Wrinkles reveal whether elephants are left- or right-trunked, study finds Guardian (Dr. Kevin)
Keynes in Dublin Dublin Review of Books (Anthony L)
Everything Is Out of Water: Should a philosopher have sayings? The Point (Anthony L)
Why painting (still) matters New Statesman (Anthony L)
Needles in Haystacks: The Lostwave Story Chris Dalla Riva (Anthony L)
Climate/Environment
Percent of global ocean with September sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of at least 30C (86F). It's as if something has changed. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/jW1XIztkBN
— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) October 7, 2024
Climate warning as world’s rivers dry up at fastest rate for 30 years Guardian
Is Arctic methane stoking the climate crisis? Julian Cribb
Greek honey production plummets due to climate change ekathamerini. No baklava?
Britons Urged To Dig Out Unwanted Electricals To Tackle Copper Shortage Guardian
China?
States sue TikTok, saying its addictive features hook children Washington Post
Chinese Stocks Tumble Most Since 2020 on Stimulus Skepticism Bloomberg
Foxconn building Nvidia superchip facility in Mexico, executives say Reuters
China demands schoolteachers hand in their passports Financial Post (Dr. Kevin)
European Disunion
US Navy is said to have been at the scene shortly before Nord Stream was destroyed, Danish newspaper reports Weltwoche via machine translation (Micael T)
New record: More pensioners than ever before are dependent on social assistance NOZ via machine translation (Micael T)
How the European Union passed a brave new law to protect our planet’s forests, only to realise that it is a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare that nobody wants Eugyppius (Micael T)
Old Blighty
Russian spies plan ‘mayhem’ on British streets, warns MI5 chief Financial Times
Israel v. The Resistance
"Daddy, what were you doing when the Gaza Genocide was being carried out?" pic.twitter.com/5ZsUZNKSjZ
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) October 8, 2024
Investigating war crimes in Gaza I Al Jazeera Investigations YouTube (furzy)
A Year of Slaughter and Starvation Daniel Larison
GAZA AFTER A YEAR OF WAR Seymour Hersh
Northern Gaza is being emptied under the threat of annihilation. 400,000 Palestinians are being forced South towards an overcrowded “safe area” that hosts 1 million displaced people in tents without services, an area 10% of Gaza which Israel has systematically bombed for months. https://t.co/TPzgzTGCAj
— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) October 9, 2024
* * * Israel’s Netanyahu warns Lebanon could face destruction ‘like Gaza’ Aljazeera. So now it’s official policy as opposed to an extrapolation from behavior.
For Doubters – Hizbullah Reports That It Is Back Moon of Alabama
Hezbollah says Israel using UN troops as ‘human shields’ in south Lebanon The Cradle (Kevin W)
* * * Col. Larry Wilkerson: Israel on the Brink of Devastation in War Against Iran and Hezbollah! Dialogue Works, YouTube. Includes important discussion of US and Iran hostilities over the Strait of Hormuz
Iranian ‘Ahmad Chalabis’ Are Helping Israel Plan Bombing of Iran Antiwar.com (Micael T)
Israel looking at $66bn war bill as economic woes deepen The Cradle (Kevin W)
After a year of war, Israel’s unity is shaken and it’s bleeding support RT
Scott Ritter: Israel’s Total Defeat Against Iran and Hezbollah Imminent? Dialogue Works, YouTube. Ritter discusses again how the nuclear test claim idea is unlikely (he still repeats the 10 mile below surface which seems to be wrong, but he has solid information on IAEA inspections and how hard it would be to get around them. Ritter explains that it would not require much testing to deliver a nuclear bomb with a “gun device” as opposed to a missile. See starting at 28:50 for the “gun device”/
New Not-So-Cold War
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are like mushrooms; The Russian army is harvesting Marat Khairullin
The War’s Pivotal Impasse Crystallizes as Russia Cements Negotiation Terms Simplicius (Kevin W). I was too indirect in my post on Lavrov’s interview in Newsweek restating Putin’s terms from June 14. Lavrov made clear he was reaffirming Putin’s position. It’s actually remarkable that Russia is merely sticking to its guns given Kursk. We linked to Anadolu Agency’s write up at the time to show that not only was everything that Lavrov enumerated in the typically long Putin speech, but that Anadolu Agency had then recapped the very same points Lavrov set forth again.
Zelensky cancels November ‘peace summit’ RT (Kevin W)
Ex-NATO Chief Stoltenberg Could Have Prevented Ukraine Conflict, But Fueled It Instead Sputnik
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Smart TVs Are Like ‘a Digital Trojan Horse’ in People’s Homes ars technica. I have always assumed that.
Imperial Collapse Watch
Finally pic.twitter.com/oASTK3vQuZ
— Philip Proudfoot 🇱🇧🇵🇸 (@PhilipProudfoot) October 8, 2024
Trump
Book Raises Unverified Claims About Trump’s Ties to Putin New York Times (Kevin W)
Kamala
Kamala Harris Struggling to Break Through With Working Class, Democrats Fear Wall Street Journal
Harris’s Biden-esque ‘hiding in the basement’ campaign has Dems worried Just the News. Well, after that 60 Minutes interview, hiding looks to be her best option.
Kamala yesterday accused Gov. DeSantis of "playing political games" with the incoming hurricane in Florida.
Today, Biden said that DeSantis "has been cooperative" and is "doing a great job."
The West Wing appears to be on two completely different wave lengths. pic.twitter.com/Ik5EsgBFJ2
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 8, 2024
Kamala’s True Grit: Harris Embraces a Gun Vilified During the Biden-Harris Administration Jonathan Turley. See also IM Doc in comments to Links yesterday on Glocks.
2024
The Problems With Polls New York Review of Books
Trump and Harris are sharply divided on science, but share common ground on US technology policy The Conversation (Kevin W)
Milton
Millions in Florida told to leave as Biden makes Hurricane Milton ‘life or death’ warning BBC. Where do they go? Sleep in their cars in Walmart parking lots in safer places?
Why experts are so scared of Hurricane Milton The Hill
Timelapse flying by Hurricane Milton about 2 hours ago.
1/6400 sec exposure, 14mm, ISO 500, 0.5 sec interval, 30fps pic.twitter.com/p5wBlC95mx
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 8, 2024
Helene Aftermath
‘The worst I have ever seen’: Disinformation chaos hammers FEMA Politico. Desperate and disgraceful new excuse for censorship. What matters for citizens is if FEMA is getting relief in to afflicted areas. Supposedly false Team R noisemaking about performance will not affect the delivery of aid. What it could hurt is FEMA’s reputation and Kamala’s odds of a win.
Contrast this scapegoating with a report from KLG that Lambert ran yesterday:
My sources have no reason to lie. Perhaps some exaggeration but it all seems too likely to me.
FEMA is a charlie foxtrot, whatever its apologists and administrators say. Almost every person who applies for the $750 is denied. For example, if you have insurance, no $750 because your benevolent insurance company will pay. Yeah, but for many, only after being dragged kicking and screaming to cut the check. An assistant rents her house in rural Georgia. Her losses are real but because she is a renter, no $200 to replace the farm produce and meat lost in her freezer due to a week without electricity. That’s all she asked for. $200B or whatever for Ukraine but no $200 for her. Some areas still do not know when power will be restored. Compared to the mountains of North Carolina, these are the fortunate. This is the message the people are getting…It is likely to get worse when Milton slams into Tampa-St. Pete Wednesday night. Sustained winds back up to 150 mph with 24 hours to go. This can be a killer.
Fact-checking falsehoods about FEMA funding and Hurricane Helene NPR (furzy). Note this claim:
As of Sunday, FEMA says it has provided more than $137 million in assistance to six states in the southeast, including 7,000 federal personnel, nearly 15 million meals, 14 million liters of water, 157 generators and more than half a million tarps.
$137 million is couch lint relative to the scale of this disaster. Lambert also points out he’d expect to see stories about FEMA relief arriving by now, and he has seen nothing on his large set of feeds. Not that we can prove a negative or near negative, but….
Hurricane Helene is America’s Chernobyl moment Unherd (Anthony L)
I assume this sort of thing is also what the wannbe censors are upset about. But this piece does quote FEMA documents and uses one of their videos: Survival of the Wokest Lau Vegys
Watchdog found $7B in untapped FEMA funds — even though DHS Secretary Mayorkas said none available for future disasters New York Post
US lawmakers dig into FCC’s $900M Starlink snub in wake of Hurricane Helene The Register
Our No Longer Free Press
The Think Tank Campaigning to Censor Satire Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Never Forget Mark Wauk (Micael T)
Antitrust
Epic Triumphs as Judge Orders Google to Open the Android Gates Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Class Warfare
Automation is Called “Productivity Growth” Dean Baker, Counterpunch
Cognizant Discriminated Against Non-Indian Workers, US Jury Says Bloomberg
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (Robin K):
They definitely thought that its one of them 😂 pic.twitter.com/zz4F1K0kTJ
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 6, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
162 comments
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Hurricane Milton
Elderly folk still love to retire
Somewhere they won’t need any furnace or fire
The Florida clime
Gets ’em every time
They know nought of a hurricane’s ire
Hurricane Milton is now Cat Three
Leave now to save all your family
Head to states further north
Don’t come back here henceforth:
This state is becoming debris
Monster storm surges will drown Sarasota
Those who stay put will have their anecdota
Of flood tides and mudslides
Riptides and boat rides
Those who leave will stay in Minnesota
Milton will savage the Sunshine State
What’s dry right now will saturate
The Gulf is so warm
It is cause for alarm
How we gonna rehabilitate?
