Grandmother, 80, is killed in freak accident in her Sleep Number bed Daily Mail
A new timeline for Neanderthal interbreeding with modern humans ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
Beatrix Potter’s Quiet Rebellion Humanities (Anthony L)
Kafka’s Screwball Tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog The Reader (Anthony L)
A philosopher engages with the mystical tradition Times Literary Supplement (Anthony L)
Philosophical Dead Ends Los Angeles Review of Books. Anthony L: “Dawkin’s simple (minded) story appealed to many, and still does, but not, I think, for reasons they admit.”
Leading Scientists Urge Ban On Developing ‘Mirror-Image’ Bacteria Science
Climate/Environment
Study finds Arctic warming tied to severe cold spells in UK, Europe PhysOrg
Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US agency says. Guardian
A Controversial Plan To Refreeze the Arctic is Seeing Promising Results CNN
How Drought Insurance Can Leave Millions Without Food Bloomberg
Housing must take priority over nature, says Starmer in green belt reform plan Guardian (Kevin W)
China?
China gorging on silicon before Uncle Sam slams the door The Register
The Red Dragon Strikes Back Lau Vegys (Micael T). Important.
China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold productivity boost South China Morning Post (Chuck L)
Koreas
The Failure of Yoon’s Desperate Power Grab Daniel Larison
Myanmar
Bloody siege ends Myanmar army control of western border BBC
China Urges Kachin Rebels to Stop Fighting Myanmar Junta Irrawaddy
India
Who’s afraid of George Soros? Indian Punchline
European Disunion
A NATO coup just took place in Romania Thomas Fazi. Micael T: “Let’s see if this will end up like the Greek NATO coup in 1967 with a military dictatorship.”
Norway Wants to Scrap EU Power Links amid Surging Prices OilPrice (Kevin W)
How von der Leyen sold out European farmers Thomas Fazi (Micael T)
Cocaine consumption in Germany is increasing Tagesschua via machine translation (guurst)
France’s New PM: Is the Wait Over? European Conservative (Li)
Israel v. The Resistance
📍Gaza
It’s just after 10 a.m. in Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed at least 37 Palestinians since dawn Thursday.
➤ 16 aid workers and volunteers were killed when Israel launched two missiles at an aid convoy, resulting also in 80 trucks to be looted.
➤ 15 people were… pic.twitter.com/z7dqyE5IDB
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) December 12, 2024
Haaretz confirms: Dr Iyad Rantisi — head of obstetrics at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, was tortured & killed by the israelis while in their custody https://t.co/Bv9yBQX0Te
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) December 11, 2024
Within less than 10 hours, Israeli forces have killed three doctors in Gaza:
Dr. Mahmoud Al-Namleh, a respected academic.
Dr. Saeed Joudeh, northern Gaza’s orthopedic surgeon.
Professor Abdelsalam Abu Zaida, Dean of Graduate Studies at Al-Aqsa University. https://t.co/n4KVpqvHvI pic.twitter.com/eKkUvrEBWy
— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) December 12, 2024
Please click through to read the tweet below in full. Another indicator that relying on unverified sources is problematic. This take may prove to be incorrect, but at this point, it looks like a better assessment based on currently available information than other Resistance-supporting accounts:
Did Israel win? Is Palestine doomed?
For those who fear The Resistance has been mortally wounded by Syria's demise–that Palestine's destruction is now essentially guaranteed–here are some 'balancing' thoughts to consider…
It's always good, after experiencing a devastating… pic.twitter.com/PUUJ4yorQO
— James Jos. Kroeger (@JamesKroeger5) December 11, 2024
‘As much and as quickly as possible’: Israeli settlers eye land in Syria, Lebanon 972 Magazine (Kevin W)
Netanyahu Hilariously Claims Israel Doesn’t Seek To Intervene In Syria’s Affairs Caitlin Johnstone
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia will reply Julian Macfarlane
About Russian Response Andrei Martyanov
ABC News reports that one million Ukraine soldiers have died.pic.twitter.com/hqxpXTdpSv
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) December 12, 2024
SITREP 12/11/24: Zelensky Draws Line with US in Mobilization Impasse Simplicius (Kevin W)
Trump says he will not ‘abandon’ Ukraine RT
Gref warns of risk of stagflation in Russia RBC via machine translation. Micael T: “Some in the West take this as the end for Russia being nigh.”
Low global demand creates opportunity for more US sanctions on Russian oil, Yellen says Reuters (Kevin W)
Syaqistan
How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace Jeffrey Sachs, Common Dreams
New regime forces in Syria carry out summary executions in Latakia Defend Democracy
1/ Varoufakis critiques anti-imperialism by rejecting both imperialism & governments like Assad's, advocating for “minimum ethical standards.” While well-meaning, his analysis is idealistic, failing to grasp the material realities of imperialism & sovereignty struggles. A🧵 https://t.co/embiYQDCIm
— Yusuf 🔻☭ (@viulenny) December 10, 2024
As images and videos emerge from "liberated" Syria of "rebels" exterminating human beings in the streets for not being the right ethnicity or religion, many are equating it to the previous government's actions.
However, the Syrian government under President Assad "brutalized"… https://t.co/ng31yTXhb6
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) December 11, 2024
Iraq rejects asylum for Syria ex-regime soldiers, Maher al-Assad The New Arab (Kevin W)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Federal government sending drone-specific radar to New Jersey to investigate mysterious sightings Gothamist
Imperial Collapse Watch
NATO tells members to divert social spending to militaries RT (Kevin W)
Patrick Lawrence: The Centrists Cannot Hold ScheerPost (Chuck L)
Amid Cuts To Basic Research, New Zealand Scraps All Support For Social Sciences Science. Only spending with economic benefit allowed. That is not what basic research is supposed to be about.
Trump 2.0
Trump weighing options to stop Iran going nuclear, including preemptive strikes – report Times of Israel
How to Trust a Trump Voter London Review of Books. From early in the month, still germane. Anthony L: “Never stop the blame cannons! – This guy is the LRB’s go to on ‘populism’ etc. Little by little the LRB converges on The Guardian.”
🚨🚨BREAKING: Update on the RINO Removal Project. #RRP
RINO Removal Project Next Steps
1.Create a Charter outline that will be finalized via the Leadership Committee and Local Chapter Leaders. Draft version #1 12.10.2024
2.Start the RINO Removal Project Community on X.… https://t.co/Gt7TMSmEVG pic.twitter.com/MYG8y9gt4s— Leo The Lion (@LeoTheLion1964) December 12, 2024
The “Perestroika” in the USA Anti-Spiegel via machine translation. Micael T: “That would be the day. I do not understand the hype and expectations on Trump. Given his first performance and organizational inertia and political resistance, he will deliver tax relief for the rich and that‘s about it. Perestroika it ain‘r.”
2024 Post Mortems
Kamala Harris Ignored Big Corporate Monopolies. It May Have Cost Her the Election Zephyr Teachout
Our No Longer Free Press
The Onion Can’t Buy Infowars Yet Matt Levine, Bloomberg (Micael T)
— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) December 11, 2024
Tech Platforms Diverge on Erasing Criminal Suspects’ Digital Footprints New York Times
Antitrust
It’s Time to Break Up Big Medicine Matt Stoller (Dr. Kevin). Important. An epic shellacking of Noah Smith.
Lawmakers push health insurers, PBMs to sell pharmacy businesses The Hill
AI
Losing our voice? Fears AI tone-shifting tech could flatten communication Guardian (Kevin W)
Guillotine Watch
Robert Sterling’s Post LinkedIn. On Brian Thompson. Micael T: “The comments even on LinkedIn are scathing.”
Class Warfare
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger calls for prayer and fasting for employees Fox. Paul R: “WTF. This explains a lot.”
Antidote du jour. Tracie H: “Mr. Livingston (Jonathon), enjoying a stroll along the shore on a lovely December afternoon.”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
163 comments
Comments are closed.
Damascus
(melody borrowed from It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year by by Edward Pola and George Wyle, as sung by Andy Williams, 1963)
O the Headchoppers From ISIS Are Here
All the looting and yelling
DO NOT leave your dwelling—it’s chaos out here
‘Cause the Headchoppers From ISIS Are Here
O these Salafists will soon come to call
They’ll administer beatings
In spite of your pleadings and your head may fall
Yes these Salafists will soon come to call
These guys are not into voting
The views they’re promoting
Say everything modern must go
They prefer getting gory
To Islam’s full story
The blood of apostates must flow
Yes, the Headchoppers from ISIS Are Here
We have no way of knowing
Where Syria’s going to be in a year
‘Cause the Headchoppers from ISIS are here
All their arrogant boasting
And sick vids they’re posting
And grudges they cannot let go
They want us on our knees
We cannot pretend these
Salafists will just let us go
O the Headchoppers From ISIS Are Here
As our children are growing
They’ll grow up not knowing this world is a sphere
We’re back to medieval times
They commit such mad evil crimes
Thousand year old paradigms
And they’re here
Excellent!
There are now reports of Christians disappearing from Aleppo – Archbishop Jacques Mourad has sounded the alarm. Yet the Christian Zionists in the US will applaud. They really aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, Mike Pompeo, Lindsay Graham, and others.
It would be ironic if the only Christian community in the Middle east that has not been ravaged by western-sponsored attacks in a few years time will be the one in Iran which continues to grow and thrive-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iran
Damn, man. After Israel, Iran is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East too-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews
What’s the bet that their DNA is far closer to the Israelis from the 1st century AD than the present lot there.
“It would be ironic if the only Christian community…”
Important to consider from here on.
