Black, red or dead: How Omaha became a hub for black squirrel scholarship Flatwater Free Press
Alarming Links Uncovered: Blue Light From Screens May Trigger Early Puberty and Stunt Growth SciTech Daily
SCIENTISTS INVENT GIANT DISHWASHING MACHINE FOR ENTIRE HUMAN BODIES Futurism
A $6 million banana?! Finshots
Climate/Environment
Climate change drives up insurance costs — and missed mortgage payments Floodlight
COP-out 29 Michael Robert’s Blog
Pandemics
We Asked 5 Experts What Trump Should Do About Bird Flu. Here’s What They Said. Barron’s
Five Eyes on India
The India-Canada Diplomatic Spat is Getting Even Worse Inkstick
Nijjar murder case: Canada invokes direct indictment, trial against four Indians to proceed without preliminary hearing Indian Express
After Kenya, now Bangladesh to review its power deals, including with Adani group The Print
Adani indictment may test Trump’s desire to keep India in US orbit Business Standard
Africa
Seven Wagner mercenaries killed in Mali attack claimed by al Qaeda affiliate The Economic Times
China?
Commentary: US car industry is passing the baton to China with barely a fight Channel News Asia
How China could strike back at Trump’s tariffs Asia Times
***
U.S. to deploy missile units to Japan islands in Taiwan contingency Kyodo News
Taiwan’s ex-President Tsai says U.S. should prioritize assisting Ukraine Focus Taiwan
Philippines VP Sara Duterte threatens Marcos assassination if she is killed Al Jazeera
O Canada
Justin Trudeau dances at Taylor Swift concert as rioters storm streets of Canada New York Post
Trudeau, political leaders denounce ‘violence and hatred’ at anti-NATO demonstration in Montreal CBC. Commentary:
I was at the protests in downtown Montreal last night. The goal of the protest was to condemn the NATO military alliance for their role in global warfare and their support for Israel.
After a few blocks some windows were broken, including those of the Palais des Congrès where…
— Alex Tyrrell (@AlexTyrrellPVQ) November 23, 2024
Old Blighty
Jewish Anti-Zionist Activist Describes His Arrest Under UK’s Anti-Terror Law Truthout
Collapsing Empire: RIP Royal Navy Kit Klarenberg, Global Delinquents
Five Innovations that Make Defence Procurement Faster and Cut Cost and Risk The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Hunger is a violation of our basic human rights – we should be outraged by UK’s food bank crisis Big Issue
European Disunion
Populist Calin Georgescu takes surprise lead in Romania’s presidential election Euronews
Contra Populism? New Left Review
Syraqistan
War on Gaza: Palestinians haunted by Israeli grave defilements and body theft Middle East Eye
One-third of Jewish-American teens say they ‘sympathise’ with Hamas, Israeli government poll shows Middle East Eye
Israeli Government Imposes Sanctions on Haaretz, Cuts All Ties and Pulls Advertising Haaretz
‘Israel’ attacks press in Lebanon, Al Mayadeen mourns two colleagues Al Mayadeen
The ‘pact of silence’ between Israelis and their media +972 Magazine. From October, still germane. Commentary:
2/ No need to pity us. We are reaping the death we have sown. But it is important to state clearly that Israel is as weak as it has ever been and it is growing weaker. I’ve written this previously, but anyone who thinks Israel is triumphant is sorely mistaken. —>
— Ori Goldberg (@ori_goldberg) November 24, 2024
And:
7/ Our genocide is justified by our version of the big lie with which I began – that our lives are alone worthy of being acknowledged as lives. We were built and suckled on supremacy, so our shift to murderous solipsism was the most radical the world has ever seen. —>
— Ori Goldberg (@ori_goldberg) November 24, 2024
Hacker group claims to have targeted Mossad UPI
***
Israel and Lebanon on cusp of ceasefire deal, officials say Axios
A map of Hezbollah’s attacks today against Israel, the most it has ever done in a single day at 51. The farthest south was a drone attack targeting a naval base in Ashdod, only 20 miles north of the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/HmiYx3Tfuc
— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) November 24, 2024
***
Pakistani capital in lockdown before march by Imran Khan’s supporters Al Jazeera
New Not-So-Cold War
Oreshnik Transforms War, Zelensky Demands More Useless Air Defence, UK MoD Seethes, Russia Advances Alexander Mercouris (Video)
Russia increases its advance pace and continues to capture the entire Donetsk Oblast – ISW Ukrainska Pravda
Wonder-Weapon Mania Dies Down Revealing Ukraine’s Wire-Frame Reality Simplicus the Thinker
Russia recruits Yemeni mercenaries to fight in Ukraine FT
***
Energy ‘corruption’ leaves Ukrainians facing a deadly freeze The Times
The Holodomor Industry Bandera Lobby Blog
