Hundreds of twitchers flock to sleepy Kent village after ‘extremely rare’ sighting of American bird Daily Mail
How ‘scientist’ whales are helping uncover the secrets of climate change All Jazeera
Jimmy Carter
Tributes pour in after US President Jimmy Carter dies at 100 Al Jazeera
Column: History gets Jimmy Carter wrong, both underrated and overrated LA Times
The Passing and Lessons of Jimmy Carter Jonathan Turley
Faith a strong force in Jimmy Carter’s life, say leaders: ‘Heart of a servant’ FOX
A Letter From Home Jimmy Carter, The Bitter Southerner
Syndemic Watch
The Wrong Pandemic Lessons Learned Avian Flu Diary
The Chicken Little Problem: Are We About to Have a Bird Flu Pandemic, or Not? Sentinel Intelligence
Long-COVID study shows high rates of cognitive change Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
China?
China’s space agency faces leadership change amid shake-up Space News
Why upskilling is so important for China’s workforce South China Morning Post
‘Phase 2 China shock is coming’: historian Adam Tooze on Europe, America and manufacturing South China Morning Post
India
Syraqistan
Middle East live updates: Gaza hospitals become ‘battlegrounds,’ WHO says ABC
Israeli communications minister storms Al-Aqsa Mosque Anadolu Agency
Syria’s de facto leader al-Sharaa says it could take four years to hold elections EuroNews
EU Officials Will Claim Ignorance of Israel’s War Crimes. This Leaked Document Shows What They Knew The Intercept
The New Great Game
Georgia inaugurates far-right ruling party loyalist as new president France24
Georgia’s president agrees to vacate residence – but not her office EuroNews
New Not-So-Cold War
A truce with Russia could lead to ultimate Ukrainian victory The Hill
Ukraine will have to cede part of its territory – Slovak defence minister Ukrainska Pravda
Can Ukraine face another year of war? BBC
Further thoughts on Trenin and how the war ends Gilbert Doctorow
Какой должна стать Украина после завершения российской спецоперации Профиль. I can’t get this translated; perhaps some kind reader will. This is “Trenin,” mentioned by Doctorow above.
* * * Slovak PM Fico writes letter to EU leaders complaining about Zelenskyy over gas transit shutdown Ukrainska Pravda
Russia will abandon its unilateral missile moratorium, Lavrov says Reuters
Provoked: The Long Train of Abuses that Culminated in the Ukraine War Mises Institute
Belarus bans Santa Claus and Jingle Bells in schools – media Ukrainska Pravda
Global Elections
Trump Transition
Trump appears to side with Musk, tech allies in debate over foreign workers roiling his supporters Politico
GOP “playing with fire” if Johnson removed as speaker, Rep. Lawler says Axios. Ha ha, indeed.
Trump hears calls to save Speaker from GOP rebellion Regular Order
Digital Watch
Blood shots in bathroom, signs of fight — OpenAI whistleblower’s parents reject suicide ruling Times of India. Crude. They should have used Boeing’s service provider.
OpenAI’s Board, Paraphrased: ‘To Succeed, All We Need Is Unimaginable Sums of Money’ Daring Fireball
An AI System Has Reached Human Level ‘General Intelligence’: Here’s What It Means Madras Courier
* * * The barcode was ‘one of the 50 things that made the world economy’ but a new revolution is coming EuroNews
Disturbing Trend: Hyatt Centric Boston Introduces QR Code Tipping for Front Desk Staff At Check-In View from the Wing
* * * Proud to be a blockhead Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
For High School Age TikTok Influencers, Online Fame Can Bring Real-Life Consequences Teen Vogue
Americans have billions in unused gift cards Quartz
The Final Frontier
NASA Is Watching a Vast, Growing Anomaly in Earth’s Magnetic Field Science Alert
Surprisingly thick ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa complicates hunt for life Science
The Bezzle
Crypto is for Criming Paul Krugman, Krugman wonks out
Physicists Discover ‘Quantum Embezzlement’ Could Offer Infinite Source of Entanglement Science Alert
Imperial Collapse Watch
French PM Bayrou pledges ‘concrete’ action to aid Mayotte after deadly cyclone France24
* * * Greenland and the Panama Canal aren’t for sale. Why is Trump threatening to take them? Hellenic Shipping News
Panama Is Back in the News. That Can be a Good Thing. James Fallows, Breaking the News
Class Warfare
Luigi Mangione & the Dangers of Terrorism Charges Consortium News
The Walmart Effect The Atlantic
Are you better value for money than AI? The Register
The Murmur of Engines London Review of Books. Perry Anderson.
Century-Scale Storage Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab
Making friends with your past and future selves Knowable
Antidote du Jour (Yathin S Krishnappa):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
‘Какой должна стать Украина после завершения российской спецоперации Профиль’
According to Yandex Translate it says-
‘What should Ukraine look like after the completion of the Russian special operation?’
https://translate.yandex.com/?source_lang=ru&target_lang=en
You can drop chunks into it to translate so the first two paragraphs translate as-
‘There is a rule: in peacetime, prepare for war, and in wartime, think about organizing peace. Now, while the conflict in Ukraine is not over, our thoughts are on victory. We are sure she will come. But it’s time to start thinking about the world that follows it. To paraphrase Stalin’s famous statement, one can say: bandera come and go, but the Ukrainian people remain.
Ukraine has not existed within the borders of December 31, 1991 for a long time. Part of the territories of the former Ukrainian SSR – Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya – became part of the Russian Federation through referendums. It is possible that over time, some other regions will follow this path. Perhaps Odessa with Nikolaev, perhaps Kharkov with Dnepropetrovsk. Maybe something else. But definitely not all of them. It is worth attaching only what can be really integrated and, if necessary, retained.’
Current versions of the Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and (Chrome-based) Edge and Yandex desktop browsers all translate the article without problems using their built-in translation. It’s a thoughtful article–worth reading.
Here is the translated article:
Dmitry Trenin
What Ukraine Should Become After the Completion of the Russian Special Operation
There is a rule: in peacetime, prepare for war, and in wartime, think about organizing peace. Now, while the conflict in Ukraine is not over, our thoughts are on victory. We are sure it will come. But it is time to start thinking about the peace that will follow. To paraphrase Stalin’s famous statement, we can say: Bandera come and go, but the Ukrainian people remain.
Ukraine within the borders of December 31, 1991, has long ceased to exist. Part of the territories of the former Ukrainian SSR – Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya – became part of the Russian Federation through referendums. It is possible that over time, some other regions will follow this path. Perhaps Odessa with Nikolaev, perhaps Kharkov with Dnepropetrovsk. Perhaps something else. But certainly not everything. It is worth annexing only what can be really integrated and, if necessary, held.
Some part of today’s Ukrainian territories will remain outside the borders of the Russian Federation. What will this Ukraine be like? The answer to this question – and in fact, it is a very serious challenge – will determine, among other things, the future of Russia. The recent example of Syria has provided us with a clear confirmation of the military maxim of the great Alexander Suvorov: an uncut forest grows.
***
In civilizational, cultural, historical, and ethnic terms, Ukraine – or at least most of it – is an integral part of the Russian world. However, today this territory is in the hands of forces desperately fighting the Russian world. It is impossible not to notice that even these forces themselves and the West behind them are fighting us with the hands of, in essence, Russian people, fighting in the Russian way – stubbornly, inventively, and viciously, despite the enormous losses.
Russia’s liberation mission – its historical task – does not end with the liberation of the cities and villages of Donbass and Novorossiya. It is aimed at liberating all of Ukraine from the anti-Russian Bandera regime, its essentially neo-Nazi ideology, as well as from the influence of external forces hostile to the Russian world.
Like any other country, Ukraine belongs first and foremost to the people living on its territory. Russia, however, is closely and inextricably linked with these people and the land on which they live. After the end of the war, we are obliged – first of all to ourselves – to help our neighbors build a new Ukraine – initially a pacified and then a peaceful neighbor, in the medium term – a partner, and in the long term – an ally.
