Airlines cancel Bali flights after volcano spews ash miles into the sky Al Jazeera
Climate
COP29: No clear signs of peak for fossil fuel CO2 emissions, say scientists S&P Global
COP29: Pay up or face climate-led disaster for humanity, warns UN chief Business Standard
Oil and gas are a ‘gift of God’, says COP29 host BBC
Does Exxon fear the collapse of the CCS house of cards? Bud’s Offshore Energy
* * * Time to freak out? How the existential terror of hurricanes can fuel climate change denial The Conversation
Syndemics
USDA Announces 5 New HPAI H5 Poultry Outbreaks Affecting 2.5 Million Birds Avian Flu Diary
China?
China arms itself for potential trade war with Donald Trump FT. Commentary:
Interesting that Mearsheimer, a longtime proponent of containing China (and, IMHO, very wrong about this), believes we're now well past the point of no return.
He says that "the US cannot do much at this point to slow down Chinese economic growth" and that he "would bet that the… pic.twitter.com/KsYvuq39Os
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 10, 2024
China’s luxury market loses shine as Bain study shows spending decline South China Morning Post
The sheer scale of it:
It started out 2 Fridays ago as a meme,
last Friday it became a movement (now with detractors). Apparently around 600,000-400,000 people from all over China on Friday and Saturday night (Oct 8 and 9) came to Zhengzhou and sharebiked from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng to… (a thread) https://t.co/yIGEV7rWvT pic.twitter.com/SwrNnHKd6F— JR Urbane Network (@JRUrbaneNetwork) November 10, 2024
Gravity’s Eastern Voyage The Royal Society
Poverty a Dead Political Issue in Increasingly Divided Japanese Society Nippon.com
Malaysia to protest to Philippines over its new maritime laws Reuters. China, too. Commentary:
This is hugely important and no-one is paying attention.
Philippines President Marcos Jr. just signed 2 new bills (the "Maritime Zones Act" and the "Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act"), backed by the U.S. State Department (via a press release by the infamous Matthew Miller:… pic.twitter.com/dWNE6jorIq
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 9, 2024
Myanmar
Unions file complaints over Myanmar garment production Channel News Asia
The Koreas
A World Without Men: Inside South Korea’s 4B Movement New York Magazine
Pop hit APT too distracting for S Korea’s exam-stressed students BBC
India
Can India benefit from Trump’s bid to end the Russia-Ukraine war? South China Morning Post
India’s import dependence on key pharma ingredients may reduce by half Business Standard
India shows all the signs of a failed middle-income country — first face them to fix things Economic Times
Syraqistan
Israeli army tells residents south of Beirut to evacuate ahead of attack Anadolu Agency
Two Weeks in Beirut Craig Murray
* * * Only Netanyahu Could Have Chosen a Cushier Trump Foreign Policy Team
UN nuclear chief in Iran to ‘reach diplomatic solutions’ Channel News Asia
* * * Zionists in Amsterdam Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
European Disunion
EU must take its destiny into its own hands after Trump’s election – EU chief diplomat Borrell Ukrainska Pravda
Europe’s richest man Bernard Arnault is suing X owner Elon Musk Fortune
Dear Old Blighty
Britain must treat tech giants like nation states, minister warns The Times
New Not-So-Cold War
Captain Ajax: Let’s be realistic – we’re fighting with sticks and stones. It all comes down to numbers Ukrainska Pravda
Ukraine’s bonds jump as investors bet Trump will end war FT
Europe Can Take Over America’s Role in Ukraine Foreign Policy
* * * Let’s Make a Deep State Peace Deal WSJ
Fourth Estate Begins Conditioning Ground for Removal of Defiant Zelensky China, Simplicius the Thinker
* * * Corruption looms over Ukraine’s massive reconstruction effort France24
Ukrainian railways report extensive damage due to war Ukrainska Pravda
* * * The View from Moscow The Nation
Russia’s economy is tougher than it looks, no chance of a crisis in the next 3-5 years – CASE BNE Intellinews
South of the Border
Putin Approves Supply of 80,000 Tons of Fuel to Cuba Resumen
How Naval Interdiction Could Help Curb Haiti’s Gangs War on the Rocks
Peru’s Chancay mega port to become Latin America’s gateway to Asia CGTN
Trump Transition
What’s DOGE? Musk’s new political appointment under Trump is a crypto joke TechCrunch. Commentary:
Here’s a key point about our mission at DOGE: eliminating bureaucratic regulations isn’t a mere policy preference. It’s a legal *mandate* from the U.S. Supreme Court:
– West Virginia v. EPA (2022) held that agencies cannot decide major questions of economic or political…— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 13, 2024
House spending leaders on Musk plan: We’ll see Politico
* * * ‘Trump opens Gaetz of hell’ with attorney general pick France24
Fetterman rips Gaetz pick: ‘God tier kind of trolling just to trigger a meltdown’ FOX
* * * All the Big Tech leaders congratulating Donald Trump The Verge
2024
GOP holds onto House majority — clinching the trifecta Politico
Abortion Closed Form
Dealignment New Left Review
Democrats en Déshabillé
Do-list:
Confirm the NLRB; fill judicial vacancies; confirm Lina Khan. Democrats are useless. https://t.co/xunkxMktIq
— Greg (@GregGrandin) November 13, 2024
Digital Watch
Apple Quietly Introduced iPhone Reboot Code Which is Locking Out Cops 404 Media
The Final Frontier
Read the chilling testimony of Navy veteran due to testify on UFO cover up: ‘We’re being visited’ Daily Mail
This Black Hole Is Eating So Much Matter that It Defies Known Science 404 Media
Zeitgeist Watch
Poetry Nook
Auden’s Island The Hedgehog Review
Imperial Collapse Watch
“He gets on base”:
Admiral: "We need to replace our fleet with three more carrier strike groups and fifteen guided missile destroyers."
Palmer: "No, we need to replace it in the aggregate."
Admiral: "The what?"
Palmer: "One carrier is a target. A thousand autonomous vessels are a nightmare." pic.twitter.com/273iFy5he4
— Patrick Blumenthal (@PatrickJBlum) November 8, 2024
Class Warfare
Viewpoint: To Unify the Working Class, Put Workers First Labor Notes
The problem is the nation-state Crooked Timber
Unions walk away from US East Coast ports contract negotiations Seatrade Maritime
When You Cross Pinochet With a Cyberpunk Dystopia… The Anarchist Library. Freedom zones.
Some Preliminary Considerations on Legal Personhood for Nonhuman and Future Entities (PDF) Graz Law Working Paper No. 09-2024
Antidote du jour (H. Zell):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
172 comments
Comments are closed.
THE SETTLERS COME
(melody borrowed from Your Time Will Come by Amy McDonald)
Oh, the violence is growing, all our options have been weighed
Our world has turned bottom up and we are all afraid
They come while we are sleeping and they shout we’re next in line
Different settlers come at noon and say we’re out of time
Each day the settlers come with clubs and knives and guns
If we had rifles, too, we’d do what you’d do
This house we’re driven from, where we have raised our sons
Goes to whichever Jew who’s next in the queue
(musical interlude)
Both our goat sheds have been fired, neither one was by mistake
Raw thoughts of vengeance come to mind—how much must we take?
They say we have to toe the line, that we are out of time
There will be no review—as soldiers join their crew
Each day the settlers come with clubs and knives and guns
If we had rifles, too, we’d do what you’d do
This house we’re driven from, where we have raised our sons
Goes to whichever Jew who’s next in the queue
Each day the settlers come with clubs and knives and guns
If we had rifles, too, we’d do what you’d do
This house we’re driven from, where we have raised our sons
Goes to whichever Jew who’s next in the queue
‘Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Interesting that Mearsheimer, a longtime proponent of containing China (and, IMHO, very wrong about this), believes we’re now well past the point of no return.’
