One thousand sausage dogs invade beach for meet-up BBC
Severe solar storm could supercharge auroras across US, impact power grids, NOAA warns Space.com
Is a repeat of the 2019 repo crisis brewing? FT. The deck: “Pain and SOFRing.”
Climate
Tracking map: Here’s the latest forecast track of Hurricane Milton Orlando Sentinel
Milton threatens to trigger flood insurance reckoning for Congress Politico
No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’ BBC
* * * Wildlife numbers plummet 73 percent over past half-century, report finds Al Jazeera
Water
What’s in Floodwaters? Scientific American
2023 ‘driest year’ for global rivers in 33 years: World weather agency Anadolu Agency
Syndemics
All eyes on XEC: Why COVID sleuths are paying attention to this variant Salon
China?
China launches US$70 billion swap tool to enhance stock market liquidity South China Morning Post
How the US Lost the Solar Power Race to China Bloomberg
China Builds A New Eurasia Noema
China’s Golden Week travel surges but spending lags pre-pandemic numbers Channel News Asia
Upgrade to ASEAN-China free trade agreement almost completed, important in time of growing protectionism: PM Wong Channlel News Asia
Commentary: US not walking the talk in Southeast Asia as Biden skips ASEAN Summit again Channel News Asia
The Reality of Afghanistan’s Land Link With China The Diplomat
Syraqistan
On the Brink New Left Review
* * * Biden speaks with Netanyahu, pledges ‘ironclad’ support for Israel Al Jazeera
Readout of President Joe Biden’s Call with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel The White House
US sway over Netanyahu tested as Israel vows ‘deadly’ Iran hit South China Morning Post
* * * Israeli troops move away from Irish forces in Lebanon BBC. Meanwhile:
BREAKING
White House advisor Matthew Brodsky suspended from X after calling for Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon to be burned alive pic.twitter.com/EQj7QnOJI8
— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) October 9, 2024
Israeli army orders Beirut’s southern suburb residents to evacuate Anadolu Agency
How long will Israel’s war in Lebanon last? FT
* * * The Killings They Tweeted Airwars
* * * Smotrich Forgets to Mention One Thing About His Plans for Israel: The Cost Haaretz. Smotrich, 2016:
In a documentary produced by Arte, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich says he wants a “Jewish state,” adding that, “It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.” pic.twitter.com/E2SBu1LJvD
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 10, 2024
* * * Yemen’s Houthis to play bigger role in Middle East conflict? Deutsche Welle
Protesters assaulted as illegal Palestinian land sales continue in New York and New Jersey MR Online
The Sermon Every Jew But Me Heard Every Week The Debate Link
The New Great Game
Is proposal that “international consortium” should build Kazakhstan’s nuclear plant merely cosmetic? BNE Intellinews
European Disunion
France’s minority government set to present make-or-break austerity budget France24
Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years France24
Dear Old Blighty
New Not-So-Cold War
Erik Andersson’s informative Nord Stream update Bud’s Offshore Energy (BOE)
* * * Russia’s Air Force Is ‘Dropping Like Flies’ in the Skies Above Ukraine The National Interest
New Batch of Russian Su-34 Strike Fighters Delivered to Air Force: Intensive Strikes on Kursk Continue Military Watch
* * * NATO chief warns of Ukraine’s toughest winter as Russia intensifies strikes Anadolu Agency
Ukraine can get through winter without power cuts – Ukraine’s energy minister Ukrainska Pravda. “[I]f the Russians do not succeed in destroying the critical energy infrastructure that survived the previous attacks.”
* * * America’s NATO Ally Warns Ukraine Membership May Trigger World War III Newsweek. Hungary.
Boychukgate Bandera Lobby Blog
After Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s Enduring Impact War on the Rocks
Biden Administration
2024
Donald Trump pledges to end double taxation for expat Americans FT
Book Nook
From Beowulf to Foucault: On the Literary Influences of Cormac McCarthy Literary Hub
Police State Watch
Cops love facial recognition, and withholding info on its use from the courts The Register
Japanese Researchers Feature Regularly Among Ig Nobel Prizewinners Nippon.com
Groves of Academe
Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’ Guardian. From Columbia.
Class Warfare
Handy chart:
"It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph, almost the entire US population is crammed into a vertical bar, one pixel wide. Each pixel is $500 million wide, illustrating that $500 million essentially rounds to zero from the perspective of the wealthiest Americans."
— Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK (@doctorow) October 9, 2024
I was captain of a ship much like the New Zealand one that just sank. Mine almost sank too The Telegraph
Researchers Think Throwing Boeing 777 Parts In The Sea Will Track Down MH3700 Jalopnik
Antidote du Jour (Wendy Rathey);
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
152 comments
Comments are closed.
ISRAEL
Children torn up burned and crushed
Cities knocked down turned to dust
Homes ravaged none escape
Girls savaged grown men raped
Settlers steal with great zeal
Shrapnel steel wounds won’t heal
Hiding spots sniper shots
Tents and cots food that rots
Columnists journalists
Can’t exist you have lists
Clinics bombed medics slain
Wells blown up we drink rain
Polio sewage flow
Lying low fireworks show
Leaflets dropped moments prior
Everything turns to fire
Blast wave hits bodies tossed
Blood and gore Holocaust
War on kids by the West
Israel delenda est
Israel delenda est
‘What the media hides.
@narrative_hole
BREAKING
White House advisor Matthew Brodsky suspended from X after calling for Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon to be burned alive’
Going by his biography, I’m calling out this guy as a Zionist. He even lived and worked in Israel for four years so he probably picked up their values and he is probably one of those people behind the scenes who make American foreign policy what it is today-
https://matthewrjbrodsky.com/about/
Maybe the Irish government should call in the US Ambassador to Ireland for a please explain session. Twitter may have suspended him but is he still working in the White House?
Funny I used to chat with this guy in my old newsroom which included many Palestinians and he seemed perfectly normal. Crazy how this past year has brought out the absolutely insane in people
Perhaps he is a deeply burrowed mole whether by plan or temperament and his true self only now is apparent 。
Or there is a collective psychosis that has taken over
“White House advisor Matthew Brodsky suspended from X…”
That such an immoral person could be working in the White House, and still working after advising the killing of Irish peacekeepers tells us that we have a uniquely shameful and dangerous President and administration.
When Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers in Ossetia along the Russian border, President Bush did not intervene when Russia responded in defense and the Georgian people soon removed the offending president. When security adviser John Bolton interfered with President Trump’s negotiations on a possible peace in Korea, Bolton was shortly dismissed by Trump and removed from the White House by the Secret Service.
