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Links 10/16/2024

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Mysterious gooey blobs washed up on Canada beaches baffle experts Guardian

‘Use the force,’ Mickey: Study suggests that ‘Jedi’ rodents remotely move matter using sound to enhance their sense of smell (press release) University of Buffalo

Can We Rein In the Excesses of Financialization Without Crashing the Economy Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds.

‘I lost £165k to fraud in an hour’ – customers say they were let down by Revolut BBC

Climate

Our Atmosphere Transforms Dust From The Sahara Into Minerals That Fuel Life Science Alert

Floods in Sahara could profoundly alter weather forecasts in the future The Watchers

Monsoon havoc exposes West and Central Africa’s rising flood risks Reuters

* * *

Analysis: Ocean temperatures warmed by climate change provided fuel for Hurricane Milton’s extreme rapid intensification Climate Central

The world is heading for doomsday – and humanity for a brush with extinction The Telegraph

Global warming will increase crop yields in Global North, but reduce them in Global South BNE Intellinews

Dashboard Carbon Mappers

Water

Worst drought in century devastates Southern Africa, millions at risk Al Jazeera

China?

How big is ‘big enough’ for China’s stimulus? FT

China’s economic ills are serious but not incurable FT

Xi’s stronger grip on legislature shows lack of checks on power Business Times. Commentary:

And:

Progress on key issues remains slow as ASEAN summit concludes: Analysts Channel News Asia

India

An MIT economist said environmentalism is elite concern. India ‘too poor to be green’ The Print

India boosts high-tech exports to Russia as Western sanctions shift trade flows BNE Intellinews

Syraqistan

Inside Israel’s secret 20-year plan to strike Iran: Advanced weapons unveiled Jerusalem Posts

Hezbollah warns of more rockets unless Israel ends air and ground attacks Al Jazeera

* * *

US tells Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation or risk military aid Reuters. Commentary:

Who Is the Ex-Israeli Soldier Serving as Biden’s Lebanon Envoy? Zeteo. Amos Hochstein.

US Muslim group demands action after American’s family reportedly bombed by Israel in Gaza Anadolu Agency

We see no signs of genocide by Israel in Gaza, German spokesman says Anadolu Agency

* * *

Transcript of interview on ‘Dialogue Works,’ 15 October Gilbert Doctorow. The type of drone Hezbollah attacked Haifa with was “not detected by Israel because it is not detectable on radar. It has almost no metal parts. It’s made entirely of composites.”

UK: Anti-Zionist views are ‘worthy of respect’, judge says Middle East Eye

The New Great Game

The European Union intends to warn Georgia that the “Georgian Dream” party is jeopardizing the country’s path to the EU, according to Reuters JAM News

European Disunion

The rooftops of Paris with the zinc craftsmen of the sky France24

Dear Old Blighty

Cheating alleged after men’s world conker champion found with steel chestnut Guardian

Labour accused of ‘power grab’ with vote to boot out hereditary peers in order to ‘parachute in their cronies’ Daily Mail

New Not-So-Cold War

The Impending Betrayal of Ukraine RUSI

Ramstein “victory plan” meeting postponed until after US elections BNE Intellinews

Ukraine Seeks Allied Help Against Hyped Threat Of North Koreans Moon of Alabama

​​Ukraine may be left without electricity imports from EU due to violations Ukrainska Pravda

* * *

SITREP 10/14/24: Russia Tightens Ring on Key Region on Eve of Zelensky “Victory Plan” Unveiling Simplicius, Simplicius the Thinker

Russia Is Clawing Back Land Taken by Ukraine This Summer NYT

* * *

To boost Ukraine’s army, feared patrols hunt for potential conscripts Al Jazeera. Commentary:

Where Are Ukraine’s F-16 Jets? Newsweek

* * *

Nord Stream litigation: Insurers’ assertion is “embarrassing for want of particularity” Bud’s Offshore Energy

Putin’s Children Foreign Affairs. The deck: “Why Younger Russians Are Not Rebelling—and What It Means for the Future.”