Mearsheimer is right here and you only have to look at Europe to see one example of this at work. The economies of the EU have wrecked themselves trying to break the Russian economy and it has been said that Europe as an entity is now as irrelevant as it was in the 15th century. The US mostly dodged this bullet by still trading with Russia. But if the US tries to wreck the economy of China through tariffs and trying to sabotage their development, then it will probably mean that the US will wreck their own economy as well and the EU will be in no position to help.
When You Cross Pinochet With a Cyberpunk Dystopia… The Anarchist Library. Freedom zones
“…So we’re talking about a “free market utopia” authorized by a right-wing coup regime, built on land stolen from peasants, with “property rights” created through robbery, and where the majority of the population lives under a system of laws which their employers had the only say in making.”
Sounds familiar.
Yeah, it just gets put together a lot quicker now with all the new tech.
I second that with the the article from BNE Intellinews on the resilience or Russia’s economy, which is not that of a gas station with nukes
Russia’s economy is tougher than it looks, no chance of a crisis in the next 3-5 years – CASE BNE Intellinews
I’m waiting for Russia’s Medvedev to call the US a Walmart with nukes.
Unsure Walmart is the correct analogy; maybe Banks of Wall Street… And don’t forget the must treat tech giants like nation states…
A movie studio with an attached casino. And nukes.
Woke superheroes, fake news, and incessant obnoxious advertising. With usurious loans, asset inflation, and Ponzi scheme type Wall Street speculation backing the whole game up. Plus nuclear bombs and missiles, some of which may even work.
To quote a certain robot, “a theme park with blackjack and nukes”, then?
The US sucks at making movies now, though. All Hollywood does is shoot out recycled comic book garbage, and a lot of that is filmed in Canada. Most of the actual interesting American movies are like low budget indie stuff these days, and plenty of other countries do those kinds of films too, usually better than us.
It sucks from the standpoint of a viewer expecting quality. It excels from the standpoint of propagating elite fashion preoccupations and cultural norms, along with reinforcing stereotypes, promoting materialism, and generating profits. And it keeps viewers glued to the screen for enough of their “free” time that they won’t be causing too much trouble in Realityland. I mean, when a once respectable (in my youth) big city newspaper has a front page item about the best commericials aired during the Super Bowl broadcast, and people at work are talking about that subject also, you know that the zombifying apparatus behind movies and television is truly firing on all cylinders.
Was watching a video about this subject. They were talking about how people used to sit down to watch the Oscars and were really wrapped up in that event. Now? Nobody cares and the ratings for the Oscars continues to fall off a cliff. You used to have big stars like Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis that would guarantee people flocking to see their films. Now? Not many people can do that anymore. Social media allowed movie stars to interact with fans and the results were not good as people found that they were too often self-entitled jerks. That is why all those “celebrity endorsements” did zip this past election. Few cared what they thought. Studios continue to bleed money as they refuse to make movies that people want to watch but make movies that they think that people should watch -and losing money by the hundreds of millions with each big film. Hollywood is dying and maybe that it is a good thing as it will clear the way for a lot of creative indie films.
Oopsie. My post was not meant as reply.
Rev Kev: In the past several weeks, I have read more than one detailed interview of Mearsheimer in Italian newspapers. Fatto Quotidiano seems to go to him regularly for insights and advice on dealing with current American manias. He has also been in La Stampa, which, as the mouthpiece of the Piedmontese alta borghesia, is less hospitable editorially.
From reading these interviews, especially something that Mearsheimer wrote on 3 November, his stance has evolved to telling Europeans to distance themselves from Anglo-America. He is acutely aware of how the Germans are wrecking their own economy by cutting off Russian natural resources (Nord Stream, especially). I suspect that all of the recent “de-risk” talk, which seems to come mainly out of Germany, is also highly suspect. It is on the same level of bullshit as Baerbock’s “feminist foreign policy.”
As you write, “But if the US tries to wreck the economy of China through tariffs and trying to sabotage their development, then it will probably mean that the US will wreck their own economy as well and the EU will be in no position to help.”
The EU, ever subservient, is already wresting with the Chinese over electric cars and tariffs. Yet, somehow, the Italians want the Chinese to manufacture electric cars in Italy. Heck, FIAT is a shell of what it once was — there’s plenty of real estate available.
Sanctions? What could p-p-p-possibly go wrong?
Thanks for keeping us posted on expansions in the universe of discourse over there. Lets hope Euroelites can’t turn him into an interesting dissident oddity, like they did when Alexander Cockburn would be given some room in the Wall Street Journal. The situation are so different, the current crisis is so acute, I doubt that they can.
For the sake of the world, for peace, for prosperity, for an end to the endless wars, end of captured media, bullshit propaganda and bullshit politics, end of corruption, for its own sake even, the US needs to wreck its own economy. And Trump is just the man for the job, and indeed he seems to be stacking his team with precisely the folks for the task at hand.
Needed $423 worth of stuff at Home Depot and i’m always curious where things are made, and every last item I bought yesterday came from China.
It’d be tantamount to most non food consumer goods in the UK in the late 1930’s coming from Germany, if we were to compare looming war potential…
By the way, there’s still over 2 months left for
Four More Wars!
The ruling class spent two centuries building the American industrial base and forty years shipping it overseas. The first gave us an empire, the second is unmaking it. I guess we need to have another century rebuilding it before we can have a war with China.
A good part of those centuries was spent getting populations to accept an industrialized society. Would as much sweat be needed to do that now?
It was not just the massive factories like Ford’s or GM. It was all the small and medium manufacturers that once were in just about towns and cities making everything. It was not just monotonous, brain breaking assembly work.
Don’t forget that a goal of the colonies and states was the ability to make their own nails, which under the economic system of mercantilism was discouraged by the British; the United States went from there to Boeing. I wonder how many of own nails do we still make?
Why not outsource the war to Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan and Australia? Problem solved.
Who needs Home Depot (or Bunnings*)? I increasingly cut out the middleman, and buy the things I need on eBay or Temu. Free shipping and 1 – 2 weeks delivery. What’s not to like?
*Australia’s box box DIY retailer.
When WW1 broke out, the British Army discovered too late that all of the suppliers of dye for its uniforms were German!
Not being sufficiently prepared never stopped the tomfoolery that leads to global war.
Dye for uniforms, and also the royal family.
Vickers shell fuses were produced on license from Krupp. I forget how much Vickers assessed they owed to Germany, but it was a significant amount for every dead German soldier.
IIRC, the first modern country of origin legislation was in UK in the late 19th century as Germany was industrialising. Surely if it was clear what was made in Britain, nobody would buy inferior German knock-offs?
>The problem is the nation-state Crooked Timber
The underlying problem is nationalism and the organization of the world into nation states, a form of organization that fosters and promotes nationalist sentiment and attachment and downplays transnational concern and solidarity…
Not sure I agree. I’ve been studying the transmogrification of the Venetian>British Empire>American Imperialism and I see that the transnational interest of the Imperium does not necessarily have its abode in the “nation state.” Rather it has interest that transcend the nation state. The article praises transnational institutions that we have such as the United Nations, but if anything what the ongoing genocide in Gaza demonstrates is that these “transnational institutions” are powerless in the face of the transnational hegemon. As Philip K. Dick in VALIS chants over and over, “The empire never ended.”
More likely the problem is how can the nation state exist as an autonomous entity in what some refer to as an emerging technostructure, or techno-feudalistic world. How can a nation state preserve itself from the encroachment from larger more powerful neighbors.
Thank you for this, Zagonstra.
Yeah, the article is a bunch of blah when one considers the other story also in links today:
Britain must treat tech giants like nation states, minister warns – The Times
Corporate giants as nations? Might work if that removed all current and future Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) and any investor complaint would instead be referred to the UN where some non-binding resolutions could be voted on.
I still can’t figure out why even one nation would see ISDS as a benefit but yet ISDS still appear in trade-treaties.
