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When dogs recall toys, and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us? Guardian
Playing It Safe Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Climate
How to Address Two Environmental Crises at Once The New Yorker
‘Enormous’ profits from avocado exports drive deforestation, water shortages in Mexico PBS
Houston woman who includes tracking device with her recycling surprised to see where it ended up KHOU
China?
Saudi Arabia ‘open’ to petroyuan, closer China ties, minister says South China Morning Post
‘Justice is hard’: Hong Kong domestic helpers welcome rare rape conviction Al Jazeera
L’or de Dior: Dior unveils gold-inspired exhibition in Beijing Jing Daily
India
India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every day Madras Courier
Regional lawmakers in Indonesia pawn appointment letters to cover campaign costs, experts warn of potential political corruption Channel News Asia
Explosion rips through Bangladeshi demo yard Splash247. Ship demolition.
The Occupation of East Asia Internationalist 360°
Africa
Regional Interests New Left Review
Syraqistan
Nearly 443,000 Gaza children get 1st dose of polio vaccination Anadolu Agency
European Disunions
How Macron endangered French democracy and support for Ukraine Responsible Statecraft
Dear Old Blighty
Blinken to visit London for strategic dialogue with UK officials Anadolu Agency
New Not-So-Cold War
Inside Pokrovsk – the vital Ukrainian town in Russia’s sights BBC
The Kursk Offensive: A Net Assessment The National Interest
Wayward Russian Drone Panic: NATO Members Launch Latest Desperate Stunt Simplicius the Thinker
Russia Singles Out Western Personnel in Ukraine in Latest Precision Strikes Military Watch
* * * Zelenskyy shares details of plan for Ukrainian victory with US congressmen Ukrainska Pravda
German Chancellor says any future Ukraine peace conference must include Russia Euronews
* * * The West still needs Russian gas that comes through Ukraine The Economist
Black Sea Energy project: A new energy source for Europe from Azerbaijan and Georgia JAM News
* * * Ukrainian restaurants flourish in Japan amidst prolonged displacement BNE Intellinews
Digital Watch
AI exuberance masks broad weakness in tech sector, say investors FT
Eleven Predictions: Here’s What AI Does Next The Honest Broker
Apple pins hopes on AI to boost flagging iPhone sales FT
* * * Silicon Valley’s new wedding perk: A bio-engineered hangover cure San Francisco Standard
Startups are getting fined, or sometimes banned, by individual states TechCrunch
* * * The Internet Archive lost their latest appeal. Here’s what that means for you The Internet Archive
Python script saw students booted off the mainframe for sending one insult too many The Register
2024
The Kamala and Tim Show Politico
Sanders on Harris’s politics: ‘Her views are not mine, but I do consider her progressive’ The Hill
The Latest Buzz From the Hive: Kill the Constitution! Streetwise Professor
Rainbow Flag Genocide Vs MAGA Hat Genocide Caitlin Johnstone
Is racism fueling claims about a Venezuelan gang “takeover” of apartment buildings in Aurora? Colorado Sun
Spook Country
Spy Chiefs of the C.I.A. and MI6 Convene, on a Couch and for a Crowd NYT. The deck: “Appearing together publicly for the first time in the history of their agencies, the heads of the U.S. and British intelligence services discussed Ukraine’s incursion into Russia and the war in Gaza.”
Working with spies makes you a propagandist, not a journalist Canadian Dimension
Whale, dead rat, cat or pigeon: Which animal is the best spy? Al Jazeera
Antitrust
Google’s lucrative ad tech business goes on trial BBC
Google to receive punishment for search monopoly by next August, says judge TechCrunch
The Supremes
The Gossip Girl-like dynamics of the Supreme Court Independent
Legal Theory Lexicon: Words and Concepts, Sentences and Propositions Legal Theory Blog
Book Nook
Patrick O’Brian is a great conservative writer Crooked Timber
Book Review: ‘Command’ by Lawrence Freedman RAND
HMS Challenger and the History of Science at Sea JSTOR Daily
The amateur sleuths trying to crack real-life cold cases FT. Shoutout to Harry Bosch.
