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Links 1/15/2024

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World’s oldest 3D map discovered ScienceDaily (Kevin W)

Babies born on Mars could diverge from Earthlings within a couple of generations ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)

Lifetime risk and projected burden of dementia Nature Medicine (guurst). Eeek.

Climate/Environment

PFAS: The astronomical cost of depolluting Europe Le Monde

Supreme Court Allows Hawaii To Sue Oil Companies Over Climate Change Effects CBS

The utterly plausible case that climate change makes London much colder Financial Times

World’s record heat is worsening air pollution and health in Global South Mongabay

Climate change forcing farmers to replace cows with goats, chickens with ducks FirstPost

China?

US finalizes rule to effectively ban Chinese vehicles, which could include Polestar The Verge

Why China’s Ice Silk Road has Trump up in Arctic arms Asia Times (Kevin W)

TSMC ‘a piece of meat on the chopping block’ the US would rather destroy than lose: spokesperson Global Times (guurst)

China plans to blow Starlink out of the sky in a Taiwan war Asia Times

Koreas

S Korea impeached president arrested after investigators scale walls BBC. Wowsers

O Canada

Canada Says It Will Match US Tariffs If Trump Launches Trade War Michael Shedlock

European Disunion

The window of opportunity for a possible rehabilitation of Nord Stream is closing Nachdenkseiten via machine translation (Micael T)

EU’s enlargement process expected to gain impetus: Commissioner Anadolu Agency

Israel v. The Resistance

Israel’s Ben Gvir Threatens To Quit Government Over Ceasefire Deal Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

Trump’s Action Demonstrates Biden’s Failure In Stopping The Genocide Moon of Alabama (Kevin W). Headline assumes Israel won’t flagrantly violate the ceasefire as it has in Lebanon, and that it gets done.

New Not-So-Cold War

Large frontline summary 7-13 January 2025 Marat Khairullin. Grimmer than a lot of YouTube takes.

But then:

Why NATO’s Plan to Conscript Ukraine’s Youth Will Fail Glenn Diesen (Micael T). For some definition of failure. Aside from the lack of a Plan B, motives include having Ukraine seem remotely viable at least through German elections and getting Trump attached to the tar baby (by continuing funding by following the ongoing fallacy of trying to improve Ukraine’s position before negotiations)

Russia Says Ukraine Targeted Infrastructure of Gas Pipeline to Turkey Defense Post (Kevin W)

Syraqistan

How Trump can break China’s tightening grip on Central Asia Asia Times (Kevin W)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Government Sites Across the U.S. Are Awash in Hardcore Porn Intercept

Imperial Collapse Watch

The State of Western Warcraft Lee Slusher (AG). Important

Britain’s post-imperial delusion Unherd

Califorinia Burning

What happened on Tuesday, Jan. 14 during the Eaton, Palisades firestorms in Southern California Los Angeles Times. Live updates

House barrels toward fight over placing conditions on California fire aid The Hill

Particularly dangerous’ wildfire weather returns to California and could linger for months, say forecasts Guardian

Australians may have to pay more for their home insurance due to the catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, as international firms raise premiums to pay for the expected massive payouts from those blazes Daily Mail

1/6

Jan. 6 committee members talk to White House about pardons Punchbowl. Take with your preferred dose of salt.

Trump 2.0

Hegseth’s views on women in combat, infidelity and more — in his own words Associated Press (Kevin W)

The Predictable Capitulation of Tulsi Gabbard Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News

Move fast, break things – sprint to kiss Trump’s ring. It’s the tech bros inauguration derby Guardian (Kevin W)

Biden

Biden Will Remove Cuba From List of State Sponsors of Terrorism New York Times

Our No Longer Free Press

Fake news is not just the practise of the Right Bill Mitchell. On economic and fiscal canards.

US TikTok users flock to Chinese app Xiaohongshu in protest with TikTok ban looming Associated Press (Kevin W)

Mr. Market is Moody

Credit Card Default Wave Hits U.S. Banks Doug Casey (Micael T)

Producer Prices Angry Bear

PPI Inflation Accelerates to +3.3%, Driven by “Core Services,” +4.0%, both the Worst Readings in Nearly 2 Years Wolf Richter

Falling birth rates raise prospect of sharp decline in living standards Financial Times. Sigh. Japan has weathered this very well. But it is also very cohesive, with low income inequality.

AI

Training AI models might not need enormous data centres Economist (Kevin W)

Water shortage fears as Labour’s first AI growth zone sited close to new reservoir Guardian

The Bezzle

The New $30,000 Side Hustle: Making Job Referrals for Strangers Bloomberg

Class Warfare

US Employee Engagement Sinks To 10-Year Low Gallup

Even Harvard M.B.A.s Are Struggling to Land Jobs Wall Street Journal

Hanging out at Starbucks will cost you as company drops open-door policy Seattle Times (Kevin W)

Drug Commercials Aren’t Just Annoying — They’re Costing You Money The Lever. This may seem like old news (as in the outrageous expenditure on marketing exceed R&D) but this focuses on misinformation, a less well-publicized angle.

Antidote du jour (Cheryl K):

And a bonus (Chuck L). Balance of power!

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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168 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Mina
    @Mina696645851
    #Ukraine launched a total of 200 drone strikes and 15 ATACMS missiles on various parts of #Russia. The main attack areas were the Tula region and the city of Kazan.’

    This was not really a Ukrainian attack on Russia. This was from Biden as a message of hate to Russia and maybe even to Putin personally as all his plans had failed catastrophically and Russia is still standing. Those ATACMS were some of the last that the Ukraine had a probably the US/EU sent a large shipment of drones to take part in this attack. Hard to know beforehand how the Russians will respond so maybe it will be lights out for the Ukraine.

    1. Zephyrum

      I think it may also be one more attempt to provoke a strong reaction from Russia in order to limit Trump’s options in the forthcoming negotiations. Meanwhile even the most liberal Russians of my acquaintance are getting restive over the failure of Moscow to prevent these attacks or to respond with overwhelming force. The pot is on full boil and the lid is starting to dance.

    2. Carolinian

      We are counting the days until mad king Joe jets off into the sunset.

      Trump will be no great gift either but for Biden everything is personal. It’s a career of self aggrandizement curdled into dementia.

        1. Carolinian

          But at least no dementia although my brother the Psych major thinks Trump is insane. I prefer to be optimistic until proven otherwise. Plus one of the scariest things about Biden was the degree to which our coastal elites kept pretending that he was normal. Why one might almost suspect that they are the problem.

          1. converger

            Your optimism that this round of grifters and clueless sycophants will be an improvement is inspiring. We shall see.

  2. flora

    re: Google re-education camps.

    Many utube channels are already running mirror sites on Rumble and/or Odysee. Good plan.

    re: today’s antidote.
    Blue blue, blue suede shoes. Don’t step on my blue suede shoes.

    1. AG

      Are these sickos doing this under outside pressure or because YT staff is actually convinced???
      Lets send YT a questionnaire on First Amendment Rights as a PR act…. ever heard of “National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie”? They´d be shocked. Would be sending SCOTUS to reeducation too if they could. God damn fuckers…stupid, stupid, stupid and uneducated.

      1. flora

        Utube is owned by Google. Google is now utube’s parent company. Send the questionnaire to Google.