Because the actual rulers of those nations, the actual persons who do the trade-treaty engineering and negotiating, personally themselves believe in ISDS. They don’t personally care what their subject victims who make up the population of the nations they rule may think about ISDS.
Sometimes those victim-populations can MAKE them care. Or at least make them suffer for not caring. As when I and others voted for Trump in 2016 in part to prevent the Clintonite erstwhile-rulers from forcing yet another ISDS upon their subject nation, and upon We the Subjects. The worm turned in 2016.
The two are completely compatible. On one hand, down with the nation-state, because it has governments which might be responsive to their constituencies. On the other hand, up with the corporation, because it has no democratic features at all. What’s not to like if you’re a diehard neoliberal?
That minister seems blissfully ignorant of British history. The British East India company (argueably the first giant multinational corporation) at its height ran much of India and Singapore, with a private army larger than Englands own armies yet it formed the basis of the British Empire, not a separate nation state.
But that was back when the Boston Tea Party and the Sons of Liberty was a terrorist act by a terrorist organization against unjust rule by that same corporation.
So maybe he’d just as soon gloss over that bit of history.
Articles like this on the “left” are extremely irritating. There is no indication whatsoever that the author understands how “internationalism” has been used for the benefit of global capital. A transnational “globalism” that extends the Socialist International to all nations is a nice dream. The historical reality has been much different. “Nationalism” has been the reaction of the masses to an international system that is leaving them behind and, indeed, gradually gutting the protections provided by social-democratic nation-states. Moreover, the *promise* (if not the reality) of the UN was not to create a transnational global government, but rather to provide a mechanism for maintaining peace through multinational diplomacy, dialogue, and negotiation among autonomous nations. That is why Russia, for example, keeps calling for the “multilateralism” represented by the UN Charter – and why we ignore it.
Just take a look at the EU. In my naive student days I tended to see it as a model of the type of trans-national governance that would bring socialism and security to its member nations. The actual history has been, uh, a bit different. That people would respond by supporting right-wing “nationalists” reflects the success such “globalists” have had in destroying any real alternative on the left. People like Bertram who mystify this history are part of the problem. At least he acknowledges that he “is not full of clever solutions.”
(From th UN Charter, Article 2)
1: The Organization is based on the sovereign equality of all its Members.
This reminded me of Aurelian’s essays, particularly “It’s not fair.” (May 4 2022). “Liberalism, like Christianity, has always had a powerful normative, messianic urge. The world must be converted and remodelled, and heresy must be fought wherever it may be found. Missionaries wanted to save souls: liberals want to save whole communities.”
I will not suggest that Chris Bertram identifies as Liberal; I will suggest the Saviour impulse is the same, as are the emotional imperatives. If only (Compassionate Imperative) governed the world, all the ‘mass death outside our gated nations’ could be stopped. So forth.
When Bertram writes that “rubes” rejected “normal sensible politics” to elect “an oaf”, I wonder what these normal, sensible politics are. Details, please.
Incidentally, the same national borders that the writer condemns protected my Dutch ancestors from the gruesome waste of that war because the Netherlands remained neutral, taking in millions of refugees in the process. Would Bertram condemn this ‘national selfishness’ as well? He wouldn’t be the first; the Dutch were widely accused of selfishness during and after the war, even as neutrality saved thousands upon thousands of lives.
Bertram cites the EU as an endangered form of enlightened governance (it has been ‘subverted’), suggesting this entire piece might be satire.
Denying people their sovereignty comes with profound implications, ones that many writers and thinkers – neoliberal or not – seem unable to grasp. Considering these beliefs appear to be reflected in institutions like the EU, I find this disturbing.
When Bertram writes that “rubes” rejected “normal sensible politics” to elect “an oaf”, I wonder what these normal, sensible politics are. Details, please.
Bertram has long been an advocate of open borders in its most extreme model. So he’s consistent, at least.
That the imposition of this model of open borders would mean the end of any kind of welfare state anywhere and the total precaritization of working populations everywhere is a reality he has arrogantly and condescendingly brushed aside, as if anyone who raises such a point is a churlish peasant.
Say what you will about neoliberalism and market ideology, but it is at least a structured ethos and operational plan of action. Disastrous, sure, but for an elite of winners, it has some correspondence to reality.
Bertram has less to offer than even that.
I must admit that I detest Crooked Timber because it seems as if it’s contributors and commentators are, for the most part, as thick as two short planks separated by a double wall of Accrington brick.
Bertram’s rant has actually, for once, produced some reasonably intelligent responses, but I did feel forced to make a contribution to the semi-realistic commentaries, which I offer to the rather more more adult and rational readers of NC:
Only rarely are there solutions to non-existent, totally stupid “problems” created by obtuse minorities within the electorates of “nation states”, most members of which believe that they have obligations to the state and the state has obligations to them which are unique to citizens of that state, and no other. This is the way of the world and, whenever we attempt to univeralise pretentious quasi-philosophical bullshit, people die and the “liberal democrats” stroll away leaving footprints of children’s blood in their wake.
Both the nation state and democracy are targets of neoliberal ideology. Only trade should be free along with free movement of capital [Chk out Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism]
Considerations of human rights and worker solidarity get in the way.
The UN’s impotence owes to neoliberalism’s attack on the nation state and democracy: one nation, one vote is an expression of both.
Immigration has militated against ethnic dominance, at least in the US. The US is now but 58% white (non-Hispanic/Latino) compared to 75% in 2000.
The prominence of the nation state (think Westphalia) has been eroded by neoliberalism. That erosion would appear to be the source of considerable conflict. Conflict is almost always a result of tensions among elites struggling for dominance; they rile and enlist the untermenschen partly out of necessity and partly for cover. The endless wars are the products of elites struggling for dominance, over markets and over one another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuBe93FMiJc&ab_channel=GartWilliams/
Ned Beatty’s NETWORK speech-by Paddy Chayefsky
This gets posted around here from time to time…
Good thoughts. Thank you. I would suggest we think about the Imperium as distinct and different than any of the Nation States. The “HomeLand” is as much a vassal state as any of the others.
Thus, the election of a National Leader in an attempt to affect the course of The Imperium is dependent on that Leader’s ability to transcend the National and operate at the Imperial level. This has been my take on matters in the US for some time.
Yes, the Empire is not the US. The Empire is supranational (Virtual Country X), but the biggest contingent of its ruling class plus their top-level servants reside in the United States, with many of the rest in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. And in a smattering in the other original NATO countries plus the non-European Anglosphere. As seen by the way European countries are destroying their economies to serve the Empire, and by the way the US is slowly immiserating the vast majority of its population, the Empire’s upper echelon have no real loyalty to their own countries or to the ordinary people in those countries.
Groupings are important–you can’t have an international state because you have cultures that are thousands of years old that share a mythological framework that brings meaning to people’s lives as only those kind of frameworks can do. There is a mistaken idea that “science” can bring people together because all things can be answered by science–that is simply untrue for many reasons. We have wars because we have contrasting mythical frameworks not because nation-states are “bad. This is a subject that is addressed by the Russian philosopher A. Dugin whose books are difficult to find in the West.
Dugin’s books may be hard to find, but his name, which rang no bells for me, is productively Googleable.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Russian+philosopher+A.+Dugin
First thing I noticed when I landed on that summary page — after “Oh, that guy!!” — were his attributed influences: Julius Evola, Joseph Stalin, and Martin Heidegger, plus credit as a founder of a National Bolshevik Party. I sense he embodies contradictions, catnip for me. Will pursue.
I’m not a political economist, but doesn’t having numerous (semi-)autonomous nation states act as a multinational corporate power sink simply by requiring these massive entities to devote resources to dealing with each one? In other words, makes the principle of mass (what might be a multinational company’s biggest advantage) difficult to wield effectively?
I don’t agree either. There were all kinds of disputes and wars long before Europeans decided to draw lines on a map.