Russia Pitches BRICS Payment System Aiming to Break US Dominance Bloomberg. Commentary:

South of the Border

Supporters of Bolivia ex-leader Morales block key roads to protest against his possible arrest France24

Healthcare

Georgia facing numerous crises, but Board of Public Health hasn’t met since May Heartbeat Atlanta

A Cloud of Noxious Chemicals and Lawsuits Is Descending Outside Atlanta Charles Pierce, Esquire

Digital Watch

Lab-grown meat is proving to be a grotesque misadventure The Telegraph

WordPress saga escalates as WP Engine plugin forcibly forked and legal letters fly The Register

The Merchants of Venice—In Code JSTOR Daily

MMT

The Boy Who Cried Wolf About Government Debt (PDF) Levy Economics Institute

The Final Frontier

“Follow the Salt”: A New Strategy for Finding Life on Mars JSTOR Daily

Imperial Collapse Watch

The US just lost a war and nobody noticed Crooked Timber

Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act? Adam Tooze, Guardian

Class Warfare

Why has your Big Mac become so much more expensive? FT

Poorest countries in worst financial shape since 2006, World Bank says Al Jazeera

The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology Quanta

Antidote du jour (WaldoAgathe):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

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

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58 comments

  1. Antifa

    OUR PROMISED LAND
    (melody borrowed from Red Right Hand  by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

    Watch our daily shock—sortilege abounds, the view is parallax
    In the torture rooms it’s a hecatomb—bodies piled in stacks
    Where the evil eyes of our soul deniers dance with dark desires
    Bringing food whenever someone cracks
    Wear and tear, sacrilege, vicious thrills to the max
    You’re not here to reform or reap what ransom can
    You’re a Judas goat for our Promised Land

    As Arabs lose their farms Brooklyn Jews are the real McCoy
    Let their Allah hear their screams this is work we can all deeply enjoy
    It’s a form of birth control to make our world whole
    Did Goliath handle David’s sling out of the blue?
    Our Mossad surely can diagnose all their voodoo
    We’ll redeem and reclaim from the river to the sand
    We’ll cut anybody’s throat for our Promised Land

    We promise milk and honey—the world to come
    What we’ve done thus far—is a dry run
    Yahweh is our architect—we aim to resurrect
    The path ahead is bloody with bombs and guns
    Ancient echoes of scenarios when the power He is comes
    Our faith is so vast we are all in His hands
    Every Arab acre is our Promised Land

    (musical interlude)

    Two thousand years of our prayers defy your regimes
    We know this will mean warfare that is taken to extremes
    There’s no need to count the dead—death is so routine
    Nobody is mourning who lands in the trough
    Arabs roast, firing squads, man to man, these are non Jews
    Every Arab is a dog, they’ll destroy us if they can
    Our kind is protected in our Promised Land

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      That’s OK. When I was a kid in the 60s I was reading in the newspaper how the Chinese were marching masses of their people in planned directions around the country to slow the spin of the Earth and how this would change the weather elsewhere.

      I’m sure that it was all mentioned in Mao’s Little Red Book.

      Reply ↓
      1. Terry Flynn

        In light of “weird Chinese stuff” I found it hilarious that one of the YouTubers I follow drew attention to the fact that in the China-India border dispute, they agreed not to use modern weapons and basically use sticks and stones! The video has been age restricted by YouTube so you’ll need to sign in to view. THIS IS LITERALLY JUST MEN THROWING STONES AT EACH OTHER AND USING STICKS FFS!. But gun use is A-OK for anyone…..

        One cannot but think that maybe NATO should be taking a leaf out of their book and stop risking WW3 and agree that Ukraine and Israel issues should be settled by sticks and stones.

        Reply ↓
        1. El Slobbo

          I have a better idea: rent a stadium and force the politicians in charge to fight it out directly using large socks filled with bull manure.

          Reply ↓
  3. The Rev Kev

    ‘Mark Ames
    @MarkAmesExiled
    Listen to the screams of the draft-age male as he’s dragged to the forced-mobilization van. Ukrainian commanders complain that morale among mobiki is rock-bottom, up to 200,000 soldiers have already deserted. So many US journalists, hacks & pols cheered this wretched war.’