My talking head weather forecaster
Says Florida’s due for disaster
A Cat Three, by golly
Hitting here at full volley
Them hurricanes get here much faster!
My palm trees, my manicured lawn,
My house, and garage will be gone
Milton’s coming ashore
Right through my front door
A climate change phenomenon
Look at that SeaSurface Temp graph curve stomping on the accelerator. Holy shit. That would be abrupt catastrophic climate change at the door. I just saw a headline stating that 5mm Floridians are under evacuation orders. Where exactly are they going, and will they be staying long? I can feel the paradigm shifting in real time.
Yeah, at the gates of Tampa. Ventusky is reading now 135 km/h winds in its east side. I do not pray but i just can hope for the best luck for everybody there.
It seems to me that the climate change gurus are still stuck on stopping it (via less CO2), which isn’t going to happen any time soon, no matter how much they try. What I see missing is action to allay the near term effects that the gurus are saying are happening and will happen.
For example, why are people still allowed to build houses on the beach when the water is supposed to flood them and ever-greater storms destroy them. Heat waves are damaging to crops and livestock but I don’t hear about plans to move such activities farther north. Rainfall patterns are changing but I don’t hear anything about a national plan to store/redirect water to where it’s needed.
If climate change is so real, and from what I see it is, then where is the commitment to deal with it’s effects rather than pretending we can reverse it next week if we try hard enough? And what if it’s not caused by greenhouse gasses?
The out of whole cloth ideological corner stone to actives, spanning [for convince sake] 50 odd years, is the legal underpinnings of *** Individual Freedom and Liberty***. Most people when they hear this phrase internalize it at there own perception of reality. Drama is that does not scale per se like someone with billions or some massive corporation/consortium. Most people have their views/thoughts on freedom and liberty established via media as children, through advertising from corporations/consortium’s seeking profit[rents] and control over consumers [RIP Citizens] as their balance sheets demand it, as that is how the C-suite and key investors make such ludicrous sums compared to everyone else.
As with many religions over the eons reality becomes prescribed and as such no – outside force – from it can be acknowledged – path dependency thingy. See geopol events of late, climatic events increasing, all whilst the ridged die hard’s, be it religion/freedom/liberty/free market/atomistic individualism big tent dither because acknowledging it screws with the narrative they have been collectively[tm] pumping out over this whole period. That equals loss of control and power – see political dynamics in Western nations at the moment.
As far as plans go to mitigate it are concerned the drama is they all have to be reduced to a balance sheet and via that investor sediment. Watched a doco recently where some in America were trying to encourage investment to offset AGW, but early returns were low or nil and notions of a pay day were off into the future = high risk.
I ponder what it will be like at the speed and scale of AGW when climate refugees moving state to state is a thing in America alone.
Some (sad) news on EU bonds – taxpayer beware.
https://open.substack.com/pub/fackel/p/eu-commission-to-issue-sovereign?r=ljswa&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I believe that the EU was set up not to be able to issue EuroBonds as the whole idea was anathema to members like Germany but one was set up to deal with the first years of the pandemic anyway. Looks like they want to make it permanent with EU taxpayers underpinning all those bonds so that they are on the hook for these debts. I don’t think that the purpose is to raise bonds to lend money to the Ukraine as that country is swirling around the drain. Therefore the purpose of setting this up is to probably bailout the EU’s big banks when they have their collapse and the first candidate that comes to mind is Deutsche Bank.
In fact, the last time Eurobonds were touted as a policy idea was back in the day when Europe has a slow-rolling bank crisis, from the GFC to about 2014.
All of the sudden, Brexit not looking so bad anymore.
Still time for Hungary to get out?
This post is incoherent. The EU will be repoing bonds that exist, of the various EU states. A repo is NOT AT ALL issuing bonds or securities. It is trading and financing of existing securities positions.
A repo is a sale with agreement to repurchase. So say a sovereign wealth fund has a German government bond. But it needs some short term cash. It is typically cheaper, rather than to sell the bond to “sell” the bond via a repo and buy it back later (set time, mainly overnight to 90 days). The difference between the sales and repurchase price is the interest equivalent.
You need to be a financial institution with a money markets desk to do this. Since when does the Commission begin to have the balance sheet to do this? Yes, the Commission no doubt gets monies before it has to spend them and must have a treasury, but the LinkedIn of the Head of the EU Treasury is not consistent with trading ops being at all important:
And
Head of Unit – Treasury Management
Her background is all payments processing and accounting.
https://be.linkedin.com/in/marta-legutko-b794a06
Yep and given that the EU has no sovereignty at all, how can the EC launch sovereign bonds? Would have to ask for permission to the 27 each time. 27 kinds of sovereign bonds with origin denomination?
‘Trump War Room
@TrumpWarRoom
Kamala yesterday accused Gov. DeSantis of “playing political games” with the incoming hurricane in Florida.
Today, Biden said that DeSantis “has been cooperative” and is “doing a great job.”
The West Wing appears to be on two completely different wave lengths.’
If old Joe meant to say that DeSantis was doin’ a heckuva job, then that particular circle gets squared real fast-
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/heck-of-a-job/
Let’s talk about decades of experience with dementia patients.
I am not referring to the ones that are already totally gone. I am referring to those who are still walking and talking and can interact to some degree. The very first thing that often goes is “the filter”.
Associated with that loss, is often a very common thing that myself and so many families have had to deal with over the years. If you slight them or shaft them in any way, the resulting blowback, wrath, vengeance, whatever is often for the ages.
In just the past few weeks – we have had Biden donning MAGA hats, if you read the excerpts of the upcoming Woodward book – he absolutely lambastes the Obamas, half his cabinet, Merrick Garland, etc. It sounds pretty bad. He has gone on the national airwaves and praised to the heavens GOP governors in the immediate aftermath of Kamala trying to denigrate them. Just yesterday, he scheduled an extremely rare press conference at the exact time Kamala was on The View – on her comeback interview trail.
This is all starting to appear to me to be not coincidental at all. I have seen this same pattern so many times in my life. You shaft a certain type of dementia patient – and you are going to pay.
I would just remind everyone about Tony Soprano’s mother, Livia, and her reaction to being put in a nursing home. Classic. Good stories in the human experience are written by people who understand human behavior.
Us family-members of dementia patients can easily be the boiling-frogs, and may not recognize or associate the behaviors that we are seeing in a loved one with dementia. I only learned of my father’s dementia after he was hospitalized with an infection, having attributed what in retrospect were obvious signs of this to personality– not necessarily changes in this, as these changes were gradual and really not much of a departure from baseline (often an asshole just becoming more often an asshole).
What I was unaware of until this past summer was that my stepmother’s doctor noted in my stepmother’s chart (she had full-blown, untreated dementia) back in 2022 that my father displayed “baseline dementia” and that the doctor was concerned for their safety at home. This was 1 1/2 years prior to my father’s hospitalization, and several months before my stepmother’s death (under gruesome and preventable circumstance).
I cannot provide further details at this time (legal-stuff), but the point I wanted to make is that one who has experience working with persons suffering from dementia may immediately recognize it for what it is whereas family members or those close to the dementia patient may not, due to lack of knowledge, lack of experience, the psychological and/or historical complexities of the relationship, etc..
Condolences. This sucks so much! Thanks for the very insightful comment despite the grief and pain that youn must have experienced.
Biden cannot be doing this in isolation. He must have a lot of help from assistants who are aware of his state of mind.
Perhaps they are using Joe to get stuff out they want the world to know.
Joe is not some guy in a memory care facility who is accidentally overheard by a visitor.
He has much staff to rein him in.
The Wizard of Kalorama lead Democratic party coup tossing Biden for Harris has probably made it clear to many of Biden’s Cabinet members and staffers that they have no future in the next administration, or the Democratic party. Imagine how you would act as a staffer that gets tossed under the bus, and overnight becomes a lame duck with bus tire tracks all over ya. And this is a lot of the same people that helped Obama toss average Americans under the bus to bail out the Wall St banksters during the GFC; they’re well aware of what has happen to them.
I wonder if this is about dementia.
Having been adjacent to the game of politics during my life, I have seen many examples where the hate for someone in the same party is far greater than the hate for someone in the opposition.