Re: Trump Transition: Is it my imagination, or has the list of potential appointments come quite rapidly? I don’t remember prior new administrations having their slate of nominees ready this quickly (or is it because he was re-elected?). Any pointers to some sort of comparative analysis would be appreciated!
Trump getting his team set up already may mean that when he is sworn in as President, that he wants to hit the ground running. Expect a lot off changes and announcements in the first one hundred days in his own shock and awe campaign.
a gish gallop of recess appointments, and if the appointees get themselves ensconced quickly enough, harder to remove.
we are entering even crazier times.
but its the first cold day, here…and i migrated the chickens across the road for winter yesterday…50 chickens kicked my butt,lol.
fixin to clip everybody’s right wing, in a symbolic act…for to keep them confined in the big run, to make my evening roundup simpler, and at a time of my choosing.
ie: chop wood;carry water…because everything on high is still well up in the air.
we wont really know what the hell is going on until at least march, I reckon.
T named Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. From Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/11/13/what-to-know-about-tulsi-gabbard-former-democrat-named-trumps-director-of-national-intelligence/
per wiki:
The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Community (IC) and to direct and oversee the National Intelligence Program (NIP). All IC agencies report directly to the DNI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence
That’s god to know. Within the US bureaucracy it will be very difficult to “clean house”. I don’t expect massive changes, so one or two will be wonderful. This is a wonderful choice. I’m happy about Gaetz too, especially because of his grilling (and hopefully future imprisonment) of Fauchi. The others, debatable.
re: Tulsi(Amfortas swoons embarrassingly…):
Scott Ritter seems sanguine:
https://x.com/RealScottRitter/status/1857047654703747244
I can’t tell if Tulsi Gabbard for DNI is a good or bad thing. Good as in someone with a conscience overseeing morally depraved three letter agencies that are out of control. The bad could be would this move shut her up, keep her silent?
It may silence her in public as is her duty. Once you serve in gov’t the tradition is to not speak in public against the administration’s policy. A senior gov’t official like the DNI can be as scathingly honest in consultation with other leaders and the POTUS as she wants. So don’t count on a public Tulsi–her job is going to be enormous and highly critical if Trump is indeed sold on reforming the Deep State. That she accepted this job is an act of sheer courage.
I remember hearing about how when the Republican Majority Senate wanted to prevent a recent DemParty President ( I forget which one) from making any recess appointments, McConnell had the Senate stay “in session” without any recess at all by having one Senator per day be physically present in the Senate for that entire day, declaring the Senate to be open pro forma for that entire day. Day after day. No recess–no recess appointments.
They could do that to prevent Trump from having any recess to be able to make any recess appointments during. Of course Trump could say that the Senate was in functional recess so far as Trump is concerned and he will make his recess appointments anyway, and let the Senate sue if the Senate doesn’t like it.
Or he could simply make every nominee “Acting”.
He is hooked by the 2025 Mandate for Leadership.
It is time to see if trump is wearing any clothes when he parades …..
He will only put people in that have suited him up in the finest material that only the highest quality people can see. the people willing to stick their heads up his nether regions)
I think the guy will parade buck naked — a visual that is sure to find me praying at the porcelain throne.
After the DOGE announcement I’m waiting for DJT to come out on stage with a chainsaw at his next speaking event.
Been there-Dunlap
Never happen. Gimmicky chainsaw stunts are for people with stupid haircuts like Javier Milei or Boris Johnstone. DJT’s hair is far too neat. :)
He will come out with weed whacker, and matching outfit. He loves the outfits.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to purge BoJo’s lovely locks from my mind.
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/celebrity-news/boris-johnson-s-hair-history-3131
Now that would be entertaining
Still not sure what this is. From one angle it looks like Trump, who may know a thing or two about Trophy Wives and Fail Sons, has set up a “business” so Musk can feel busy and important and be kept out of the way. Possibly also a platform to yap about braindead political points.
Cleverish on the meme name, if that was deliberate.
Musk has Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter to keep him busy already. He hardly needs Trump to give him a new hobby.
It’s presumably to try to give some legitimacy and profile to this cost cutting campaign. But unless Musk and Vivek get very big staffs, I don’t see how this goes anywhere. Having worked with internal records of merely meaningful sized units in big enterprises, learning your way around them alone is a big task.
I’d ask how much time he really devotes to those interests as one could have made that argument before he purchased Twitter.
As a long time Musk critic, I’ve seen this time and time again. He is very good a looking busy but is usually a detriment to whatever he touches. Tesla only survived due to government handouts and EV credits which he sold at high cost to other automakers. SpaceX is largely run by Gwynne Shotwell. And Twitter? It’s a dumpster fire.
In any case, I do agree with your overall take that this is unlikely to go anywhere, not only for the reasons you stated but also because Musk is involved. It’s almost guaranteed to go sideways.
urdsama\; And Twitter? It’s a dumpster fire.
Not necessarily. What if Musk’s long-term plan is to bundle X/Twitter with Starlink? And then, maybe, throw in AI services?
Farfetched? If so, why did Musk change the name to X?
Currently, Starlink has over 4 million global subscribers, a substantial percentage of which are residential, and it’s growing fast and it can’t be throttled easily by national governments via jamming. (It’s been tried in Ukraine.)
So in that context X could make quite a bit of sense.
What Mr Musk would like to do and what he will be allowed to do is the problem. The actions of Mr Melei on taking over Argentina and Mr Musk on taking over Twitter were very similar.
Rip about 40% of the costs out and let the cards fall where they may. Sort it out later, it is the only way to bypass all the entrenched interests, don’t give them time to organise against real change.
Can’t see Congress tightening the purse strings that much although $2 trillion is about 40% of US gov. spend.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doge-hiring-staff-how-to-apply-2024-11?op=1/
It’s hilarious.
DJT needs more drama than that. Maybe one of Musk’s flamethrowers? Then he could dress up in one of the new space force outfits and announce he was adding some space aliens to his team as well.
I read the chieff of staff is a fearsom woman…
Unlike Democrats, Trump learned something from 2016.
That landslide.
Well, no, + just to adjust perceptions. It was no landslide. The Electoral College tends to magnify the results of the majority. So it is a decisive win for Trump in the Electoral College, but the popular vote will be close, once California bestirs itself and finishes the count.
On 3 November 2024, Fatto Quotidiano predicted the U.S. presidential race as 49.6 percent for Trump and 48.2 percent for Harris. The numbers came from Atlas Intel, a polling outfit that seems to be based in Brasil, and that also seems to be thorough and careful with polling results.
Here is a link to a PDF of the final pre-election poll.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20241102_US_AtlasIntel.pdf
Note that in the sample, those making 100,000 USD plus are overrepresented, as are those with college degrees, and women. Blacks are underrepresented. Yet Atlas must have some very good body English in use to re-weight the sample.
Every indication is that their results are correct. They also predicted that Trump would take all swing states, also reported on 3 November by FQ.
You can imagine that I took notice.
As for you, if you do go into the PDF, take a look at the graphs of approval and performance of Biden. Wowsers. Horrible / bad at 50 percent? That sure explains a lot. (More than the simpering I am witnessing on BookFace of white liberals, “They hate us because we’re beautiful.” I hate ta break it to ya, dollface, but no.)
Gil Scott Heron isn’t being quoted as much as one would expect. Or maybe I’m not traveling in the right circles. Or maybe the concept of a B Movie is out of date.
Oh to be on TikTok and mash up that nonsense about the “flawless campaign” with “this ain’t really your life, ain’t really our life, ain’t really nothing but a movie.”
Start a war with Iran and we will have peak CO2 emissions.
War emissions – no problem. Animal farts, however….
