Scientists Release an Astounding, Detailed Map of a Fly Brain in Groundbreaking Study Colossal
Mass extinctions on Earth can help us find alien life in the cosmos. Here’s how Space.com
Climate
How climate risk will complicate central bankers’ jobs FT
U.S. enacts law to exempt select fabs from environmental reviews Tom’s Hardware
Residents File Class Action Lawsuit Against BioLab for Toxic Plume 404 Media
Southern California study shows extensive exposure to toxic airborne plasticizers The Hill
75,000 – 80,000 birds dead from botulism near Oregon border FOX 12
Hurricane Helene
‘Civilization is pretty much gone’ after Helene tears through Spruce Pine, NC News & Observer
Mayorkas warns FEMA doesn’t have enough funding to last through hurricane season AP
North Carolina Asks Zelensky For $100 Billion In U.S. Funding Babylon Bee
Syndemics
Water
Before Brita: A Brief History of Water Filtration JSTOR Daily
China?
Foreign investors ‘seek shelter’ in undervalued Chinese assets, but scepticism remains South China Morning Post
A stimulus is good, but China still faces a hard slog Channel News Asia
Vietnam plans US$67 billion high-speed railway with no foreign capital Channel News Asia
Japan’s Rice Farmers Planting More Heat-Resistant Varieties Nippon.com
India
A Durga Puja Like No Other: R.G. Kar Protests Cast Shadow over Festivities in Kolkata The Wire
UK cedes Chagos Islands to Mauritius in deal securing Diego Garcia military base France24
Syraqistan
Iran, Saudi Arabia vow to resolve differences, boost ties Xinhua. “The Saudi minister voiced his country’s determination to develop relations with Iran. ‘We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states,’ he said.” Big if true.
Scores of illegal Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque amid tension Anadolu Agency
* * * Massive blasts in Beirut after renewed Israeli air strikes BBC
Radar shows scale of damage from Israeli strikes on Lebanon FT
Why Could Lebanon Be Rich, but Is so Chaotic? Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories
* * * Netanyahu’s high-stakes gamble against Iran and Biden confronts the limits of his influence over Israel Politico
Clarity After Iran Strike, as Israel Tries to Pivot to Nuclear Arc Simplicius, Simplicius the Thinker
Can Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities by itself? FT. The deck: “Without US support, analysts believe the Israeli air force will struggle to mount a successful operation.”
* * * Houthis’ email alert to Red Sea ships: Prepare for attack, with best regards Reuters. Commentary:
Extraordinary number of ships at #singapore. All bunched up here because of Red Sea disruption to shipping and shifts in way things are being shipped. Fascinating. This is where commerce and geo politics come face to face pic.twitter.com/7sCRdW9YPk
— Richard Quest (@richardquest) October 3, 2024
* * * A debate with John Mearsheimer about the US-Israeli relationship via ‘Judging Freedom’ Gilbert Doctorow
Israel’s Oct. 7 Early Warning Failure: Who Is to Blame? War on the Rocks
European Disunion
EU sues Hungary for criminalising groups that receive foreign funding, including NGOs France24
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s top commander orders defences bolstered in the east after Vuhledar falls Reuters
Diplomacy Watch: Russia capitalizing on battlefield surge Responsible Statecraft
Ukraine negotiates nuclear plant protection with UN atomic watchdog observers Euractiv
Ukraine gives the US a sweet deal with one dead Russian soldier for every $20,000 spent on drones, unit commander says Business Insider
The Russian Military Will Be ‘Battle-Hardened’ After Ukraine War The National Interest
South of the Border
Reinventing Mexican Conservatism The Baffler
Biden Administration
An Exodus of Agents Left the Secret Service Unprepared for 2024 NYT
John Deere accused of being full of manure with its right-to-repair promises The Register
2024
Prosecutors request indefinite delay in trial for Trump assassination attempt suspect Ryan Routh FOX
Realignment and Legitimacy
Citizens’ Assemblies in Michigan and Beyond Crooked Timber
Antitrust
Michael Jordan, Anti-Monopolist Matt Stoller, BIG
Digital Watch
Supply Chain
Geopolitical concerns ‘very serious’: Bank of England warns of Middle East oil shock risk Anadolu Agency
World Wide Waves: an interview with Laleh Khalili The New Inquiry
Sports Desk
Class Warfare
Dockworkers’ union suspends strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract AP. Commentary:
Interesting Discovery short video showing the fully automated Rotterdam port operation.
It’s the largest seaport in Europe and 10th in world for cargo tonnage (was #1 between 1962 and 2004, since overtaken by Chinese ports)
It's operated by <20 people onsite and works by:… pic.twitter.com/Ph2Fb0ghW0
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) October 3, 2024
Biden declares ‘collective bargaining works’ after deal struck The Hill
* * * UAW Reformers Muster Forces to Hold Bosses to Their Word Labor Notes
* * * Can Social Democracy Win Again? Boston Review
The Peanut That Broke The Law nonsite.org
In American Empire, You’re Either Invading or Being Invaded Literary Hub
Richard III, the Tudor Myth, and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism MR Online
Victim’s Unsealed Testimony Reveals New Details in Epstein Case NYT
Antidote du jour (Oilstreet):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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HURRICANE HELENE
(melody borrowed from The Battle of New Orleans by James Harris, as performed by Johnny Horton, 1961)
I hopped in my Cadillac to take a little trip
Headin’ down to Florida to have a skinny dip
I haven’t seen the ocean there since I was just a teen
And I had to see this Hurricane that people call Helene
The rain beat down on the roof—it was a drummin’
The highway started floodin’ traffic moving pretty slow
I played some tunes I’s singin’ I was hummin’
Thinkin’ ’bout the people in a town I used to know
I picked up a fella who was holdin’ out his thumb
Said Louisiana was the place he hails from
Worked up in Chicago where he didn’t earn a thing
He’s headin’ where the water’s warm to wait until the spring
Where I grew up it was always bright and sunny
South of Tallahassee where it doesn’t ever snow
We fished a bit to earn some pocket money
Where I grew up that was all you had to know
By trickery and little bit of clever lies
I joined the Marine Corps with a bunch of younger guys
We went to Vietnam—there’s some stories we could tell
When me and all my buddies we got introduced to
Well, the rain came down but the Cadillac was runnin’
I’ve heard of Ford’s and Chevy’s but that’s nuthin’ I would know
It’s got big fins, the leather seats are stunning
I only have to whistle and the ladies want to go
Yeah we checked on our tires ’cause the road was a shambles
While the wind came in whooshes with the lightnin’ bolts aglow
They hit so close we could reach out and snatch ’em
Mother Nature busy out there puttin’ on a show
We bought another bottle in a sleepy Georgia town
Every store was boarded up, the place was tumble down
Graffiti covered every wall, the people were resigned
We left that town to zombies who were stoned outta their minds
We reached the Gulf it was like the Second Coming
The beach was underwater and the waves began to grow
The engine died—the Caddy wasn’t runnin’
I lost my purple Caddy to the Gulf of Mexico
Yeah, the sign said no fires and the surge stole our sandals
As Helene came ashore on that archipelago
Her eye came past as the waves came a crashin’
We met her on a roof while we was singin’ zydeco
Waves climbed that shore
Late night dance floor
Helene Cat Four
Wild men want more
we took a little bacon and we took a little beans.
very clever of you, always!
I enjoy and finish reading the song parodies/adaptations that adhere to meter, but quickly abandon the ones that don’t. What’s the point of ignoring it, apart from an unwillingness to work the wording till it fits? Antifa achieves that fit on the regular. It’s kinda the point of the exercise.
Fabulous version there, Antifa.
It don’t matter if it meters to me
If you really feel that
You need sometime to be free
Time to go out searching for yourself
Hoping to find
Time to go to find
And it don’t matter to me
If you take up with someone who’s better than me
‘Cause your happiness is all I want
For you to find peace your piece of mind
“Ukraine negotiates nuclear plant protection with UN atomic watchdog observers”
Does the Ukraine really want to bother having foreign observers from the IAEA near its nuclear power plants to protect the country’s energy supply? The Russians have them at the Zaporizhzhia and Kursk nuclear power plants but whenever the Ukrainians attack them, the IAEA inspectors just can’t work out where those drones and artillery barrages are coming from. I’m thinking that IAEA inspectors are in reality a jobs program for the Braille Institute.
The un, of limited use before the twin wars, is now quite useless. Perhaps there will be a BRICS un by and by to represent the 7/8th not in the golden billion.
They need foreign observers from the IAEA for the incoming false flag attacks.
>Scientists Release an Astounding, Detailed Map of a Fly Brain in Groundbreaking Study Colossal
Maybe they can map Biden and Trump next, though it might not be as “groundbreaking”
You would think they would start out small, on Trump or Biden before tackling a fruit fly.
No, that wouldn’t be groundbreaking, just an instance of logical positivist science in practice, i.e. verification or reproduction of a fact.
Come on now. These are Politicos we speak of here. ‘Facts’ are of no relevance to this class of beings.
I will go so far as to suggest that the optimal ‘philosophy’ for dealing with the class of Politicos is “Magical Stealism.”
(It is of note that the early developmental researcher Sendak, back in 1963, describes the environment where Politicos form and develop as “Where the Wild Things Are.”)