Matthew Brodsky fortunately has nothing to do with the Biden administration. * I was foolishly misled by several headlines. This person is no longer a government advisor. I am sorry to have been carelessly misleading.
* https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241010-us-former-white-house-advisor-urges-israel-to-carpet-bomb-irish-peacekeepers-in-lebanon/
Not so far off the mark. The point is that he was a government advisor like that Stuart Seldowitz mentioned in that article. These are the sort of people that the government are listening to and getting their briefings from. And Brodsky is young enough that we will hear about him from time to time down the track as he goes from government service to think tank and back to government service again.
“The point is that he was a government advisor like that Stuart Seldowitz mentioned in that article. These are the sort of people that the government are listening to and getting their briefings from…”
Especially helpful response for me; I am grateful.
I was curious about this and looked at several articles to get his background and current responsibilities. Every article in a cursory search describes home as a former Trump WH advisor and currently a consultant to Republican candidates. He would certainly fit right in with the Biden WH, but that claim seems inaccurate.
Same here. Washington is full of guys like this who are associated with numerous “think tanks” and “consultancies” and cycle in and out of government positions. His associations seem to be mainly with conservative and pro-Israel organizations and Republican administrations. But there are plenty of these guys shaping Democrat policy as well, as the current administration demonstrates. With “peace advisors” like these…
Should also be a warning to anyone who has any illusions that Donald Trump would be any better on Israel. To the contrary, on this issue he is singing McCain’s “bomb, bomb Iran” tune.
Yeah, his website featues a picture of him sitting in a tree outside the White House, advising.
https://www.matthewrjbrodsky.com/about/
The Irish peacekeepers are toast if they stay there. The war is only heating up.
And Israel wouldn’t be entering Lebanon if it wasn’t already divided.
Wouldn’t be the first time that the Israelis have attacked & killed UN troops as they have form here and are already now firing on UN posts in southern Lebanon-
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2574732/middle-east
I was about to bring that up:
Re; Syraqistan
BBC: Israeli troops move away from Irish forces in Lebanon
Al Jazerra: Israeli forces fire on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, wounding two
UNIFIL says Israeli soldiers ‘deliberately fired at and disabled’ on-site monitoring cameras prior to Labbouneh attack.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/10/israeli-forces-fire-on-un-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-wounding-two
Peacekeepers are no good if they are not allowed to defend even themselves. But perhaps Hezbulla will come to their aid..?
Just today the Spanish papers report that the UN headquarters was fired upon by an Israeli tank. Spanish soldiers were present but were not among the wounded (2) according to ther paper.
The Irish peacekeepers have a history of holding their ground:
The Siege of Jadotville
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3922798/
This story in links is contains an interesting addendum to the Irish peacekeeper story:
Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’ – Guardian.
“…Khalidi resists questions that demand a crystal ball. He is a historian who prefers to focus on analyzing what past actions tell us. His next book will focus on Ireland, and how it was a laboratory for Palestine. It stems from a fellowship he had recently at Trinity College, Dublin. He says that to understand Palestine, you have to understand British colonialism more broadly. He is hoping to examine key figures in the British aristocracy whose Irish experience was central to everything they did afterwards – people such as Arthur James Balfour, Sir Charles Tegart and Gen Sir Frank Kitson. He is hoping to show how the Irish experience was exported to India, Egypt and Palestine, and then returned to Ireland again during the Troubles, having been magnified in the colonies. “It is astonishing how personnel and counter-insurgency techniques, like torture, assassination, find their roots with the British in Ireland,” Khalidi says.
May I recommend the works of Kneecap in this regard?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H-W–5HkNdU
(Interview on Irish links with other British colonial populations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_V-YS0DbEHQ#
(Longer interview on Irish language, British occupation and Palestine)
No, he was a Trump advisor and does not work in the Biden administration:
https://www.thejournal.ie/republican-adviser-says-israel-should-drop-napalm-over-irish-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-6509640-Oct2024/
“Wicked peacekeeping, Ireland. The UN tasked you with keeping that tiny patch of southern Lebanon de-militarized. It appears you missed, in just the last year, 12,000 or so military launches: rockets, drones, what-have-you. Is that correct?
Maybe ask your cousins on Chicago’s Southside how to find a ‘win’. Look, we’re not trying to tell you how to do your job, Ireland. However, your tune-up-insurgents-who-invade-your-island program has had mixed reviews for some time now. Why, throughout history, to defend your ISLAND nation from all that pillaging, you never once thought about deploying a navy!?”
Perhaps because all its wealth went to England?
Without knowing what possible constraints that the peacekeepers might have on them, I don’t think that this is fair….in fact it sounds a bit nasty.
If you know that they’ve not followed their orders please say so, and explain, as knowing these parameters would be helpful. Otherwise this has a flavor of victim blaming.
England didn’t deploy a navy until they’d been overrrun MANY times (I mean the royal family are of Germanic descent, are they not ?), and they used it as tool of imperialism, not defence; so maybe the lack of imperialistic thrust had something to do with it.
Despite all that the monks of Ireland did manage to save culture through the dark ages, by fleeing with their illuminated manuscripts into deep hiding, seems like the rest of the world would owe the Irish a small bit of gratitude for that.
As far as the peacekeepers in Lebanon, I believe their primary task is observation, so way to sound off about multiple things you don’t know in the same comment.
Well, we would have to assume that there is something about our culture worth saving.
Because at the point at which Northwest Europe had developed sufficient state capacity to adopt standing navies (roughly 16th century), the most prosperous parts of Ireland had been under English rule for the best part of 400 years (mid 12th century). England bottled Ireland up early, like Gaza, and the UK continues to dominate Irish home waters.
Yes, Ireland has an EEZ etc but there is no meaningful military presence in Irish waters other than the UK. The same for Irish airspace, which is managed on an integrated basis with UK airspace. Ireland is neutral and not in NATO but this ambiguity suits Ireland, just as she turned a blind eye to British use of Irish waters and airspace in WW2. This is a pragmatic acknowledgment of the larger neighbour’s power, like Taiwan and China, only Ireland has more confidence the UK won’t invade (US protection of Irish interests; basic implausibility of it and shared history and strategic interests, fundamental acknowledgment that if NATO interest really required it, the UK and US would invade anyway in a day, short of Ireland being a nuclear power) so does not need to spend a fortune on defence.
If he was a Trump advisor, he is probably not working in the Biden White House. That’s just my guess.
Do we have hurricane Milton in Florida today after Helene in North Carolina last week?
This level of storms and destruction is not normal. Except that now it is.
Only one thing telling us to look out.