Russia has historical experience in turning military opponents into friends or reliable fellow citizens. It is enough to recall the revival of the Chechen Republic, which became a stronghold of stability in the North Caucasus; the alliance with the Afghan “northern
alliance” of former mujahideen or the example of the GDR and a number of other satellite countries of Nazi Germany after World War II.
***
There are different visions of post-war Ukraine in the Russian expert community.
The most radical option is for Russia to take control of the entire territory of Ukraine, up to Lviv, and reach the borders with NATO countries. Logically, this military success would be followed by a political continuation – the second “reunification of Ukraine with Russia”, which would actually mean the abolition of Ukrainian statehood. We will not discuss the feasibility of such an outcome of the SVO from a military point of view. But we can say for sure: there are reasonable doubts regarding the ability to keep all of Ukraine under Moscow’s control and then integrate it entirely into the Russian Federation, as well as regarding the material price for Russia of such a solution to the issue.
The opposite, least acceptable and most dangerous option for us is an embittered Bandera pro-Western Ukraine with borders somewhat reduced compared to 2022. This is a fiercely anti-Russian state, a tool of the West for constant pressure on Russia and provocation, and then, at a convenient moment, a springboard for a new war for the “liberation of occupied territories”. The main idea of this “undefeated” Ukraine will be revenge. This option must be completely excluded.
There is one option – a weakened Ukraine, a kind of big “gulyay-pole”, an entity abandoned by the West as unnecessary and dependent on Russia. In this reincarnation of Makhnovshchina, various interest groups and simply criminal gangs will constantly and tirelessly fight each other. It is assumed that Moscow will be able, by manipulating local elements, to turn such a Ukraine into a safe buffer for Russia in the south-western direction. Two things are doubtful about this option. Firstly, that the West will “step back” from the Ukrainian “gulyay-pole” and will not use its “heroes” to fight Russia, which will not stop after the end of military actions in Ukraine. Secondly, that Moscow will be able to control this Makhnovshchina.
The optimal and not entirely fantastic option for us would be to push anti-Russian, revanchist elements into the western regions of Ukraine. There they could create their own “free Ukraine” under the protectorate of the West or become a zone of influence of neighboring states – Poland, Hungary and Romania. The West could console itself with the fact that part of the country has avoided falling under Moscow’s control, and talk about Western Ukraine consisting of five or seven regions becoming an analogue of the FRG during the Cold War. Let it be so. It is not scary to concede something that is not only expensive for us, but also dangerous to have. Stalin’s mistake of annexing Galicia and Volyn and thereby infecting Soviet Ukraine with the virus of nationalism cannot be repeated.
The main thing is that “Galicia”, taking into account all possible assistance from the West, does not pose a danger to Russia, that is, it has a subcritical mass. The remaining part of Ukraine – isolated from the hotbed of ultra-nationalism, and also without the regions that have already joined or may still join the Russian Federation – would become a new sovereign Ukrainian state. At the same time, a state that is not under our occupation. It makes sense to offer such a prospect to the Ukrainians, explaining how beneficial it is for them.
***
The New Ukraine would be much more Ukrainian than the Ukrainian SSR or even Ukraine without Crimea and the four regions that voted to join Russia in 2022. Ukrainian culture would have all the opportunities for further development and prosperity here. The Ukrainian economy would have access to the Russian and Eurasian Economic Union markets. At the same time, the New Ukraine would be strictly separated from the alien Bandera element, which historically formed in isolation from Russia and on an anti-Russian basis. Kyiv would be freed from those who flooded and desecrated it after the Maidan coup of 2014.
The new Ukraine as a state and society would be created on a broad all-Russian – or, if you prefer, East Slavic – basis. Such a Ukraine would inherit Kievan Rus and the Zaporozhian Cossacks; it would be proud of the contribution of its people to the strengthening and prosperity of the Russian Tsardom and the Russian Empire, as well as the Soviet Union, of which the Little Russian lands were an important part. It would finally embody the historical dream of several generations of Ukrainians about independence.
In the realities of the modern world, the true sovereignty of Ukraine – as well as other neighboring states of the former USSR – is possible only in conditions of close interaction with Russia. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church would remain the spiritual foundation of society.
The “New Ukraine” project does not necessarily have to wait for Victory Day. Planning can begin now. There are many Ukrainians in Russia who care about the fate of their homeland. Many of them have the necessary competencies to get involved in the work on the state, economic and cultural construction of the future Ukrainian statehood. It is important to emphasize that this work is aimed specifically at creating a new statehood, and not at restoring the Ukraine that was swept away by the Maidan almost 11 years ago.
It is not only about those who have moved. After our victory, there will be work to separate war criminals, criminal figures, ideological opponents and incorrigible Russophobes from the bulk of the population of Ukraine. From its ranks, the New Ukraine could attract patriots – officers, public and cultural figures, businessmen, ready to rebuild their country in cooperation with Russia. We, in turn, will have to give these people an initial vote of confidence and treat their “Ukrainianness” with respect. They are not “khokhly”, “ukrops” speaking “mova”, and not just neighbors, but a part of the Russian world that we must return. Not for their sake, but first and foremost for our own sake, our safe (in this direction) future.
In our work with Ukrainians, we must already now emphasize that for the West, Ukraine and its population are only a tool, expendable material in the matter of weakening Russia. That for the West, Ukrainians (who were only “discovered” en masse three years ago) are strangers, second- or third-class people. That the wonderful Ukrainian national values are destined for the unenviable fate of being buried under an avalanche of Western mass culture and all the latest innovations in gender policy. That the Ukrainian language is under increasing pressure from English. That Ukrainian wealth – black soil, mineral resources – has been bought up by American and Western companies and, in fact, for the most part, no longer belongs to Ukraine. That a hypothetical attempt by Ukraine to protect its identity will be met by the same wave of arrogant pressure from the West as the actions of the current Georgian authorities.
So, to sum it up: we must be ready for war, but we must also be ready for peace. Let us expect that all the goals of the SVO will be achieved, and hope for at least the optimal option for ending the war described above. In other words, for our victory. But this will be a victory, first of all, over the attempt of the collective West to restrain our development and weaken us. This will be a victory over the Ukrainian Banderites – the enemies of both Russians and Ukrainians. For ordinary citizens of the New Ukraine, the day of our victory will be the day of their liberation. This is what Victory Day was called in the GDR.
The author is a professor, scientific director of the Institute of World Military Economy and Strategy of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” and a leading researcher at the IMEMO RAS
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“You don’t fuck with the Ukrainians!” As spoken by a South Pacific gang leader in L.A., referring to a Ukrainian gang (mafia?) leader in the 2003 movie “The Italian Job”
Regardless the outcome in Eastern Europe, with the historical easing of visa requirements for allies in foreign conflicts, the US should prepare itself for the influx of refugees, many quite ambitious and, uhm, creative, from Ukraine.
How else they gonna get rid of the nazis?
>>>How else they gonna get rid of the nazis?
We do not need any more racists. America already has an apparently irreducible element of racism and facism.
right there, appreciate you JBird4049
He’s being sarcastic. Some CA friends with whom I spent a few days earlier this month were complaining about the flood of Ukrainian refugees filling the state’s Central Valley agricultural installations. Methinks they are already somewhat entrenched.
thanks, interesting. they certainly wouldn’t want to work the fields, did some reading about Ukrainians being paroled to Fresno – brings to mind the Marielitos back in the 80’s.
“Ha-ha, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”, but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian WHEN DEATH IS ON THE LINE!”
-The Princess Bride (1987)
Yes Firefox worked for me.
Schryver in a good piece 2 weeks ago:
Dictating Terms
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/dictating-terms
but I disagree with this –
(Trump is not that stupid – unless of course Rubio believes pushing into a war would help him against Vance in 2028. But that’s non-sensical speculation)
“Trump and his incoming administration, in the face of an explicit Russian rebuff of American demands, will almost certainly conclude that they must “teach the Russians a lesson they will not soon forget”.