My mom bought that book in the mid 60’s, and the creature comforts displayed within were anything but to a little boy, and the basis for nightmares, especially when combined with the closet door of my bedroom being open at night and hanger’d clothes turned into scary monsters, unless you were careful to either pull the bed cover over your head, or a pillow over your head works too. Most of us survive childhood, is the claim.
>Vietnam plans US$67 billion high-speed railway with no foreign capital Channel News Asia
So a country we tried to bomb back to the stone age will have high speed rail before the US, And, I think Ethiopia also has a high speed rail project in collaboration with China underway. Nice…
The imperialist US and its citizens pay a tremendous price for their strategy of trying to dominate the world by force. Instead of building and improving US infrastructure and financing badly needed social benefits, the US wastes trillions of dollars a year on useless weapons and on 800 military bases around the world.
Meanwhile, other countries are free to spend their wealth improving the lives of their citizens and forging a new and better future for themselves. Imagine what the US could have done with the $12 trillion that was wasted on the useless and destructive Middle Eastern Wars in this century alone.
US is investing in extractive means from all this wealth being created around the world, why don’t you get it?!
Iran, Saudi Arabia vow to resolve differences, boost ties – Xinhua “Big if true.”
Indeed…if true.
I’ve had a BOLO for more info about some of not-so-usual suspects relations with Israel.
Below is one of the first articles I’ve read that gives an outline of BRICS+ countries’ economic (and other) relationships with Israel.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/03/the-blessing-for-genocide-nearly-all-brics-regimes-nurture-israel-economically/
US strategy, most US don’t recognize, has been to use the Sunni to run down Shi’a Iran, and the Shi’a majority in Iraq.
Abraham Accords were an inch stone on the US siding more openly with the Sunni.
Demise of neocon fantasy alert!
The countries discussed in the outline/overview are not all in the Mid-East.
Wasn’t it here that I recently read that Netanyahoo should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for finally uniting Shia and Sunni across the Moslem World?
This is Patrick Bond. Be very careful taking everything he says without a handful of salt. Most of his work that I have seen in the last decade or so has been violently anti-BRICS and, for a purported Trotskyite, he is happy to rely on the most reactionary of sources for his material.
Notwithstanding that, it is true that BRICS is an economic alliance of countries which stand to gain by uniting in order to avoid or challenge the destructive effects of the US-dominated world trade and financial order. It is emphatically not a liberation movement, nor is it necessarily leftist — nor could it be, given the number of right-wing governments on board.
The fact that all these governments trade to a greater or lesser extent with Israel is lamentable in itself, and still more lamentable in the era of genocide. On the other hand, most of the BRICS governments have been critical, to a greater or lesser extent, of Israel’s behaviour. That is, they challenge US political hegemony in the middle east exercised through its principal agent there. It is a good thing not to blindly accept BRICS as the force which will save us, but attacking BRICS on spurious grounds looks like covert support for US imperialism.
I know that Yves doesn’t approve of ad hominem attacks, but after thirty years of watching Bond’s utterances I have yet to see him generate a sincere book or article which does not further the agenda either of US/NATO imperialism, Western plutocracy, or the South African ruling class. That’s not something I say with any great pleasure, as South Africans could certainly do with a leftist intellectual or two — virtually all the ones generated in the 1980s have died out or been absorbed into the right-wing propaganda matrix.
>Victim’s Unsealed Testimony Reveals New Details in Epstein Case NYT
Jane Doe 1 said…
Tired of reports on what “Jane Doe” had to say. I want the list of Epstein clients/blackmail targets. Ok, this is the NYT, I understand but, Mossad and Israel was mentioned once? Not even in passing.
I think Whitney Webb’s “One Nation under Blackmail” is of more public interest/weight than one victim’s personnel viewpoint of sexual abuse, though I’m not minimizing it. The whole Epstein sexual aspect/focus is intended, I think, to misdirect from the real underlying nexus that exist between politicians/intelligence agencies/MSM and various other power brokers in that nefarious satanic “inner circle.”
Yes. The “new details” were about as un-enlightening on the *real* questions as they could be. Epstein was just a rich, controlling sex pervert. Nothing more to see here. But I expected nothing less from the intrepid investigative reporters of the NY Times.
Re; Gilbert Doctorow’s, A debate with John Mearsheimer about the US-Israeli relationship via ‘Judging Freedom’
Doctorow argues the it is the US that is manipulating Israel, using Israel to fight its wars, and not the other way around.
Would Doctorow then agree that Netanyaho is a cat’s paw of US military-industrial interests? By extension, APAIC?
A lot of money has been made since 9/11, and I’m sure that there are some who wish to see these wars, and the cash-flow they bring, continue.
Where I disagree with Doctorow is that while he seems to feel that the current US proxy-wars are motivated by vengance, I believe that these are simply the result of cold-blooded calculations, developing and taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.
If it were really a matter of calculations, the mainframe would have long since pointed out it was a strange game where the only winning move is not to play.
I wouldn’t discount vengeance. I often wonder if our foreign policy is just a grudge match between our intelligence operations and the opposition intelligence. That would explain our posture towards Cuba, Russia and Iran. At one point or another they have all thwarted US imperial ambitions. It might be ancient history to many but the CIA, like the Russian or British intelligence, never forgets, diplomacy or legitimacy be dammed.
I think it’s a bit more complex than one side controlling the other. There are important trade offs.
Israel does serve as a valuable proxy for the US while allowing for plausible deniability to pursue some actions that the US can’t/won’t do itself. That’s beneficial to the US national interests.
On the other hand Israel sometimes does reckless stuff that harm the American position in the ME and around the world while also consuming a lot of military resources.
There’s also the whole AIPAC/MIC/giant piles of money aspect, so that probably helps convince some people that supporting Israel is good business.
It’s quite the circulatory system – the US gives $ to Israel who then gives it back via AIPAC to our politicians.
Israel is a land based aircraft carrier. The object is bases ringing Iran in Syria and Iraq!
To “do Iran” requires larger/as diverse air power than lost in Vietnam!
Which was absent in Ukraine!
> it is the US that is manipulating Israel, using Israel to fight its wars, and not the other way around
this is also Brian Berletic’s view, for example articulated recently here. BB cites multiple examples of US employment of proxies to undertake conflicts of varying “temperature” with adversaries (Ukraine vs RF, Taiwan and Philippines vs PRC).
It seems inarguable that in the case of Israel vs parts of the Middle East, the proxy has much more influence in US than is the case in the other examples BB cites. Things may have started out the way GD sees them, but have evolved since then.
I think about it this way: The US had a well known history of using proxies and abandoning them. I recall, for example, Pat Lang making this point about our allies in the war in Vietnam. Many more examples come to mind.
My hypothetical is, can I imagine the US abandoning Israel should its hostilities go against them? I find it very difficult to say yes.
Douglas Macgregor has made the point that the US is a maritime and aerospace power. But what this means is that if things go wrong, then they can sail away and fly away from their former ally.
Yes. We can pull back and rely on our oceans and weak next door neighbors. The question is would we leave Israel to its fate? I think the answer to that also answers the question of who is the dog and who is the tail.
The tapeworm is our only ally in the middle body.
I think you are correct. Doctrow’s mistake is that he sees grand strategy on the part of the US in the Middle East when he should just be seeing raw licentious greed. The “aid” given to Israel is mostly money spent on US munitions. Just like Ukraine, you could see these conflicts as big money laundering operations for juicy defense contracts. Sure, throwing sand in the eye of Putin and seeing Iran get bombed might please Washington, but this is all secondary to the flow of money at the end of the day. I think one of the darkest moments for me in this whole monstrous ethnic cleansing in Gaza was when I realized our leaders could be bribed and intimidated into actively supporting such barbarity done openly and without apology. I guess you don’t get very far in US political life without knowing which rings to kiss and backs to stab, so the whole process naturally filters out anyone who’d try to do otherwise.
This!
There it is.
It might not be so much bribery, but bills 💸 of sale instead. IMO, the u.s. government has sold itself to the zionist entity, and its lobby. Remaining a purchased asset of the entity virtually guarantees an elected official unlimited tenure. He/she will oppose the entity at the certain risk of unforgiving opposition, and the loss of real money 💰 in subsequent elections. Tom Massie, the libertarian right-winger from kentucky, has remarked that most members of congress have an aipac handler ‘helping’ to manage that particular member. It’s as though the lobbyist is leading his dog out on a stroll. And if that stroll must pass through the killing fields of Palestine, and now Lebanon, the pooch must learn to mind its master, and wag its innocent tail in happy 😊 obedience.
I’m dying to know how you posted emojis!
A concise explanation of the need for another Revolution.
‘Graft Dodger’: …somebody not in the employ of the MIC
Resorting to the apocryphal Ambrose Bierce’s “The Politico’s Dictionary” again?
(Really, this prompts the idea of a “New and Improved” Naked Capitalism Publishing project: ‘The New World Politico’s Dictionary.’)
Stay safe.
‘Graft Dodger’ – that’s a keeper, that…
This in turn illustrates why ethical principles are important.
The quality of the ethics depends on the source. Darth Cheney has ethics, generally bad ones. Obama has ethics, but they are traded on Wall Street as CDO Squared offerings.