Joe has many rational reasons to be utterly p*ssed. First there was the palace coup that saw him ousted (now the dementia angle there could be him not seeing reality, but then maybe not)
And then we have Harris in various forums trying to distance herself entirely from Biden, by dissing him in public. Ouch. Most politicians in full possession of their faculties would be mightily offended at the very least, and more common is making sure that the hated turncoat never gets into power even if that means keeping his own side out of power.
What Joe is doing now is an old-fashioned spoiler operation, used by generations of cognitively intact shafted pollies. Who knows, Jill might be right on board.
And he never wanted her for VP from the very start, she was foisted onto him at the last minute against protest.
Biden is going to cast shade on Harris at every turn until the election. Get out the popcorn.
DeSantis was saying the same thing about Biden the last time I checked (“Everything I’ve asked for so far, the President has approved”). I think he’s actually trying to govern for a change. I suspect “doing a great job” from Biden is code for “has chosen not to turn this into a culture war and be actively counterproductive”, which is indeed high praise for DeSantis.
Looking it up, it appears Harris’s complaint is that DeSantis didn’t take her calls during the post-hurricane period. His office says it’s because it sounded like a campaign activity rather than an executive one (statements from Harris on the issue are full of “When I am President” and the like, so that seems spot on to me) and they didn’t want to make things political. While I do wonder whether they applied the same judgement to Trump, that sounds fair enough to me otherwise.
Harris then decided to throw her toys out of the cot and accuse DeSantis of ‘gamesmanship’, presumably on the basis that what his distressed population really needed was to have Harris show up for sympathy and photo ops and he was cruelly denying it to them, choosing instead to deal with the actual president, who was providing all requested support. To which DeSantis responded: Uh, we’re trying to clean up after a hurricane here, maybe chill and get over yourself? (Paraphrasing).
It seems like really bad judgement for Harris to pick this fight, and possible evidence of Clinton-style narcissism.
On the IZ economy, I thought this interviewee had a unique perspective: he argues that a collapse of the economy will bring about needed political change. Well worth a listen beyond my trivialization. He calls himself a “political – economist ” and moonlights disrupting arms shipments.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7qO9fGYZA&pp=ygUhZWxlY3Ryb25pYyBpbnRpZmFkYSAic2hpciBoZXZlciAi
What the Harris campaign even thinks it is doing at this point is beyond me. The Glock posing is one thing, the business speeches that sound like Reaganite boilerplate about cutting red tape and reducing the burden of unspecified regulations are another. If the “thinking” is to peel off some 2nd amendment and crackpot libertarian votes from Trump, that’s not going to happen.
It occurred to me that except for abortion she would sound like a candidate in a pre-Trump Republican primary. Perhaps this is a side effect of not having had to take positions to get through Democratic primaries? In any case it’s demonstrably ineffective.
If the northwest Philly office a few blocks from me is any indication, the ground game is pretty lame. They’re across the street from the co-op I shop at and a couple of my neighbors wanted yard signs, so I strolled in to pick up a couple for them. For any other campaign I’ve seen this is about a 2 minute task.
No shortage of signs, but when they finally got to me after about a half hour (I got to watch as they floundered dealing with various other simple issues), it turned out that if you wanted a yard sign you needed to become a Harris volunteer, commit to a certain amount of work and provide your phone# and email. No thanks, folks.
My guess is that when election day dawns there’ll still be a giant stack of signage sitting in that office.
This ship seems even more adrift than was the good ship Clinton before it hit the iceberg.
Clinton campaign people. It’s 3rd way nonsense all the way through. The mid level aparatiks on Hillary 08 are high level now and originally were inspired by Bill Clinton. Everything is being done via the prism of a The West Wing episode.
Your sign anecdote is what popular campaigns do. My guess is they are trying to goose numbers to show donors, are trying to project confidence for what they can get, or simply can’t reason out the causal relationship with signs and enthusiasm.
I recall reading right after the 2016 election, an account of Bill Clinton at a campaign rally in Detroit a few days earlier. “This doesn’t feel like victory.” There was never any chance at all that I’d vote for someone with so little strength of character as Kamala Harris. But the current environment feels very familiar to me — the gaslighting, the contempt for the voters, etc. The biggest difference is that the media is even more in the tank this time.
Can never emphasize enough how transformative the neolib’s impact on the party was. They literally drove everyone who’s not them from the temple then pulled up all the ladders so that no one they disapproved of could ever work at the DNC again.
In this one regard, the blame is easily focused. This is not a muddy mess no one can sort out. The neolibs have had total control over the party this entire new century and they have utterly demolished it. They purged the party of volunteers and replaced them with know-nothing consultants. The results are obvious yet they continue to blame all their woes on the hard working folks who they booted from the party, Russians or Trump, none of whom are in any way to blame.
I do not think their rules permit us to clean house. No clue who takes their place, but this Democratic party needs to be thoroughly Whigged and feathered.
This situation is, in a way, a golden opportunity to make change whether Harris wins or not. Also, while the takeover started with neoliberalism because money, it has now evolved to where neoconservatives are increasingly running policy–i.e., imperialists want all money for conquest none for disaster relief.
Eventually, this isn’t going to work despite the DP’s takeover of almost all the media. The particularly noxious Republicans will move over to the (non-) Democratic Party where they belong and maybe the Republicans will open up new avenues for those of us who are on the left–only the right as currently constituted seems to allow real leftists a chance to express themselves. So that should tell us something.
They’re putting qualification hurdles in front of and means testing for…YARD SIGNS?!?
Do NOT let Mark G. see this!
As of today I’m past caring. No one could save the Harris campaign at this point. Trump is no longer even needed, people are ready to vote for a yellow dog so long as it’s not a Democrat.
The Realignment is upon us and Milton is its prophet!
/not sarc
…and Kamala pretending she drinks Miller High Life will peel off so many working class voters. LoL
I’d like to second Stephen V’s recommendation, political economist Shir Hever interviewed by Electronic Intifada on the erosion of the Israeli economy as the war drags on. His overall impression — based on a mix of polls, emigration data, anecdotes, etc — is of a collapse in morale: roughly 15% of Israeli Jews believe Gott ist mit Uns so it’s in the bag, and the rest not only feel the Zionist project is in tatters but also that, in the words of one “well, the whole world hates us, and maybe they should.” There’s an interesting/appalling dovetail between the certainty of divine endorsement, gimcrack military improvisation, and the nihilistic brutality of a pillaging mob.
>Foxconn building Nvidia superchip facility in Mexico, executives say Reute
We’re building the largest GB200 production facility on the planet,” said Benjamin Ting, Foxconn senior vice president for the cloud enterprise solutions business group.
So we are spending billions to protect Taiwan from China so that the former can build factories in Mexico, yup that makes sense; especially after the fiasco of Trump getting a commitment from Foxconn to invest in a Wisconsin factory.
The news has become a twisted sick joke, the only satisfaction is the rare moment where someone tells the emperor he has no clothes, e.g., when Liam Cosgrove tells Matt Miller that “People are sick of the bullshit in here.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/foxconn-sharply-scales-back-wisconsin-investment-2021-04-20/
Of the three strategic goals in the Ukraine proxy war: 1. arms sales; 2. regime change Russia and make it beg the West for help, like in the Yeltsin years; 3. force loyal vassals to stop trading with Russia; (these being the MIC, neocon, and realist theories respectively) the last is the most interesting. The realists may have counted on a fair likelihood of failure of goal 2 (neocons always get it wrong, anyway) and destruction of Ukraine in the conflict and that it wouldn’t matter in changing who their client states do business with. And it will continue to work for years to come even as US politics backs away from goal 2.
So, hypothetically, let’s assume that the realists similarly count on a fair likelihood of failure to regime change China and bring it to heal and of destruction of the proxy, be it Taiwan or Philippines or both. If, as I argue, the realists’ goal of war is to force loyal vassals to significantly reduce trade with China, USA should get ready to supply what those vassals need.
They can’t. They shut down all those factories years and decades ago and either shipped the machinery to China or sold it for scrap. And the workforce all got the boot and told to get lost.
True story here. They have been using a lot of Stinger missiles in the war in the Ukraine but Raytheon stopped making them twenty years ago. So Raytheon had to call these old boys out or retirement who were in their 70s and pay them bucket loads of money to teach the new workforce how to build them-
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/06/raytheon-calls-retirees-help-restart-stinger-missile-production/388067/
But that idea will not scale up and the US is simply unable to replace what China makes. It is simply not possible.
But apparently foreign companies, Foxconn, can build the world largest GB200 production facility on the planet South of the border, in Mexico. Is the labor force so different in Mexico than the U.S., are the laws governing labor what makes building a factory in the U.S. no longer tenable? Environmental regulations? The wages, unionization? Are American’s intractable/lazy, too old? Is the American worker lacking basic skills, work ethics, what? Or, is it just a question of margins? Germany used to be competitive with average wages above the U.S.
