeals Court Review of Biden Genocide Complicity Case Common Dreams
Trump
Crypto is the new Trump family business. Ethics watchdogs have concerns. Politico
Kamala
RFK Jr.
RFK Jr. sues North Carolina elections board over ballot The Hill. To get off the ballot.
Democrats en déshabillé
I got Covid at the DNC. Why’s the next pandemic absent from this campaign? Too Close To Call
The COVID Wave at the DNC Was Not a ‘Surprise’ Discourse Blog
GOP Clown Car
The think tank behind Project 2025 is also behind some of Florida’s most extreme laws Seeking Rents
Imperial Collapse Watch
BRICS’ New Development Bank Authorizes Algeria’s Incorporation to the Economic Block Telesur
Why does Algeria want to join BRICS? The New Arab
Our Famously Free Press
A co-ordinated attack across the western former democracies.
Danny Shaw was arrested returning from speaking alongside me on a panel at the Free Palestine International Film Festival.
Richard Medhurst was arrested en route to speak alongside me on a panel at the Beautiful Days… https://t.co/XDd79156rJ— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) August 31, 2024
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Growing backlash from law enforcement as NFL asks officers to submit to face scans The Record
AI
Was an AI Image Generator Taken Down for Making Child Porn? IEEE Spectrum
OpenAI searches for an answer to its copyright problems The Verge
How AI Copyright Law Is Being Guided By Spirits From Atlantis Defector
***
AI firms are SF’s most desired tenants. Here’s how much office space they’re gobbling up The San Francisco Standard
Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst https://t.co/XeQNlZG9YV
— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) August 31, 2024
Class Warfare
The job market needs workers. The newest ones are over age 75. Christian Science Monitor
Uber drivers in Kenya are ignoring the app and charging their own rates Rest of World
Montreal’s model for resisting culture vulture capitalism The Breach
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
215 comments
Comments are closed.
Re Putin, cash and guns prompt ‘explosive’ rethink of Swiss neutrality Politico
I read as far as Russia’s unprovoked attack and stopped. If the author believed that he or she is deaf, dumb, blind and monumentally ignorant. If not, they are simply witting propaganda merchants for the US MIC.
This is more a case of the Neocons in Switzerland wanting to end the centuries long neutrality stance of Switzerland, rip up it’s Constitution which guarantees it, join the EU and NATO, “share” it’s tunnel bases with NATO but especially the US, host a coupla NATO basis there in order to keep the government in line, start to send contingents of Swiss troops to any new hot-spots on NATO’s behalf, increase the military budget to buy US arms and for all I know send a Swiss Navy squadron to Asia to join the Italians there. That last bit was a joke but all the rest is solid gold predictions.
Switzerland does have a high seas fleet, comprising 49 commercial vessels. Officially, the home port is Basel. From there to having a high seas war navy is still a stretch though.
This being said, there has been quite a change of orientation ever since Ignazio Cassis became member of the Swiss government: he is a committed Atlanticist and Zionist (he is quite hostile to the UNRWA for instance). Viola Amherd also tends towards more cooperation with NATO, and she was instrumental in pushing through the selection of the F-35 as the new fighter jet for the Swiss army (including with very suspect scenarios involving Switzerland fighting in Czechia and Bavaria, and after playing dubious negotiation games with the French regardinf the Rafale).
There still is a democratic line of defense in that the Swiss can resort to both initiatives and referendums to block unpopular moves by politicians. As a matter of fact, signatures have been collected for an initiative for the “preservation of the Swiss neutrality”.
The Swiss government has been playing fast and loose with those referendums lately. There was a popular referendum proposed to stop the order of a three dozen F-35s as being the wrong fighter for Swiss needs so the government jumped the gun and signed the contracts for them before that referendum could go ahead-
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/09/19/swiss-leaders-sign-625-billion-contract-for-f-35-fighter-jets/
Indeed, but the real problem in that case is that the organization committee of the initiative decided to give up rather than force a vote. In case of acceptation, it was generally agreed that this initiative would have led to an “interesting” constitutional conundrum (aka constitutional crisis), with Switzerland being likely forced into an expensive cancellation of the contract with Lockheed.
I am going to interject here a bit with a historical footnote…
Both Sweden and Switzerland, while nominally neutral during World War 2, in practice where hardly uninvolved. Sweden in particular had been such an important component of the Nazi war economy, that in autumn of 1939 the British and the French briefly considered invading the place; Adam Tooze in “Wages of Destruction” has more details there. But Switzerland was far, far from a neutral and innocent dove:
– Swiss weapons companies (Oerlikon, Hispano Suiza) sold the bulk of their production to the Third Reich and its allies.
– Swiss banks processed the vast majority of the Third Reich’s foreign gold transactions.
– Swiss missions under the auspices of the Red Cross helped the Nazis cover up atrocities in the East, and sanitized the fate of the Jews deported to the camps. Recollections and testimonies of some of the members of these missions makes clear, that the Swiss authorities were not fooled, but rather went along with whatever the Nazis wanted.
– The Swiss also sent medical missions to the Eastern Front, at least in 1941-1942 (not sure about after), where they were explicitly instructed to treat the German troops but not the Soviet prisoners or civilians, and to keep quiet regarding any atrocities against said. One or two members of these missions tried to make a fuss about it back in Switzerland, but to little avail.
These are basically the highlights, but they should be enough to establish that claims of wartime neutrality by the Swiss were, shall we say, greatly exaggerated. Incidentally, this information is public, just not especially emphasized; for example, here is literally the first link I got from a search string “Swiss weapon sales Third Reich”, from back in 2002!
[https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/swiss-supplied-arms-to-nazi-war-machine/2613736]
And I would argue that link’s version of events is rather tamped down, compared with what one might read in more modern sources. For example, though Adam Tooze focuses relatively little on Switzerland in his book, here are a few lines from “Wages of Destruction”, page 382:
“A further telling symptom of the shifting balance of power was the new mood in Switzerland. In the months following France’s capitulation, voices were raised both in business circles and across a wide spectrum of right-wing politics arguing for a reassessment of Switzerland’s neutrality. At a meeting of business interests in Berne in July 1940, one of the Generaldirektoren of the Schweizerischen Nationalbank put the case clearly: ‘The events of the last week have thrown the order of things in Europe completely out of balance, and this, it appears to me, will not be a transient aberration. The world, and with it our country as well, is confronted with new circumstances, to which one will have to accommodate oneself.’ If Switzerland remaind passive in relation to Germany’s new power, it risked being marginalized…In the summer of 1940, collaboration with Hitler’s Germany was simply common sense. Swiss trade policy was significantly modified to grant more generous export credits to Berlin, whilst severely restricting ‘strategic exports’ to Britain…Switzerland’s high-precision machine tools and 20 millimetre anti-aircraft guns were reserved for Germany.”
In other words, everything old is new again. Switzerland’s neutrality in the 20th century was, at best, quite nominal, and there is no reason for why the 21st century should be any different. Though I somehow suspect this is not how they teach history in Swiss schools…
Thank you, both, for the important comments.
I’ll just add this to my comment-
“Swiss Parliament Rejects Proposal to Ban Country’s Army From Participating in NATO Drills”
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240830/swiss-parliament-rejects-proposal-to-ban-countrys-army-from-participating-in-nato-drills-1119961277.html
The Swiss government really seems keen to get the country tied up with NATO.
I’ve read as far as Politico.
‘Mark Ames
@MarkAmesExiled
Ukraine’s collapse in Donetsk accelerating even further, so rapidly compared to past 2 years that some pro-Ru milbloggers think it may be an AFU ruse. If Ukraine doesn’t have another trick up their sleeve, we’re seeing the consequences of the Kursk invasion that so many predicted’
It’s not an AFU ruse. They’re using the well known Holy Grail tactic, not to be confused with the Hail Mary tactic-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUG9VzHoEoc (10 secs)
Ah, you fooled me. I thought the Holy Grail tactic was for the wealthy and important people to move to France (with the Grail) and leave the poor and unimportant behind to deal with the mess. The one you posted is better.
“Brave Sir Robin”.
Brave Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot is one of the four knights chosen by King Arthur to join him at the Round Table in Camelot in the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, played by Eric Idle. Unlike many of the other knights in the movie, he is the only original knight written solely for this movie, and not from the King Arthur folklore in general. And his name is a misconception; although called “brave,” he would run away from fights, including from the Three-Headed Giant. It also didn’t help along his journey, his men perform his supposed theme song that went:
He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp, Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken; To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away; And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin!
Sadly, Sir Robin died at the Bridge of Death when he was asked a difficult question, “What is the capital of Assyria?”; He stated, “I don’t know that!”.
When will the unladen swallows be kitted out with weapons? And AI?
Or will those dirty carrier pigeons continue to hog all the glory!
Knights need to know.
You first have to make sure the swallows are compatible with the weapons, with the fuss about European and African swallows and all that.
(tilting head sideways) European or African swallows?
Reply given by Arthur in Monty Python’s Holy Grail in response to the third question before he would be allowed to cross the bridge of death. The troll couldn’t answer the question and so suffered ejection into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.
Sorry, I have too much time on my hands today. ;)
Going back a bit further, here is A.A. Milne’s “Brave Sir Brian”:
Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on.
He went among the villagers and blipped them on the head.
On Wednesday and on Saturday,
Especially on the latter day,
He called on all the cottages and this is what he said:
“I am Sir Brian!” (Ting-ling!)
“I am Sir Brian!” (Rat-tat!)