Once an open neo-Nazi, Azov Movement’s top figure Dmytro Kukharchuk is upbeat about “working meetings” at Pentagon. He says Pentagon is optimistic about Ukraine and keen to replicate the example of 3rd detached assault brigade (controlled by the political leadership of the far… pic.twitter.com/mRrmUGUftS
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) November 22, 2024
The Caucasus
Georgian opposition gears up to disrupt inaugural parliament session Bne Intellinews
South of the Border
VIDEO: Evo Morales speaks to The Grayzone, blames U.S. for assassination attempt The Grayzone
Spook Country
Why has the CIA been Hiding the JFK Files for 62 Years? Larry Johnson, Sonar21
Trump Transition
The counter-insurgency is “on” – against Trump’s ‘storm’ Alastair Crooke
Trump’s national security pick: I’m on same page as Jake Sullivan about ‘our adversaries’ Politico
Tech under Trump, part 1 Blood in the Machine
Democrats en déshabillé
Bill Clinton: “in demonizing all establishments and all people who wear a tie like you and me to work and have a good education, we are breaking down the legitimacy of…people who actually know things that are very important for us today and very important for our continued… pic.twitter.com/0OfAJOa6yV
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) November 24, 2024
Police State Watch
Antitrust
Monopoly Round-Up: Economic Termites Preparing to Feast? BIG by Matt Stoller
AI
CHURCH SETS UP AI-POWERED JESUS INSIDE CONFESSIONAL BOOTH Futurism
Another four miles Internal exile
Groves of Academe
THE BUSINESS-SCHOOL SCANDAL THAT JUST KEEPS GETTING BIGGER The Atlantic
The Bezzle
Gamblers Are Sinking Billions Into a Leveraged Market Fringe Bloomberg
Class Warfare
Inside the State Fight Over ‘Swipe Fees’ Boondoggle
As Wall Street freezes Floridians out of home ownership, talk of reform ripples through Tallahassee Seeking Rents
To stay on the farm, more and more farmers are working second and even third jobs Harvest Public Media
Beyond Productivity: Reimagining Futures of Agriculture and Bioeconomy Review of African Political Economy
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Bibi Bows
(melody borrowed from In The Jailhouse Now by Jimmie Rodgers, 1926)
Bibi knows how to handle a mob
In Israel that’s the PM’s job
Though half the country wants to bring him down
A coalition government’s OK
He makes deals out in the hallway
A handshake’s fine—no need to write it down
And Bibi’s taking bows
Who knew from sacred cows?
Everybody has their price
Bibi bargains hard and he’s cold as ice
He stays on top somehow
(musical interlude)
Bibi loves to bluff at poker
Never been an honest broker
He plays high stakes that put the rest to shame
But he’s left a crooked trail
And the court’s pulled back the veil
His parade won’t make it to the finish line
And Bibi’s taking bows
Who knew from sacred cows?
Everybody has their price
Bibi bargains hard and he’s cold as ice
He stays on top somehow
(more musical interlude)
Lounging in his big Jacuzzi
Whilst cookin’ up a real doozy
Bibi thinks they’ll never run him down
He owns the land of milk and honey
The U.S. sends pallets of money
When Trump comes in he’ll just be Bibi’s clown
And Bibi’s taking bows
Who knew from sacred cows?
Though you rarely lost at the polling place
Your whole career’s been a huge disgrace
You stayed on top somehow
‘Ken Klippenstein
@kenklippenstein
Bill Clinton: “in demonizing all establishments and all people who wear a tie like you and me to work and have a good education, we are breaking down the legitimacy of…people who actually know things that are very important for us today and very important for our continued growth and prosperity and harmony.”‘
So would that apply for people wearing ties that were responsible for America’s response to the Pandemic? To those who wear ties that enable the Israeli genocide in Gaza? And people with ties that are trying their hardest to push America into a shooting war with Russia? Ties denotes nothing.
By coincidence I read today that somebody tried to edit out all mention of Epstein in Bill’s Wikipedia page but I see that it is back again. The internet never forgets.
Tie-demon Clinton thinks we have prosperity to continue? Growth? They’ve forgotten how to talk to regular people.
Bill is legacy shopping with what he has, but but he always spoke to his specific audience. He just predates the 24/7 coverage.
Not to mention “harmony.”
Come to think of it, Donald Trump always wears a tie, even when he’s flipping fries at McDonald’s.
“It is doubtless important to the good of nations that those who govern have virtues or talents, but what is perhaps still more important to them is that those who govern do not have interests contrary to the mass of the governed; for in that case the virtues would become almost useless and the talents fatal.”
Alexis DeTocqueville, “Democracy in America”
Best…H
Touché, Hank.
Whoops. No “Epstein” on Bill’s page just now. The Blob never sleeps.
Reporter host follow up question to Bill Clinton: “Could you be a little more vague?”