Doesn’t help that there are more people and things in the path of turbulent weather.
The planet hasn’t stopped changing and evolving.
“The planet” will change and evolve, according to its form, but from one person living at the terminus of what looks to be a human-engendered conveyor belt of ever bigger cyclonic storms, I offer that my discomfiture and that of millions of others “just living life,” results from the directed profit stripping and growth-is-GREAT participation ponzi swindle.
At least my little house in largo is still standing and maybe the peach tree can be stood up again. Don’t know, I evacuated 90 miles north. Now is the time that as with Helene, neighbors and friends will determine the immediate future. Though what the heck, de Santis seems to be on top of this. Compare the bullshit performances, not even half hearted, of BidenHarris. Will we have a Mad Queen, or any head of state at all, come January?
I’d add that the sheriffs in the mid Florida counties are looking pretty good as property-protecting Strong Men, who invite homeowners to arm themselves as a tacit militia. Maybe time to buy some more ammo, the fully captured national and many state governments ain’t doing it.
Be careful out there. Wishing the best for you.
Thanks. And wishing you well also. In the end, all we’ve got is each other.
> White House advisor Matthew Brodsky suspended from X after calling for Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon to be burned alive.
Isn’t this the problem with all those State Department people resigning over Israel’s conduct in Gaza in the first 3-6 months? Are people like Brodsky the only ones left in the administration?
If he was a Trump advisor, probably he or people like him will become Trump advisors again if Trump is re-elected.
>No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’ BBC
But on platforms like X and TikTok, posts alleging – without evidence – that the US government is secretly controlling the weather have been viewed millions of times.
Many were published by accounts known for spreading conspiracy theories, as well as misinformation about Covid-19 or vaccines.
Is this the same “news” organization that has been reporting on Gaza for the last year. Yeah, they’re just the right source for setting me straight on “misinformation.”
My first impression reading the headline was. Was this article necessary? For what reason was it written? The only one that came to mind is when you have a censorship agenda and want to pile up motives for its implementation.
All while subtly sowing doubt about climate change. Win win!
Same here. Supposedly this “misinformation” was read by millions. My guess is it was subsequently believed by only Kyrie Irving.
If these corporate media types are really so concerned about people believing incorrect things, perhaps they could use their enormous influence to push for higher education budgets and an end to bloated military budgets to fuel wars of choice. This schoolmarm/hall monitor mentality doesn’t appeal to anyone, except maybe Hillary Clinton, who I heard from some dude on the internet was actually an alien lizard in disguise.
Lol! Didn’t you know that one can control the weather on a flat earth?
Maybe we cannot control the weather, but I’ll bet a pocketfull of Pazoozas that our Reptilian Overlords from Zeta Reticuli can.
It’s not for lack of trying: “Weather warfare ,” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_warfare
And
“Weather as a force multiplier: Owning the weather in 2025,” https://ia601605.us.archive.org/35/items/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier.pdf
This is not foily stuff at all. Just part of hegemony.
This article was necessary in order to show that BBC doesn’t write only lies.
I’m quite certain that the BBC Ombudsman will point out that there is a subtle difference between writing lies and repeating lies.
There are people around, I recently spoke to someone saying the hurricane that hurt western NC and TN was engineered. I think, in general, people seem not to trust anything the authorities say or do–this has grown dramatically in recent years.
Yeah, and then there was that weapons-of-mass-destruction thing…
>Rockdale County soil and water supervisor collapses, dies shortly after speaking about BioLab chemical plume: Officials
Sketchy on details. Maybe the BBC can get in front of this one before conspiracy theories start to swirl on social media.
According to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office, Johnson died at Grady Memorial Hospital. The ME said that due to the circumstances of the incident, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has agreed to accept the case.
A cause of death is still pending, as an autopsy needs to be completed.
>On the Brink New Left Review
Following this setback, the Israeli military resorted to one of its tried and tested tactics, prosecuting an indiscriminate bombing campaign (with US-supplied F-35s) against the densely populated districts of Beiru
The most moral army in the world, sic, sick…
“Commentary: US not walking the talk in Southeast Asia as Biden skips ASEAN Summit again”
I never had the impression that Biden was ever really interested in Asia. His focus – his obsession really – remains with the Ukraine and he is willing to let US interests in other parts of the world flounder as he is wrapped around the axle of the Ukraine. Even Gaza represents nothing more than an unwelcome distraction for him as he has no say in what is happening there. The only reason why he cancelled his trip to Ramstein to meet Zelensky is that images of him hugging Zelensky while Floridians are treading water would not go down so well. I think too that the only interest that he has in Asia is AUKUS as that is a tool aimed at China. ASEAN countries then would only interest him in those who would join AUKUS against China.
From the beginning, members of this administration have made clear the intent to contain, control and undermine the economy of a benign 5,000 year old civilization of 1.4 billion. This intent reversing presidential policy in place since 1972. The “problem” has been that containing and undermining China has proven quite impossible.
What then remains for the Presidential policy reversal on China, as a benign China continues to develop and thrive?
“It is written that future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.” I doubt it. Because why would God only allow them just up to Damascus? Just as Mormons conveniently experienced divine Godly communications at just the right moment to adjust the direction of the wind sails after too many noticed their ship was sailing towards Crazy Land, my expectations are the Zionists too will find ways to ever expand the land God told them is rightfully “their’s”. With The West having no reverse gear, at some point the Israeli escalations might become too great for the US to fund. Or someone strong enough will put an end to it. Interesting times we live in.
Looks like Israel sees all this as their greatest chance to get Greater Israel going and not just Netanyahu either. In some western countries you can be punished for the saying “From the River to the Sea” as that is a Palestinian saying but Zionists have their own saying “From the River to the River”–
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/greater-israel-from-the-euphrates-to-the-nile/
With ultra-orthodox families popping out six or seven kids each, they are going to need Lebensraum and they know where that means. And I still reckon that the two blue stripes on the Israeli flag represent the two rivers.
It should become clearer to people as to who was really behind the Sept 11 World Trade Center and the false flag implications. I have always called it America’s Reichstag fire.
It gave the Bush Vulcans, most of whom are Zionist, the ability to start trying to clear out the Middle East for Israeli expansion using US goyim blood and money to do their dirty work for them on their attempted Eastern expansion.
I seem to recall hearing Gen Wesley Clark who is half Jewish, boasting about removing five countries in seven years.
I still wonder who REALLY engineered the ‘73 oil embargo. With friends like Israel you don’t need enemies.
>DA JOOS
Great analysis.
Was he boasting or was he warning?