“I am Sir Brian,
“As bold as a lion!
“Take that, and that, and that!”
Sir Brian had a pair of boots with great big spurs on;.
A fighting pair of which he was particularly fond.
On Tuesday and on Friday,
Just to make the street look tidy,
He’d collect the passing villagers and kick them in the pond.
“I am Sir Brian!” (Sper-lash!)
“I am Sir Brian!” (Sper-losh!)
“I am Sir Brian,
“As bold as a Lion!
“Is anyone else for a wash?”
Happily, the day that he forgets his battle-axe, the villagers gang up on him and push him in the pond.
It’s an attempt to buy time needed for the development of first Ukrainian Holy Hand Grenade.
I could have sworn Doctorow said Russians aren’t bunnies.
Can Zhelenski count up to three?
I beg to differ. Holy Grail Black Knight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRwCPUEND1U
100%. I often think of that knight when thinking of the Ukraine War.
This is delusional. Is he actually saying this is the first time a rich person meddled in a nations “information space”? And isn’t the U.S. government run by the billionaires and so what does that mean for the Voice of America?
And what about the billionaires meddling in the “information space” of our own country? He OK with that? Telling us COVID is over and it is fine to gather in a big group to worship the billionaire selected DNC candidate?
And IMO, if corporations are people, I should be able to operate transnationally just like they do.
Are you serious? Your comments are looking more and more troll like.
Our billionaires trying to influence our elections is called politics. Did you miss that civics lesson in school?
The top social media companies are US domiciled. We could drop the hammer on them if they go beyond what is allowable (more than you think) under Citizens United. The fact that Zuck has apologized about his past election influence and says he won’t do it again suggests he perceived he has exposure. Dem superdelegate contacts speculate that he is worried about jail time if Trump wins, so this take is not coming (only) from the right.
Most countries do not recognize corporations as being people. You are actively misinforming readers.
There is an argument to be made against Berletic, but it’s the primacy of free speech/freedom of information sort, and not the right of corporate overlords to engage in cross-border psyops to advance their economic colonialism, as in looting.
I have zero tolerance for this sort of thing. Both your logic and your informational claims are bogus. This site is dedicated to promoting critical thinking. You are selling swill.
One more like this and the comment will not be approved and you will be blacklisted.
>White House rejects plan to send F-16 maintenance personnel to Ukraine, WSJ reports Kyiv Independent. “…the Biden administration is hoping European countries will take partial or even full responsibility for maintaining Ukraine’s recently-delivered F-16s.”
From the article:
Citing officials familiar with the matter, the WSJ said the U.S. intelligence community ruled the plan too risky and “raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine.”
Really, no s**t Sherlock.
Classic, let everyone else get in harms way, do the dying. But not us.
US maintenance crews for EU donated F-16.
Are we to believe after debating about sending F-16’s for 2 plus years no one thought about how to keep them flying?
Might as well dock the Navy’s logistics ships, no one is planning logistics!
Here’s a thought: Sheep dip the maintenance crews (or send an ally’s, as in order an “ally” to send their maintenance crews). Despite “not sending” US military to Ukraine, there are credible reports (Patrick Lancaster, for one) of American voices and patches in Ukraine fighting (and being killed) – ah they were retired military fighting as a mercenary. Convenient. And who is going to conduit ultra-secret ISR asset targeting info to Ukraine, or for that matter, run the Patriots. It’s like a running bad joke on the American MSM reader.
How about “killing two mercs with one shot?” “Sheep dip” the ‘contractors’ and rebrand them as Target employees! Those big red bullseyes on their shirts, (a special feature of ‘Overseas’ Target employees,) will facilitate “employee turnover.” I guarantee it!
See – Right to repair –
LOL! “Could you direct me to the nearest John Deere dealership?”
I participated in logistics planning for USAF fighters in the mid 1980’s. F-16 was repaired and refitted for combat missions in deployed environments without contractor support. That was a long time ago, and I have done different work on military systems.
If USAF F-16 is now more dependent on contractors it may be that USAF cannot recruit and keep technicians or some electronics may have been installed where USAF failed to set up organic MIL SPEC repairs.
I do not know if the Dutch e.g. relied on contractors. When they bought the F-16 organic repair was possible with tech data etc supplied with the aircraft, if they bought it. Dutch could have decided to let contractors repair which is what the Saudis do.
Loss of Right to Repair, that is not developing MIL SPEC repair and overhaul processes is a problem with US fighters after F-16/15 (1960’s designs).
MIL SPEC repair is usually cut to cover cost over runs! Not only fighters!
I seem to remember that when the end was in sight for Afghanistan, that the US civilian contractors for the Afghan Air Force were pulled out of the country which meant that the aircraft were soon falling out of repair and had to be grounded.
Like you when I was in the USN, the repair and logistics was all performed by Navy personnel. There were contractors, but generally they were for very specialized tasks. There were more corporations and contractors involved supporting repair and spares at the very tail end of the supply chain. This was during a period when many of the traditional MIC suppliers (such as IBM, Honeywell, etc) were interested in divesting from military products and support so Navy depots were actually having to expand to provide support. It was the very beginning of the MIC consolidation period.
My impression from talking to other former military is that the DOD at some point decided hiring contractors rather than organic repair was going to be the way to go. First, the DOD has been unable to recruit enough people for a long time (I think 9/11 gave the DOD a recruitment bump up for a while, but that’s long gone now). Second, it lets the DOD say they only have 5000 soldiers at that base when there are also 40,000 contractors at the same base (this was true in Afghanistan). And third the DOD has been closing hospitals and other support activities as part of reducing expensive support for personnel (and retired personnel).
But the majority of the contractors being hired are retired or ex-military, especially the ex-techs that have been trained by the military. The military tech schools used to be excellent (not sure what’s going on now.) So if the DOD cuts back on recruiting and training techs, eventually the contractors being used by the DOD are becoming more scare and expensive too. So dumping organic repair capability may only be a short term cost saver at best, and I think the days of there being real savings is already over.
Plus, like you, back then everything was a MIL SPEC part. but it was getting hard to get MIL SPEC parts with all the suppliers bailing out of the business. Let’s just say that when old ships and subs were retired, there was a crew of people there that were going to cannibalize parts out of them.
My only brief experience with this world was interviewing at Lockheed for a job writing technical manuals for maintaining the Trident missile used on SSBNs. The job would have had me flying to several different places as part of the job, including to the UK as they had at least one sub with Tridents apparently. I opted not to keep interviewing, as I’m more of a documenting software kind of guy, not hardware.
The interesting part was one of the interviewees served on the USS Alabama, so I asked him about Crimson Tide (w/ Hackman and Washington), and he said decidedly that such a thing couldn’t possibly happen on a nuclear sub. In the facility, there were wall photos of the various missiles that Lockheed had delivered to the military, all in flight, with a caption describing which missile program it was.
Fun times peering inside the nuclear trident, and it was enough for me.
FWIW this is pretty much my experience and observation as well.
I guess we now know where Oprah has invested some of her undeserved massive fortune.
About the only thing I blame Donahue for is Oprah. I’m not she hasn’t perpetrated more frauds and cons on the American public than the deeply hated Orange man himself. Dr Phil, Dr Oz, liquid diets, her godawful favorite things list..of course she is going to burnish AI’s increasingly tarnished image.
Oprah Winfrey has a net worth of some US$3 billion. And yet the only thing that she can do with all her free time is to help scam people out of their money instead of doing a Rockefeller and doing something good as her legacy as she nears the end of her life. But she is doing this. Hmphh. I can see it now-
‘And you get bankrupt, you get bankrupt, you get bankrupt, everybody gets bankrupt!’
Maybe there are Rockefellers and then there is “Rockefeller Medicine Men.” Blurb on the book: This book is an eloquent, well-documented damning appraisal of the historical marriage between medicine and capitalism and its impact on shaping the kind of health care system we have today.
BUT I once saw Abby R. at a Lecture on Local Currencies…
Not completely off topic: Compare Oprah with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. 200,000,000 books. And Dolly has more heart plus more talent in her songwriting and performing little finger than, well, virtually anyone.
Doing a Rockefeller? I’m waiting for her to start giving dimes to kids!
The problem I have with the tweet is that the current bubble still has some ways to go, at least judging by Nvidia’s latest earnings report. Supposedly the market finds Nvidia’s forecast for the next quarter to be disappointing, but that’s just investors having unrealistic expectations.
Give it enough time though and maybe a year or two down the line, Oprah’s spiel will reach the legendary status of Matt Damon’s “Fortune Favors the Brave” speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEjjufPd3Is
Ugh. When I saw that ad I could hardly believe that he was ripping off his film “The Martian.” It felt so scummy. Just now noticed the name on that female astronaut in that ad – ‘Satoshi’ as in ‘Satoshi Nakamoto.’
Thank you Pat, I’ve despised Oprah for years. She has perpetrated as many frauds if not more than the dreaded orange man. But, you know Oprah is a democrat and uses her race to boot! Can’t ever say anything bad about her. The Dr Oz and Dr Phil stuff is a prime example.
She is responsible for “American’s mayor”.
You can check out any time you want, but you can’t ever leave:
How a Leading Chain of Psychiatric Hospitals Traps Patients NYT archive
What is missing from the article is whether the “stickiness” applies to all patients or only those with private health insurance which pays far higher rates than Medicaid. Of course they want to overmedicate everyone that crosses the rubicon.
