This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 446 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, continuing our expanded Links.
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.
119 comments
Comments are closed.
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!
Nazdrovia!
Here’s my effort along the same lines…
What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a Cabernet, old chum
Come drink up the Cabernet
Put down the appointed hat, black cape and broom
It’s time for a holiday
Life is a Cabernet, old chum
So come drink up the Cabernet
Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow your horn
Start celebrating right this way
Your oval office is waiting
What could permitting some Donald prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
Life is a Cabernet, old chum
So come drink the Cabernet
I used to have this boyfriend known as Willie
With whom I shared some dally-dilly
He wasn’t what you’d call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact he was SF political power
The day she was elected veep the neighbors came to snicker
“Well, that’s what comes from too much liquor”
But when I saw her laid out in a pant suit nice & clean
She had the happiest giggle, I’d ever seen
I think of Willie to this very day
I remember how he’d turn to her and say
“What good is sitting all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a Cabernet, old chum
Come drink up the Cabernet
And as for me
And as for me
I made my mind up, back in W’s run of bleak
When I go, I’m dying in my sleep
Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
Isn’t that long a stay
Life is a Cabernet, old chum
It’s only a Cabernet, old chum
And I love a Cabernet
musical interlude… Ray Davies “The Kinks), Alcohol
nazdrovia back at ya with a shot of slivovich – had a partner a long time ago for a while from Bratislava that turned me on to slivovich, an interesting and enticing flavor – but was recently introduced to Malort in Chicago, an acquired taste but it grows on you – and gives on a glass half-filled feeling –
nazdrovia Wuk
“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.
According to Hollywood conventions, everything¹ will be decided by a fistfight² at the end between Zelenski (the Good) and Putin (the Bad), perhaps even Trumala (the Ugly) will partake, if the money is right.
¹The fate of the world, the universe etc
²Rules are a bit complicated, e.g. only some kinds of death are allowed for the Bad: Getting impaled on a glass shard is a very popular one. If the Good really, really dies, he has got at least 5 minutes for a memorable end monologue.
Z doesn’t yet recognize that Hollywood is in free-fall.
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?’
thx for the chuckle – can always depend on you Wuk – what is your secret of the glass half-filled and not half-empty – mine is just about empty –
Václav Havel
Ah, Václav Havel. My bohemian blood wanted me to think well of him, but now I suspect he was just running a Labour NGO…
The answer to the “glass half empty/half full” question is this:
If you are pouring water into it – the glass is half full.
If you are pouring water out of it – the glass is half empty.
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.
funny as in hahaha or funny as in pathetic – rhetorical confirmation RK, we know it’s pathetic – he did get his million dollar book deal and they backed off attacking his wife –
Such promise but now he’s out with a whimper….
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!
From the Potomac River to the Sea, genocidal neo-cons are united in their support for Harris.
Link not working! Working with spies makes you a propagandist, not a journalist Canadian Dimension
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/working-with-spies-makes-you-a-propagandist-not-a-journalist
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.
I am unusually passionate about shaving. I have been shaving for ten years with a Merkur double edge safety razor, and after 3-4 shaves I discard the disposable razor into a blade piggy bank. To make the blade bank, I drilled two holes on the top surface of a can of chicken broth, emptied and washed it, and cut a straight line between the two holes with a dremel. After ten years of collecting used razor blades and numerous hobby knife blades, my can is half full. When I eventually fill the entire can, the recycling center had better show me that they actually recycled my can of blades. Or else. Ideally, they would melt my can, whose contents are entirely steel, and give me some steel stock or a sheet of metal. I could probably do something practical with steel stock.
A good amount of monies spent on recycling by cities were merely sorting centers before it all went on a not so slow boat to China…
The TEUfel is in the details~
A good amount of monies spent on recycling by cities were merely sorting centers before it all went on a not so slow boat to…
[ China does not import any waste products, and has not done so since 2017. China however does sort and recycle. ]
I dip my razor in isopropol alcohol after each use and I get many shaves out of one blade. I keep a little jar of alcohol under the sink, change it out about once a month.