Exactly what form this “lesson” will take remains uncertain, but given the pervasive perception that US air power is unquestionably preeminent, it can be confidently assumed that any American response to Russian impudence will consist of some species of conventional air campaign against high-value Russian targets.
And if that is the course the US pursues, I remain convinced it will result in a disastrous defeat that will shock not only the populace of the so-called “western democracies”, but most of the inhabitants of nations around the globe.”
p.s. the Trenin piece in Engl. machine translation archived:
Dmitry Trenin
What Ukraine Should Become After the Completion of the Russian Special Operation
https://archive.is/fzDpJ
He lists the 5 of the 9 oblasts that majority voted for the russ leaning ukr candidate in the 201 4 election and which have been incorporated into Russian fed thru referendums. These 5 constitute the ‘easternmost tier, or belt’, those closest to Russia.
The other 4 he lists as possibles are the remaining 4 from 2014 (and the next easternmost belt), tho he says ‘definitely not all’. Imo all would vote in a free and fair referendum to join Russia, especially considering the alternative of staying with a failed state… plus, Russia is already allocating resources to patch up the eastern oblast areas they control.
Perhaps he thinks it’s just too much to handle? But there are security issues, certainly Odessa/nikolaev but Kharkov too… At least in the north you would get the dnieper for a border.
My guess is Russian pop will push to hold referendums and liberate the remaining 4 Russia-leaning oblasts. Certainly not Kiev, hugely anti Russia in 2014, imo Putin’s mentioning that city was a feint.
*Sigh*
We have repeatedly hoisted this comment from PlutoniumKun. You can’t have the Dnieper or any major river as a border when you have a hostile neighbor. You need to control the watershed. His earlier remark:
One third of the world’s borders are along rivers – they are one of the most natural borders one can get.
As I pointed out when PK first posted this idea, it’s a river in Ukraine, so most of the sewage is already pumped directly into it, and nobody followed any building codes aimed at protecting the water quality. Dnepr is an open air sewage already.
As for the water shed, the right bank is the high bank and the left bank is the low bank. From this it follows that who ever controls the left bank (a.k.a. Russian side) controls 80-85% of the Dnepr watershed. Half of the Dnepr watershed is located in Belarus and Russia as it was. And anyway, most of the Luhansk and Donetsk already get their fresh water trough canals and pipelines from Don.
Having co-operation on a wide range of issues helps, but is not needed – Dnepr seems to flow just fine for the 350 km it has been the actual front line for the last year and a half.
You are skipping over the friendlies versus at war part entirely, which was essential to the matter. The US is not at war with Canada or Mexico, despite Trump bluster, and those both have rivers as meaningful portions of the border.
The river that separated East and West Germany was small and not much of a boundary or part of a meaningful watershed.
Plus front lines are well away from the Dnieper, so I do not even remotely understand that part of your remark.
Did you miss that Ukraine blew up the Nova Kharkovka dam and created an ecological disaster below? Pray tell, what is to prevent an angry rump Ukraine making similar messes? Or that Ukraine cut the water flow of a canal that was an important supply to Crimea?
Plutonium commented by e-mail:
The first point is self evidently untrue as a quick look at any map will show. Minor rivers are often borders of course, but that’s not the point – pretty much all the worlds great rivers (in particular the navigable ones) run through, not between countries, with watersheds being the most common form of boundary for reasons which should be quite obvious. In ancient times, great rivers were sometimes boundaries if those rivers were not navigable (such as the Rhine forming the northern extent of the Roman Empire), but in modern times the need to manage and maintain the watercourses makes them very awkward boundaries. They exist – such as parts of the Mekong or short sections of the Danube – but mostly as accidents of history. One exception is most of the Congo, but that river is not navigable (except for some short stretches) and runs generally through what would have been impenetrable jungle when the borders were created by Europeans.
As for sewage – well, thats simply untrue, they may be run down, the old Soviet Union was pretty good at the basics like sewerage. You simply can’t pump the effluent of a city the size of Kiev into a series of reservoirs. The result will be… unpleasant, and somewhat obvious to anyone within smelling distance. A very quick google search shows up multiple pages detailing the various municipal wastewater schemes in Ukraine. Many were funded by the EU prior to the war
There is also the fundamental issue of managing the dams on the main course of the river, flood control issues, managing navigation rights, and dealing with water abstraction, fisheries management and a whole host of other issues which if not dealt with, can and do become casus belli. And thats not even addressing the awkward situations that arise when rivers naturally change course (a regular problem on the Mekong and the Oyopok, which forms the French Guiana and Brazil border).
As for the final point – obviously, the difficulty of crossing a river means that they do very frequently form battle lines.
I would not rule out the possibility that the difficulty in crossing the Dneiper would mean it becomes a de facto border. south of Dnipro But, as we’ve seen with the lower stretches, when that happens the result is that the ‘boundary’ sifts back away from the natural course (essentially, shell range), which would be excellent news for wildlife, but the end of it as a working river. It would probably end up as something of a neutral zone – one of these exists on the Congo between the DRC and the Republic of Congo.
* * *
BTW, just as an additional point, the proof that rivers form bad boundaries can be found within countries as well. Nearly every advanced nation has some type of central government run river/river catchment management organisation for major watercourses precisely for the reason that its easier to do that than have various local/regional governments having to agree on every detail.
Even within the EU its hard. Among the many problems Brexit caused was how to manage shared watercourses along the NI border. I’ve been tangentally involved in this and it can be excruciatingly difficult to get agreement on the most minor things (like agreeing standards for domestic wastewater treatment), because everything has to be referred upwards for internal agreement when things are transnational, and then triple tested for legal watertightness. It extends even to apparently simple things like mutually agreed standards for hull treatments for leisure boats (to prevent migration of invasive species).
One further point is that when river borders are shared between hostile countries, almost inevitably the stronger country insists on controlling the far bank. You can see this along the Israel/Jordan border. In the 1994 Treaty (which does use the northern Jordan as a boundary), Israel insisted on setting the boundary along the east side of the Jordan as it flows south from the Red Sea, using the flood plain edge as boundary – you can see this clearly from googlemap images (the boundary follows the edge of the irrigated plain, not the main river channel).
Just as a final point, I would point out that a key difference between those rivers that do act as boundaries and those that don’t is navigability. The British used the ‘three mile’ rule with every African river they sailed up (i.e. the range of a cannon). Hence the strange shape of countries like the Gambia. The country that can dominate the navigation of a river will use that domination to control the overall watershed. China, Russia, the US, etc., are all geographically based around navigable engineered rivers. If there is a rule of political geography, this is one of the key ones.
Thanks, I did read this but forgot some of it.
However, I’ve long thought Russia wont stop until Ukraine surrenders. In this case I assume Russia will insist on a Russian leaning gov, which will then invite Russia to set up bases in the rump as us did in Japan after ww2.
In this situation the west will not lift a finger or spend a dime on the rump but will continue to fund mischief, which will cause problems for a while, but if Russia is willing to help the rump, and they manage to ‘de-nazify’ the rump, imo time will be on their side. On the plus side the burden would not be nearly as severe as the old soviet satellites were (which imo, combined with a hugely inefficient Econ system, is why they fell apart in ‘89, not Reagan out-spending them.)
Cory Doctorow link points to Euronews story on Georgia (ex) President
Working link for “Pluralistic: Proud to be a blockhead (21 Dec 2024)” article at-
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/
Correct link: https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/#vocational-awe
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/#vocational-awe
RE: Barcodes
My honorary Uncle Alan Haberman is responsible for us having barcodes. It is one of the great stories of forging consensus, and is true (not an urban legend). In order to form the consensus required he took the industry committee he chaired to an expensive dinner in San Fransisco then they all went to see “Deep Throat”. Try doing that today.
Color me sentimental.
They went to see the secret informant who gave information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Did they have a tinkler?
Here’s a translation link for the Trenin story on post-war Ukraine.