    2. Wukchumni

      Its worth noting that Dr. Drew (a sex therapist) was an outspoken critic that Covid was no big deal early on in the game, a charlatan’s charlatan.

      1. Pat

        In a previous era Dr Drew would have been traveling around the country in a wagon selling ointments and tonics along with a partner who sets up the fraudulent pitch to the crowd. IOW he has been a modern snake oil salesman for almost his entire career and certainly his entire media career.

        1. ambrit

          And how is this any different from our present day crop of Politicos? I don’t see anyone demanding that they be sent to… Oh, wait a minute. I just remembered Woke, DEI, The Hidden Hand Society, etc. etc.
          “Mr. Citizen, are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Philatelist’s Society of the United States?”

      2. The Rev Kev

        He sounds like another Dr. Oz-

        ‘In April 2020, Oz appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity and said that reopening schools in the United States might be worth the increased number of deaths it would cause. Referencing an article published in the medical journal The Lancet, Oz said, “I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet [medical journal] arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2–3% in terms of total mortality.” Oz’s comments provoked a backlash online, and he apologized, saying he had misspoken and that his goal was “to get our children safely back to school.” ‘

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Oz#Medical_claims_and_controversies

        And now he is going to be the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Just the man to be in place for the coming H5N1 pandemic.

        2. flora

          Whitney Webb, Glenn Greenwald, Due Dissidence guys, Jimmy Dore, and many many others also have been admonished/temporarily silenced by Google/utubes strikes moderation system. They all have mirror channels on Rumble or Odysee or both. The utube looks like it’s clamping down even more; maybe it’s going full state media. / my 2 cents

      3. redleg

        It shouldn’t matter. I’d love to see a lawsuit for stuff like this, as discovery would be clarifying to say the least. Was the government involved? Does YouTube have a license to practice medicine? Does this make YouTube a editor instead of a natural platform? Etc.

      4. lyman alpha blob

        And today, we are all (with the exception of many NC readers) pretending it is no big deal, even the Trump-deranged PMC types who got a new jab every other week. Testing has gone by the wayside – if you don’t test, that lingering sickness might just be a cold. Over the holidays, we had sick relatives of the Blue No Matter Who type who were planning to come visit us anyway. When we asked if they had taken a rona test after being so sick for a week, the answer was “no”, so we insisted they did so before coming for a visit. And of course they had it.

        Whether it’s a big deal or not seems to depend on who you ask and when, and what the Mighty Wurlitzer is blasting on any given day. I’m so old I remember that through February 2022 it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” who were going to kill all the liberal goodthinkers. Then Russia invaded Ukraine which miraculously stopped the pandemic in its tracks, and nary another word has been heard about it from DC since.

      1. AG

        Great!
        Thanks.
        Fits … a bit….
        BERLINER ZEITUNG today:

        “Right-wing extremist is now a woman according to the Self-Determination Act
        Sven Liebich is apparently a trans woman. The surprising thing is that he is also a well-known right-wing extremist.”

        https://archive.is/vP0PV

      2. Giovanni Barca

        “It’s the Suede denim secret police!
        They’ve come for your uncool niece.”

        California über Alles is upon us.

    4. griffen

      “Blue you’re my boy!”. Frank, Old School.

      I like that bonus antidote… albeit a quick and brief video it seems, like something out of the first two Jurassic Park movies. But very real of course! Imagined conversation between the lions, as the apex predators…”I’m not so hungry yet and honestly, the giraffe is a hard one to catch …”. “Yeah and hyena always has a funny taste…”

    5. FreeMarketApologist

      I recently read Enter the Dragon, art critic Dave Hickey’s essay on beauty (reissued in 2023 in a 30th anniversary edition), and he relates Michel Foucault’s interesting distinction between autocrats who monitor appearances and bureaucrats who monitor your soul. This leads to a discussion of Jeremy Bentham’s theory of reformative incarceration (in Panopticon, or The Inspection-House), and the point is made that while a king will uncaringly destroy those who don’t show sufficient fealty,

      “…Bentham cares. He has no wish to punish, merely to reconstitute the offender’s desire under the sheltering discipline of perpetual, covert, societal surveillance in the paternal hope that, like a child, the offender will ultimately internalize that surveillance as “conscience” and start controlling himself as a good citizen should.”
      Bentham’s warden… demands our souls, and on the off chance that they are not forthcoming, or cannot come forth into social normality, he relies on our having internalized his relentless surveillance in the form of self-destructive guilt and henceforth punishing and ultimately destroying ourselves.

      What has happened, that all these tech executives think they should be Bentham’s warden?

      1. JBird4049

        Sadly, Bentham was a serious, moral reformer, especially with the hellish prisons of the time. However, his panopticon was problematic. I think that reformers of the time tended to think of those of the lower classes as not very bright or civilized children, which made their proposed “solutions” not very good.

        1. witters

          The panopticon was lifted from his brother’s factory in Russia – the perfect managerial surveillance device.

    6. Mikel

      I just did a search on YouTube with “youtube re-education training” to see if any content creators have been bold enough to do a video about their “re-education” experience.
      Nothing yet.

      1. Ben Panga

        The guy in the tweet doing the “Vaccine misinformation” reeducation is bad enough.

        I’m wondering what the training will look like for those who commit ‘Antisemitism’ under the IHRA definition. Picturing a Palestinian activist forced to click “No, Israel is not an apartheid state” etc on some faceless multiple choice test.

    7. flora

      an aside: both Google and Hollywood are headquartered in California. Here’s Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt, about Hollywood’s Dumb Scare, similar to its actions during the 1950’s Red Scare.

      Hollywood’s Dumb Scare
      In Hollywood, self-pity abounds, but there’s no remorse for unfairly ruined careers, as Oscar writer Sasha Stone found out

      https://www.racket.news/p/hollywoods-dumb-scare

      From the longer article:

      It would be unfair to say California set aside legitimate affairs of state (like preparing for fires) because it was consumed with turning government and public enterprises like schools into models of utopian thinking. At the same time, it’s impossible to avoid noticing that the state is massively overrepresented in the realm of stupid cancelations.

      ….
      The [Hollywood] industry should be able to recognize the lurid patterns of snitch-and-defame movements, since it later made a slew of movies about the worst episodes, from Guilty by Suspicion to Good Night and Good Luck to The Front, Dash and Lilly, The Majestic, Trumbo and countless others. This doesn’t count the many great period films about the dangers of conformity and group cowardice, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, On the Waterfront, and High Noon.

      Hollywood hasn’t learned, spending an inordinate amount of the last decade shunning and punishing its own. Racket readers may recall hearing from the great Tim Robbins on the industry’s atrocious bullying during the Covid-19 period, but there have also been exhaustive episodes involving Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Jonah Hill, Woody Allen, Roseanne Barr and countless others (so many that IndieWire could put out a listicle just about stars canceled between production and release). There’s an even longer list of movies, new and old, that have been deemed “problematic,” forcing directors to worry about the judgments of future culture warriors, which may be one reason why the scripts of so many big-ticket movies read like formless puddles of progressive goo à la Avatar. As Stone wrote, studios hoping to win Oscars know their movie “can’t just be good — it has to completely satisfy the requirements of an industry seeking to right the wrongs of the past, right the wrongs of the Oscars. It has to offend no one.”