    But wait – it gets better. Right now US officials are demanding that the Ukraine lower the draft age all the way down from 25 to 18. Officials like Lindsey Graham. They argue that ‘when the US fought in Vietnam, people were drafted from the age of 19’ and look how well that turned out-

    https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/15/us-politicians-are-pressuring-ukraine-to-lower-draft-age-to-18/#gsc.tab=0

    Those US officials, as well as EU officials, really want to make sure that the Ukrainians burn their seed corn and won’t be happy until they do so.

    Reply ↓
    1. Safety First

      To be fair, the US is simply demanding that Ukraine inflict as much damage on the Russians as possible, including by literally marching cannon fodder into artillery and machine gun fire, before this thing ends. How many lives the proxy loses in the process is immaterial, since in the end, the US will move on to another war in another place, and whatever is left of Ukraine will be someone else’s problem. From that standpoint, encouraging the Ukrainians to sacrifice their 18-year olds today is not much different from most American papers baying for the Ukrainians to throw everyone into suicidal charges against the (outer reaches of the) Surovikin Line last year. And how dare our proxies not gladly sacrifice their lives, all of them, for our strategic objectives…

      Speaking of – rationally, this is a stupid move. Because one, there just aren’t that many 18-25 year olds in Ukraine demographically to begin with, thanks to the Gay Nineties, so throwing them into the fire would push the country from an extant, pre-war demographic crisis into a demographic catastrophe. Two, the bottleneck isn’t so much manpower, it’s equipment and training. A lot of mobilized men are burned up almost immediately because holes in the frontline need plugging, and that’s no way to run a lemonade stand. But even the percentage that is trained up for a few months first, there isn’t enough gear for them. You will notice, for example, that when Macron recently toured the “Anne of Kiev” (used to be “Anne de Russie”, but we can’t have that now, can we) brigade, the thing was organized as a light formation, with no organic tanks or heavy weapons save for a couple of dozen Caesars, and pitiful air defence and EW capabilities. That’s why burning up all those weapons in the Kursk region matters so much, because it’s a highly limited resource.

      So even from the standpoint of US strateegery of trying to damage the Russians until we run out of Ukrainians, it was obvious a year ago or more that the latter should go into deep defensive mode (say, along the Dnieper River) and try to conserve as many men and resources as possible. Instead it’s Rabotino in 2023, Kursk in 2024, and dead Volksturm teenagers in 2025…

      Reply ↓
      1. aporetic

        At least he does a good job offloading the blame:

        – Trump
        – the Europeans
        – US support: too little too late
        – Joe Biden
        – German populists
        – Macron, and the french far left and far right
        – Chinese and Indian banks (for not being trustworthy)
        – the Middle East (perhaps even blame it all on Hamas?)
        – prospective president Kamala Harris for continuing Biden’s indecisiveness

        Did we forget anyone?

        Reply ↓
        1. Colonel Smithers

          Thank you, both.

          Yes. My employer. We got our bearded wonder clients from Antwerp to visit the European Commission and get Alrosa’s diamonds exempt from sanctions as it would impoverish this community if their main source of stone dried up.

          Reply ↓
          1. The Rev Kev

            Thank you, Colonel. Of course if Israel did something stupid with the Russians in the Middle east, those bearded ones would find those stones drying up anyway.

            Reply ↓
        2. NN Cassandra

          What about the think-tankers who assured us the war will be two weeks affair, because West is democracy and has 1000x greater GDP than Russia?

          Reply ↓
        3. Louis Fyne

          add the weather….this year has been milder and drier than median over there.

          Putler has mastered weather control, too!

          Reply ↓
  5. WillyBgood

    The foreign affairs article puts Orwell to shame with the delightful “Involuntary loyalists”. The title may as well be “Russia”s Stockholm syndrome children”.

    Reply ↓
  6. Terry Flynn

    re MMT and nonsense claims about money/debt, 2 hours ago I wrote a caustic response to one of my hitherto favourite tech YouTube channels after he “strayed way beyond his lane” and fell into practically every hole concerning money printing and the national debt. I was just waiting for the “taxes fund govt spending” canard and barely reached the one minute mark before I was satisfied the guy was either an idiot or someone who under financial pressure was beginning to churn out nonsense from the MSM that is demonstrably false. I also unsubscribed (and said so) since I believe the only way producers get the message is when nobody buys their “goods”. I have also instructed YouTube not to suggest videos from that channel again.

