Dear patient readers,
I trust those of you who are celebrating Christmas have a lovely day in store. And to all, I hope you enjoy this festive season, even if that simply means having a relaxed day. Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025!
Why do you assume Rudolph is a male reindeer? BBC (Dr. Kevin)
Ant geopolitics aeon
Young mammoth remains found nearly intact in Siberian permafrost Reuters (Robin K)
Engineers Achieve Quantum Teleportation Over Active Internet Cables TechSpot
Exclusive: Strokes are skyrocketing in ‘fit and healthy’ men under 40 – experts reveal alarming reason why Daily Mail. From earlier this month, still germane.
Drinking Tea and Coffee Linked To Lower Risk of Head and Neck Cancer in Study Guardian
Commercial Tea Bags Release Millions of Microplastics, Entering Human Intestinal Cells MedicalXpress
#COVID-19
Isn’t It A Great Thing That Covid Turned Out To Be Not A Big Deal. Also, Unconnected, Why On Earth Are A Quarter Of The Marines Medically Unfit For Duty? pic.twitter.com/6EKYtxoMSe
— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) December 24, 2024
Covid DOUBLES risk of heart attack and stroke long-term.
In severe Covid, it's 4-7 times the risk.
(Details in comments.) pic.twitter.com/mzppWZjRCO
— Cat Herding Science Nerd 🔬 (@catladyactivist) December 23, 2024
Climate/Environment
Tribunal says Mexico violated trade agreement in banning GM corn The New Lede. Nick covered this long form yesterday but important not to miss.
Whistleblower Demands PA’s Gov. Fix ‘Completely Unregulated’ Fracking Wastewater Network DeSmog
You saw the Santa Cruz pier collapse, but did you see the rogue waves that caused it? pic.twitter.com/m4bJlFRskn
— Man in the Moon (@beautheory) December 24, 2024
China?
My Way or the Highway Warwick Powell, China&US Focus
The ‘Invisible Wall’ Amplifying China’s Population Doom Loop Wall Street Journal
Koreas
South Korean president again defies summons over martial law declaration probe Anadolu Agency
South Korean opposition postpones decision to impeach acting president Channel News Asia
Myanmar
Myanmar Junta Boss Urges Unity as Forces Disintegrate in Rakhine and Chin Irrawaddy
Thai Officials Sound Alert Over Cholera Outbreak in Myanmar Bangkok Post
Africa
US and China scramble to control Africa’s mineral riches The Times
US ramping up biological warfare presence in Africa — Russia’s top brass TASS (guurst)
Nigeria’s Deadly Stampedes Highlight Desperation Amid Economic Crisis inkl
European Disunion
EU burns through gas storage at fastest rate since energy crisis Financial Times
François Bayrou’s failed gamble Le Monde
Old Blighty
More than 10,000 members of UK armed forces ‘not medically deployable’ Guardian (Kevin W)
Israel v. The Resistance
Israeli soldiers share footage showing destruction at the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, caused by the Israeli operation last night. A soldier shouted, “The Indonesian Hospital is finished.”
No military force in history has boasted about destroying hospitals like Israel. pic.twitter.com/PFGWx8BYDk
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) December 24, 2024
LIVE: Famine ‘unfolding’ in north Gaza amid Israeli blockade, monitor says Aljazeera
Three Declarations of Genocide and the U.S. Responses Jacobin
The Axis is not Broken and the War is not Over; it is Only About to Begin Alon Mizrahi
New Not-So-Cold War
Large frontline summary 17-23 December 2024 Marat Khairullin
India’s Share of Russian Arms Exports Surges Since May: Further Major Deals Expected Military Watch
EU candidate’s president eyeing attack on Russian peacekeepers – Moscow RT
Syraqistan
No one on the thread so far is saying the images are from other rallies:
BREAKING: The son of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has organized a massive rally calling for Turkey to takeover Israel.
"Yesterday Hagia Sophia, today the Umayyad Mosque, tomorrow Al-Aqsa.”
pic.twitter.com/5n5Avz4Sko— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) December 24, 2024
Syria authorities say armed groups have agreed to disband Arab News
Turkey advances Syria engagement with energy plans and refugee return BNE
Greece rejects proposed Turkey-Syria maritime deal as illegitimate ekathimerini. Lead story.
The “king-makers” pull the rug from Syria, yet again… A “Greek tragedy” begins Alastair Crooke
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
FBI, DEA deployment of AI raises privacy, civil rights concerns Biometric Update
WHO Expands “Misinformation Management” Efforts with “Social Listening” Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Health Care Giant Ascension Says 5.6 Million Patients Affected In Cyberattack ars technica
Imperial Collapse Watch
Destruction of Syria & Cold Peace in Ukraine – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen YouTube. Includes important discussion by Mearsheimer of simmering conflicts in eastern Europe even after the Ukraine war dies down.
US almost shot down second friendly plane – Fox News RT (Kevin W)
South Pacific nation to declare independence – media RT (Robin K)
Trump 2.0
Denmark boosts Greenland defence after Trump repeats desire for US control BBC
Trump vows to direct DOJ to pursue death penalty in wake of Biden clemencies The Hill. Erm, no wonder he gets on with Zionists.
Donald Trump’s Ridiculous Remarks Regarding the Panama Canal Larry Johnson
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan should be released from prison, President-elect Trump’s envoy for special missions, @RichardGrenell, said on Tuesday.
Grenell noted that Khan, like Trump, faced “a lot of the same allegations,” with the ruling party using corruption… pic.twitter.com/XVYyoMDmCp
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) December 25, 2024
Trump’s nominee for top defence post thinks Middle East is ‘relatively unimportant’ Middle East Eye
Trump Backs Down From Strong Sweeping Deportation Promise Michael Shedlock. Not news if you had been paying attention to Homan.
Top defense stock traders in Congress in 2024 Responsible Statecraft
Woke Watch
The Supreme Court Case Over Trans Youth Could Also Decimate Women’s Equality Politico
AI
Biggest Banks Sue the Federal Reserve Over Annual Stress Tests CNBC
The Big Five Publishers Have Killed Literary Fiction Persuasion (Micael T)
The Bezzle
Defaults on leveraged loans soar to highest in 4 years Financial Times
Guillotine Watch
When I met Luigi Mangione Unherd. While a very helpful window into Mangione as a person, I object to his depiction of Brian Thompson as a “tiny cog in a a vast and unfair system” and depicting him as subordinate to actuaries.
In China, citizens don't need to take matters into their own hands.
The state ensures justice is served to the corrupt, who are abusing the system for personal gain.
The people of the US should learn from China's 'People's' government.#China #Corruption pic.twitter.com/teh20c5dcs
— Jason Smith – 上官杰文 (@ShangguanJiewen) December 25, 2024
McKinsey Agrees to Pay Another $650 Million to Avoid Trial Over U.S. Opioid Crisis CocotteMinute (Micael T). And they managed to get this story held to the dead Christmas-New Years period.
Class Warfare
Walmart Sued Over Illegally Opening Bank Accounts For Delivery Drivers The Verge
Amazon and Starbucks strikes in US portend escalation of global class conflict in 2025 WSWS
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus:
christmas is coming 🎄 pic.twitter.com/imtv3AXhJw
— why you should have an animal (@shouldhaveanima) December 16, 2024
A second bonus:
— Doglover (@puppiesDoglover) December 24, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
138 comments
Comments are closed.
I’m seeing the links for tomorrow already posted. Is this like when you open Christmas presents the night before on Christmas eve?
It’s already Christmas in Thailand!