Let Yourself Be Shattered By Gaza
In the suburbs they live with animals in their homes
who they treat like people and love like children
while ignoring real children in Gaza.
They’ll take a baby dog away from its mother
and hack its ancient canine conditioning
to mistake a western nuclear family for its wolf pack
in order to fill the void in their hearts
which yearns for unconditional love,
all while hoarding their own love
so far deep in their chest caves
that they cannot feel anything for a Palestinian burn victim
in a bombed-out hospital
who is screaming because there’s no painkiller.
We have so far isolated ourselves from nature
that we need to fill our homes with potted plants
and docile, domesticated animals
just to feel whole.
We drink our wine and chuckle at memes
and talk to our dogs like we talk to babies
while the world turns to fire
and feral dogs feast on corpses in Gaza.
These last 14 months have shattered me.
Shattered me beyond the power of recollection.
But sometimes it’s good to be shattered.
Sometimes it’s good to be dashed to the floor
and cracked wide open
so that life can get a word in.
Sometimes the heart must be broken
to smash through the calluses and cataracts
which accumulate on its surface
and return us to our original tenderness.
This world will break your heart
and then pour plant medicine into the cracks.
It will show you a dead Palestinian child,
and then show you a white kite in the sky.
It will drop you to your knees screaming in anguish,
cursing a God you don’t even believe in,
bawling your eyes out,
only to open them and stare in wonder
at a dandelion growing through the cracks in the concrete.
It will annihilate everything you believed about humanity
in a blazing holocaust,
and then leave you blinking and bewildered
in a mysterious universe of unfathomable beauty,
the rusted chains of preconception
incinerated from your eyes.
Again and again and again
we are shattered to dust and scattered to the wind
by the cruelty of this world,
slowly learning that,
if we can fully surrender to the shattering,
it will return us to that primordial clarity
we abandoned long ago
when we set out to create this mess
in the first place.
Let yourself be shattered
by heartbreak, by loss, and by Gaza.
Let your whole universe
be reduced to ashes.
Let it all die away,
and then stand up,
and rejoin the fight,
eyes no longer clouded
by anything that could be destroyed
by truth.
thank you.
I had heard Ms Johnstone is overwhelmed by the pain of the genocide, many of us are. I think this is her bearing witness, all that most of us can do right now.
Destroying Eastern Christianity have been a plan for a while.
“Trump weighing options to stop Iran going nuclear, including preemptive strikes – report”
The Times of Israel getting it’s hopes up here. Trump thought about attacking Iran back in 2020 and asked for options for attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. The Pentagon told him that doing so would lead to an all out war that would take years to fight and lead to thousands of US military personnel getting killed with no guarantee of success as they did not have the troop numbers to occupy that country. A lot has changed since then.
For a start I do not think that the US has the weapons and ammo to do this anymore as the bulk of it has been spent in the Ukraine and in Gaza. US troop numbers must be declining as the services fail to meet recruitment quotas. And certainly Russia would not allow this to happen and they have already stationed a bunch of defensive gear in Iran to thwart the Israelis. It would be a red line for Russia. Does the Pentagon really want to see Russian fighters face off with F-35s to see which is the better fighter? Think how it might effect future sales!
Trump will have to be wary. In the same way that Zelensky wants Trump to commit to the Ukraine war and eventually send troops, the Israelis will be doing the same with Trump and Iran. He may think himself a master negotiator too but what happens when he meets with a delegation from Iran and their first words are. ‘Your country has broken every single agreement that we had with you including when you were last President.’ What will Trump say to that? ‘Trust us – this time will be different.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54972269
He’s always seemed keener on attacking Iran than Ukraine though. And there are frequent spurious Iran hitmen etc stories emanating from MAGAworld. I think he will be super reluctant to agree to troops.
Maybe it’ll take a couple of years to build up a drone force and then they can have their damn war.
There are 90 million Iranians. Trump would need close to 5 million soldiers to “pacify” Iran.
Trump is a bullshit artist. Miriam Adelson’s $100 million donation – in the future, to be called “an Adelson” in fundraising terms – isn’t going to buy her a land war that we can’t win.
I wouldn’t put my hopes on that. The Empire has exhibited a huge capacity for mayhem. Looking at what the Israelis are doing, I’ve repeatedly wondered: how many bombs do those guys have? Their inventory appears inexhaustible. Unlike Hezbollah’s.
Re A NATO coup just took place in Romania Thomas Fazi.
Fazi concludes by asking “How long before the same measures are deployed against core NATO countries in Western Europe that stray from the alliance’s prescribed path?”.
Maybe he overlooked how Corbyn was destroyed via a fabricated antisemitism smear. Maybe not the same means in terms of a campaign directly based on unfounded allegations of Russian interference, but certainly the same end of ousting a popular politician not subservient to NATO’s prescribed path. Although the BBC did show an image of Corbyn wearing a Russian style hat against a background of the Kremlin and Red Square to allow viewers to join these dots.
I thought that disgraceful of the BBC at the time but now I know that it was just par for the course. Don’t forget the coup in Moldova as well. President Maia Sandu was losing when at the last moment all those votes came in from Moldovans around Europe that tipped the balance a second time. Not those in Russia of course as only a tiny percentage of those Moldovans were permitted to vote by severely restricting the number of ballots sent and the number of polling stations opened. I’d call that a coup. And of course there has been an attempted coup in Georgia but the government was ready for it.
General de Gaulle was in Western Europe, and had inclination to stray from the alliance’s prescribed path.
He wll support Ukraine for as long
as it takesas he can.Wouldn’t it be funny if Trump offered Zelensky a deal. That he will continue to support Ukraine – but Zelensky has quite the Presidency and get out of the country. You think that Zelensky would take him up on that offer?
All Zelensky’s thoughts & prayers are about getting off this runaway train. He would even give away his Oscar, alongside his firstborn, just to get out of this in one piece (or “piss” as he would pronounce it).
Zelenskyy, like the string of puppets in Saigon from 1963 to 1975, serves at the pleasure of the trans-national deep state.
I read that as Trans-actionable Deep State.
Do you think the Ukranazis would let Zelensky live long enough to take Trump up on this offer if they began to suspect that Zelensky might want to take Trump up on this offer?
I’m sure that the US would provide him a safe, secure place to live in the same way that Russia now protects Assad. Just ask any former US client head of state. /sarc
I avoided voting for Trump by not voting at all, and will merely say that some of us who hoped Trump would win are quite aware that Trump should not be president either.
But anything is better than Biden and the lunatics he brought into the White House with him. Probably the biggest thing to worry about is that the ever shallow MSM will start deciding that Trump is their guy and Trump turns into Biden. May he always be hated by those who are the real issue.
As for Iran, Russia etc–reality stands in the way of the Bomber Boyz.
But anything is better than Biden and the lunatics he brought into the White House with him, Oh yes, and if I may, “the unnamed behind him”.
“the ever shallow MSM will start deciding that Trump is their guy”
I think that’s already happened. The billionaires are lining up to genuflect in Trump’s direction – Tim Cook, Bezos, etc etc. The NYT seems to be on board as well.
Re: Feds send drone radars to NJ
I predict a continuation of the kabuki of bureaucratic ineptitude and the radars will not get to the bottom of this.
I would bet large amounts of money that these are Anduril drones and none will be taken down.
Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey looks to be a MAGA Sam Bankman Fried of war. You can hear him talk about his plans for the defence industry from 21:40 of this hour long talk at Pepperdine University
If I wanted to find where this operation was being run from, I’d start at Anduril’s huge marine drone facility in Rhode Island
Maybe they could contract with some experienced drone warriors to shoot one down. It can’t cost that much to hire some Russian mercenaries.
This presumes they don’t know what they are. I think they do.
Game of Drones?
>Housing must take priority over nature, says Starmer in green belt reform plan Guardian (Kevin W)
The link title was enough to trigger me. Priorities!? How about prioritizing life over war mongering death that is part and parcel of Starmer’s support for genocide in Gaza and UK’s perennial strategy of division, fomenting political stability and alliances that strengthen nations that seek autonomy. How about extending instead of diminishing heating subsidies to elderly and poor instead of arming the ME to the teeth?
You want UK to stop acting like it’s UK?
Establishing so-called green belts was one of the achievements of the post WW2 Labour government headed by Attlee. Other achievements included the creation of the free at point of use National Health Service, nationalisation of various key industries etc. Most of these nationalised industries were since privatised by Thatcher and then Blair. Now Starmer is finishing the job, he is well on course to complete the destruction of the NHS, so obviously green belts would now be in his sights as the last bastion of putting society and people before capitalist profits. Any and every suggestion that socialism can be the answer to any question must be ruthlessly oblitorated. And whatever he fails to tackle in this direction over his five year mandate, will be completed by Farage, for whom Starmer is oiling the path to power.
All that wasted green belt could finally be put to use as land to build exclusive gated communities on that would be convenient to London. There would be room for exclusive golf courses as well. /sarc
In a way, it is like a seizing of the Commons all over again but this time around instead of going to the local lords and gentry, it will be going to the wealthy elite of London.
Sorry for your (unrealized-maybe there is hope yet?) loss. Selling the family silver for an exorbitant broker’s fee is old school corruption. As we are number 1 (guess who!), I’m sure we will come up with some kind of even more backward thinking natural resource grifter’s delight project.
There will be opposition to placing new housing adjacent to the Greenbelt by the folks that are already living adjacent to the Greenbelt. Trees don’t vote, people do.
‘Citizen Free Press
@CitizenFreePres
ABC News reports that one million Ukraine soldiers have died.’