Everybody Hates a Tourist
Zeitgeist Watch
Pro-euthanasia film The Room Next Door wins top prize in Venice BBC
Endgame: How the Visionary Hospice Movement Became a For-Profit Hustle Pro Public
Guillotine Watch
Why do Miami’s mega-rich drop millions to live here? Step inside the Billionaire Bunker Miami Herald
Class Warfare
California companies wrote their own gig worker law. Now no one is enforcing it CalMatters
The Bizarre State of Western Democracy People’s Democracy
Antidote du jour (PlasticTVm):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
AMERICAS’S WINE MOM
(melody borrowed from Day Tripper by The Beatles)
This isn’t treason
Kamala’s feelin’ stressed out
Wine is in season
Doncha be so damn devout now
So she’s a day drinker
Kamala sips yeah
Why is that so wrong hereabout?
And she’s passed out!
Jug in the freezer
Hide the Serenity Prayer
Do not displease her
Handle her whims with great care now
So she’s a day drinker
Kamala sips yeah
How is that so wrong hereabout?
And she’s passed out!
(musical interlude)
Moods can seize her
No one can meet her demands
Never tease her
She’ll come at you with both hands now
So she’s a day drinker
Kamala sips yeah
Well is that so wrong hereabout?
And she’s passed out!
Day Drinker
Day Drinker yeah
Day Drinker
Day Drinker yeah
Day Drinker
OMG! ROFLMAO!
“Zelenskyy shares details of plan for Ukrainian victory with US congressmen”
I can imagine his strategy. He will tell the west to give him all the long range missiles and drones that they can give him, he will then use them to hit civilians in the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, there will be an outcry by the Russian people on Putin to end this war no matter what the terms are and Zelensky can then negotiate using his 10 point plan as a basis. In short, Russia loses this war. And in return, Zelensky gives the US access to the trillion dollars’ worth of minerals that they have and which Senator Lindsey Graham keeps on going on about. Sounds like a plan to me. /sarc
You’re talking about the Future President of Russia (in his mind). Show some respect! And he’s gonna ask for nukes to go with long range missiles.
You must have missed this article in yesterday’s links, The War in Ukraine Is Already Over—Russia Just Doesn’t Know it Yet
The moral scales have now firmly settled on the side of the Ukrainian defenders, and it is far likelier that Russia itself splinters into its constituent republics than that Ukraine falls to its erstwhile invaders…Wars are won in the heart of a people, not through the rational calculations of military planners. While there is momentum left in the Russian war machine, it is only a matter of time before reality sinks in that the Russian heart is not in this fight
https://reason.com/2024/09/05/the-war-in-ukraine-is-already-over-russia-just-doesnt-know-it-yet/
His plan is to move to Hollywood, and make a movie in which Ukraine wins.
Politico
Sanders on Harris’s politics: ‘Her views are not mine, but I do consider her progressive’ The Hill ******* Kamala Harris, the candidate that has united America far and wide from one valley hilltop to to the other, from Dick Cheney to Bernie Sanders…we are now ready to move forward into the future as a united nation of States. So…what’s the next war on the united Uni-Party agenda…Taiwan or Iran? Or both at once?
Kamala Harris a progressive? Really? Is that like the time that Nancy Pelosi said that she was the biggest progressive in the House. Like that sort of progressive? To me she is always Kamala the Cop. But now Politico is telling me that that is a good thing-
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/23/kamala-harris-crime-00170463
Bernie…..Bernie…..Bernie – can only shake my head at how far he has fallen – timbers may be correct in assuming the next war – will Bernie become a cheerleader shoulder to shoulder with Darth Cheney? – war is the long walk off the short dock with an anchor chained to a neck – and our country plods along remorselessly –
Bernie got run over by the Donkey Show short bus in North Carolina, and requested that said vehicle keep going as he was brushing off the skid marks on his soul, and asked after about a quarter mile…
‘Could you please stop and put it into reverse and at the highest possible speed-run me over again, to prove i’m a team player?’
I thought it funny that Bernie signed up for Russiagate hook, line & sinker and was so rabid about those Russians. And then one day when he got off a plane, a reporter ambushed him and asked if he knew that the Russians were funding his campaign.
Well, in Bernie’s defense, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, was set in New England.
Looking through the other Politico article, so now the Democratic ticket can be viewed as a mash up of those feel good 1980s comedy series…no, really. Let’s have the weekly chuckle again on Thursday nights, like when millions watched Cheers, Seinfeld or Friends! Yeah different decade but the analogy would still fit.
Honestly I think it’s more like the fictional Bluth family, from the early 2000’s series Arrested Development. 2024…such a stupid timeline.