Needless to say there will be minimal or zero accountability. The electronic medical are being scrubbed as I type.
Glad to read “How a Leading Chain of Psychiatric Hospitals Traps Patients”, and thanks for posting it.
I was held at Holly Hill Hospital in Raleigh, NC fro 10 days when I was fine after the second day. Even my Psychiatrist knew this and was fighting with them to get me out because the experience was making me worse. The nurse was even stealing my meds. They held me for 10 days because Medicare will pay fro 10 days. And meanwhile I saw other patients doing way worse than me released after three day because they had no insurance. I did not see a doctor for 48 hours after I was admitted. I saw a doctor once every four days for 30 minutes and there was no back and forth communication. My blood pressure was spiking to 170/100 and it took a visiting psych doc to get them to give me meds for it. Once staff member yelled at a elderly black patient clearly in distress; “Just go ahead and kill yourself then!”
These private mental health facilities should not be in operation.
I know many of you might be inclined not to believe me because I have a mental illness but that is the same power they have over the patient. Always believe the patient when they are talking about these places! Read the reviews of this place:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DVmsR6NVUoffvcgg6
WRAL in NC is doing a great job writing about it all. Yay for local news doing what they should!
https://www.wral.com/story/former-holly-hill-patients-question-raleigh-police-plan-to-divert-mental-health-crises-to-troubled-facility/21602703/
Been in jail twice, a locked ward once. The jails were much warmer, more friendly spaces. I understand prison can be quite terrifying but in jail it was an inmates v guards vibe. In the locked ward it was the entire institution v each individual patient.
We had similar experiences with our son. Three separate hospitalizations with private insurance. It has been 11 years since the last experience and the PTSD lingers with us all to this day. Privately insured is a cow they love to milk. Since so many mentally ill lack insurance or rely on Medicaid it is a huge money loser for most hospitals.
And building on Mark G, the mental health system and society’s treatment of mentally ill prove Jim Crow separate but equal is alive and well. It is the equivalent of legal, institutionalized racism (but do not equate this comment as support of the Mad in America crazies).
Let them
eat cakesell plasma.It’s worse in Bavaria. See Gustl Mollath (or, going back a while Ludwig II).
Love this though. No context at all. No agency. It just happened. Could rewrite this for any neoliberal infestation.
Pensions were once a popular way for workers to retire with dignity. But both governments and private employers have been retreating from defined benefit plans. Today, Wall Street plays a larger role.
How is this person not in jail? There’s no accountability for the elite in America. Not for imprisoning people without means against their will.
This is similar in ways to the dialysis center abuses that Stoller posted about a few months ago.
America is an elite free for all.
That whole episode of retirement conversions from defined benefit pensions, or defined contribution, to self-managed 401k plans was a con.
Get the companies off the hook, with a bonus. The employee takes on responsibility, and gets exposed to the predators of Wall Street.
Fees galore with annuities for me, not for thee, no customer yachts, yachta, yachta.
Thanks but I’d go further. I was an actuary for 2 years right at the point when major companies were moving employees from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes.
On a personal level it was potentially disastrous: for the 10 actuaries it takes to make a DB scheme run it takes only 1 for a DC scheme. However I was sick of the job and exiting anyway. However THIS move shafted employees even before the move toward self managed 401k plans etc.
The only thing actuaries are good for these days is giving vaguely accurate estimates of the real implications of climate change (cause they HAVE TO in calculating insurance premiums).
Tucker interviews Jeff Sachs. utube. 2 hr, 25+ minutes. Last part has interesting stuff about Paulson, Lehman Brothers Bank, and the GFC.
Jeffrey Sachs: The Looming War With Iran, CIA Coups, and Warning of the Next Financial Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsjKZstp-XU
Whether one agrees with every word or not, Jeffrey Sachs is a lesson in how penance works. Now at Columbia instead of Harvard.
re: Kansas and unexplained TB. Open borders, baby. / ;)
Ellis Island is SO 19th century. It’s a whole new paradigm.
I went to my boss’ funeral last week. When I was standing at his casket I said to him “Who’s thinking outside of the box now?”
I got a job in Switzerland back in the 80s and much to my surprise had to go for an X-ray to make sure I did not have TB. But who does something like that these days?
I remember getting tested for tb in order to get restaurant work back in the 80’s. I guess testing these days will be “suggested”, you do you after all.
My granddaughter was tested for TB last week. It is a requirement for working as a substitute teacher in New Jersey.
As a new immigrant to Canada in 2004, one of the many, many tests I underwent was a serious set of chest x-rays to screen for TB or other problems. I’d guess they’re still doing it, but hard to tell. Sometimes Canada can be Byzantine, as witness the scandal over granting fast-track approval of citizenship to Hungarian strippers in those years. I remember saying I should take pole-dancing lessons and it might speed up my own immigration paperwork.
Canada asks of the prospective immigrants to go through X-rays to check their lungs. I had to do it twice in 1996 to prove that some sechele of childhood pneumonias were not active and sign of TB.
Canada immigration partnered with provincial CDCs to look into the presence of TB of immigrants. Lots of data linkages there…
It’ll be like the 1950’s again, and proverbial “Morning in America”…TB, polio, measles…oh and a new, new cold war with China moreso than Russia, quite possibly ( ok I submit the last entry is a stretch, after all where will Amazon find all the cheap supply of deliverables? ).
In 2013 I had two business trips to Israel.
Had to get a polio vaccination per US state department recommendations.
11 years later and it is still a problem in Middle East.
Old is new on the public health front.
Don’t be so ridiculous, flora.
10 million illegal human petri dishes from pretty much every third world country on the planet, ushered in and then seeded throughout these united states, has nothing to do with it.
It is and always will be covid, long covid, asymptomatic covid, undiagnosed covid, and “latent” TB activated by covid. Intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.
(yes, but plus Covid).
Intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. I O C O! One of an Engineer friends favorite’s!
Referring to the African Uber story, all those millions can legally sign up as Uber’s independent contractors and not raise, but push down any wage demands uppity Americans might expect post COVID.
Kamala may own stock in her brother in law Tony West’s company and thus would be doing insider trading by allowing in all that labor feedstock.
Kinda like the first Kamala yard sign I casually walked past on Mill St. the other day…KAMALA! OBVIOUSLY!
But will TB be the new “cold” ?
As in, you don’t need a day off for something just like a cold.
In the 2028 Olympics, will we have hero stories of the athletes who had TB but said dang it, then went out and won a gold?
So that’s what’s the matter with Kansas!
The gift that keeps on giving.
Thanks, Joe and the Ho. /:
IM Doc mentioned months ago that he was seeing diseases that you just didn’t see in America with recent immigrant arrivals in his area.
It is kind of mind bending that we just let whatever infectious diseases into this country, no questions asked.
C’mon man! Disease is the profit engine of the fastest growing sector of the US economy.
Americans are as sick as we can safely get them without dampening profits, so immigration is essential!
It’s a pure bonus if the immigrants bring other profitable diseases with them!
… narrative control is so advanced it’s “killing you slow, most of yall don’t even know you’re paying the machine to die.”
‘Henry Foy
@HenryJFoy
Poorer countries that receive more from the budget than they put into it “need to understand that the world where they get an envelope of cohesion funding with no conditions [attached] . . . is gone,” said one EU official briefed on initial work for the 2028-34 budget’
I literally have no idea what that EU official is talking about. They are forever putting strings and conditions on any loans which has caused more and more counties to turn to China for loans. China’s main condition is that you pay the loan back but at least they don’t add on any lectures or finger-wagging or talk about “values’. Maybe the conditions that that EU official is talking about is one of the new ones. You know – sanction Russia, send all your weapons and billions to the Ukraine, end any contracts that you have with China, etc. Stuff like that.
Since the tweet refers to cohesion funds, this is about the internal subsidies granted to EU countries from the EU budget, not credits to other countries. Still: more red tape and strings attached.
Thanks for that correction. Sounds then like a mechanism to stop countries like Hungary “interfering’ with the EU’s war plans. More to the point, making legal what they have been doing to countries like Hungary the past few years.
Yes, this looks to be very much the intent.
All part of killing off any vestige of “national sovereignty” which, if I understand right, is the underlying raison d’etre for the entire Euro project. All subservient, in the end, to the Empire. So unelected titulars van der Leyen, Borrel and Stoltenburg over EUEC, and unelected titular Kamala over the Empire.
“Elections are way over-rated anyway.”
From Michael Hudson’s reduction yesterday, debt and interest is how oligarchies always rise to “own everything,” and the only semi-successful counter is a wise king or pasha who taxes them and declares Jubilees. We mopes are taught to laud the Magna Carta, but that was just the feudal oligarchs stripping the monarch of the power to be debt-wise.
How to break the cycle? Survivors of Empire-triggered nuclear war will likely still operate under the money-debt-slavery treadmill.
The original underlying raison d’etre for the European project was to prevent a repeat of the carnage of WW1 and WW2. First proposed by French politicians in the inter-war period.
it was sold that way. but actually it was and still is, a fascist construct, a dream of the 1930’s fascists.
Stated purpose, maybe. My bet is that the “long thinkers” had the other thing in mind. Regardless, I believe events demonstrate the current intent, to subsume nations into a “managed from Brussels” obedient singularity.
Actually, the idea of the EU was a project concocted to return to an earlier pre-great-depression situation where a financial and industrial oligarchy determined policies in Europe.