Let us not even get into Graft Backed Securities (GBS.) Or tranch warfare, a la WW3 hedging.
Israel is the US’s largest military base in the world. Given the US’s disastrous efforts to maintain hegemony from the MENA to Pakistan/Afghanistan, Israel is its last-ditch effort to keep a hold on the region.
Hamas’ 10/7 raid, about which Netanyahu and the Israeli military establishment were well aware, offered the occasion to unleash the dogs. Israeli outrage suite US goals. Biden’s supposed impotence in controlling Bibi is PR veneer.
Palestinians have been an enduring obstacle to a smooth operation of this largest of US military operations.
The US acknowledged having some 40k military in the región. More are being sent. If Israelis falter in finishing the job in Gaza and Lebanon the US will step in. If Iran seeks further to frustrate the project, we should not be surprised when Israel/US breaks out the nukes.
“Palestinians have been an enduring obstacle to a smooth operation of this largest of US military operations.”
Are they really a bigger obstacle than Netanyahu or the settlers? If Palestinians were simply left alone in the West Bank and Gaza, how would that meaningfully affect the part of Israel’s operation that is relevant to American military interests?
Left alone, I suspect that resistance to the occupation by a regionally dominant Zionist entity of any portion of Palestinian land would continue. As well it should. OTOH, if Israel could be converted into a demilitarized Disneyesque religious theme park, things might go better than they have so far. Or not, ironically, the tendency toward schismogenesis among the believers in the same one true god is like a force of nature.
If they stopped occupying the Palestinians the resistance would vanish. If Palestinians were to thrive in their own, whether one or two state, they’d become stakeholders to this military base. This points to the fact that what’s really driving this only hatred, against Arabs, probably Muslims.
Perhaps this is better described as a crusade against Islam.
I think that’s what the Rabin leadership was thinking when it joined into the Oslo Process. I think that’s what Netanyahu thought Rabin was thinking when he and his community agitated and worked to get Rabin assassinated in order to stop the Oslo Process from reaching an Oslo Result.
The Secular Israelis/ Rabinists of that time should have understood the Rabin Assassination as a Fort Sumter event. They should have accepted that the Likudists and Kahanists had already opened the Civil War and they should have held up their end of it, finishing with giving the Likudists and Kahanists the Marching Through Georgia and the Burning Down Shenandoah treatment.
And now it is too late. The remaining remnant of secular Israelis don’t have the power or ability to exterminate the National Religionist Judeans into surrender or extinction.
Do the countries even matter? Maybe the US and Israel and the UK and who knows else are all being manipulated by a supranational collection of powerful and wealthy individuals and families (often interrelated by mariage) that only care about the health of their host countries to the extent that this enhances their own financial and political health. As foreseen in some ways by Christopher Lasch in his Revolt of the Elites. They have no genuine loyalty to a nation. They only care about the US to the extent that there’s a money printing press here that they can use. Maybe they care about Israel for purely religious symbolic reasons, since most of them are either fundamentalist evangelical Christians or ultraconservative Jews. They care about the UK as a historic center of congregation for many of them.
They care about whoever is providing the big stock markets. They care about who provides the movie studios and related media that can spew the right propaganda. They care about who can provide intelligence assets to spy for them and soldiers to fight and die for them and armaments that can kill all the designated victims.
We could call them Virtual Country X, a nation no longer tied to a physical grography. VCX is manipulating the US and the UK and Israel and maybe a few other European countries.
I think you just enunciated the “Grand Unified Theory” of the West’s governance, Lefty. I have seen no other summary that seems so complete and consistent with the changes we’ve all observed since the Thatcher/Reagan days. Guess I better read Lasch’s book.
> a supranational collection of powerful and wealthy individuals and families (often interrelated by mariage)
“There are not very many of the Shing.” –Ursula LeGuin
US is a business masquerading as a country/nation. EU+NATO is not even pretending to be one, and members give up on being countries by gettin’ in.
‘Rotterdam’s automated port took away traditional dock jobs but new ones are required including’
It has not escaped my notice that the jobs lost were ones that ordinary people were performing while the new jobs are really just ones in the IT industry. It’s like AI. People say that although huge amounts of jobs will be lost as AI replaces them, this will be balanced by all the new jobs created – like AI trainers, auditors, governance & review people, AI scouts, security engineers, and entrepreneurs – which all happen to be jobs that serve AI.
People say that although huge amounts of jobs will be lost as AI replaces them, this will be balanced by all the new jobs created – like AI trainers, auditors, governance & review people, AI scouts, security engineers, and entrepreneurs – which all happen to be jobs that serve AI.
You know, the economists would all tell us that’s the desired endgame, brought to us by the beneficient magic of Mr. Market.
It actually is desirable, given the alternatives. While it’s not impossible, I won’t be convinced till I see it.
The base effect here is the passing of the economic gatekeeping function from the old labour brokers and trainers, often blue-collar persons, to the white-collar credentialed technology class. The latter guarantee that the “knowledge based class” (for some definition of “knowledge,”) gets to control the society more completely, with all of the perks and grifts that involves.
ambrit: The latter guarantee that the “knowledge based class” (for some definition of “knowledge,”) gets to control the society more completely, with all of the perks and grifts that involves.
Sure, obviously. But again, consider the alternatives. Because the robots and the automation are not going away. Au contraire.
And if you nourish the daydream that the structure of the US labor force can somehow be reverted to that of circa 2005, say, and maintained there, tell me how that works in a world where China under the CCP has already advanced far ahead of the US in automating its ports and factories?
Flying into many US airports after flying out of Shanghai, Shenzhen, or Beijing already feels like time travel back fifty years.
Does anyone else find the premise behind the Business Insider article about cheap drones and Russian deaths crass and revolting?
This goes back years. When the Russians intervened in the destruction of Syria, US officials were boasting how they would have Russians go home in body bags and in the present war people like Lindsey Graham talk about what a bargain it is in how many Russians are being killed for only a tiny bit of the US budget. Good thing that when this war is over, Russia will never seek any payback.
Here’s another from BI to think about– not necessarily the content, just the photo they used for this story:
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-boost-economy-stock-market-bazooka-stimulus-sentiment-rally-pboc-2024-9
To me, it seems pretty clear what message they’re trying to convey.
And to answer your question, I find that just about everything the west is doing in these wars to be crass and revolting.
They diss with the pic and then the actual article describes policies in China that are recognizable to the USA. In many respects, but not all, right out of the US economic playbook.
“State media China Securities Journal explained the thinking behind the move in an editorial on Monday
“The capital market is not only a ‘barometer’ of the macroeconomy, but also a ‘thermometer’ of investor sentiment,” said the editorial, which acknowledged the vicious cycle of negative feedback between the stock markets and economic sentiment.
“Boosting the capital market is an important breakthrough in strengthening confidence. An active stock market and improved investor confidence will improve expectations for economic development,” the media outlet wrote.
Even accepting the premise, the math is off.
Assuming 100k Russian KIA (which seems reasonable enough) and around 200 billion in US funding, it’s around 2 million per KIA. Quite a bit more than the claimed 20k.
Doesn’t include European funding or stuff that isn’t public.
I recall an article I think in Stars and Stripes in the late ‘70s-early 80s where the reporter attempted to calculate the cost of each “gook” body from the US killing spree in Vietnam.
Hard to do in the mostly opaque fog of war the Empire so assiduously generated, where “body counts” were so fraudulently inflated to support the imperial Narrative. But I recall the writer’s assumption of about 2.5 million dead, just in N. and S. Vietnam. Cost of lethal hostilities was estimated at $1 trillion, likely thought to be a lowball even then. No actuarial estimate of loss of life earnings of said dead gooks, damage to Vietnam infrastructure, opportunity costs, etc.
Simple horrible math thus puts the “cost,” as one input to the then McNamara-popularized “cost-benefit analysis,” at $400,000 per body. RAND loved this kind of sh!t, made and continues to make book off it.
I recall one of the observations made at the time, that it would have been a lot more effective to demolish the budding Commie Vietnam nation to just pound gold into the little slips and ingots treasured by them Orientals, attach little parachutes to each one, and carpet-bomb the countryside with them instead of high explosives and deadly toxic sprays. Turn the serfs into middle class overnight.
Nowhere near as satisfying, of course, to the Nazgûl and Orcs that rule in the land of MICIMATT.
Which country will be the NEXT to explode a nuclear weapon of war, loose a plague of pathogens with hostile intent, turn a misanthropic AI loose to wreak havoc, or some other act of species suicide as yet just a fever dream for the Fokkers who run things for their pleasure and profit?
As I recall, during the Vietnam War, Art Hoppe, humor columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, proposed bundling 50000 one dollar bills into packages and bombing the North Vietnam region with these packages from the air.
He suggested that if the package fell on the enemy, they would be killed. And if it didn’t, someone nearby would pick it up and be instantly converted to capitalism.
Hoppe’s 50k came from an allocated cost to kill one Viet Cong that was mentioned at the time.
Things have not improved as during Vietnam some leaders such as Johnson and McNamara were haunted by their actions. McNamara developed an ulcer and Johnson did not live long after he left office.
The new crew such as Bush II, Cheney, Obama, Biden, Trump, both Clintons, never express regrets and apparently sleep well.
Maybe the hegemonic elite have optimized their selection process?
