Ancient Hawk-Sized Birds With Raptor-Like Feet Discovered in Montana SciTech Daily
The Forgotten War that Made America The American Conservative
Explosive pollen wars: Plants fight for pollen-space on pollinators Phys.org
Climate/Environment
Tax on Europe’s frequent flyers could raise €64bn a year – study The Guardian
A Carbon Tax Alone Will Not Solve Climate Change Dollars & Sense
Nuclear power could solve US electricity needs. But at what cost? Floodlight
Water
Fears over looming water shutdown in Joburg Sowetan Live
Less than 40% of Europe’s surface waters are healthy: Report Down to Earth
Pandemics
REVIEW: Stanford’s “Pandemic Policy” Conference Pandemic Accountability Project
Africa
Cementing US-Angola ties: the significance of Biden’s visit Institute for Security Studies
When justice means impunity Africa Is A Country
Canada-India Row
Did India back Poilievre for CPC Leader after Brown criticized Modi? Dougald Lamont’s Substack
The India-Canada-US triangle merits an honest political dialogue Indian Punchline
China?
China urges India to handle Taiwan issue cautiously after Mumbai office opening Channel News Asia
China’s Cautious Moves in the EU Tariff Conflict The Diplomat China’s Cautious Moves in the EU Tariff Conflict The Diplomat
***
Market unsatisfied with Beijing’s 6 trillion yuan stimulus Asia Times
Concerns And Prospects of the PBoC’s Market Engagement – Analysis Eurasia Review
China boosts funds for housing projects to support embattled sector Reuters
Syraqistan
U.S. strikes Houthi weapons storage facilities in Yemen NBC News
Use of B-2 bombers against Yemen shows US panic: Yemeni source Al Mayadeen
***
No Gaza ceasefire talks for weeks, says Qatar’s PM Doha News
Biden envoy told aid groups Israel too close an ally for US to suspend arms Politico
Netanyahu’s Likud Party Issues Invitation to Event Titled ‘Preparing to Settle Gaza’ Haaretz
CAN BIDEN REIN BIBI IN? Seymour Hersh
Topsy Turvy in the Middle East: The Case for Total Victory The Gatestone Institute
No More Texts From My Sister, A Doctor in Gaza Murdered by Israel Common Dreams
***
‘Israel can always rely on German arms deliveries’: Scholz The Cradle.
“That’s what Germany stands for”:
💥 La sinistra europea è attraversata da fratture sempre più insanabili. Qui la ministra degli Esteri tedesca, Annalena Baerbock, dei Verdi, un movimento verde sempre più legato all’establishment conservatore e liberista, in crisi nei consensi, di fronte agli attacchi israeliani… pic.twitter.com/TcRm6arR9P
— Paolo Mossetti (@paolomossetti) October 15, 2024
***
Resistance Pact Signs Israel’s Death Warrant Global Delinquents
***
Did CIA help in the assassination of senior Hezbollah official? Ynet News
Netanyahu: ‘State-of-the-Art’ Russian Weapons Found in Lebanon Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel bombs south Lebanon municipality, kills mayor during relief work meeting The Cradle
UNIFIL says Israeli tank fired at peacekeepers watchtower in Lebanon Al Jazeera
16 EU countries in UNIFIL urge ‘utmost pressure on Israel’ ANSA
Hamas Network in Europe Exposed European Leadership Network. Good to know that these pro-Israel outfits are looking out for these “threats” to Europe.
Old Blighty
Russia suspected of planting device on plane that caused UK warehouse fire The Guardian
UK troops placed on standby to defend Estonia against Russia under new pact The Independent
Over half of London working parents use food banks, survey finds: ‘Is this the country we live in?’ Big Issue
European Disunion
Global Chip Stocks Erase $420 Billion After ASML Sales Warning Bloomberg
“ASML faces more restrictions in China as Dutch government gives in to US pressure” Bits & Chips. From Aug. 29, still germane.