  3. Zagonostra

    >Babies born on Mars could diverge from Earthlings within a couple of generations ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)

    In time, natural selection would amplify certain traits in the Martian population that would considerably differentiate humans born on the Red Planet from Earthlings

    Not sure there will be any “Earthlings” remaining in a “couple of generations,” if there are, I speculate they will have massively bigger thumbs to scroll through meaningless memes on their Xphones.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Any Martians may find themselves being unable to visit Earth due to gravity-

      ‘Since Mars has less mass than Earth, the surface gravity on Mars is less than the surface gravity on Earth. The surface gravity on Mars is only about 38% of the surface gravity on Earth, so if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 38 pounds on Mars.’

      To visit Earth they would have to spend years training in a centrifuge and even then if they came to Earth everything would weigh three times normal weight, they would feel like they are wading through quicksand constantly and their feet would ache all the time. The scifi author Robert Heinlein had one character in one of his books come to Earth from Ganymede and experienced all these problems.

      1. diptherio

        It’s also an important plot point in The Expanse series (which, for my money, is the best sci-fi to come out in recent memory, hands down).

      3. Kurtismayfield

        Heck, in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” Heinlein had the Loonies in wheelchairs on Earth, because he knew their bodies wouldn’t have a chance in 6 times Moon gravity.

    2. Milton

      We Gaians find the term Earthling to be offensive. You may use Terran if you so choose but note not all who dwell on this planet live on land.

        1. Wukchumni

          I got cornered by a couple of zealous evangs pushing dogma in the cat food aisle @ a Wal*Mart in San Diego a few years ago, and I calmly explained that my cult was much older than theirs and my God shows up on average 270 days a year in SD, the mark of Zoroastrianism!

          1. Dan Berg

            I usually quote them my favorite Biblical passage:
            “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley”

        2. Contranarian

          The level of discussion around colonizing Mars is bewildering to me. The first and only fact anyone needs to know about the planet is that it has no magnetosphere. As a result, the levels of solar radiation are incompatible with life. Sure, we can ignore that, and many other issues, and speculate about generations of Martian kids riding to school on dinosaurs, but it’s never actually going to happen.

          1. The Rev Kev

            Agreed. The only way that they could pull of Martian colonization is to have those colonies well underground to shield them against all that solar radiation. So the whole thing is just a scam otherwise.

  4. The Rev Kev

    “Canada Says It Will Match US Tariffs If Trump Launches Trade War”

    Canada might have two good cards to play in a sanctions war with Canada imposing an export tax on everything going to the US. The first card would be on lumber as a little bird told me that the US is going to need lots and lots of lumber in the coming months and years. The second is oil going to the US and the Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre complained the other day that Canada is ‘selling oil and gas at a massive price discount to American refineries and LNG plants that are able to massively profit at our expense’–

    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/canada-selling-oil-gas-massive-224743386.html

    I suppose that would cause both gas prices and inflation to rise in the US and I do not think that Trump would welcome that.

    1. wendigo

      One current guess is Trump will bring in the tariffs gradually, the boiling frog strategy.

      Pierre can say a lot of things, unfortunately for him the 10 % or so of Canadians that are Trumpers are a large part of his base.

  5. Wukchumni

    “We got to get a pound of flesh for any dollar that’s spent on California, in my opinion,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I get how deprived for porn some of our political leaders are, but can’t they just go on the internet?

      1. ambrit

        Not if you are a subscriber to the “Dark Web” google app, “Meta Meata.”
        Ever watch some of the gamers at play wearing their headsets? Those microphone attachments do have a vaguely phallic aspect to them.

  6. Zagonostra

    >US finalizes rule to effectively ban Chinese vehicles, which could include Polestar The Verge

    China’s access to vehicle software presents “a significant threat” to the US in that it would grant an adversary “unfettered access” to critical tech systems and the user data that they collect, the White House said.

    I’m so thankful that my gov’t is working to ensure that China doesn’t have “unfettered access” to “user data,” after all, we only want to give American companies that allow NSA/CIA/etc. access to that information.

    Meanwhile, forget about getting your hands on a nifty $10K EV.

    1. timbers

      Did an oil change last week at a VERY large Toyota dealership. Very impressive digs. Walked around while waiting, asked a sales rep how many new cars did they have on the lot? He looked out proceeded to named each one outloud. All 6 of them. The folks running this nation have wrecked affordable housing, wrecked affordable higher education, wrecked affordable Healthcare. And now since 2017 when I bought my car at the height of the car glut featuring entire lots with rows and rows of brand new vehicles, they have wrecked affordable cars and transportation vehicles. No wonder its not uncommon to see cars sometimes more than one parked in yards obviously no longer road worthy but a scrace commodity being saved to be cannibalized when needed. We’ll done, American elites. American lawns are becoming a car junkyard.

      1. earthling

        Toyota has been cutting production. From what I can see as a hapless would-be buyer, this is part of their business model, to keep demand and prices high by creating an artificial scarcity. You’re supposed to get desperate enough to place an order and pay a premium over list for whatever they happen to let roll off the line.

        1. Wukchumni

          I took my Taco in for a service to the dealership and they had maybe a couple dozen new cars, and the Nissan dealership next door had so many new cars on the lot, it was close to bursting.

          Nissan has acquired a crummy reputation as of late, I get that.

          1. RedStapler

            A quick search shows 350 new vehicles in stock at the 2 large Toyota dealers near me in Northern NV.

            It does seem like most of the major OEMs have given up on small affordable vehicles for the masses.

            1. timbers

              You might get an entirely different number if you visit the dealership in person vs internets. Also, I mean vehicles for sale, not lease. Just saying…

              1. Wukchumni

                I’m in the market for a specific Toyota ride, and the 4 new vehicles on the internet in theory at the dealerships, didn’t exist, all a come on to make me inquire.

      2. Erstwhile

        If you speak up like this in public, you’ll probably get a “If you don’t love it, leave it” thrown in your direction. This has happened to me several times. I suggest speaking out, but having a retort ready. Something that just might stop them in their tracks. Now, what could that be?

        1. Expat2uruguay

          Well if everyone took the advice of if you don’t love it leave it, then who would be left? How would they organize their society? Probably they would not consider open discussion of problems important. The United States of Denial.

          In my opinion most people stay in the US because their families are there. Yet all over the world people migrate from their home countries and then return for visits.

          1. lyman alpha blob

            That just goes to show that propaganda works. My Angolan in-law told me she’d never heard any of the bad things about the US before coming to live here, just that it was the land of opportunity and the shining city on the hill, the same pablum USians are spoon-fed from birth.

        2. timbers

          You are describing the “agree or leave” argument. My response has been to say, agree or leave isn’t an acceptable response so you’ll have do better.

        3. ДжММ

          I am partial to, “I did five years ago. Best decision of my life.
          But my brother and sisters are still stuck in your shithole country for now, so unfortunately it still matters to me”

  7. Mark Gisleson

    If Jake Sullivan starts another war, he should become Gitmo’s sole occupant for life (and his life should be radically extended through science-like, Fauci designed and supervised experiments).

    2. Wukchumni

      Current Humordor odds:

      Jeffrey Dahmer gets pardoned ex-post facto: 6-1

      Hunter gets quickie sex reassignment: 8-1

      Biden drops a neutron bomb on Moscow: 5/2

      Jill divorces Joe, claims love for Donald and stays in the White House: 1-1

      1. ambrit

        “Jill divorces Joe, claims love for Donald and stays in the White House: 1-1.”
        Melania enlists help of “Wedding Banderites” and crushes Jill in surprise drone strike. 1-3.