You touched on the key factor – margins. And hidden within ‘margins’ are ceo and executive compensation, armies of marketing and sales peons, debt fuelled financialization siphoning off the cream into interest and stock buybacks, and kickbacks to the distribution channels. It’s all overhead, compounded by the multiple layers of distribution agreements, wholesalers and middlemen.
Underpinning margins are input costs. Sanctioning Russia just blew Europe’s input costs (energy, commodities) sky high….
Early in my career (mid aughts) I worked for a logistics company that handled Foxconn’s US/Mexico cross border shipments for their factories. This is the kitting/warehouse management logistics, not package shipment. Foxconn has factories on the Mexico side of the border that regularly erupt (then and still) in worker riots because pay is withheld or other truly staggering labor violations. Links from after my time show it’s still an issue.
OpenDemocracy did a deep dive on the Foxconn factories in 2015
To put it Lambert style, Foxconn is not agreement-capable. I fully expect they will renege on whatever deal they struck for the factory (which is likely to be for final assembly and not actually making the chips).
While it is baffling that they’d even consider Mexico given its current security situation, remember, Trump’s tariffs are still up and Biden is keeping them around. If you want to get goods into the US cheaply, they have to come from (as in country of origin) Canada or Mexico. Mexico has made an entire industry out of being the first port of call for the Chinese as they try to dump product on the US.
My sis and her better half were high up wheels in the ‘Estes Rocket Factory’ in Tucson, and kind of similar to us fighting $10k drones with million $ missiles, we can’t keep up with their cheaper, easier to reproduce NextGen goods. The imbalance is startling.
It’d be as if one store sold Hershey’s chocolate bars for $1.50, but the one down the street wanted $150.00 for waxy sugary goodness where the only thing they didn’t cheap out on in production was the almond slivers, because they couldn’t find a substitute.
He’s been retired for awhile but still keeps his nose in the tent, and at Xmas last year he thought there was a 12-18 month delay on delivery of new armaments here, chips being the culprit.
That is what TPP was. It’s just Obama and others instead of promoting US autarky capable of supplying those countries he focused on cutting labor and environmental regulations and payoffs to the super rich. As an electoral matter, Obama spent years kicking the coalition that elected him, and now Democrats are paying. Part of Trump’s appeal is from Trump following on the widespread anti-China rhetoric from the DC establishment without promising to ship jobs overseas and telling people to learn to code.
With consumer goods available on demand, I think the foreign policy establishment “realists” can’t conceive how the long term decline fits into their plans.
Kamala – I’m developing a sense of how Kamala and MSM is marketing her to voters. If it were a TV campaign commercial, it might go like this ******** Hi fellow Americans. You have an important decision to make this November. I’m probably the the first Policy Free candidate you have had a chance to vote for. That’s because I don’t believe in policy. I believe in values, the kind of values you and I grew up with and learned about in life. Like growing up with your neighbors that were proud of their lawns. I’ve always believed in the same values we all share, and that’s why I don’t believe in policies and don’t have any. America is interested in values…not policy. I need your help. Please join with me to help fight for values for Americans. VOICE OVER as camera pulls away – “Kamala Harris – The Values Choice. The Policy Free Choice.”
Kamala is the Tabula Rasa candidate. Generally a person as free of thought or supportable beliefs as the blank book on Kamala thought for sale at Walmart. Her policies are what her benefactors decide but can’t reveal to us. There is no support from us for her except for those who buy into the image making, the joy of political joy. Except for one policy, war, all the time deeper and more spending. War against Iran. Israel first.
More likely Kamala is the Seinfeld candidate.
Interviewer: “Mr Seinfeld, what was your show about. I mean REALLY about?” Seinfeld: “Nothing. It wasn’t about anything.:
This is precicely what makes Kamala Harris the perfect candidate to be President of the United States of America.
This playbook (values but no policies) was used by Starmer in the recent UK election. Labour’s “election guru” (who ironically lost his own parliamentary seat) has been advising the Harris campaign.
Starmer basically just said “change” a lot, waved the flag, and tried to show he wasn’t Corbyn.
Unfortunately for Harris the situation is very different. She is not facing an opponent (like the UK Tories) who is roundly hated, totally incompetent and in power for the last 14 years.
As we can now see clearly with Starmer the absence of policies was at least partly because all his policies are extremely unpopular and he has no solutions to people’s problems. One suspects similar with Harris.
Perhaps market her as a prescription drug…
Feeling anxiety over knowing too much about an aspirant for the highest office in the land?
Ask your doctor about Xdjoy*
* side effects too numerous to mention, you’ll just have to wait and see what happens
They could always come out with a book with the risque title of “The Joy of Kamala” to bring people comfort.
The Democrats have done an enormous amount of policy work, for the Republicans.
They have been too busy making up imaginary policies the R’s will commit to instead of making policies the D’s will do.
There was a big policy released yesterday concerning Medicare. Coverage to include hearing aids and eyeglasses. Also big proposals for long term in home care. Bernie has been asking for these for years.
There also have been housing policies. Please tell me what the other side has proposed in these areas?
Believing a politician’s promise four weeks out from an election? I dunno. A lot of people remember how old Joe reneged on that $600 promise that he made and that was on virtually day one of becoming President. Was there any mention of any of that stuff being funded?
Oh, a shiny new policy! Based on something Sanders and the great masses have wanted for years. Rolled out less than a month before The Most Important Election Evah. From the party that fell all over itself to get the endorsement of Dick Cheney and 700 spooks.
Joe Biden still owes me $600. Anyone who believes this “policy proposal” is sincere…deserves exactly what they get.
You’re talking about paper (or digitized online) that aids wrote….FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH. Name me 1 instance of Kamala speaking put in interviews or campaigning for Medicare hearings etc. You might prove me wrong, but maybe not. I doubt Kamala even knows she supports regarding what you wrote.
Gosh remember when Obama promised to address abortion, but it wasn’t important after he got elected.
Frankly at this point I would be happy if they would just
1.) codify fines for Medicare fraud that not just reimburse the total stolen but actually penalize the company that does it.
2. Allow Medicare to both negotiate drug costs AND import drugs if they are cheaper
3. Regulate Advantage plans so that they provide the same benefits as Medicare (in other words if they can do it better because…they have to provide the same product.)
None of these things really add to Medicare costs and they would benefit everyone on it. But promising pie in the sky benefits to a program that most politicians in DC have been trying to privatize so they give a few big profits and generally provide less and less healthcare is really going to happen.
Harris is indeed policy free. Trump is recycling what passed for policy during his term with the added promise of retribution for injury to his giant ego. Harris and Trump are each all in on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, war in Lebanon and even Bibi’s wet dream of an all out war with Iran … with the US toddling along in support. Why does the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber support genocide and war? Well, Sparky, let me explain. #1 we support Israel because we support Israel. #2 We support Israel to allow it to die so our oil companies can control the oil. #3 we support Israel because the MIC is making a boatload of money from arms sales to Israel paid for by the US taxpayer. (Now that’s a sweet deal.) We support Israel because we, that is persons within the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber, are paid to do so and a tentative #4. (Is there any truth to the tale that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Israeli intelligence and hoovered up kompramat to, at the least, embarrass certain individuals?)
Harris and Trump support #1, #2, and #3. Perhaps I ought not have included my tentative #4.
This is a choice?
I also feel that blackmail is an under discussed option. The subject appears taboo, even among Independent Media. I think it should be discussed, analyzed, hypothesized, just like everything else. It doesn’t deserve to be an exception, not with what we know already about Epstein, who he entertained and what his true business model was.
No, Bibi wants the US out there in front, the first wave to hit the beaches, thus throwing the US against Iran the way the US threw the Ukraine against Russia.
And the way the Jewish ultra-orthodox in pursuit of the wet dream of a Greater Israel are more than happy to throw a conscripted IDF into the fight while fighting hard to keep their exemption from conscription –
“for the meek shall inherit the earth”, over the bodies of the brave.
The whole Glock thing reminds me of Michael Dukakis’ tank.
Of course Kamala could prove that she knows what she is talking about by having her go to a firing range with her Glock and letting off a few rounds in aimed fire. But if she gets “Glock Leg”, will that balance out Trump’s ear?
If she had claimed to own an Uzi, it would’ve strengthened her Zionist bona fides, like killing 2 doves with 1 stone.
No, two red heifers.
>Trump and Harris are sharply divided on science, but share common ground on US technology policy The Conversation (Kevin W)
On technology policy, Biden and Harris share more with Trump than they let on.