Re: AI Jesus
As seen in THX 1138… coming soon.
Oh yeah. Just what the doctor ordered-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0YkPnwoYyE (2:49 mins)
‘You are a true believer, blessings of the State, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy.’
AI Jesus”, the lede,
A church in the Swiss city of Lucerne has set up a computer inside a confessional booth that allows churchgoers to converse with an “AI Jesus.” That’s got to be some kind of heresy.
Apparently it’s not supposed to be a “confession”. Maybe want to put it somewhere else then?
I like this, “It was really an experiment,” one of the church’s theologians Marco Schmid told the Guardian. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would they talk with him about? Would there be interest in talking to him? We’re probably pioneers in this.” Uh huh, you mean you wanted to see if your idea is going to go “ka-ching!”.
Hey, wait a minute. The whole point of Confession is that it is a very private matter between a parishioner and the local priest. And this theologian just said ‘What would they talk with him about?’ so does that mean that they will be reviewing everything that was said in that confessional booth?
When I first read the link “Black, red or dead: How Omaha became a hub for black squirrel scholarship …“, my crappy myopia substituted Obama for Omaha, and went looking for this curious connection in the article. LOL Need more coffee.
PS Fantastic antidote today. Definitely the way to approach adversity.
Rolf – I read that headline as Obama too and was most intrigued. Talk about inadvertent click bait. And I had finished my morning coffee!!
Here in eastern Ontario, we have mostly black and gray squirrels. Our red squirrels are much smaller, a little bigger than chipmunks and rarely seen hanging around feeders set out by humans. The black and grey squirrels and the chipmunks happily eat the peanuts we put out and scavenge for seeds spilled from the squirrel proof bird feeder. And yes like so many, I feel guilty about feeding the wild creatures but I can’t help myself. They are so enjoyable to watch. I do make sure that I buy decent seed mixes not those stuffed with additives that our feathered friends shouldn’t eat.
CanCyn,
Thank God I am not alone in my Obama-Omaha transposition! :-)
We have mostly Eastern Gray Squirrels here in Houston, and they are fearless, daredevil taunts.
re: antidote du jour.
Snow leopard singing Y M C A ?
Or Snow Leopard mistakenly peeing on an electric fence.
What an awesome animal. My cats think of themselves this way!
Beautiful.
Meanwhile, couldn’t help but think, who gives a crappola what bill Clinton thinks about anything. The filthy grifting child molester. He and Hilary deserve each other.
Perhaps it’s recoiling in horror on first encountering a cucumber, or in surprise at first contact with popcorn.
Maybe it just watched the Bill Clinton video.
Tucker on twtr-X. short.
“Wow. Look at that. Real Journalism.”
https://x.com/OG_DrC/status/1860384831323906407
About to get hammered by an atmospheric river, and I plan to drop in on my kayak out of a 737 Max by deploying one of the emergency chutes, wish me luck.
NWS sez up to 11 feet of snow soon to be deposited among the Kaweah peaks, not far from my perch on the front porch of the back of beyond.
This is the kind of early Sierra storm that doomed the Donner Party…
Book Tips:
Storm, by George Rippey Stewart… one of my favorite authors, who also wrote the classic treatise on the ill-fated Donner Party: Ordeal By Hunger, along with his best known book: Earth Abides, one of the first post apocalyptic novels, novel for its time and a thinking person’s end of the world, save handfuls of human survivors.
Thank you, Conor.
With regard to the link about the Royal Navy’s decline, please let me add the following:
The May 2021 mission led by the carrier QE2 was as much post Brexit and post pandemic flag flying as anything military. There are suggestions that Boris Johnson overruled the more cautious defence establishment, who knew of the mechanical and financial concerns, although, to be fair, some in the Navy were up for the mission, too, for intra-service and wider financial and political reasons.
Most of the escorts in the carrier group were from NATO allies. When the handful of Royal Navy escorts, designed for operations in the North Atlantic, broke down in warmer waters, they were replaced by, sic, fisheries protection vessels. (One hopes PK pipes up as he and I have exchanged comments about naval engineering.)
All of the fixed wing aircraft and their crews, who enjoyed a reception and photo opp with the royals before departure, were from the US.
These carriers were ordered under Gordon Brown and built in Scotland, so pork barrel, unionism and even military keynesianism played as much a part as military need.
Briton turned Usian Fiona Hill has returned home, well London, not Sunderland, to lead the Labour government’s defence review. She’s making her presence felt as per last week’s scrapping of some ships, aircraft and drones.
I don’t get the impression that the British defence establishment and MSM have learnt from Russia’s approach to defence, not just the means of and tactics for fighting in Ukraine. Neoliberal PMC types can’t contemplate such an approach.