    80%+ of the channels I subscribe to are making pleas in their videos along the lines of “only 5% of viewers subscribe, please subscribe”. Therefore I know unsubbing has a financial penalty (albeit tiny when it’s just one person like me). But I’ve no time for people who repeat nonsense or read from wikipedia.

    I do not care that I’ll lose insights into something that interests me. I have free and paid for subs elsewhere to get the info. Frankly, so many YouTubers these days are just reading a wikipedia page with some funny memes inserted so it’s probably no great loss. The most infamous is a British guy (now living in Czechia) called Simon Whistler. Part of his “schtick” is that he sounds posh but certainly didn’t get an extensive education and boasts that he doesn’t remember basic facts from a past video that he simply read from his editors/writers. That is not what I’d define as productive work from an MMT viewpoint. We could simply get/create an app that does an audiobook version of reading of wikipedia. Some would allege that this “content farming” is grifting. 5-10 YouTubers I followed for years, who produced genuinely new content based on their “real job” have now left. I tend to hold my tongue but I want to shout at them “if you don’t own the platform on which you broadcast then you don’t own the content and you are up the creek”. End-stage capitalism.

    Reply ↓
    1. Samuel Conner

      Recently in a The Duran interview with Samuel Trapp, in response to a viewer question (@ 1:19:57) about US debt and future entitlement obligations, “the deficit myth” (that monetary sovereigns must obtain funding through taxation or borrowing before they can spend) was on full display. Mercouris occasionally strays into this territory; thankfully this is not a central point in his commentaries, and he is cognizant of the real constraints that are the actual limits on what monetary sovereign governments can do. I wonder if it would be possible to persuade him to interview an MMT principal.

      It’s disappointing to see widespread fallacies repeated by intelligent commentators. It’s as if the entire world has been and is being gaslit. It’s a bit exhausting to be always wondering, when contemplating a piece of information concerning a matter about which one does not have direct knowledge, “is this true?”

      Reply ↓
      1. Terry Flynn

        Re your last paragraph. Indeed and I feel that the most basic critical thinking – which you’d ironically think would be stimulated by the anthropological stuff that people like Whistler read from a script and which are basically repeating what Graeber et al have said about how goods were traded 1000s of years ago – is being lost.

        When I see a YouTuber repeat something re money that I know to be false, inevitably I have to ask “is any of their previous stuff untrue as well?” That’s how we devolve to “you can have your own truth” territory.

        I am middle of Gen X but sound like the archetypal old man shouting at clouds. However, I believe that whilst Gen Z etc are good at presenting information in novel ways, their dismissal of those of us who spent decades researching to provide that information is pretty awful. An attitude I see over and over again is that “we can take whatever is the dominant paradigm and juice it up to present a nice 10 minute video”. NO. You spend years learning about the paradigm, challenging it, deciding whether it is sufficient or needs refinement/replacement and then putting in the slog to do this. With the exception of the YouTubers I’ve mentioned who really want to disseminate their original work in a novel way, I think these people presenting YT vids have zero value to society. Ironically, Late Stage Capitalistic YouTube is evolving to give them the value they deserve – zero ;-)

        Reply ↓
      2. Random

        The issue is that a lot of people that want to see the US hegemony end like to cite the debt as a main argument which makes them emotionally attached to it.
        And because most people in that space believe that argument, it becomes very difficult to go against it.

        Reply ↓
  7. Mikel

    Something has been on mind…
    In a country like the USA, with even the most pissant docs considered classified as a matter of national security, why would the number of weapons stockpiled or manufactured in the USA be public knowledge?
    Especially during a time of escalating conflicts..

    Reply ↓
    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      Mikel: I think that you answered your own question. The classification system in pure nonsense. It is about bureaucratic power rather than protection of legitimate secrets — of which there are fewer than the national-security state lets on.

      It sometimes occurs to me as I read the comments and articles here at Naked Capitalism that a considerable portion of the information, even in the comments section, would be classified by overzealous and fearful U.S. classification technicians (or whatever they call themselves, maybe, “secrecy concierge services”) as secret.