Nice idea! I think I’ll try making up a little spray bottle of 99% Isopropanol and just spray the blades.
Ideally, you won’t melt them but forge into Damascus steel blade, and shave with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnJrXSZmaBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8pEyBES9sg
If you bury the can in your back yard or by the roadside, it and its contents will rust away nicely.
Holy moley! Tabi from SarmaT’s second youtube link has amazing craftsmanship. He knows how to use an impressive variety of equipment, forge, hammer, anvil, drill press, table saw, angle grinder, belt sander, rotary grinder, band saw, various chemicals for the Damascus effect.
I have shaved with a straight razor before. This activity is, paradoxically, quite relaxing when considering how a fantastically sharp blade is right at my throat. I still chose the double edged safety razor blades to shave because they are much cheaper than the horrible $5 shaving cartridges from Gillette or Schick and because straight razor shaving just takes too long. Additionally, I shave “down there” with the Merkur, and I probably should not do that with a straight razor. Sorry for the too much information.
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.
Yes. It’s cigarettes that are not allowed.
Ran into something similar with my local mom&pop Thai restaurant. Click the “website” link from Google maps, and it takes me to a 3rd party delivery website for the restaurant, not the actual restaurant. The menu and prices are different. Even searching Google directly led to the top links being “sponsored” links not the the restaurant’s actual website. They really made me work and pay attention.
I told the restaurant about it, and they said it was their understanding that much of the Google maps content is “user sourced” so these slimeballs tell Googe to “correct” the restaurant’s information to point to their own website – and with these small places, they rarely have their own domain name, but use a Url provided by their web hosting company. It becomes circular – they correct Google, bad guys “correct” the correction, repeat. Google doesn’t care about a tiny restaurant so they give 0 interest to fix it. Although, I think they have now finally fixed it because they have their own url, not a 3rd party one
It wouldn’t surprise me if something similar is going on with Motel6. I can’t see a corporation approving such a setup. I suppose it could also be a rogue franchisee getting a kickback from the middleman as well.
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.
Along the same lines, in an article that argues that “[a]nimals are much more like us than we [?] thought,” I still had to mentally edit every reference to “animals” to read “other animals.” Then again, I have to do that pretty often when “animals” and humans are mentioned.
>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..
The book you mention is out of copyright, and therefore is available on Project Gutenberg.
However, for books that still are copyrighted, it takes time to write a book. If you don’t pay for a book, the author can only spend his or her free time writing that book, and must spend the rest of his or her time working another job, to sustain his or her life. If the author writes interesting material, that’s rather of a waste of his or her talents, is it not?
On the other hand, if you just want to read mediocre drivel, why not just use ChatGPT? It’s free to the user, and can generate infinite reams of plausible sounding word salad to keep them occupied. Oh, and unlike authors, those making it are very well rewarded.
A Martian would find the incentive structures humans are making this 21st century to be very strange if they actually want to improve their knowledge and understanding of the world.
There’s always Anna’s Archive:
https://annas-archive.org/blog/critical-window.html
(At least I hope there is/will be)
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.
It would be rather difficult to be an Illionaire with a B, as you’d always have to keep up appearances and live up to the standards of the maximum securities cell you inhabit.
…what if one of your contemporaries saw a photo online of you flying coach?
The island paradise described in this link bears striking similarity to the island in space in the movie “Elysium”.
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.
Probably not poisoning them but I believe that they are using the oral rather than the injectable version, which in the case of the former can cause vaccine derived infections in the unvaccinated. It’s my understanding that the current outbreak in Gaza is oral vaccine derived.
Confirmed polio case in Gaza leads to vaccine drive CIDRAP, University of Minnesota
This said, the mass vaccination campaign with the oral vaccine is still better than nothing. In Israel, as with the U.S. and other well off countries, the oral vaccine is typically no longer used.
The slaughter will have to continue by other means.
Either that, or there just using the “vaccination” to find a DNA match for Hamas operatives, similar to what they did in Pakistan looking for bin Laden.
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.