The two events that motivated the move towards the type of unification that the EU implements were as follows:
1) Fascism, especially nazism. With fascism, while firms enjoyed an almost complete domination over labour, they were themselves submitted to the control of the fascist state, via its corporatist regime: no independent employer organisations, compulsory directives regarding production and prices, no free trade (because of the goal of autarchy), disregard for property rights (notably spoliation of Jewish property), and eventually a devastating war.
2) The Popular Front (France, Spain, Scandinavian countries, various municipalities and regions throught Europe). Leftist policies imposed a number of reforms that were loathed by capitalists: limits on working hours, paid vacations, pension plans, unemployment insurance, nationalization of industries, etc.
The crucial point is to realize the logic that led to the current EU:
a) The policies of Fascism and of the Popular Front were atrocious.
b) The Popular Front(s) and Hitler came to power through elections.
c) Therefore, Europe must be organized so as to disable democracy, making sure that comparable, or other unacceptable policies (from the point of view of the financial and industrial oligarchy), never come to pass again.
And that explains the neo-functionalist organization of the whole European unification, the perennial “democratic deficit”, the imposition of policies in treaties that preclude alternative economic or social projects, and that, via a tangle of impassable political hurdles and ratchet effects, cannot, in practice, be abrogated or modified.
Vao is quite correct.
From the EU’s beginnings in the 1950s as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and then the EC, core members of the original Mont Pelerin Society were active in creating it as a project to achieve neoliberal ends — centrally, to reduce social protections and restrict the economic policy space available to democratic governments against the market.
Wilhelm Röpke, personal advisor to Konrad Adenauer, West German Chancellor, and his Minister of Economics in the late 1950s, for instance, supervised the creation of the ECSC/EC on the German end, before leaving to literally become president of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1961-62.
Ludwig Erhard, the second Chancellor from 1963-66, had been a member of the Mont Pelerin Society since 1950. And so on.
As the EU began, furthermore, so it’s continued. Robert Mundell, chief designer of the Euro when it was introduced in 1999, was also the father of ‘Reaganomics’ and went on record boasting about how the Euro would work to ‘discipline’ — immiserate — the European working classes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/26/robert-mundell-evil-genius-euro
…The euro would really do its work when crises hit, Mundell explained. Removing a government’s control over currency would prevent nasty little elected officials from using Keynesian monetary and fiscal juice to pull a nation out of recession.
“It puts monetary policy out of the reach of politicians,” he said. “[And] without fiscal policy, the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.”
All this was as designed by von Hayek in his “The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism,” explicitly framing the free movement of capital, goods, and labour – a “single market,” in von Hayek’s own words – among a federation of nations as the most promising means to subordinate employment and social protection to goals of low inflation, debt reduction, and increased competitiveness.
And that’s what you see in the modern day EU. Article 107 TFEU allows for state aid, for instance, only if it’s “compatible with the internal market” and doesn’t “distort competition.” Whether or not state aid meets these criteria is at the sole discretion of the European Commission – and courts in member states are obligated to enforce the commission’s decisions.
Granted, the past was a different country and Hayek and the original neoliberals in the Mont Pelerin Society seem to have thought of neoliberalism as the opposite of fascism and Nazism.
Granted, too, on the French end with Robert Monnet and co., they thought of a future EU as preventing a repeat of the carnage of WW1-WW2, and further European bloodbaths.
Nevertheless, there is no more neoliberal organization on Earth than the EU. Because that’s what it was designed to be from the very beginning.
You probably mean Jean Monnet one of the “founding fathers of Europe”.
Significantly, Jean Monnet was a banker who, in the USA, in Europe, and in China, worked for that financial and industrial oligarchy that lost command of the economy during the Great Depression and worked tirelessly after WWII to regain it.
Obviously, it is succeeding; it is also following approaches similar to those that led to the Great Depression 1929-1939, and long before that to the Long Depression 1873-1896.
Yeah. Jean Monnet. Thanks. I’ve paid less attention to the French end of the embryonic EU/EEC, where the MPS was less blatantly active.
Agree absolutely about the Depression aspect, and the effective replay of Karl Polanyi’s THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION our elites are embarked upon.
Michael Hudson’s piece yesterday was an eye-opening read for me. I had no idea. This history was never taught in any school I ever went to, starting in the 1950’s. I wish everyone knew these things. I have recommended it far and wide. Gob-smacked is a good word. I am making new connections and reviewing old ones among the cobwebs of the old brain that have been fossilized for so many decades. New insights!
Yes, with money comes control. The power to control just sits there in the background, silently until needed, and then they swoop. At all levels of society.
Which is why I am dead against universal basic income.
SInce EU has to prepare the right infrastructure for the transportation of troops and war materiel on the Eastern front, money spent has to make that infrastructure good, not like the year old made bridges collapsing in Romania…
Strings and conditions are attached from the moment a country joins the EU or Eurozone.
or signs a free trade agreement.
Japan military resurgence meets reality : Japan woos military recruits with bigger steaks and better beds. That headline could have been written by the Babylon Bee, but it’s the FT so it has to be true. Apparently the number of personnel in the entire armed forces of Japan is only around a quarter million, compared to China’s 2 million. One thing to be sure of is that there won’t be a resurgence of Manchukuo.
Yours truly might be moving later this year to Japan for work, so I will have front row seat to experience Japan’s slow motion (for now) collapse. Hopefully I won’t become a meme for the phrase “from one frying pan (Taiwan) to another”.
I have no idea how Japan thinks it is going to increase the defense budget with that Godzilla sized debt to GDP ratio.
Will it become another Ukraine, totally dependent on foreign aid?
The BoJ should just go all in on Nvidia Call options. I mean, it kinda worked with the Swiss Central Bank.
The company I was interviewing with originally balked at my salary demand, but after speaking with the two most senior members of the team, in the final offer they ended up bumping my number up by 12.5% :) Perhaps they know the Yen will one day be worthless anyways, so a couple million Yen here and there won’t matter.
When something sounds too good to be true ……
National government debt is denominated in yen, so why can’t Japan increase it (besides it being a waste of resources)?
@ChrisFromGA, I think you might be interested in this, https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/nov/what-lessons-drawn-japans-high-debt-gdp-ratio
My reply to you about the BoJ buying Nvidia call options was made partly in jest, but it turns out, the BoJ is actually a giant hedge fund after all, so I was not that far off the mark.
In the mid-19th century, the new Japanese navy overtly used the lure of white rice with every meal to gain recruits. It took several decades before they realised this was the reason beri-beri became as much a problem for them as scurvy was for British sailors. Even after the discovery, it was a tough job to persuade the sailors to take brown rice for health reasons.
Japan has a big domestic arms industry, but it’s proven a huge economic deadweight (despite overall very low defence spending) as restrictions on exports means they don’t have the scale to make weapons cheaply. Their fairly useless tanks and domestic fighters are amongst the most expensive per unit in the world. They do have a good Navy tho’, even thought they’ve had to perform weird semantic tricks to make it fit into the notion of ‘self-defence’, including redefining flat tops as ‘destroyers’.
The Yoshida doctrine proved very successful for decades for the Japanese. One wonders what will replace it.
That is quite a good link about Japan’s problem with beri-beri. I have never heard of that before. Thanks for it.
A side note on brown rice. A Korean American friend told me brown rice is frowned on in Asia as being rice for poor people. Polished rice (white) being preferred. One would think that that would change with knowing the nutritional benefits of brown now days.
Brown rice from the American south has more synthetic arsenic in it from years of growing cotton there. California brown not so much. Whole Foods 365 brown rice ranked fifth highest in synthetic arsenic out of the brown rices tested by Consumer Reports. I bet I know where they buy it. White rice has less arsenic, which is taken up from the water, and tends to be more concentrated in the outer part which is removed by polishing for white rice.
I recently heard Robert Barnes make a comment about how people buy organic food that has organic arsenic in it. It is called organic even with the arsenic, which is different from synthetic arsenic and not as harmful. I googled brown rice and organic arsenic and had to wade through a FDA disclaimer that appeared as the top result, proclaiming “There is no such thing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. . ” Further down the page are results from USA Today (didn’t read due to ad requirements to access) and the consumer reports article. I did not find out if organic gardeners deliberately spread organic arsenic on their fields. Any readers who do know please pipe up.
Interesting article about naturally occurring arsenic in well water.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04475-3
Well . . . natural arsenic in rice is “organic” the way that natural radon in basement air ( in the radon belt) is “organic”.
I have read that some soils are richer in naturally occuring arsenic than other soils.
Rice grown in those soils will naturally have more arsenic in it. Pretty sly of someone to call natural arsenic “organic” just because it wasn’t artificially applied to whatever legacy crop was grown before the rice was.
Luckily . . . ” Scientists Find New Way of Cooking Rice That Removes Arsenic and Retains Nutrients” .
Really? Yes. And here is the link to that article.
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-find-new-way-of-cooking-rice-that-removes-arsenic-and-retains-nutrients/
Thanks very much for this link
Mr. Wolf.
This makes sense as arsenic is water soluble. Recently I soak every grain hours before using, often overnight. I drain and rinse before cooking. Serendippity-doo-dah.
Interestingly, Persian recipes for cooking rice are as follows:
1) Let the rice soak for at least an hour.
2) Throw away the water, then put the rice to cook for a short period of time (5 minutes or so) in plenty of boiling water.
3) Throw away the water, rinse, then proceed with the final cooking of the rice.
Maybe there is a connection to getting rid of arsenic?