Watching that ex-Ukrainian soldier wearing a prosthetic leg reminded me of something. I have the series “The Civil War” by Ken Burns on DVD. At the end of the war he mentioned one ex-Confederate State whose largest budgetary expense on their books was prosthetic limbs. I guess that some things never change.
This reminded me of seeing a huge billboard on highway 22 about 30 minutes east of Pittsburgh. It shows a U.S. Veteran with a prosthetic limb and says “another victory.”
Men and women maimed for life and needing prosthetic is according to U.S. military advertisers, a “victory.” It assumes that the eyeball that sees the billboard doesn’t have the capacity to ask “compared to what?” I guess, they just assume you’ll fill in the the answer, death and not think that maybe it would have been better if the person didn’t sign up to go to join the military.
One can remember a former US president who pushed for wars that disabled many US veterans, later charging 100k to speak at disabled veterans groups.
His wife also got in for 50k.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-veterans-charity-george-bush-charged-100000/story?id=32251253
Shame has been bred out of many US leaders.
Indeed, Compared to What?
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4
“The President, he’s got his war
Most folks don’t know just what it’s for,
Nobody gives us a rhyme or reason,
Have one doubt, they call it treason,
We’re chicken feathers all without one gut,
God damn it!
Trying to make it real compared to what?”
Fabulous. That’s the first Jazz album I ever bought. In the back yard having to “clean it up” instead of ride bikes with my girlfriends, he said, Hun, “why don’t you put on one of your stations”. Unheard of as he would always play country music and Howard K Estep christian preachers. I put on the local rock station and it was their Jazz hour. When “God Damn it” rang out, I had to buy that LP. Changed my life.
have the “Swiss Movement” vinyl too, purchased because of that song – have to add, as a Detroit boy, that Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Going On” released a couple of years later was transformative – the key changes within a song were musically illuminating but his song lyrics, especially “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” and in particular “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” cut to the quick – still relevant – his death an unnecessary tragedy –
There is a killer live version on youtube –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPkM8F0sjSw
thanks – lovely live version – the whole album is beautiful music –
It’s extraordinary that ACB News would give numbers like that. Can anyone find the video clip on an ABC News property? Any idea where the reporter got the numbers from?
I bet there is a 98% chance this clip is faked. There is almost no way that ABC would make this statement. There’s a 2% chance it was a typo in the ABC script. (My very brief look for the clip turns up nothing, but I would love to see if someone can find it.)
That claim is fake and got posted repeatedly by “big influencers” on X (Twitter).
Was going to post it myself but checked the actual article. The ABC article said
one million KIA, total, with the majority RF forces. Same MSM propaganda.
Many “reputable” X accounts post garbage and get 1000s of ‘likes’ or ‘reposts’.
I heard that it was 600,000 dead several months ago.
re: Housing must take priority over nature, says Starmer in green belt reform plan Guardian (Kevin W)
This same scenario is taking place here in Ontario, with conservative Premier Doug Ford, who promised to leave the Green Belt intact, having made deals with real estate developers. As we speak, the Green Belt is mountains of dirt and mud, converted to suburb after suburb, it is no more.
The problem with taking this particular Green Belt is the soil is the most fertile in Ontario, perfect for agriculture, which is the reason it is a Green Belt. Land usable for farming is scarce. So, in effect, it’s “Housing must take priority over food.”
The Guardian article doesn’t even dive into this aspect. What good is writing a piece about it if you’re not going to get into why it’s designated a Green Belt in the first place, which might be rather relevant?
London famously has zillions of square feet in luxury housing that sits empty year after year. Is the same true for major cities in Canada?
London also has a lot of vacant rental property, but that’s another type of thing.
Although one one think asking questions about existing property that none one lives in would be a sensible move before bulldozing greenbelts.
Yes, the green belt desecration in Ontario has been particularly egregious. What’s going on in Britain is a mirror to what’s happening in all the Anglo 5-I countries, which is the push for insane permanently high immigration levels to, in our leadership’s eyes, keep ‘groaf’ high while keeping wages permanently under pressure. Bonus points to keeping the housing price ponzi going. If there is one thing they hate above all else, it’s when workers have any bargaining power whatsoever which leads to rising wages, and you can see the misleadership class acting tout-suite to stop that happening.
Plowing over Green Belts and general environmental destruction is to be expected when your public policy is to jam in as many new
slavesworkers as possible. Can’t have much of a green belt with a million newcomers every year, forever.I think the Ontario Greenbelt boondoggle was either a case of our dear Premier wanting to please his wealthy fiends or just outright corruption. I am still not sure which. Still, the report of the Ethics Commissioner was a joy to read. It reeked of total disbelief in anything Dougie told her.
: Philosophical Dead Ends Los Angeles Review of Books.
> Niche Theory: Hat tip Judith.
> Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution [Nature, 2023; co-author Sara I. Walker]
[nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
> The equations for niche construction allow negative values. Cases include the Great Oxygenation Event (self-extinction), and wild boars (destruction of existing niches). New niches alter the covariants of selection. Cui bono, cui malo.
> Coalescence theory has been showing up in the equation icosystem. Good stuff, but I have concerns about the tool influencing the mindset. There is a difference between a cause and a retrospective attribution of why something happens. While you can follow time in geological strata, there are techniques to discern where strata have been eroded away, so you at least can discern that a period of time has been removed. Is there a similiar mechanism of discernment in genetics? Ἐγγύα πάρα δ’ Ἄτα.
I guess thoughts and prayers were not good enough, so he wants to ramp it up.
Ha! Thank you for the laugh.
Everyone thought the whole prayers thing from Pat was just a quirky charming CEO thing, when the reality of the situation was that he was 100% legit, for realz, ‘Pray for Intel’ mode, lol.
Haaretz confirms: Dr Iyad Rantisi — head of obstetrics at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, was tortured & killed by the israelis while in their custody
Torturing and killing doctors, bombing hospitals, schools and mosques, targeting children, women, and U.N. aid workers, our close friend and ally who we will spare no cost in blood and treasure to support. Sick, sick, sick. All the opprobrium of civilized nations (which excludes most of the West) 2 years on continue to watch this madness in horror as the genocide continues and expands.
The first quarter of the 21’st century is turning out to be as blood soaked as the last one.
Well said. Depressing summary to have rattling around in my head during the holidays but apt.
Many years ago I visited the Tuol Sleng center of torture & genocide museum in Cambodia a few times. Outside the front door was a favoured spot for amputee beggars.
[Edit: this was meant to be a reply to Rev Kev above]
A Controversial Plan To Refreeze the Arctic is Seeing Promising Results CNN
We are in for geoengineering whether we like it or not.
This example seems to have the least potential downside of any ideas I’ve seen so far. The strategy is to …drill holes through the sea ice to pump out the seawater below and freeze it on the surface. Does it scale?
Lastly, If all goes to plan, he expects they can scale up within eight to 10 years. I’m skeptical we have that many years to give, maybe.
If the AMOC is indeed shutting down, the Arctic may begin refreezing on its own. Which may make for interesting times in the mid latitudes, with all that excess heat trapped there.
Be more interesting in Europe where they would then get the same weather that Siberia gets. Hey, if all that excess heat is getting trapped in the mid-latitudes, wouldn’t that make for more powerful & frequent hurricanes that would head west to the US and the Caribbean?
That’s a recipe for foul weather, and I’m guessing it may not be preventable. Recovering lost albedo might restore some balance (cold poles), who knows. We need a new ice age.
Careful what you wish for. Last time around Chicago for example was under 3,000 feet of ice – which was twice the height of the Willis Tower-
https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=dc43c67e-f054-42b2-95c6-7c20289abcf1
Yes, but I have come to the conclusion that this is the only path to survival for the human species. Depopulation is a feature.
Mexico may have to build themselves a Border Wall-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Te-ePzt5FE (49 secs)
I guess Mexico is going to pay for that wall, lol.
But it will be a big beautiful one!
Don’t worry, mrsyk, nuclear winter is coming.
We are thoroughly out of the icehouse state. The Arctic is not refreezing any time soon.
Why do people insist on perpetuating the idea that AMOC slowing will freeze Europe? You know that energy imbalance doesn’t just magically go away, right?
I imagine we can geoengineer our way to an ice age. I’d be straying from my lane into the hard numbers, but that’s where my stake would go. How much blocking of the sun would it take? Agree on the AMOC thought. “freeze” seems to be doing a lot of work, but imagining the distribution stream (and forecast its evolution) of the energy surplus might be helpful, that is if one is able to.
Seems like the laws of thermodynamics might not have been studied to hard in college by whomever is behind that plan.
Elaborate. It’s early and I’m not feeling particularly sharp this morning..
It takes energy to power a drill to put a hole in sea ice, plus the transport to get it there. Holes don’t just drill themselves.
Where is that energy going to come from? Might not some fossil fuels be involved?
I guess sailboats with battery powered Ryobis?
Yes, thank you. From the photos, it looks like they use a generator to power the pumps. The drill looks to have a battery pack, and I can’t imagine those batteries keep a charge very long in sub-zero weather. Nevertheless, manually powered drills and pumps exist. Manpower is one resource that we have plenty of if the will to pay for it is there. To the upside, no energy required to freeze the water.
At what duration is there a return on the energy invested? That’s above my pay scale.
Never, ever. The water they pump up will melt the top layer of ice, mixing with the sweat of the Kamala Krew of the indentured incarcerants who are relocated via NGO.
What would be the cost of using shaped charges to blast the holes? Compare that with the drill scenario. Put some of that Pentagon budget to a good use for once. Let the Corps of Engineers do it. They have a history of geo-engineering, such as the levee systems along rivers in America.