I thought same thing.
They could bring the drugs. No mention about any food tagging along for the children.
So, really…WTH?
As soon as I heard about that program, I wondered how long it would before the Israelis would bomb one of these clinics calling it a Hamas command post. It is their nature.
No more so than here in the good o’l U.S. of Amnesia when all the stops were pulled out to get everyone a CV19 vaccine shot but not giving a F%^k if people received basic healthcare, housing, or enough food to live.
I’ve found that Hanlon’s Razor doesn’t apply to Israeli Governjent actions. They are vaccinating a group of children that are food & water insecure and stressed in a war zone with a vaccine that can cause the disease it is supposed to protect against. Seems sinister to me.
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 find all this hand-waving bizarre. The “Left” is pissed that, although it only won a quarter of the votes, it wasn’t automatically asked to form a government: it would not have been able to anyway. But there’s no rule that says the largest single bloc has to be allowed to nominate a Prime Minister, still less try to impose one by protests in the streets. I have read a lot of statements like this recently from the PMC-adjacent ideas factory:
“Macron could have respected the voters’ will and let the NPF’s candidate govern in exchange for moderating the left’s program,”
which is close to nonsense. The “voters’ will” is not really discernible, but insofar as it can be seen, then it must feature more heavily the 37% who voted for the RN and its allies than the 25% who voted for the “leftist” electoral alliance. Indeed, both in the country and in the National Assembly, there is a clear centre-right majority. But in PMC land, of course, people who don’t think Like Us don’t count. And Macron doesn’t appoint a Prime Minister as such, he asks whoever he thinks is best qualified to try to form a government. There is no scope for negotiation about programmes: that would come in the formation of any coalition government, and it appears the author doesn’t understand basic constitutional distinctions. Oh, and the Socialists have already refused to change any part of their programme.
My essay on this last Wednesday that Yves kindly linked to, has provoked a lot of interest and comment, so I’ve decided to do a brief update this week to try to dispel all this confusion. You have been warned.
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/
Amazing new CEO of boeing singed new contract their union and then announce this.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-promises-new-797/#:~:text=In%20its%20press%20release%20on%20the%20deal%2C%20Boeing,about%20if%20Boeing%20will%20ever%20produce%20the%20jet.
I would if he’ll make it?
Hard to tell if you meant to say singed, but i’ll go with it.
just around the edges……….
“Eleven Predictions: Here’s What AI Does Next’
My prediction is that all these AIs will fill the internet with so much garbage and computer-generated illusions, that it will slow down the internet as much as ads have done. And over time what these AIs produce will deteriorate in what they produce that what was once a great source of information will be filled with just trash. You could call it the Google-ization of the internet.
But then you reinvent the blogosphere. Curated links, no algos. It worked then, it could work again.
If the u.s. continues in its descent you might need to reinvent the blogosphere somewhere on the dark web.
I love the curated links as well, but there used to be more of a description or commentary on the links here so you knew what was behind the title. I miss that
I do not think it will work as in the past.
Those new blogging sites will have to be protected somehow against AI — intruding (e.g. in comments) or pilfering the content — via subscription schemes, or possibly captcha-like barriers. Perhaps we will even return to mailing lists — remember them?
It’s a Monday and the links are a reminder that any any given moment every Human being is doing the best they can with what they have.
This is the best Humans can do.
On a more cheerful note the NFL season is about to start and there’s a good chance the Chiefs will win their third Super Bowl in a row, Reid is a superb Coach and Mahomes is a joy to watch.
And Chocolate, there are days when only Chocolate makes life worth living.
Playing it Safe
Another factor I worry about is China’s slowdown and overproduction. The Chinese economy has fed worldwide consumption of everything for the past 20 years. If this reverses or even stagnates, it’s bad news. Reading Michael Pettis it doesn’t seem like things are going in the right direction.
Michael Pettis is a fine, Milton Friedman style economist. However China is a socialist economy, and needs to be analyzed differently than a Friedman understood. China is dramatically restructuring its economy, and changing trade relations to focus increasingly on the Global South. Chinese investment is very, very high, just as Robert Solow would have suggested. High quality growth is there now and will continue. Just as African leaders understood, China is in fine economic shape and a fine model for developing economies.