The more I think about it, the more similarities I see with the philosophy that was popular in WW2 Germany and today’s Israel. Don’t dwell on it, it’s unpleasant.
The two rivers are the Litani and the Euphrates.
Give them enough time and they will claim that the two rivers are the Rhine and the Yangtze . :)
One is Potomac.
The other is the Mississippi
I think it shuold be the River Styx
Or the road to Nowheresville.
I once again bring up an interview “The New Yorker” did roughly a year ago – a month or two after October 7 – with some woman from among the leaders of the Israeli settler movement.
When asked whether she envisioned Israel as being “from the river to the sea”, she said, no, she envisions Israel as being “from the river to the river”. That is, from the Nile river to the Euphrates river, and she stated this both explicitly and matter-of-factly. Now, the idiot reporter working for “The New Yorker” did not press the point, as per usual, but this appears to be a thing in the settler movement, or, at least, among some of them. There is, of course, no religious or historical justification for any of this – arguably, said justification for a “river to the sea” Israel is nearly as thin, especially as the original two Jewish kingdoms were pretty much destroyed in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, which was a long, long time ago – but it does make a kind of a strategic sense. Israel the settler colonialist state can only ever be “safe” if, in simple terms, every Arab within 500 miles of its present borders is killed or expelled. Or, as this woman implies, if it occupies and cleanses a large enough area from Egypt to Iraq, which would also expand its resource (and water) base considerably.
Objectively, the idea is just as mad as that of the Nazi Germany controlling all of Eastern Europe up to the Ural Mountains, and genociding the 100-150 million non-Germans living there before the war – but they tried, didn’t they. And they didn’t even have the US as their sugar daddy paying their bills and helping them out of military jams. I half suspect that if the settler coco-bananas-loonies ever get to run Israel, then they’ll easily out-Netanyahu Netanyahu…
One of our hosts pointed out recently in regard to Ukraine that rivers make lousy borders, and countries work better when their borders correspond to a watershed (Nile, Mississippi, etc). So claiming two rivers as borders is sort of insane strategically, though of course ethno-religious dogma has little to do with strategy per se.
Mountains used to make more defensible borders than rivers; now nothing works — see yesterday’s Links for all those Russians and Iranians overwhelming MI-5.
Oh, but Hitler *did* have the US as his sugar daddy. Stone and Kuznets estimated some $250 million invested in Nazi Germany ca. 1939 from the likes of Henry Ford, GM, IBM, and many more. European capitalists also backed Germany’s Wehrmacht, up until Molotov-Ribbentrop. We’re still fighting WWII, correcting Hitler’s mistakes at Kursk.
More like repeating Hitler’s mistakes where Kursk is concerned, but yes to everything else.
“I once again bring up an interview “The New Yorker” did roughly a year ago – a month or two after October 7 – with some woman from among the leaders of the Israeli settler movement.”
That “some woman” is the notorious Daniella Weiss, check her out on Wikipedia.
Here she is 5 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-w_SbhFRLo&ab_channel=Haaretz.com
Here she is 4 months ago with her wealthy American friends:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcnHoXshfQ&ab_channel=ZOA
There’s a hell of a lot of very ugly tax exempt money and mayhem about…
“It is written…” Yes, believe it or not, misinformation and disinformation have been used to excuse heinous actions since well before the internet. As soon as humans learned to communicate, they started lying. And shortly thereafter they started using “authoritative” lies and ravings by the elders and “tradition” to back up their new lies. This problem should’ve been foreseen well before Eternal September.
Whatever is Jacob Dreyer aiming at in that Noema article, “China Builds a New Eurasia “?
To describe it as incoherent would be charitable.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noema
Noema is a noun that means the objective aspect or content of an intentional experience. It comes from the Greek word noēma, which means “perception, thought, understanding, or mind”. ]
https://www.noemamag.com/china-builds-a-new-eurasia/
September 30, 2024
China Builds A New Eurasia
China’s efforts to decarbonize are upending a world economy dependent on the petrodollar and, in the process, restructuring the U.S.-led world.
By Jacob Dreyer
[ Good grief. ]
Just finished it and had the same thought as you, so I was looked at his other articles. They are basically the same in terms of style, subject and incoherence.
This one is a doozy:
https://www.noemamag.com/author/jacob-dreyer/
I always wondered about the idea of ethnicity, and why it applies to some places and not others.
https://www.noemamag.com/who-gets-to-be-chinese/
Apologies for typo and incorrect link. This was the one I meant. Should not use phone for this sort of thing.
“But the new direct flight between Shanghai and Riyadh is relatively cheap, under $200 each way sometimes — somebody is clearly subsidizing a new flow of people between China and the Arab world.”
He should check out the crazy subsidies that get me to Rome from the French countryside for under 30€. Somebody clearly wants me to go there.
If the point of writing is to communicate ideas, it failed.
The actual technical term is “total bollocks”.
“Russia’s Air Force Is ‘Dropping Like Flies’ in the Skies Above Ukraine”
Strange article this as the clickbait title is not supported anywhere in the body text. In one part it says-
‘Airpower is a fundamental aspect of modern warfare. Yet, Russia’s airpower has failed to achieve total air dominance, even though its force is more advanced, better equipped, and far more numerous than the opposing Ukrainian Air Force.’
But I think that that is part of Russian doctrine. To not dominate the airspace of an entire country but only that airspace over the fighting itself. No point in losing pilots and planes in pointless battles but instead having the enemy fly all the way over to where you are based. This is kind what the RAF did to the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. And where he say-
‘The constant deployment of mostly older warplanes, in many cases from the Soviet era, indicates that Russia is accelerating the age of these systems due to constant wear-and-tear and shoddy maintenance practices.’
Sounds like the Russians are using up their old gear first so their new gear is ready in case NATO does something stupid.
Strange article this as the clickbait title is not supported anywhere in the body text Agreed. I dislike the formatting as well, with an analysis of the article preceding the text to guide one along I guess. I’d rather do my own thinking.
I’m now wondering if that formatting is “AI friendly”.
🛎️🛎️🛎️
The point is, we’re winning.
The Russian air force has been wiped out.
Destroying seventy percent of Ukraine’s power generating capacity has had no effect on Ukraine’s power generating capacity.
Oh, and the Russian army has all been killed off, forgot that one.
And Stepan Bandera is alive and well and living in the White House.
I read this stuff all the time in the comments threads of Moon of Alabama, your unwilling station for dimmer NAFO broadcasting.
Used to be there was much to be gleaned from the commentary at MOA. Is that no longer true?
CTR trolls have been activated … LOL
Title unrelated to article: that’s how propaganda works. Few people read more than the title and the first paragraph. So the message that Russia is being soundly defeated has been delivered.