Yes.
US has only terror in its magazine.
That’s how business works. You gotta increase those profit margins.
Re. Diego Garcia
Will Britons now rest easier, knowing that by securing a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia, the Starmer government has “shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the U.K.”?
I know I will. Think how many people have died on small boats crossing the English Channel. The death toll must be even higher when these boats are setting off from the Indian Ocean.
And does that mean that at daybreak in the Pictairn Islands, the sun will finally rise for the first time over the British Empire? Or is there somewhere that I have forgotten?
Agartha.
Diego Garcia is in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, and 1000 miles from the nearest landmass. I cannot fathom which direction a migrant might be coming from and in which direction they might be going, but in any case it would be 2000 miles to get where they were going. Said migrants would be looking at a map of the Indian ocean and would barely even see the tiny speck that is DG, and meanwhile all sorts of closer landmasses are more obvious to aim for.
But perhaps the Starmer government knows this, but they also know their constituents are map and geography challenged.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1842061280146018674
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Everyone should read this letter that 99 American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza wrote to Biden, since, as they write they’re “among the only neutral observers who have been permitted to enter the Gaza Strip since October 7”:
https://gazahealthcareletters.org/usa-letter-oct-2-2024
You cannot read their letter and not conclude a genocide is indeed taking place, their observations are beyond horrifying:
– They estimate, with evidence, that “the death toll is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population”
– They write that “with only marginal exceptions, ‘everyone’ in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.”
– Children routinely shot in the head or chest: “Every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year, is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.”
– Healthcare system systematically targeted: “Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s healthcare resources and has killed nearly one thousand Palestinian healthcare workers… We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world… All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel. This makes a mockery of the protected status hospitals and healthcare providers are granted under the oldest and most widely accepted provisions of International Humanitarian Law.” And they stress that despite spending “a combined 254 weeks inside Gaza’s largest hospitals and clinics, … not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities.”
12:36 AM · Oct 4, 2024
‘All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel.’
Got that right. Israel just bombed a medical clinic in Beirut killing 9 people. Israeli doctrine seems to be to kill doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and health workers as a matter of priority. They were doing this back in 2006 when they attacked Lebanon then. If any other country on this planet did what they were doing they would have found themselves isolated and embargoed. Then again, is there any other country in the world as hated as Israel is right now?
The US might be more hated.
That this information isn’t on MSM and hasn’t been for the last 11 months for Gaza and 2.5 years for Ukraine shows an incredible bias.
As this connects to the Doc/Mishim debate. I don’t have any insite to an answer either way. But either way the US is 100% complicit in war crimes.
To those of us who have followed events in the region for the last half-century or so and talked to Israelis and Zionist Jews in America, the genocide is no surprise. I’ve always been perturbed that reasonable sounding people can turn into monsters once Palestinians/Arabs/Iranians etc., are mentioned. So it is no surprise that they are slaughtering people they consider as vermin just as the Nazis once thought of Jews in the same way.
The worst part of this is the (no surprise) disgusting and cowardly state of the mainstream media barely reporting on this new holocaust because the assholes who work in the media only care about their careers. May they all have bad dreams–perhaps that level of reality might change them.
Lots of Israelite Holy Men, having a direct line to their YHWH, have decreed that one of the Chosen Means to extirpate the Amaleks is to kill the children. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/not-every-soul-shall-live-jewish-rabbi-encourages-killing-of-palestinian-children-women/# As with certain pesticides, that kill the larvae and thus the whole breeding pest population over time.
Some of you may have heard of Torat Hamelekh. I actually downloaded it and read it. At one point he points out that abortion is allowed by Jewish law to save the life of the mother. He generalises this to allow (or maybe it was to require) post-birth abortion of children who could endanger the life of the Jewish people.
Hurricane Helene…. official day count since it’s immediate impact here in South Carolina is at one full week. To the good side of the ledger people I know within 20 to 40 miles have been getting power back on. Local authorities finally sending alerts with official notice of daily meals being made available yesterday evening. It does seem like areas hardest hit and hardest to reach both here and especially in western NC are still going to be in wait and hope mode. These line crews hopefully are on a rotating schedule, the work must be exhausting. And thankfully for much of the past week, the weather has been mostly cooperative and pleasant.
I’ve discovered this news source, both online and on my basic channel station ( over the air broadcast only, no functioning cable or network ability ). Honestly it’s some of the best reports of rescue efforts and donation efforts, and it’s of course of great local interest. As our host will often remind us, to look for the helpers!
https://www.qcnews.com/
Will add more details as I find them. Separately I have seen or heard of comparisons to two key storms of the past 20 years. Katrina of course but also Sandy which hit late in October 2012. FEMA only ever gets focus and attention it would appear in such epic instances of widespread destruction and yes even deaths.
Here in Asheville the water treatment plant is down by the French Broad river, which flooded mightily, twice what anyone expected—taking out huge sections the adjoining highway along its bank with ALL the 36-inch water main pipes that were buried under there. What Helene did was one of them Can’t Happen Here jobs, so fixing this is not a repair project, but a total replacement of the city water mains. They are barely at the digging up the Godawful Mess stage, so this will take many weeks.
It’s not the sort of thing you can do a rush job on, either. The new mains will be there for decades. Or until Hurricane XXX arrives—but hey, that Can’t Happen Here.
When water does come back to Asheville taps, eventually, all of it will have to be boiled before using for a few more weeks. It’s like camping out in your own house!
(All suggestions that we move our water treatment plant further from the river must be submitted in triplicate and filed in the nearest round file.)
Up in the high country, most of us have wells, so when electricity came back after 8 days, we are now able to offer people showers and laundry and the intertubes and cooking on a stove instead of a grill or campfire—if they can get here on the gas left in their tank. It matters a lot, to them, as it does to us. You had to be here in the dark for a whole week to know how much. There are thousands of people still without any cell phones, landlines, lights, water, internet, food, or water. Or gas to go get any of this necessary stuff.
We have lost a lot of buildings, and roads, and lost a lot of people. A lot. Nothing is like before, but there is a growing sense of defiance toward Helene. She had her fun. We’re still here.
Tar heel to Helene!
Thanks for your report from the scene of the clime, and glad to hear you are isolated from the fray, as in the toxic ersatz stone soup mixings in municipal water.
What a nice service to offer those without, the simple pleasures of a shower, laundry and night life as you knew it before the hurricane had other plans.
Maybe those mountain cabin folk had the right idea: a well, slaughter a hog for food through the winter, take baths down at the crick, hunting, fishing etc. Maybe no internet.
My grandparents had a setup not too far from the above so I’m not being snarky. It says something though that only one of their many kids took up farming.
Everyone needs good neighbours like you Antifa! Thanks for the report. Take care.
> Up in the high country, most of us have wells, so when electricity came back after 8 days, we are now able to offer people showers and laundry and the intertubes and cooking on a stove instead of a grill or campfire—if they can get here on the gas left in their tank. It matters a lot, to them, as it does to us. You had to be here in the dark for a whole week to know how much. There are thousands of people still without any cell phones, landlines, lights, water, internet, food, or water. Or gas to go get any of this necessary stuff.
Thanks for the report. I’m chuffed to know that the NC Songbook was produced in North Carolina.
Thanks for the link.
Thanks for the link. I’ve seen more and more non-MSM reporting, and it looks bad, very bad.
I know there was some discussion about concern about voting, access to ballots, etc, and those are very valid. But I expect at some point the years long hundreds of billions of Federal support for over seas conflicts, and a pittance for disasters at home is going to have a break thru moment with the American public, and this may very well be it. I lump this in the completely out of touch DC elites that still think it’s the 1990’s in America.
We’re less than 30 days from the election. If Harris doesn’t do more to turn this into a FEMA all hands on deck event, she’s going to lose a lot of votes NATION WIDE. People I know of all political stripes are completely sick of watching the Federal government bend over backwards for foreign wars. Every at home disaster is happening to people just like them, and they can see that people in that situation are never going to get back to “normal”. They’re pretty much just [family blogged] and left to struggle as best they can .
Glad to be of limited use, on sharing that link. As to portions of that ending paragraph, in particular how the Federal government allocates unending $ billions with aplomb to foreign wars ( or dare I say, foreign satellite cities / states or regions ), and are instead highly tight-fisted when it comes to priorities at home for American citizens and natural treasures like the national parks…yes quite the irony of modern Congress critters and how the Senate and the House function.
I have regaled recently ( ok, mostly just to those nearest to me in real life, although they are some distance away ) this week on my views, both to the situations here in impacted regions after the hurricane, and I call it the Hunger Games but real life version. Everything in Panem is splendid and glowing, whilst those in the lackluster or less populated regions are more than not, completely on their own and must rely on the local community…
“Ukraine’s top commander orders defences bolstered in the east after Vuhledar falls”
I admire the art of the headline writer. Presumably the idea is that we are all so busy chortling at the ridiculousness of that headline (maybe bolstering the defences BEFORE Vulhedar fell would have been an even better idea?) that we don’t stop to think that the headline should actually be “Ukraine defences face crisis after Vuhledar falls.”
EU should sue USA for criminalising groups that receive foreign funding, including NGOs.
The 420. Not so benign.
As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms NYT
The harms were obvious before widespread legalization.