Asia is a big place, it’s not just China, Korea, and Japan :). My dad operates a rice store, and he sells brown rice for a premium because people know that it’s more nutritious. Most people go for cheaper varieties of white rice though because that’s what they can afford.
Plus, even in Korea and Japan, brown rice and barley are more expensive than white rice. 60 years ago, this is not.
Thought the same was true with the army as well? Mixing barley with rice or, worse, brown rice could never work because the white rice was really the only thing that drew peasants to the army.
One other things about the Japanese Navy and food is how curry was introduced to Japan largely as the result of the navy looking to improve the nutrition of its personnel. Curry Friday remains a sacred tradition (well, along with the war flag, and the imperialist marching song…) in their navy today.
Yes, I think it was a problem with the army as well, just not as extreme as presumably they could get a wider variety of fresh food on land.
This story always reminds me of the scene in Seven Samurai where the wealthy samurai are horrified that the peasants have to eat a gruel of millet and barley. Presumably the latter was a lot healthier. Kurosawa must have been aware of the history because in his later Red Beard, the doctor character puts his fat rich client on a rice free diet.
The curry Friday thing is fascinating, I’d no idea about that history. I’d always wondered where the Japanese got their taste for curry. I’d no idea it came via the British Navy.
One of the reasons for the popularity of white rice is that it lasts almost forever without refrigeration, while brown rice has a shelf life of about six months. There seems to be some sort of interplay between storage benefits and popularity benefits, for navies and the general population.
Interplay between health benefits and longevity too: the unhealthier it is, the longer it lasts, because there’s nothing in it to rot. I seem to recall mice don’t bother eating white rice, they’d rather have cardboard. In college I enjoyed an ancient Indian melodrama where a well bred girl sees brown rice offerings on an altar, and feels pathos for the poor who have so little to give. She too was ‘refined.’
White rice is not unhealthy. It provides calories. You can have all the vitamins you need but without calories you will starve long before you need to worry about beriberi, scurvy, or some other vitamin deficiency. Besides being unpalatable, I am not sure or the heath benefits of rancid brown rice.
I think the B-vitamin benefits touted for brown rice ignore too many down sides to brown rice as a reliable long-term staple. There are other sources of vitamin B than eating brown rice. It makes more sense to me, to invent a food that incorporates rice hull flour into a form more compact and easily preserved than a bag of brown rice — a cracker[?]. Rice is not the only source of B-vitamins. I recall reading what claimed to be an old Korean proverb: “Rice without a side-dish is a poor meal.” This of course has several meanings, but I believe one of those meanings is that a diet of rice alone will not provide all of a body’s needs. Eating brown rice alone, unless it is one of the specially designed golden rice variants, is not especially high in vitamin A. I tend to think of rice as a source of calories, and vegetables and fruits as a source of vitamins and minerals. I view the hype around brown rice as similar in kind to the supposed health benefits that argued for using turbinado sugar in chocolate chip cookies with carob chips in place of chocolate chips. Turbinado sugar and carob chip cookies may be marginally more healthy, but just how healthy are chocolate chip cookies?
Biden Administration
Palestinians Seek US Appeals Court Review of Biden Genocide Complicity Case Common Dreams *********** The good news is some Supreme Court Justices (Sonya?) have expressed that Biden might be able to just pink mist the US Appeals Court Justices and staff, if they grant an appeal (or not). American’s legal system at work doing it’s job. More clarifications from The Supremes tangled and mangled 9/11 era rulings to come!
And in other news, Israel has had to shelve, at least temporarily, the plan to insert cyanide into the polio vaccine, given the current, worldwide shortage of the stuff. Under pressure from the United States to reduce the per capita cost of killing, the brain trust in Tel Aviv has been methodically working through various alternatives to bombing the kiddos to smithereens. Finance Minister Smotrich, who chairs the trust, continues to argue that compared with all known alternatives to date, bombing continues to provide the most bang for the buck. Besides, he adds, we are helping the Palestinian parents as well, as with our extermination method of choice, there is no need for a shroud, much less a box. And as he reminded his loyal followers, one should bear in mind the source of the Nobel prize money, as in “die no mite!” (Those closest to him report that Smotrich has been angling for months for the same prize that BHO got, arguing that between the two, he is clearly the more deserving.)
How about the physics prize? A physicist in Israel once proposed the physics prize for Menahem Begin (“He deserves the physics prize at least as much as the prize for peace”).
Did this physicist propose that Anwar Sadat also co-share that recommended physics prize in the same way that Anwar Sadat co-shared that peace prize with Menahem Begin?
Newly found high rise mountain, underwater 900 miles from the coast of Chile. Count me in for being otherwise clueless, there really is an ocean creature called a flying spaghetti monster. I had always thought such a beast was fiction, like in the epic poem Beowulf.
It’s the revered deity of the Pastafarians, a religion founded back when resistance and humor could still be found on the “left.”
It’s been known for a long time. Here is a link to a Renaissance painting of the monster.
Ok, but, that painting is clearly showing the *Flying* Spaghetti Monster, the deity of Pastafarianism.
This one, dwelling deep in the ocean, might be the Abysmal Spaghetti Monster. Perhaps we have a new sect of Pastafari.
No more blue sky, we must go deep.
Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Neolibs, thank you. This,
“In a widely discussed book published that same year, Die Selbstgerechten (“The Self-Righteous”), Wagenknecht explained the reasons for her growing estrangement with the mainstream Left. “Left”, she argues, used to be synonymous with improving the lives of ordinary people forced to support themselves through their (often backbreaking) labour; however, today’s progressive movement has come to be dominated by what Wagenknecht calls the “lifestyle Left”, whose members “no longer place social and political-economic problems at the centre of Left-wing politics. In the place of such concerns, they promote questions regarding lifestyle, consumption habits, and moral attitudes.” She further notes that, far from being liberal, today’s Leftists tend to be viciously authoritarian.”
“… today’s Leftists tend to be viciously authoritarian.”
Yes, and as someone who’s been observant or active in Left formations since I was twelve years old in 1968, that authoritarianism is accompanied by an ever-more swollen sense of moral vanity which makes them insufferable to be around and, as intended, an obstacle to real organizing.
Wagenknect’s emergence, and the resonance of her message, is one of the few positive things to emerge in Left politics recently. May Germans struggle beside her, and Fortuna keep Her hand on Sahra’s shoulder…
She’s the clearest-thinking leftist to rise out of the West’s neoliberal brain rot. Almost the only one, come to think of it. I wish I could vote for someone remotely like her.
an aside: Sasha Latypova’s latest about the moral philosophy of the modern “left”, no paywall.
You have free will.
Stanford University wants you to think the opposite.
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/you-have-free-will-god-made-it-so
Taibbis’ latest agrees wholeheartely about liberal authoritarianism. https://www.racket.news/p/liberalism-removes-its-mask
“Was an AI Image Generator Taken Down for Making Child Pron?”
‘And popular platforms such as Hugging Face and Civitai have been hosting that model and others that may have been trained on real images of child sexual abuse. In some cases, companies may even be breaking laws by hosting synthetic CSAM material on their servers. And why are mainstream companies and investors like Google, Nvidia, Intel, Salesforce, and Andreesen Horowitz pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies? Their support amounts to subsidizing content for pedophiles.’
The spirit of Jeffrey Epstein lives on. Mostly because they never published his client list nor sent to prison any of the people on it – including Bill and Andy.
In the spirit as you describe it, let us not forget the excrement named Alan.
Greenwald vs. Berletic on Brazil’s ban of ‘X’
This illustrates the real dilemma of states that resist the tremendous global hegemony of the US. My own preferences lie in the Greenwald camp, but then I live in the US. Today we are much more aware of how the US and its allies have weaponized “free speech” and “glasnost” through foreign media and academia to undermine uncooperative governments. And Musk has already demonstrated that his war against censorship is a limited one and his own hubris is very great. It’s a tough call. If there were fora for truly informed, open, and equal debate on issues then the Greenwald’s free speech purity would be the ideal. But there never is. So we fall back to depending on whether we agree with whoever is doing the talking – or censoring.
Greenwald is at ‘the medium is the message’, while Berletic is with ‘the medium is the massage.’
Recent events in the country of Georgia suggest to me that foreign agent disclosure laws are effective at countering foreign interference in local politics.
This article is worth a read.
Boiling the oceans and bleaching coral all so pedos can get a nut off.
With the proliferation of smaller models that you can self host on capable hardware, like Apple’s Silicon CPU hardware, at some point they’re gonna be doing this locally and then sharing the stuff. That’s a horrific thought.
Britain on the Brink – Wrong Side of History
The limited imagination of the elite actually sees dictatorship as the only palatable solution to societal problems they can’t control. For all their disdain or warnings about it, it’s they don’t fight such outcomes as much as actually trying to change for the benefit of the masses.
The article perpetuates the Thatcherite lie that the 1970s in Britain were a terrible time.
I beg to differ, because I lived there then. Higher education and the NHS were essentially free.
We (the taxpayers) owned all the utilities, the railways and the airlines. You could quit your job and find another one. Workers went on strike for higher wages – good for them!
In retrospect, in the 1970s, we never had it so good.