I know I got drunk last night, but seeing tomorrow’s links today really threw me a curve– it’s been a while since I lost a whole day…
Merry Christmas Yves, Lambert, Conor and the Mod Squad. Thanks for providing an intellectual sanctuary in this darkest of timelines. Thanks for giving me a rooftop from which to shout. Thanks for the Lexicon. Thanks for all the lovely minds I would never else have met. And thanks for the early Links! Peace
I’ll join those thanks. I also want to thank those who comment so well. I feel a bit less isolated and insane being able to participate in this community. Feeling less isolated and insane is a positive, I think.
>Feeling less isolated and insane is a positive, I think.
I agree completely.
The thing I also appreciate here is the disagreements without being nasty.
Though love it whenever some troll rolls in with some ridiculous comment and promptly gets an Acme safe dropped on him or a bomb blowing up in his face like he is Wile E. Coyote of the old Roadrunner cartoons.
. It’s good learning experience being on this site.
Peace to all.
A soapbox on which to stand. Ditto that.
Amen.
Unherd also errs on UH’s profitability as I think Matt Stoller laid out in detail. UH has so many profit points along its product line in the healthcare continuum that a simple % of total revenue is meaningless.
That essay, the author’s seeming confidence in his every opinion and conception of the world as an unassailable neoliberal lock in, and the chorus of similar views in the comments section, fill me with despair for the future. There must be a lot more of that out there that I’m not reading.
How dreadful.
Wow, imagine stating this so matter-of-factly…
“Brian Thompson was a normal, flawed guy trying to keep costs low both for his company and his policyholders, while keeping his duty to shareholders whose investment his company depended on. “
The image of CEOs as these powerless, unassuming, diligent workers is bizarre. The man was under litigation for a massive insider trading scandal.
The writer’s piece is pretty good, but I just don’t get these sorts of howlers…
“He was a tiny cog in a vast and unfair system that’s controlled by no single person but by the cumulative actions of millions of people operating in their own immediate interests.”
He literally wrote this about the CEO, not some customer service rep who answers phones. It makes me wonder if he understands anything about how corporations are run.
Yeah if this is the case, tell me why again we can’t just replace CEOs with AI? Seems like they would be perfect tiny cogs in the big machines and would help keep costs low.
I think the now-firmly-in-the-cross-hairs plutocrat class is going to find that “while keeping his duty to shareholders whose investment his company depended on” is not the type of excuse that’s going to get you out of the cross-hairs.
PS: also a fallacious understanding of “shareholder value” … #Natch
The shareholder primacy crap can’t hit the dustbin of history fast enough for me. But this wall of b.s. is starting to come down!
“The consensus around shareholder primacy is crumbling.”
https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/law_faculty/article/1814/&path_info=61BCLRev.pdf
Not only that the writer has no idea about actuaries dictating termination guidelines to claims. Actuaries are not allowed to share detailed reserve information with the claims department. It is verboten. Actuaries using standardized mortality and morbidity data along with historical incidence information shape the policy rates. Actuaries are more like navigators and not captains. We were working on a LTC product and found the ridiculous health market inflation to be the driving cause of policy pricing and that’s a Wall Street thing. It’s the business bugs that drive the health market.
Thanks. I suspected that was the case but could not say so with confidence.
The West and Eastern Europe
3 important older links which I found in the Martyanov commentariat:
THE GUARDIAN, 2004
The Ukraine street protests have followed a pattern of western orchestration set in the 80s. I know – I was a cold war bagman
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/dec/07/ukraine.comment
CIA document on regime change operations in Eastern Europe, signed by Reagan, 1982
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-54.pdf
UNICEF documents sexual exploitation of children at German-Czech border, 2003
https://web.archive.org/web/20230303062316/https://news.un.org/en/story/2003/10/83922
These are good to remind us that there are two ways to look at US (and so-called Western) foreign policy. One is the Cold War framing that we are familiar with. The other is fight for global submission by governments of their sovereignty to Western capital. Things continue to look so Cold War not just for reasons of bureaucratic inertia.
I’m going to keep “Market-Leninist” in my pocket.
Not even going to think about why Christmas is earlier than usual.
My Links opened directly to the TechSpot post where the first sentence is a doozy.
WooWoo.
But Merry Christmas to everyone and much thanks for our hosts efforts this past year helping everyone sort through it.
Defaults on leveraged loans soar to highest in 4 years Financial Times
“Many of these defaults have involved so-called distressed loan exchanges. In such deals, loan terms are changed and maturities extended as a way of enabling a borrower to avoid bankruptcy, but investors are paid back less.”
Ain’t these loans fer stock buy backs and, or, looting purposes where the borrower is a company under the direction of a financial genius who is leveraging tangible assets into cash that can be bagged up and distributed. And these loan terms – they sure should have an interest rate to compensate for the risk and should the lenders/investors take a loss – well that’s where it should be taken but, no – it’s not the benefactor of these loans that takes the hit … because the benefactor of these loans/investments is not the company but,rather, the financial geniuses who are bagging the cash at the expense of the fall-company.
A good ole con that needs saving – as the Finacial Times seems to be the eternal cheerleader of this old persistent con business model – why not – it’s what is deemed good business .
“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain” Attributed to Twain on the Almighty Dollar – The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain edited by Aaron John Loeb
via Perplexity.ai …
Prompt:
Considering that male reindeer shed their antlers in the fall, while female reindeer retain their antlers throughout the year, if male reindeer were castrated, would they retain their antlers year round?
Response:
Yes, castrated male reindeer would retain their antlers year-round, similar to female reindeer. When a male reindeer is castrated, it no longer sheds its antlers and loses its aggressive tendencies. This is because antler shedding in male reindeer is linked to testosterone levels. Castration leads to a drop in testosterone, which prevents the normal antler shedding cycle.
Effects of Castration on Reindeer Antlers
Antler Retention: Castrated males keep their antlers throughout the year, unlike intact males who shed them in late autumn after the breeding season38.
Behavior Changes: Castration reduces aggression in male reindeer, making them easier to handle for commercial purposes or as pets.
Climate Adaptation: Retaining antlers can help castrated reindeer cope with climate change by allowing them to break through ice to access food in warming Arctic regions.
This practice of castrating male reindeer is somewhat common, particularly for reindeer used in commercial settings or as pets3. It’s worth noting that Santa’s reindeer, if male, would likely be castrated to explain their depiction with antlers during the Christmas season.
The ghost of Christmas future links! :)
Thank you for a great year of insightful coverage and discussion. Best wishes to the entire NC crew :)
Re: Rudolph
The reason most English speakers think Rudolph is male: the Xmas jingle lyrics use the personal pronoun “him”.
(I’m awaiting Santa’s sleigh this very moment!!!)
While Robert Lewis May might not have known that, only neutered males are used for hauling. They’re big but calm, though require some retraining every winter. You can only semi-domesticate them reindeer, anyway.
And they also make a splendid part of the hors d’oeuvre of the Christmas dinner in the Socialist household.
Mrs. Santa Claus reputedly has some great recipes based around venison.
I have no problem with the reindeer being male or female, I truly don’t care, I’m just baffled why the BBC piece thinks they’re depicted as male but are female, where is this coming from?
I checked out the original 1947 Max Flescher film and it depicts Rudolph without the antlers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN0g5lLPsU4. Huh, ok.
Likewise with the 1969 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1BJHiHtb9g How weird.
A quick look at later films seems to always have Rudolph without the antlers? I don’t know if any recent films which have them with antlers.
(It would seem the original film makers knew a thing or two about male reindeer shedding their antlers, which I find interesting in itself.)
From the BBC short: “According to science the reindeer would have been female”, “because reindeer can be both male and female”, “male reindeer shed their antlers in winter, female reindeer don’t until spring”, therefore Santa’s reindeer must have been female? Because…? It almost seems to be wanting a “because Santa’s reindeer are depicted with antlers in winter!” But where are they depicted with antlers? Or am I missing something?