      There are several people commenting with excellent information on numbers of weapons in many countries as well as the capabilities of the weapons. Likewise, when Comatoso Joe and gang blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, several experts on demolition and deep-sea conditions explained what kinds of equipment would be necessary. (And, no, not a rent-a-yacht from Rostock.)

      Who knows what a secret is these days? Even the handles we use are hardly anonymous.

      Reply ↓
    2. Samuel Conner

      I suspect that between appropriations bills and financial disclosures of publicly-traded companies that manufacture munitions, it may be possible to guess a great deal.

      The publicly-mooted opinion that approximately 1000 THAAD interceptor missiles have been manufactured since inception of the program ~ two decades ago, by a publicly-traded corporation, is something that might be rooted in real-world data about the production rate, even if nothing more than the memories of workers on the missile assembly line.

      Perhaps this is something that should be clamped down on. It may be that in the wake of the collapse of USSR and prior to peer competition with China, it was reckoned in USG that there were no peer competitors who could make use of such information and there was no need to conceal it from the small nations the US was at the time pushing around.

      Reply ↓
  8. Cassandra

    From Foreign Affairs:
    At the beginning of Putin’s rule, when today’s 20- and 30-year-olds were still at a tender age, Russia was benefiting from strong economic growth—a result of the market economy built in the 1990s and high energy prices in the early years of this century. Thus they grew up in a more comfortable era of booming markets, new means of communication, open borders, and consumerism.

    Right. Everyone knows how wonderful the post-Soviet market economy was for the Russian public. No wonder they long for the heady days under Yeltsin! Such a shame that Russian youth are not free to express their views like the Occupy protesters or the anti-genocide groups at American colleges!

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      I mean, who doesn’t want life expectancy to drop into the mid-50s? Getting past 50 is overrated. Hope I die before I get old – Pete Townshend.

      Reply ↓
      1. mrsyk

        I mean, who doesn’t want life expectancy to drop into the mid-50s? I’m guessing Pete Townshend for one, heh heh.

        Reply ↓
    2. SocalJimObjects

      From Wikipedia:

      Between 2000 and 2004, Putin set about the reconstruction of the impoverished condition of the country, apparently winning a power-struggle with the Russian oligarchs, reaching a ‘grand bargain’ with them.

      Foreign Affairs lost the plot a long time ago, nowadays I don’t even bother reading anything from them.

      Reply ↓
  9. The Rev Kev

    Don’t ask me why but when I scrolled down to that cat in today’s Antidote du jour, it had a look as if it was saying ‘Justify your existence!’

    Reply ↓
    1. Terry Flynn

      Our cat shows that exact look at 6am daily to guilt trip one of us to feed her.

      Then she eats a tiny portion (often just the jelly stuff in the wet food) and makes an almighty fuss to be let out (she won’t catch the damn rats alas). My mother thinks she is mad. However, having watched too many cat videos on YouTube I have concluded that our cat is rather intelligent and insufficently stimulated – she’s a tuxedo cat and (apparently) whilst they are not up there with Siamese cats in the IQ stakes, they can be very smart and therefore cause trouble if you ignore them.

      For instance, our cat interacts with the TV when I broadcast cat videos from YouTube to it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lena

        My kitty was very smart and vocal, as tortoiseshell cats usually are. She loved to watch nature programs on PBS. The ones with birds or squirrels were especially enthralling to her. She would be entranced and make excited little meows while watching.

        I miss her so much.

        Reply ↓
    2. MFB

      Or, in other words, “Feed me!”

      By the way, that Crooked Timber post is unfortunately distorted by the fact that its author uses the failure of the US Navy to defeat the Yemenis to justify his belief that navies are obsolete. I tried to point out that there were other factors involved (Crooked Timber is riddled with Zionists so the author wisely insisted that nobody talk Middle Eastern politics) but got slapped down as an uninformed bigot.

      Earlier on the same author explained that it was impossible for China to attack Taiwan because an obsolete Russian cruiser got sunk in the Black Sea. I think Trump Derangement Syndrome is prone to metastasis.