Europe Can Take Over America’s Role in Ukraine Foreign Policy
So according to this Paul Hockenos based in Berlin, scrapping the European barrel will be enough to “assume America’s role in Ukraine”. Fantastic! I mean this is pure neocon fantasy again and again. Does not merit going into the details of it. IMO it will only risk (more) discontent and European disunion for nothing. If the fate of Ukraine is on inept von der Leyen’s and Kallas’ shoulders, Mearsheimer’s “primrose path” will be certain.
Ursula and Kallas are at the “Great Game” slots machine playing with other people’s lives and money.
after all these losses, they are bound to hit a winner. amirite??!!
Some Preliminary Considerations on Legal Personhood for Nonhuman and Future Entities (PDF) Graz Law Working Paper No. 09-2024
Utter BS.
If the stupid must happen, let it wait until I’m gone.
My opinion: only entities that can be incarcerated or physically institutionalized can be legal persons. Thus corporations can not be persons (but their boards and executives can be jailed), and neither could fetuses (it would be unjust to imprison the pregnant woman along with the unborn “person” which could not be guilty of anything the woman may have done -“free the fetus” should be the cry of the anti-abortion crowd).
That would cancel Citizens United and much of the legal defense of abortion bans.
This from the paper: “To conclude, anything can be or be made a legal person, or almost anything. ”
To quote Mikel: Utter BS.
Some or all entities listed in the paper could have guardians (as instituted for minors) established, who would have rights and responsibilities toward those entities, and who could be punished if they violated them.
yeah, just like the whole idea of incorporate the womb, and they’ll respect it.
well, incorporate that river, that woodlot, that tribe in the jungle, that pod of whales.
but personhood…well thats insulting to actual persons.
and along these lines…ive said that i finally got mom to put this place in a trust, because thats as far as we can go towards allodial title, short of having our own nukes.
i think that having an easier…as well as more robust…way to remove stuff from The Market(holy) would be a good palliative to the neoliberal catechism’s universalising totalitarianism.
thats what i wanted from a trust…this place cant be used as collateral, nor to satisfy my or my boys’ creditors, should any arise.
add in a warding spell against eminent domain, and i’ll be satisfied.
>Zionists in Amsterdam Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
…Western print and broadcast media purposefully falsified all representations of these events to turn reality upside down: Wall-to-wall, the criminals became the innocents in the news accounts, the victimizers became victims, and the victims became condemnable, anti–Semitic menaces to human decency…Mainstream media across the Western world, as has now been well-exposed, have made an ungodly mess of their coverage of the Amsterdam events — and so of themselves.
Good article. But, the mechanism by which this “falsification” is allowed to occur is not addressed. Is it Zionist ownership and control of the ‘print and broadcast media?” Has fidelity to the truth in reporting always been skewed to represent/prop up the ruling elites? Probably, but the extent of the lies, such as the WaPo reporting of the supposed conversation between Trump and Putin, just discredits these erstwhile “trusted” news sources, such as the NYT. What some call MAM (mainstream alternative media) are also coming under the influence of powerful/monied interest.
The sad fact is that the control over the narrative of events by powerful interest will in time improve. Most are coming to see, as Lawrence points out, that we are being lied to. How is democracy possible in a world where “the formation of men’s attitudes,” subtitle of Jacque Ellul’s book Propaganda? Sad, pessimistic, conclusion is that it can’t.
Yes, media represent, usually, the interests and attitudes of the upper classes. However, at one time those very classes had some loyalty to something beyond or above money as was documented from a historical perspective by Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites. Today, I don’t see that the elites are interested in the rest of us and the editors, producers, and writers work for those elites aren’t going to care either since they usually have mortgages and kids. That’s why alt-media is growing and will gradually take over the information space.
That’s why alt-media is growing and will gradually take over the information space.
I remember in the early days of TubeY the results of a query on a politically sensitive topic or a recent news story were diverse, now the algorithm ranks CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc…at the top and you really have dig to find that alternative voice/view. So, I’m not sure how much longer that “alt-media” space is going to yield any information that isn’t curated/controlled.
I get a lot of alt-media on my YT page. I rarely touch mainstream stuff on YT. For people who still believe the “news” is mainstream, of course they will get all those sites–but if you never click on them the algorithm will eventually “get it” and you’re mainly out of the garbage dump. YT has changed it’s ways a bit since a couple of years ago. As for the search engines–it’s getting there.
Yep. Train Your Algorithm is a thing.
The problem is the nation-state – Crooked Timber
That’s a problem from ideas about ethno-supremacy…not the nation state.
Which reminds me of a famous quote: F the EU.
Britain must treat tech giants like nation states, minister warns – The Times
This weirdo is practically giving the Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) monologue from the movie Network.
That weirdo is the UK secretary of technology and he says: “I’m …dealing with companies which are outspending our entire British state when it comes to investment in innovation. So let’s just act with a bit of sense of humility. We are having to apply a sense of statecraft to working with companies that we’ve in the past reserved for dealing with other states.”
He then names specific R&D amounts and technological area and companies, and he’s factually correct.
For worse and better, these companies are neo-state actors and it’s the beginning of wisdom to recognize that reality. Though, yes, these are neo-state actors don’t have one very significant thing that nation-states have — as yet, anyway — and that is their own militaries and the capability to project military force internationally.
As may be, but giant corporations, perhaps tech in particular, have the financial, commercial power of nation states and their political clout is considerable as well. That concentrated wealth moves governments is not up for debate. Let’s wait and see how it is going to influence the shape of DJT’s term in office and did I not see that Larry Fink said that it mattered little who won the presidency. That bespeaks power.
I am more and more persuaded that the nation state as it existed for the last 100 + years is entering a phase change. The US, for example, is too large to be governed by its constitution and laws so willy-nilly those are changing, reshaping, trying to centralize but beginning to lose control of the ideological periphery. That periphery changes shape to some extent with the alternation of the parties, but the unpopularity of the uniparty is and will continue to see what is characterized as “soft secession.” Take a look at the election results by county. Geographically you see a red ocean sprinkled with blue islands and coastal archipelagoes. Might that translate into some sort of separatism especially as the nation’s finances move ever closer to a crisis point. A change in the world order is beginning. The nation state, or some nation states, may be casualties.
An amazing couple of minutes in EnZed politics…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/nz-parliament-maori-rights-bill-mps-debate-haka-new-zealand
I first visited NZ & Australia in 1981, and the former was so different from the latter, in that Maoris were a quite visible part of NZ society with full acceptance, while I remember having to take the railroad to Redfern in Sydney to catch a glimpse of Aboriginals, I never saw them elsewhere in maybe 5 or 6 trips to Aussie in the 80’s.
It probably boiled down to the Maori fighting the English to a draw in the Maori Wars in the 1840’s and 1860’s-earning their respect, whereas it was a way different story in the not so Lucky Country for the indigenous population.
US Senate GOP members elected Sen. Thune to the GOP leadership spot. Thune was McConnell’s first pick, early on he let everyone know his choice. So Mitch McConnell is still in charge from the backbench. Thune detests T, as do most of the uniparty GOP Senators. T’s real opposition will come from them with Dem help, the uniparty. T comes into office a lame duck, he can’t run for another term. The uniparty knows that and calculates their advantage.
With the punchline being “common ground”, the policy issues T and the blob agree on, and we are not talking single payer, or peace in the Middle East.
>Let’s Make a Deep State Peace Deal – WSJ
Mr. Putin, meanwhile, is spending troops like there’s no tomorrow, which suggests he’s positioning himself for a negotiation.
That’s not the message I get from Scott Ritter and other frequent guest on Judge Napolitano’s podcasts. These commentators say that Russia is proceeding very cautiously, preserving its troops and far from expending them like “there’s no tomorrow.”
Ukraine…needs to be able to repel and deter Russian forces regardless of any formal guarantees it receives in a cease-fire deal.
It’s true of NATO itself. Its guiding ethos needs to become rearmament, with European countries relying less on U.S. nuclear threats than on their own military capacity to fight Russia, as Ukraine has done for the past two years.