I recall Saturday night comedy lineup of All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart, Caroll Burnet. Then later Saturday Night Live, and maybe The Midnight Special.
I won’t even bother to clink on anything he says these days. His last campaign was sickening to me. Went dawn to his local headquarters and saw all the young people there so enthralled and believing in him. Selling them out as quickly as possible. I have nothing but
Contempt for him now. Honestly I think both times he ran, it was to sheep herd for the corrupt democrats. He is no better than any of them. Kamala Harris is no progressive!
Link not working! Working with spies makes you a propagandist, not a journalist Canadian Dimension
News you can use on plastic recycling efforts in a huge sprawling city like Houston. Hey look over there, is a leaning tower of disposable bottles of Coca Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper….\sarc
I do try at recycling the basics like cardboard or paperboard cartons..I also wonder if the effort is wasted.
I have toured our county recycling center with the facility director and hounded her with questions. The short of it was… aluminum is very worth it, steel cans are also worth it, cardboard and paper are worth it. They all have strong markets for reuse as raw materials. Glass, because it is no longer source separated by color is not used to make more glass but is instead crushed and used as a drainage layer in the landfill. They can get rid of #1 plastic but often lose money on it. Other grades of plastic have no value – there is no market for them.
My trash truck picks up all 3 bins-brown, blue and green, on the same day and it all goes into the landfill.
This has been going on since Covid, and truth be said I’m ok with it, as it gives me 3 bins to get rid of things such as weed whacking debris within 50 feet of buildings and other stuff.
If I was to make a video of said trash truck picking it all up, would that change things in guilting the company to make an effort, or is it all just a feel-good dog & pony show effort on our part to make it seem as if we are making a difference, when in fact its utter bullshit?
Few years back (mid 00s) I was the HR guy at my company. We had paper recycling bins in every office and copy room and we all made the effort to “do our part” by putting any paper waste in the bins rather than the trash. One day I was talking to someone in the custodial department and the paper recycling came up for some reason. They just said “yeah, we just throw it all in the dumpster with everything else.” I can’t quite remember the reason, but I think it was there was no place to offload the paper waste in our county that made financial sense, something like that. But the custodians put on the show of collecting it separately- they had people who went around the complex only collecting the paper bins and any shredded documents in separate trash bags. We were on federal land (though we weren’t federal employees ourselves), so a recycling program (or the appearance of one at least) may have been a requirement of the contract. Anyway I was pretty bummed when I found out. Sort of like the adult version of finding out Santa Claus is made-up BS when you were a kid.
That headline is the worst – sounds like the woman was confirming suspicions.
The only logical thing here is to consume as little as possible, choosing the most benign packaging possible.
We really have contrived a lifestyle and matrix that is detrimental. Will opting out ever be ‘in’?
>The Bizarre State of Western Democracy People’s Democracy
The policies favoured by the ruling class in other words are being pursued despite public opinion being palpably and systematically opposed to them.
I’m reminded of Leonard Cohen’s song, “Everybody Knows.” The author, Prabhat Patnaik, would be well served by reading some Peter Dale Scott’s or even Whitney Webb’s One Nation Under Blackmail , the article’s author would find that “riding roughshod over public opinion…by keeping these burning issues of peace and war off political discussion altogether par for the course.
What everybody wants to know is how, and hopefully when if ever, will it change – fears of fascism notwhithstanding.
The College Fix can provide more insight for questions terrestrial, temporal and beyond! /s
Just wanted to comment on photo of beautiful cheetah. Always makes my day to see the wonderful photos of nature here amongst all the bad news. Trying to stay informed is painful.
from spook country
“Working with spies makes you a propagandist, not a journalist Canadian Dimension” link sends you to Fox.
correct link.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/working-with-spies-makes-you-a-propagandist-not-a-journalist
Looks like the Russians had a point when they picked up that Wall Street Journalist spying on one of their production centers.