They are always depicted with antlers on Christmas cards and other renderings. Never never w/o.
Well, now we know reindeer with antlers in winter must be female (I didn’t know this until today), so if we see a Rudolph without antlers it’s a male, and if its leading a pack of reindeer with antlers then how typical.
Regarding Luigi Mangione, this is going to make people smile. From the Times of India, “Real reason why Luigi Mangione got a shave in jail: ‘Barbershop head went to him’. The short of it is The Adjuster is getting serious respect from the prison population. Quote, “It was bizarre to guards and prison staff how he had become a hero in the inside and outside,’ the source added.
Amen
NewsNation conducted an impromptu interview of Luigi’s cellmates in Pennsylvania who were watching the live broadcast and shouting their responses to Ashleigh Banfield’s questions out the window for the on-site reporter to hear and relay.
> While a very helpful window into Mangione as a person, I object to his depiction of Brian Thompson as a “tiny cog in a a vast and unfair system” and depicting him as subordinate to actuaries.
I’ve said it before regarding the “lifting of the veil” – our overlords are so confident of their power of the masses; of their (hitherto) impunity in inflicting horrible circumstances on the masses, that they no longer even feel the need to pretend about what the goal is (Rule #2). Your observation, as always, is correct. “The
devilactuaries made me do it” has got to be the most “IDGAF whether you believe this or not” sort of excuse for morally bankrupt C-suiters like Thompson.“Young mammoth remains found nearly intact in Siberian permafrost”
It’s only a matter of time until places like Batagaika crater cough up a Neanderthal or a Homo Sapiens as they widen. They be able to do a full DNA sequences which will give us a boatload of info. Bonus points if those bodies are wearing their original clothes and carry their actual tool kit as well.
Wasn’t there an episode of Scooby Doo that had a frozen cave man?
And they made a coupla films based on this idea. Here is one-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbw25zNGjNc (2:17 mins)
The film “Iceman” starring John Lone. Quick frozen “caveman” is thawed out and scientists try to study him. Played straight.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(1984_film)
(Despite posting this I prefer not to think of dandelions. I prefer my number and graphics-ridden NC-article with sober views on what lies beneath all this. Sentimentality doesn´t go well with political analysis. Having said that I am aware many will disagree. My be I just see no sense in flowers unless there are some bees around which I can support and thus get a share of their stuff. Odd I know. Especially as people sometimes ask me to take care of their balcony when they are absent.)
From USEFUL IDIOTS
Love and Rage – A note on Christmas Day, 2024
Some thoughts from Useful Idiots
Katie Halper, Aaron Maté, and Matt Wilson
This has been a hard year. If you’ve been watching our show, you’ve probably heard the bleakness slowly growing in our hosts’ voices, the increasing grimness of our guests, and maybe begun to feel hopeless yourself. You’re not alone: 2024’s most popular episode had Norman Finkelstein mourning that “our generation has, for good reason, lost the belief that we have the force of history behind us. Our generation believes there’s a good chance we’re not going to win.”
2024 has shown us heartbreaking and disturbing footage from Gaza, shattering the lines many of us held of what we thought were the limits of human cruelty, and an election cycle that told us we’re powerless to stop it. 2024 brought WWII levels of destruction to a city and its people, and made them cry silently in defeat while it happened. 2024 felt broken, beaten down, and emptying.
But there’s something in that darkness, that rage against the world, that brings a light we can’t usually see. Something that makes you wonder how the world could be so terrible and how the world could be so beautiful. It opens your eyes to something new.
Our fellow Substacker Caitlin Johnstone wrote it best in her poem, “Let Yourself Be Shattered By Gaza.”
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.
This year has been more challenging and draining than any other. It’s also been the year of noticing the beauty in more sunsets, dandelions, and people than any other.
The stories of what our guests and their families have been through, the brave stands that groups like CodePink have taken, the risks that doctors and volunteers have made in Gaza have shown us how much beauty there still is in the world – and why the fight must go on.
The poem ends like this:
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.
Have you felt this too – light that comes with the darkness? We love to hear from you, so share your 2024 thoughts in the comments.
Keep up the fight, and keep noticing every beautiful thing. It’s all love and rage.
> Despite posting this I prefer not to think of dandelions. I prefer my number and graphics-ridden NC-article with sober views on what lies beneath all this. Sentimentality doesn´t go well with political analysis.
Reindeer, tapir, dogs and deer as antidotes today. I benefit from some recharging of the spirit. Whatever works to perk you up a bit, even sentimentality, can be welcome.
The combination in Johnstone’s poem is awkward but this reflects the awkward state of being simultaneously responsible to diverse things, for example to a political cause and to love that which we must love.
Yes. I am possibly writing more sternly than I truly feel.
It might also have just been the one line of her poem which I found displaced. Not many poems that I do like.
Poems that are truly emotional and yet not betraying the intention via their form are I find very rare birds. To quote the late film historian David Bordwell “sentiment is not sentimentality”.
Eventually however as you say, there is no right or wrong here.
Recounting a conversation regarding [John] Cage’s reaction to Handel’s Messiah.“I had just heard The Messiah [sic] with Mrs. Henry Allen Moe, and she said, “Don’t you love the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’” and I said, “No, I can’t stand it.” So she said, “Don’t you like to be moved?” and I said, “I don’t mind being moved but I don’t like to be pushed.”
Well, thank you for this indeed very good quote.
I will try and remember it.
p.s. In fact this IS a real issue within the arts. Yet to agree or disagree on these matters is as difficult as troubling for those individuals who might or might not agree but feel the pressing need to exchange over the question. Contradictory as humans are.
Thanks for this.
Peacenlovenlight unto you and yours! (and the entire NC Omniverse!!)
“War is over. IF you want it.”
Up on the hospital top does the IDF pause
Out jumps a reservist for the cause
Down through the stairway with lots of explosive toys
All for the little ones, Alt-A goys
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Up on the hospital top-Uzi at the quick, click, click, click,
Down through the surgery room, in good nick
First comes the stalking of those making people well
Oh dear, those just following orders are giving them hell
Give him an orphan that laughs and cries
One that will forever shut his eyes
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Up on the hospital top with an Uzi, click, click, click,
Down through the maternity ward, in good nick!
Next comes the stalking of what’s left of their survival will
Oh, just see what a glorious haul this hospital fills
Here is a helicopter and lots of tank attacks
Also Zionism-a whip that cracks
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Ho, ho, ho! Who shouldn’t go?
Up on the hospital top with an Uzi at the quick, click, click, click,
Down through the patient rooms, in good nick!
Up on the hospital top with an Uzi at the quick, click, click, click,
Down through the morgue, in good nick!
“Encyclopedia Britannica Is Now an AI Company”
How bad can it get. You have information that may be of dubious provenience being offered up by a dodgy AI. Are they doing the same for Wikipedia as well?
You’ll only take my 1966 World Book Encyclopedia when you pry it from my cold and clammy hands!
…and by the way AI, its gonna take a few trips to remove all the editions-plus yearly update volumes well into the 1980’s, along with all the newspaper and magazine clippings my late mother felt obligated to insert into said encyclopedia listings, easily adding another 10% in weight alone.
How bad? It’s going to be Idiocracy bad.
Actually, Idiocracy will look like an improvement on the BS imaginations from today’s emotionally challenged.
Someone on Twitter pointed out how screwed we are that kids are going to be learning wrong stuff from this (llm) in engineering and medical programs. Gonna be great
that;s why a bought a 2023 World Book set!
AI slop has consumed Facebook, is running Wikipedia editors ragged, is rapidly destroying Google search, probably put an extra finger on the scales of election influence, is confusing and annoying crafters, steals endlessly from authors, is on its way to demolish YouTube comment sections, and will probably end up in a movie theater near you sooner than you think. But if you’re streaming Christmas music today, did something seem a little off to you? If so, there’s a very good chance you’ve been listening to AI-generated carol-slop.