As a Soviet general once observed, and remains evident, to the effect “good enough is sufficient”.
Slow down at the point marginal returns “knee”.
A basic difference in philosophy
Why knock down AWACS, when learning their doctrine engaging it…..
‘As a Soviet general once observed, and remains evident, to the effect “good enough is sufficient”.’
I think that Americans had an equivalent phrase once-
‘Good enough for government work.’
In American construction circles this phrase was, and probably still is, an indication of shoddy and sub-standard workmanship. The meaning as it was explained to me once by a Quality Control man on a big government job was that if something was just good enough to survive the warranty period, it was “good enough.” As long as the government contracting ecosystem enriched itself “legally,” all was well.
>In American construction circles this phrase was, and probably still is, an indication of shoddy and sub-standard workmanship
Oh it still is.
Along with,
A little putty and a little paint, make it look like what it ain’t.
Can’t see it from my house.
Caulk and walk, ( The Plumber’s creed)
On and on…
I was under the impression that all of these terms have been replaced by IBGYBG.
That is how the phrase has evolved with the rise of the MIC.
During WW II it was standard for making stuff for victory and bringing your sons home.
Yes, the original meaning was that something was high quality, built to exacting standards.
‘Good enough for government work’ is more along the lines of ‘they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work’.
Unlike some other countries, Russia mostly doesn’t get to choose wars where “total air dominance” is possible. So indeed in Soviet/Russian thinking air power defends the motherland and helps the army.
I guess the writer could have asked some Ukrainian front liners of their opinion of the Russian air power dominance and the of effect of being relentlessly bombarded with UMPK enhanced FAB-500 and FAB-1500 bombs.
This. The title is dumb, and the article is dumber.
John Russell is a very appealing journalist at More Perfect Union. Here he is at a county fair in Michigan, among the deplorables and fifth columnists. He also gives Oliver Anthony his due. Much plain-spoken eloquence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_sVwib2rdE&t=612s
Russell also has a report on Elliott Country, Kentucky, that explains all too well the current U.S. distemper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfxvHqTCy2w&t=27s
I find it interesting that John Russell goes in and announces he is leftist, and his interview subjects out-left him. (Or are they all sneaky fascists trying to take him in?)
Thank you so much for providing these links, DJG. What a refreshing breath of fresh air (and a new rabbit hole for me to go down)!
An appendix to Not-So-New Cold War: Two articles on a report about the Nord Stream sabotage in the Danish publication Politiken a couple of weeks ago, which quotes a Danish harbor master who says he was “not allowed to say a thing” about what he saw. From Weltwoche:
Nothing to see, Mr. Harbor Master. Move along. And keep your mouth shut. NATO as protection … racket. Wasn’t it Chomsky who said international relations resemble nothing so much as a mafia war?
No, Hurricane Milton was not ‘engineered’ BBC
The average length of time from “conspiracy theory” to “groundbreaking discovery” is about 8 months.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1844233207912464474
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
The best proof you’re going to get that “autocrat” and “authoritarian” now means “independent from the US and refusing to be vassalized”.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/10/mexico-autocracy-sheinbaum-lopez-obrador/680192/
October 8, 2024
Women Can Be Autocrats, Too
Mexico’s new president follows her predecessor’s authoritarian path.
By David Frum
12:27 AM · Oct 10, 2024
(Chuckles grimly) another sharp comment, thanks.
Anything by David Frum should be treated with suspicion. He is a Bush-era Neocon and his Wikipedia entry is a doozy-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum
i dont bother with frum anymores….and rarely go to the trouble to archive.ph the atlantic.
i reckon i know where theyre coming from.
heres a surprisingly balanced take on the new mexican prez, from TAC:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-dangerous-radical-on-our-southern-border/
i get the feeling that the headline might be a lil tongue in cheek, since the author seems almost like a fanboy.
i expected standard “conservative” bile.
Thanks amfortas! TheAmericanConservative article was excellent, IMO.
China launches US$70 billion swap tool to enhance stock market liquidity – South China Morning Post
Should be a familiar type of policy to those that warmonger about China.
Keir Starmer did call for the return of the sausages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTFSBJaCXD8
That video was so cool. I wish I had been there. We were lucky enough to be the host family for a mini-dachshund, Daisy. She was so smart and so stubborn it was awesome. I miss her a lot.
Thank you, Lambert.
Further to the Syraqistan links, please let me share some tidbits from Blighty:
An academic acquaintance is under investigation for writing about the genocide. Complaints have been made about anti-semitism. His university employer is investigating him, has hinted that he’s under surveillance and hinted he should retire, which he’s nearing. The professor has some media work, which is likely to dry up if even the news of an investigation is made public. He contacted me last week.
A leading local government official, “one of the good guys”, took the side of pensioners who objected to their pension scheme investing in Israel and Israel related securities and wanted a meeting with the fund managers about BDS. This kicked off a fortnight or so ago. There were also allegations that the fund is overweight Israel, which sounds suspiciously like the subsidy from the Florida state fund to Israel, breaching mandate limits. Last Friday, the official was summarily fired. I heard the latest yesterday evening from a colleague of the official / close relative of mine.
Media are being encouraged to self censor and censor BTL, not that they need much encouragement.
Hi Colonel, thanks for the info. Did Cameron not introduce, or tried to introduce legislation preventing public authorities from boycotting, divesting etc., from Israeli products?
Plus any update on Starmer’s unfortunate uncle, who allegedly was torpedoed during the Falkland/Malvinas debacle?
To NC readers who have not hear of the latest Starmer gem. He defended his stance on selling arms to Israel to ‘defend itself’ in parliament yesterday, on the grounds he almost lost an uncle in the Falklands war. However, no British ship was torpedoed, so either Starmer was lying, or his uncle was Argentinian or otherwise serving on the Belgrano.
HMS Sheffield was badly damaged by an air-launched anti-ship missile (Exocet) and subsequently sank.
There presumably were crew casualties in the missile impact and subsequent fire. I don’t know whether this has bearing on the PM’s statements, but there was a UK ship casualty during that conflict.
The logical connection between that conflict and the PM’s posture toward the current one seems, IMO, kind of tenuous.
Six RN ships were sunk during the fighting, including HMS Sheffield, where twenty crew members died. The death toll would have been substantially higher, but the missile failed to explode.
Thank you, John.
I heard that nonsense on the way to work this morning.
BTW, I have read your comments on said academic’s blog…
Stand by for the bond cram down as with the Ukrainian bonds, US local, state and whatever bondholders will be first in line to take hair cuts when the value of these bonds are reset.