Our son smoked high test multiple times a day in his freshman college year. Psychosis and schizophrenia followed and seeminly permanently disabled. I do not believe the “self medication” BS. Stoners, alcoholics and meth/opioid addicts will never be in the revolutionary vanguard. All going to plan.
MR. X
1969
Written under the pseudonym Mr. X to avoid the heavy social stigma associated with marijuana consumption at the time, Carl Sagan documented his personal experiences with cannabis in this essay in order to dispel common misconceptions about the drug.
https://www.organism.earth/library/document/mr-x
For years I was getting my cannabis directly from a Humboldt County grower, allegedly the best of the best. I have smoked some amazing weed in my life. I have had numerous experiences with hallucingens (LSD, psylocybin). There is nothing inherent in cannabis that would generate the results Sagan describes.
What Sagan is describing is a highly brilliant and disciplined mind after you loosen it up a little. Like Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor, Sagan went from nerd to enlightenment after a few puffs. Cannabis may have triggered/unlocked these experiences but they were all in Sagan long before the THC hit. You could give 100000 average people the same smoke and no one would ever see a volkswagen.
Cannabis does not make you paranoid. Insanely over-the-top hyper-violent POLICE make you paranoid. If Anne Frank had smoked cannabis in her attic, would people say that the cannabis made her paranoid or would they still blame the Nazis?
The USG has absolutely refused to do meaningful testing of cannabis in this regard. It is a wonder drug, it has enormous potential but yes, if you spend all your time smoking it and not doing anything else, your brain worms will grow and become noticeable. Not the same as they would be if you drank alcohol all day but comparable. The exact same weed given to someone else could provide them with enormous benefits as it has done for me and as it does for most overworked and highly stressed Americans.
Caveat: living in poorly soundproofed mass housing (dorms, apt bldgs) is enormously stressful especially if you come from less densely populated area. I don’t remember any heavy cannabis smoking in the movie/TV show “The Paper Chase” but there certainly was no shortage of mental illness. When I went to college the ’60s hadn’t really arrived on my campus and I left school two years later still never having smoked cannabis. Yet thanks to going from a farm to a crowded campus and sleeping in a common dorm room (bunk beds), I felt very crowded and hemmed in. I also remember that despite there being few drugs on campus, mental illness was everywhere and counseling services were widely advertised. /pro cannabis rant
I wouldn’t have wanted to be dingy when Professor Kingsfield called on me the next morning.
It can work the other way. I had two roommates from Boston come home with me during spring break one year. The coyotes singing at the moon completely freaked them out. They couldn’t sleep and were ready to get back to the big city where they were safe.
Just recently I left my next door neighbor’s house on a moonless night and it was so dark I had to use his driveway to get me to the sidewalk so I could find my way home. We live on the edge of town so there are no artificial lights behind us and in the backyard I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
We need a national BnB program that lets city and rural folks swap homes for a week. It’d be hell to run but it could have a Peace Corps sized impact.
1. i have no idea how much thc is in my stuff…but i have had high potency gummies before…and found them unpleasant and a waste of buzz.
same, but worse, with “dabs” and “wax”.
kinda like the first time i made brownies, and just fell asleep.
2. i would want them to look into the possibility of self-selection/self-medication…to seriously look into it. i cant get NYT,but the studies ive seen over about 40 years indicate that the “psychosis” all the anti-weed people harp on is often in folks who are already beginning to present, perhaps subclinically, with such symptoms, and are indeed attempting to alleviate them with whats to hand.
this is also borne out by 40 years experience with potheads….mental healthcare system in texas has sucked forever…plus the stigma, problems with mainstream drugs, etc.
ive known many people who went back to pot because the doctor prscribed drugs for their bipolar or whatever made them sick or wrapped their heads in fog.
the bias inherent in so many of these studies is a problem,too….reefer madness lives.
all that said, i warn my youngest to be careful…and to avoid if possible…the higher dose products that his cohort has access to(they dont do the smoking kind of weed anymore).
he seems to have taken the argument about waste(one can only get so high, after all, before its no fun any more) seriously. he’s also sworn to never try the wax/dab method.
as grinspoon insisted 50+ years ago(regarding jamaican laborers.) i find that the productivity, here on the farm, plummets when i’m out of the noble herb…but my main reason for using it is chronic pain…it potentiates the damned vicodin.
set and setting is a real thing, as well as intent…i generally aint looking to get zonked.
and i find smoking an ideal way to regulate intake(eat a 1/4 brownie, and you wont know for 30 minutes how “d^ck in the dirt” you’ll be)
still usually at >1/2 a joint per day…unless theres folks out at the wilderness bar.
Your experience agrees with mine. I’ve enjoyed smoking the jibbah for decades with all kinds of people and I’m not aware of anyone who developed mental health issues because of it. I don’t believe the supposedly higher THC content makes any difference, and as you said, one can only get so high. After half a joint or so, smoking any more is just wasting it. I would also recommend steering clear of the non-smokable THC, but that could be just my preference speaking. For one, those products are far more expensive, especially if you have any kind of tolerance. I tried gummies and felt nothing after taking a few of them so I stopped, both because of the much greater expense and also not knowing when I might go from no buzz to completely blookered, which I try to avoid.
What does get me crazy is reading about one neoliberal-inspired atrocity after another on a daily basis, often sponsored by my tax dollars. The love of money and the lengths people will go to get more of it than they need is truly disgusting. Just coming in to work today listening to the sportsball radio for a few minutes, which I do to try to get a respite from the news, I hear the jock chastising anyone who would be offended at slapping a corporate logo on Fenway Park, one of the last ballparks without a corporate sponsorship. It’s the way of the world, nothing’s sacred, we’re all whores, so just get over it, they said, and they were not kidding. Well it’s not the way of the world I’d like to live in and I won’t get over it, ever.
After a day of absorbing all this insanity which you’re supposed to pretend is normal, having a few tokes out in the back by the fire pit while shelling some beans is quite calming. I do envy your wilderness bar as I try to convince my own significant others that maybe a quieter lifestyle wouldn’t be so bad.
You can win the rat race but you’re still a rat. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
> completely blookered
I am torn between cause and effect. Are people with early symptoms of schizophrenia self-medicating to ease those symptoms? Also note that it seems to be high test THC that is the problem. Do we know how strong Sagan’s weed was? I was a pretty regular user of marijuana in my last two years of high school. Had a friend with older brothers who were dealers so I had an easy supply. Now in my 60s, I am unaware of any adverse long term effects but I really didn’t use much after high school as my easy supply was no longer readily available. To take my anecdotal evidence out the range of n=1, as a teenager of the 70’s, I knew many dope smokers, some who use to this day. I don’t know of any who have had any kind psychotic breakdown.
No idea, I was addressing the broad plaint brush of a stoner never amounting to anything.
In the 70s THC content was 3-5%, mostly Mexican weed complete with sticks and seeds for $20/oz. One had to smoke a full joint or 2 full bowls to get high. Higher test skunk bud or Hawaiian was around but not cheap or common. I was not a casual user at all, nor were my coworkers at the railroad. We were professional.
There simply isn’t any comparison between even “good stuff” 50 years ago the 25% THC products so common now. Today it is one hit shit and I cannot imagine being able to smoke a full joint, speaking from experiences 40 years apart.
I have no doubt that 25% THC products influence neuroplasticity in the young brain in a very negative way. What is sold today is like 190 proof grain alcohol vs 4.5% beer.
Hash and hash oil have been available in America for at least the last 50 years and are usually above 25% THC.
40 years ago most places in Amsterdam wouldn’t sell the best cannabis products to people from North America because they felt it was too strong.
Maybe in places higher THC products are a new thing, not everywhere.
I shouldda added if anyone doesn’t remember any acquaintance that developed schizophrenia that wouldn’t be surprising. The incidence is single digit percentages, but the social cost is enormous. Further, most people with serious mental illness are disabled, not in the workplace and by the nature of the illnesses tend to self-isolate.
Because a bad thing didn’t happen to one of us individually doesn’t negate population facts. Plenty of people smoke tobacco or drink heavily without consequences. Most people that got COVID recovered.
In the ’70s you also tended to bogart the joint so you could smoke more of it. In the 2020s people bogart the pipe because they’re so stoned they forget to pass it. So you smoke less just like beer drinks graduating to distilled spirits use smaller glasses.
Because people used to hide their homosexuality, many folks were surprised when friends and neighbors began coming out of the closet. I think we were collectively less surprised when it became obvious that this is hardly a Christian nation when no one goes to church.
As people become more open about cannabis, ‘straights’ are going to be shocked to learn how many people they know who have always been ‘stoned’. For me, that would be everyone in town that I’ve talked to since moving here ; )
About 25 years ago when I worked at Washington Mutual, we had a bowling outing to build ‘team spirit’ or some such corporate nonsense. I fancied myself as being extremely nonconformist when I went out to the parking lot to smoke a joint. Turns out half the staff was already out there doing the same thing.
Musical accompaniment – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvfNix_z9uA
Back in the 90s I had the best job I’ll ever have, assistant editor and tape op and animation stand at a Video Post House in SF. Our boss told a story of a meeting she was in with other CEOs and the topic of drug testing came up. She said she would have to fire the whole staff.