For the time being, AI has very little pull in shaping how a trail ought to go, or how a glorious sunset forms and is often finished in 15 minutes flat, mingling without a modem.
>>>But if you’re streaming Christmas music today, did something seem a little off to you? If so, there’s a very good chance you’ve been listening to AI-generated carol-slop.
Well, I am listening right now to the Philip label’s 1981 box three LP set of Handel’s Messiah, which is rather nice. Sidestep the onrushing AI Apocalypse by going old school.
Wokapedia is already sketchy. Why ruin a ruined thing?
> Commercial tea bags release millions of microplastics, entering human intestinal cells
I successfully switched from being a 2 cups of coffee a morning person to a 6* cup of green tea a day person earlier this year. There are three tricks:
1. Buy loose leaf tea from a reputable seller who specializes in single origin teas. I like Verdant Tea personally, I bought a huge box of a mix of 25g packets earlier this year to figure out what I liked, and then from the winners in that list bought larger quantities later in the year. I also have one or two ‘daily driver’ teas from organic/fair trade tea merchants that aren’t quite as nice as the small farm single origin teas at Verdant but still pretty good that I buy a pound at a time. I usually go with Numi Tea’s Jasmine Green; it’s about $35 USD a pound, which lasts me 5-6 months. I store opened teas in metal cannisters.
2. Buy a reusable stainless steel mesh tea strainer (about $10 dollars). I prefer the type with ‘shoulders’ that sits over an open mug. You want one with a cap to keep on during steeping. You don’t want a tea ball, it’s usually not large enough for a good tea to water ratio. Also kind of a pain to clean.
3. If you’re really committed, get a Zojirushi water boiler. They’re kind of spendy but they keep water at the correct temperature for multiple types of tea without needing to constantly have a tea kettle going and/or worrying about scalding the leaves. I’ve had mine for 8+ years (I originally bought it for doing pour over coffee, which it also works really well for as it has a 208 degree setting) and it’s still going strong.
*: I reuse the tea leaves through the course of the day instead of refilling the strainer after each cup. The taste and color is fine and I don’t have to worry about caffiene issues.
I’ve been wanting to get off coffee, so this is serendipitous information, thank you.
Coffee in the morning.
Green tea afternoons
End of day reflections
A whiskey finished much too soon.
For green tea I alternate between the Costco Kirkland brand and the Bigelow Organic. Other green teas tend to make me a little nauseous. The Kirkland tea is made in Japan and has a little bit of matcha in the envelope. I drink green tea after a meal.
You don’t need to buy an expensive water boiler – we bought a “Master Chef” brand for $50, you can find them online, ebay etc. Works great and has multiple temperature settings for different teas (and coffee).
Also I want give a shout out to a great tea source – https://teahousegallery.com/ He’s based out of Seattle, has very high quality tea and will ship anywhere I think. I’ve been drinking his mail-order teas for a few years now, having weaned myself off of coffee (although my wife is still addicted to the beans).
I usually drink plain green tea, but for a treat this one from Harney & Sons is a personal favorite- https://www.harney.com/products/organic-bangkok
A tin makes a good Festivus gift – square is very easy to wrap!
The Politico piece on the Supreme Court case urging repeal of trans laws accepts the absurd term of “sex assigned at birth” as something that was kind of accidental and arbitrary label put on a helpless baby by bureaucrats or whatever by accepting like good Party members that sex is whatever a child calls itself. As if children never develop and grow emotionally. The fact the PMC is so gung-ho on chemical and surgical intrusion into a childs life is deeply disturbing to me. Do they really think sex is “assigned”? Do they really believe that it is compassion to mutilate children who may or may not want this treatment that must be there for the rest of their lives depending on and being at the mercies of the highly corrupt American medical industry who are happy to supply drugs to people forever. And it isn’t it this PMC crowd that is into eating natural foods and caring about the environment being polluted by the same attitudes that govern Big Pharma?
I think there needs to be a closer look at the long-term consequences of sex-change. I think we need to look closer at the fact this “movement” towards the right of children (against the will of their parents even) even exists at a time when the sexes are, by historical standards, roughly equal says something. Men can signal themselves through dress and attitude a female persona and a woman can signal maleness by the same means. I’ve seen it and been around people like that almost all my life. Why the surgery, why the drugs? What real benefit this gender-affirming care give? Maybe there are underlying emotional problems that will resolve over time–who knows?
When I was a practicing nurse, and later while supervising nursing students, I’ve seen about a dozen cases of infants born without a discernable gender. Some had genetic testing to determine sex chromosomes (which did not always resolve the issue), some died within a few days, some lived and the parents were asked what gender they wanted their baby to be surgically assigned. The latter, without exception, chose male.
Merry Christmas, all. Thank you for being here.
Apparently most people in the U.S. don’t understand that this happens. Those cases are comparatively rare, though. Here in Thailand, if a child thinks it was born in the wrong gender, even though it has well defined genitalia, they just start acting like the gender they feel like. Mostly, it’s men who feel like they are women. In school their choice is more or less accepted, but they aren’t allowed to wear the uniform of their choice. In the case of males who identify as females, the term is katoey. It’s different than gay. The girls are less obvious (probably because they are less accepted), so I’m not clear how they handle it, but generally katoeys are accepted. In fact many of them are very important in the arts, especially television. Frequently in a television drama you’ll have a character who is a parody of a katoey in an important role, usually as an important producer or agent. As far as I know they aren’t allowed any medical treatment until they are over 18, when they are expected to pay for it.
Katoey originally meant unripe, for example unripe fruit. The usual English translation as ladyboy is interestingly different from the Thai.
Assigned male/female at birth is a correct term for folks born intersex. These rare cases have ambiguous physical sex characteristics.
Intersex and transsexual and transgender are different phenomenon. Using “assigned male/female at birth” for trans folks is inaccurate.
If the Democratic party hadn’t made such a big deal out of the trans thing, it’s possible that the Republicans might have ignored the issue?
The evangs hate anything trans with a burning passion, and the Pachyderms needed a new tack after getting rid of Roe v Wade, and that TV commercial with Kamala in regards to convicts having sexual reassignment while in prison was almost more damaging to the campaign than her personality, in the end.
I can still hear her basically saying…
‘You get an operation, and you get an operation, and you get an operation, et al’
Personally I believe this is a side issue politically. And for the record it isn’t just evangelicals who are deeply uncomfortable with this embrace of supposed transgender causes. Count me as a long term Democrat agnostic and deep supporter of gay rights and marriage who sees this as largely a scam. The evangelical community had lots of reasons to reject Kamala not all of which were limited to just them.
But Kamala has never pandered well, it is almost always awkward, and that was one of the worst.
This is not a conservative-liberal issue. Lefty woman here: when I see the word “gender,” I read: “sexist stereotype.” Anyone’s free to embrace it, but the term “gender-affirming care” makes me think of foot binding of upper-class Chinese girls in days gone by. Both are abhorrent practices that seek to change the body in pursuit of some sexist ideal.
Men in dresses? Sure. Still men. I’m wearing sweats as I type this, but that makes me no less a woman. How I wish everyone would just leave gender in the dustbin where the women’s movement tossed it with great effort in the 1970s. Just dress as you please. It doesn’t change your sex and men who don’t respect women’s spaces and sports are just vile men who don’t respect women’s spaces and sports. Men’s feelings are not more important than women’s feelings, safety, and privacy.
And the number of human babies born with deformed genitals is so tiny. Some snakes are born with two heads, but we still say snakes have one head.
I think this baffling, bizarre issue is a sign of our batsh*t-crazy times.