Serbian protestors rally to oppose Rio Tinto’s lithium mine project MINING.COM
Is Europe not the West? Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue
New Not-So-Cold War
The Grand Poobah’s Not-So-Grand Victory Ploy Unveiled Simplicius the Thinker
Ukraine – The Real Story Of High Disability Numbers Moon of Alabama
US to focus on training of young Ukrainian pilots in its F-16 pilot training program – WSJ Ukrainska Pravda
Australia gives 49 aging Abrams tanks to Ukraine ABC News
US announces additional $425 million military aid for Ukraine SEMAFOR
The Great Game’s other principal presenter: Dmitry Simes Gilbert Doctorow
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
Why ‘Good Enough’ Isn’t Winning Banks’ Fight Against Fraud PYMNTS
Trump Assassination Attempts
Man arrested with guns near Trump rally sues sheriff, says he was falsely called a threat Palm Springs Desert Sun
Kamala
Harris’ Bizarre Hawkishness on Iran Eunomia
Harris seeks to lure winnable Republicans in Fox interview Deutsche Welle
Democrats en Déshabillé
Antitrust
What do pork, quartz and saline solution have in common? Art Cullen’s Notebook
Blue Cross Blue Shield To Pay Largest Settlement in U.S. Antitrust Health Care History: $2.8 Billion HEALTH CARE un-covered
AI
AI-Powered Social Media Manipulation App Promises to ‘Shape Reality’ 404 Media
Driving automation on the farm: Self-driving tractors look to fill agriculture’s labor shortage Agriculture Dive
Boeing
When will Boeing’s Starliner fly astronauts again? NASA still doesn’t know Space.com
Imperial Collapse Watch
U.S. Navy Demonstrates Game-Changing Underway Reload Technology That Could Redefine Naval Warfare gCaptain
U.S. Air Force Continues to ‘Flip-Flop’ on its Leading Hypersonic Missile Program Military Watch
Groves of Academe
FOIA Files: The University of California Racket News
The University of California: At War With Its Own Proud Speech Tradition Matt Taibbi, Racket News
The Bezzle
Trump-Touted Crypto Website Crashes as Token Sale Goes Live, With Just 1.7% of Target Sold Coin Desk
Class Warfare
The Call Is Out for Mass, Simultaneous Strikes in 4 Years Workday Magazine
Aggression, Capitalism, and International Law: Missed Opportunities or Structural Constraints? Current Legal Problems
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
UNITED KINGDOM
(melody borrowed from Maxwell’s Silver Hammer by The Beatles)
Life’s unlivable, Parliament is risible
I can’t heat my home
Radiator covered in ice cubes (Ohh oh oh oh)
I’m a specimen! Skinny as a Bedouin!
Belly to backbone
Maybe I’ll find comfort in Scriptures—N o o o . . . (oh oh oh)
The Devil keeps it warm down below . . .
They’ll welcome me, I’m sure!
There sits Margaret Thatcher with Satan’s crown on her head!
Handing every soul in Hades a meager crust of bread!
Happy filling in, always snogged on too much gin
Her heart’s a black void
Hissing at young boys so unpleasantly (ee ee ee)
‘Face the facts’ she’ll say, ‘You have done no work today’
‘Your crust is declined’
Adding to her crimes like a proper pol (oh oh oh)
A stingy maniac, hoi polloi
Have no worth to her mind
There sits Margaret Thatcher with Satan’s crown on her head!
(Doo doo doo doo doo)
Handing every soul in Hades a meager crust of bread!
(musical interlude)
Here’s Beelzebub over from the country club
Standing by her throne
Showing her colonial prisoners (Ohh oh oh oh)
‘Count their calories! Tax back half their salaries!
Landlords absentee!’ (Landlords absentee)
‘Charge them each a fee so our profits grow!’ (Ohh oh oh oh)
They pick out Margaret’s favorite whips
Austerity in mind . . .
There sits Margaret Thatcher with Satan’s crown on her head!
(Doo doo doo doo doo)
Handing every soul in Hades a meager crust of bread!
(Whoa whoa whoa ohhh!)
Margaret Thatcher lives!
Can Biden rein Bibi in?
I’m going with Betteridge’s law of headlines.
Biden keeps on issuing those blank checks and Bibi keeps on cashing them. But the way that Israel keeps on escalating and doubling down time and again, it is really starting to sound to me like a pyramid scheme. We’ll see how Project Greater Israel turns out.