Practice does help…for some. Just watched Governor DeSantis’ morning press conference. And yes I used the title deliberately. I do not like him, or most of his policies, but he was informative, succinct, clear and covered a great deal in a short period of time. He gave good advice simply and then turned the microphone over to the heads of operation rather than hogging it. And yes, other than the rather spectacular miscalculation of using the stadium as a staging area Florida’s emergency planning appears to be working as planned and speeding into action. And I say the last after watching coverage on both Twitter and several different news outlets.
The point of my opening though is that as awful as events like this is, DeSantis, his administration, and much of Florida have been through weather emergencies multiple times since he became Governor. The state and local emergency response has been improved and refined, and they appear to communicate well. Helene was a new level, but their emergency response system was resilient enough to kick up and go again even as they were still cleaning up the damage from her wake. I wish I could say as much for our federal response.
I don’t expect any of our Presidents, HRC or Harris to be able to give as good a press response, and not just because of lack of practice. I wouldn’t expect them to be able to tell a bedtime story with or without a book. We aren’t talking FDR here. Instead we have a bagful of power hungry narcissists with speech issues. But what about the federal structure. FEMA’s issues are long standing. It is abundantly clear that while there are probably lots of people there that honestly want to help, the procedures and policies do not allow it. The real failure is that the people in position to demand changes to address this have not bothered to even attempt to do so. Not Bush, not Obama, Trump or Biden have done so failure after failure. They left it at “heck of a job”. And worse now, is the decision to deem any mention of the failure of the response as misinformation.
As with so much facing us, the choices we have been allowed will not fundamentally change this to make it work as the public expects or needs.
FEMA’s issues may have a very basic reason behind them. So Jimmy Dore was reading out a letter posted by a guy with ten years working in emergencies and he has a bit to say about his experiences with Hurricane Irma survivors back in 2017-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dxt8Kl3EvU (8:27 mins)
Thanks for the link. It seems like FEMA is run by a Milo Minderbinder type. Or maybe it’s the parent agency, the DHS that’s run by a Minderbinder.
edit: working link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder
I live in Ocala, a place people did and have long evacuated to. There are fewer branches in my yard than after Helene, not significant. Supposedly DeSantis (or some forward thinking individual) staged power trucks and rescue crews at the Horse Park and the Don Garlits museum, both spitting distance to I-75.
I would be surprised to hear otherwise. DeSantis needs Florida to stay open. Two (non-political) questions bothering me. How many are displaced? For how long?
DeSantis’s latest press conference. He sounds like he really understands logistics. utube, ~30 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p1RJuXkQIg
The Sermon Every Jew But Me Heard Every Week – The Debate Link
“…I was synagogue-shopping and so had recently seen exactly how much it costs to join a synagogue…”
Yes this is a normal part of joining a temple. It pays for upkeep and the rabbi salary and cantor fees along with allowing people who can’t afford it to attend high holy days, etc. When you move, you’re sort of at the mercy of what’s there and it can be very disheartening if you’re used to a decent liberal congregation and find yourself immersed in the incoherent hasbara nonsense.
Biden speaks with Netanyahu, pledges ‘ironclad’ support for Israel – Al Jazeera
No administration would do that unless they had allies (no matter how weak they are perceived to be or small in number) also helping.
Finally, buried at the end, after some smoothing words about vaccination effectiveness, Salon finally states the truth plainly:
Of course this should have been the lead. COVID shots do not prevent this. Avoiding exposure prevents this.
Also correctly identifies it as vascular:
And mentions N95s. Should have led with the last section, which has the correct information. Information people need to know.
Always surprising that Trump’s Surgeon General pick is actually our best public health advocate on COVID from his former administration.
I was looking for him to cite even one study regarding vaccine efficacy against new variants—likely a stretch given how variable the variants are, but I guess former surgeon generals only assert and that meets Salon’s editorial standards.
Meanwhile not a word on XEC virulence, which was the only reason I skimmed the article.
Thanks for those DJG.
Found a couple similar ones –
Trump as Hitler don’t move the needle according to this guy, responding to an MSDNC interviewer who is surprised to find out people don’t care about January 6 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmBwYRmDUOI
Another guy visits a Trump rally and a poor neighborhood and gets a variety of answers from Harris and Trump supporters – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qiMyyWOvc
There are a few people in those videos who don’t have a strong grasp of the details (claiming “communism” is a great threat for example), but for the most part in your links and in the two above people do understand what’s happening and how they’re getting screwed.
In my liberal neighborhood there are quite a few TDS sufferers humping for Harris who do not at all understand the appeal of Trump. If they got out of their silos and talked to a few people who don’t live in well off liberal neighborhoods, they might have a better understanding. They might also be less surprised about a 2nd Trump victory.
Personally I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to vote at all. The link in yesterday’s WC about Sawant wanting to punish the Democrats makes me a little more likely to turn out and vote for Stein. I have to say that the older I get, the less enamored I become with democracy, and definitely with the “our democracy” variety. HL Mencken gets more relatable every passing day –
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Aargh – meant as a reply to DJG several comments above.
Our political problems are really cultural and moral problems. If we vote for Harris we vote for authoritarianism which to many on the right means “communism” because it’s tendency is totalitarian, i.e., censor “misinformation” which is just another way of saying restricting free-speech. As such, as bad as Trump may appear, he may represent less authoritarianism and totalitarianism so this fact needs to be in our minds when we vote. `
Milton threatens to trigger flood insurance reckoning for Congress
Back in the day, I was tasked with local implementation of The National Flood Insurance Act of 1968. It was the intention of this act to protect property owners in flood prone areas. We identified areas liable to flood along the shoreside during hurricanes and other weather events. We used contour maps and info from earlier hurricanes in 1938 and 1954 and updated the zoning maps.
The presumption was that this would insure the economic protection of the few home owners in what we labeled the ‘high flood danger zone.’ What we didn’t see was the subsequent flood of people demanding building permits in the high flood danger zone now that their otherwise dumb investment choices could be subsidized. Just call it Murphy’s Law of 1968.
On the SOFR rate spike, exacerbating this may be the discontinuation of the BSBY, the Bloomberg rates.
The loan pricing index referred to as BSBY (aka Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield Index) is being retired on Nov. 15, 2024.
I received this notification on 9/27/2024.
Is Musk REALLY the wealthiest guy in any meaningful sense? Is that just the value of his Tesla shares, but would quickly prove ephemeral if he started to unload any sizable junk of them?
