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Links 9/28/2024

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Penguin chicks survive tearaway iceberg BBC

Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rate Ticked Up in August Calculated Risk

Nobody Knows Anything, The Beatles edition The Big Picture

Climate

Helene’s impact felt far and wide across several southern states PBS

Hurricane Helene causes over 4.7 million power outages across Southeast US S&P Global. Commentary:

‘Zombie’ storm Hurricane John regains strength as it returns to coastal Mexico Guardian

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Dozens dead and millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across southeastern US AP

TEMA: Duke Energy Says Waterville Dam Has Not Failed, Evacuation Notice Still in Effect WIVK

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How climate change is intensifying storms like Hurricane Helene The Hill

U.S. Climate Policy Explained: What Americans Need to Know RAND

Syndemics

Missouri investigates more possible human-to-human H5N1 avian flu spread Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

Bird flu casts a wider net as U.S. health officials keep drip-feeding information on Fridays Fortune

Review shows bird flu control strategies ‘not working’ Pirbright Institute

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SARS-CoV-2-specific plasma cells are not durably established in the bone marrow long-lived compartment after mRNA vaccination Nature. From the Discussion: “Here, we measure SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific [antibody-secreting cells (ASCs)] in multiple [bone marrow (BM)] compartments up to 33 months after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination and compare them with well-known long-lived responses such as tetanus- and influenza-specific ASCs and show the absence of SARS-CoV-2-specific ASCs in the BM [long-lived plasma cell (LLPC)s]. This finding provides a mechanistic explanation for the short duration of systemic antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines.”

Federal lawsuit challenging mask ban in suburban New York county dismissed AP

China?

‘Get things done’: China tries to rally risk-averse officials to revive economy South China Morning Post

Moving Bricks: Money-Laundering Practices in the Online Scam Industry Global China Pulse

Sri Lanka’s Lenin-loving new president unsettles establishment FT

Philippines, US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand to hold joint maritime activity in South China Sea Channel News Asia

Water

Millions depend on the Mississippi—but the mighty river is running dry National Geographic

War over water in Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley France24

India

Schools feel the heat as closures increase with extreme weather events Monga Bay

How Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand are challenging authoritarian rule South China Morning Post. Commentary:

Syraqistan

Bowen: Huge Beirut strike leaves West powerless as Israel chases victory BBC. Commentary:

“Here’s the truth, Israel seeks, yearns, has made and will make peace again”. Netanyahu’s address in UN Times of India. Meanwhile:

Israel says it has killed Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah FT. Meanwhile:

How Israel went after Hezbollah’s chain of command – and why it matters Telegraph

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As Israel Widens War, Gallant Triumphs Over Netanyahu in Their In-house Battle Haaretz

Israeli army hacks into Beirut Airport control tower, threatens Iranian civilian plane Anadolu Agency

Surgeons and others detail gruesome injuries; many of the thousands of victims were blinded, with fingers severed New Lines Magazine

Middle East Maritime Threat Escalates: Israeli and Lebanese Ports in the Crosshairs, Ambrey Warns gCaptain

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Biden directs Pentagon to review US military’s posture in Middle East Anadolu Agency

Anti-Daesh/ISIS coalition mission in Iraq to end by 2025; US ‘not withdrawing’ Anadolu Agency

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Israel accused of breaking global labor law by withholding Palestinian worker pay Guardian

Europeans, Arab and Muslim nations launch a new initiative for an independent Palestinian state AP

Dear Old Blighty

Keir Starmer: a technocrat without a plan Unherd

Where do neoliberal economists think money comes from? Funding the Future

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukrainian Recruits Surviving Only a Few Days, Poorly Trained and Prone to Panic – British Sources Military Watch. Commentary:

Almost 7,000 kilometres of power lines needs to be demined in Kharkiv Oblast Ukrainska Pravda

How Defense Experts Got Ukraine Wrong The Atlantic

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Military aid to Ukraine at risk due to lack of funds from partners – Bloomberg Ukrainska Pravda

What Are JSOWs? Long Range US Glide Bombs Handed to Ukraine Newsweek

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Serbian President suggests war in Ukraine will end according to Korean scenario Ukrainska Pravda

Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine Change Is More Cautious Than It May Appear The Wilson Center

South of the Border

Argentina’s poverty rate soars above 50% under Javier Milei FT

2024

Harris walks fence at US-Mexico border as she works to project tougher stance on migration AP

False Hopes New Left Review. Israel.