Regarding “sex assigned at birth”, maybe some of the docs in the commentariat can confirm this, but I have read in the past that some babies are born with ambiguous sex organs. Hence, sometimes sex is actually “assigned” at birth based on the parents’ and doctors’ judgements.
Read Ann’s comment above.
Buon Natale. In this season of Kamalicious joy, I would like to give the gift of slagging to Matt Taibbi, who should know better than go all fanboy for the Great Barrington Declaration:
From his latest piece, his Christmas message: ‘The major difference between what we just experienced and previous periods of collective madness is that while, say, the Red Scare of the fifties froze America in a conservative delirium, punishing the slightest deviations from a patriotic norm, the recent merger of national security agencies with Madison Avenue and the press stressed instant conformity to radical change. It almost didn’t matter what the change was, it just had to be far out. The power to move people off long-held beliefs was the important proof of concept. Hence the weirdness of so much of what we’ve lived through, from “biological sex” or “natural immunity” becoming forbidden science to liberalism’s overnight rejection of the Bill of Rights.’
This is a bunch of false equivalences. Further, after many enlightening comments here at Naked Capitalism, plus plenty of good links to epidemiological articles, we can accept the data that there is not “herd immunity” for coronaviruses. Yet Taibbi repeats the dire canard.
I also don’t accept the idea that the wave of panic and paranoia from 2000 on in the U S of A is somehow different from the 1930s (recall the opposition to the New Deal), 1940s, and 1950s. There was the Lavender Scare. There was Scoundrel Time. These panics are deeply embedded in U.S. culture, which is why Arthur Miller could use the Salem Witch Trials to explain McCarthyism.
I realize that Taibbi was treated extremely badly by the Democrats when he testified about the Twitter Files in the Congress. Plaskett and Wasserman-Schultz truly do not have any decency.
But is the result to pretend that it was okay to send kids to school during the height of Covid because the Great Barrington Declaration insisted that schools had to remain open and kids were a low-risk group?
Note the article linked in the Mail: Major upticks in strokes. What recent events could possibly have caused a weakening of the circulatory system? I’m like mystified, groundlings. {And note the twiXts from the Vertlartnic and the Cat Herding Science Peeps.}
Thanks for dissecting Taibbi’s misfire on COVID. I’ve been a big fan of his writing, and when he’s in fine form, it’s a delight. But he’s clearly gone off the deep end on this one.
I think Matt, lacking actual knowledge, is assuming that because J. Battychayra and GBD were censored, their information is important truth. Sometimes the censorship industrial complex suppressed bad information, like the proverbial blind squirrel, by accident.
Maybe a misfire. At this point I have absolutely no faith in whatever anyone has to say about COVID. I don’t know enough about viruses and vaccines to evaluate any studies on my own, and all discussion of COVID has become so politicized that I don’t have any faith in anything someone with knowledge has to tell me at this point.
Yes, increase in strokes among younger men, what could possibly be the cause? A real puzzle.
Notice that he writes “natural immunity”, not “herd immunity.” Couldn’t it be that aside from whatever mass exposure to infection might do to a group of people, some individuals to have a natural immunity that protects them from becoming infected?
Sounds dubious to me.
Why? Some doctors are actually investigating why some people who don’t take any precautions have never caught Covid. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/never-covid-1.7248039
‘Luck’ would be doing a lot of work after 5 years of pandemic.
Some kids died from polio and diptheria. Some kids got a mild infection, back in the day. Natural variations in immunity sure seems like a good hypothesis to start with.
They cannot be sure they never had Covid unless they were tested often, and not those high false negative at home tests. Many people got asymptomatic cases. And even bloodwork can’t differentiate whether you had a case or had a vaccine. Plus for both, antibodies can fade to negligible levels over time.
That sounds like a stealth appeal to the concept of “superior genes,” and the people with them, ie. The Chosen.
Natural immunity and herd immunity are two different things.
The Eyal Yakoby twiXt about Bilal Erdogan and the demonstration at the bridge.
Does anyone here speak Turkish? Mine is extremely rudimentary, but I managed to make out Agia Sofia and the Sulimaniye Mosque in the discussion.
Agia Sofia, a basilica that Kemal Ataturk, among others, wanted to be kept secularized, was more or less confiscated by Daddy Erdogan in a display of Sunni fundamentalism (and a significant number of Turks do not adhere to Sunni fundamentalism).
So if the drift of what that conference is about is what I think it is about: A warning. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
This one’s a howler, Erdogan & family are taking aim at King Troll and Lavrov for shade, and beyond them for obliquity. Not that it’s not serious, if you look at a map of the Ottoman Empire. And Not that’s its not a feint, so he can gunocide the Kurds and nobody can say boo.
But the timing means that the Aipac network just fired up on Christmas, guaranteeing that putative Christian executives get no cozy morning family tree thing. Blinken ain’t drinking cocoa right now.
Please forgive my schadenfreude.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1871900388137578618
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Sorry but this is 100% on you. * Your capitalist class decided to move your industry to China during the unipolar moment, at a time when the US – as the sole superpower – unilaterally set the rules of the global order.
Ridiculous to play victim on that one.
And in fact, to this day, you would have been perfectly happy with this situation had China remained your cheap labor and had they not successfully developed, despite all the odds stacked against them.
The real issue therefore isn’t ‘deindustrialization’ – it’s that the expected perpetual economic hierarchy didn’t materialize. You’re mad that they turned the tools of globalization – which were supposed to cement your advantage – into instruments of their own development.
We’ve seen this movie before with Japan. Same playbook: first encourage their development as a subordinate economy, then cry foul and claim unfair practices once they start competing in higher-value sectors. All leading to the Plaza Accords which crippled Japan’s economy to this day.
Which goes to show that this has nothing to do with you being a victim of China, but very much with your imperial reflex to crush any nation that dares compete with you, even if they follow your rules.
* https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GfpTe6QbUAAJLN8?format=jpg&name=small
7:46 AM · Dec 25, 2024
Seconded.
China saw what happened to Japan after the Plaza Accords and has no interest in going there. And as you said, it was the US that moved it industries to China by choice as they were so cheap. Would you believe that they even gave corporations tax breaks to get out of America to go to China. Now that China has become the big dog of the industrial world, Washington can’t stand it. They want to reset the clock to the 90s or force China to sign their own Plaza Accords. Maybe even go with a trade war against China under Trump. Not going to work. If push came to shove, China might start withdrawing from the US but I am sure that it would be in certain strategic industries first so you might find the Pentagon suddenly out of spare parts. Would it be a nasty knock on the Chinese economy? Yes, but capitulation would put them on the road back to the 90s again.
Not only tax breaks.
I remember reading an interview with a US manufacturer back in the day. He told how Walmart threatened that they would only buy future products from him if they began to manufacture in China.
I seem to remember that too – cannot find a link, but I can re-post this one:
Wal-Mart and China – A Joint Venture
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/secrets/wmchina.html
I don’t know how anyone can think China “planned” this.
China also saw what happened in Russia. There was no way in hell that any rational elite would turn over their financial system to the west after seeing that.
Its way worse than that mate …
I can scroll back to the advent of MPS being an elite funded social agenda w/Powell memo et al being stepping stones to usher in the utopia everyone[tm] would enjoy. Reinforced by the 80s meme/trope that government should be run like a business ***for profit*** above all else and GDP was the carrot without distribution vectors because it was a self fulfilling prophecy e.g. the logical/rational[tm] outcome i.e. trickle down like manna from heaven or those chosen by it … cough … natural order of freedoms and liberties …
Now that the Red scare of oligarchical wealth concentration being hampered by the State [see Hudson] in the West the only two major economies of Russia/China stand it the way because Sovereignty supersede all other economic/political reasons.