I follow the guy on twitter and he’s just so stupid, and behaves like such a clown, I find it hard to believe he has more money in practice if even on paper, than Bezos, Gates, the Waltons, etc.
you’d never see any of them jumping around at a Trump rally like that.
Elon behaves as the one billionaire that didn’t get the message…
You’ve got to remember that at these levels of wealth, no one is getting paid, they’re spending from taps of equity loans and other financial mechanics so the money keeps making money. It’s more like waves of richness that ebb and flow. There is really nothing he cannot “afford”, including being a total asshat.
This. And they get low interest rates that will never trickle down to the masses.
living off the interest – if he is smart
I don’t know about that. I think lots of high net worth people act like that, but most take care not to do it on camera.
I have met a few billionaires and quite a few hundred millionaires now. What strikes me most is while they may believe different things than Trump they all act very similar. They all think they’re brilliant. They all think they can solve any problem. They all don’t understand when rules or regulations constrain what they want to do. Everyone who doubts them is a hater. Etc.
This is their world. We’re just living in it.
Egomania = occupational hazard for billionaires.
Social Security sets its 2025 COLA increase at 2.5%. Here’s how it will change your benefits.
FTA:
Lovely. I also noticed the CPI report was today.
CPI report from the BLS
Top paragraph;
Of course the cost of supplemental insurance will no doubt eat all the COLA money and then some. I might be wrong, but at the end of the day I don’t think I will be any better off. NO! Tell us it ain’t so.
Good thing the Fed just lowered rates by 50 bps.
I’m sure Kamala will fix all this since she is going after price gouging and all. She is so wonderful I can’t wait to vote for her. My friends can’t wait either, and it’s going to be a landslide, and so fun to watch.
I’m kidding of course. But I was told today;
The people who believe **** like that are part of the problem. Harris is a perfect example of a zero – a know nothing, do nothing, empty suit that only cares about serving the donor class while spewing train loads of BS. And people suck it up like a Hoover.
Incredible. If you can’t tell that COLA number ticks me off to no end. Expected, but still…
That COLA increase has me feeling the JOY!!! juice too. My rent will go up again and my meager food stamp benefits will go down. When all is said and done, I’ll be worse off than in 2024, which was a hell of a year. Yay.
I’m thinking my palliative care doctor, who told me to go home and stop all intake of water and nutrition (‘Go Die!’), was giving me good advice after all.
Social Security Cola – I agree it’s laughable, but it happens nearly every year. We’re given a COLA that doesn’t pretend to keep up with the true costs of living and then removed from benefits when we go .50 cents over the line. This year I’ll receive an additional $40.00. My health insurer has already announced a $20.00 increased co-pay to see a ‘specialist.’ I’ll be over the cut-off for food stamps, so I’ll lose that $23.00 too. Right now, it looks like I’ll be $3.00 in the hole for 2025 – and that’s without knowing how much my rental and car insurance will go up.
Joe Biden owes me $600.00.
Whoa big daddy in the sky, that’ll wip my inflation now (remember Ford’s WIN?). I’ve long qualified for food stamps but never took them as the reporting requirements are onerous. I may have to change up on that. My small pension never changes so I keep falling further behind.
I have a food stamps reexamination interview every year. The interviewers always tell me I’m the easiest person for them to evaluate since I don’t own anything of value. No car, no property, no savings, nothing. My only income is SS. The routine questions they ask are interesting. For example: Do I own a boat? Do I have a railroad pension? Did I win the lottery? Um, no.
The railroad pension idea has intrigued me. So I think, maybe I could marry a guy with a railroad pension. I ask a friend about this. (True story.)
Me: Do you know any guys with railroad pensions you could introduce me to?
Friend: As a matter of fact, I do know a guy with a railroad pension.
Me: Great! I’d like to meet him.
Friend: Well, he’s 94 years old.
Me: That’s okay! Age is no barrier to true love and a railroad pension!
Friend: He already has a girlfriend.
Me: Damn! All the good ones are taken.
Oh, Lena, thank you so much! I desperately needed that laugh, having just skimmed through the infuriating post wherein Stone tries to shame us into supporting Team Blue. Blessings upon your head tonight!
From The Kansas Reflector. (Yeah, this should help the uni’s autumn fund raiser. / ;)
Kansas lecturer on leave after ‘inappropriate reference to violence’ during class
https://kansasreflector.com/2024/10/09/kansas-lecturer-on-leave-after-inappropriate-reference-to-violence-during-class/
NY Times is so flipped out, this is not paywalled: The Price
Empire must continue! That’s why you’re here. And the Great Nuclear Modernization ushered in by Obama, the peace laureate, continues!
Well, you gotta get them while they’re young. War is peace and all that, and keep that share price up.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59365
July, 2023
Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2023 to 2032
The Congressional Budget Office updates its projections of the 10-year costs of U.S. nuclear forces every two years. This report contains CBO’s projections for the 2023–2032 period.
If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2023 budget requests, submitted in April 2022, would cost a total of $756 billion over the 2023–2032 period, or an average of just over $75 billion a year, CBO estimates.
That total includes $305 billion for operation and sustainment of current and future nuclear forces and other supporting activities; $247 billion for modernization of strategic and tactical nuclear delivery systems and the weapons they carry; $108 billion for modernization of facilities and equipment for the nuclear weapons laboratory complex and for modernization of command, control, communications, and early-warning systems; and $96 billion for potential cost growth in excess of projected budgeted amounts.
About two-thirds of those costs would be incurred by DoD, mainly for ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOE’s costs would be primarily for nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities….
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20241010278/homeowners-havent-drained-cash-out-of-their-houses-this-fast-since-2008/
Homeowners haven’t drained cash out of their houses this fast since 2008
“Homeowners in California were the most active in terms of home-equity lending activity.”
Southern Cali: The four metropolitan areas with the most home-equity loans in the first half of 2024 were all in California: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario.
Most likely contributing to this state of affairs:
First the strikes that were going on in the entertainment biz and now there are reports of lack of work all over.
https://english.news.cn/20241008/d204d51b57d5498595c4ba6b9bb3e5c2/c.html
October 8, 2024
China saw 765 million domestic tourist trips during 7-day holiday
BEIJING — China recorded 765 million domestic tourist trips during the 7-day National Day holiday that ended Monday, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent on a comparable basis, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
The figure is 10.2 percent more than that of the same period in 2019, the ministry said.
The total spending by domestic tourists exceeded 700 billion yuan (about 99.3 billion U.S. dollars) during the period, marking a year-on-year growth of 6.3 percent and a 7.9 percent increase compared to 2019, according to the ministry.