Didn’t mean to be a tease, that translation abruptly stopped half way through. Key missing text:
Here is the original https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/comments/what-ukraine-should-look-like-after-russia-s-victory/
“Georgia’s president agrees to vacate residence – but not her office”
The EU must be really grinding their teeth that Georgia is not yet in the EU. If they were then things would be a lot simpler. They could just do a Romania on them and cancel that inconvenient election and have a do-over a coupla months later. Fellow EU officials would continue to treat Salome Zourabichvili as the legitimate president, even though her term was not over. Maybe police detachments from other EU countries could be sent to Georgia to protect those protestors. EU funding would be suspended until the “correct” government was elected and the population told so. At this point, the average Georgian is getting a really good idea of what life would be like if Georgia was in the EU, aka Hotel California, and i bet that they do not like it.
They should tell her she can work from her home. That’d get damn near anyone to leave the office.
Re Carter–How Brzezinski wrecked his presidency.
“The caricature that emerged of Carter’s presidency—one that has been lodged in the popular imagination for some 40 years—has always been misleading. Carter, so we are told, was idealistic but weak. The truth is far more interesting—though ultimately the direction his foreign policy took does not redound to Carter’s credit.
No real discussion of U.S. foreign policy under Carter is possible without an in-depth consideration of Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who broke into Carter’s inner circle early on. Like his fellow emigre Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski was ambitious to the point of shamelessness.”
More
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-untold-story-of-carters-fateful-foreign-policy/
And this is telling and IMO hard to disagree with.
“Some saw trouble brewing early on. Robert Lovett, one of Washington’s legendary ‘Wise Men’ and Harry Truman’s fourth and final secretary of defense, sniped, ‘We really shouldn’t have a national security advisor like that who isn’t really an American.'”
Carden suggests that Carter’s “human rights” FP morphed into the R2P excuse of the Clinton years and the pose of saintliness finds its counterpart in the zeal to describe all who oppose us as Hitler. Ultimately the government by amateurs we’ve seen in the last few decades gives great sway to special pleaders.
Carter himself morphed into a better person–I used to read my mom his books–but too late to undo all the damage that he did.
The biggest damage Carter caused, as with Callaghan in Britain, was to usher in Reagan and Thatcher and the wrecking ball they wrought on the world.
Carter owns some responsibility for Reagan, but let us not forget how GHW Bush and his buddies clinched the election for Reagan with their treasonous ‘October Surprise‘.
Scheerpost, December 29, has just reposted something from Robert Scheer’s 1976 Playboy article on Carter. It contains some fascinating observations on Carter — whom Scheer finds ‘unknowable’– and the workings of the small-town South. What I excerpt here, though, is about Brzezinski:
“…the first time I’d ever really heard of Jimmy Carter wasn’t over beers in some redneck bar with the likes of Jody Powell or Hamilton Jordan, but in Mount Desert, Maine, with none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski.
It was the summer of 1975 and I was researching an article on the Rockefellers, who vacation on the coast of Maine. I’d met Zbig and his wife and they’d asked me over to their twenty-seven-room house just down the road from David Rockefeller’s place. I found that Zbig had been sponsored by David Rockefeller in much the same way that Henry Kissinger had been sponsored by Nelson Rockefeller. (“ With one important distinction,” Zbig cautioned. “Henry worked for Nelson as an employee and I work with David as an associate.”)
It was back then that Brzezinski told me that he favored a former Governor of Georgia as the Democratic candidate. I was surprised. Why a Georgian peanut farmer who was supposed to be a grassroots populist should have earned the enthusiasm of an Establishment intellectual like Brzezinski was a mystery to me.
Well, it turned out that Brzezinski and Carter had a relationship going back to 1972, when David Rockefeller asked the then-Governor of Georgia to join the new international-elite organization that he was forming called the Trilateral Commission.”
The article I link doesn’t get into the Rockefeller angle although it seems to be well known. Perhaps one should also ask what David Rockefeller saw in Zbig. Carden suggests that there were many who warned Jimmy not to hire him.
At the time many of us thought Carter simply wanted his own Kissinger figure in order to be taken seriously and wound up with the B team version.
And being taken seriously was a thing because at the time the prejudice against Southerners by the Eastern elites was considerable.
“Peanut farmer”. Not sure you can get away with shaming somebody as a “farmer” these days.
The Rockefeller connection is crucial in understanding the rise of the neocon/neolib duopoly that emerged to take over the country after Nixon’s fall. The right-wing proto-neocons took over during the Ford administration when they threw out the Rockefeller Republicans during the “Halloween Massacre,” which was led internally by Rumsfeld and Cheney. As part of this, Ford agreed to jettison Nelson Rockefeller as VP in 1976. The Rockefellers then moved to select and groom the Democrat candidate for President – Jimmy Carter. Zbig wasn’t just a Carter hire. He basically schooled Carter on foreign policy as head of the Rockfeller-created Trilateral Commission as the Rockefellers were pushing this unknown Southern governor in the media. Much of Carter’s administration was staffed by Trilateral members. This is all well-documented, even in some of the mainstream press of the day, though I’m not sure how well-known it is.
Carter was our first neoliberal president. Major deregulation started during his administration. His capital gains tax cut is sometimes seen as the beginnings of Reagan’s “supply-side” tax “revolution.” He was a strong believer in “markets.” And of course it was Carter who appointed Paul Volker – not Reagan. In foreign policy I think his administration was torn between the declining “realists” like Vance and the rising Atlanticist neocons like Brzezinski. It was the influence of the latter that was his legacy; the “human rights” stuff, though I think it was sincere on Carter’s part, would survive to provide cover for later neocon projects in Democrat administrations.
I do actually believe Carter was a decent man who was sincere in his humanitarian beliefs. But with him the Democrats became Rockefeller Republicans. He was the first neoliberal President, and his administration began the neocon infestation that would greatly expand with Reagan. In my view this history is crucial, but none of it will be mentioned in all the obituaries to come in the next few days.
Well if I as a mere commenter knew most of the above then I call that widely known.
Carter had been in the Cold War Navy so he may not have needed much persuasion on that front. Don’t believe he was considered much of a liberal as GA governor but that was before I lived there.
Many of us born after Carter definitely do not know any of this, for what it is worth. In more recent times, the association of Democrats going all neoliberal generally start with Clinton, not paying Carter his due.
This. It’s pretty old, though, and I’m sure it wasn’t viral when it was published.
How many people at Naked Capitalism are ‘mere commenters’? One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? One in a hundred thousand?
Something which is known to ‘mere commenters’ at Naked Capitalism but is not known to the NON-commenter majority is not ‘widely known’. In broad American-society terms, it is hardly known by anyone at all.
He’s history’s greatest monster
In the commentary for this episode of The Simpsons, its revealed the writers of the joke didn’t intend for the line to be ironic. Other writers were shocked to hear Carter’s presidential sins as he was in popular culture just a guy who wore a sweater.
Agree with you. But every now and then my eyes almost pop out when I hear comments like this out of 20 something co- workers say in reference to Palestine-Israel “Everyone is entitled to human rights. Why don’t we (our govt) support that? Obama bombed 7 nations. We all have human rights.”
I attended a Kennedy Institute of Politics seminar run by one-time Rhode Island governor Frank Licht, at which then-Governor Carter was a guest. He portrayed himself as quite the progressive. I had taken Moynihan’s course on the War on Poverty and knew Jimmy’s policies were in line with other southern governors, most of them Dems back then.
Jimmy struck me as a little obtuse in the seminar pre-game. He did his “I’m Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Where y’all from?” intro, to which I responded “Missouri.” He launched into an ode to Warren Hearnes, then governor of my home state, apparently oblivious to the likelihood that the boy who stood before him, hair to his shoulders, might be more the McGovern wing of the party, who had plenty of reason to hate Hearnes, who was one the worst of the Dem backstabbers in ’72.
We should also mention the Georgia Mafia, as they were called back then. Bert Lance had a position of power along with his Southern manners. My wife overheard Stu Eizenstat lecture Joan Mondale about a speech she gave that was too oriented to class politics. Ham Jordan and Jody Powell were names that might also ring a bell.
pjay, the Rockefeller connection to Carter was not known to me. Thank you for the information. I was fairly young when Carter was President. I know more about his life as a former President.