Biden envoy told aid groups Israel too close an ally for US to suspend arms
there ya go. If you lookup the phrase “Hidebound stooge” online, the result ought to return a picture of that WH envoy.
I got that question in the subject of an email from Sy yesterday and it annoyed me. In principle, yes Biden can rein in Bibi. The question I care about is not what can be but what will it take to change WH policy and rein in Bibi and Israel? Public opinion won’t affect policy unless it’s expressed as mass popular protest, and that possibility was successfully stamped out. There is no electoral choice in this matter. So then what?
“UK troops placed on standby to defend Estonia against Russia under new pact”
‘Some 1,000 British troops are already deployed in Estonia…Army brigades differ in size, but as many as 5,000 troops could be placed on standby under the pact, which will begin in July 2025.’
So, how does that stack up against the present size of the Estonian military?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia#Military
Never mind. And last I heard, the Brits had about 5 days worth of ammo to shoot and then they would be back to ‘Fix bayonets!’ And should it be mentioned that the supply line from the UK to Estonia would stretch to over 1,600 miles/2,570 kilometers?
I’m actually comfortable with the fact the UK armed forces are utterly useless.
Getting pasted in an attempted intervention might be the best thing ever. It did for Anthony Eden. We need more cluster family blogs.
Plus it’ll cement the change in views round here in a central England marginal constituency: Starmer in 100 days went from saviour to a word more despicable than the c word used about a woman’s bits. My mother has showed me what is being said on local Facebook. Nothing is repeatable.
The guys at The Duran did a demolition job on him in a video recently called “UK Starmer, unpopular and without a program”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7h4IGWSZ-Q (13:41 mins)
The guy reeks of corruption. At least Larry the Cat remains as popular as ever and I suspect will outlast Starmer as PM.
Starmer’s pet journal, the Guardian, totally lost whatever credibility they maintained during the Max Gogarty scandal. I was fortunate enough to be reading the original post and comments in real time. FUNNIEST AFTERNOON EVER.
Believe me, you’d have to be sure the wayback machine was 100% up to date to see the truly hilarious yet monstrously disgusting and nepotistic nature of the Guardian to see what comments were put up there before the hopelessly inept Guardian moderators could delete them.
THAT was the moment I realised that the Guardian is no better than the Daily Mail. Indeed, Yves has mentioned that the DM health coverage is often pretty good. You can’t say that of the Guardian with their Islingtonistas who like healing stones and cut ties with notable evidence based scientists like Ben Goldacre.
Is dissenting like that on Facebook legal in the UK?
Apparently so. Huge vitriol. The only thing that worries me is that whilst I think our MP is a moron, like me he is gay and his membership of the “Labour alphabet mafia” could end up with people like me getting beaten up by association.
I’ve already endured abuse for wearing a mask in the shopping area of our suburb. Bleak times….
This is not about fighting. NATO is drifting into the picking-up-the-pieces stage of the crisis now, and the competition is on to see who will have how much influence on the “post Ukraine” work which has apparently already started in Brussels. To have influence in that debate you have to show that you still have some military capability left. Many NATO nations have lost what little capability they had, and the UK deploying like this is a way of underlining the fact that, although weakened, it is still capable of sending a Brigade abroad under national control. Not many other European states have this capability now, and just talking about expanding your forces, increasing your defence budget and buying lots of stuff with money you don’t have, doesn’t magically provide it.
Re Russia suspected of planting device on plane that caused UK warehouse fire The Guardian
The usual baseless smear article from the British intelligence house journal. Working on the classic principle that more people will only read the heading, a few will read the intro, but even fewer will read the entire article.
Namely: Buried in the body copy is the following:
‘The parcel is believed to have arrived at the DHL warehouse by air, though it is not known if it was a cargo or passenger aircraft, nor where it was destined for.’
So it may have come via DHL, may have been cargo or passenger plane, no idea of the ultimate destination, but lets point the finger at Russia. They are the eternal evil wrongdoers.
More, British investigators suspect that the incendiary device is part of a wider campaign that Russian spies have been carrying out across Europe this year, which has been condemned as rash and careless by spy chiefs in the UK and elsewhere.
So, “Russian spies” are “rash and careless”.