  8. Zagonostra

    >Canada Says It Will Match US Tariffs If Trump Launches Trade War Michael Shedlock

    Canada buys more US-made goods than any other country, according to US Commerce Department export data

    What Canadians buy, or already own, is condo’s in Florida. My cousin (lives in Montreal) just told me he is selling his condo in Ft. Lauderdale because the monthly maintenance fee went up 50% and with the current unfavorable exchange rate it makes more sense to sell and rent an AirBnb when visiting. I bet this is being replicated en masse. Maybe Wolf Richter will look into it…

    1. Es s Ce Tera

      I can report my own family is also divesting, albeit mainly because of increasing climate events in the south and the obviously sketchy insurability situation.

  9. Zagonostra

    Max Blumenthal
    @MaxBlumenthal
    In Israel, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt paints the “genius” pager attack in Lebanon as a model for countering “antisemitism” in the US

    What more needs to be said, the U.S./Israel have normalized state-sponsored terrorism.The UN, might as well walk quietly away into the night, it has proven that it is impotent to stop genocide and terrorism, it’s a vestigial organization, serving no function, or at least falling far far short of its stated mission.

    1. timbers

      A United Nations without USA and Israel would at least stand a chance of being effective. Those 2 nations being allowed to remain in the UN are in some ways the equivalent to slavery in pre civil war United States – a house divided against itself can not stand. BRICS IMO is getting so many wanna be’s in part due to desire for an alternative UN in some ways.

    2. Chris Cosmos

      The UN has ceased to function in its original role. It is only, it appears, a corrupt bureaucracy with mainly BS jobs. When I last worked in the world of international organizations in the nineties the UN had a reputation for corruption and ineffectiveness. No one that was any good or interested in doing something wanted to work there. We are in a totally different era now from the late forties.

    3. .Tom

      What I found striking about the pagers and walkie-talkies was how indiscriminate and crude they were. Reminded me of IRA pub bombings. So the open blood lust was obvious when people mentioned how clever it was and expressed various versions of “gotcha!”

      1. timo maas

        Indiscriminate yes, crude no. Pagers were not jerry-rigged, but engineered. The blood lust was not in the heat of the moment, but a long term deliberate effort, which makes it much worse.

  10. ChrisFromGA

    Re: Trump’s action shows Biden’s failure in stopping genocide MoA

    It’s looking like Trump is finding out that pushing Netanyahoo around isn’t so easy.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-ceasefire-appears-close-us-egyptian-leaders-put-focus-coming-hours-2025-01-14/

    But a senior Hamas official told Reuters late on Tuesday that the Palestinian group had not yet delivered its response because it was still waiting for Israel to submit maps showing how its forces would withdraw from Gaza.
    During months of on-off talks to achieve a truce in the devastating 15-month-old war, both sides have previously said they were close to a ceasefire only to hit last-minute obstacles. The broad outlines of the current deal have been in place since mid-2024.

    This is classic Netanyahu pulling the football away just before Charlie Brown attempts the FG. He’s going to show Trump how he rolls. Those maps aren’t coming, and the IDF will bomb the Gazans into the Stone Age while Trump is sworn in on Monday.

    Brump!

      1. timbers

        Yah. I mean to say, Hillary’s Seth Rich approach probably using with her billionaire donors to do the deed operating with or without her knowledge, looks Bourne espionage archaic by comparison. In contrast, using Greenblatt’s suggestion, entire swaths of uncooperative Congrescritters could be made to be no longer a problem.

  11. Zagonostra

    >Britain’s post-imperial delusion Unherd

    For when it came, the blow of Britain’s dethroning as Top Nation, by our own former colony, was softened by this sense of kinship.

    I know the Schiller Institue organization is suspect for many people because of its association with LaRouche but they offer nice contrast with the assumptions assumed in this article regarding the process of “dethroning.” In fact, what is happening with Trump’s focus on acquiring Canada and Greenland actually falls into place with the notion of “five eyes” alliance and the theory that was put forward by Anton Chaitkin and Webster Tarpley (who went completely off the rails with a severe case of TDS) and others in the clip below.

    https://youtu.be/utkhD0Gypro?si=SD5QXCriQZ0tvlW2

  12. Wukchumni

    The utterly plausible case that climate change makes London much colder Financial Times
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    If there was a repeat of the winter of 1709, the die-off in Europe would be rather on an epic scale…

    The Great Frost, as it was known in England, or Le Grand Hiver (“The Great Winter”), as it was known in France, was an extraordinarily cold winter in Europe in 1708–1709, and was the coldest European winter during the past 500 years.

    Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine, the Duchess of Orléans, had written a letter to her great aunt in Germany describing how she was still shivering from cold and could barely hold her pen despite having a roaring fire next to her, the door shut, and her entire person wrapped in furs. She wrote, “Never in my life have I seen a winter such as this one.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frost_of_1709

    1. The Rev Kev

      I had not heard of that event. Thanks for that link. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people who died but who were never recorded and I wonder if it got so cold in North America as well. Not only did the Thames freeze over but also the Canals of Venice as shown by a contemporary painting-

      https://www.onthisday.com/photos/great-frost-of-1709

      1. mrsyk

        Thanks both. I love the painting, Rev. The good citizens of Venice are acting like they’ve been at the catnip. This quote from the end of Rev’s article;
        Modern climatologists have been unable to explain the causes of the winter, but have noted that it took place during a phase called the Maunder Minimum, when unusually low sunspot activity was recorded on the surface of the Sun.
        Interesting.

    2. mrsyk

      A decrease of 0.5 PW represents ~16,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules per year! 1.6 x 10 to the 22nd. Whoa. About those stronger winds, storms…….

    3. boomheiat

      There is an argument that suggests that an AMOC collapse actually brings on the next ice age. The Gulf Stream stops running as all the Greenland ice melt enters the ocean and this in turn lowers temperatures in Europe and Russia by up to 20 degrees C, as it is the warmth of the Gulf Stream which moderates European weather. This chilling in turn means that snows dont melt, fully, year by year. In a decade those snows are deep anough to become ice. In a century there is an ice aheet grown in place. All the unmelted snow increases reflectivity and the earth begins to cool such that snows then fail to melt in North America, too, and we find ourselvea in a new ice age, suddenly, which will be catastrophic because of crop failures and mass migration.

      One could argue in fact that the interglacial warming period, which has happened over 20 times during the Pleisticene, roughly every 100,000 years, in fact has ended every time with an AMOC failure.

      The last interglacial before this one, the Eemian, occurred about 110,000 to 120,000 years ago. I believe ice cores show the average earth temperature was 2 to 3 degres C higher than today. Sea levels were 30 to 50 feet higher as well.

      It is entirely valid to argue that industrial activity these last 150 years has increaaed carbon in the atmosphere and entirely changed everything such that we now talk of runaway heat and tipping points. It is however important to recognize that the glacial cycles these last over 2 million years seem to show a repeating cycle of warm brief periods and long cooler periods, with the warm period before this one now even warmer than today.

      The scary part of this is that while steadily rising heat can be adjusted to, and might even offer more northern lands for agriculture, an AMOC collapse would within one year cause a worldwide disaster nobody in preparing for. There will be many who will argue even raising this notion is wrong, as the climate battle has now gained the force of religious taboo.