Yes. A few years ago my wife and I got some contemporary stuff from a friend now deceased. We hadn’t smoked for years and took a few puffs. The wife passed out and I doubled up like a penknife.
Somewhere there is some more healthy balance, in between decriminalization and promotion, but it seems like we missed it and are over on the promotion side
The healthy balance point between decrim and promote would be legalize without promoting. And make “legalize” include “legal for natural persons” and not just corporate persons to grow. The more natural persons are free to grow all the marijuana they want, the smaller the “market” for corporate marijuana would shrink, which would reduce the “promotion” problem.
Probably the best way to achieve that would be to strike cannabis entirely off the Controlled Drug Schedule, the way it was for thousands of years before political operators got it put on the Controlled Drug Schedule. Make it default-legal and subject to no legal restriction on growing by natural persons. And make the tax on it low enough that Organized crime can’t be bothered to grow illegally to undercut the legal price.
I do find this hard to believe. Anecdata of course, but I’ve known a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people who have smoked pretty much their whole adult life (and stayed in touch too) and I can’t think of any that have had any psychological problems that rise to the clinical level, meaning needing treatment other than understanding, friendship, etc. Some have needed counseling for help when going through hard times like the sudden death of a child but pot had nothing to do with that. The harder drugs are a different story.
BS writ large
I agree.
There are clearly some people who react very badly to marijuana and hallucinogens, while other people mostly have positive or more neutral (or, at least, undramatic) reactions. It would be terrific if the medical profession could figure out what the cause for that difference is, since it is highly likely to have a genetic/biochemical basis. Same thing with alcohol. Then at least people could be tested and warned of a high likelihood for a poor outcome when the results showed that.
But we’d have to suspend our value judgments about people’s substance use to allow for that. Instead, as with sex, we want all those bad outcomes to be publicized to justify our punitive attitudes. Not that we won’t also try to make as much money as possible, for the right people, off the whole thing.
I suspect the marijuana of today is several times stronger than the marijuana of our youth. If someone told the young people that, would the young people believe it and be careful with today’s marijuana?
The local bougie head shoppe will sell you a nicely ground ounce for $40, when I was a teenager you’d hear tales of the ‘4 finger lid’ for $25, circa 1969.
In 1969 $’s, an ounce of schwag should cost around $300 now, so they’ve greatly lowered the price of entry, and killed the small guy grower for taxes that’ll probably buy a fleet of K-9 Police SUV’s for Weedlake, er Woodlake.
We ought to consider COVID damage as a possible cause, I think. I know I see reports on Twitter that people can no longer consume alcohol, or red meat. So why not this?
The world changed in 2020. We need to always consider SARS-CoV-2 infections as an accelerant or instigating factor, in everything.
Israel gives the US a diabetes deal.
Whoever used the (Netanyahu?) octopus analogy for Iran strategy missed the point.
A small fire ant does not try to decapitate a tarantula!
Netanyahu recycling Nazi antisemitic propaganda? I can believe it.
re: Mayorkas
How much money has FEMA spent on resettling, housing, and stipends for illegal aliens entering the country in the last 2 years?
But no money for disaster aid, oh, right, a one-time $750 per person.
Maybe they can do what the Pentagon does and find a coupla spare billion through an ‘accounting error’ in the books or maybe just look behind the lounge cushions. Seems that Congress does not want to assemble to vote more money for FEMA as they are too busy campaigning. But what happens if a social media campaign comes together that dogs those Congress critters whenever they appear at a meeting and call out why they are not voting for more money for disaster relief.
Regarding the latest bickering in Congress:
“House Republicans had previously included $10 billion in additional funding for FEMA as part of their initial six-month stopgap offer. But the funding fell out amid calls from hardline conservatives pushing for more to be done to curb government spending. Other Republicans also expressed confidence that the funding in the shorter stopgap plan that was eventually adopted was sufficient.”
https://thehill.com/business/budget/4910588-hurricane-helene-congress-disaster-funding/
I posted a comment about the $750 in yesterday’s Water Cooler.
To be fair, $750 is 25% more than the $600 we never got.
A turd in the hand is worth less than one in the bush…
Inflation calculator says $600 in 2020 is worth $707.57 in 2023 dollars. I’m guessing that if the calculator went to 2024, the amounts would be about the same.
The paperwork and time to get that turd in your hand will no doubt render what is a mere pittance impossible to get. People need immediate help with living saving basics of food, shelter and communication – that help seems to be coming more readily from volunteers than the government. And I have no faith that the government will be available when needs beyond the immediate are ready to be faced. The jokes about asking Zelenskyy for money are bang on.
Three one horse towns in Buncombe County have already renamed themselves Vugledar. Luck is just prepping your opportunities . . .
There is a fair amount of anger here in North Carolina (we are only a couple of hours away from the hardest hit areas) about what has happened to the western part of our state–it is up close and personal for many of us. This brings home to us, or it should, that money and help and care is only there for Ukraine and Israel and, as someone mentioned, yesterday to me, illegal aliens (it is not myth it is real). We live in a country that is run by gangsters–this has nothing to do with the “one party with two right wings.” This is far deeper and crises like that caused by Helene bring us closer to reality.
Note to Trump campaign – stop with the lame ads calling Harris a commie.
Trump ought to be running commercials non-stop with Harris and Zelensky/Bibi (photoshop if none are in the public domain) and the quote “America Last Harris” juxtaposed with scenes from Western NC.
Not just in North Carolina. Here’s a twtr-X clip of Georgia’s Gov. Kemp:
Brian Kemp says he “was outraged,” had to call the White House after only 11 of the 90 counties hit were included in the FEMA disaster declaration — rural counties neglected.
https://x.com/_johnnymaga/status/1841676424958058876
“How much money…”
The Newsweek link quotes an unnamed spokesperson saying disaster relief and the Shelter and Services program are funded separately. The second link for FY 2030 cites the appropriations bill and provides some dollar amounts.
https://www.newsweek.com/fema-response-accusations-money-spent-migrants-1963702
https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-program/fy-23-faqs
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response
edit: FY 2023
No Lives Matter(tm)
THE exceptionally American Way.
“U.S. enacts law to exempt select fabs from environmental reviews.”
I read the Tom’s Hardware article. To avoid NEPA review, the fabs must meet the following conditions:
– Construction of the fab started or starts before December 31, 2024.
– The project is funded in the form of a loan or loan guarantee, but not a direct grant from the federal government.
– The financial assistance provided in the form of grants and excluding any loan or loan guarantee comprises not more than 10% of the total estimated cost of the project.
Why the conditions? Why? If fab construction is a low-risk activity where NEPA review could be reasonably skipped, this exemption should apply to all new fabs going forward, not just this specific subset. And If fab construction is a high-risk activity where NEPA review is necessary, then it should never be skipped. Period.
This reeks of a “special favor” for a political ally, where that ally gets to take a major short-cut, while any future competitors still have to go through the full process. It makes a mockery of the whole concept of “fair and impartial government”, and it’s a stunning example of bad governance.
I agree. Now imagine applying that same (lack of) standards to new medicines. The FDA is on it!
From Sasha Latypova:
The FDA simplifies experimentation on children without parental consent
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/the-fda-simplifies-experimentation
As she logically points out, how can you know a risk is minimal before you have done the tests? You can’t know that. You can only theorize the risk is minimal. There are already many examples of theory not matching actual results.
RE: John Deere accused of being full of manure with its right-to-repair promises
And Liz Warren writes them a sternly worded letter. I’m sure that will get to straighten up and fly right.
None of these companies are ever going to cede to regulations until C-suite types and board members are enjoying some time in the slammer, and not the Club Fed type.
I think whatever crimes corporate types commit are no longer going to be prosecuted. We are entering a neo-feudal future at this time–which is better than a totalitarian future the Democrats seem to want.
Gotta agree Chris. Last week, someone here linked to a book by Jem Bendel (https://jembendell.com/about/) -guy who has accepted that there is no righting the climate ship, has stopped his climate advocacy and is living as best he can while he can. A different take (but for similar reasons) on Amfortas’ way of living. I think the same is true of our slide into what you call our neo-feudal future – it is happening, inequality is never going to be fixed and will only get worse. What is amazing to me is how few folks seem to see or want to see it. My PMC friends are planning trips, shopping for EVs, wishing for grandchildren and just carrying on as if life will continue to be this good forever. They love the summer-like weather in October. Big storms and weird weather don’t phase them – “oh it’s happened before, it’s not that unusual”. (Will Helene’s destruction change their minds?) They have and know youngsters who are doing just fine, so there are no problems for the young either. I have a friend who pointed out the low cost of houses in some states when wondering why everyone was so worried about the cost of housing! When I pointed out that the cost of those houses is low because there are no jobs in those places, she reminded me that everyone can work from home now – you can live anywhere! There really is no talking to these people. Sorry, this is a long way from John Deere but our ‘neo feudal future’ set me off.
Great comment–you get to the heart of the problem. The PMC, which once had a conscience (I grew up in that milieu and people did care even if in wrong-headed ways about the society as a whole) no longer has any of that. All they want to do is have fun, pursued their idiotic bucket lists and perform rituals associated with TDS.
Chris Cosmos: I think whatever crimes corporate types commit are no longer going to be prosecuted.