Antitrust
Google’s lucrative ad tech business goes on trial BBC ******* As I’ve been doing car travel of late about 1000 miles btwn Massachusetts and Tennessee, have noticed what a ripoff the internet controlled by Google & Co is. As I have an intact dog and don’t like kennels even if they would take him, he comes with me. Which makes pet friendly Motel 6 my choice. Here’s the rub – if you locate a nearby motel on Google maps (easy to do), it can provide you a phone number to call ahead. Excerpt it’s not the motel phone but a 3rd party agent eager to tack a fee and steel your wallet. Finding the actual phone number can by difficult (or not) but not a good idea to do when driving. Representing the phone number when it no such thing IMO is fraud. Why are the Google’s of the world allowed to get away with this? I tried a few ways the the real motel phone but did not find it, but there must some way to do that. Will add, when you ask the front desk what the nightly rate is, they frequently mumble “let’s see the variable going rate is…”. So the wallet steeling 3rd party agents are probably commoditizing hotel rooms and driving up the price.
Google probably put a cookie on your phone indicating you have a pet (via searches you made in the past).
So they know you’re “stuck” with Motel6 and the variable rate algorithm that hotels and airlines use (widely documented all over) kicks in for you to give you your own special price.
Doesn’t Motel6 have an 800 number that covers reservations for their entire chain? Use that (if it exists) to avoid 3rd parties, although who the heck knows, maybe they outsourced that too.
They have a Reservation Center at 1-800-899-9841 for what it is worth-
https://www.motel6.com/en/home/policies/contact.html
My sister tends to travel in a highfalutin style that bears scant resemblance to the way I like to go about it, and 5 years ago convinced our mom to lay out the semollians for a family stay @ the Ritz-Carlton in the palm desert near Palm Springs, and after we valet parked the Taco and walked into the lobby, every other person it seemed had a pooch on leash, and no Heinz 57 hounds here.
I know some motels are ok with you having a pet, but this was crazy at first glance, the Ritz-fricking-Carlton allows dogs?
$250 more per night for Fido, was the going rate.
Ever thus. Pets allowed high end and low rent. Mostly.
Martha Gill writes in The Guardian When dogs recall toys, and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us? that “… animals are much more like us than we thought.”
No, they aren’t. They are more like us that maybe you thought, Ms. Gill.
This is the Malcolm Gladwell mode of flattery journalism: presume a strawman of such-and-such being commonly believed and explain how the common sense understanding we all either already have or can easily take on board once we think about it is in fact really the case.
Gill goes on to blame the false understanding on a habit taught in academic psychology that scientists must not compare human and non-human animal behavior. I guess that’s partly true but since it’s clearly scientifically valid to compare the behavior of two species, prohibiting comparison with only one species is curious. Where does that come from? That’s a question worth studying.
>The Internet Archive lost their latest appeal. Here’s what that means for you The Internet Archive
I’m going to be sad when IA’s cooptation/consumerization is complete. Just last week someone in the comments recommended, Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski after I mentioned’ that Putin’s recent visit piqued my interest in Mongolia, in no time I was able to go to IA and download a pdf and read it on my Tablet. The peak freedom of the internet is in the rear view mirror, still some road ahead, but I fear it will be full of pot holes and detours..
BIllionaires and Miami island: it is great if they want to dig themselves down there. A good place for them to drown.
The bridge also look very destructable.
I was thinking of the movie possibilities myself. One is where these wealthy people blow the bridge to protect themselves from the zombie horde – only to discover that zombies can just walk on the floor of that channel as they cannot drown. Another is where a civil war breaks out and they blow the bridge imagining that they are safe which is why they bought into there. Soon they are under siege as drones fly over and bomb and burn those houses and stop helicopters fly rescue missions by crashing into them. I’d pay money to see either of those movies myself.
Much like the line about the Hamptons not being a defensible position. I read a tangential article on the residents moving into or living there, timed shortly after the Bezos buying property there. TB12 bought a place too, all the best in the world. I’d wonder what monthly or annual HOA dues…\sarc
These billionaire anecdotes remind me of a Tom Petty ( but not the Heartbreakers ) lyric…”…It’s good to be king, of your own little world…”. As for Tom Brady he’s now gonna be a working stiff on weekly NFL broadcast for Fox. But as some others reminded him yesterday, now you don’t need to deal with any losses or be sore as hell from the game the week prior.
That island is like a salient. And salients get pinched off and destroyed.
I don’t get it, that island looks like it could be a cemetary. Any idiot with a boat could get to it, and if shit really hits the fan the guards will bug out or better yet become warlords.
I was thinking about how easily the guards could be bribed as they all are paid less than the minimum wage. But the fun idea was how they will soon be under water.
That global warming thing again so inconvenient for them.