Ambrit, I’m usually a fan of your comments but I think you’re conflating superior genes and “superior people “. Clearly some people have a genetic propensity to be healthier than most other people, just as one person might have a genetic predisposition to be an artist or another an excellent dancer. Neither the person with the hardy immune system nor the artist nor the dancer is necessarily a “Superior Person, but most people would acknowledge that people can be “gifted “ artists or athletes or students. Said “gifts “
are genes that confer superiority in some dimension. The comment to which you replied was addressing one kind of genetic gift, not suggesting that there are races of uber people who are genetically destined to rule over the rest of us.
I gather that your comment refers to the above remark.
For the record (because its not apparent from the excerpt), Arnaud Bertrand is addressing Matt Stoller in that comment.
re: My Way or the Highway Warwick Powell, China&US Focus
This got me thinking – how much is US foreign policy based on (abusive) US parenting models and f***ed up childhoods? We know filial piety via Confucious has an important role in Chinese culture, and Russians culturally are raised to dearly love and cherish their children. On the world stage Russia and China almost seem patient and maternal, authority is expressed differently.
The US approach, if it can be said to reflect its own culture, seems to be from a time when parents beat their kids, men were heads of households and women’s places in the kitchen, authority is wielded by fist and belt, the “my way or the highway” parenting approach.
“This got me thinking – how much is US foreign policy based…”
This theme is worth exploring, for US sociology seems lost in trying to explain what the US is as a people.
Population movement by coercion has had a major impact on the character of the U.S.- westward displacement of surviving indigenous tribes with settlers from Europe; and importing Africans for unpaid labor.
Merry Christmas to everyone here!
Re: Greece-Turkey feud over the maritime issues:
Greece brings up a valid point. The gang of HTS has no legitimacy because they are not in control of the country. The Kurds control the east and all the oil, the Russian sea bases are still there, and Israel is busting a move to grab as much land as possible in the south.
Any agreements signed with such a weak government (can we even call them a “government?”) are likely “null and void” as we don’t even know how long the Toyota pickup truck army is going to stick around. They’re really a bunch of children “Playing House” while the adults like Bibi and Joe (er … Sullivan?) loot the country.
Of course, they have lots of CIA money and the Sultan’s blessing. So, they’ll keep playing house for a while.
The head Turkish spook was in Damascus the other day and Jolani was the chauffeur for his car. And right there is your pecking order. This is all starting to remind me of what happened to Yugoslavia but worse.
re: US ramping up biological warfare presence in Africa — Russia’s top brass
I seem to recall there were western news stories to the same effect long before the Ukraine war, that AFRICOM was getting considerable new focus and priority in the scheme of things, especially across the Sahel, that it was opening bases across the central belt of Africa in particular (there was some obvious pattern when looking at a map), was also opening a series of CBRN labs across that belt, was increasing CBRN exercises simulating CBRN scenarios and all of this suggested that the Pentagon was anticipating and preparing for CBRN conflicts there.
A Merry Christmas to all!
Here in Sonoma County the Pandemic is over because Joe Biden said so, and if you can’t trust Joe Biden, who CAN you trust?
Are you sure it was Biden who said it, or one of the puppet masters? And which one? We had presidency by Inner Circle.
Will America be a serious country next year?
Tune in next week!
How it started, Dec. 11, 2024: “We proposed a Christmas ceasefire and a large-scale prisoner exchange. It’s sad that President Volodymyr Zelensky clearly rejected and ruled this out today. We did what we could,” Orban wrote on the X social media platform.”
How it’s going, Dec. 25, 2024: “Christmas morning in Ukraine was overshadowed by a massive Russian aerial attack using cruise missiles to target energy infrastructure across the country, which Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned as “inhuman”.”
Last I heard, in Ukraine people who observe Christmas use the Orthodox Christian calendar. Sheesh.
Merry Christmas to all anyway!
As Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church doesn’t follow the Holy Spirit but a man, last year it switched to Gregorian calendar. At the same time so did also the Orthodox Church of Ukraine – which was founded in 2018 as many bishops of Ukrainian Orthodox Church transferred from Moscow patriarchy to Constantinople patriarchy – but I gather there has been a lot of friction among the parishes regarding the issue.
For what it’s worth, in the Eastern Christianity the baptism and the death/resurrection of Jesus are much bigger events than his birth.
It’s worse than it appears. Until last year the decision of which calendar to follow was left to each parish, and depending on the situation, some followed the Gregorian calendar and the vast majority didn’t. This applies to both Orthodox and Eastern Catholic parishes.
And for what it’s worth the importance of baptism and the resurrection are much bigger events than the birth in Western Catholicism as well.
Political liturgy.
A lot of “catholics” west of Kiev are aligned with Rome for influence with the EU and US!
In 2018 a new orthodox sect, more into hurting Russia than buttering up Rome, was formed by Kiev to oust the Russian/Metropolitan of Moscow linked parishes.
Sadly, they dupe US protestants and catholics, who willfully ignore Christ!
None holding to St Augustine Just War doctrine, which would condemn forcing Russian leaning oblasts back into Stalin’s kluge.
From the article: “Today, Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhuman? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones,” the Ukrainian president said on Telegram.”
Zelinskyy is referring to today as Christmas. He’s also doing that in English. There’s a good chance this is to speak to the audience he needs to influence so he continues to receive funding.
Regardless of his reasons for using Telegram or speaking in English, this is another example of how Ukrainian leadership rejects every opportunity to de-escalate and achieve peace. They don’t even want to support temporary peace. So I guess we’ll just have to wait until Zelinskyy himself takes the battlefield. Because at the rate he’s going there won’t be any people to fight for him when he’s done. Stupid. Tragically stupid.
Could Zelinskyy possibly imagine ANY future for himself in a decimated, by his actions, Ukraine?
Perhaps he is simply running out the clock as he awaits his USA provided Golden Parachute.
And there will be one, perhaps not because the USA likes Zelinskyy, but because TPTB want to signal the next foreign tool that they will be provided for.
I can imagine a nice Florida estate, painted in Ukranian flag colors, as the home for Zelinskyy’s government in exile.
This is for people for 2020.
I wish we had more recent data. We have all kinds of population level data of the consequences, but always disappointing to see stuff based on WT virus or stuff from 2021. It’s almost 2025. What’s the virus doing lately?
For anyone else who found Covid19 under the family Christmas tree this year, here’s a handy page from FLCCC Alliance on early treatment.
Whether these increases in labor force disability are related to Covid-19 infections is unclear to me, but obviously should be examined carefully:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16TO1
January 4, 2020
Labor Force men and women with a disability, * 2017-2018
* Age 16 to 64
(Indexed to 2017)
There is still lots of interesting Covid science popping. I usually can’t get more than about five posts down my Covid Twitter feed before I’m totally bogged down with new stuff to try to understand. Here is one (as a Thread):
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1871219233608368210.html
The consequences of SARS-CoV-2 within-host persistence (Nature Microbiology)
https://x.com/radcentrism/status/1871782720902455302?s=46
https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/php/surveillance/index.html
December 19, 2024
Reports of pertussis cases were lower than usual over the past few years, during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the United States is beginning to return to pre-pandemic patterns where more than 10,000 cases are typically reported each year. It’s likely mitigation measures used during the pandemic (e.g., masking, remote learning) lowered transmission of pertussis.
In 2024, reported cases of pertussis increased across the United States, indicating a return to more typical trends. Preliminary data show that more than six times as many cases have been reported as of week 50 reported on December 14, 2024, compared to the same time in 2023. The number of reported cases this year is higher than what was seen at the same time in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
Vaccination is the best way to prevent pertussis. However, as typical infection patterns return to the United States, CDC expects pertussis cases to increase both in unvaccinated and vaccinated populations. Pertussis occurs in vaccinated people since protection from vaccination fades over time…
Under orts and scraps or bits and bobs:
https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2024/12/19/water-tasting-menu-the-inn-at-little-washington
I wonder if unlike the Left, Trump’s base will “make him do it” on immigration. Between that and the business class likely win to businesses, but what of midterm punishment for Congress? Guess we’ll see.