That was already made clear sixteen years ago by how the 2008 GFC was resolved in the US, which was when I began planning to leave.
That sounds a lot like my decision making process too. But I spent a couple of years trying to be an activist and bring people’s attention to the problems of money and politics in particular. No dice. So here we are, except now I’m watching it from far away
Our presidential election is on October 27th, but it’s not at all hysterical here. But check out these national referendums:
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/latam-focus-could-referendum-rattle-uruguays-presidential-election
Here’s an example of how far the John Deere folks are willing to go to keep repairs and profits to themselves. My great-nephew (niece married and had kids early, I’m not that old 😉) works for John Deere, training to be a repair technician. He lives near and works at their near-Ottawa facility. He and 3 other guys have been sent to school in London ON (other side of the province). JD is renting a house for them, paying for tuition and books. One of them has a company vehicle and can charge gas to the company. The others have personal vehicles and claim mileage. They also have daily food allowances. This will be for four months this year, then back to work for 8 months then back to school twice more. And none of them had to sign anything to say they’d stay with the company for a certain amount of time after finishing school. If only they could abscond and start their own business but of course then their work would be illegal. Sigh.
Yet an in-law left a six-figure job at Cargill to work for Deere because they felt like Deere was much more open to ‘outsiders.’ Deere invests in its employees (what you’re describing as perks are reasonable investments in the company’s future).
If you’re entertaining prospective customers, this is seen as normal. How strange that it seems excessive when you’re not wining and dining someone whose business has been locked in for years and would have signed the contracts in your office.
Employees should be treated well. Otherwise instead of defending their employer at social functions, they pull you aside and give you the URL to download all the repair manuals you need from ruTracker, Demonoid or some other darknet filesharing sites.
sotto voice: (nicely done.) / ;)
Agreed Mark. I am very happy for nephew and totally believe that all employees should be treated so well. Such a sensible kid. He talked the others into pooling their food allowance, buying groceries and cooking at home instead of going out to eat all the time! When I first went to write my initial comment, I was thinking to contrast the image of the evil John Deere with this example of good employee treatment but my cynical side won. It seems to me that few for profit businesses treat their employees well if it doesn’t also benefit them.
Only full source code and email server disclosure can fix the attitude problems of that lot.
California reports first suspected H5N1 bird flu patient amid fears virus is spreading between people for first time Daily Mail
~~~~~~~~~~
We went from 17 CAFO style mega dairies reporting having H5N1 in the Cali last week, to 55 now. There’s nearly 500,000 dairy cows in Tulare County alone.
Most mega dairies in the USA don’t have a bucket list worldwide draw such as Sequoia NP, about 50 miles away from Bessie & Co., and way too close of a vector for tourists to take back home with them on a really long flight.
“Scores of illegal Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque amid tension”
Netanyahu and his ilk seem to have decided that now is the time to create Greater Israel and are already talking about carving off southern Lebanon for this project. So I wonder at what point he will have the Al-Aqsa Mosque bombed so that it can be demolished and replaced with the third temple.
and dont forget the special cows.
saw somewhere that theyve already built the altar to kill the special cows.
what a world, where this sort of thing drives usa foreign policy…
TikTok “Red Heifer Live Cam” — clickbait, natch, but clever clickbait. ;)
I think events are heading in that direction. And it could be a good thing in a way. It should galvanize the Muslims around the world to destroy Israel. If it doesn’t then it says a lot about the bankruptcy of that culture. It will be, if it happens, a defining moment for Islam. If recent history is any measure they will do nothing.
Sarid’s masterpiece “The Third” shows you in detail how that will happen. After 10 years, it’s finally going to be published in English.
If the Mosque is destroyed then this will force the Islamic world to act or not. If not then it will tell us that people like Erdogan are all hat no cattle. My guess is they won’t act.
Background:
Low-cost airline Spirit is considering a bankruptcy filing. While I’ve only flown them once, and their reputation for service is a bit iffy, I would say that one less option for flying isn’t going to help fares. One less competitor for Delta, United, and American? Or will a Federal Judge allow them to re-org and emerge as a leaner, meaner airline with haircuts for creditors?
https://archive.ph/kjV9Y
Spirit in the Sky
(Sung to the tune of, “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum)
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best
When I lay me down to die
I’m off to see the Judge and like Spirit I’ll still fly
Chorus:
Goin’ up like Spirit I’ll still fly
To bankruptcy court where equity dies (equity dies!)
When corporate citizens die and they lay ’em to rest
You’re gonna go to that place shareholders detest
Prepare yourself, you know it’s a must
Gonna have a reorganization
So you know that when you die
Your business gets rightsized while the shareholders get fried
[Chorus]
[Musical Interlude]
I’m a Wall Street sinner, my balance sheet sinned
I’ve got a friend in USC Chapter Eleven
So you know that when I die
The judge’ll fix me up so like Spirit I’ll still fly
Oh set me up with a haircut for bond guys
In bankruptcy court where equity dies (equity dies!)
When I die and they lay me to rest
I’m gonna go to that place you”ll detest
So well done, take a bow~
On our drive yesterday to see Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway in Fresno, we saw 4 Trump signs on Hwy 99 from Visalia, thats around 35 miles of prime Godzone turf with but a month to go in the really big show. A decided lack of enthusiasm compared to 2016 & 2020 among the faithful on the very same stretch of highway, maybe the signage got raptured?
Wow, is that one talented band, or what!
Great concert.
That is one talented band!
Living in the midst of NYC, the enthusiasm gap appears to be bipartisan. I was near the debate location a few hours before. There were a whole lot of UFT organized supporters getting ready and a small coterie of Trump supporters not clearly organized by anyone. The Trump people had a truck and motorcycle decorated with large banner flags.
In my neighborhood I am not seeing any Harris Walz signage, I don’t imagine anyone would be stupid enough to put any Trump ones. I have seen a couple of Gillibrand placards in store windows in the last week though. Definitely not 2020.
Still no election signs at all in Silicon Valley, except a few for local races.
The signs were few and far between for a while in my small town in Michigan, but now in the past few (or several?) weeks they’ve grown quite thick on the ground. Perhaps we’re a battleground within a battleground, “thanks” to our local PMCPTB folks going all out (except out in the public eye) to recruit an EV-battery plant along the same stretch of river that got dilbitted by Enbridge back in 2010. The township board is in the process of flipping away from that (opponents won in the partisan primary, so incumbents would have to run as write-ins for the general). City Council is non-partisan, so the verdict isn’t in yet — we’ll have to see how many of the people who signed the shadily-disallowed zoning referendum turn out to vote.
But back to my original topic, with a few further observations:
* Each of the two MainStream Moneyer wings seems to be pushing full-spectrum dominance this year, based on the increasing frequency of signs for down-ballot candidates in yards with top-ticket signs.
* And while the R side has fairly consistent and familiar-looking signs, there are a *LOT* of different D-side signs (D-signs?). I haven’t looked at them up close, but I wonder if they come from different corners of the fabled big tent. (BTW, I haven’t even seen any of the Barbie-style signs in real life — only at the links posted recently here on NC. If anyone’s seen signs with graphics inspired by Barbie’s running-time mate Oppenheimer, I for one would love to hear about them. . . .)
Re: Japan’s Rice Farmers Planting More Heat-Resistant Varieties
It’s the second week of October and temperatures in Kanto have been well above normal. It was 32°C on Weds.
Our local farm has tried planting carrots three times since spring, but apparently they won’t germinate if the earth is over 24°C.
Methinks this could become a really serious problem, and not just for carrots. :(
“How a stale A$17.50 cookie sparked a social media storm”
Who are these people? Did they just believe something that they saw on Tik Tok and had to act on it? They actually paid nearly twenty bucks for stale cookies because they were a foreign brand name? And that women that spent 150 bucks on 10 cookies? Who are these people? But you know, I know exactly who these people are. People that are so easily influenced that they will tell you that Israel has a right to defend itself and Putin is evil for invading Ukraine who was just standing around minding its own business.
Big bickies!
“How a stale A$17.50 cookie sparked a social media storm”
Jill Stein with Krystal and Saager on being kept off the AZ ballot by the Democrat party, just in case you needed any more evidence that the US is a full blown banana republic –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWv_uMTw3PE
‘Richard Quest
@richardquest
Extraordinary number of ships at #singapore. All bunched up here because of Red Sea disruption to shipping and shifts in way things are being shipped. Fascinating. This is where commerce and geo politics come face to face’
Hard to tell which of those ships are anchored normally and those held up by Yemen. I flew into Singapore in the early 80s and when I looked out the cabin window, there were so many ships below that it looked like the D-Day landings.
I read that the Houthis sent emails to Greek Shipping companies warning them that “all your ships will burn, with best regards.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthis-warn-shipowners-new-phase-red-sea-campaign-prepare-be-attacked-2024-10-03/
Have to admire their skills, not just military, but legal research to track down the owners, find the business emails, and draft a demand letter with a polite salutation. I wonder if now that these shipping companies have been served notice, they’ve assumed the risk of ignoring the warning and they’re lawsuit bait?
Or their insurers are taking note and getting ready to cancel policies, under section 24, sub-clause (f), page 203 of the contract.
Or maybe someone else did all this research for the Houthis and gave the Houthis the results of all this research.