That’s because terms like “Trump and Harris” are categories of the mind. They are fictions, they have no basis in the world of reality. They “share more” because they are servitors’ of empire. A “conversation” that starts with “Trump and Harris” is doomed from the beginning, authors should ask cui bono? But that’s not the tack of the article, it is instead intended to show what a knuckle dragging creature Trump is:
Trump’s dismissal of and at times outright contempt for scientific consensus is well documented. From “Sharpiegate,” when he mapped his own projected path for Hurricane Dorian, to pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, World Health Organization and the Iran nuclear deal, Trump has demonstrated an unwillingness to accept any advice, let alone from scientists.
Not for nothing, but the Paris climate agreement was bullshit but provided PR cover for the Obama administration who also didn’t give a c*** about climate change or the science about it.
> Everything Is Out of Water: Should a philosopher have sayings? The Point (Anthony L)
A lovely essay. Betteridge Law violation.
Most of my best ideas are somebody else’s. ‘What is easy, is easy to know; what is simple, is easy to follow.’ If I explain like I’m five, that is easy to understand, shorter words but more ambiguity. Polya: many a proverb can be matched with another proverb giving exactly opposite advice, and there is a great of latitude of interpretation.
Today is three-tens-and-six years since Janet and I got together. Much of our communication could seem repetitive, applying the same words contextually. Many are pop culture references. Best thing for everyone, I’m right there with ya. These shared references build social cohesion.
A good saying has depth. ‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us’. Look at the tense, the subject-object relations. No dangerous words like ‘you’ or ‘they’.
Ambiguity increases when translating sayings:
> The underdog of the Delphic sayings is: Give a pledge and trouble is at hand.
‘Pledge’ is the author’s translation of ἐγγύα (first declension pledge, surety, security). My philosophical framework tends toward epistemological uncertainty, and my translation is:
Don’t be so sure.
My take on that Delphic saying is “Any guarantee will be promptly called on”.
I file that one under “moral hazard.”
That point about contrasting proverbs was one of my late father’s mental games. As he would have said it (and often did): “He who hesitates is lost — BUT . . . look before you leap.”
>Smart TVs Are Like ‘a Digital Trojan Horse’ in People’s Homes – ars technica
That’s ok, as long as it doesn’t explode and kill me and those in vicinity. After all who really cares that streaming service providers, have developed a “surveillance system” that has “long undermined privacy and consumer protection” at least I can get my fix of Netflix and have something to talk about at the proverbial water cooler.
Still using a late 2000s Samsung screen that was their last “dumb” TV. It broke this summer (top half of the screen went half-resolution) then, after a few weeks, it fixed itself. The lifespan of these screens is supposed to be no more than six years, mine is at least 16 years old now.
They told us CDs were not permanent media. I have boxes of home-ripped CDs from the ’90s that still play just fine. After going thru generations of hard drives they’ve stopped dying on me after a few years and my data keeps accumulating.
Current tech is much better than we’re being led to believe. They have to brick the old stuff to get us to keep buying new but if it was built in this century, it should still run. What’ll you encounter, however, is an internet that keeps upgrading in ways that brick the older systems. That’s not progress, that’s capitalism at its bottom-feeding worst.
I think it’s a mistake to confuse luck with reliability.
Plenty of cases where the tech in question barely makes it to the projected EOL date. And many cases where it fails to reach even that…
Considering that my tv is stationary, not to mention that cable and TiVo have been collecting my rather boring viewing habit information for decades this is one area where I am pretty blah about their actions. Especially as my streamer doesn’t have voice control so they are not spying beyond my choices.
My phone, internet access and presence and the various assistants I cannot avoid along with the cameras on every street corner worry me far more. They are far more invasive and spy far more.
“Britons urged to dig out unwanted electricals to tackle copper shortage’
Not to worry. The Brits are already on the job-
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/copper-thieves-leave-700-homes-and-businesses-without-connectivity-in-county-tyrone-northern-ireland/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/29/copper-cable-theft-causes-days-rail-delays-every-year/
On the “disappointing” Chinese confetti money/stimulus:
Why is confetti money different in China vs. the US? It still floats in the air like magic, and you still need a wheelbarrow to harvest it.
I guess that Chinese confetti money isn’t structured to serve the grift-based economy. Key quote:
So confetti money that helps the little people = BAD
Confetti money that jacks up corporate profits (particularly, foreign investors) = GOOD
Glad we have that straightened out, Bloomberg!
Perfect punctuation to Zagonostra’s comment on chip production above. Chinese stimulus goes into products/people. US stimulus goes into interest payments.
Aeon and the witches – I find it unfortunate that this guy is harping on about Clinton and the Pizzagate as an example of wrongly held ideas of witches since 1) Hillary is personally responsible for death and misery in at least Yugoslavia and Libya, so that evil inflicted by her is real (at least in Libya and Yugoslavia and. 2) the Clintons relationship to the suicided Jeffrey Epstein says that the underlying paedophilia-stuff was real enought. The pizza parlour could very well have been a spin just to make sure that the Clintons paedophilia would be passed to the tinfoil territory.
Also, he doesn’t mention the Catholic Church and their demonology which very much includes witches that were killed to the left and right. For the demonology, please, read Malleus Maleficarum.
We are down south in Pinellas for the summer (foolishly bought a place a few miles inland), so we had to high tail it out of there Monday.
The i75 corridor was gridlocked in many places by visual inspection and gmaps delay reports, fortunately we were able to re-route around.
Several gas stations passed visually inspected with NO GAS signs.
Local social media reported people on i75 running out of gas after sitting for 12+ hours. Keep in mind this was on Monday.
Most houses were not boarded up in our neighborhood when we left, but people seemed to be having a lighbulb moment. In general people seemed just not concerned as of Monday. This is an area that hasn’t seen a storm in 100 years, so I think it just isn’t real for the people who have lived here for 20+ years.
Because the place has been untouched all these years there are huuuuge live oaks everywhere. Those bad boys are all going to come down. There are also huuuuge piles of household goods everywhere from Helene in front of the houses that are a mile or so further towards the coast than us.
Sure we boarded up but what’s that going to do against 2,000 lbs of live oak? I imagine all we will come back to is 4 walls and a debris pile.
I can’t imagine anyone will survive the tree limb & ikea furniture cuisinart that Milton is going to generate. Back to VT it is!
> 2,000 lbs of live oak?
Vast underestimate. We had a ninety foot sycamore brought down, newfangled crane thingy, two pieces of the main trunk were 6,000 apiece, and we left a longer segment standing.
My buddy from Tucson was in Cedar Rapids 4 years ago at his brothers house when the Midwest Derecho hit, sporting 126 mph gusts at the highest speed.
A mighty oak crushed his year old Ford F-150 in the driveway, and he related that a place that had prided itself on its beautiful oak savanna, now had a much lessened one, trees were down everywhere, some disassembly required.
During Katrina my parents went to their country place in Kiln, MS, perhaps 20 miles inland. The hurricane eye went over their house. It spawned a tornado on their plot. The live oaks stood with a few limbs broken, literally every pine was snapped like match sticks. In New Orleans the live oaks in City Park stood, even with 8 feet of brackish water for weeks.
>Book Raises Unverified Claims About Trump’s Ties to Putin.
Does it matter if it’s unverified?
You KNOW that the MSM and Team Blue are going to run with it. Likely Woodward will get some National Book Award if not Pulitzers to the NYT for reporting on it.
Will there be reports of a soggy mattress in Woodward’s book?
Bob Woodward… hmm, sounds vaguely familiar. Oh yeah, now I remember. He led our intrepid Free Press in a Crusade for Truth that helped us get rid of a dictatorial President. The System worked; Thomas Jefferson would have been proud! I remember there was a movie about it. Robert Redford played Woodward – a brave hero *and* a good looking guy.
I wonder who his Deep Throat was for this revelation? The timing was certainly fortunate.
Some of us believe the Watergate “story” was bullshit all down the line. Nixon was hardly the villain he is thought to be, IMHO. We’ve had far, far, far worse POTUS’ since then. In retrospect, if you take his work in toto, he doesn’t look so bad.
Yes, some of us do – myself included. I do think Nixon was a villain — Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, the October Surprise, CHAOS, on and on. He was a ruthless, amoral war criminal. But his realist moves toward detente with China and the USSR – his best moments – were resented and resisted in the Pentagon, the CIA, and among the anti-commie right-wing in general that would gain control after Nixon was gone. Ironic for the old red-baiter. Not that he didn’t have plenty of haters on the “left” as well. But yeah, I agree that the official story of Watergate is about as accurate as Russiagate or the Warren Report.
Vietnam started in the 60s. He was more “environmental” than any POTUS since he was overthrown by the MSM and the Deep State. Read more widely.
This is your response to my examples and you are telling *me* to read more widely?
In basketball terms, we’ve entered garbage time.
Many news sites are reporting that the Kremlin confirmed that Trump sent COVID test equipment to Putin. I guess that makes it harder to deny.
So a leader of one country sending medical equipment to another that we are not at war with during a pandemic is evil and uncalled for? I get that the same people would be screaming if it was to Cuba or the real President of Venezuela that we don’t want to recognize, but there is a reason I think if we knew everything they had done we would find the people publicly outraged about this probably belong in prison.