Albanians burn crosses in Gračanica, Kosovo and Metohija
https://www.blic.rs/vesti/politika/na-ulpiana-festivalu-kosovski-albanci-zapalili-tri-krsta-kod-gracanice/xtqncre
https://lat.rt.rs/srbija-i-balkan/106834-eparhija-rasko-prizrenska-festival-kosovo-paljenje-krstova/
(articles not in English)
Seems to be connected with Kosovo Albanian extremists. A partial translation says
‘In a wave of vandal attacks by Kosovo Albanian extremists, dozens of churches where crosses were burned and torn down were destroyed and burned. Crosses were also broken in many Christian cemeteries. The burning of crosses in the immediate vicinity of the Gracanica monastery represents an insult to the Christian faith and a direct threat.’
Also it was on some sort of archaelogial site-
‘In the predominantly Muslim populated area of Kosovo and Metohija, such public desecration of the most sacred Christian symbol in the name of a perverse art only shows the ultimate irresponsibility of those who organized this event and puts into question their ability to take care of the ancient Christian heritage. The heritage of ancient Ulpiana has been continued for centuries by the nearby Gračanica monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which has stood for 700 years not far from ancient Ulpiana as a testimony of the Christian faith.’
The Klan for Freedom(tm)? Perfectly fine as long as they are foreign? (Just like Ukraine)
re: Big Brother is Watching You Watch link “…NFL asks officers to submit to face scans The Record”
Invasion of the digital body snatchers continues afoot because data brokers are purchase agents scoring profits where they can be found.
The Record, “…officers whose police departments agreed to the waiver would lose control of their biometric data once they signed.”
So the police union leader in Las Vegas (as printed in The Record) declares, “We are a hard no because our officers do not need to be treated like a popcorn vendor or a groupie fan…(later on the union leader says)…there’s no need to scan officers’ faces, Grammas said, pointing out that police officers already submit to substantial background checks.”
from:
https://prospect.org/justice/2024-08-30-texas-state-police-expansion-surveillance-tech/
But over in Texas, police have no problem integrating invasive tech in the name of public safety. From the link, “the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) signed an acquisition plan for a five-year, nearly $5.3 million contract for a controversial surveillance tool called Tangles…an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.”
and here’s a cherry on top: “Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.”
Common civilians can be stopped, frisked, and even shot at by po-pos protected by qualified immunity and civilian oversight boards shrug as the culture of aggressive policing keeps on.
and yeah, i’m sure Tangles has no capacity for facial recon uses (snarc)
RE: CNN denies that Harris interview length was edited The Hill
As remarked on Jimmy Dore’s takedown of the “interview,” what could CNN have edited out if what was aired was the “good stuff.”
“…deadlines around time” comes to mind.
Hmmm. Fair point.
We got to watch some of the CNN Harris/Walz interview. It didn’t cause pain. Much of it was quite funny. We’ve been missing this drunk auntie spectacle since she was only allowed scripted stuff. I think she will be an ideal president for the USA. She is 100% puppet. The all are pretty close to that but there’s just no denying what Drunk Auntie Kam is. She will do what she’s told and either read a script or improvise word salad for the news media who will accept it and dress it up as just fine because their owners are the political donors who run the whole show. George Clooney and the class he spoke for knew exactly what they were buying when they chose her.
So here we are. It all makes sense and fits together perfectly. She’ll be perfect.
And also to be fair, we must give to VP Harris some credit for her statements that Israel is killing “too many” civilians. In fact, an insider recently assured me that my messages (submitted via the White House contact site) are “being heard.” Although the VP currently has no intention of changing her stance that the US must continue to send weaponry to Israel “so it can defend itself,” this insider relayed that, henceforth, for every 1,500 messages (similar to mine) which the VP’s office receives, the VP will add one “way” to her statement that Israel is killing “too many” civilians. And thus, for example, after the VP receives another 4,500 such messages, the VP will state that Israel is killing “way, way, way too many civilians.”
Granted, the VP’s statement as enhanced may or may not do anything to reduce the carnage. On the other hand, at least her supporters will be able to shove that statement in the face of her opponents, effectively proving to those opponents that the VP really and truly cares about civilians. (And to think that until recently I felt impotent.) By the way, this insider let me know that I might have a bit more sway if I were to refrain from comments about the VP’s attire. My response that I was not trying to be snide, but in fact actually adore pantsuits seemed to fall on deaf ears. So, fellow commentators, please use caution if you broach the subject of threads, whether polyester or otherwise.
Your comment provides very useful evidence in support of my take that the system is working perfectly as it was designed. All we need is a somewhat more extreme position from the Republicans for better-of-two-evilsism to ensure the goods will be delivered (to Israel, Ukraine, Pentagon contractors, you name it). And it does no harm that the Trumpeters denounce Drunk Auntie Kam as a Marxist and a communist.
I gotta say, something about Tim Walz just doesn’t look Marxist or communist. In the interview he looked like the well-paid attorney at a deposition sitting beside his client.
One of the Dore commenters said that Walz reminded him of Peter Boyle’s Frankenstein’s monster character in the “Putting on the Ritz” routine in “Young Frankenstein”. I think he was spot on with that observation.
Putting on the Ritz
Blighty falling.
During my time in London about 50 years ago, I was struck by a few sensory items.
First, the smell. The streets, sidewalks and doorways reeked of decay, dust and other odors.
And the Tube. Descend via those wooden escalators and hold your nose due to the onrushing fetid smells.
Then the food, inedible. The tea and beer were okay.
Escaping the city was a relief.
Subsequent visits brought some more favorable opinions, the smells mitigated, the food much better after foreigners opened restaurants, and the transport was better, too.
I haven’t been for a while, maybe 20 years, but even for a conference, just two or three days, I remember the air turned your snot black. I check with other attendees and they confirmed.
I’ve lived in London for 44 years and my snot has never turned black. Was the conference held in a toilet?
Probably more than that. I remember showing a Canadian friend around London about 30 years ago. I wanted to show him Westminster Abbey, and I was staring straight at it and couldn’t find it. I was looking for a black building, and it had become white.
For some strange reason the smell migrated to the North and the coasts during the Thatcher years where it took up permanent residence.
“Macron denies inviting Telegram founder Durov to France’
If Macron had simply denied it, then that may have been it. But according to Alex Christoforou, he not only denied it but made a real song and dance about it and kept on about it. Methinks that he doth protest too much. Reminds me of the Medicis of Florence who reputedly invited people to dinner only to poison those who were against them.
This is really off topic but I’m curious.
I went to the grocery store yesterday. I don’t buy it often and I actually had some inventory so I don’t know when the last time I bought some. When did bleach become so expensive? I payed over 6 bucks for a gallon (Kroger). That seems nuts. Maybe I don’t remember correctly, but wasn’t bleach pretty cheap at one time not too long ago?
Maybe it’s imported from Russia, over India, just like oil. 😀
Yeah I notice the similar jump in pricing when I buy laundry detergent. Used to get a very large container of a mild off brand Purex…but then that price jumped and kept going. I think it was 100 ounces, I think the price now if not on sale to be $12 or that range. And as for a big name like Tide detergent..nope not a chance.
I said hello to very cheap detergent. Same analogy applies to a standard 12 pack of Coca Cola canned sodas…buy 4 cases and save (!)
Adding some pointed snark, but in this same world the Paul Krugman or the Noah Smith would tell us plebes these examples are acceptable, fine and inflation is down dramatically. Yeah for Bidenomics.
I’ve been using our search functions in the attempt to find some usable info. This is about as good as I could find. Sounds like it changed back during COVID.
Status of Chlorine Product Availability and Pricing – EPA
Yea, Krug would have some excuse. I quit reading that huckster years ago.
Yes.
And, gardeners can tell you that fish emulsion, a mainstay in the garden has gone from about $8 per gallon to $20. Makes me want to start a fish pond.
> When did bleach become so expensive?
When it became treatment for Covid – it has to be priced like pharmaceuticals
…I’m trying to keep a straight face…
Be glad you don’t gave to buy chlorine for a pool. The price went nuts a couple of years ago and hasn’t come back down.
And bromine is even worse, price wise.
“When did bleach become so expensive? I paid over 6 bucks for a gallon (Kroger).”
The point about inflation is that while prices are generally increasing only moderately now, price increases that occured in the last few years have not reversed. Increasing moderately does not mean falling. Also, trade restrictions by the US have meant domestic price increases are not readily reversible. Finally, for manufactured products-equipment productivity has actually declined now for the last 12 and a half years. The decline in manufacturing productivity is unprecedented and very important.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mB
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024
* Output per hour of all persons
(Indexed to 1988)
Everybody’s gouging.
Everybody’s gouging.
Everybody’s gouging.
You can buy bleach tablets on Amazon or from Walmart online (and no doubt other sources). Just add water. They stay good a lot longer than regular bleach, which expires quickly, and so may be a cheaper option. I tracked the tablets down when I got tired of spending so much money on prepping with bleach that I never ended up using, and I didn’t want to buy a bucket of pool shock.
That was fast. Tweet by B.M.(@Ireallyhateyou) with video of Abir Kara on Ch 13 news (“Yes, it is possible to achieve total victory… There’s a finite amount of people in Gaza”) has been removed.
https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1829932100583096710
Abir Kara seems not to understand the Endsieg she mentions. When everyone in Gaza is dead or exiled that doesn’t mean they are done fighting. Far from it, I would imagine.
I think we should use the word Endsieg in place of Total Victory. I don’t know any Hebrew or what Israelis say when they refer to it but when it comes to translating whatever it is, can’t we use this borrowed word, like we use Kindergarten?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endsieg
Endsieg a German term translating to “final victory,” emerged prominently during World War II as a central concept within Nazi ideology.
“I got Covid at the DNC. Why’s the next pandemic absent from this campaign?”