Rep. Ilhan Omar to Introduce Major Long Covid Bill Mother Jones

Antitrust

Google CEO Says Antitrust Trials Could Drag On for Years Bloomberg

A Flawed Divestiture, Dynamic Pricing on Steroids, and Worker Harms: Why the Kroger/Albertsons Merger Should Be Stopped The Sling

Police State Watch

Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops The Verge

Imperial Collapse Watch

DoJ Notified of Suspected Faulty Welds on Subs, Aircraft Carriers at Newport News Shipbuilding US Naval Institute

Class Warfare

How Easy Is It To Become Middle Class Now? Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds

Visual Contracts in U.S. Courts (forthcoming) Drake Law Review

How Evangelical Christians Seek to Influence American Politics Through… Bible Museums? Literary Hub

Antidote du jour (Per-Ola Norman ):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

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

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19 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Séamus Malekafzali
    @Seamus_Malek
    A photo of Netanyahu giving the order to strike south Beirut tonight from New York, destroying several apartment buildings.’

    This is Netanyahu just mocking the US and all those who wanted to establish a truce. He actually waited until he was in New York, ordered the attack on Lebanon, and then had this image published as a big upraised finger to show everyone that nobody can stop him or Israel. No wonder there was a mass walkout on him when he gave his speech at the UN. He claimed that the UN was antisemitic but that is not the truth. Those diplomats don’t hate Jews. They just hate him.

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    1. Ben Panga

      My tin foil side is beginning to think it must be more than just money and fear of AIPAC that is keeping the US onboard. Perhaps it’s a mind-boggling collection of blackmail material residing on a server in Tel Aviv?

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      1. The Rev Kev

        Or helping Israel destroy Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, etc, let’s the US become a dominant force in the Middle east once again and that is why the US is shipping them everything they need to do the job. It’s a proxy war against the Middle East and Israel in return gets their dream of a Greater Israel as promised by their holy real estate realtor.

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      2. deedee

        Didn’t some guy with Mossad connections and tons of blackmail assets hang himself in prison? If so I imagine it would be fascinating to know what happened to all of that kompromat.

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  2. AG

    Animals are my new favourite category.

    p.s. A book review on
    “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy”
    by Rev. Dr. William Barber II

    The critical review is by
    Gary Olson
    Chair, Department of Political Science, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pa.

    “Whither White Poverty”
    https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whither-white-poverty/

    It ends after a longer read (officially 13 min. whatever that means):

    “(…)
    The late sociologist Gerald Dawley concluded that “The ballot box was the coffin of class consciousness” and the Black anarchist revolutionary Lucy Parsons proclaimed “The ballot is only the paper veil that hides the trick.” And even after his earlier unqualified suppport for the franchise, the great W.E.B Du Bois refused to go the polls in 1956 and declared “Democracy is dead in the United States.” Class consciousness was lacking during both the First and Second Reconstructions and my fear is that Barber’s well intentioned book, with its “Vote and Change the System” slogan will not advance that class consciousness and may retard its development.

    Barber may be romanticizing the First Reconstruction in that the conditions for class consciousness and real international solidarity simply did not exist at the time. Even W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of the “lack of vision of vision” by both Black and White legislators in the South and my reading the Marxist Du Bois may have fallen to exaggerating the “dictatorship of labor.” And I’ve yet to see any evidence suggesting that the essentially conservative Reconstruction governments were inclined to enact legislation hostile to capitalism. Such assertions reveal wishful thinking that to our peril in not umcomon on the Left.

    Again, there is a highly selective use of Dr. King’s writings in the book. We know know that in his final speech to the Southern Cristian Leadership Conference (SCLC) members he said, “One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin asking that question, you are asking about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalist economy.” And in a posthumously published essay, King wrote “…only by structural change can current evils be eliminated, because the roots are in the system rather those men in the system” and a post gradualist reformer added, “The dispossessed of this nation — both White and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society [and] they must organize a revolution against injustice.”5

    Finally, words “capitalism” and “socialism” did not make their way into the book and this reminded me of Bruce Dixon’s final bit of advice about the PPC: “We can and should march alongside them. What we can’t do as socialists is to consent to this cramped vision, a vision which refuses to name the capitalist system.”
    (…)”

    Reply ↓
  4. mrsyk

    How Defense Experts Got Ukraine Wrong While all we armchair generals (to one degree or another) got it right? For anyone waiting for an apology over the absurd western policy called Ukraine here it is I guess. I’m not reading it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Revenant

      If you read it, you would discover that what we got wrong was the mirage of Russia’s initial success and that if we hadn’t been so afraid of the mangy old Bear, we could have armed the brave Banderists and they would now be winning.

      Basically, the Nazi-Liberal faction have added some epicycles of gaslighting to their theory of how the world revolves around predestined Ukrainian victory, to make it fit with the unfortunate observations of Ukrainian defeat.