The election may have been a repudiation of inflation, but America was going to get a new Ukraine policy no matter who won.
Continue rearming Ukraine? I don’t think that’s going to fly with Russa.
A repudiation of inflation? Is that the only/main reason Biden/Harris was rejected. The forever wars and genocide in Gaza, didn’t sway the electorate at all?
.
Mr. Trump shouldn’t overinterpret his mandate…
No indeed, let the WSJ mis-interpret his mandate for us.
Now he’s back at a pivotal moment in history and they get a second chance to do what they should have done after his first election: help him use his undeniable political talents to get important things done.
Yes let him get things done that he didn’t get done and failed to do in his first election, but I have something different in mind than the WSJ.
I honestly did not know that Ukraine has used it’s own military capacity to fight Russia the past two years. I figured Ukrainian military capacity run out in the summer of 2022, and it has been using everybody else’s capacities and money since.
Regardless, the article doesn’t bother to say with whom Russia could or should negotiate even if it wanted to? It’s forbidden for Zelensky to negotiate, even if somebody somewhere somehow agreed that he indeed is a legal representative of Ukraine (elections, constitution and all that stuff) who can sign agreements.
The West is making a lot of noise that it’s not, no way, no how, part of the war. So naturally it has no say in the negotiations, correct?
And that’s not even touching the issue of total lack of trust between the parties, whatever those parties in the end turn out to be.
Good points. When WSJ says “Ukraine needs to…” it should be understood that there is no independent entity called Ukraine, there is only a proxy that depends on it’s master for its existence.
Craig Murray, Two Weeks in Beirut.
Long and detailed, it is worth your while. It is a travelogue in a still-functioning state that is under siege by foreign invaders. The Lebanese show aplomb. Craig Murray enjoys being Scottish.
Yet it is hard to get around facts like this:
“Driving slowly past the sites, it is immediately apparent these residences are civilian, with corners of settees and beds and kitchen equipment jumbled in the rubble and heart-stopping indications of children, including a bright pink poster of a pony, held down by a dust-filled boot.”
And that is why I voted for Jill Stein.
Any party with Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney in it has no room for me — and no room for morality, is seems. Any party turning to carnival barkers like Vivek “The Brahman” Ramaswamy and Elon “Undesirable Alien” Musk has no room for me. But they all have time for war and for inflicting suffering.
Yes, very interesting article but depressing.
I also took the link in that article to: “Wartime Cafe” EP14
I had no idea right-think was so codified in Europe. Even more depressing. I don’t know — does the US also have laws giving serious jail time for expressing wrong opinions?
Currently the US is focused on the censorship side of the equation.
And that is why I voted for Jill Stein. Ditto. And I’d do it again.
Moi aussi.
fourth that
We are all one percenters! (An exaggeration, she received 1/2 percent)
So… it means we’re special?
Help please: when I try to view Murray’s latest it asks for money, send me to Patreon and demands $20/mo. I’m already subscribed at the £3/mo rate. Any workarounds?
Hmm. Last night when I read the “Two Weeks” article I got to it without seeing a paywall. Trying again now, I see the paywall. That page has a lot of comments from people who should have access but can’t get in. Maybe they made a mistake coding the paywall?
A few comments up, I mentioned a link that was in the article to an interview with Murray. Here is that one, at least…
“Wartime Cafe” EP14: Craig Murray “Repression of Anti-Zionist Voices in the West.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf8uB7jwnoU
The immediately prior column, dated Nov 10, is open. In it he describes the hoops he is being forced to jump through in order to publish from Lebanon. Perhaps between a glitch and a lack of time to devote to operations of the sort needed to fix this, it’s going to be a little while before it’s back. Or we can choose to see CT and y’know, run in circles scream and shout. ;-)
The “Two Weeks” link is back again without the paywall. Must have been some kind of mistake.
I get the impression Murray´s site is permanently targeted by government censorship agencies all over Europe. It´s a scandal and disgrace how they work the online space without absolutely no shame and boundaries. And media are 100% mute over this.
p.s. although the issue with recent article was Craig´s fault
Anyone else getting that Boyd Crowder vibe off Matt Gaetz?
I get more of a Jack Nicholson peering through the door after busting it out with a Pulaski vibe, in The Shining.
Heeeer’s Matty!
I can see that. Gaetz got undiluted crazy shooting out of his eyes.
My ex and Matt are mortal enemies, after the latter gave him a fleet enema in purging Kev from power.
Most all of the name brand positions have been filled, but you know how Trump likes to mix it up, could we see him getting the nod for a consolation prize position, a parting gift?
Ambassador to Austria ( I presume this to be an open position, but not fully certain so there is that ). As long as McCarthy does his best to avoid shenanigans like say a Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber.
“Let’s throw another shrimp on the barbie!”…\sarc
I like that, hard to disagree…instead how about one of them Bennett sons from season 2?
One dude had the messed up leg, I think the oldest son was acting law official…either way the family had a duplicitous nature about them ( cashing draw checks of dead folks for one )…Hard to “trust” a character of a TV series who does that, which about describes my take on Gaetz.
Trump (at team blue), “Who’s the loose cannon around here now, suckers.”
I had to look up Boyd Crowder, so I’m not sure about that. But I did think Fetterman was accurate: A “God tier kind of trolling just to trigger a meltdown.” In these dark days you have to take your laughs when you can get them. I thought nominating Gaetz as Attorney General of the US was hilarious. And the Establishment outrage at Trump daring to “politicize” this esteemed office was about as hypocritical as it gets.
It will be interesting to see whether Trump can get Gaetz through confirmation, not to mention what Gaetz might do if he actually makes it. Should be entertaining. Unfortunately most of Trump’s other appointments aren’t so funny, especially for the Palestinians.
Unfortunately most of Trump’s other appointments aren’t so funny, especially for the Palestinians. To be fair, Trump is mainly picking republicans. Not going to find much sympathy for Palestinians there.
True. I’m not sure which is worse; Democrats pretending to give a s**t about Palestinians, or Republicans cheering on the genocide because the Bible says God promised Israel to Abraham. The results seem to be the same, so I guess we’ll have to hope that the rest of the world provides some sort of effective resistance.
I was going to throw team blue in there as well, but they area sooo last term.
Another one that might be interesting – Tulsi
I’m not a fan of Aaron Ruper, but he has a Tweet showing Elizabeth Warren talking about Tulsi. I will just post what she said and avoid linking the Tweet, but you can find it if you look.
Bold mine. Just stop with this BS. It’s old, tiresome, and way past it’s expiration date.
I’d love to see Gabbard vs Warren.
If Elizabeth Warren actually believes that she is a true creature of the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber. That sort of clap trap … “Putin’s pocket” … is not only past its sell by date, it is past its smell by date.
Fortunately,
We are now living in the next little while in a world where swamp creatures and liars like Warren can say all they want – and nothing will matter.
This Dem really is looking forward to it. They really need the enema that is coming.
What else needs to be said to show them they were duped with the whole RUSSIA RUSSIA stuff?
> What else needs to be said to show them they were duped with the whole RUSSIA RUSSIA stuff?
I continue to mull over Thomas Frank’s bon mot: “We never betray our betrayals.” What was RussiaGate but an enormous betrayal, a psy-op instigated by a losing candidate against their own people?
I may have to send a message to my Senator Warren to take her head out of her a**. I’m surprised she didn’t say Assad instead of Putin. Assad is so yesterday I guess. I voted Republican for Senator here in MA for the first time ever and I am not seeing any reason to go back.
Putin’s pocket, lol, there’s been a lot of action in there. I’d like to meet his tailor. (Warren Zevon gets a second quote today)
“Corruption looms over Ukraine’s massive reconstruction effort”
The odd thing about this France24 article is that it keeps on going on about Ukrainian corruption which is fair enough as before the war it was acknowledged as the most corrupt country in Europe. But what about EU corruption as they get their mitts into all that reconstruction money worth several hundred billion? Will Ursula do a Biden and demand 10% for the Big Gal?