      1. mrsyk

        I will argue that we cannot survive steadily rising temperatures. IMO, an ice age might be the only path to preserving the earth as a life-bearing planet. Either way, humans are in for a major reduction in numbers.

      2. Roger Boyd

        That’s an ice age IN EUROPE, and Europe is not the globe, and its most probably Northern Europe not Southern Europe. The Mediterranean is already nice and toasty due to climate change and will have an opposite effect in that area.

        If we also experience an ice free Arctic there will be a much greater positive energy imbalance there (dark water vs. bright snow and ice). Due to topography etc. the vast majority of the melting Greenland ice would flow into the Northern Atlantic not the Arctic Ocean.

        So more a mixed bag of effects, which could easily include increased rain and warmth along the northern permafrost and horrendous storms in the North Atlantic (Hansens “Storms of my Grandchildren”). The Southern Hemisphere and Equatorial regions would be warmed by an AMOC failure, as well as the US east coast and the Caribbean. The Earth System is also a very complex thing, and some research even points to some warming in parts of Europe due to an AMOC failure.

        Any AMOC slowdown/shutdown will be in the context of anthropogenically driven climate change and that context has to be taken into account. An ice free Arctic dumping rain on Greenland and across the areas of permafrost (producing increasing methane emissions), and sucking in large amounts of extra energy from the Sun, in conjunction with anthropogenic GHG emissions, would be quite different to historical parallels for example.

      4. John k

        The Gulf Stream transfers vast amounts of heat from the tropics to the countries around the North Atlantic while cooling the tropics. If the heat stays in the central Atlantic temperatures will rise even higher than we’ve seen so far with global warming, gulf is already reaching jacuzzi temperatures. This means way more frequent and bigger hurricanes over a longer season. Would be rough on SE US/Central America.
        Nearly no rainfall so far in our rain season plus bright sun/dry air has extended CA fire season way past normal. Lots of the us might become uninsurable.

      5. lyman alpha blob

        Peter Godfrey-Smith makes a similar point to yours in the beginning of his latest book, Living on Earth. He talks about the extremely slow geological processes that affect the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans, and how human activity is a drop in the bucket in comparison. I wasn’t sure what to make of it since I’m only a few dozen pages in, but I think he’s saying the same as you did above – that human activity does negatively affect climate (at least the climate necessary for continuing large scale human existence), but there are much larger forces at play which we rarely think about, being so focused on ourselves and all.

  13. ChrisFromGA

    Re: Low employee engagement

    Employees in specific industries. Engagement fell in the finance and insurance, transportation, technology, and professional services sectors.

    Just an observation, the work place feels like the worst it’s ever been in my career. Not personally, but based on what I’m hearing from friends and seeing on social media. In particular the rose bloom is over for tech. I would suggest the following factors:

    1. Big Tech pre-announcing huge layoffs (Meta, Microsoft) marking their bottom 10% for culling. This tatoos “loser” on every future job seeker who has those companies on their resumes and has to explain why they couldn’t hack it.

    2. RTO/RTP (return to the office/past) mandates – clearly Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy value CRE over their people. No surprise that this gets reflected in surveys that show employees feel that nobody cares about them or their careers.

    3. AI being used to induce fear and loathing.

    4. Corporate America trying to squeeze every last drop out of remaining employees after the mass layoffs.

    5. Massively dehumanizing interview processes – ASM used to screen out candidates resulting in rejection letters hitting your inbox two seconds after hitting “submit” on a lengthy job application. Multiple rounds of interviews including panels for a simple entry-level job cranking out code.

    1. screwball

      No surprise that this gets reflected in surveys that show employees feel that nobody cares about them or their careers.

      Bold mine.

      I’m now retired and teaching a STEM classes at a local college. Before retirement I spent 30+ years in corporate America. I never once thought they gave one good $hit about me.

      Speaking of teaching, yesterday was the first day. This was a CAD class and I was explaining the basics since this was the first day. Some young smart whipper snapper in the front row asked “will this be taken over by AI?” I could tell by the way he asked the question, his voice, and facial expression, that he’s a huge fan of AI.

      To his displeasure I answered “I hope not” and then explained why, and finalizing with “you do want a job don’t you? Because if you can be replaced with AI you will be – just so you know.” His eyes got a little big. Good.

      He must be one that still thinks they give one good $hit about us. No, they don’t.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        I remember my first job out of college. The boss would make us all quit at 4:30pm and take us out for happy hour on Fridays. Nobody got fired unless they did something that was black-letter a fireable offense. You felt secure for the long term, with the caveat that there was always talk of buyouts for the older crowd. People worked hard because they wanted to, not out of fear.

        I think that all this “stack ranking” at Amazon and Meta is really going to backfire on the PMC. It used to be that a gig in Big Tech was seen as a plum job, that you could put on your resume and use to advance in your career. Now, it is a big ball of risk. You might get fired after 1 year and become a tech caste system “untouchable.”

        AI is one big fraud, if you ask me. It cannot do any sort of work that requires skepticism or questioning the status quo. It can only predict the next word in the sentence based on prior inputs. It will be used to further crapify customer service and other low-wage jobs.

        1. cfraenkel

          It cannot do any sort of work that requires skepticism or questioning the status quo.

          Sounds like a feature, not a bug. /s

          1. Procopius

            It reminds me of the joke about Microsoft, back in the ’90s. “Failure is not an option! It’s the built-in default.”

      2. John Wright

        I’ve suggested that part of the concern for workers in the USA in the 1950’s and 1960’s was because much of the USA management class remembered The Great Depression and WWII sacrifices.

        A 15year old in 1938 would have been born in 1923, and would be middle management age of 40 in 1963, so much of the management of companies should have had memories of the tough times of the GD when getting a job was difficult.

        But the Depression era generation is no longer an influence in company management.

        Given that the USA had far more natural resources to tap in the 1930’s -1960’s to support the economy and a smaller population of workers, future rough times appear inevitable to me.

        A management class that is maximizing their “value” only makes the condition worse.

    2. Glen

      Maybe employees just read Forbes:

      How Employees Became Disposable In The Modern Workplace
      https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescommunicationscouncil/2024/09/06/how-employees-became-disposable-in-the-modern-workplace/

      But I have to admit that over my working career from the mid-seventies to now, the vibe in the workplace has changed considerably. In short, today employees are treated like replaceable widgets in an Excel spreadsheet. Maybe that’s just the way managers are trained now-a-days, but it seems to be extremely effective at pissing off and demoralizing their workers. We literally had one of the best engineers in the office (a retired nuke engineer that had gotten his lifetime rads) quit when he heard our new manager was going to be a “youngster” that had just gotten his MBA.

  14. AG

    This is German source, in case use google translate.

    Since 2023
    The Gates-Foundation received 600M Euros from the German state.
    Aspen Institute 500k
    Marshall Fund 2,5 M
    Open Society Foundation 5,2 M
    Various so-called American Institutes in various towns each 90k.

    However the charts on the site which are of interest won´t be translated and needn´t be.
    Self-explanatory:

    https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=127273

    Gates received as much money since 2021 as the state has granted Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building additionally for 2025.

    Sick, sicker, capitalists.

  15. Kouros

    I like how wildlife uses roads for travelling or resting. Animals are not stupid.