      Reply ↓
  11. Zagonostra

    >US tells Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation or risk military aid Reuters. Commentary:

    The letter is the clearest ultimatum yet to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the Gaza conflict began, raising the prospect of a shift in Washington’s support for Israe

    I listened to Brian Berletic analysis yesterday and he departs from Reuter’s characterization as well as most of the regular analyst on Judge Napolitano’s podcast. Berlectic view is that what is happening in Palestine is a manifestation of U.S. interest akin to Ukraine. It’s not the Jewish lobby that is wagging the dog/U.S. Rather it’s the U.S. using/sacrificing Israel for its wider interest in the region. It is the U.S. that is hankering for a war with Iran, even though they know Israel would suffer massively, similar to Ukraine.

    The recent calls, like the one here from Reuters, painting Netanyahu as the crazy man and the U.S. as the more reasonable partner in genocide, trying to rein in the former is challenged by Berletic and is causing me some pause and rethinking. Several recent articles I read try and untangle who is really in charge/responsible for the disaster in the ME, Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote an article saying its both, as have others. This is a complicated issue and an important one, because if you can’t identify where the snake’s head is, it’s unlikely you will be successful in killing it.

    https://youtu.be/yfY5C__A6Ao?si=B7cj29WiuCMAo-Wv

    Reply ↓
    1. Alice X

      Fool me once, shame on you W

      Biden and his handlers are Zionists through and through (for whatever reason). He just trots this stuff out to maybe grab a few gullible voters on their merry way to the polls. He has to make one phone call, which he won’t do. Stop arming Israel, now and forever more.

      Reply ↓
  12. Steve H.

    > Use the force,’ Mickey: Study suggests that ‘Jedi’ rodents remotely move matter using sound to enhance their sense of smell (press release) University of Buffalo

    We’ve had a glass sliding door on the back porch for the last year and in practising for my dotage I’ve done a lot of observing. I can see birds emitting when I can’t hear them by their power-stroke with the tail. Both birds and the chipmunks can differentiate when the glass door is open via sonic vibrations. So too the bugs that come in, they rapidly figure out it’s a closed space (or zip to the open door).

    So rats pushing molecules sonically is fully feasible. Or as we call them around here, Sumatran Long-tailed Hamsters.

    (Humans are capable of echolocation as well.)

    Reply ↓
  13. VTDigger

    Environmentalism as an elite hobby.
    Yes finally!
    Screeching and preening while doing the opposite. The public can do nothing about 1.5c or whatever the experts are yammering on about.
    The people who can know exactly what they are doing. I grant they too may be powerless to stop the machine now…

    Reply ↓
  14. The Rev Kev

    “Who Is the Ex-Israeli Soldier Serving as Biden’s Lebanon Envoy?”

    ‘Hochstein, McGurk and other top U.S. national security officials are describing Israel’s Lebanon operations as a history-defining moment — one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.’

    I’m sure that as predictions go, this will rate alongside when the Oracles at Delphi told King Croesus when he consulted them that if he launched an invasion, that he would destroy a great empire. And they were right. Just not the empire that Croesus was thinking of.

    Reply ↓
  15. mrsyk

    Global warming will increase crop yields in Global North, but reduce them in Global South. Hmmm, I am having my doubts about meaningfully increased yields anywhere, while it’s easy to imagine the decreases.

    Reply ↓
  16. Colonel Smithers

    Thank you, Lambert.

    With regard to the Middle East Eye report about Bristol professor David Miller, readers may be interested to read that one of the politicians mobilised by the zionist lobby to bring him down is none other than former Green MP Caroline Lucas.

    One of Lucas’ friends, also an academic and acquaintance of mine, is now under investigation by his employer for anti-semitism, commenting on genocide in Palestine online.

    I’m glad that you have linked to Kathleen Tyson’s tweet about a potential BRICS payment system. I know and have worked with her. She’s one of the good guys and good company, too. Kathleen has been working with one of the BRICS on its payment system and potential link to a BRICS one.

    Reply ↓
  17. DJG, Reality Czar

    Mysterious gooey Canadian beach debris (Guardian):

    Residents and marine scientists unable to identify pale masses, as myriad theories are blown out of the water
    My first inclination is that the blobs are evidence of the misuse of the word “theory,” just a bunch of floating opinions, sort of like Rachel Maddow, now littering the beaches of Newfoundland and Labrador. You see what happens when you don’t use words correctly?