Make Americas Army Great Again (MAAGA.)
That ice is probably not particularly thick.
That’s kind of what I was vaguely thinking, about the same for a lot of the decarbonization “plans” that get mentioned.
Yo! Europe, let’s kick it
Ice age, ice age baby
Ice age, ice age baby
Alright stop, collaborate and listen
Ice age is back with brand new cold convection
Something grabs a hold of land tightly
Flow like a frozen wave daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo!, I don’t know
Turn off the soil and on ice what can you grow?
To the extreme, it’ll rock the AMOC like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a tipping point like a candle
Dance, go rush to the money that go boom
I’m killing your brain like a poisonous nuclear mushroom
Deadly, when I play a climate zugzwang melody
Anything less than the best is a felony
Love it or leave it, you better gangway
You better hit bull’s eye, the atmosphere don’t play
If there was a problem, Yo!, I’ll solve it
Check out the free freezers while the ice floes hit
Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla
Now that the climate change party is jumping
When the frozen kicked in, with all that oil pumping
Quick to the point, to the point, no faking
Chill out the continent, a destiny of our making
Burning them out, if you ain’t quick and nimble
I go crazy when I hear there goes their status symbol
And hi-lo temps with a souped up tempo
I’m on a roll, it’s time to go Han Solo
Rollin’ in my snow-mo
With the helmet off so my hair can blow
The icebound frantically waving, want a ride
(Did you stop?) No, I just rode by
Kept on pursuing to the next stop
I busted a left and I’m heading to the next block
The survivors on that block was dead, yo
So I continued to what used to be A1A Beachfront Avenue
Take heed ’cause I’m a lyrical poet
Miami’s a snow scene just in case you didn’t know it
That town created on all that low down
Enough to create sinkholes in the ground
My style’s like a mindful spill
These are rhymes that fit the bill
Conducted and formed, it’s a hell of a concept
I make it -31f and you want to step out on this
Yo mankind, let’s get out of here
Word to your mother
Ice, ice baby, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice Ice Baby, by Vanilla Ice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOQtzxPnoY0
Some calculations are available for the Antarctic in The Ministry for thFuture by Kim Stanley Robinson considering this method.
re: Haaretz confirms: Dr Iyad Rantisi — head of obstetrics at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, was tortured & killed by the israelis while in their custody
I went looking for the article and it seems to be six months old. Not that this invalidates it.
It’s this one, right? Or is there some new development I’m missing? https://archive.ph/g8oLU (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-18/ty-article/.premium/israel-arrested-a-senior-doctor-in-gaza-six-days-later-he-died-in-a-shin-bet-facility/00000190-27eb-d14b-a999-27eb9aea0000).
Holly Jolly Kill-mas
Sung to the tune of, “Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives
Have a holly jolly killmas
It’s the worst time of the year
I don’t know why hatred grows
But have a cup of fear
Have a holly jolly killmas
And when you walk down the street
Say hello to ancient foes
On battlefields you’ll meet
Oh no, the death toll grows
Anyone can see
Somebody lies to you
On cable TV
Have a holly jolly killmas
And in case I wasn’t clear
Oh by golly dodge a volley, of hot bullets, this year!
Have a holly jolly killmas
And when you walk down the street
Say hello to ancient foes
On battlefields you’ll meet
Oh no, the death toll grows
Anyone can see
Somebody lies to you
On cable TV
Have a holly jolly killmas
And in case I wasn’t clear
Oh by golly Biden’s folly, brings more misery, next year!
>Russia will reply Julian Macfarlane
Good Media people will tell you The Fall of Assad is a forerunner to The Fall of Putin and The Fall of Xi Jinping.
Well, maybe not the “Fall,” but it certainly was a set-back. Russia/Putin by announcing that there will be a retaliation, seems to be have a milquetoast flavor. You would have thought the the response was primed and would be instantaneous, but no. Like Iran, they seem to telescope their response and targets ahead of time. I don’t get it.
No, the last time they did the Oreshnik, followed by the biggest strikes evah on Ukraine electrical production and taking out 5 ATACMS launchers.
The reason it seems wimpy is the press here didn’t report on them.
As a follow-up to Yves point, Putin and the General Staff don’t usually jump on their horses and go running off in all directions. There, probably, was a dusting off plans and deciding on their best bang for their buck. Or even let their opponents sweat it a bit.
No, I would not.
Thanks, it should have read “I would have thought” – not nice to project self/ego thinking on to others
“You would have thought the the response was primed and would be instantaneous, but no.”
And leaves no doubt about what is being responded to. Probably would force more news coverage of a response.
The link in the X tweet from Chris Hedges under the heading of “Our Famously Free Press” is not working correctly.
It may be that this sub stack article was intended:
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/letter-to-refaat-alareer
re: Who’s afraid of George Soros? Indian Punchline
This weird obsession with Soros has always mystified me. It originates from somewhere unseen, Netanyahu just one day out of the blue decided he was enemy #1 in the whole wide world.
When I was involved with Occupy the neocons and anti-Occupy folks were arguing that Occupy was funded by Soros. Always seemed to always bring him up, seemed to be operating from some unseen script or playbook somewhere. Before Occupy, and before I was accused of being Soros funded, I had never even heard of Soros.
It was around that time Netanyahu in particular, and the Israeli right, seemed to have a major grievance with him, targeting him relentlessly. The standard was to accuse him of being a Nazi. (For the record, Soros was a Jewish child hidden by a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Hungary, he barely escaped the camps.)
Fast forward to now and I read in Indian Punchline that Soros is a neocon, which I doubt given the projects his foundation supports. This piece reads to me as if the lies around him have been repeated often enough that IP now believes them, a major victory for Netanyahu.
He was extremely influential in Eastern Europe after the USSR fell.
You should follow Junior Soros Twitter.
Soros has long been a right-wing boogie man who has been blamed for almost everything right-wingers don’t like. Since he was Jewish, he has also been a convenient foil for antisemitic International Jewish One-World Conspiracy types.
He has also been a major funder and supporter of neoliberal color revolutions worldwide, as this article suggests, often using his resources and the “private” cover of his NGOs to partner with and amplify the actions of the CIA and State Department to destabilize uncooperative nations. This is well-documented and pretty well known today. I don’t know about his role in current Indian politics. But such allegations are not made out of thin air.
The fact that he has been targeted by paranoid “conspiracy theorists” on the right provides a convenient excuse for ridiculing anyone who points out his actual role in various foreign and domestic policy adventures (needless to say the antisemitic stuff helps as well). It is perhaps possible to distinguish “neocon” and “neoliberal” factions of our national security establishment, but since their desired policy goals are often indistinguishable I can understand the use of the “neocon” label here.
He did get rich by destabilizing a major world currency for his own personal profit back in the day. Destabilizing a country doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
Dr. Mahmoud Al-Namleh,
Dr. Saeed Joudeh,
Professor Abdelsalam Abu Zaida
A what point do we arrive at “enough is enough”? How many more? Bloody hell.
Rest in peace.
In my darker moments I sometimes think that Israel should be renamed as Murder Inc.
It literally is, in the sense that the Mafia is often called Murder, Inc.
Aaron Good of American Exception podcast is doing a series exploring the role of the Jewish mafia in doing the dirty work for the American oligarchy, founding of Israel, and the assassination of JFK. Israel was a Mafia state from the start and engaged in all kinds of organized crime activities, in addition to “legal” stuff like arming and training right wing regimes in Africa and Latin America.
This is outside of the series, but he brings some of this up in his interview with Larry Wilkerson.
https://youtu.be/9Fh2svieFaA?si=GCc234RiZ20P8cS6
Gothamist: Feds in a panic sending radar to New Jerseyites in a panic. To quote:
“Meanwhile, a tense Congressional hearing revealed that FBI officials still do not know who is behind the drone activity.”
Che sorpresa. The FBI doesn’t know~!
As for me, my money as the cause is on either (1) Caltiki the immortal monster or (2) Mothra.
Never rule out Mothra.
[In Chicago, such drone sightings would be an advertisement for Mr. Beef on Orleans. Here in the Undisclosed Region, we don’t have drone sightings, although nearby Monte Musinè has been visited by UFOs and other apparitions, just like any other reputable mountain. Undoubtedly, the UFO pilots were looking for a good recipe for bonet.]
All in all, though, I see the drone sightings as a metaphor for the new U.S. age of anxiety.
The whole thing smells of a psyop. You’ve had people claim that there is a Chinese mothership off the coast of the US sending these drones over which is ridiculous. The government and the media are only happy when they are making the public frantic with worry and scared out of their wits and this is no different. Remember the induced panic when a Chinese weather balloon was blown off course and flew over the US? They never did show people the shot down remains of that balloon, did they? I’ve seen videos of some of those drones and wondered why you don’t have people following them in cars or getting vigilantes using their own drones to crash into these UFO drones to bring them down to be examined. They do it in the Ukraine.
We can target individuals in the ME, but we can’t track drones im NJ? Gimme a break!
Indeed, if the feds are sending drone detecting radar, why even announce it and thus tip off the drone operators, eliminating your one opportunity to figure it out? In what universe does that make sense to do? Unless the drone operators are themselves the feds, perhaps?
How about CaliTikiToki? A wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Valley Influencers Alliance LLP.
What is “fun” here is that the people reporting their sightings often jump right to the “drone” explanation. This brings to mind Jacques Vallee’s observation that the UFOs, whatever they may be, are usually described in terms common to the era of the sightings.
Stay safe. Keep watching the skies.