My thoughts exactly. I once took a boat tour of Singapore harbor as a tourist. It was amazing. There were a huge number of ships. As I understood it some ships swapped cargo without coming into port.
There was a whole floating economy of small boats that delivered goods to the cargo boats (food, liquor, clothes, [women? boys?] and such). They also served as water taxis to ferry people around.
Without counting boats everyday and keeping track of this it would be impossible to claim that there were more ships present than average.
“NC asks Zelensky for 100Billion…”
Starting at the 11:29 time stamp, Garland Nixon shows a split screen video of Asheville today, with all the destruction from Helene, and Kyiv today, with all the happy people milling about, awash in US aid $$’s. Very effective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6uotXqgu8g
Thanks for the link. Very effective.
Some detail on I-40 in the Smokies–“closed indefinitely” as the entire roadway fell into the river.
https://www.wspa.com/news/local-news/i-40-near-western-nc-indefinitely-closed-after-devastation-from-helene/
There isn’t anything much supporting whats left of the roadbed on I-40, and they’ll have to make heavy use of Gabions. very time consuming stuff to fix.
Gabions, a new word for me. At least they won’t have to make heavy use of Gaboon vipers. They’re the longest-fanged serpent in the world, and deadly.
Guess I won’t be going to Knoxville any time soon and that’s a damned shame. Knoxville is a traffic nightmare–a fairly large city strung out along one freeway. But then Tennessee is a state strung out along that same freeway.
There are ways to get around the blockage but not convenient ways and perhaps impassible ways for the near future.
News from medical staff meeting this AM –
The medical world is very used to all kinds of shortages – and has been for the past few years.
Now we are told that the main hub of IV fluid production – and IV solutions was severely incapacitated by the NC hurricane.
There will soon be a massive shortage in the USA of all kinds of IV fluids – so we are told to begin conserving today immediately.
As we found out with the baby formula issue and all the generic meds issues of the past few years – these are not just things that can change on a dime. IV fluid has been described as the “holy water” of modern medicine – I am afraid this is going to be very interesting indeed.
That’s extremely scary. Thanks for sharing.
Baxter Closes its Biggest Factory Amid Hurricane Helene Flooding in North Carolina
Thought I would share this — a musician friend of mine forwarded me an email he got from his friend Sharif who lives in Beirut:
“Yes these 2000kg American made bombs are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I’ve been through a lot of bombing. Apparently they dropped 4 of them simultaneously. It sounded like a strong explosion but it would not end, like all other explosions, I estimate it lasted about 10 seconds, but it felt like 10 minutes…
I’m still in a state of shock.”
Four hospitals in Lebanon have suspended service.
Once Israel decides on what it believes to be an effective strategy, it sticks with it.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/10/04/israeli-strike-near-south-lebanon-hospital-puts-it-out-of-service-temporarily
According to Al Jezeera tonight it has also bombed out the main road between Beirut and Damascus.
(I’m still trying to figure out the difference between a “limited incursion” and an invasion)
I think that I can help. With a “limited incursion”, if you get your a** kicked like Hezbollah is doing to the IDF at the moment, you can pull back and claim that it was not really an invasion but a “limited incursion” so no biggie that it failed. You just never put in the troops and resources.
Maybe its like the difference between a Special Military Operation and a War?
Not sure if NC readers are familiar with Dave Ramsey, but he has a pretty large radio/internet show giving out decent financial advice from a Xtian perspective. Pretty basic stuff like don’t spend more more than you have, don’t get into excessive debt and pay off what you do have quickly, etc. I think he’s toned down the Xtian aspect as he tries for a larger audience, and in recent years he does seem to have forgotten some of the better Xtian perspectives himself, declaring that rich people such as him deserve to be squillionaires due to all their hard work, ignoring that whole camel/eye of needle example. That being said, he recently had Trump on – https://x.com/_johnnymaga/status/1841496461575328047
My better half listens to him regularly (which helped us get the house paid off – somehow hearing the advice from Ramsey stuck better than hearing it from me!) and she heard the Trump interview. Ramsey claimed while she was listening that he had invited Harris too and her campaign hadn’t responded. Not sure if that has changed since.
Just posting it since it seems like a smart move on Trump’s part, and rather stupid on Harris’ if she turns down the chance for an interview which would reach an audience of people who presumably need the type of economic changes she is claiming she’ll provide.
I bet if anybody goes it will be Walz. They can’t let her be interviewed by anyone with any independent from the Trump must be stopped at all costs, including truth and integrity, cohort. She would lose them more voters than she would gain.
https://x.com/salematkovic/status/1841879792444207583
https://xcancel.com/salematkovic/status/1841879792444207583
US media have been spreading fake news about alleged Russian influence on the Serbian environmental movement because we oppose a large Rio Tinto lithium mine. The Wall Street journal has just published an opinion piece on this that is just outrageous so as one of the (1/30)
persons deeply involved in the movement I want to make a statement.
For context, when I say “US media”, I don’t mean only the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post was previously contacted to report on the surging violence against activists and scientists in Serbia, (2/30)
…
https://www.wsj.com/business/this-2-4-billion-lithium-mine-is-caught-between-russia-and-the-west-a785be24
This $2.4 Billion Lithium Mine Is Caught Between Russia and the West
U.S. suspects Rio Tinto’s project in Serbia has been hit by a Russian disinformation campaign
Thanks for the links. I’ve been reading about the proposed Rio Tinto lithium mine development and conflicts for some time. Is lithium becoming the new oil?
This week’s Taibbi and Kirn talks about ‘perception’ in politics at the 56 minute mark. Back it up to the 51-minute mark if you have not seen the video of Paul Krugman being ranted at by an irate audience member.
The panel Krugman was on was about to discuss “misperceptions” of the economy by voters. What the audience member says will sound familiar to NC readers but probably not to most Americans.
I recently commented about how politics are about perceptions, not actual facts (facts relevant as they are perceived as opposed to what they actually mean if not the same thing). The Blob ‘gets it.’ They can’t reverse perceptions before the election so they’re mislabeling what Americans think as being simply misprocessed data. What will follow (assuming the Krugman clip doesn’t go massively viral) is that we will here an endless parade of clever facts that statistically prove our eyes and bank accounts are lying to us.
This is Taibbi and Kirn at their best. Whole show has been good (disaster coverage) but I’m still watching so I can only vouch for the first hour as being worth your time and yes, Kirn still spends too much time trying to justify his takes but otherwise a great show.
That is one righteous dude.
I remember when I used to like this pro-Krugman song before Krugman made it apparent that he was a complete Democrat party hack. Glad to see him called on his BS – he deserves every single word of it. Maybe the ranter guy can do Friedman next.
Krugman … Mister IS-LM free market with a moist left[tm] eye for the unwashed ground down for it all ….
>Scores of illegal Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque amid tension
The article is bit misleading and, imo, underestimates the explosive potential of the situation.
According to the Bible, god came to Abraham and demanded he sacrifice his son. On the very spot that god spoke to Abraham the Hebrews built their temple. For passionate religious types, this is a sacred piece of land.
Over the centuries, the temple was renovated and modified by kings like Solomon and others into a monumental edifice. It was eventually destroyed by the Romans. Obviously, unlike Biden, the Romans had red lines which they made sure you regretted crossing.
Prior to the temple destruction, the Hebrew religion was different from today’s rabbis and text. Back then it was a religion of priests and super priests—not much different from other religions—and the temple reflected that with vip rooms reserved for the priests, sacrifices, and such.
All that remains of the temple is the foundation. If you see a photo, it looks like an empty parking lot, just a level surface. The wailing wall is a small section of wall that’s part of the temple foundation.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is built on top of the Hebrew temple foundation and many Jews want to rebuild their temple. The problem is there is no way to rebuild the temple without tearing down the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet, doing so would create an explosive situation that would involve, not only local Arab Muslims, but Muslims around the world. I’m sure not even Netanyahu wants to give the tear down order but religious passions have created disasters in the past—the thirty years war for example—and there is already a war in progress.
Till recently the Rabbis and Texts of Jewish religion all taught that the Temple would not be rebuilt until God sent the Messiah to signal the End of Days, and meanwhile, Jews were supposed to wait for that to happen rather than trying to make it happen.
Just when and how did the Red Heifer Rabbis come from and how did they arise into existence? ( Obviously they would be among the “Judeans” needing to be contained or killed by the “Secular Israelis” if the “Secular Israelis hope to conquer “Israel” back from “Judea”, if that is even possible anymore which I doubt it even is anymore.
I’m not up to date on Red Heifer rabbis but if Netanyahu is determined to ethnically cleanse greater Israel, then sooner or later the Al-Aqsa Mosque must go. You can’t allow millions of Muslims pilgrims to visit the mosque in Jerusalem after murdering and ethnically cleansing millions of Muslims.
The Vatican is built on the ground that Saint Peter was crucified and people take this stuff seriously.
As events are progressing, Netanyahu will give the order to tear down Al-Aqsa even if the Jewish temple is not restored; it will create a firestorm.
Firefighters union not endorsing anyone this year.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna173918
…buncha ladder sitters!
They had better be careful in December. The backdraft from this will be fiery, no matter who wins the election.
Heh. I think the term is ‘mugwump’. Major unions failing to automatically endorse the Dem candidate is something new in US politics. / ;)