Carter was one of the several conservative candidates running to expunge the ghosts of hippie, radical loving McGovernism from the party. Just think, we could’ve had Frank Church. Or, even wilder, Fred Harris. Carter was part of the “move to the Center [meaning Right]” playbook that the Democrats have been following ever since 1972. He got the votes that Scoop Jackson and George Wallace didn’t, maybe because he had Wallace’s southern credentials and Jackson’s militaristic Democrat credentials, without the less attractive demeanors of those two men. By the time we got to 1992, Clinton was much farther to the right than Carter, Mondale, or “business friendly” Michael Dukakis (now considered a raging leftist in the popular imagination). It’s been a continuing long slog rightward into ultimate irrelevance for Team D.
Needs to be said: Carter wasn’t a peanut farmer. Not a farmer at all. His family ran a peanut warehouse which I’m guessing is the peanut equivalent of grain elevator.
Wikipedia’s early history for Carter is very slippery in how it talks about his family and farming:
From that we don’t even know if Carter’s grandfather farmed cotton. The news media willfully gets this wrong, mostly I think because the swells in the media no longer have a clue that there’s a difference between different kinds of non PMC jobs.
I wonder how many of those swells in the media think that cotton comes from peanut trees.
And wasn’t is Brzezinski and David Rockefeller who leaned on Carter to let the Shah get medical treatment in the US?
Talked about in my link.
Let’s not forget the Carter administration’s involvement in the suppression of the Gwangju uprising against martial law in Korea — many imprisoned and at least 2300 dead. They sure haven’t forgotten in Korea. This one was just standard issue Cold War repression — what was so exceptional about Carter?
This one is over a year old, but it’s about as good a breakdown of the psychology of “AGI” believers as any I’ve read.
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
“Crypto is for Criming”, well no kidding Paul Krugman. Has it really taken fifteen years to come to this conclusion? Lol. Readers here won’t be surprised to see this article magically turn into an anti-Trump screed via the last two paras.
The Resistance types will curiously come to all kinds of realizations over the next year until they need to back Newsom.
Conveniently eliding the fact that Harris was all in on crypto and buddying up the techbros during her campaign. These people just can’t help themselves.
The Hill: Yuri Yarim-Agaev has as much moral righteous to sunder Russia/Putin as Caesar had to civilize Gaul!
Holy moral crusades for Stalin’s whim.
The guy is an old former Soviet dissident and was a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who described him as a “Freedom Fighter”. I think that this guy still thinks that it is the 80s and really does want to regime change Putin because Putin is obviously a Nazi. While reading this article I kept thinking about that old saw that says that you are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. He really wants to push Trump into not making any sort of deal with Russia and I think that this was why The Hill published this article.
Yuri Yarim-Agaev part of this Anti-Communist group in the 1980s
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Resistance_International
Which means they probably cooperated with former SS/Bandera Nazis of pre-1945 “fame”.
The affiliations here are insane…and they have spread across all over Eastern Europe now which makes this question of Ukraine’s future a really tough one (how do you want to “filtrate” – horrible term – possible terrorists? without violating human rights?)
That piece is utterly absurd. The gymnastics of reasoning required to produce the outcome of getting rid of Putin, putting both Russia and Trump back in his box, and restoring the Free World to their god-given place at the top of the world order, because, and I quote, A truce means only a ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners and free passage for people. Peace and a truce are fundamentally different.
All we need is a sneaky truce! As if we need any confirmation that the US is not agreement capable.
I’m sure he always uses the striving for peace in gaza as an anecdote at cocktail parties, it’s working like a charm…
If the US takes back control of Panama Canal, it would resoundly proove to the whole world that the US is not agreement capable.
Oooh! This explains why the article sounded unhinged to me.
“Lessons from a bumpy ‘super year’ of global elections’
‘“People want democracy. They like the theory of it,” she said. “But when they see it actually play out, it’s not living up to their expectations.” ‘
Yeah, nah! People can see how so many of our leaders are pretty weak and useless with one or two off in ga-ga land. But the real lesson learned is what happened when people tried to change their leadership. In the US the opposition candidate faced endless waves of lawfare cases with made up rules and now that he has won, those cases are just evaporating. In Romania when the people chose change the government simply cancelled the election and said that they will have a re-do in a coupla months time. In France the people wanted the centralists out but after the election the government ignored the results of that election and doubled down on choosing centralists to have power. Germany is due for an election but they may try to cancel their main opponents. In the UK there really was no choice so the people dumped the ruling party but gave no support for the incoming party as they were just as hopeless. In Moldova the people voted the president out but through shenanigans, those Moldovans outvoted those who actually lived in Moldova – those that were allowed to vote that is. So my take is that those that really have power saw to it that nothing really changed at all and protected all those weak leaders instead.
People want change!
People want change for the better for a change.
It was an Australian, Alex Carey, who wrote the book “Taking The Risk Out of Democracy”
The risk of which Carey spoke, was to the elites’ control, not to the general population.
Carey died, by apparent suicide, in 1987 aged 64.
The world is seeing Carey’s thesis in operation as voters, in different parts of the world, vote “the incorrect way” and are overruled.
“Cas Mudde, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia who studies extremism and democracy, summed up 2024 in Prospect magazine as “a great year for the far right, a terrible year for incumbents and a troublesome year for democracy around the world.””
Nobody can explain with sound and valid arguments why “democracy” is in trouble when it comes to actually counting votes and respecting the electorate’s wishes?!
Because Hitler was “democratically” elected?! It was a plurality, not a majority if I remember correctly. I also remember that the Republicans won in Spain during the same period and all the capitalists around helped bring down that government and supported General Franco.
What are people to do when it is known they will always vote against war and for more social support?
Yes, the Nazi Party had a plurality, not a majority, but President Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor because many influential industrial CEOs thought they could control him with bribes. After that he maneuvered quite creatively to suppress the Communists, set up concentration camps, get the Nuremberg Law passed, and have himself appointed dictator.
No party ever got a majority in the Weimar Republic. The Sozis got into power with comparable pluralities before the Nazis pushed them off the top (in fact, checking it now, the Nazis got closest in the last election to a majority of any party in the Weimar Republic’s history). That’s just how their political system worked. Granted there was an additional factor: the military and conservative elites wanted to get Hitler in so that they could control him, pacify him and perhaps use him against their enemies. It did not exactly work out the way they (or the Sozis, or the Communists) had planned. But if they hadn’t picked Hitler for that reason or some other, they would’ve been going against established precedent, and it’s not clear that there was any democratic alternative. Who would have wanted to rule Germany then, especially without anything remotely approaching the Nazis’ level of parliamentary or popular support and with the Nazis coming for their throats? I think a military dictatorship might have been the only realistic alternative, but the German military was intellectually unequipped for taking power itself.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/WcqLVyvkHkug
Re: Trenin.
Ugh. To summarize, his main idea is that Russia should only directly annex a few more regions (Odessa, Nikolaev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk), and the remainder should be split into pro-Western and pro-Russian sections. He views Stalin’s annexation of Western Ukraine as a mistake that ought not be repeated – let the “seven westernmost regions” (essentially everything west of the Vinnitsa-Zhitomir line) become a “Western protectorate”, allowing the West to declare a small victory of sorts, while “Ukrainian Ukraine” becomes, essentially, a “sovereign” Russian satellite. Essentially East Germany/West Germany, and he references the DDR example explicitly.
Notably, he contradicts himself from earlier in the article, when he points out that all frozen conflicts eventually unfreeze, and that leaving a hostile, revanchist, virulently anti-Russian Ukraine supported by the West will not end well, see Syria and the Idlib experiment. He also stipulates that there will have to be a serious “filtering” of the population in the pro-Russian section of Ukraine, with any anti-Russian AND “criminal” (in the sense of theft and corruption, not war crimes) elements being somehow pushed out to the pro-Western side. Finally, he imagines a rewriting of Ukrainian state propaganda to emphasize both Ukrainian sovereignty AND historical unity with Russia (and not the evil, corrupt West that just wants to use Ukrainians for its own ends), which is well and good, except that the pro-Western statelet will surely create some version of the exact opposite with which to bombard the pro-Russian side.