Did those many news sites report that the Kremlin confirmed that Trump sent COVID test equipment to Putin as a payoff for prostitutes that Putin sent to Trump earlier?
About Government responses to disasters.
I have a great deal of experience in disaster relief,please forgive me for not going in to detail about that in a short post.
Just three points:
The amount of capital and labor needed to prepare for even relatively minor disruptive events makes it impossible to fit in to everyday budgets.This is true from the town level through to the national government.
FEMA or the equivalent agency in another country does not have truck loads of goods and labor to distribute it sitting around waiting for something to happen. Agencies like this at best are given authority to send local logistic resources from areas not effected by the disaster. This takes a lot of persuasion and time as local authorities usually would rather husband their resources instead of sending them away. This means stuff and people have to come from a long way away.
It is always the local people working together that do all of the heavy lifting. “Get along like a house on fire” is a phrase with great meaning in these situations. Everyone expecting outside help that doesn’t come is actually a great way to build local societal cohesion.
Sorry, but what you say sounds like that the government will not really be there to have your back when a disaster hits and that you are on your own. The people of East Palestine, Maui and South Carolina may be able to share their experiences here. So how come the government can throw away $60 billion to the Ukraine in one hit and $23 billion to Israel but they just can’t work out how to have a stockpile of vital goods for distribution in each State in case of a disaster? They could be placed in a military base for security and if it was an Air Force base, there would be transport planes that could pick them up and deliver them whether by landing at a local airport or dropping them out the back with a parachute rigged to them. The military does stuff like this all the time. It’s not that all this can’t be done but it seems that there is a lack of political will to make it happen. And with the increased frequency of disasters in the US, it is not like that they will gather dust and never be used.
Such a different response to wildfires on a Federal level.
When the KNP Fire started here in early September of 2021, the Caldor Fire had been going for a week and was threatening to take out South Lake Tahoe, so it was a get every firefighting capability onto it pronto, a high value asset in peril!
As a result we didn’t have much initially to fight the 88k blaze as the cupboard had been laid bare, but then the Southeast Federal firefighting team (I think there are 6 of these across the USA) shows up with lots of Mississippi & Alabama accents in tow and takes over the job, having driven through the night with all their equipment from a fire in Oregon they’d been working on.
And never, ever is brought up the cost to fight these fires, it isn’t as if NPS hit up Congress for $60 million for the recent Coffee Pot Fire here, the money more or less magically appears, as far as I can tell.
That can be while the realists don’t know it. What you think I ought to know by now may never be properly understood by them.
If the money is there, private companies have capacity to step-up. I used to work for an airline catering company that switched production to ready-made-meals to distribute to people after a recent hurricane. The problem is the niggardly purse strings of federal agencies. Billions for war, pennies for citizens in need.
It will be a step forward in our civilization if these two disasters bring home that point to the fervent right wing, that smaller government refusing to help because ” tight budgets ” is ridiculous, when billions can fly to Ukraine or the Malibu hills or Israel at will. Maybe these downsized dysfunctional federal agencies ‘you can drown in a bathtub’ were a bad policy, and maybe that whole concept is what needs to drown. In a storm surge.
Fema should have a flexible budget, and be full of wizards who can quickly fund and send help via the best means necessary, including contracts awarded to best bids from honest players. The amazing logistical work of Wal-mart during past disasters comes to mind. And Anheuser Busch switching to canning water and getting it on trucks.
Meanwhile after Katrina, Fema gave fat no-bid contracts to Bechtel and others for housing units, raising unit cost nice and high (what on earth value did they add beyond what a trailer manufacturer could provide?) , and ended in thousands parked in an Arkansa field. Apparently lobbyists and pols were able to rapidly misallocate billions of dollars the day after the disaster, while displaced people stood in lines over a period of weeks begging for crumbs.
The US is a big country which could take care of its own, if the people holding the purse strings were not lazy, shortsighted crooks.
The means testing for aid is the real bugaboo. Federal and state governments are psychologically unable to simply help people out no questions asked. It’s a bit of projection going on. Because they are crooks by and large, they immediately assume that those seeking aid are also crooks.
Things I did not see in that post: National Guard, Corps of Engineers or emergency coordination with places like WalMart warehouses. The logistics are there, it is the will to use them that is lacking. It is laudable that local residents can build temporary bridges out of trailers*, but that is not what residents of disaster zones are paying taxes to do.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb02M4voDxA
For an article on a speech made in 1933, its surprisingly relevant to todays economic disputes.
As I was repeatedly told as an economics undergrad in Ireland in the 1980’s, Keynesianism (and pretty much any classical or neoclassical economics theory) didn’t work in either theory or reality when applied to small open economies. Its interesting to see that Keynes himself seems to have agreed. Small open economies (which accounts for most of the countries in the world) need to see themselves in regional terms, and focus on economic policies that push up local productivity, and ‘free trade’ only works if you see it as a war you have to win, even if at the expense of some of your own domestic sectors. This is a lesson hard earned by most of the Tiger economies, and indeed Ireland learned it after a few decades of terrible failure. As Michael Pettis has pointed out in his writing, ‘free trade’ is actually a trade policy. You cannot avoid trade policy, and for economists to pretend that there is some sort of neutral stance on it is fundamentally incorrect. Plus of course, when you hand over your currency to Central Bankers rather than elected representatives, you don’t gain better decisions, you lose democracy.
Your first phrase; exactly the same I thought when I read it. Besides the size of the country, IMO it matters also the resources (arable land, forests, marine resources, geological resources etc…). Keynes argued in Dublin that each country should try policies oriented to self-sufficiency, not to depend (i guess excessively) on imports. So, while ageing Keynes turned more “protectionist” or less free-trade addict. IMO this would merit by itself a post to be discussed.
Well was it not the whole drama with any cookie cutter economics, with an -ism attached on the end or notions of empiric laws.
That was some WH presser, lemme tellya!
Laid bare on the floor from a sitting position in a little over a minute flat, and the only response the authorized talking head could muster, was that it was a speech and there are other places in Humordor for such things.
What a moment for everyone else in that room who hasn’t asked such questions.
One would hope, but many, if not most of the participants in the charade are there precisely because they are willing to overlook such questions.
That’s Liam Cosgrove for the Grayzone asking Matt Miller about nuclear war and US//Israeli genocide under the “Imperial Collapse Watch” heading. Good for him. But what I also see is Miller saying “Hahaha, I have unlimited impunity and zero accountability backing me up so shut up.” The point of all this is that Cosgrove/Grayzone applies some pressure to the others in the room.
It really was an emperor wears no clothes moment with millions of views as of this morning.
Whether WH reporters have the moral conscious to feel the pressure to follow suit, on that, I’m very doubtful, though would very much like to be wrong.
I’m sure the reporters for our national media would *like* to follow up on Consgrove’s observations, but there are much more important stories to cover – like the fact that one of our Presidential candidates has been regularly conspiring with PUTIN! Maybe they can get to that genocide stuff later.
There will likely be no road to Damascus conversations but the pressure has its effects. Put it another way, imagine if for the last 100 years there had been no independent news media, no journalists that jumped sides, no body to embarrass the fence sitters.
Oh, there is a road to Damascus. It just so happens that Saul is insisting on staying blind and insisting on driving a chariot (ie Merkava–although I’m told thatbit foes not mean any random chariot but a Biblical reference.) at full speed.
Wait, African elephants don’t “wrap” their “trunk fingers” (apparently, the actual technical term) around objects? What exactly do they do?
The wording in the actual study makes the distinction a bit clearer:
[bold added, footnote number omitted]
Here’s hoping that the increasing frequency of disasters motivates some changes in responses. How about a simple documented game plan for what will be done on Day 1, Day 2, … of any disaster? How about appointing an individual for each event with accountability for relief efforts and communication? Planning for use of drones to survey damage, a helicopter fleet for getting supplies to areas isolated by damaged roads? Warehouses of basic essentials like water? Daily press conferences focused on discussion of how relief efforts are doing vs. plan. “Lessons learned” meetings to review what worked well and what didn’t.
Maybe Walmart or Amazon could weigh in on logistics plans, say with the US Army (remember Operation Lightspeed?)
– ‘Never Forget’ – Mark Wauk (Micael T)
This is a very good rant, in my opinion. It gets almost everything right, not only the deprivations of our “ruling class” media censorship agenda, but also the hypocrisy of those “free speech” defenders on the right like Turley – or Trump/Vance – who are fine with silencing critics of war and genocide if it’s the Israelis doing it. He also gets this right:
“Culturally speaking, America is a libertarian nation, for the most part. Which means it believes, as a cultural matter, in little to nothing. The result is a lack of strong, conviction based, opposition to the agenda of the ruling class.”