Branko Marcetic with a decent commentary on Ta-Nehisi Coates vs. the media on Palestine:
“Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Bucking the Media’s Palestine Consensus”
The problem with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent grilling on Palestine by CBS News’s Tony Dokoupil isn’t that it was rude. It’s that Dokoupil’s questioning betrays a fundamental lack of concern for Palestinians’ basic humanity, shared across mainstream media.
https://jacobin.com/2024/10/ta-nehisi-coates-media-palestine-israel
“(…)Three years ago, Peter Beinart wrote that anti-Palestinian bigotry was so prevalent in establishment discourse that it went by without notice, and that if it was ever actually named and talked about, almost everyone with power and influence in American society would be guilty of it. It’s like oxygen in the air, around us all the time but something we almost never notice.(…)”
on the other hand such odd minor bit:
“(…)While we shouldn’t encourage knee-jerk firings or even disciplining of reporters for airing controversial views, in today’s media climate, it’s hard to imagine a major network TV host saying this kind of thing about any other group of people, let alone keeping their job afterward.(…)”
I wouldn´t know of a single reporter who WAS subject to “knee-jerk firing” for dehumanising Palestinians.
So while making his case well he doesn´t really express the outrage that would be truly appopriate:
“(…)
What will come of the Coates brouhaha? That CBS is reportedly split between those who think Dokoupil’s sin lies in his tone of voice and body language, and those who think he was boldly speaking truth to power, does not suggest anyone at the network has actually learned anything from this, or that anything will be done to remedy the anti-Palestinian bias that pervades mainstream media. There was, after all, no actual issue with the way Dokoupil said what he said, or how he was carrying himself when he said it. The issue was what he actually said.
(…)”
This for me is way too well-behaved.
After all this is not about some bias. This is about genocide.
Marcetic is aware of this. But his text is inadequate for the stakes at hand.
Consider this by Craig Mokhiber instead:
“(…)
But free speech guarantees do not protect incitement to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Those acts can and must be subject to criminal accountability. Both defamation and incitement can also bring accountability in civil courts. Action in international tribunals for Israel’s crimes against humanity and genocide in Palestine has already begun, and more is certain to follow. It is not inconceivable that, just as in the cases of the Nuremburg and Rwanda tribunals, some media companies or individuals might face real legal accountability in the months and years to come.
(…)”
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/western-media-can-be-held-legally-accountable-for-its-role-in-the-gaza-genocide/
One need not agree with Mokhiber´s demand (First Amendment issue?) but he addresses the monstrosity which is the true cause for the numbness Marcetic describes but does not dissect.
p.s. Marcetic in general is useful for intensively linking to other sources to make his argument.
re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Again from 1 year ago :
“Ta-Nehisi Coates Speaks Out Against Israel’s “Segregationist Apartheid Regime” After West Bank Visit”
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/2/ta_nehisi_coates
“Ta-Nehisi Coates and Rashid Khalidi on Israeli Occupation, Apartheid & the 100-Year War on Palestine”
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/24/ta_nehisi_coates_and_rashid_khalidi
In my experience racism in America is much less evident at the personal level than it was in the 1970’s and much more evident at the institutional level.
Biden and the Clintons have been racist to the bone throughout their careers and the attitude of the Blob, and especially the Media toward Palestinians is openly racist.
My experience?
My last long term ( 9 years) sweetheart was an African American Woman who reminds people of Halle’ Berry with a little extra pizzaz.
We got an ugly look a time or two in rural Sonoma County, but that was it.
I dated a Black Woman in the 70’s, in Oakland and it was very different.
Yelled at by White and Black people, actually spit on once, threatened physically…and the “You must be a real stud” from some acquaintances.
Ugly stuff and why the relationship ended ( Amicably).
If the IZZIES were doing this to people with Blonde Hair and Blue eyes it would not be acceptable to Western “Elites” and it would have ended in a week.
=> “Lina Khan Is Just Getting Started (She Hopes)”
This long wandering review of Lina Khan and her work at the FTC while generally very laudatory of Khan’s accomplishments so far offered relatively little to suggest whether she will remain at the FTC after the Presidential election. I did learn that Lina Khan had worked in Barry Lynn’s group at New America and followed him to the Open Markets Institute. I am not certain but I believe Matt Stoller also worked in Barry Lynn’s group for a while before Goggle pushed the group out of New America. I have often wondered whether there had been some falling out between Lynn and Stoller. Incidental to revisiting the Open Markets Institute after giving up on it long ago, I noticed that Barry Lynn is coming out with a new book. I had thought that both Barry Lynn and the Open Markets Institute had faded away to nothing.
I fear Lina Khan will not remain head of the FTC no matter who wins the Presidential election. I believe she has been entirely too effective at her job.
=> “How the US Lost the Solar Power Race to China”
This links tells the sad tale of the u.s. dismantling of its industry through the transfer of silicon chip and solar panel manufacturing to places far far away. I was disappointed that the link only traced the demise of the u.s. solar power industry as far back as 2008. Back in 1970s there were many small start-up companies coming out with a variety of solar power panels and applications. My parents put in a solar water heating system — still lowering their cost for a warm shower — that had been designed by a small local business. Jimmy Carter put solar power onto the roof of the White House. Shortly later Ronald Reagan was elected. He had the solar power installation removed and the country enjoyed “Morning in America”. Support and the market for solar power evaporated. It went the way of the 55 mph speed limit on freeways.
I believe the on-again-off-again u.s. economic policy supporting solar power was sufficient to warn away new solar power business ventures until solar power became a poster child for the Green New Deal. By the time of the Green New Deal the Chinese were too far advanced in producing solar power chips and panels for any small start-up to have a chance. The big players in the u.s. saw their profits in locking in u.s. government subsidies for relatively large scale solar panel installation projects.
The u.s. did not lose the solar power race to China. The u.s. stepped off the solar power racetrack years ago.
My impression is that the Russian military can pretty much push a button and destroy any Ukrainian infrastructure it chooses. The fact that the Ukrainian energy infrastructure has not been completely eliminated is a deliberate decision by the Russians, I assume a humanitarian one, to allow a minimally functioning civilian society to survive.
I don’t think there’s any heroic defense going on here. Furthermore, since most of Ukraine’s electrical grid was built by the Soviet Union, to different standards than are used in Western Europe, the likelihood of repairing the Ukrainian grid anytime soon is small unless and until Russia takes over the work.
(It’s also worth pointing out that the United States itself has a multi-year backlog of electrical substation equipment and all the grid damage happening in the southeastern United States is likely to go without repair for a long time as a result. Supply-chain problems for electrical operators seems to be a widespread problem.)