Patrick Lawrence: Center Cannot Hold.
Always worth a read. There is much detail in this article as well as many insights.
Just one quote: “And what unfolds in France as we speak — Macron says he will shortly name a new premier — is a variant of what we witness across the neoliberal world, if I can suggest this term. Democratic process is to be sacrificed at the altar of power.”
Romania, anyone?
Looking back in European post-WWII history, we have Ukraine. One million dead soldiers. In a population now estimated at 25 million. Every family has been destroyed.
The dismantling of Yugoslavia. It was too big a counterweight of imperial designs in the Balkans.
The regime of the Colonels in Greece no longer looks like an isolated event. It seemed peculiar and horrible at the time, even a tactical blunder on the apart of the U S of A. It was a rehearsal.
Teddy Roosevelt thought we should get into the imperialism business but wasn’t so smug after one of his sons died in WW1.
Of course as long it’s far away Ukrainians getting slaughtered then “damn the torpedoes full speed ahead.”
This ‘Decembris’ movement is kinda reminiscent of the farewell tour when the Iron Curtain came down. It was a series of incremental incidentals that led to collapse, and nobody would a figured, just like now, who had Assad sacked on their crystal balls?
Remember that “d–n the torpedoes, full speed ahead” was uttered during Admiral Farragut’s assault on Mobile Bay, Alabama, during the American War Between the States. The Civil War, an original Colour Revolution?
Yes I got my quotes wrong and was shooting for “fire when ready Gridley” in Manila Bay at the launch of our overseas empire. Mobile Bay more your neck of the woods and the best we upstate SC denizens can muster is the Battle of Cowpens during the Revolution.
Doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
Ah, but not to worry friend. The Tories from the Carolinas and Georgia moved mainly to the Bahamas after King Georges War ended. The Bahamas were forcibly “annexed” by England from Spain at that time, and was a convenient spot to dump the revolutionary losers. Their descendants are still there, in the out islands. Known as “The Conchs,” (not to be confused with the American joke polity of the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys,) they run a sort of autonomous zone, apart from the central government in Nassau.
As for the North American Deep South history, I once heard a Professor of History bemoan the miserable handling of the Scottish troops at the Battle of New Orleans at, really, after, the end of the War of 1812. Remember that Andrew Jackson made his reputation in repulsing the English assault aiming at capturing New Orleans from the Southwest. It was mentioned that all the English officers had to do was to yell, “Out claymores and charge!” and American history would have been very different. Luckily for America, as usual, the English officers were incompetent, and the opportunity was lost. (Similarly, if Cornwallis had followed orders and not strayed so far inland in his march north from the Carolinas, the Crown would have had a much better chance at prevailing.)
The moral of the stories, if there is one, is the pernicious effects of stupidity and chance on history.
Agreed re: Lawrence. He’s always worth a read, but I’ll disagree about the “altar of power.” It’s really the altar of money. Yes, money can and does buy power, but these fools who are our oligarchs are so lacking in depth and imagination that the best they can come up with for using their power is go to Mars or attain personal longevity if not immortality. Otherwise, they just use their acquired power to make more money. It’s money that they love.
One million dead soldiers. In a population now estimated at 25 million
I did some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations in the summer of 2023 and came to the conclusion that the Kievian-controlled parts of Ukraine likely have a population of 16–22 million. Douglas McGregor quoted similar figures recently and he must have better sources than me.
I don’t think there is any way you can get 25 million without including Crimea. /src
“France’s New PM: Is the Wait Over?”
I suppose that for Macron, he has two things that he wants in a new PM. They have to be a centrist and they have to be loyal to him. Considering the numbers that the left and the right have, I do not think that they will treat the next PM any better than Barnier. Why should they? Macro is only selecting his centrist buddies for office holders and blocking people from the left and the right. And this goes back to the election that he called which he did not have to any kept his Cabinet in the dark until he announced it. Maybe he should have gone for a grand coalition but that is not Macron’s style. He wants all the power so France is now stuck with an unstable government for the next coupla years.
Nice one, Rev. Way back when that Hoosier fella Buttitch was truncated to Mayo Pete, I smiled and adopted that form for all subsequent references (not that there have been so very many) to himself. Now you’ve given the world another one:
> Why should they? Macro is only selecting his centrist buddies …
Macro he is and Macro he shall henceforth be. Good on ya, mate.
Maybe Macro can write an MS Word Macro to randomly select a stooge from his Excel DB every three months as the new PM?
That sounds an awful lot like a Macro virus.
My preferred adaptation is Micron. It seems fitting to his intellectual depth. And then there’s Blair Starmer and Not Pierre Trudeau.
Re: How to Trust a Trump Voter
That second paragraph is interesting:
Having heard of the premise and not having read either book myself, but wouldn’t Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal contradict that entire paragraph?
Any liberal elitist writer who is arrogant enough to write that first sentence should be forced to read Listen, Liberal and respond to each of its very numerous examples of liberal elite arrogance. I put this statement in the same category as the Robert Sterling post on Brian Thompson in today’s Links. Arrogant and oblivious.
A realistic view of the world contradicts that entire paragraph. Believe me it is very easy to live in a bubble if you have an income that allows it in NYC. And most of the major media figures have that income. And any one they might talk to who doesn’t figured out long ago that if they want even a share of the money sloshing around you don’t bring them any bad news. So they do it very rarely, if ever.
It’s never about their actions. It’s always about the “messaging” with these people. No one noticed they were getting the shaft until Trump told them. Good grief.
MONTHLY REVIEW – The New Denial of Imperialism on the Left
This is from Nov. 3rd. So I hope I am not reposting here something.
But at least based in Germany I come across this failure of the Left every single day in all shapes and forms.
https://monthlyreview.org/2024/11/01/the-new-denial-of-imperialism-on-the-left/
by John Bellamy Foster
intro:
It is a sign of the depth of the structural crisis of capital in our time that not since the onset of the First World War and the dissolution of the Second International—during which nearly all of the European social democratic parties joined the interimperialist war on the side of their respective nation-states—has the split on imperialism on the left taken on such serious dimensions.1 Although the more Eurocentric sections of Western Marxism have long sought to attenuate the theory of imperialism in various ways, V. I. Lenin’s classic work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (written in January–June 1916) has nonetheless retained its core position within all discussions of imperialism for over a century, due not only to its accuracy in accounting for the First and Second World Wars, but also to its usefulness in explaining the post-Second World War imperial order.2 Far from standing alone, however, Lenin’s overall analysis has been supplemented and updated at various times by dependency theory, the theory of unequal exchange, world-systems theory, and global value chain analysis, taking into account new historical developments. Through all of this, there has been a basic unity to Marxist imperialism theory, informing global revolutionary struggles.
FWIW my understanding is that the left-wing humanitarian Bismarck tried to prevent Germany from acquiring colonies, because they were money drains that weren’t worth the price. IIRC Germany only began colonizing after Bismarck was pushed out of the government.
“Confronting risks of mirror life”
‘All known life is homochiral. DNA and RNA are made from “right-handed” nucleotides, and proteins are made from “left-handed” amino acids.’
Just had a thought based on an old Robert Heinlein story. So what if Country A wants to wreck Country B. So they breed a species of wheat that has “right-handed” amino acids. They then get Country C to sell the seeds for Country B to grow their wheat crops with. All looks well as they grow and are harvested except for one thing. You could eat a truck load of bread made from this wheat but your body would never get any nutrition from it as it only handles protein from “left-handed” amino acids. By the time this is discovered, you have starvation undermining that country.
Best not to step through the looking glass.
Rev Kev: ...You could eat a truck load of bread made from this wheat but your body would never get any nutrition from it as it only handles protein from “left-handed” amino acids.
During the Cold War, both sides distributed crop-blighting pathogens in each others’ territories to lower the enemy’s harvests; likewise, spread flu viruses among the enemy population to crimp their industrial productivity. (I used to have contacts in the biodefense/bioweapons business as it was part of my turf as a journalist.)
So what you’re proposing is nothing new in that general sense and, in fact, I’ve heard your specific idea proposed before. But there’s far too much risk of such reengineered seeds and the amino acids themselves escaping (via the decayed plants in the fields, or carried by the wind, rain, insects, birds) into the general environment beyond the targeted nation’s borders.
What a good bioweapon needs is a vector that supplies targeting specificity. A good example of this is DARPA’s ‘Insect Allies’ program, one of the technologies field-tested in the US biolab sites in Ukraine —
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2016-10-19
DARPA Enlists Insects to Protect Agricultural Food Supply
New program aims for insect delivery of protective genes to modify mature plants within a single growing season
…using targeted gene therapy to protect mature plants within a single growing season. DARPA proposes to leverage a natural and very efficient two-step delivery system to transfer modified genes to plants: insect vectors and the plant viruses they transmit. In the process, DARPA aims to transform certain insect pests into “Insect Allies,” the name of the new effort.
And to be clear, this was not theoretical. It was done. With this technology, a potentially large number of specific genes can be selected to be inserted into crop plants out in the fields — including an enemy state’s fields — and there’s precise targeting specificity and far less genetic engineering required than what you propose.
So, Hezbollah does not have 100k missiles? Now wait a minute… And everyone who said it sounded so sure of themselves. Though in retrospect I always wondered where did that number come from. It’s not like Hezbollah is subject to regular independent missile audits.
The problem is that it is not just the number of missiles available, but their targeting and their drone swarm front guards.
True existential missile targeting on Israel would be to take out the factories that make the high profit export items. Next, take out the offices where the cyberforce programmers and operators work.