    Working in the Flathead area in the SE corner of BC doing some sampling after fording a creek (bridge was impassable) we found this landing (point of collection of felled timber to be loaded in trucks) that we used as a starting point to get into the bushes.

    It was quite a large area, almost as big as a soccer field. You had to pe careful to not step on grizzly bear poops.

  16. Wukchumni

    All the evacuees are gone (all the evacuees are gone)
    And particulate matter is gray (and particulate matter is gray)
    I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
    On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
    I’ll be safe and warm (I’ll be safe and warm)
    But if I was in L.A. (but if I was in L.A.)

    California burnin’ (California burnin’)
    On such a winter’s day

    Looked into the remains of a church
    I saw on the internet today
    Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
    And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)
    You know I like the cold (I like the cold)
    God knows I’m gonna stay away (knows I’m gonna stay away)

    California burnin’ (California burnin’)
    On such a winter’s day

    All the evacuees are gone (all the evacuees are gone)
    And particulate matter is gray (and the particulate matter is gray)
    I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
    On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
    I’ll be safe and warm (I’ll be safe and warm)
    But if I was in L.A. (but if I was in L.A.)

    California burnin’ (California burnin’)
    On such a winter’s day (California burnin’)
    On such a winter’s day (California burnin’)
    On such a winter’s day

    California Dreamin’, by the Mamas & Papas

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhZULM69DIw

    1. griffen

      Nicely done there…it should be ( it has so yeah ) acknowledged that the one music group you are adapting the lyrics onto the horrific situation ongoing in Socal…Well some of those musicians had some children who also entered the entertainment business….

      So for Californians and those elsewhere who face a struggle of rebuilding or perhaps worse still…just Hold On. Below provided by Wilson Phillips…Early 1990s music was going, well a little odd to my young ears so thank you all the Seattle bands!

      https://youtu.be/uIbXvaE39wM?si=9JHVjpVihJ4cxrlA

      1. Mikel

        “Well some of those musicians had some children who also entered the entertainment business….”

        And the story could’ve taken a head-spinning turn from there.

      2. Lena

        I always found the lyrical advice given in Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” to be bizarre and contradictory. I have to remind myself that these women grew up in highly dysfunctional, albeit talented and wealthy, families, so I cut the poor dears some slack.

  17. Mikel

    Credit Card Default Wave Hits U.S. Banks – Doug Casey

    “This puts the final nail in the coffin of the “strong economy” narrative that President Biden’s handlers and Fed Chair Jerome Powell have been pushing. It’s anything but strong…”

    But all that debt people were racking up was being counted in the BS GDP numbers as “growth”. And they said, “See number. Good.”

    1. Zagonostra

      Is it any wonder people are defaulting with terms such as below? It is from a recent email I received from one of the credit cards I hold.

      Your variable Annual Percentage Rate (“APR”) will be increased to 34.99%. This includes an increase in the margin to calculate your variable rate APR. The margin will be 26.49%. Your APRs may increase but will not exceed 34.99%.

      A Penalty APR of 39.99% may be applied to new and existing balances as described in the Revised Terms section below.

      1. Wukchumni

        The idea that the credit card interest rate is closer to the actual inflation rate than Big Gov #’s on most everything I purchase-save gasoline, is quite telling.

      2. Pat

        Funny how they edge ever closer to rates from loan sharks. Now defaulting on credit cards won’t be as hazardous as doing it to the shark, but I really do foresee the day when the guys with the leg breakers on staff will be the competitive choice.

        Seriously, only in a broken system could this be remotely legal.

  18. The Rev Kev

    ‘Nature is Amazing ☘️
    @AMAZlNGNATURE
    In Africa, the encounter between two lions, four vultures, a hyena and a giraffe, who did not know what to do next, was filmed.’

    I think that what we have here is a scheduling conflict. The giraffe was supposed to turn up first. Then the two lions were supposed to arrive and take down that giraffe. When they had their fill, then the hyena was supposed to move in and when he was done, finally the vultures would turn up. Instead they all arrived at the same place at the same time. Stupid Microsoft Outlook Calendar.

    2. Wukchumni

      For a moment there I was sitting too close to the color TV watching Daktari and mom nagged me to move back, on account of radiation poisoning.

    3. Mikel

      “In Africa, the encounter between two lions, four vultures, a hyena, a giraffe and a camera crew, who did not know what to do next, was filmed.”

      Also, what happened to the giraffe’s instincts that had it walking into an open road trap?

    5. John k

      The animals are quite interested in what the others might do, none of them is interested in the human taking the video.
      We watch all the African animal shows, I’m always struck by how all the animals realize were neither predator or prey, so it’s a dangerous waste of time to pay any attention to the weird things we do.

      1. Mikel

        I was thinking the giraffe might be on the road because of the humans. Seems like it’s looking at the camera.

  19. heh

    TSMC ‘a piece of meat on the chopping block’ the US would rather destroy than lose: spokesperson Global Times (guurst)

    A Taiwanese Christopher Columbus have just disovered American policy, a scorched-earth policy.

  20. Jason Boxman

    From House barrels toward fight over placing conditions on California fire aid

    As usual, the money just isn’t there suddenly

    Johnson, for his part, is denying any political motivations.

    “We’re going to look at this very honestly,” Johnson said Tuesday. “And it’s not political. We have to do the right thing for the people at a time when our fiscal house needs to be paid back in order.”

    It is telling that no one is talking about tying the aid to providing aid for the people of western NC. How about that?

  21. TomDority

    “For instance, when mortgage rates are high, even the most engaged and skilled real estate agents struggle to close deals compared with periods with lower rates.”
    And this is somehow – news – that FIRE sector actors are skilled and engaged when that can’t sell due to market conditions.
    Let me make-up a sentence….
    Even the most engaged and skilled shoppers struggle when they have no available funds to purchase their needs at check-out.
    ‘There is a difference between talking politicians and working politicians’ and today we have flood of the former and draught of the later.
    Maybe we have a draught of competence in the managerial suites prostate to the flood of incompetence of their FIRE sector owners.

  22. The Rev Kev

    “Water shortage fears as Labour’s first AI growth zone sited close to new reservoir”

    This is all Keir Starmer’s brilliant idea for saving the UK. Just invest everything in AI because it has the capability of powering the UK economy rather than just making stuff. They don’t really have the power that those centers will demand so they hand wave it away with talk of small nuclear power generators because everybody knows that you can buy them off the shelf at your local hardware store. And I would bet that any water would be prioritized to go to those AI centers over, you know, that needed for actual drinking water. Let them drink bottled water. And if you protest the insanity of this idea, then I am sure that Keir Starmer would happily apply domestic terrorism laws against those protestors. Liz Truss, come back – all is forgiven!

  23. Pat

    I know I am probably being naive here, but why would anyone think that only the “good guys” can booby trap personal tech, now that the Israelis have opened that Pandora’s box and done it large scale as a weapon?
    Get access to the right production facility, the right shipper and it can be phones for the Knesset or for Greenblatt’s organization or the US State Department…or…or…
    I know these people think they are masters of the universe, but how often have they been shown to be wrong or to have overestimated their abilities. WTF do they believe they are the only ones who get to do evil?

    1. Revenant

      Indeed.