Please notice the date:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/dealing-with-chinas-troubles.html
December 26, 2011
Dealing With China’s Troubles
China’s economy seems to be in trouble, which could be a very big problem for the world unless China’s leaders and trading partners ensure that economic strains in the world’s largest exporting nation do not lead to trade confrontations around the globe….
SIrota’s third episode of his “Master Plan” series is available. Episode 3 covers the Powell memo. The reporter visited the Powell archive.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-episode-3-the-memo-that-changed-america/
Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are now available for non-subscribers.
Transcripts are only available for subscribers.
am a subscriber and found the Nader interview especially interesting, especially the rather lightly dismissive take by Nader on the Powell memo that it is not as important as it is sometimes made and that the metamorphosis it supposedly spawned was actually evolving quite nicely on its own going back to when corporations were first defined as legal “persons” in an 1880 California case called In re Tiburcio Parrott – Nader also points out the ‘golden age’ of our government responding to the people was from FDR to the early 70’s – Nader also echoes much of what is written in the link today, “The Bizarre State of Western Democracy” – the last sentence of that piece, “Such moral bankruptcy………….constitutes the context for the growth of fascism; but whether or not fascism actually comes to power, the attenuation of democracy in metropolitan societies has already disempowered people to an extent that is quite unprecedented.” i would disagree with the ‘whether or not’ conclusion in that piece about fascism when we have what amounts to it to some degree in both halves of the uniparty –
In the interview with Nader, he referred to the Southern Pacific RR decision not Parrott but at the time of Parrott corporate lawyers turned the Parrott decision towards ‘cases solely involving corporations’ arguing that ‘wealth was a condition like race that must be shielded from unequal legislation’ – man that is some high stepping legal tap dancing – but because of the nature of the case, Parrott couldn’t be appealed to the Supreme Court – but the highest court’s decisions in Yick Wo v. Hopkins and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, both released on the same day in 1886, confirmed an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that covered ‘not only persecuted minorities but corporate shareholders as well’ – and the horses were off running on the race track –
This dam is on a key tributary of the Ganges/Brahmaputra, and as per usual neither India nor China pays much attention to Bangladesh when it comes to managing the river, which doesn’t so much flow through Bangladesh – it is Bangladesh, the entire country is essentially the delta of the Ganges/Brahmaputra, and these rivers arise and flow through India, China/Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal.
A key problem with this dam is that its largely unnecessary, and India knows it. After a few unhappy experiences with dams, Bhutan now only permits run-of-the-river projects, which allow for massive energy production while minimising downstream impacts. India knows about how these work because they were largely built by Indian engineering companies.
Re California Gig Law…
No coincidence that Kamala’s brother in law, Tony West is chief counsel for Uber?
Kamala’s letting in millions of potential independent contractors-no obligation to check their immigration status–is a boost for Uber, Amazon and all other gig plantations.
Rob Bonta?
https://www.marinatimes.com/california-attorney-general-rob-bonta-and-his-assemblymember-wife-tied-to-disgraced-oakland-political-operative-mario-juarez
Soap Opera pitch:
‘Days of our Lies’
Antony Blinken stars as the scion of a family who doctors history, and skew everything our way or the highway!
Last week’s episode found Antony eye to eye with Haiti in a steamy embrace and he didn’t blink~
Re. Sanders on Harris:
I get a kick out of Sanders. The guy has been around forever in Washington, which I assume is due to a highly developed sense of what it’s politically possible to do at any given moment. Because of the way the US government is as a whole, it’s usually not possible to do much as a single individual, though when he sees an opening he goes for it with all his might (e. g., two presidential campaigns in the last eight years).
The above quote is classic. He could actually (a) be telling the unvarnished truth, that is, every politician has to first of all decide for themselves how much they need to compromise their ideals in order to get elected so they can then work on their ideals, or (b) he could just be acting as a loyal foot soldier and giving lip service to a candidate he doesn’t particularly like but who he thinks is the best of the available possibilities.