Unfortunately, when the Ukraine finally collapses, America will have all of that “Excess Political Economic Capital” sloshing around in the DofC appropriations trough to be redirected. The State of Israel will become even more dependent on American largess.
Gooooooooooood Mooooooorning Fiaaaaaaatnam!
The platoon had mutually decided to slit our risks of triskaidekaphobia* becoming rampant in the ranks-a clear and present danger on occasion when it befell on a Friday, and more pressing than overhead action near Area 50.99 in the pine barrens, that is if said extraterrestrials don’t decide to stay and becom ‘para-illegals’ as they will henceforth be called.
…what do they bring to us other than a veritable shitload of air mile points?
* if you’re staying on the 14th floor of a hotel, stop deluding yourself that you really aren’t on the 13th floor, just because the elevator suggests there isn’t one
“Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences”
Classic neoliberal thinking. If you have research going on, you should be able to see some sort of return for it on the quarterly accounts. They would have closed down the Manhattan Project on the grounds that it was not showing a profit on the first year. Hmmm. Bad example. Point is that historically research has always paid off and the big advances came from projects where they were not making money for several years but when they succeeded, that is when the big advances came and the money flowed.
Interestingly, a Japanese study found that while researchers can achieve more with larger grants, in terms of investment efficiency, it is more effective to allocate smaller grants to a larger number of researchers than to allocate larger grants to a smaller number of researchers.
Same with extramural research grants from the National Institutes of Health in the US. The diminishing return from that second grant is striking and declines even further with the third. Of course, the good grantsman or grantswoman acknowledges each grant on every publication so the separate study sections (review panels) that recommend funding are really impressed with the apparent productivity (another fraught concept) of the Principal Investigator (PI). This is the first lesson learned after one gets into the club! Club members claim to know about his subterfuge and act on it when reviewing grants.
They lie. How do I know? When I was still a research technician I did most of the research for a grant application independently and then worked with the PI and Co-PI during the all-nighter that put it together (no real writing involved; I had never previously crammed like that for anything). I thought this would never get funded, as shoddy as it was. Wrong! The reviewers loved it because the PI was already well funded by NIH and this was a “natural extension of his research” with clinical potential (never realized). I should have taken the hint right then and there. Starry-eyed me…Much later I heard from a very successful scientist that he never got a grant until he just got sloppy with them and didn’t worry overmuch about the content. Go figure!
It would be nice if the NIH grant process could have the barnicles scraped off so I could sail smoothly. I grant that there are a lot of barnicles.
Is the rot so deep that the entire institution should be broken up? (Like Boeing, where the corruption goes all the way to the shop floor, with people moving not-up-to-spec rudders around under cover of nightfall, and then installing.) I’m inclined to do that with the CDC, but OTOH it would be nice to have some functioning institution like a CDC for when the next pandemic hits. Can the Trump administration stand up new versions of those agencies? Or would they turn everything over to corporate labs? How….
On the road and late to reply. Short answer: Yes.
I have Canadian colleagues who get smaller grants without the process being a lottery. They do well. A similar program, OUTSIDE the US National Science Foundation where wokish logrolling is high art, would work. But Canadians generally do not have to come up with graduate student stipends AFAIK and that makes all the difference.
NIH is a complete mess, but this is not something that near-total crank RFKJr as any idea how to fix.
Note: I posted this comment on another thread yesterday, but I feel it’s relevant to one of the Tweets listed above. I’ve been a daily NC reader since its appearance in the mid-2000s and I occasionally comment here. Israel has, I’m my view, fatal vulnerabilities. It is wholly dependent upon the USA for its continued existence. This support is a contingency, not an absolute certainty. Also, its army is flaccid and in several respects endangered. Its air-force is formidable but only because the US supplies it and it has no opposition in the sky. I suspect that Iran could severely damage or destroy Israel’s air-force -and Israeli society. If that occurs the entire balance of power equation is upended. There are other factors to consider regarding Israels’ quest for permanent bully-boy dominance, like its precarious economic status, out-migration, small population and geographic size, and the wherewithal of its benefactor, the USA. In sum, in the short term, a big win for Israel; long-term, the inevitable end of Israel.
One fear I read appears to be that a huge confrontation between Iran-Israel would pull RU in after Iran had had supposedly done some serious damage to Israeli structures. I don´t know if genuine experts share this or not.
I could however imagine this Syria business satisfies Israel in a way that it may expand into that area and might attempt to cut off Iran in the long run instead of seeking hot war. With the goal of setting up an Iron Curtain just the way it might return in Europe. Richard Medhurst mentioned the Silk Road as a perceived threat which they try to counter. Although I have the impression Israeli nat. sec. state is among the most flexible ones when it comes to business ties globally. But eventually the rough idea is a bipolar world where the US is fine with simply disconnecting their sphere of influence from those who dare trade with China. Since they can´t bully many countries the way they did they now bully their allies into subservience. i.e. no-no to China and Russia. BRICS conveniently would be confined to the non-US part.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2024/October/weo-report?c=924,532,546,111,&s=PPPGDP,PPPSH,&sy=2007&ey=2023&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
October 15, 2024
China in 2023 was 26.8% larger in real GDP than the US
China in 2023 was 29.8% larger in real GDP than the EU
BRICS counted for 36.16% of world GDP in 2023
G7 counted for 29.48% of world GDP in 2023
But who in the WH will read those numbers?
Swoosh, and there goes your reality out the window. (Black Knight vs. King Arthur syndrom)
Actually, thinking of neglect – Anchorman 1&2 could easily be re-labeled POTUS 1&2.
There’s a notable controversy in Ireland, where a recent and supposedly left-wing party the Social Democrats, ended up having an ex-Palantir (i.e. basically CIA) employee elected as a TD (like an MP in UK Parliament) – and now just after the election, dumped him from the party after it emerged he still held hundreds of thousands in Palantir shares, while the party is supposedly Pro-Palestine (which is a bit odd, as you’d think simply having been a Palantir employee is discrediting enough):
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/social-democrats-deputy-leader-ocallaghan-very-angry-about-hayes-incident-1706892.html
Today they called in the bomb squad for a package addressed to this politician (remains to be seen what the story is there). Previously the party had been under threat from the far right, too:
https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/12/13/army-and-garda-security-operation-ongoing-at-social-democrats-headquarters-after-suspect-package-sent-to-office/
If he cashed out those shares recently he did quite well. Palantir is up over 300% this year 700% over the last 2 years!
Grandmother, 80, is killed in freak accident in her Sleep Number bed Daily Mail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not mentioned in the article, but obviously #13 was a bad choice, Granny.
Re Robert Sterling’s post: I saw it the other day and was disgusted. My work colleague had liked it(he’s a jerk, par for the course for him after how he’s treated me). I couldn’t read through the comments, was too upset by such an elitist, out of touch post. Other former colleagues now in biotech and pharma liked it as well. When people show you who they are, believe them.
FTA:
Wow! The first sentence (bold mine) is a dandy, and so is the guy who wrote it.
Yeah, that post and the few people popping in to defend the original point was liking seeing a New Yorker cartoon in real life. There are sometimes when reading the curated set of articles offered on NC that truth becomes blindingly clear. There is an entire class of people in our world, and concentrated in the US, that sees nothing wrong with the torture and death of millions of people as long as the methods used are legal and profitable. Now that there is an event which has made that point of view obvious to many they are shocked that other people are repulsed by it. I expect the censorship and enbubblement protecting this insulated class to get even worse during Trump II. Which means the slow burn that has been smoldering for years now is likely to burst into flames sooner rather than later. These fools are going to give us another Reign of Terror because they’re too stupid and greedy to do anything else.
In the past year, whenever a shocking event occurs, I am, like, ‘wait for it!’ Then the PR/spin doctors roll out the editorials, headlines, talk shows, etc., to damp down the initial, probably genuine, public reaction.
I worry about the increasingly large divide between a manufactured ‘right’ and ‘left’ in the US. I wandered into a ‘liberal’ website the other day (I can’t remember how or where) but I was gobsmacked by how alien all the points of view felt. I feel the same about the ‘right’ ideology. I feel out of place, neither fish nor fowl, but, increasingly, a hybrid or perhaps an entirely new species. But my well-loved family and friends belong to either one or the other, seemingly. Only at NC, and other alternative news and views sites, do I feel a sense of community and understanding.
I consider going back on FB: I quit cold turkey three years ago but there is still a like-minded community of former activists that I was part of in Denver during Occupy. But, again, my family and friends post happy stuff; denial perhaps, but do I really want to spend my time and ruin relationships by posting what I really think? I have already ‘ghosted’ a former friend, met at a NYC rally to support Edward Snowden, who has made no secret of her unwavering support for Israel. I mean, how would I have had a pleasant relationship with a Nazi friend if I lived in 1930’s Germany? Limit our conversation to the really good food at a new beer hall?
So, I am going with the dark time of year feeling of melancholy, looking forward to a Winter Solstice celebration next Saturday at a Seattle park. The mercantile Christmas jollity evades me completely, although I am grateful for the company of loving family and friends. Maybe on December 22, when the light begins to return, the doom-mood will lift. But, somehow, this year, I doubt it.
” I feel out of place, neither fish nor fowl, but, increasingly, a hybrid or perhaps an entirely new species. But my well-loved family and friends belong to either one or the other, seemingly. Only at NC, and other alternative news and views sites, do I feel a sense of community and understanding.”
Well said, Eclair and thank you for this post. Sometimes I feel like the character in Philip K. Dick’s short story, “The Hanging Stranger”*, who sees what’s right in front of his eyes while every one around him just walks by, ignoring the grotesque corpse swinging from the lamp post. Ultimately, it’s a trap.