So this is disturbing; OpenAI has launched “Sora”, and the intro page is just a bunch of fake AI generated videos of stuff. The best of the best, I assume. It still looks kind of bizarre and off-putting in a way. One is a moving turkey, cooked bone in, at a Thanksgiving dinner. Huh. Chipmunks going in circles in beanies that are colored. A dog with its ears flopping in the water. Just bizarre stuff. I dunno.
Welcome to our AI generated future of trash.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful day in whatever way is best for you!
Thanks to Yves Smith and everyone for keeping this site running, and putting up with my comments!
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1871378479067128087
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is hilarious.
US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo admits that her work to curb China’s technological progress has been – in her own words – a “fool’s errand”. Her exact quote from the Wall Street Journal is: “Trying to hold China back is a fool’s errand”. * Particularly ironic coming from someone who still in March this year was saying that the US “will do whatever it takes to curb China’s tech”
( https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-11/us-may-further-curb-china-s-access-to-chip-tech-raimondo-says )
and is of course most infamous – especially in China – for saying that the “U.S. needs to slow China’s innovation rate”
( https://cnbc.com/2021/09/28/us-needs-to-work-with-europe-to-slow-chinas-innovation-rate-raimondo-says.html ).
All a fool’s errand, as she now admits
* https://wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-biden-chip-manufacturing-gina-raimondo-b98c2606
9:12 PM · Dec 23, 2024
Peace on Earth! I can’t make that wish anywhere else and feel the sentiment is shared.
A big Christmas Thank You to Yves, Lambert, Nick, Conor, the Mods, and all the assembled eyes.
[Putting on my Grinch costume]
Why is the IRS so desperate to keep the confetti money flowing?
https://thehill.com/business/5054886-irs-recovery-rebate-credit/
1 million taxpayers to receive “rebate checks” because they didn’t file for a pandemic era stimulus bennie.
Suspicious timing: Did Biden deliberately delay this move until now in order to ensure Kalamity Harris didn’t benefit? Won’t free money drove up the price of eggs and food just in time for Trump’s inauguration?
EU candidate’s president eyeing attack on Russian peacekeepers – Moscow
Those troops are peacekeepers same way the US troops were peacekeepers in eastern Syria, before the fall of Assad. They, (same as US troops) precluded the legitimate government taking control on that particular section of the country, with a concentration of ethnic minority, different from the overall majority.
Russia has no problem adopting western discourse when it suits its interests.
Apparently Solani complete flipped her wig when Zelelnsky announced that he was shutting down all gas pipelines going west, including to Molodova. Of course she blamed Putin but the fact of the matter is that the Molovan budget for next year is already toast and she will be the one having to deal with the oncoming mess. If I were here I would say no more weapons or money to the Ukraine until they switch the gas back on, which incidentally earns the Ukraine a boatload of money, but Sandu will never go there.
Oh, I don’t disagree with any of these. My point was only specific with the Russian presence in Transdnistria.
“legitimate government”
FBI, DEA deployment of AI raises privacy, civil rights concerns
At this stage of the game, does anyone think that the government is concerned about Americans rights?
When I’m driving I frequently channel surf over the FM band.
I’m struck by two types of voices, the conservative talk show host who is supremely confident in their rectitude and the religious leaders, who have a similar, Gawd promoting, but different tone.
I came across a very confident female voice holding forth recently.
It was none other than Condoleeza Rice, of Bush II administration Iraq/Afghanistan War promotion fame (and mushroom cloud invocation).
She still has a job at Stanford’s Hoover Institute.
Here is a transcript of her Dec 12 interview.
https://radio.foxnews.com/2024/12/12/dr-condoleezza-rice-syria-trump/
A small sample of her wisdom.
” For instance, I wonder if we’ve given the Ukrainians everything they needed at the beginning of the war rather than debating tanks, then sending tanks, debating long range artillery, then sending them. The Ukrainians have the Russians on their back foot. They might have won the war outright. And so this kind of incrementalism, trying to always talk about keeping escalation down. When you say we’re not going to escalate, you give escalation to your adversary.”
“I know a number of the people who are coming in and they are first rate. I believe that Senator Rubio, Marco Rubio is going to be a really fine secretary of state.”
“I really do believe that there is nothing worse than Bashar al-Assad. He was a Russian and Iranian stooge, frankly, in, you know, helping the Iranians to get weapons to Hezbollah, keeping his power through the most extreme, brutal circumstances.”
“And I have to say one thing about the Israelis here, what they’ve done in the last few months in response to the awful, barbaric events of October 7th is starting to reshape the Middle East in a favorable direction, taking care of Hezbollah, making sure that the Iranians can’t can’t reinforce Hezbollah. You know, the Iranians pulled up and left within minutes, it seems, of when Assad fell. And that tells you something about how Iran views its own weakness at this moment. And that’s thanks to the Israeli, the Israelis and the IDF. Hamas is now talking about a cease fire because all of a sudden Hamas is completely on its own. So let’s just take a moment to acknowledge that however difficult it’s been in watching what the Israelis have done, they’ve achieved something quite extraordinary.”
“It’s a complete catastrophe for Iran. I’ve always said that Iran was a cowardly state. They did most of their work through their proxies, what they actually but call their for defense. And now their proxies are dead in the water”
Hmm, some other nations use proxies to do their work…
“how do you prevent Vladimir Putin from thinking that he’s won? Well, one thing is the United States of America never recognizes Russian sovereignty over those four provinces in the east. You simply say, as we did, by the way, for 45 years, we did not recognize the Soviet Union’s sovereignty over the Baltic states. And if we don’t recognize it, nobody will invest there. And they’ll be stuck with the Donbass region in the east, which is very difficult, and it’s mostly Rust Belt. And so do not recognize Russian sovereignty over those, what.”
If the USA doesn’t recognize the four provinces, nobody will invest there?
Money will flow from international finance if the numbers pencil out.
She closes with opinions on college football.
Thanks for sharing that.
I thought Sen. Graham was very clear that we needed the Eastern Ukrainian territory because of the “r-itch stor o’ men-arals” they have for us? I don’t think they’ll have any problems securing interest despite what Ms. Rice is saying. It seems incredible but it appears our leadership really does think we still call all the shots worldwide.
Rice sees bombs as birth pangs al Jazeera 22 Jul 2006!
I guess she was 18 years too early with that call. Unfortunately she is probably right this time. She was also Secretary of State in 2008 when Ukraine and Georgia were annointed as NATO darlings. Recall her PhD was about the USSR and Russia. Her damage is epic and gives Blinken a run for the money with sheer destructive energy.
For some reason these war criminals avoid prosecution and have fulfilling retirement gigs.
A.I., the Electricians and the Boom Towns of Central Washington
So help me out: why exactly did we argue in favour of Trump for Nov. 5th?
I don’t know who this “we” is.
Pretty much all readers were clear the choices utterly sucked. The debate not “for” anyone save perhaps Stein but who was less terrible. As I recall the main thrust, the arguments v. Kamala included having a new variant of Biden-with-dementia not knowing who was in charge, but even worse re her of not knowing what she even stood for. Trump at least was a known quantity.
Another was that to the extent she did take charge or try to appear to, that she would hew to the female uber hawk model to prove she was not weak. With respect to Russia, that would risk nuclear war. I can’t track down who recently said it (it was an insider) but apparently every war game v. Russia has escalation producing nuclear war.