‘In full transparency, my vax is well out-of-date.’
That’s adorable that. He actually thinks that the vaccinations are going to protect him. But then he gets to this part-
‘If you asked me to name the top contributor to Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, I would say his haphazard response to the unfurling pandemic, when peoples fears and uncertainties were at their peak and guidance from the federal government was murky, misleading and often flat-out wrong.’
In all fairness, it was a novel virus. But the fact of the matter is that in Trump’s haphazard way, he left the building blocks in place for dealing with the Pandemic. But when Biden came in, not only did he knock all those building blocks away but then he declared that the Pandemic was over so nobody needed any more help from the government. It was Grade A gaslighting. But I do not think that the author of this article would be comfortable with those facts. Maybe that is why he went to the convention without even a mask to protect himself with.
Ran across this article from a couple of days ago. From the Guardian opinion authored by Robert Reich.
Elon Musk is out of control. Here is how to rein him in
First paragraph;
Watch out Elon – they gonna get you.
The Guardian continue to go full bore on “censorship is good”
From the should-be-disgraced conspiracy theorist Carole Cadwalladr
“It was a breaking news alert to lift the spirits and make the heart sing. A tech billionaire arrested as he stepped off his private jet and detained by the French authorities. Happy days!”
She’s got quite the history-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Cadwalladr
Japan has an especially fine health care system that should serve as a model:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p7yP
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2017-2022
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p7yR
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2017-2022
Re: Britain on the Brink
I was in high school, university and early career in the UK in the 70s. That essay echoes my memory of those times well. But I wonder :
I was a poor student living in the slummy areas in 3 different Northern ( poorer region) cities. I WOULD be experiencing slummy environs.
By the 80s I had gone up the career ladder andn living in the countryside , working in New out of town offices with a car a house and life was pretty bright … Or was it because of Margaret Thatchers policies.
Perhaps there is an individual side to history.
I was in England last May in Birmingham and London in the inner suburbs. The areas were still as slummy..by the apartments built on brown field sites are well built. it’s the streets that’s are slummy. But the countryside and country villages were just as pretty and tidy and neat as ever.
There is , in a generalized category sense, a town v country difference to England. Then and now.
As for Japanese debt, what makes it sustainable is that it is chiefly owned by Japanese banks rather than foreign investors.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2024/April/weo-report?c=223,924,132,134,534,536,158,922,112,111,&s=GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2007&ey=2023&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
April 15, 2024
General government gross debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States, 2007-2023
2023
Brazil ( 85)
China ( 84)
France ( 111)
Germany ( 64)
India ( 83)
Indonesia ( 40)
Japan ( 252)
Russia ( 20)
United Kingdom ( 101)
United States ( 122)
Steve Keen would say Japan at 252 is waving some red flags, but that country does seem to be exceptional and enigmatic when it comes to weathering financial crises. Visited in 2018 and the prices were hauntingly similar to what I was paying for things there in the early 90’s. How is that even possible?
“Why Turkey is accelerating towards normalisation with Syria”
Turkiye is also doing this with Iraq too and I suspect that it is a matter of strategic interests. Turkiye has woken up to the fact that the Kurds may become a proxy state to destabilize those three countries on behalf of the US and Israel. This being the case, the Kurds need to be put back into their box which also means getting the US out of Syria. When that happens, the situation in Syria finally settles down and rebuilding & investments become possible, the Kurds have to give back all the land that they occupy from Syria and are neutralized. With the security question being settled, Turkiye no longer needs to occupy parts of Syria and Iraq. But unless they do something, the Kurds could very well become the Ukraine of this region and being armed by the US and Israel for their own strategic interests.
“Why Turkey is accelerating towards normalisation with Syria”
Turkiye is also doing this with Iraq too and I suspect that it is a matter of strategic interests. Turkiye has woken up to the fact that the Kurds may become a proxy state to destabilize those three countries on behalf of the US and Israel…
[ Really important argument. ]
Yes. I thought it was cute that the Western-oriented New Arab seemed to leave out the US entirely from its analysis, since everyone knows that the Kurdish SDF is indeed a US/Israeli proxy force (No admonitions about the “agency” of the Kurds, please. No doubt they have their own sincere reasons for being used and think their cause will benefit in the end – just as do the Ukrainian nationalists. Both are equally delusional.) The same with the discussion of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the other jihadist groups. They do manage to cite a couple of Atlantic Council “experts” though, so I guess they would have mentioned this if it was really important.
Snark aside, the article did cover some important complications in the normalization of relations between Turkiye and Syria, in particular the refugee issue. It just left out the “complication” of US (and Israeli) involvement in the region and the fact that balkanization and instability is the main purpose of this involvement. Instead, the main “outside” agitator discussed was Iran. What a surprise!
Turkey must severely limit or end its domestically unnecessary militarism for the sake of Western interests:
https://english.news.cn/20240823/6c516a05857f4af3a542caab52ca816f/c.html
August 24, 2024
Türkiye’s economic woes cast shadow over future of young people
By Burak Akinci
ANKARA — Arda Asrakci, a young man from Türkiye’s capital Ankara, is gearing up for university, but the economic challenges facing the country are casting a shadow over his future.
“The high cost of living is a burden for us because we need to prepare for the future but lack the means to do so,” the 18-year-old man told Xinhua in Kizilay, a popular gathering spot for young people in the city.
Asrakci, coming from a middle-income family, once lived a comfortable life, however, currently his family struggles to make ends meet.
Rising food and education costs are putting the greatest strain on his family’s finances, he said.
“I cannot make plans for the future because the situation is unpredictable,” the young man lamented, voicing his frustration at the high inflation that has impacted almost all sectors of Turkish society over the past years.
Following the implementation of a tight monetary policy and austerity measures since the summer of 2023, Türkiye’s sky-high inflation cooled to a nine-month low of 61.78 percent in July.
Nevertheless, prices for most goods remain elevated and keep rising, putting additional pressure on struggling families. Notably, young people are a key demographic among those impacted.
“I’m worried I may be unemployed when I graduate,” Bedirhan Cufadar, a first-year law college student, told Xinhua as he was leaving a well-known bookstore in Kizilay.
“I just went to buy some textbooks. I needed three, but I only managed to buy one because I didn’t have enough money,” he said, explaining that he paid 400 Turkish liras (11.8 U.S. dollars) for the textbook and was left with 20 liras in his pocket.
“What can I eat with 20 liras? I’m planning to start a diet,” he added with a chuckle…
“Türkiye’s economic woes cast shadow over future of young people.”
As a story very similar to the above, please consider The Wild Pear Tree, a Turkish movie released in 2018. A bit long at just over three hours, but worth it.
I hope it’s not too cheeky to ask the help of the wonderful commentariat in identifying one of my favourite ever books whose name and author I’ve forgotten.
It was a trilogy originally although I believe he rewrote it as a single book in later life.
The story is about a semi psychopath/autocrat and his family and neighbours in late 19c frontier south west Florida with occasional wandering into the pan handle and Georgia. It is very dark and revolves around who is responsible for a death.
The first instalment was centred on the man himself and the third about a descendant trying to get to the bottom of the story. I can’t remember the point of view of the second.
The writer had a Scandinavian type name and it was his life’s work except for some natural history non fiction.
It’s driving me nuts. Please help.
Oh yeah, I liked it too. The publisher thought the original was too long and made him break it up. He released the first part Killing Mister Watson c. 1990 by Peter Matthiessen. The second and third were Lost Man’s River & Bone By Bone printed in 1997 & 1999. All three have been slightly edited and gathered in what he said was close to his original intention in the book Shadow Country published by the Modern Library in 2008. That edition is probably the easiest to find for those who would like to read it.
Matthiessen also wrote many books about wildlife in America including In The Spirit of Crazy Horse. A highly recommended author but hard to find. Genealogists would love it.
My hero. Thank you so much. And so quick. And so comprehensive. I knew the commentariat would come through.
Matthiessen also wrote the beautiful “The Snow Leopard”
Don’t forget At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Matthiessen was also a spook who co-founded The Paris Review back in the 50s as a cover for his work with the CIA.
This was not known to one of the other founders, “Doc” Humes. Humes gradually lost his grip on reality, and took to wandering around elite east coast campuses claiming he was being spied on by the government. Students treated him fondly as a delusional mascot
After he died, his daughter found through a FOIA request that he had been spied on for nearly 30 years. She also made a great documentary of his life called Doc.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Bet chat GPT couldn’t do this!
I’d say that sounds quite like Peter Matthiessen’s SHADOW COUNTRY, except I assumed Matthiessen was an Anglo name. Might not be, though.
The first book in the original trilogy was called KILLING MISTER WATSON, if that rings any bells.
Beaten to it.
Still, thanks.
I have understood ” Matthiessen” to be Danish.
Looking on Yahoo search engine, I get this . . . ” Son of Mathies
Matthiessen is a Danish – Norwegian patronymic surname meaning “son of Mathies” (equivalent of the Biblical Μαθθαιος, cf. English Matthew). ” . . .
And also a wikipedia entry . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthiessen
Shadow Country Trilogy by Peter Matthiessen
Goooooood mooooorning Fiatnam!
Nobody expected the Debt Offensive coming on a holiday weekend that really meant nothing as labor relations were largely relegated to the 20th century, but somebody has to pay eventually, was the thinking.
‘Lack Monday’ was what they will call it in the future.
Sounds like you had fun in the desert. I figure, since yer broke, maybe we’ll get a tale or two for Labor Day Lite Zero Calories!