With respect to keeping relationships with people/family who can’t see what I see, I’m on the fence as to whether these relationships are worth it because I’ve been stifling myself for years. When I do speak out, it’s never helpful. It’s an extremely stressful situation to be in, and I know many people on this site are experiencing the same kinds of stress.
*Introduced to me by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn
Link to story:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41562/41562-h/41562-h.htm
For the record, the comments destroy Sterling. And they are polite, well written and laden with facts. Most make the point that they can dislike the man and still not condone his murder. A couple liked pointing out he was going through a divorce (his college sweetheart marriage is a point in the highly cleansed biography), that his company was under investigation and that he personally was facing indictment for insider trading. I really liked the one who cited their own admirable background and rags to riches story who made the point that getting ahead by misleading and harming others was not admirable nor did it fit his understanding of the American Dream. And he would rather really be good than forsake that for some perverted version of success.
I think this is an important point. The comments weren’t just reactive “he deserved to die” or “kill ’em all” rants. They were good, reasoned responses that made crystal clear how oblivious and despicable this guy’s version of the “American dream” was.
Taibbi and Kirn. America This Week, public excerpt, ~30 minutes.
America This Week, Dec. 13, 2024: “Assassination Tales and Rubber Elephants”
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-dec-13-2024-assassination
Mitch falls, now
Nancy. She was injured and hospitalized in Luxembourg.
Could the universe be trying to tell our over the hill elected officials something? I know it is too much to hope for karma to be awakening. (And let’s face it, short of the seventh circle of hell there really isn’t enough Karma for either of them.
Falling-apart legislators?
They’ve certainly spent zero mental energy doing anything useful for the past 10 years.
They can get faces botoxed and filled and tightened but those stiffening joints and aging inner ears are inevitable. I do hope the Senate (average and median age about 65) is sponsoring morning chair yoga and moderate weight lifting sessions, and maybe has some good PT people on hand. And, and consider cutting down those alcohol-filled meals and receptions with Donors; my balance is pretty good, thanks to yoga and dancing and gardening, but after one glass of wine, man, I get really tottery!
Tripping resulting in a fall does seem to become more frequent and dangerous in the older age population. Slower reflexes, weaker muscles, less body balance awareness. The WaPo’s former owner Katherine Graham died after a trip and fall on a cement sidewalk resulted in a severe head injury.
an aside: Imo, strength training and tai chi exersizes are good for both muscle strength and balance awareness. The things we take for granted in youth and in our prime must be exercised in older age to maintain. / my 2 cents
Yes, you need to maintain both strength and agility as you age. Tai Chi provides both by challenging the skeletal muscle and proprioception (body awareness).
Tripping occurs because Seniors don’t have the same foot awareness and leg muscle (quadriceps) that youngsters have.
An example: a 20 something can balance on one foot w/ eyes closed for thirty seconds; a 70 something for 4 seconds (at best).
It ain’t the years, it’s the miles, as they say. I’ll take Iowa’s Sen. Chuck Grassley any day over Mitch and over many other younger congress critters of either party. Chuck hasn’t lost a step, imo, and he’s 91. Health, mental health, and character are not strictly age related. / my 2 cents
Wall Street’s next big bet:
Agentic AI
Just remember, sports fans, if you can be on-boarded by an AI agent, you can get down-sized by one, too!
Prediction: AI agents will be used by management to try and sidestep liability for age discrimination suits. The AI agent did it!
AI replaces the dog? As in, the dog ate my homework. / ;)
ha-ha-ha!
In German there is also “Der Hund hat die Noten gefressen” – “the dog ate the sheet music”.
(In a country where it used to be standard for middle and upper class children to play the piano whether they like it or not. Since Germany is the greatest country in Classical music eeeeever. Unless of course you ask Andrei Martyanov who would tell you, nah, Russia!)
Yea, if you count Vienna as being in the country of Germany (and Prussia being Germany, Italy too).
Something I have not seen in years are “Now Leasing, 1 Month Free” for new Condo’s.
This in Santa Rosa CA, both on Guerneville Rd and Sebastopol Ave.
These are in what I would call “working Class” locations, not terribly walkable or close to high end amentities but definitely not the “Hood”.
Seems like an over reaction, but we’re being warned (I guess). This lady was arrested and the judge set the bail at $100K “considering the status of our country”:
Woman charged with threatening healthcare firm by using CEO killer’s words
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czenlg5d5rjo
I guess all I can add is that the person you’re talking to on the phone is stuck in the same crappy system as you. Best not to take it out on them.
Ref: The Red Dragon Strikes Back Inside China’s Export Ban on America’s Must-Have Metals
“But here’s the thing: gallium and germanium are basically just byproducts of mining aluminum (bauxite), zinc, and coal. We already have these mining operations running in places like Tennessee and Alaska. The real bottleneck? Processing capacity. The U.S. has minimal facilities for processing these materials.
And you want to know why? One word: regulation. These days, the red tape around setting up anything remotely related to mining in the U.S. is downright insane.” – snip
All I can say is WOW … did the author, Lau Vegys, not get the Summers memo on the toxic legacy of uplift or the epic history of Corps pollution of not only the environment but, generations of its citizans.
The other drama is his example of the Resolution Copper (RCM) mine in AZ alleviating supply pressures without any dirt to dust analysis or property rights adjacent to it during that time.
“The Resolution mine would consume 775,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply a city of 140,000 people for 50 years. Resolution’s groundwater mining is estimated to reduce the value of nearby Arizona state trust lands by at least $537 million. Proceeds from the land trust help finance Arizona’s public schools. The mine would also create an 8,600-acre liquefied waste dump impounded by a tailings dam.
The mine would also destroy an emerging tourist-based economy in the small towns in the area, including Superior, which hosts rock climbers from across the world to climb the boulders and spires at Oak Flat. – https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-11/oak-flat-copper-mine
It blows me away to note the authors complete refusal to acknowledge the end results of Share Holder/Profits financial capitalism – plutocrat democracy for decades. The very system that set up the Regulation he now decries.
“All I can say is WOW ”
Terrific comment.
Ta mate,
I can take this back to the quandary going back decades over reclamation bonds/contracts – Industry/Investor own goal e.g. go in for short term profits/equity looting until just before it kicks in. Then Sell/BK to another party so the whole thing resets with a side of Gov funding to clean it up. Rinse – repeat.
I grew up in AZ during the 60s/70s and part of a trust that administrates 250K acre’s with high grade copper/Gld/gems. Dramas are water/terrain and proximity to civilization – total FIFO.
Only topped off by personally watching everyone stampede to China in the day. Lmmao, no due diligence on absence of functional commerce law/judicial, in the works at the time, only surpassed by the ego driven notion that Western players were superior to their counter parts and would ultimately rule the day. Which then begged TTP to extend its legal purview over other sovereign nations that were recalcitrant to the desires of foreign investors/shareholders.
Self introspection or splat … yet the West … especially U.S. keeps minting billionaires, which like wages diverging from productivity inexorably tracks the decline in society for most.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/yWpl2tyjuHV4
1990 Yasser Arafat: Israel will anex half of Syria among other territories
nice one!
This is the history piece I wanted to share:
60 years ago German labour union economist Viktor Agartz died.
His ideas were fought by Lucius Clay, Ludwig Erhard, Herbert Wehner. i.e. from right and left:
German original
https://www.jacobin.de/artikel/viktor-agartz-wirtschaftsdemokratie-lohnpolitik
https://archive.is/jChCF
Google-transl:
Dec. 9th 2024
Viktor Agartz: Pioneer of an Economically Democratic Germany
60 years ago today, the trade union economist Viktor Agartz died. In the post-war period, he met with widespread approval for his “socialist planned economy in a democratic constitutional state” before the “social market economy” won the battle for direction.
After the end of the Second World War, the view was widespread in German society that the forces of the capitalist economic system had played a significant role in the National Socialists’ machinery of destruction. Even the CDU was persuaded to call for a ” common economic order ” in its Ahlen Program of 1947. In this window of opportunity for a democratic-socialist turnaround, Viktor Agartz became the most important source of inspiration.
Agartz’s rise and fall are closely interwoven with the history of the German trade union movement and social democracy. It was these grassroots organizations that politically socialized him from the beginning, that helped him to short-lived fame, that gradually let him down and from which he turned away in a painful process – until his death exactly sixty years ago, on December 9, 1964.
Why did the balance of power change to the detriment of him and his mostly intellectual comrades from the left-wing socialist milieu, including Wolfgang Abendroth, Theo Pirker and Fritz Lamm? Why did Viktor Agartz fail?
The Rise
The economist, born on November 15, 1897 in Remscheid in the Bergisches Land, shaped the first post-war decade like no other social democrat and trade unionist. Socialized in the social democratic working class milieu, his parents enabled their mathematically gifted son to take his high school diploma, thus giving him the prerequisites to study business administration, which he began in Marburg in 1920. There, his companions included the future Federal President and Agartz’s defense attorney Gustav Heinemann, as well as the leading figure of the ordoliberal business school, Wilhelm Röpke.
In Cologne, where he had been working for many years, he received his doctorate in 1924 from the renowned economist Eugen Schmalenbach. The latter opened important doors for the young social democrat to the propertied middle classes of the Lower Rhine industrial, commercial and banking metropolis, which were to prove important for his “wintering” in the Third Reich. In the First World War – this turning point was important for his generation – the then 18-year-old had served as a soldier on the Western Front from 1915.