I guess we can all select the interpretation we prefer!
Oh…I thought he was just saying that she is lying.
“Can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures of the chase?”
Our dog Lucy, who once featured in Antidotes with her bff Garbo, passed away in June. Lucy had a prodigious vocabulary and remarkable memory and over her last days we lay with her and we spoke of all her favorite activities; swimming, digging, chasing, and very complex imaginary play with tattered toys. Most especially Lucy remembered beloved friends; human, canid, feline, or textile; including many not seen for years. As she declined we kept revisiting the joys of her life and she continued to lift her head and raise her ears at the mention of a loved one; very close to death she looked around for Nelly, her birth-farm mommy whom she’d not seen in 10+ years.
Lucy was clearly conscious of her life and she had always communicated her delight at her place in it. And why not, she was a bossy girl and the Queen of Hearts and in her last days we had the extraordinary experience of sharing the memory of it all.
That’s so lovely. So very kind of you to think of that way of keeping her happy in her last days. Condolences.
This is not unlike the natural last few days of human life. You are special for sharing it!
Thanks for your memories.
That reminds me of the death of a human friend of mine.
sidd
Thank you all for the kind words.
A parochial note: “Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to strip 10 million pensioners of winter fuel payments could KILL nearly 4,000 people… says LABOUR’S own research”
We have a government after government in Europe falsifying the Peter Principle: their members have risen far, far, far above the level of their incompetence. Leaving aside Scholz and Baerbock, Macron, Uselessand fonda Lying, and that later entrant to the carnival of horror, Kaya Kallas, the former leader of a hamlet somewhere near Russia, Der Starmer and the former Bank of England servant to the FIRE sector, Rachel Reeves, have established hitherto unknown new lows to intensify poverty amongst the agéd by cutting the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance of £400 for a married couple at a time of higher energy prices than those which prevailed when the allowance was first introduced.
Rather than defend the universal principle – the original basis making the middle class supporters of the welfare state – Der Starmer and Reeves will target the benefit to a minority of pensioners on the ground that the new state pension has risen £900 per annum compared to the previous year. Tellingly, next year’s rise in the new state pension is expected to be £400! Shit, the Bank of England really teaches it’s bottom feeding scribblers how to do basic arithmetic to help achieve an equilibrium for the old as well as the poor.
I really can’t see this government surviving because of it’s majority. After the PR exaggerations and the excessive sentences in Der Starmer’s Midnight Courts following “the riots”, I see blood on the moon and an insurgency which will make Thatcher’s Poll Tax Riots look like a hookup in the Bois de Boulogne.
The British people, regardless of their basic political leanings, voted for a change for the better, not for the worst to become worse faster than it takes a downhill racer to make the bottom of the slope.
Taibbi’s latest. no paywall.
ATW Live Tonight, 8 pm ET/7 pm CT: Debate Preview, Drinking Game Rules Discussion
Help Walter Kirn and I make up the list for what promises to be a strange and inebriated Trump-Harris debate
https://www.racket.news/p/atw-live-tonight-8-pm-et7-pm-ct-debate
Was there ever any hope for our species?
So when Trump talked about Hungary’s Victor Oraban favourably, Hillary Clinton went on a rant about Orban describing him as a ‘democracy-killing Hungarian dictator’ and shared a 2018 article claiming that his strict immigration policies, controversial judicial reforms, and expulsion of liberal financier George Soros’ Open Society Foundations NGO amount to ‘soft fascism.’ So Balazs Orban, the political director of Viktor Orban’s office, tweeted back-
‘Dear Mrs. Clinton,
May I share with you what I think the death of #democracy is: the desire to imprison your political opponents, the failure to organize elections transparently, and the attempt to replace dissatisfied voters with migrant voters. Which country do you think this applies to? Every reasonable person thinks of this when reading your remarks: “first take the log out of your own eye” ‘
https://x.com/BalazsOrban_HU/status/1833875618749927850
Ouch.