      And your post just made me think of something. Why did nobody’s mobile telephone set off an alert when scanned in an airport? Maybe Hezbollah senior figures don’t fly commercial but some of the foot soldiers must have flown around, visiting shrines in Iran or family in other countries and using ICAO-compliant airports/airlines, e.g. transiting Dubai/Qatar/Abu Dhabi or Istanbul.

      All those devices and nobody ever saw anything amiss on the scanners…? What then is the point of all the scanning?

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        They did not have typical explosives. They had a second battery that could somehow be triggered to superheat and explode, taking the regular battery with it.

          1. Wukchumni

            There has never been weaponry that the other side didn’t get eventually, only took 60 years for the North Koreans to have a nuke.

            1. ChrisFromGA

              Bruce Schneier, an information security expert made the same point some years ago when the NSA developed ‘super duper’ spyware exploits for iPhones and other devices. Probably to target foreign leaders like Angela Merkel.

              Eventually, the “bad guys” got their hands on the same technology and weaponized it for their own nefarious purposes. I think the NSA spyware kit got leaked into the wild a few years back, proving Schneier right.

        3. Revenant

          I’ve gone to double-check.

          I only have Wikipedia and its underlying sources to go on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks) but:

          Reuters says the battery incorporated 6g PETN plastic explosive plus a strip of detonating material (i.e not a metal detonator) that was set off by electrical discharge.

          (https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLLAH-PAGERS/mopawkkwjpa/)

          The assembly was designed not to show up on airport scanners. And Hezbollah allegedly scanned the devices.

          To my knowledge, Li-ion and other battery technologies do not detonate, they deflagrate (burn). The molecules in the batteries do not contain moieties that disassociate exothermically readily into gases and do so faster than the shock wave can travel, which is what gives detonation its destructive power. It may be possible to create an explosive mixture of gases by over-volting the battery but explosive gas mixtures have much less powerful detonation than solid explosives which decompose exothermically.

    2. Es s Ce Tera

      “now that the Isrelis have opened that Pandora’s box”

      They opened that Pandora’s box before Israel was even a state. Irgun and Lehi (precursors of modern day Likud) were responsible for a list of terrorist firsts – the first suitcase bombs, first car bombs, first embassy bombs, first hotel bombs, first market bombings of civilians and first hostage takings, and Lehi was known for a long list of assasinations of political people for wrongthink or being adjacent to wrongthink, all before 1948.

      It’s a long and very established tradition. The complete disregard for the lives of non-combatants and innocents is also tradition, celebrated, revered.

  24. The Rev Kev

    ‘Zlatti71
    @Zlatti_71
    🇩🇪 The German left-wing chancellor candidate, Sahra Wagenknecht, has called for lifting sanctions against Russia and maintaining the import of Russian gas. In her view, the U.S. sanctions policy has nothing to do with the Ukrainian conflict and is solely aimed at boosting the American economy. Wagenknecht also described Washington’s restrictions on Russia as a “program to kill German and European companies,” as quoted by Die Zeit. It is worth noting that Wagenknecht also advocates for banning the supply of German weapons to Ukraine.’

    And for having these views, the German establishment has labelled her a hard-right winger and just like the AfD.

    1. Chris Cosmos

      As I’ve said for decades (when I realized the Democratic Party was becoming a right-wing party as it is now) there is a natural alliance between the “extreme” right and “extreme” left (i.e., those of us who still favor the working class and are anti-imperialist). Germany is clearly the victim of Washington and needs to move away from that position–not just the pols who have become more corrupt than ever but the people as well who, it seems, still worship the USA probably because Hollywood and rock music.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        But as we saw in France with Macron losing his vote of confidence and the left winning, the left/right always seems to form an alliance with the center, isolating the plurality of voters who want change.

        It’s always a game of “let’s gang up on the winner” in these countries where the minority parties cobble together enough votes to deny anyone who dares to depart from the neocon agenda of more war.

        Some people are going to have to look hard in the mirror at themselves if they ever want to end the killings.

      2. OnceWere

        At the abstract level of rhetoric it’s all very well to say that, since some parties of both the left and right at times claim to be pro-working class and anti-imperialist, then an alliance is possible. But at the practical level the policies they want to pursue to actually be pro-working class and anti-imperialist are diametrically opposed. I’ve never seen anyone attempt, even as a demonstration of principle, to come up with a detailed party platform for this supposedly natural red/brown alliance. I’d like to see someone try to square that circle, just to see what they came up with, but I suspect it would please almost no one and win almost no votes. That’s why they both left and right always have to ally with the centre.

        1. Chris Cosmos

          I don’t think the US libertarian anti-war right is incompatible with many of us on the left who believe in human freedom and well-being. For example, government programs in the USA are nearly all systemically corrupt, i.e., are built that way because they are created by Congress and libertarians understand that and those real leftists who aren’t living in fantasy land also see that so that’s a lot to have in common. Reasonable alert people can differ in basic ideology but also manage to agree when there is a will to solve problems–I’ve seen it happen in all kinds of situations. The issue is not whether or not they can agree but whether or not they want to solve the problem rather than play with tribalism which is at the center of US politics.

          1. OnceWere

            People of different political persuasions can relatively easily agree on what the problems are, but that doesn’t help when they don’t agree on the solutions. What do you mean by systemically corrupt government programs and what do you propose to do about it because it’s the detail that determines whether we can cooperate or not. For example, two people, one who claims to be a leftist and one who claims to be a libertarian, might easily agree on the proposition that American healthcare is a disaster but precisely how do they cooperate to solve the problem if one believes the solution is extending Medicare to all and the other believes the solution is the complete privatization and deregulation of the medical industry ?

    2. AG

      In suppressing Wagenknech the power of German media comes into play here in combination with the relative high level of wealth.

      Nachdenkseiten, the largest indie news site just today had a short item pointing at the fact that media try to picture BSW as a small party in danger not to make it into parliament and thus attempting to manipulate the electoral behaviour by voters in favour of CDU, SPD, GREENS. All of course for the greater good which is “everything but AfD”.

      I can only repeat here: Do not underestimate how much the German population that is against war, (undecided over Israel due to Holocaust n´stuff) and is basically on the lines of what was Brandt´s SPD in the 1960s/70s is worried over AfD. Just because The Duran and others outside Germany are cheerleading AfD it doesn’t represent German daily realities among those who form a big chunk of the critical political class that still finds Scholz the safer choice, or wants to give Merz a chance.

      Besides as I wrote last year, AfD is used against BSW. Which is why the chatter and pseudo-scandalized Musk-Weidel encounter could have as well been staged by the CDU and the SPD. Polarisation is a magic trick here and offer big profit. Until AfD´s rise the majority had lost interest in the big parties. And that was dangerous. So you needed a new dragon. And as mythology goes – dragons are often made of the same fabric as the dragon-slayer.

      So labelling AfD by and large is a conscious technique. The fact that it works so extremely well is an embarrassement for many Germans (unknowingly so of course). And offers another explanation to how Berlin could get so much entrenched with Kiev, too. i.e. nothing will change. Until it’s too late.

  25. Mikel

    Why China’s Ice Silk Road has Trump up in Arctic arms – Asia Times

    In the earlier days of the SMO in Ukraine, I remember mentioning the conflict of NATO/USA vs “The Others” spreading to the Arctic.