Let me conclude by referring readers to a little reported remark by David Cameron circa 2010. He, a scion of the establishment and with links to empire, said his premiership would mark the retreat of the UK from four centuries of global military and foreign policy ambition. It was as much a reference to the need for austerity as to the UK’s military needs and foreign policy.
One hopes, in particular, Anonymous 2, Aurelien (formerly known as David), Froghole, Harry and Paul Greenwood chime in.
“Collapsing Empire: RIP Royal Navy’
This is sad reading this. Once upon a time the Royal Navy was a force of nature. They patrolled the sea lanes of the world, fought down piracy in the 19th century, mapped the unknown world, explored vast regions of the uncharted world. And now they have become this. I can guess why. British neocons wanted to become useful to Uncle Sam so the UK’s entire defence posture was redesign and built around this pathetic idea. Now that the whole thing has become a fiasco and a bad joke, it will take generations of work to rebuild the Royal Navy into a force that will be able to defend the home islands. And that is an if. Here is a film from the 1953 Coronation Spithead Review showing the massive force that was the Royall Navy. Pay attention to the aerial shots showing the extent of this portion of the fleet-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6qDYrqfjRQ (15:35 mins)
Re Alex Tyrrell on Montreal protests, money quote;
This morning I have watched the political reactions pour in; many federal and provincial politicians are attempting to frame last night’s vandalism as anti-Semitic violence in the streets of Montreal. This is factually incorrect. It’s just another distortion of truth by the supporters of genocide. They want to brand any form of resistance to their genocidal agenda as racist or anti-Semitic.
Of course they do because this strategy works (until it doesn’t).
I just can’t keep this golden nugget from you. Margot Wallström, Swedish Foreign Minister 2014-2019 is posting this on LinkedIn today appealing to environmentalists to keep sending money to the Ukrainian Nazis:
“Ukraine is doing pioneering work on the the environmental impact of war. How? By prioritising the issue, talking about it, making it one of 10 points in the President’s ‘Peace Formula’, collecting evidence of environmental crimes using modern methods and conducting legal proceedings, planning for green and sustainable reconstruction, developing new measurement methods and standards. Have contributed to the work of an international working group and our proposals are now being implemented, for example in mine clearance. Read more!”
https://www.president.gov.ua/storage/j-files-storage/01/24/69/cc0dab040b3207268e5c8fb5275b22e4_1707492952.pdf
Mine clearance, as in throwing out anti-personel mines approved by Biden?
Another nugget:
“Gaining the full trust of the Ukrainian people, donors and investors will require a firm commitment to transparency and countering corruption. This will be critical to carry out the proposals here.”
– In Ukraine the donors and investors are committed to corruption and do not care about the Ukrainian people as is proven every day the West is delivering weapons to Ukraine. So this work is then just an environmentallly unfriendly way of wasting paper and server energy?
I wonder if the Western misleadership all have access to some sort of secret book of stupidities where they can find a stupidity to engage in or say for all situations.
Re the business school scandal. My initial reaction is to ask what else we should expect from MBA types? They’ve been lowering workplace ethics standards since they first started showing up in management in every field. Why would their home base be any different? I was suspicious of Schroeder’s motives early on in the article. It doesn’t seem far fetched at all that she would have adopted her data checking, transparency project in order to save her cushy academic job and reputation. There is a pretty simple fix for this ‘data problem’ – The peer review process is already lengthy and tortuous, it would not be much worse if unbiased data checking was added to that process. My cynical self tends to think that data checking doesn’t happen for reasons made clear in the article: “No one wants to kill the golden goose,” one early-career researcher in business academia said… then many of their most memorable, most TED Talk–able findings would go away. “To use marketing lingo, we’d lose our unique value proposition.”
“Populist Calin Georgescu takes surprise lead in Romania’s presidential election”
There are a lot of people upset about this guy taking the lead. For a start, he is anti-Ukrainian war which is a crime in the present day EU. He is ultra-religious, nationalistic, wants to reduce ‘Romania’s reliance on imports and boosting domestic food and energy production.’ So he is one of the new breed of populist leaders that are contending elections across the west and Trump himself is perhaps the best known. He may as well wear a cap saying ‘Make Romania Great Again.’
https://www.rt.com/news/608140-romania-presidential-elections-surprise/
Color me shocked. B-schools also sell junk economics, based on readings from Professors Hudson and Keen. And per Lambert, “‘Tis a mystery!”
“Russia recruits Yemeni mercenaries to fight in Ukraine”
So does that mean that those 10,000 North Korean soldiers were a no-show? And so now it is going to be Yemeni mercenaries? If this story develops anything like the story about the North Koreans, first it will be a few hundred Yemeni mercenaries, then a few thousand, then 5,000, than 10,000. At that point all mention of Yemeni mercenaries will evaporate from the news and you will then hear Russia recruiting Niger mercenaries to fight in the Ukraine. Just rinse and repeat.