Oh, come on! Even if 3% of the current MEPs have been sentenced for frauds and 25% have been involved in corruption scandals, they are just a few bad apples and the system is healthy, fair and transparent. And something about values, too! /snark
in general a highly recommended site:
Bandera Lobby Blog
From Nov. 1st on “Holodomor” discussions
Nation.Cymru or Nation.Coverup?
A year on from the debate in the Welsh Parliament on whether to deem the Ukrainian famine a genocide Philip Colley reflects on the use, and misuse, of his great uncle’s Soviet famine testimony
https://banderalobby.substack.com/p/nationcymru-or-nationcoverup
intro:
Philip Colley’s damning critique of the Welsh Parliament’s controversial 2023 ‘Holodomor as genocide’ debate asks whether the Senedd pandered to the cause of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism and misused his great uncle Gareth Jones’ famine testimony in the process. His opinion piece, originally commissioned by the Nation.Cymru news website, was pulled from publication at the last minute after its editors caved into pressure from the very politicians the article criticizes.
25th October 2024:
>Oct 7 2023 – Netanyahoo Knew The Attack Was Coming – He Let It Happen On Purpose – Moon of Alabama
I’ve seen this reported in other MAM but this is the first time I’ve seen Moon of Alabama report on it; though I have heard allusions made that elements within Israel knew about the hang glider attack and let it happen on various podcast.
Let’s see how long it takes for this to be mention in American MSM.
We now can finally say that this was indeed the case. Israeli authorities, up to the prime minister, knew that the attack was coming, but rejected to raise the alarm to an appropriate level. They let the attack happen on purpose (LIHOP).
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/oct-7-2023-netanyahoo-knew-the-attack-was-coming-he-let-it-happen-on-purpose.html
It makes sense considering the stories that there were elements in Israel that preferred the rise of a militant Hamas in the first place.
Heck, considering that Hamas practically began as a creature of Israel… (in that they figured that a religious fundamentalist movement would discredit secular nationalists of PLO and sponsored such factions accordingly back in 1980s, and these guys became Hamas…)
Re: Zionists in Amsterdam
Thanks for the Patrick Lawrence article. Stephan van Baarle, a Dutch parliamentarian, made a refreshingly frank statement about the whole incident, and called out members of the political establishment for trying to take advantage of it for their own ends:
https://x.com/abierkhatib/status/1856951278443675951?t=5_HiBYECrc4JieEyTyTEGw
Many Dutch clearly know what’s up, and last night a pro-Palestine street demonstration was organized in Amsterdam, in defiance of a police ban:
https://x.com/daydreamers25/status/1856837123237695955
But there is also video that claims to show protesters being taken outside the city and beaten up by police:
https://x.com/Maghrebi82/status/1856820856426516728
“How Naval Interdiction Could Help Curb Haiti’s Gangs”
Kinda funny and sad at the same time. The author is a Canadian attached to the Joint Interagency Task Force–South. So he outlines Haiti’s problems. Well, some of them. Then he comes up with a real great idea. He wants to have a small fleet of ships and planes patrolling that island for anything illegal that might finance those gangs and of course the center he works at could control them all. No, it would not be under the UN but would be a US-led mission. But then he wants the nations of the G-20 to kick in the ships needed to do that mission as the US can’t. Would that include Russian and Chinese ships too? Already western ships refuse to put themselves under US command in the Gulf as there is no trust present so why would they suddenly change tack and let the US command their ships in the Caribbean? There would be no desire for a naval coalition of the willing as nobody is willing or has the money to pay for it anymore. Times have changed.
Are these naval ships going to shell neighborhoods featuring “unrest”? Does “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” ever go out of style?
On the other hand, conquering Haiti would give our military a much needed boost of morale, there being much time passed since Grenada.
Our point, their village…
“every bombed village is my hometown.”–James Baldwin
whats the deal about Haiti?
why does the usa still have a hardon for them?
do they have oil, etc in some great quantity? or is their Origin Story still a splinter in their eye?
“A recent finding has shown that the nation of Haiti might have some of the largest oil reserves in the world. The oil reserves are estimated that they could be larger than those of Venezuela. Nations that are found close to the Greater Antilles such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Haiti are estimated to be sitting on natural gas of about 159 billion cubic feet and oil of about 142 million barrels.” World Atlas
Oil and gas are a ‘gift of God’, says COP29 host BBC
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maricopa is on Hwy 33-‘the Petroleum Highway’, where if you thought you were in Saudi Arabia or Texas it wouldn’t seem out of place, there’s a pumpjack every 50 feet for quite a stretch.
The nearby Naval Petroleum Reserve @ Elk Hills played a big part in the Teapot Dome scandal a century ago.
The last time I drove though, every last business on the main strip of Maricopa was out of business, many boarded up.
Of course the resource curse is not just localized, comeuppance see me sometime.
– ‘The View from Moscow’ – The Nation
Given The Nation’s very uneven contribution to the Russiagate saga, especially after the death of Stephen Cohen, I was glad to see this piece by Fred Weir. He makes a number of points that readers of NC know but that might startle many “progressives,” such as how “Putin’s puppet” Trump actually intensified the Ukraine conflict, undermined relations with Russia, and destroyed any illusions about the US by the Russian people. I would like to hope that this signals a more realistic discussion of US-Russian relations on the compatible “left” these days. But I’m not holding my breath.
The Onion buys the Infowars site with help from Sandy Hook parents. You love to see it folks!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/satire-slinger-the-onion-buys-alex-jones-infowars-at-auction-with-help-from-sandy-hook-families/ar-AA1u5jLD?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Of what value is Infowars without Alex Jones? His fans weren’t tuning in because it had the name Infowars on it
The story says they are going to rewrite the website to make it funny.
Sure, but don’t they already do that on their own site? Why buy a second site to do the same thing? They’re websites, not car dealerships.
Syraqistan
Israeli army tells residents south of Beirut to evacuate ahead of attack Anadolu Agency **** Maybe I’ve got this wrong but Damascus looks presiously close to Beruit on a map and no doubt God told the Zionists that Syria is also their land. And that Russian base in Syria. You’d think some more effective targeting weapons or whatever is needed to put mad dog Israel out if it’s misery would accidentally wind up in the hands of the only one with male appendages in the room – the Houthis.
“How Europe Can Assume America’s Role in Ukraine’
In short, they can’t. Their economies are wrecked, they are in debt, their military armouries are standing empty and they never even got so much as a participation prize. Of course some of them are still doubling down. Annalena Baerbock was saying that to send 37 billion Euros to the Ukraine, Germany had to make cuts to social security for German citizens, halt plans to modernize the railway system and to halt investment in Germany. And this at a time when Germany has a twenty billion hole in their budget. I guess the same must be true of some of the other EU countries as well but it sounds like there is a bad brew stirring up in the EU.
The German government has just settled on February 23 as the date for snap elections — we’ll see where Baerbock and the Greens stand after a frustrated, much put-upon electorate has gone to the polls.
Bummer that the most probable result is a coalition of Christian Democrats with the Greens, though. Baerbock may well still be riding high in the foreign-ministry saddle after February 23, and not going anywhere.
Turkey Breaks Diplomatic Relations w/ Israel! Col. Macgregor Explains Why it Matters. Daniel Davis.
This has been populating my algos today. Imagine Israel being the one to blow up NATO, lol, the irony. IMO, how Trump handles relations with the Republic of Türkiye will in no small way dictate future events both Ukraine and Middle East.