In other words, realistically, this is probably what the Kremlin wants – see Medvedev’s “home-made” map of post-war Ukraine from 2022 – and this is quite possibly where things might end up, but it’s not exactly the easiest or the most strategically effective solution to the problem. To wit, the main reason for Stalin’s incorporation of Western Ukraine is EXACTLY because he did not want it to remain a hotbed of nationalism under the control of a Western power – Nazi Germany in 1939, to be specific, but the principle stands. He did not want his own Ukrainian Idlib, even if this approach entailed additional and significant security costs.
This is very helpful. Thank you!
One thing worth noting is that there already is an Idlib besides Galicia: Poland. Gorchakov declared this publicly as early as 1870s. One can add the Baltics to this list. Is a Western controlled Galicia any worse for Russia than a Lithuania?
In the long run, all these may become moot: truce vs peace logic applies to both sides. If one side (the West, or, at least, its Baltic overlords (sarc)) keeps saying it wants war in the long run, then Russia has no reason not to prepare for one.
Which is why military installations all over the place are such a serious issue. Once in place they are political manifestations of what the US intends and once there won’t be reversed easily.
In fact if – for whatever strange reason there is some form of provisional peace aka freeze with NATO holes to sneak in – which I do not expect to happen – Europe would be the biggest loser in this. The RUs could handle a new Iron Curtain. EU could not this time. When they will realize it will be too late. And a peace movement now senselessly pushing for a hasty freeze will further this. Again lack of understanding military affairs by Europeans will create a pitfall for well-meaning groups and interests. (The first time this happened in the late 1940s early 1950s and their willingness to walk into the NATO-trap.)
For the unelected, term expired democrat in Kiev US is repeating Vietnam, keeping the “loyal” sectors plied away from the mother separate.
In both cases the US bait and switch is the ‘sanctity of borders’, none broaching any more clarifying moral observations.
The other parallel is the corruption and profiteering! Kiev and Saigon twins.
Today’s Kunstler throws out a wonderfully spot-on list of all the matters Trump’s administration will have to investigate. Quite a list:
I have no idea where Kunsler gets these ideas. None of this will happen. Investigations take resources and will. Trump didn’t even have the inclination last time to go after something as obvious as Hillary’s home brew server. And some of the things on his list were not decisions but orthodoxies, like transexuals in the military, hence not investigatible.
Re The Walmart Effect–The article’s self admittedly dubious statistics are used to defeat counter arguments by those who actually live in the Walmart zone. To wit: our industrial heartland was already being hollowed out before late comer Walmart came along to defeat earlier outfits like Kmart that promoted the same format. The notion that all those small town bakers and grocers were paying premium wages versus the Benton behemoth seems unlikely since retail has always been a low margin business. It was the loss of those better paying manufacturing jobs that made the working class so dependent on discount stores.
Or at least the picture is a lot more mixed than those who likely have never set foot in a Walmart would claim.
Having lived with the Wal-mart effect from its beginnings, there was initial delight from all to see a wide array of goods at good prices, as opposed to the local stores’ short hours and ‘if we don’t have it, you don’t need it’. And there was a sweet time there when Mr. Sam personally went around seeing that needed goods made it into the heartland at the best possible price.
Then there was the reality-sets-in phase. Wal-mart put any discount competitor out of business. For pure greed to boost numbers, they did things like added automotive repair to undercut local garages, sewing sections which killed local fabric shops, optical shops so techs could work for a chain instead of a local optometrist, in-house banking, clinics, etc. Yes, gutting main street was an actual thing.
And you’re right, this happened as manufacturing jobs were sent overseas by a senseless ‘leadership’. We could have so easily retained our manufacturing with some tweaks to the tax code. This was handy to give Wal-mart a poor and desperate workforce. Pay them less,keep the difference, build thousands of stores worldwide with the money ‘earned’ from their underpaid toil. Throw the rest around among the stockholders. Build an art museum in Bentonville.
But in each town which is now a Wal-mart town, the money pouring into cash registers does not even rest overnight, it is whisked out of the community instantly. There is no capital formation, there is no local base of wealth. There are only wage earners waiting to see what crappy shifts they are stuck with this weekend, if they are not already replaced by self checkout.
It’s not about who paid lower wages, it’s about gutting our local repositories of capital. Turning off the taps to local business and entrepreneurship. Turning power over to the chains and multinationals, gradually deleting our small business base, and our power as ‘citizens’ of this oligarchy.
You make good points but I’d say the thinking behind all this came out of Wall Street rather than Bentonville. And Kmart did lively business before Walmart showed up….not locally owned. Our downtown had turned to tumbleweeds long before Walmart showed up.
If Kmart was committing Walmart type activity, then why weren’t all the Kmart towns and communities destroyed all the way down to a Walmart level by Kmart?
Didn’t Walmart come into the Kmart towns because in the Kmart-era there was still something left to extract?
In some towns, the malls turned the downtowns into tumble weeds, then Walmart eventually moved in near the mall or became most of it as the malls struggled.
That’s right. The public were, still are, in search of giant lots of free parking. Most of America even in the 1960s didn’t consist of twee New England villages.
My objection to the Atlantic article is that it leaves out all the context of a country devoted to cars and suburbanization. Walmart is the resulting chicken, not the egg.
Thinking back to pre-walmart days(pre-kmart too). LA had White Front in the late 50’s, discount dept stores in south central and east los angeles, the rent was cheap here. I imagine they took customers away from the 5 10 25 cent stores as well as the furniture and appliance rental shops.
Well, at least here on Oahu when Wal-Mart came in it was a Godsend. Not sure it’s true but I heard that after the first one opened it became the highest grossing unit in the country. Of course old-time Arakawas in downtown Waipahu folded, but that was going to happen anyway. As far as “Wal-Mart effect”, no the real problem was when sugar “wen pau” due to being noncompetitive in the international market and Oahu Sugar / Waipahu mill closed.
But here I would say Costco has been the real game-changer. Much more than Sam’s Club which we also have.
Eventually they put in a Wal-Mart in downtown Honolulu in the old Liberty House dept store location, but it failed/closed.
” Making friends with your past and future selves”
In spite of the title, the article overwhelming talks about the future self. I would contend that a balance is needed as it is past self that set you on the road to where you are now. And unless you understand that aspect, you will not have a solid grounding for working out future self.
Thank you Rev. I agree on the balance and will add that, for myself, achieving some sort of peace with my past has been helpful as I eye a most precarious future.
“If ya wanna know where you’re going, it helps to know where you’ve been.” Right up there with another favorite from my “Ripe Old Age Cookbook” – “Too much of a good thing ain’t!”
I would offer this:
One of your biggest challenges is finding a way to forgive yourself for the you you were in the past. This is usually lifelong.
The human who is most dengerous and fearful is your own self out in the future looking back at the decision you are making today.
Agreed. I feel supremely alienated from my past self and much more connected to my future. Make of that what you will. I have a hard time with it. For example, when I go back to the campus of my college, it is as if someone else attended and has told me stories about their adventures now decades in the past.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1873578772211069149
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Only the @TheEconomist can have the audacity to write an article expressing concern about anti-Asian discrimination and headline it “how China turns members of its diaspora into spies” (and file it in the section “China | Eyes everywhere”)…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GgBAwLrasAAuh5z?format=png&name=900×900
10:56 PM · Dec 29, 2024
My view has always been that Western “anti-racism” is usually fundamentally racist: racism is fine if the other people are being “uppiity” and do not conform to the “Western” stereotypes. (Versions of this have been said by a LOT of people over the years…and the West still doesn’t get it.)