    But one must speculate. The texture is described as that of the dough of toutons, which are a local delicacy that is fried dough. So it is like a Native American fry-bread or “pizza fritta,” little pan-fried cakes of dough that my mother’s godmother used to make from scraps of dough left over after assembling the pizzas.

    Hmmm. I realize that COVID has done a job on noses, but did no one notice a scent? They look a bit like the Greek treat, saganaki, so do they smell like cheese? Or are they yeasty like toutons? It seems to me that scent may determine what they are.

    Because of global warming, it is possible that something well below the surface has reached a melting point. Does it then re-solidify on it way to the surface?

    Is it time for Michael Shellenberger to panic and do some videos about Unidentified Floating Objects? What if it turns out that they are intergalactic snack foods? Someone should consult the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and determine if they are Vogon cheeseballs. And if they are Vogon chip-and-dip leftovers, we should get jittery, knowing what the Vogons might do to Earth…

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      We better check to see if there are any papers on display in the office at Alpha Centauri only a few light years away. After all, it’s our own fault if we don’t pay attention to local affairs. You’ll have to excuse me now. I’m just off to grab my towel.

      Reply ↓
  18. mrsyk

    Mysterious gooey blobs…
    “ They are slimy on the outside, firm and spongy on the inside and surprisingly combustible.”
    Well alright then.

    Reply ↓
    2. griffen

      My mind veers into Caddyshack territory and the inimitable Carl Spackler..”great gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts….au Revoir, Gopher…”

      Reply ↓
  20. The Rev Kev

    “The European Union intends to warn Georgia that the “Georgian Dream” party is jeopardizing the country’s path to the EU, according to Reuters”

    They say that as if it was a bad thing. The EU right now has become more of a suicide pact where member states no longer have sovereignty, have to pay money in but can be denied money if Brussels does not like them and is evolving into a monarchy with Queen Ursula the First already enthroned. Give another 10 years and there may not even be an EU as that institution seems determined to destroy Europe so that a small clique in Brussels can achieve supreme power. Georgia would do better looking east for its future.

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  22. Judith

    Han Kang of South Korea awarded Nobel in Literature.

    “But the Nobels are always political statements, situated in the political moment, and across a backdrop of live-streamed genocide and daily atrocity, it’s unthinkable that that Palestinian genocide could have been far from their minds or ignored in their deliberations.

    The awarding of the Nobel to Han Kang is that oblique acknowledgment. Of the short and long lists, she is the only contemporary writer dedicated to witnessing and inscribing the horrors of historical atrocity and mass slaughter perpetrated by the imperial colonial powers and their quislings. “

    https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/15/han-kangs-nobel-prize-is-a-cry-for-palestine/

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  23. ddt

    Lambert and NC tech team. The tweets/Xs you embed are not showing up as tweets/Xs, just text. Just letting you know.

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    1. Terry Flynn

      I thnk this is a browser issue. I see them on mobile devices but my Linux Firefox with all the extensions makes them text only. Plus IIRC it was noted that the ability to embed tweets elsewhere would be restricted when Musk took over. But the techies here probably have the ultimate answer.

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  24. lyman alpha blob

    RE: The world is heading for doomsday – and humanity for a brush with extinction

    Well the Tories have their knickers in a twist today with this one. This –

    “If anything, we have the opposite problem to the one Ehrlich predicted. Rather than overpopulation, the world appears to be running out of people.”

    – is very hard to take seriously in a world with a still growing population and all the concomitant problems that result from it.

    The crux of the issue appears to be that there are fewer people being born in the UK which will make it harder for debts to be repaid eventually, which will presumably lead to some bankers having to unload yachts on the cheap. The horror, the horror…

    Charles Hugh Smith gets it right in his link today. Not everything needs to be about money –

    “In the moral universe, the question is: “what is the right thing to do now for future generations?” The self-evident answer is to deflate the financialization bubble, defang its predatory tools, and take the lumps now rather than dump the ever-expanding destructive consequences on the next generation. This can be viewed as our civic / moral duty. “

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  25. The Rev Kev

    “Inside Israel’s secret 20-year plan to strike Iran: Advanced weapons unveiled’

    Wait. So the Israelis are saying that their plan is to use “wonder weapons” to win?

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