Turkey is still selling oil. I also bet that Erdogan’s son is involved just like he was in the Syrian oil theft. I.e., Turkey will keep on selling oil as long as they can. Nothing like mixing government and personal business.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-03/russia-says-it-has-proof-turkey-involved-in-is-oil-trade/6996424
Well, he intervened and created a mideast mess
“Excitable goy,” they all said
And he rubbed out Soleimani in his quest
“Excitable goy,” they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable goy
He took the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
“Excitable goy,” they all said
And the Zionists made a hero out of him
“Excitable goy,” they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable goy
[Chorus]
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
He took little notice of the Palestinian pogrom (Ooh, ah-ooh)
“Excitable goy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
And he killed her hopes on November 5th (Ooh, ah-ooh)
“Excitable goy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
Well, he’s just an excitable goy
After four long years, they let him back in the house
“Excitable goy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
And he dug up Jared for a second round
“Excitable goy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
Well, he’s just an excitable goy
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable goy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
Excitable Boy, by Warren Zevon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZokPAuhD6k
Re that hurricane article and the fancy suggestion that AGW denial is all about fear of death.
Well yes we humans do live in denial about death and most especially those young men who go off to fight in wars. But that’s because there’s nothing we can do about it and we have to get on with the business of living. In a similar vein many look at the actions of the AGW acceptors over the past three decades and conclude there’s nothing we can do about that either. Unfortunately this rationalization does encourage them to go buy monster pickup trucks not to mention fly around in private jets. Those who object to these actions should stop blaming their psychology and instead come up with convincing ways we can deal with AGW. It’s really the “liberal” scolds who are in denial. You aren’t going to change human psychology but perhaps there are things that will really curb the AGW threat. Get cracking.
That article has as reference only the US modern population. Gore Vidal wrote a kind of satire book about the US fear of death, “Messiah”…
The rest of the world, right now especially in Gaza, death is sometimes their friend…
There isn’t much left in it as far as denials are concerned, when I read the other day that there was a 4,000 to 5,000 acre conflagration in NY in November, I got the same sort of feeling a decade ago in January when I spied smoke in the far horizon in Sequoia NP, called dispatch there and they explained it was in the Golden Trout Wilderness and was called the Soda Fire, and at 6,000 to 7,000 feet where there ought to have been snow,-but no, a 1,400 acre fire in the middle of a 5 year drought.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/sequoia/news-events/?cid=STELPRDB5446149
We’re kinda living in J.G. Ballard’s The Burning World, get used to it.
Can’t resist:
“Up from the Skies,” Jimi Hendrix (1967)
Sometimes I feel like a buffalo
like the last of a tribe
at the gates to paradise
I’m standing outside
Am I a part of the problem
Am I part of a plan
Sometimes I feel like a buffalo
Sometimes I feel like a man
Buffalo, Mallett Brothers, 1921
Autism student takes a favorite stuffed animal to school, unbeknownst to his mother, and becomes a student arrested. Well that’s a headline with some dark clouds over it. A fairly new law took effect this summer across Tennessee, so lawmakers have some work yet to do on the finer details it appears. Maybe a bit of discerning adults would be useful, but most often a threat said out loud needs to be quickly addressed.
I will confess to an unfortunate and instinctive reaction to reading the headline first…from Con Air, a reprehensible mash up of a late 90s movie ( just my two cents, so over the top ). “Put the bunny back in the box..” To quote the film protagonist Cameron Powe…
You just done made friends with Cyrus da dam VIRUS!
Great Patrick Lawrence. Obviously he must and does live in Europe to be so frank.
In other news: FBI raids home of Polymarket CEO.
From Reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-raids-polymarket-ceos-home-seizing-phone-electronics-ny-post-reports-2024-11-13/
Dems are useless.
Oddly, donors just gave them a billion…. For one race. God knows how much for all the others. Maybe donors found a use for them.
Due Dissidence guys with Lee Fang on Jimmy Dore. utube, ~17+ minutes.
Here’s Why Trump WON The Young Men Vote! w/ Lee Fang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIqPuzYb6VI
Oil and gas are a ‘gift of God’, says COP29 host BBC
The stated opinion/belief is a trite common place narrative that is often repeated by those individuals tasked with both representing and advancing ruling class interests. It will always be necessary (when and where the option of force and violence is not always suitable, as it might assumed to be the case in ‘democratic’ societies) to control the boundaries of individual and collective thinkable thought and besides a certain subset of the audience wants to be comforted and soothed by the retelling of both fables and noble lies. The ruling class, ‘owners of capital’, like it that way.
So, for example, “The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we’ve been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind,” he told CBN’s David Brody. Trump’s top environmental regulator, who has overseen aggressive rollbacks of rules on greenhouse gases, air pollution, water pollution, chemicals and more, also tied religion into his ongoing criticisms of left-wing environmentalists. He accuses them of wanting to shut down drilling and other resource development.”
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/375148-pruitt-bible-says-harvest-the-natural-resources/
Or, “We cannot keep 174 billion barrels of oil in Alberta locked in the land and do nothing about it,” Mulroney said. “This is wealth that was God-given to Canada.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mulroney-says-energy-east-a-nation-building-opportunity-for-trudeau-1.2872504
When I was managing income property in East Oakland during the 1970’s I was initially puzzled by the people I encountered who acted as though they had no stake in society.
After a Month or two I understood that their actions were rational, they were poor and black and there was no place in American Society for them.
At present the bottom 50% of Americans control 2.6% of the Nation’s wealth, they do not matter to “American Society” .
That’s 169,000,000 Americans who are beginning to wake up to the fact that their betters would prefer that they die, quietly and profitably.
Because Markets.
Stochastic Eugenics has made a nice start in eliminating the unwanted, but I doubt all of them will go quietly.
Russia’s Economy–
Excellent articles by Fred Weir (The Nation) and Ben Aris (bne IntelliNews). I see only two serious difficulties for Russia’s economy in the near future: a shortage of unskilled labor (the post-Crocus City crackdown on Central Asian migrant workers is having a major impact) and a growing real estate bubble (both commercial and residential, especially in Moscow).
One huge factor that both articles fail to mention: the west’s ongoing financial sanctions are forcing Russian money to remain in-country. Whereas during 1992-2022, giant chunks of money regularly fled abroad (to the benefit of the west’s banking and real estate sectors). Money never rests, so that stuck-in-country money is now being re-invested into the Russian economy. This is a profound change that is only slowly starting to make its effects felt (positive for Russia, not quite so positive for the west).
Great catch with the money outflows stopping.
Tim Barken ended his New Left Review notes with the observation:
“It may be that one day it will be possible to interpret 2024 in the casting of a new political order.”
Sometimes, when I listen to Mike Benz and Matt Getz, I think I am sitting in an SDS meeting in 1968 – the Benz critique of the domestic institutional structure that directs American foreign policy and the Getz critique of the domestic monopoly power of Big Tech.
Their respective voices just might be the rough beginnings of new beast slouching toward Bethlehem – the dreaded merger of a populist left thinking with populist right thinking!
Hell yeah!
LEFT & RIGHT UNITE!
read matt stoeller’s piece on matt gaetz and in a moment of matt unity, it has me slightly less pessimistic about the trump admin. of course, matt gaetz would still have to be confirmed, and it seems a lot of people don’t like him. which,,, is kinda good. reading over his track record, he has done some good things. and also. am wondering if the pedophilia charges are similar to the ones against scott ritter. overblown to take the focus away from decent policy.
again, i remain highly skeptical of anything getting done – the viscous forces of the deep state will slow down any progress. but uh, props for some anti-business sentiment. i’ll take it where i can get it.
re: Gabbard
Ray McGovern expressing doubts that Gabbard will be able to change anything about the nat.sec. state.
But he believes in miracles.
Will Gabbard Be Able to Direct the Intelligence ‘Community’?
https://scheerpost.com/2024/11/14/ray-mcgovern-will-gabbard-be-able-to-direct-the-intelligence-community/
Indeed they are. Military leaders should consider reading ‘Second Variety’ by Philip K. Dick before committing to this.
Gutenberg link to Second Variety novelette:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32032/32032-h/32032-h.htm