The we is provocative, yes. NC did not make any recommendations to vote for T. Sometimes however I had the impression there is a vague hope connected to a Trump-led admin and that things might get better re: Ukraine. (which would not have been an unjustified hope of course, possibly shared by a “we”). I wrote my message last night after watching Berletic’s recent video where he briefly argues, Biden’s escalation now is no attempt to sabotage Trump. In fact what he is doing now will simply be continued by Trump. And that things will get worse.
Pretty much what Yves said. Few here saw any great value in either option. But I do need to ask the question…looking at the death pangs of the Biden figure head administration and her vacuous campaign why would anyone think Harris would feel like a better choice. Or would it feel like disastrous choices like Blinken, just more media accepted
We have imo had three consecutive Presidential elections where the public was desperate for change, but the two major parties locked the choices to four of the nastiest, least popular people none of whom should have been allowed anywhere near a government office, including at the DMV. Three of them belonged behind bars, and of those three the one convicted of anything was the least damaging and corrupt. I have no evidence that the fourth should join them but it would not surprise me.
Oh and the hideous choice thing also applied to Obama/Romney as well but apparently the populace still had hope that Obama wanted change. They could get fooled again.
I did not want to suggest Harris would have been more desireable.
However a question: Did the POTUS election have any influence on being able to do something about social and labour issues on state and local level?
i.e. to ask: Would it make sense for local activists to argue: “(inter)nationally Harris might be worse but on local level it’s still better for us”. Or is that nonsense?
When following the election discussion on spaces like DemocracyNow or truthout it appeared as though that was the argument. But I have no way to judge this myself.
I want to add a comment that might appear crazy, but what the heck. In November we had an election which offered no way out of the mess that is the US. Both candidates continued the all too long run of being absolutely the wrong kind of person to head the government. Both were owned by the war machine,I.e., the zionists, and the facist types of millionaires and billionaires whose only function in history seems to make life unbearable for the greatest number of ordinary people. Throw in the bought-out media and an unrelenting surveillance state, and what does anyone have to vote for? Capitalism, rinse, spit, more capitalism.
Now this is the crazy part. There was a second national election, and this one occurred early one morning in midtown Manhattan. I refer to the assassination of the health care ceo by Mangione. Hardly funded by the usual suspects, and carried out, allegedly, by a lone gunman, it was a simple and straightforward matter. That it immediately came to be understood as an attack on those capital structures that make ordinary life so fearful demonstrated its other simple lesson: people are tired of living in a trap designed to keep them powerless and hopeless. The overwhelming support given Mangione stunned the ruling class. They quickly began a campaign to subdue that support. I might, and will, say that they’ve mightily tried to overturn the results of that December election, but remain confounded by the level of public support that Mangione continues to receive. The media will now do what it always does. They will attempt to tar Mangione with every brush at their disposal, failing (intentionally) to understand that the real defendant in this trial is the powerful corporations that relentlessly place profit over people, capital over justice. That is what this second election was about. And the voting continues not in the usual way, but in social media posts across the country, and in the conversations ordinary Americans have in their daily lives. It’s just crazy.
It is strange how the drone story has disappeared from twitter. I put it into the search engine and didn’t pull up anything later than Dec. 22nd. It seems to have been shut down as a story. This is especially striking since so many genuinely reputable people reported seeing the drones.
I have to say despite Lambert deigning to do a big post, we both hate the story. The drones with lights all seem to hew to the pattern of mis-identified aircraft, and they seem to be the majority.
The fact that the US has not shot them down (it immediately scrambles jets when private planes go off flight paths) mean they are somehow known and permitted but no one wants to say what is up.
You don’t get to object to Amazon drones flying over your house for deliveries either.
I think a more interesting part of this is very similar drone incidents at Langley last year and over USAF bases in the UK in the late summer.
Taken alone, the NJ story is just noise.
I agree that they must be known and permitted. My guess is that it is some sort of military exercise, being done by a private company. But it is still strange that the twitter and other coverage has gone away. It did merit an article in the WSJ several days ago, and now it is all gone.
Germany
Cost of living, JUNGE WELT
Expensive food and drink
Review of the year 2024. Today: Price development. After years of relatively stable food prices in Germany, products are becoming increasingly expensive
By Gudrun Giese
In the summer, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) presented a special analysis of the long-term price development of food. Between January 2020 and May 2024, prices rose by an average of almost a third. The developments in individual products, especially staple foods, were drastic. The price of sugar rose by 80 percent during this period, flour and other grain products became around half as expensive, as did potatoes. Bread and rolls cost a third more than at the beginning of 2020, whole milk almost 28 percent and coffee around twenty percent. The reasons for the price increases are varied.
Olive oil, which more than doubled in price between January 2020 and May 2024, was affected by crop failures in the Mediterranean countries. According to the International Olive Council (IOC), global olive oil production fell from 3.42 million tonnes in the 2021/22 harvest year to 2.57 million tonnes a year later, reported Tagesschau.de . A decline to 2.41 million tonnes was expected for the current harvest year. The price increases are hitting Spanish consumers harder than German citizens, because the widely used product has become three times more expensive there since 2021. At least the government in Madrid has set VAT on olive oil to zero for the period from July to September 2024. Of course, this does not change the fact that olive harvests are declining as a result of global climate change.
There are other reasons for the price increase for many food products. In its most recent main report, the Monopolies Commission found that there is a lack of competitive pressure in the food retail sector. Falling costs in purchasing goods are not being passed on to end customers. Everything points to “oligopolistic behavior,” it said. Four companies have dominated this retail sector for some time: Aldi Nord and Süd, the Schwarz Group with Lidl and Kaufland, Rewe with its discounter subsidiary Penny and market leader Edeka with Netto, which account for around 85 percent of the entire market. As is usual with oligopolies, the remaining players in this sector do not hurt each other and set their prices largely identically. A study using the price comparison app “Smhaggle” commissioned by Handelsblatt at the end of October found that the big four charged the same prices for identical products. Hazelnut nougat spread and chocolate biscuit rolls were the same price, and the increases were also synchronized. “The supposedly tough price competition in the German food retail trade is now just a show,” Handelsblatt quoted Marc Houppermans, who was formerly managing director at Aldi Nord and is now a consultant at “Discount Retail Consulting.”
In mid-August this year, consumer advice centers clarified that higher costs for energy, fertilizer, feed, personnel and crop failures were also contributing factors to the price increases. However, not all of the recent price increases can be explained in this way. Politicians and the Federal Cartel Office should examine more critically “whether companies are using the current situation to improve their own earnings.” However, since consumer advice centers also do not believe that food prices will return to their previous levels, consumers must prepare for permanently high expenditure on this item in their budget.
But what about the people whose income has long since failed to keep pace with the drastic increases in rent, energy costs and food? According to current data, almost one in five Germans is poor or at risk of poverty. Those who live on citizen’s allowance, basic security or low wages have to spend a very high proportion of their income on basic needs. Often there is not enough money to buy food by the end of the month. Institutions such as food banks or soup kitchens can hardly cope with the demand. Politicians in the early election campaign have no useful answers. There is talk of limiting citizen’s allowance and compulsory work (CDU), while the SPD hopes to win votes by wanting to reduce VAT on food from seven to five percent, which at best means a “saving” of a few euros a month, but possibly nothing at all if the retailers pocket the difference themselves.
There remain the demands of consumer centers and social associations for a significant increase in the citizen’s allowance, special payments for people with low incomes, cost reductions for communal catering, abolition of VAT on fruit, vegetables and pulses and support for food banks (consumer centers) or also the creation of living wages, adequate pensions, improvement of social benefits and redistribution through higher taxation of large incomes and assets (social association VdK). It is quite unlikely that any of this will be implemented any time soon.