[ My view has always been that Western “anti-racism” is usually fundamentally racist: racism is fine if the other people are being “uppity” and do not conform to the “Western” stereotypes… ]
Thank you. This is a blunt reminder of WEB DuBois sense of racism; I needed the reminder.
https://x.com/Jingjing_Li/status/1872102313822982568
Li Jingjing 李菁菁 @Jingjing_Li
It’s funny that an East Asian face is only BBC’s first choice when there’s bad news.
Even though the largest ethnic group in the UK is White British (81.7%).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GfsJTU2XUAAiu6n?format=jpg&name=small
9:09 PM · Dec 25, 2024
re: Jimmy Carter / Chris Hedges
Don’t Deify Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter may have done good works out of office, but in power he fomented a series of domestic and foreign policy disasters.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/dont-deify-jimmy-carter
Thanks for this link. I didn’t see this before posting my Carter comment above, but this is pretty scathing. It is also a necessary historical corrective to the hagiographic obituaries we’ll be seeing this week, and also to those critical of the Carter administration for being too “weak” and dovish.
Some domestic issues from Carter, the article mainly lists de-regulation of common/passenger carriers.
1. Overhaul of Civil Service. Created the Merit System Protection Board and Senior Executive Service. Not sure either lived up to their promise.
2. Overhaul of federal budget system. This I would argue has been complete failure.
3. Slipping the FY from 1 July to 1 October. Done in consequence of item 2, supposedly not enough time to get appropriations done by July. Now we just have everything crammed into Oct – end of term.
OTOH, Carter doesn’t get enough credit for making the All Volunteer Force credible, mainly through massive pay raises for those of us who survived the post-VN drawdown.
This, more critical Counterpunch article, gives a better lowdown on how Carter was a forerunner to latter Dems who would pave the way for ever-regressive regimes due to their neolib policies.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/
Thanks!
Disturbing Trend: Hyatt Centric Boston Introduces QR Code Tipping for Front Desk – Staff At Check-In View from the Wing
A couple of things:
That’s probably more about some kind of deal between the hotel chain and a tech company.
And I’m trying to avoid willy nilly QR Codes. Enough tech scams to worry about on the daily. I just say no to QR codes. I see a QR Code and I immediately think, “can I get what I’m looking for some other way or some other place.”
I am glad I am not the only one who reacts this way!
I use a “flip phone”. It appears to be based on a stripped-down Android. Has a camera, but no capability to do anything with QR codes. This was an issue during quarantine as to get back home (Hawaii) I was supposed to get a pre-authorization and show them my QR code on landing. I got put into a penalty box until someone came by with a tablet and could get me an account in the HIDoH system so they could track me for 2 weeks.
– ‘Provoked: The Long Train of Abuses that Culminated in the Ukraine War’ – Mises Institute
This is a review of Scott Horton’s book ‘Provoked,’ which is a very good book in my opinion. It traces the entire history of US/NATO provocation since the fall of the Soviet Union and is chock full of detail and useful references. I mention this because NC readers might be put off by this “Mises Institute” source. And indeed the book is published by the Libertarian Institute. Further, Horton’s libertarian ideology occasionally presents problems in the book itself. For me, this is especially true of his description of the collapse and looting of the Russian economy in the 1990s. Even here he gets the main facts right, but his libertarian worldview leads him to a rather ridiculous (in my opinion) conclusion that the massive economic collapse could have been averted with a *real* application of “market” policies (as recommended by various “Austrian school” economists). This is similar to the website on which his work often appears, Antiwar.com, which is often excellent on Western imperialism and its war machine but sometimes includes comments on the economy that make me wince.
Despite lapses like this, Horton’s detailed history of post-Cold War expansion is the best I’ve seen so far in collecting the key elements in one place. I actually just discovered it a few days ago and I’m only about 2/3 of the way through. But based on what I’ve read so far I recommend it highly.
Edifice Wrecks Update:
The third tallest building in Minneapolis just sold for $85M, a 73% haircut.
In 2019, the building had sold for $315 million.
That’s a 73% drop in value over five years. Source – finance and commerce, LinkedIn.
Bzzzzzzz!
[Hair falls to the barbershop floor.]
That will reduce some due taxes,; corporate, board, and local.
Little hair will fall unless some pensioners were invested.
Hard to know without being privy to some internal data:
+Was the 2019 sale made to private equity, or sliced and diced into CMBS?
+Is some regional bank a bagholder?
+Will the taxes really drop, or will the local taxing authorities cling to 2019 fantasy values?
The bagholders could indeed be pensioners, Wolf Richter has made the point that most of the rotten CMBS from the pre-pandemic era ended up with pension funds and foreign investors, not regional banks.
With H5N1, if there is indeed a human Pandemic, some of the anti-mask, anti-lockdown (lol), anti-vaccine people won’t be much of an influence any longer. What has been said, science progresses one funeral at a time? Let’s just say, some people that deny reality fiercely won’t be able to do so any longer.
I guess that might resolve our problem with COVID as well, as whoever is left might actually recognize airborne transmission. What a stupid timeline.
Avian flu, a disturbing letter from a front line worker
Brian writes:
From the good doctor’s response: (audio at minute 47)
Their recommendation: at the very least workers involved in every step of the process of grinding, transporting, and disposal should at the very least be wearing N95 masks.
Even if the “very least” is being done at the sites involved, which seems somewhat doubtful given the letter’s query, windborne transmission could be occurring beyond the sites in question.
New essay on Identity Politics Is Dead, and the Far Right Knows It by Richard Seymour.
Excerpts:
Of course, the multiracial right extends beyond this election cycle, and far beyond the US. Consider Charles-Emmanuel Mikko Rasanen, the mixed-race Finnish Nazi who played an organising role in Britain’s summer pogroms. Or Mauricio Garcia, the Hispanic white supremacist who fatally shot nine people at a Texas mall last year. Or Sai Varshith Kandula, the Nazi sympathiser of Indian descent who drove a van into metal bollards near the White House. Or Enrique Tarrio, the Afro-Cuban American former chairman of the Proud Boys and Latinos for Trump, now serving 22 years in prison for his part in the 2021 insurrection on the US Capitol. Then there is the embrace of Kanye West by the American far right, or its rueful admiration for the Taliban after Biden withdrew US troops from Kabul. The right’s politics of race and identity has turned out to be more mobile and adaptable than the essentialist politics of identity absolutism that briefly dominated centre and liberal-left politics during the 2010s.
…
In an attempt to neutralise the radical struggles of the oppressed and head off their wayward universalising possibilities, governments sought to form relationships with promoted community representatives. This was a disciplinary politics, however – the obverse of policing. New Labour put it into overdrive, fostering relations with politically chastened Muslim leaders while unleashing the violent apparatus of counterterrorist policing and surveillance aimed at curbing “radicalisation”. It is no coincidence that as identity-talk has proliferated, particularly among the liberal centre, so has identity bureaucracy at airports, the drive for identity cards, and the multiplying techniques for validating online identities. This returns the concept of identity to its origins in efforts by early modern liberal political philosophers like John Locke to ground the emerging social logic of capitalism in a conception of the self: to this extent, identity has always been about policing and property.
…
It was this version of identity-talk that proved most useful to ruling-class politics in the populist era, as in the spiteful liberal invective about “Bernie bros” or – far more insidious and ultimately destructive – the libel of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as antisemitic. What, after all, could be more patently cynical, when a specific claim of antisemitism was held up to justified scrutiny, than to say, “Actually, non-Jews (and Jews we disagree with) don’t get to define antisemitism”? And yet the implication that Jews or any other group adhered to a single cohesive identity, rendering all political disagreements moot (recall that anti-Zionist Jews were singled out for special contempt as “nutters” and not proper Jews) was not wildly out-of-key with the leftist common sense of the time, which is one reason why it was so paralysing. Given the genocidal mania that was, it later transpired, brewing in the faction that claimed a monopoly on Jewish identity, the effects of this were disastrous. The same hard centre that orchestrated this appropriation of woke idiom to shake loose left coalitions under Corbyn then cheerfully pivoted to anti-woke, nationalist identity politics once its foe was defeated – that much-vaunted pragmatism in action.