Agartz biographer Christoph Jünke describes his life as the epitome of a specific mixture of “programmatic radicalism and political pragmatism ” in the spirit of the former social democratic dual strategy of reconciling maximum and minimum goals. The fact that this balancing act ultimately failed is demonstrated by his meteoric rise and subsequent fall from influential trade union economic politician to marginalized pariah due to dirty intrigues and his own political misjudgments.
As long as Agartz enjoyed the trust of Hans Böckler, the strong man of the emerging German trade union movement, he had the unions behind him. Their paths crossed as early as the Cologne workers’ movement in the 1920s. Agartz worked as an academic lecturer at the Seminar of Free Trade Unions and on the board of the consumer cooperative Hoffnung, Böckler was a union secretary, SPD city councilor and member of the Reichstag.
After the end of the Second World War, Agartz, Böckler, Kurt Schumacher and many other surviving representatives of the social democratic workers and trade union movement blamed the capitalist economic system based on private property for the National Socialist war of annihilation. Their “never again” culminated in the demand for a democratically organized planned economy and the socialization of key industries.
At the peak
After the war, Agartz was one of the few untainted experts: During the Nazi era, he worked as an auditor and, according to his own statements, had contacts with the bourgeois social democratic resistance movement. This made him the economic expert of the hour for both the British (North Rhine-Westphalia was part of the British occupation zone) and the emerging workers’ movement. Appointed head of the Minden Central Office for Economic Affairs by the British occupying forces at the end of 1946, and thus effectively the first economics minister, the social democratic economic and administrative expert became one of the most influential political figures in the uniting Western Allied occupation zones.
The visionary SPD chairman and concentration camp survivor Kurt Schumacher also contributed to this. After the total defeat of German fascism, he postulated “the abolition of capitalist exploitation and the transfer of the means of production […] into social ownership [as well as] the steering of the entire economy not according to private profit interests, but according to the principles of economically necessary planning.”
This corresponded to Agartz’s approach of a “socialist planned economy in a democratic constitutional state.” What seems incomprehensible today met with broad approval at the time – even among the SPD and trade union leaders. When it was founded in 1949, the DGB had committed itself to a socialist program that included the socialization of key industries, i.e. interventions in private property, and state control measures.
Nevertheless, Agartz kept an eye on what was feasible: “The SPD does not see the socialist planned economy as an end in itself,” he wrote in May 1946. It therefore demands that state intervention be limited to the extent necessary in each case. […] By incorporating market economy elements of competition, planning must increasingly move towards the methods of indirect control, without prejudice to its comprehensive character. The largely decentralized planning and control work must always proceed from the bottom up. The needs and experiences of the individual regions and local economic relations must be taken into account.”
Until 1948, Agartz influenced the economic and supply situation, among other things as head of the Bizone Economic Office and as a member of the Bizone Economic Council. He was one of the most powerful economic politicians in the western occupation zones. But despite the backing that Agartz enjoyed from significant parts of the SPD and trade union leadership, his attempts to establish a new socialist order in West Germany were thwarted.
The case
The American occupying forces under General Lucius Clay and the consolidating entrepreneurial and conservative-liberal establishment, under the skilful direction of the former mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, torpedoed such plans. With Ludwig Erhard, Agartz’s economic opponent and director of the Economic Administration of the United Economic Area since 1948, a figure who was becoming increasingly popular among the population, dominated the stage.
Agartz’s “new economic democracy” was replaced by the “social market economy.” The ordoliberal school around Professors Werner Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke had prevailed. Ordoliberal slogans such as competition as an alternative to the formation of monopolies, the setting of framework conditions for the economy instead of state intervention, the inviolability of private property, if not absolute, then at least extensive, free price formation, reconstruction and “prosperity for all” came to the fore.
Flanked by the loans of the Marshall Plan and the introduction of the D-Mark, which replaced the Reichsmark in 1948, the myth of an “economic miracle” was established. In fact, the steadily increasing economic growth released enormous forces for the reconstruction of West German capitalism, including hefty gains in prosperity – also for the majority of the population.
In the face of the instrumentalized anti-communism that gained momentum due to the escalating system antagonism, the SPD and the DGB unions were put on the permanent defensive. Three consecutive Social Democratic election defeats – including an absolute CDU/CSU majority in 1957 – led to programmatic adjustments: In 1959, the SPD said goodbye to the project of a socialist transformation and changed from a class party to a people’s or catch-all party, as the union-affiliated lawyer Otto Kirchheimer aptly noted in 1965.
In 1963, at the Düsseldorf Trade Union Congress, the DGB watered down its economic democratic basic program of 1949. Far-reaching socialization and planning guidelines that were intended to tame capitalism were simply watered down. Christian-oriented trade unionists had already formed around the theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning to marginalize socialist positions in the DGB. They insisted on the broadly understood party-political and ideological neutrality of the unitary trade union principle on which the DGB had been based since its founding. Spurred on by Herbert Wehner, Siggi Neumann and Willi Eichler, social democratic critics of von Agartz used the considerable influence of this Christian democratic current in the DGB to weaken it.
Agartz’s failure on the political and union stage is embedded in these processes. DGB boss Hans Böckler appointed him head of the DGB’s Institute of Economic Research (WWI) in 1948. However, with Böckler’s unexpected death in the course of the grueling struggles for equal co-determination in the coal and steel industry, or in short: mining industry, in 1951, Agartz lost a powerful advocate.
He held the position of WWI director under increasingly difficult conditions until 1954, assuming sole responsibility. Because Agartz continued to employ his close colleague, the sociologist Theo Pirker, against the will of the DGB leadership, his authority was curtailed. Pirker’s activities against West German rearmament were a thorn in the side of the DGB federal executive board under Walter Freitag. This also indicates an increased pressure to adapt within the organization that socialists and anti-militarists in the DGB were exposed to. From then on, Agartz had to share the leadership of the WWI. His former confidants, the economists Erich Potthoff and Bruno Gleitze, were appointed as co-directors, and they outvoted him on many decisions.
One last victory
Ironically, Agartz managed to achieve a Pyrrhic victory in 1953/54. The concept, published in the WWI-Mitteilungen under the title “Contributions to economic development 1953. Expansive wage policy,” attracted great interest. According to Agartz, wage policy should not be content with retrospectively bringing real wages into line with economic development. “It must try to force economic expansion on its own initiative in order to encourage an expansion of production through a conscious increase in purchasing power.”
Agartz’s suggestion that the so-called economic miracle was based on decades of wage restraint – including by the unions – which began at the end of the 1920s cannot be dismissed. After the unions were no longer able to enforce their demands on the issue of co-determination in the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG) in 1952, their defensive position was cemented. With an aggressive wage, redistribution and strike policy, Agartz wanted to bring the unions back into the game for power and system transformation.
It was Otto Brenner , the then co-chairman of IG Metall , who took up the concept with determination, but concentrated primarily on the redistribution perspective rather than the transformation perspective. According to Brenner, wage policy served as a lever for an offensive redistribution policy in order to secure a growing share of the gross national product for employees. The strategy of “expansive wage policy” theoretically underpinned by Agartz suited him just fine, because it had both an economic and a political dimension.
On the one hand, a combative wage policy by the unions could increase purchasing power and thus strengthen domestic demand and prepare the way for a redistribution of wealth. On the other hand, a clever wage offensive increased the willingness of the union base to engage in conflict, which, according to Brenner’s thesis, made it possible to overcome the widespread mood of resignation and the tendency towards depoliticization. Following Agartz, IG Metall also interpreted wage issues as questions of power. These considerations were taken into account in the implementation of a union action program that made a significant contribution to making IG Metall the locomotive of collective bargaining and membership successes. However, this was no longer about setting political course, as it had been in 1951/52.
This was Agartz’s last great success. After being celebrated at the third trade union congress, he gradually disappeared from the big political and media stage. The DGB dropped him. Social liberal “westernizers” (Julia Angster) did not want a fanatically fighting politician for reorganization who believed that a “socialist planned economy in a democratic constitutional state” was possible. General Clay’s dictum from 1947 that Agartz would not be allowed to use his office as head of the powerful economic office to introduce socialism hung over him like the sword of Damocles.
Arrived at the bottom
At the beginning of the 1950s, the SPD and the trade unions also prevented him from achieving this goal, even when he was at the height of his reputation. In addition, his own mistakes accelerated the gradual dismantling of what was probably the most brilliant, controversial and contradictory trade union economist in the history of the Federal Republic. After being sidelined, he had his magazine project WISO financed by the SED-affiliated Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB).
In March 1957, Agartz was “arrested at the inner-German border with 21,000 DM in his luggage,” as Gregor Kritidis states in his book Left-wing Socialist Opposition in the Adenauer Era . This was followed by a defamation campaign that ignored all “basic democratic and journalistic rules” and “amounted to a pre-judgment of Agartz.” The accusation of treason was fabricated. His defense attorneys Gustav Heinemann and Diether Posser managed to get their client acquitted. Nevertheless, Agartz was badly damaged. He largely withdrew from public life and died on December 9, 1964 in Bensberg near Cologne.
Agartz’s vision of a “socialist planned economy in a democratic constitutional state” as a third way beyond neoliberal capitalism and Stalinist command economy was probably not politically viable in the escalating Cold War between the leading powers, the USA and the Soviet Union, and their vassal states. Nevertheless, his concepts can still serve today to remind us of the broader horizon of the trade union movement.
Jens Becker is a social scientist and head of department in the student funding department of the Hans Böckler Foundation.
I recently learned that all we know about Kakfa came via Max Brod. Somewhere along the way, every Kafka scholar starts to secretly worry that the whole thing was a prank by Max Brod, that Josef K. never existed.