I like this bit, Any plot that would have led to the bringing down of a plane would have attracted widespread international condemnation. Am I sensing disappointment? I’m reading “false-flag opportunity”.
Nestle says its sales are suffering due to Israel boycotts
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nestle-says-its-sales-are-suffering-due-to-israel-boycotts-7982f5f7?mod=home-page
Hmmm. Seems awfully convenient excuse….and really–a decline in their “internal rate of growth”, a completely self-constructed unpublished company metric?
I mean, it would be swell if Nestle were feeling real pain, but I suppose them claiming this publicly is worth something, if others believe them……..
“Tax on Europe’s frequent flyers could raise €64bn a year – study”
‘Just over half the benefits in a given year would come from the 5% of people who fly the most, while 72% of people would escape fees by flying once or not at all.’
So how many of that 5% would be business travelers flying for their company? I would assume that those companies would simply pay that extra tax and claim it off their taxes at the end of the year. But here is the thing. Why is there no suggestion by this mob that there should be a tax on private jets? A strange omission that. You have to be pretty wealthy in order to fly by one if not even be a billionaire. So surely they could be taxed an even larger amount to put a brake on their jet-setting around the world. Look how many jets fly in for a big social affair like Burning Man for example. Not hard to collect. If you don’t pay the tax, you get no refueling, no servicing and are not allowed to take off until you do.
I get where you’re coming from. However, the “flights to enable in person meetings” is a real thing. Don’t get me wrong – I think Bezos does NOT need to fly to meet Gates. However, lower level peeps like me did over a 15 year period (2001-2015) really make key connections that led to advances in human knowledge that simply would never have happened in the “Zoom era”.
The key is rationing trips and offsetting carbon or using govt taxes etc to ensure that only the most important trips are made.
I realise this is pie in the sky…but just thought I’d put in my twopenneth.
The Great Game’s other principal presenter: Dmitry Simes Gilbert Doctorow ****** Based on Doctorow’s interpretation of FBI raids on Simes residence and property, it’s comforting to learn that my “La Farge like” stained glass window of dogwood blooms that might be optimistically worth a few thousand or my small collection of British art deco and American victorian style Seth Thomas antique mantle clocks is me doing “money laundering.” America land of the free. Good thing I sold off my Grandmother’s extensize coin collection when I was a teenager (something I truly regret) because I thought I needed the money.
“Topsy Turvy in the Middle East: The Case for Total Victory”
After reading through this I thought that it might have been released by an Israeli Embassy but in fact in came from Gwythian Prins. So who is he?
https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/gwythian-prinns/
So he is a serious person that has serious talks with serious people. Seriously. I wondered then what he had to say about the Ukraine and found this-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/04/brexit-helped-save-ukraine-vladimir-putin/
I honesty think that this guy has a nervous breakdown in his future. The only question is whether it will be caused by the collapse of the Ukraine or the implosion of Greater Israel.
I was assuming Gwythian was a made up name. Those MI6 are a bunch of kidders.
>>>>U.S. Navy Demonstrates Game-Changing Underway Reload Technology That Could Redefine Naval Warfare
newsflash: The US Navy has basically sacrificed its unsexy ships (oilers, minesweepers, ice breakers) to fund their expensive siblings.
take your pick….what will the US run out of first in WW3: ammo, jet fuel, airframes, public legitimacy? place your bets!
Re Taibbi, Racket, University of CA–perhaps the quip needs to be reworked and the new definition of a despot would be a liberal mugged by acquiring power. Suddenly the former outsiders see the merit in keeping down the great unwashed. Of course we, the mostly powerless, understand this a lot better than those with the giant rice bowls. The latter may be the problem but how to put the money/power genie back in the bottle? I don’t think it’s unfair to say that in Kamala we have yet another climber to go with the Obamas, the Clintons etc.These middle class climbers don’t have to worry about noblesse oblige as that’s somebody else’s problem but they do have DEI to pretend to care with no real threat to their money and status. This unholy bargain is very shaky however. You spend all your time worrying about the boogie man, Trump division. Call it the latest wrinkle on America’s paranoid style.
“The nightmare facing Democrats, even if Harris wins” — Vox
Thanks, Obama.