      It is profoundly disturbing that people can write and read this twaddle without their internal organs trying to strangle them, like the worst poet in the Universe and his audience in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Grunthos_the_Flatulent

      Reply ↓
    2. OnceWere

      You might have thought that you were going to read an article criticizing the experts who declared that a Challenger-led tank charge would send starving Russian conscripts armed only with rusty AKs running all the way back to Moscow. You would be wrong. It’s the experts who expressed doubts over the Ukrainian army’s ability to defeat the Russians that should hang their heads and express a little intellectual humility. This from the bozo who wrote in an article in the same publication from April 2022 that “The evidence suggests that Russia’s armies can, if met by a well-equipped Ukrainian force, be thoroughly wrecked and defeated.”

      Reply ↓
  5. Psyched

    “How Evangelical Christians Seek to Influence American Politics Through… Bible Museums?”

    A museum for Christianity is fitting. But I would call it a cemetery.

    I am a follower of Christ’s teachings because I try to live his teachings and I have seen how it makes my life, and the lives of those suffering around me, much better. I would say I am closer to how St. Francis saw God and understood Christ’s teachings.

    I ask these types of Christian; “Can you live like Christ? Give up everything you own for the benefit of someone else?” They tithe their 10% and think that this is what Christ asked of his followers. No one pushes them, not even their pastors like close to Christ’s example. They wan to convince people with words, but Christ did more than that, he convinced people with his actions, and this was repeated by St. Francis.

    I live in Central NC, just went through some tornado warnings from Helene and still cannot contact a friend who lives south of Asheville. I see this storm as one caused by the heat generated by our greed for money and power. We are not going to fix anything with words, we need to act and sacrifice. And this is why I think all of the worlds problems right now stem from a unitary spiritual problem. I do not see a Christian god, I just see God. So choose whatever you wish and when we see each other expressing God, wee will smile at each other.

    Reply ↓
  6. Balan Aroxdale

    Biden directs Pentagon to review US military’s posture in Middle East

    US president ‘directed the Pentagon to assess and adjust as necessary U.S. force posture in the region to enhance deterrence,’ says White House

    There she blows. The US has committed itself to troop deployments and boots on the ground in the ME for the coming escalation. I doubted Netenyahu went all the way to Washington to give a speech at the UN. This confirms it.

    The timing is a little short for Biden, but I assume Netenyahu has agreement from one or both of the incoming Presidential candidates.

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  7. Carolinian

    Re Helene–Those of us in the Southeast who were feeling smug and safe from the new weather will have to rethink. A walk down my street yesterday evening revealed two late model SUV crushed under trees and on another street a tree fell on a car with somebody in it who miraculously survived. At a stoplight intersection all the stoplights are down on the ground with a shattered tree on top of them.

    In the past many of our trees had already fallen or been cut down, often due to old age, with replacements planted. So we will get by. But via the AP story it sounds like others have it much worse. That threatened dam across the border in NC contains a large lake. Floridians are perhaps more familiar with all this.

    Reply ↓
  8. mrsyk

    Federal lawsuit challenging mask ban in suburban New York county dismissed, for lack of standing. The photograph of county executive Bruce Blakeman and his henchmen are a study of human expression while communicating a mis-truth. Quote, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who signed the bill into law in August, said in a written statement that residents “can be grateful that the court dismissed a lawsuit that would have made Nassau County less safe.”

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  9. sarmaT

    What Are JSOWs? Long Range US Glide Bombs Handed to Ukraine Newsweek

    The precision hardware, known as the 70-mile Joint Standoff Weapon, is a 1,100-pound winged bomb that will allow Ukraine to circumvent Russian air defenses when launched at a low altitude, according to TWZ.com.

    70-mile range requires high altitude release.

    According to one expert, they are smarter than the glide bombs used by the Russians against Ukraine and they cost $500,000 each.

    According to a guy I met on a parking lot, no bombs are smart but some are guided. This one has the ability to use terminal infrared homing in addition to standard INS+GPS. No ChatGPT available.

    So it has a stealth-like signature, making it that much harder for Russian air defenses to shoot down, according to TWZ.

    Yep. Just like Storm Shadow and JASSM, but without the ability to hug terrain. Also, not heat emission.

    Reply ↓
  10. The Rev Kev

    “Israeli army hacks into Beirut Airport control tower, threatens Iranian civilian plane”

    The Israelis wouldn’t start shooting down civilian airliners with their fighters and pretending that they were actually carrying Iranian arms for Hezbollah, would they? Would they? (crickets)

    Reply ↓

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