“A key to the success of the ruling class has been control over the information system, and the breakdown in the ruling class monopoly over information flow—due to the internet—has been the biggest factor in the spread of unrest… Unlike the subject class, the ruling class is in no doubt, has no trouble focusing on the key problem—it’s the free flow of information that is the threat to “total control”, as no less an authority on “total control” than Hillary recently stated.”
This is not new. In the 1970s with Watergate, the Church Committee, etc. there was another brief period of breakdown in total information control. We started getting warnings like the Trilateral Commission’s ‘The Crisis of Democracy.’ That breakdown was shut off pretty quickly. They’re trying to seal this one off as well, before our “libertarian” public can get its act together.
IM Doc mentioned this the other day.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/some-hospitals-are-giving-patients-gatorade-and-oral-medicine-instead-of-iv-fluids-as-they-grapple-with-a-shortage-after-hurricane-helene/ar-AA1rVIWz
Some hospitals are giving patients Gatorade and oral medicine instead of IV fluids as they grapple with a shortage after Hurricane Helene
B. Braun produces IV bags and has a plant and distribution center in Daytona Beach.
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/business/real-estate/2020/10/14/b-braun-daytona-beach-medical-products-manufacturing-plant/5851206002/
Daytona Beach hurricane info page:
https://www.daytonabeach.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1745
Russian spies are on a “mission to generate mayhem” on Britain’s streets, by doing nothing and letting Britain slide into mayhem by itself.
That is actually a rather disturbing article, because the Financial Times was once not completely contemptible despite being right-wing and neoliberal. The idea that the British Security Service claims that the Russians and Iranians are responsible for all the problems which Britain faces as a result of the immiseration of the British working class over the last couple of decades — in a sense it’s funny (doesn’t it occur to them that the Russians and Iranians are rather busy elsewhere, and the claim that Russia specially hates Britain doesn’t pass any kind of smell test) but in a sense it’s the kind of thing which a banana republic’s chief propagandist would dream up on an off day.
Plus, if you read the comments, the British ruling-class intelligentsia are beneath contempt. An expat friend of mine is terrified that when Britain collapses his awful family will flee the country and come and live with him (he’s scared that they’ll discover he has a swimming-pool). Perhaps he has a point.
Well, sure. The Ruskies blew up their own pipe line driving up energy prices in the UK and the EU. Now UK citizens are reminded to ration their winter heating costs by the benevolent UK govt. So empathetic that UK govt. Nice guys.
the PMC believes they can make never ending mistakes and blame it all to Russia. I have always found dangerous those individuals who cannot admit any wrongdoing. I find it childish. Don’t you?
Never read the main ft.com comments. They are Satrean! Hell is other people….
The FT Alphaville comments were class though. But they seem to have limited them recently from registered readers.to paying subscribers only. I can no longer comment. :-(
“Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes’
Been watching this development since reading an article back in 2012 called “Is Your New HDTV Watching You?” and it was as creepy as. It described how as you watched TV, it would be watching & filming you and sending it to Samsung servers along with recorded audio. And it used facial recognition as well so it could identify each and every person. Hopefully not while you were getting frisky with your partner on the lounge. Since then most people seem to be fine with this happening and giving up all privacy in their own homes but after reading that article 12 years ago, I have made sure that any TV we had never had access to our internet.
RE: US Navy is said to have been at the scene shortly before Nord Stream was destroyed
Of course this was reported two years ago even before Seymour Hirsch’s piece came out, and widely ignored.
I remember seeing articles about US naval exercises in the area prior to the explosion, and I’m pretty sure I saw mention of US ships in the area right at the time of the explosion. Just did a google search for “us navy ships in the area before nordstream destroyed” and I found this one from two years ago which discusses two “dark ships” with their transponders off –
https://www.wired.com/story/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-dark-ships/
When I did that search, the vast majority of results I got were from corporate media sources about “Russian” ships in the area at the time of the explosion, despite not including “Russia” in my search at all. Imagine that.
You’d think some intrepid gumshoe might have wanted to get to the bottom of the story given these extremely suspicious circumstances of ships without transponders, but so far there has been just about zero interest. Either that, or a very good job of censoring stories related to it.
Germany’s economy and manufacturing are paying the biggest price for that… um… accident. With economic knock-on effects across the EU.
Have the West’s vaunted leaders decided the West must die? Serious question.
The newsworthy bit isn’t that the US Navy was in the area, it’s that a mainstream EU publication is bucking the consensual censorship around the subject.
I suspect there’s lots of interviews, screen caps, editorials etc already written that have been spiked over the last two years – maybe the dam is starting to leak?
I was pointing it out right here on NC around the time of the explosion. I got the fleet number wrong, but the Baltops right. There’s an entire fleet out there somewhere that knows who dunnit, cuz they were doing what they thought were training exercises right on top of it and shortly thereafter it was blown up.
On a morning after a recent Helene movie
In a country where they want to turn back time
You go strolling through abandoned Tampa like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
Milton comes out of the west like a sailor in distress running
With storm surges in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
He’ll just tell you that he came
In the year of the Cat 5
He doesn’t give you time for questions
As he locks up the well dispersed
And you follow ’till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There’s a hidden hurricane shelter luck leads you to
These days, everybody says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the Cat 5
While he looks at you so cooly
And his eye spins around above the sea
He comes in intense and unruly
So you take shelter, to find what’s waiting inside
The year of the Cat 5
Well morning comes and you’re still existent
And the residents and the tourists are gone
And you’ve thrown away your choice you’ve lost your home
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the newborn day
You know sometime you’re bound to leave Florida
But for now you’re going to stay
In the year of the Cat 5
Year of the Cat 5
Year of the Cat, by Al Stewart
The Grauniad article on recycling copper cables. Anything to do with Russia or China perhaps? I do know South America produces a lot of copper as well. In any case are they offering any compensation? As a person who has many “audiophile” 99.999% oxygen free copper cables laying around I can inform the Guardian that their dude is a bit overly optimistic about consumer cables. OTH they might accidentally encourage people to strip out (loot) the wiring in unoccupied older homes.
This article was very odd. Trial balloon? Media brain fart on slow news day. Time will tell.
Does anyone have a good, regularly updated Hurricane Milton path projection site they like? I thought I’d found one on NBCnews, but it went poof on me.
Thanks in advance, NC commentariat!
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=26.1;-79.4;5&l=rain-3h
Wind gusts around 100 at midnight
This is awesome, thank you!
Found it again on NBCnews (here). Be nice to see what everyone else is using too, though.
“Israel’s Netanyahu warns Lebanon could face destruction ‘like Gaza’”
Translation – We will kill Lebanese civilians by the hundreds in the futile hope that they turn against Hezbollah and start a civil war. Of course Hezbollah has the capability to turn Israel into Gaza as well but won’t mention that. At this point he just wants to keep the war going until somehow he can drag American troops into it. Maybe he is thinking of his “legacy” and wants to leave behind a Greater Israel. But all he is doing is to isolate Israel from the rest of the world more and more and if it gets any more isolated, it won’t even have a postcode.
Thanks for the UnHerd article comparing Hurricane Helene to the old USSR’s Chernobyl disaster and the gov’s response failures.
Meanwhile, these guys aren’t waiting for official approval. from twtr-X:
Tonight these regular everyday Americans are working through the night to make bridges for Hurricane Helene victims out of downed telephone poles and trees. This is work by real American you won’t see reported by the media
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1843503174377976145
Adding this bit from the UnHerd article:
“The water was right there, sitting on the [Wal-Mart] shelves; people needed immediate help, so why not distribute it now and have the government simply pay Wal-Mart for it later? Wal-Mart was more than happy to go along with this arrangement, but FEMA was horrified that someone had circumvented their own chosen contractor. Grudgingly, they accepted the deal already struck, but then acted forcefully to shut down future ideas of dangerous and unauthorised innovation.”
Ah, a govt’s chosen contractor, in this instance, sounds like an opportunity ripe for grift, imo.
A “chosen contractor.” Gaaachhh!
I had people wondering how old I was when I brought up how FEMA blockaded aid to New Orleans back during Hurricane Katrina’s response. Bizarrely, the first example in this article is also about moving pre-existing Walmart stock. Nineteen years and nothing’s changed.
Thanks for the link. The Department of Homeland Security, the DHS, was created in 2002 and now oversees all these efforts. Is that the problem? Really, not a cynical question. A real question. (I remember Katrina and various DHS nonsense that made no sense at the time compared to earlier years when FEMA wasn’t under a DHS control.)
From your linked article, (and thanks again for that):
“Citing security concerns, the Department of Homeland Security barred the American Red Cross from entering New Orleans with food.”
and adding from your link:
“The federal government became even less involved in natural disaster relief after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when FEMA’s mission was shifted toward responding to terrorist attacks. In 2002, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA — which Clinton had elevated to a Cabinet-level agency — was made one department in the massive bureaucracy. As a result, although George W. Bush has a nickname for FEMA director Brown (“Brownie”), Brown enjoys far less clout under Bush than Witt enjoyed under Clinton, which Haddow says is an “incalculable loss of influence” for FEMA.”