Is anybody else experiencing cognitive dissidence with the program to vaccinate the children of gaza against polio?
I assume it’s happening so that the Polio doesn’t spread to Israelis.
A part of me wonders if they’re using this opportunity to poison the vaccines.
That was exactly the reason given. The Israelis did not want to live next door to a reservoir of polio disease as they knew that their walls would not protect them. It’s another reason why IDF soldiers got polio vaccinations as a matter of urgency.
Uh, yes. I’d call it extreme WTF levels of cognitive dissonance.
Effing Globalist Bill Gates is in the middle of this superficially “charitable” act.
When it sadly appears that the oral “vaccines” mutate in vivo back to pathogenic form and polio ravages the Palestinians, or some other “how were we to know?” horror somehow pops up, the whine will be “But we meant well!” And eventually, as so many times before, the documentation of the malevolent intent will start to appear, shouted down with “well-meaning” cries of “disinformation.”
The Israel ites would not have allowed this mass event to go forward unless it tied to the intent to exterminate the Pals. The Izzies have no problem killing off real health care and treatment in Gaza and West Bank, whether at retail by Hellfire-ing and droning individual ambulances and treatment teams, or dropping 2000-pound US bombs onto UN, Red Cross/Crescent and other hospitals and offices.
A plague on them.
Yep.
Simplicius, Poland and drone detection. It seems as if Sweden has joined a club of true equal peers. A classic is Sweden chasing submarines that turned out to be herring farts.
https://improbable.com/2021/02/19/a-vivid-telling-of-the-herring-farts-soviet-sub-history/
Eldar Mamedov, Responsible Statecraft writing irresponsibly.
So Macron has impaired French democracy. On that we can agree. But the even more important thing for Mamedov (and he doesn’t hide his priorities) is that the spigot to Ukraine may have to be turned off.
So much for French democracy.
Note this paragraph, in which Mamedov seems not to understand the temerity of les citoyens: “All of that reinforces the perception of a staunch support for Ukraine as an elite project that has little to do with the daily concerns of the French, the overwhelming majority of whom consider Russia neither a partner nor a military adversary. When that elite is perceived as self-serving and disdainful of the popular will, anything associated with it gets tainted, and that risks including support for Ukraine too.”
Yes, Marie-Antoinette Mamedov, a program of “Let them eat brioches and send their disposable income to Kiev” is just not going to be successful.
I note that Mamedov is based in Brussels and now despair of Belgium.
‘All of that reinforces the perception of a staunch support for Ukraine as an elite project that has little to do with the daily concerns of the French, the overwhelming majority of whom consider Russia neither a partner nor a military adversary. When that elite is perceived as self-serving and disdainful of the popular will, anything associated with it gets tainted, and that risks including support for Ukraine too.’
Sounds like a pretty damn accurate assessment by the French people to me. Probably find that for most French people, they would prefer a live and let live relations with the Russians. The optics of Macron wanting to send the French to fight the Russians on behalf of the most corrupt country in Europe may have served to concentrate minds here. Not many would want to die on behalf of Zelensky or even Macron.
I guess pipelines are out of fashion.
Yea, both of them.
“Scholz says next Ukraine peace talks must include Russia’
I think that Scholz is beginning to panic. He can see that the Ukraine is ready to collapse so sends more weapons to them to keep the war going on so that a conference can be organized to stop the war, almost certainly with a freeze. And for that he knows that Putin will have to be there. A freeze right now would mean that the Ukraine will have essentially won and later on they can be re-equipped & trained to try to retrieve those lost territories. But will the Russians negotiate on those terms? With Japan on the verge of collapse in early 1945, would they US have agreed to a freeze of the war in the Pacific? The west thought themselves smart arranging to have an arrest warrant put out for Putin but that restricts the number of places where such a negotiation can be held. And in any case, why should Russia trust in any negotiations with the Ukraine and the west? I wouldn’t.
Rainbow Flags MAGA hats: better link:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/09/09/rainbow-flag-genocide-vs-maga-hat-genocide/
The link for Rainbow Flag Genocide Vs MAGA Hat Genocide goes to https://madrascourier.com/opinion/indias-new-mega-dam-will-roil-lives-downstream-with-wild-swings-in-water-flow-every-day/
Correct link is: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/09/09/rainbow-flag-genocide-vs-maga-hat-genocide/