…
There is something deathly in identity, in that it reduces us to a list of attributes in lapidary fashion. Here lies the subject: gender, race, class, nation. It often recruits us to a narrow-minded and coercive idea of what a person can be. Insofar as identity becomes the basis of a community, it can also circumscribe our political possibilities and align us with leaderships we’d be better off without. At worst, it is a reactionary trap, a way of binding us to violent, oppressive projects.
file under AI and human intelligence:
AI ‘language’ is based on human language – words and mathematics (a human language). AI scrapes all it can find online as learning sets. Its data sets consist only of words, mathematics, and undifferentiated, digitized images, all converted into digital tokens for AI assemblies.
I certainly question the idea the sum of human knowledge exists entirely in words and mathematics. Here are a couple of paras from Martin Gayford’s new book on painting:
‘Verbal language has severe limits. The writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed has suggested that all humans in a sense suffer from ‘locked in syndrome’; albeit not as severely as those who are paralysed and can communicate only by eye movements. None the less, we typically communicate by speaking (or writing). Syed quoted Neil Lawrence, a professor of machine learning, who points out that this is ‘an amazingly inefficient way to transmit information.’ A computer, AI, can compose and spout a flow of words incomparably faster. On the other hand, we are privy to a stream of sensations, urges, memories, emotions, dreams, and impressions, and inchoate non-verbal combinations of all of them. A machine cannot truly experience these because it does not have a biological body and the psyche that goes with it (though it might be programmed to behave as if it did).
That is why, as [Virginia] Woolf argued, a painter may be a ‘great biographer’ (think of a Rembrandt portrait). Painting can be a way of transmitting a huge amount of information that would be difficult or impossible to communicate in words. …’
– How Painting Happens (and why it matters)
Thinking about Matthew Syed’s idea that humans relying on language to communicate information suffer from a sort of ‘locked in syndrome’, I think AI relying entirely on human language and mathematics simply means AI suffers from an enormous ‘locked in syndrome’. When it gets to the edge of its language models it may simply make things up, or ‘hallucinate’ as some call the wild errors AI too often makes. It’s a ‘locked in syndrome’ on a computer, not an escape from the limits of human language./ my 2 cents.
It seems like a huge tell to me that LLMs are by definition bad at what maybe the most valuable application: Correctly assessing the output of another LLM regarding its accuracy and reliability. This is the “killer app” that could actually make these things useful. But it not only doesn’t exist, it doesn’t appear to be getting any more likely.
The (apparently dated) essay comparing them to mentalists made me think of the old movie Nightmare Alley which has been credibly remade. The part where the mentalist starts to be able to con himself seems so correct for this era.
And in parallel, it probably means the MS bean counters who are measuring LLMs in terms of expected revenue have it correct. “If it works enough to bring in revenue it’s probably fine” and why not?
It turns out it’s probably difficult to dislodge something once the checks start clearing. Ask the DNC.
A truce with Russia could lead to ultimate Ukrainian victory
Having read the above article, I am convinced that a more realistic strategy might be for NATO to enlist the help of Baba Yaga and use her magic hut to make further gains in the Kursk region.
In the early 1970s the Catholic Church was backing my ideas on land reform as part of its Liberation Theology, and arranged for me to give a lecture on how New Mexico could improve its tax and monetary policy, the Republican Governor Cargo said that he had never heard a banker talk that way, and asked me to follow up my talk. A man from the Ford Foundation came up to me and said that he was bowled over by my speech, and asked that I meet with him at his office to discuss how his foundation might like to support my work.
A week or so later I did indeed visit him, but immediately sensed a change in his demeanor. He was quite distant. I immediately suspected that he had done some background checking on me, and found that indeed I was not just a public-spirited banker. Avoiding any discussion of my ideas, he talked about politics. He thought that the future of American politics was to promote a southern governor for president as the ideal type of candidate. That plan is just what the Democrats followed, first in Jimmy Carter and then Bill Clinton’s triangulation. It was as if he had just come from a meeting at Ford discussing how they could derail progressivism, and was bubbling over with their strategy.
Ending the interview, he gave me one last word of advice: If I wanted to win a Nobel Prize, I should attach myself to an existing winner and further elaborate his research. I saw immediately that his suggestion showed that he viewed me as a threat to the status quo, and hoped that somehow he might lead me to impose the kind of tunnel vision that is required of Nobel recipients to gain the acclaim of their colleagues.
Just saying … Carter’s backers knew just what they wanted him to do.
Interesting background, Mr Hudson.
Off topic, on social media I noticed Fred Hampton Jr shared an excerpt of your talk regarding why US debt is preventing Africa from growing its own food, rather growing food only for export. Appreciate your work.
Thank you, Prof. Hudson. If the Ford Foundation tried to seduce you and failed then that’s a feather in your cap, imo.
adding: one can only wonder what dear American Catholic woman Dorothea Day and her workers’ union and charitable organization might have thought.
her good work continues in East Los Angeles
” If I wanted to win a Nobel Prize, I should attach myself to an existing winner and further elaborate his research.”
This makes me laugh horribly, since no matter what level of research we address, it appears to always follow the same insane rules and “think”.
Frankly it’s terrifying.
p.s. It´s banal by comparison but came up while reading comments: As a freshman I made the mistake of becoming student representative and of course I went onto collision course with the institution’s senate. It was about the decision of who would be chosen as the new president and the students could cast 2 out of like 17 or so votes. And as things stood those 2 votes were decisive. And I was called in by the dean. And I made clear I would not let myself get pressured. The dean did no refrain from threats and even mentioned relegation…
Tooze thinks china’s over production problem has nothing to do with their internal economy, it came by hard work.
well yes it did. i cannot fault China in that. but its a old story, trade surplus countries export their unemployment, poverty and deflation onto others. adam smith warned of this.
it seems that China is not learning from history, just as bill clinton was a complete(free trader) neo-liberal criminal, who is seeking a pardon for his crime family for signing up with china, never understood history
so Tooze thinks that china will want in on joint ventures in europe, that will require technology transfers. isn’t that what bill clinton and other towering intellectual midgets like tony blair signed the west up for, china gets 51% ownership and the technology transfers?
so Tooze is offering just another form of protectionism. no need for tariffs, after all, tariffs are a tax on the rich.
the real shock will be joint ventures if they happen, china will realize everything they worked for, and everything the west handed to them on a silver platter, will mean a lot less employment in china.
so i would drag my feet, make sure any joint ventures must clear massive red tape hurdles, and bleed the dim wit free traders dry as they slowly initiate one joint venture at a time, which will be the real shock to the west.
our standard of living will massively plummet, even more than now. we will be viewed as pheasants with sandals, nukes that might not work, banks and ak-47’s., trying to compete with a system so superior, that the free traders will surely in desperation, launch nukes.
I’ve read some of the negative comments about Carter and his legacy and I’m a bit taken aback.
I guess I look at his legacy with rose-colored glasses because I think of him as the last honest and uncorrupted president we had.
In my opinion, he was demonized because of his good morals and he had to go because he wouldn’t play ball. What is government without corruption and dishonesty?
You can find bad points about everyone, including saints, and he was a saint in my book.
Maybe you need a better book.
Why?
he may have reformed in old age, but his evil never went away. He was a settler colonialist as all of them were, and are.
The Chicken Little Problem: Are We About to Have a Bird Flu Pandemic, or Not?
thank you for this link – although not a subscriber to this substack the comment about plant-based antivirals sent me down the rabbit hole discovering a wealth of white paper studies affirming the benefit of plant based supplements – so many of them i can incorporate in the garden – many of them i incorporated long ago in the regimen of supplements i’ve taken for decades, fortunately – so many of the comments are about things we abhor yet are unable to effect substantial change beyond an acute awareness in the face of the horrors we witness in our world, it is nice to learn about ways we can effect change on a personal level to our health – now back to the rabbit hole to learn more about what to add to our garden –
Corrected link for “Why upskilling is so important for China’s workforce” article:
https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3291705/why-upskilling-so-important-chinas-workforce