  26. JMH

    How does the conflict spread to the Arctic when the US lacks the means to conduct a conflict much of anywhere? The brilliant Ukraine project was supposed to bring Russia to its knees. How is that working? NATO and the EU were to be in Georgia and Ukraine years ago. Belarus? What happened? Lukashenko is still there. It is true that either Israel is doing US dirty work or we are enabling the creation of Bibi’s wet dream, Greater Israel. One success: Six of the seven wars to remake West Asia have resulted in chaos. Iran still stands. Bibi still wants the US to fight it for him. Are there the means? Is Iran weak or does it have the means to lay Israel waste? What about those air defenses? Israel, the US and Turkey have taken down Assad. Hurray. Let the back stabbing and the double dealing begin. War with China? A successful war with China? That is potent stuff you are smoking.

    Could we please sober up and stop with the fantasy land dreams, the bluster, the non-stop propagandistic chest beating, the displays of moronic parochialism by the congress, especially Johnson’s house … give it to Mikey, he’ll eat anything. The last four years have been horrible: war, support for genocide, shredding of the Bill of Rights, censorship, gross incompetence in the executive branch, and the next four promise a different flavor of nasty.

    Why have you done this to my country?

    1. Mikel

      “the US lacks the means to conduct a conflict much of anywhere”

      The A game of imperialism has always been divide and rule.

      1. Cristobal

        The CIA has been the US strong suit for years. “We lie, we cheat, we steal”. Terrorism (kinetic and financial) is all we have left.

        1. Mikel

          Global intelligence agencies involved in various imperial projects over the centuries have been involved or coordinated to keep it going.

    2. Mikel

      “The brilliant Ukraine project was supposed to bring Russia to its knees.”

      Sometimes I think the USA would rather Russia keep hanging out in the Ukraine, while the USA is stirring up mess everywhere else.

      They aren’t worried what the people define as “the success”. They won’t be facing any personal consequences and will gladly do chaos until that day comes.
      Blue prints abound for the next destructive thing to do.

  27. AG

    not a bad interview:

    Why Elites Love Identity Politics
    An interview with
    Vivek Chibber

    The Democratic Party at every level spent years embracing identity politics that mostly served the interests of professionals, argues Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber. We need a return to class.
    https://jacobin.com/2025/01/elite-identity-politics-professional-class

    The interviewer makes some irritating remarks but the substance is not uninteresting at all, mainly the historic developments of NGOs vs. unions and how that affected identity politics and the plight of working class and why.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Let’s exercise reasonable skepticism here. Nothing is final until the Israeli cabinet votes tomorrow. This may be premature or perhaps a deliberate bit of misinformation meant to give Joe a “brag” tonight at his farewell address.

      I think Ben-Gvir resigns from the cabinet if this goes ahead, and Bibi may face a vote of no confidence or collapse of his coalition. Others more up to speed on the politics in Isreal can better evaluate that.

  29. Mikel

    S Korea impeached president arrested after investigators scale walls – BBC

    The story started on wild and ended on wild:
    “Meanwhile, reports emerged that a man set himself on fire near the CIO’s office – although it is not known whether the incident is related to Yoon’s arrest.”

  30. chuck roast

    Bertrand n’ Klippenstein on TicTok…we are getting into the territory of High Theatre. Our betters have decided that they want a new “secret handshake” for the highly initiated. This is a scream as mom used say. And the US Supreme Court is prolly on board with the forced sale…so, it’s legit.

    Funny, the way-away Romanians have provided yet another chapter in this highly sordid tale. They apparently, used TicToc to come to a virtual understanding of their preferred candidate in a recent executive election. These dopes are channeling that old sideways hippie McLuhan who talked about a “global village”. Sorry, this is not permissible. Only the ‘Swells’ can have a village. And of course the real funny thing is that they think it’s private.

  31. juno mas

    RE: State of Warcraft

    Nowhere in this article is even a hint that US warcraft is pure F#$#!ng Evil. And at the end suggests that unless the status of US military changes Russia/China would be at our shores. What drivel. Russia/China want nothing to do with the West.

    2. AG

      Lee Slusher is former secret military intelligence, 4 times Afghanistan, 1 Iraq dispatch I believe. What do you believe where his loyalties lie? Yet, if he and an Andrei Martyanov agree in their military assessments – that´s big. May be not here on NC. But everywhere else where folks have much less expertise but much more influence.
      Here on Dec. 25th
      https://substack.com/home/post/p-153595357
      Slusher even used the same picture as Martyanov did for his 2018 book:
      https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40658433-losing-military-supremacy

    3. AG

      Lee Slusher is former secret military intelligence, 4 times Afghanistan, 1 Iraq dispatch I believe. What do you believe where his loyalties lie? Yet, if he and an Andrei Martyanov agree in their military assessments – that´s big. May be not here on NC. But everywhere else where folks have much less expertise but much more influence.

      Here on Dec. 25th
      https://substack.com/home/post/p-153595357
      Slusher even used the same picture as Martyanov did for his 2018 book:
      https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40658433-losing-military-supremacy

      p.s. such a verdict as this e.g. – if European decision-makers were seriously confronted with – would cause a meltdown in the “opinion-creating community” of BSers. And who knows may be it comes to that confrontation and moment-of-truth-briefing. Slusher´s office isn´t too far from the WH I assume…

      “Push back hard enough on the arguments of NATO evangelists and one will find, eventually, the sole pillar on which their belief system rests. Such an exchange might begin with their boasting about Tomahawk cruise missiles. By the time these projectiles lazily make their way to their intended targets, and assuming most are not shot down or defeated electronically, Russian missiles—superior in speed, range, and payload—will have already been launched. Some will have already struck, and the others will trail behind them.

      (…)

      Here NATO’s defenders play their perceived trump card, airpower. However, many of these aircraft are outdated while many of Russia’s have grown more advanced. Furthermore, along its periphery with NATO, Russia has the most advanced air defense network and electronic warfare complex in existence. The latter has already proven effective against many of the very technologies on which NATO’s entire way of war depends, particularly GPS-guided bombs.

      All of their hopes appear to be pinned on the F-35. It all comes down to this plane, an aircraft dubbed Lightning even though it has demonstrated difficulty flying in that very weather. Could the F-35 defeat all these many threats? No one knows and that is the most honest answer anyone could provide. Neither the US nor anyone else has flown against such formidable threats—ever. Doing so would be an extraordinary gamble and ought to be understood explicitly as such. Here many suffer from a potentially terminal case of “F-35 brain” for which catastrophic defeat might be the only remedy.

      Anyone who thinks China lacks similar capabilities, perhaps with the exception of an Oreshnik analogue, is a fool. Consider the possibility of a US-led defense, or even a resupply, of Taiwan in the event of a war with China, a wildly popular fantasy within the US foreign policy establishment. China has built a robust sensor-to-shooter capability that links spaced-based and terrestrial surveillance with many thousands of missiles capable of striking targets well into the adjacent skies and seas. Even if the US had sufficient armaments to support such a war (it does not), the country lacks the sealift and the ability to penetrate Chinese defenses. The entire notion of such an operation is militarily and logistically illiterate. It belongs mostly to the polished history obsessives with no real-world operational experience who populate the thinktank ecosystem.”

      This is DC speaking.

  32. none

    In Israel, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt paints the “genius” pager attack in Lebanon as a model for countering “antisemitism” in the US

    Wtf, spyware and location tracking in iPhone apps was bad enough. Now they want Apple to build explosive charges into our Airpods?

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