Re: Montreal’s model for resisting culture vulture capitalism
This is good. I live part time in Montreal and have a theory about why it has resisted both the insane cost of living (compared to the rest of Canada and North America) and the worst of the ravages of neoliberalism to this point: the worst developers and financial looters are all Anglophone (here I am specifically thinking of big North American and Canada-Britain real estate conglomerates, please do not come after me language police – certainly there are Francophone financial villains) and Quebec’s language restrictions prevent them from making headway with local contacts who might otherwise be willing to cash out or assist.
WHAT IS AN ITALIAN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP DOING IN THE INDO-PACIFIC? — War On the Rocks
Oh my, what a fun read. The mighty Italians strike forth! Avanti ragazzi! The author is “…professor of war and strategy in East Asia and codirector of the Centre for Grand Strategy at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London…”, and clearly needs to get out more, regardless of the fancy job title.
This aircraft carrier (ITS Cavour, its brilliant and intelligent namesake must be shouting in his grave at this gross abuse of his good name) is a joke, capable of carrying a grand total of 16 jets and 2 helicopters (not a misprint). Although this particular deployment carried only (quoting from the article) “…a 13-strong air wing of AV-8B Harrier II jets and cutting-edge F-35B”. Oh my. Re the F-35, ’nuff said. Re the Harrier: even as a precocious teenager in 1982, racing home after school with my equally precocious best friend to hear BBC radio’s latest updates on the Falkland Islands crisis, we both understood that the Harrier (a jump jet! no runway needed! cool!) was a useless piece of military junk (we also understood after HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet missile that big surface vessels were also useless military junk…..). The Chinese and Russians must be quivering in their boots at this display of Italian military might.
Oh, and the ITS Amerigo Vespucci is a sailboat (not a misprint).
I sometimes wonder if the western PMC (or at least its foreign policy subset) has utterly lost the ability to distinguish PR from reality.
Meloni disappoints me. I never believed the MSM portrayal of her as a right-wing neo-fascist, but I hoped that she might be a breath of fresh air and alternative viewpoints. Nope, wrong again.
Maxwell Johnston: Grazie tanto della risposta spiritosa.
I live here in the Chocolate City on Via Cavour not far from the Palazzo Cavour, where Cavour was born, that is, long before he became an aircraft carrier.
Indeed, the mighty Italians strike again. Of that I have no doubt. Italy is signaling something, although it may be that, being Italians, the Italian sailors simply want a nice meal in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
As to Meloni, the intriguing thing in Italy is that her adversaries like Sabina Guzzanti and Marco Travaglio admit that she is intelligent — even affable. Yet they also know full well that she is misguided, although compared to Matteo Salvini she looks quite rational these days.
And as I remind my Italian friends when trying to explain the swampy chaos of U.S. politics: Salvini is Trump, who has a big dash of Berlusconi. Renzi is Hillary Clinton, auctioning himself/herself to the highest bidder. Kamala Harris is looking rather Elly Schlein-ish, now isn’t she?
È sempre un piacere leggere i tuoi commenti. Se visiti la Toscana, dovremmo incontrarci e bere qualche bottiglia di vino.
I cannot compare the chaos of Italian politics (with its many parties and endlessly shifting coalitions) with USA politics (a uniparty pretending to be two parties). Also, Italian politics is obsessed with the endless pursuit of free money from the EU, which has no equivalent in the money-printing USA.
But Italians do love their food (especially lunch, il pranzo is sacred and untouchable around here, I have long ago learned never to phone anybody between the hours of 1200 and 1530), and quite possibly the entire purpose of the Italian Carrier Strike Group’s deployment is to sample the very best of Asian cuisine at the expense of the long-suffering Italian taxpayer.
Siete benvenuti anche qui in Veneto! We could discuss the disdain that the Veneti have for the government in Rome, the cult of Luca Zaia and how Treviso manufacturer networks regularly circumvent Russia sanctions…all over a plate of pastin e polenta e un bel bicier de vin!
Her eye rolling peers at the G7 (I think) was very endearing.
It is a “balancing act”… When Meloni was shaking hands with Xi, it was also anounced that Italy will be sending a carrier strikable group in the indo-pacific…
WHAT IS AN ITALIAN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP DOING IN THE INDO-PACIFIC?
A wonderful comment. Remember though, this is the Meloni who wore off-the-shelf pink and green frocks up to the day of election, then switched to and has remained with Armani suits. Likely, an invasion of Ethiopia will follow on the ITALIAN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP patrolling off China. After all, Italy has spent the last 23 years growing 4.4% in all, diversion is necessary.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1rnHz
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and Italy, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
The news about Kids and TB is no surprise, we will be seeing a lot of Kids crippled and killed over the next few years due to the eugenicist policies of our reptilian overlords.
However the DNC superspreader event may prove beneficial in the long run, the participants may be too ill to cause as much harm as they would otherwise.
Always the optimist….
This is why we can’t have nice things. We have a uniparty!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/house-democrat-urges-us-airlines-to-restore-israel-flights/ar-AA1pBxkV?ocid=BingNewsSerp
A Democrat sounding like Lindsay Graham or maybe the late John McCain. Falsely claiming that the big US airlines are somehow under the spell of some DEI Rasputin that effects an Israeli boycott.
I have some news for you, Rep. Torres.
The real reason Delta, United, and American won’t fly into Tel-Aviv isn’t so much about security, although the prospect of having one of their planes shot down like ML-17 was over Ukraine probably isn’t real great for business. It’s something every corporation has as priority numero uno:
Dollars and cents.
Nobody in their right mind is going to go to Israel right now for tourism. It’s a genocide sponsoring hell-hole. Maybe some business travel still exists, but not enough to justify losing money on routes that lack demand.
Well, these airlines could always ask for a cost-plus subsidy to restore these flights.
Don’t give them any ideas! I can totally see such a provision tucked into a CR to fund the gubmint past October 1.
The flights from Israel are packed….
I just read a twitter/X message:
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal presented a list of measures that will be applied not only to draft dodgers, but also to their close relatives (spouses, children, parents, sisters, brothers, grandfathers, grandmothers).
Sanctions against relatives duplicate the measures against the draft dodger himself and can be applied in the form of confiscation of property, fines, a ban on the use of vehicles, restrictions on the use of banking and payment systems, the use of communication services, deprivation of various benefits and allowances provided by the state, including specialized benefits for the maintenance of disabled people and other social payments.
Several commenters use this as argument to call the Ukrainian government a stalinesque authoritarian gang, but they are obviously ignorant of the much more relevant comparison: the nazi regime.
The nazis relied upon the principle of “Sippenhaft”: sanctions against the relatives of a person accused of what they considered major crimes (treason, political opposition, defamatory statements against the State, and yes, desertion). Sanctions could be asset seizures, internment in concentration camps, or even the death penalty.
It looks as if the Ukrainians really cannot help it.
Don’t worry, Vao!
The War always comes home…
Asset Forfeiture is undoubtedly part of the urgently needed Domestic Terrorism Bill which has been in a holding pattern for decades.
What’s been done to Medhurst, Durov and Murray is just the start, preserving “Our Democracy” requires vigilance and decisive action in a moment when “The Republic is under threat from within and without as never before”.
Thank goodness the Adults are in charge and will keep us safe from evil thoughts and evil people.
Bless their hearts.
Henry Foy @HenryJFoy
Brussels seeks to overhaul €1.2tn EU budget to tie payments to reforms, in a revolutionary step thats pit the bloc’s top officials against many of its member states who see the cash as sacrosanct
[ I assume this is supposed to be an effort by Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President, to end national sovereignty in the EU. Could this be right? What are we dealing with here, whether the initiative is from von der Leyen or another source? ]
Got to say, I’m expecting most of what this article describes to become normal in Europe pretty soon:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/02/how-chinas-internet-police-went-from-targeting-bloggers-to-their-followers
I don’t know how much attention this is getting nationally, but the Colorado State Republican Party has undergone a schism, with both sides currently arguing they are the legitimate Republican Party in the state. To say this bunch is dysfunctional is an understatement—the incumbents are the party leadership that held a caucus without a public vote in 2016, leading to a popular revolt and the requirement to hold open primaries getting voted into state law. It is a mystery why the national party hasn’t stepped in to resolve this. If my instincts are correct, this is merely a sign of living in a safe state, where the Republicans, with no resources or stakes, are only too happy to loudly fail as opposition.
Bit like the Popular Front of Judea versus the Judean People’s Front.
From reddit (Ask historians)
Just a reminder that big premium increase notices arriving within days to a couple of weeks before could shake things up. This in a blue state:
NY approves rate hikes for health insurance premiums
I don’t imagine it will be much better in any other state.
Oh and for giggles the state’s pr version:
Let’s just talk about the part we didn’t let happen
Final results for the German state elections in Saxony and Thuringia are now available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Saxony_state_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Thuringian_state_election
As predicted by polling, the right-wing populist AfD came in first in Thuringia and second in Saxony, being edged out in the latter by the Christian Democrats (CDU). The brand new (only 8 months old) left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) leapt into third place in both states.
For lack of willing coalition partners, the AfD despite its gains is unlikely to enter government in either state.
I once again heard an MD refer to Covid 19 as a respiratory disease on the Radio this Morning.
This seems like a very serious category error.
To the best of my knowledge Covid 19 is an airborne vascular disease, usually with an acute respiratory phase.
Please correct me if I am mistaken in this.