I could go on quite a long bit about the push to centralize control here, but I won’t. We’ve seen very much at the uni level.
The odd thing is that Nc/ga are swings. Why not declare nat’l emergency? Unlimited funds? If congress needs to act, get them to dc. And fab opportunity for Kamala to move to Nc and ‘take charge’ of emergency efforts.
Because there is no emergency. It’s all disinformation. Acting as if there is an emergency will be validating them. (I want to add a /s here but I’m not sure if this is in fact what’s going on–national media doesn’t cover the situation much and a lot of PMC don’t seem to be very aware of the situation)
Throw this sucker into the witches’ brew of geopolitical events that make up an October surprise soup:
https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-news-army-cuts-road-railway-south-korea-citing-war-danger-1966267
‘Nature is Amazing ☘️
@AMAZlNGNATURE
They definitely thought that its one of them 😂’
First time I have seen a bunch of ostriches suffer from Uncanny Valley Syndrome.
IMO the ostriches were just curious about that animal seemingly alike though almost certainly not recognized as one of them but curiously similar and probably not aggressive. Having not ever had an interaction with such a creature they were trying to learn if it was something to fear or not. Yet we tend to believe the idiot ostriches were totally deceived by the trick.
When we think about megafauna extinctions, I think we should consider the role of children picking off juvenile animals while just goofing around.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/08/politics/us-military-weapons-systems-ukraine/index.html
US military compiled list of American weapons systems that could help Ukraine in the war with Russia
The US military’s top commander in Europe compiled a list of weapons systems the US possesses that could help Ukraine in its fight against Russia that the Biden administration has not yet provided, including air-to-surface missiles and a secure communications network used by NATO.
In an annex attached to a classified report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy that was delivered to Congress early last month, Gen. Chris Cavoli outlined a list of US capabilities that could help the Ukrainian military fight more effectively, according to people familiar with the report.
The list included the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a type of air-launched cruise missile, and a communications system known as the Link 16 — a data sharing network used by the US and NATO that is supposed to enable more seamless communication between battle systems and is particularly useful for air and missile defense command and control. Ukraine has asked for both systems repeatedly, another source familiar with their requests said.
Given the “many, many” fighters Ukraine has there to operate and the “low” risk of those very few remaining being destroyed, it is almost certain that those air-launched cruise missiles + Link 16 will be the the final wonder weapon that will change the course of the war. /s
Scrapping the bottom here to keep the Narrative alive?
OK, you can supply radios to transmit/receive Link 16, but the data carried over the link is spec’ed as TADIL J and you need your weapons or command and control systems able to process that, or get some sort of translator to convert TADIL J into whatever formats you need for your existing systems. Also the radios need the right electrical interface to the existing equipment. In my day it was MIL-STD-1397. Probably they have moved on from that by now. We would spend a lot of time / money on interoperability testing to make sure all these systems could “talk” to each other.
Not to say some enterprising soldiers/airmen couldn’t cobble something together the engineers would never have thought of.
Can they integrate Link 16 to the situation in Ukrainian military, where they are using mishmash of gear from, well, everywhere? The lack of interoperability between NATO gear and old Soviet style gear (and the training/exp to go with them) was a major problem from the beginning of NATO supplying heavy gear to Ukraine, IIRC.
You’ve got to be f**king kidding me. Sanders in Kamala Harris Struggling to Break Through With Working Class, Democrats Fear:
(bold mine)
Harris refused to override the Senate Parliamentarian on raising the federal minimum wage, why would she do that now? Sanders was — double checking — in the US Senate at that time, and knows this.
And speaking of creating a political movement. LOL. Wasn’t there someone that ran for president in 2016, someone that said we needed to build a movement, and created said movement, and then… did nothing with it.
Sanders, my dude, go away please.
Never has the LOL quip been more appropriate. How much mulah does Harris’s husband have? Give me the answer Bernie and I’ll send you a box of Kamala genocide chocolates.
The Democratic Party thinking that Sanders still has any credibility with the left that they can parlay into votes for Harris is further evidence of how completely out of touch they are with voters, imo.
The Democratic Party thinking that Sanders still has any credibility with the left that they can parlay
Projection is the operative word. Harris is the “vibes” candidate, and that is how neoliberals and MSDNC wine moms see politics. They have a limited capacity to comprehend Sanders former support was the byproduct of calling for policies. Famously, Gloria Steinem called young women for Sanders “boy crazy” because she can’t conceive people actually care about things like Iraq War support.
Sanders is openly telling Harris she needs to lie, and the DNC is basically going “we have vibes” because they are the idiot off spring of the rise of the Third Way.
“created said movement, and then… did nothing with it.”
Is there any written chronology of these events?
People in Germany are living on the Moon in this regard but articles can at least make a point.
(You cannot imagine how low the level of competence is around here.)
I am seeing very few yard signs and most of those pertain to local issues like Measure J which will ban CAFO operations or for local candidates..
There are some, however it is about 10% of the number I saw in 2016.
As to Harris and her Glock, this is a woman who has an inflated idea of how important she is and who ( Look at the turnover in her staff ) has major issues with rage.
Not a good combination.
Firearms are inherently dangerous tools, perfectly safe in the hands of responsible adults who follow the 4 rules of firearms safety and very dangerous to anyone within range ( Which can be a mile or more ) in the hands of the irresponsible.
CAFO operations? There’s a local fight here over banning slaughterhouses. There is some CT speculation on r/Denver that the “vegetarian activists” who got the measure on the ballot are part of a national effort.
Sal (What Is Going On With Shipping) provides a maritime and infrastructure look at Tampa pre Milton:
Port of Tampa Evacuated | Tankers Offload Fuel | Jones Act Waiver | Time to Mobilize Maritime Assets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os9TJgpoNms
Long but full of info. Discusses bringing in cruise liners for housing, food, etc. Wow, good idea, first time I’ve heard of a real use for those things.
Is Dublin Review of Books still as Russophobic as they appeared last time I checked 2022?
The stuff I read then ruined the outlet for me.
It does have a very Encounter feel – https://www.artandpopularculture.com/Encounter_(magazine)
I love this title from the NYT: “Book Raises Unverified Claims About Trump’s Ties to Putin”. If they’re “unverified” why print it????
Actually, I’ll bet it’s about as complete and revealing as the recent NYT bestseller “The Achievements of Kamala Harris”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/opinion/jack-smith-trump-biden.html
October 9, 2024
Jack Smith Owes Us an Explanation
By Jack Goldsmith
Last week a judge unsealed a 165-page legal brief with damaging new revelations about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The revelations have been widely discussed and debated — but the timing of the release should receive more scrutiny, because the Department of Justice should not have allowed the information to be disclosed so close to Election Day. This event is the latest of many examples of Biden administration officials paying insufficient public attention to executive branch rules that are designed to ensure that prosecutions are, in appearance and reality, conducted fairly and apolitically.
The special counsel Jack Smith’s two prosecutions against Mr. Trump — for election resistance and for misappropriating and mishandling classified documents — are the first against a former president. They are also the first by an executive branch whose top officials — once Joe Biden, and now Kamala Harris — have been running for president against the target of the administration’s prosecution. It is much more vital in this context than ever before for the executive branch to take scrupulous care to assure the public that the prosecutions are conducted in compliance with pertinent rules.
On this score, Mr. Smith has failed….
Jack Goldsmith is a law professor at Harvard.
The entire liberal media industrial complex is all hands on deck TDS … it’s sickening.
Re: Hurricane Helene is America’s Chernobyl Moment
I am sympathetic to the author’s point, but equating the 1986 USSR’s exhausted “Marxism” with the 2024 US’s hollow “patriotism” is a wild pitch.
The American version of the USSR’s politburo is a capitalist cult. I’ve had enough of political critics and observers veering away at the last minute from engaging in a class-based analysis of the lived reality of the people who live in the United States.
Good point. Few western writers are free of the knee-jerk ‘compare everything bad to the commies’, while ignoring the illicit and fraudulent and malevolent financier class that has run us all in the ditch with their greed and stupidity and endless wars.
” It’s actually remarkable that Russia is merely sticking to its guns given Kursk.”
But what’s the strategic value of Kursk? None at all. Russia’s using its lowest-tier troops to contain the offensive. Ukraine’s still on schedule to lose several of its most important fortresses in Donbass.
Russia can afford to play ‘cat-and-mouse’ insofar as Kursk goes.
Re. Ritter
The “gun device” is the method used to initiate the reaction, not the delivery device. Two sub-critical fissile pits are placed on the opposite ends of a tube and one is fired towards the other to set the thing off. The alternative is a crushed sphere, which it a lot more difficult to manufacture and requires more testing than the gun design.