Three million years ago, our ancestors were vegetarian ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
Iron Age DNA Reveals Women Dominated Pre-Roman Britain ScienceAlert (Chuck L)
Regency Sex Ed History News Network (Anthony L)
The Power of Prayer aeon. Micael T: “Can you Luigi oligarchs through prayers? Will we see oligarchs with lifeguards protecting them from prayers?”
Honey, I forgot to duck: Jackson Lears London Review of Books (Anthony L). On Max Boot on Reagan.
Them and us: How good are we at getting on with one another? Times Literary Supplement (Anthony L)
The Adults in the Room Michael Ignatieff (Anthony L)
Younger Women Are Now More At-Risk for Cancer Than Men Wall Street Journal (Micael T). Have not found a non-paywalled version. Another report on the same data: Cancer cases are increasing in women while declining in men, report finds NBC
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Rise of vaccine distrust – why more of us are questioning jabs BBC (Kevin W)
Avian influenza outbreak in Georgia halts sale of poultry, forces quarantine Fox5. KLG: “Northern part of Georgia is chicken central”
HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE.
Surely waiting in a room filled with people with infectious disease with no mitigation helps people catch vital infections that invigorate them with health and vitality?
Or maybe infections caught in hospital kill people.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/lYGfqcv3PM— tern (@1goodtern) January 18, 2025
Climate/Environment
Trouble Transitioning Adam Tooze, London Review of Books (Anthony L)
China?
CHINA’S CONTEMPORARY PARADOX: RISING INEQUALITY, FALLING SUPPORT FOR REDISTRIBUTION World Inequality Database (Micael T)
Trump holds ‘very good’ call with China’s Xi RT
Beijing calls Biden a ‘liar’ and says hello to Trump Asia Times (Kevin W)
India
Wed or I’ll shoot: Inside the criminal world where young men are forced to marry at gunpoint RT (Chuck L)
European Disunion
EU faces up to €1 trillion loss for cutting Russian gas – Moscow sovereign wealth fund RT
Old Blighty
UK economy sliding back into recession London Loves Business
Oldham gang rape survivor blasts ‘appalling’ Labour plan for local grooming inquiries and ‘rapid audit’ Independent (Kevin W)
Israel v. The Resistance
Israel Admits Failure in Gaza John Mearshemer
Ceasefire and colonial self-cannibalization Alon Mizrahi
Starmer’s Support for Gaza Ceasefire Riddled With Lies Jonathan Cook
🚨Most Palestinians who'll be released on Sunday are HOSTAGES!
Not prisoners or detainees
Those are civilians the IDF mass kidnapped from Gaza & the West Bank since Oct 7 as a bargaining chip; or "strategic assets"
"We're holding them for the deals" an Israeli officer admits👇 pic.twitter.com/zuMlUn36pa
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) January 17, 2025
All the uncertainties surrounding the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal Thomas Fazi
New Not-So-Cold War
How the West Was Lost American Affairs Journal (Anthony L)
Ukraine’s Debt: an instrument of pressure and spoliation in the hands of creditors CADTM (Micael T)
Dusk for Norway is dawn for Russia’: The looming gas crisis facing the West Telegraph
Game Changer — Russia and Iran Sign Mutual Security Agreement Larry Johnson. This is more than was expected.
Inside the Russia-Iran Comprehensive Partnership Treaty: What’s In It and Why It Matters Sputnik (Kevin W)
SITREP 1/17/25: Russia-Iran’s Landmark Agreement Imitated in Starmer’s Last Minute Kiev Stunt Simplicius
🗣️ The Kremlin is concerned about the provision on the advancement of British military infrastructure in the "century-long treaty" between London and Kiev, stated Russian President's Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov. He noted that Moscow will analyze how these agreements will be…
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) January 17, 2025
Getting Russia Wrong: A Quarter Century of Putin American Conservative (Anthony L)
What will a “European Armenia” bring? Strategic Culture (Micael T)
6 questions and answers about the document signed between Armenia and the USA Media Max (Michael T)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
WEF Director Backs UN’s Pro-Censorship AI Watchdog Reclaim the Net (Tom D)
Lawsuit alleges Vermont tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable for parenthood Associated Press. Paul R: “Lebensunwertes Leben. Apparently they tracked when pregnant women had mental health episodes, and flagged them to have the kids taken away once born.”
Imperial Collapse Watch
Wars top global risk as Davos elite gathers in shadow of fragmented world Reuters
Trump 2.0
Authorities Preparing For “Worst Case Scenarios” Ahead of Trump Inauguration Modernity
Georgia appeals court upholds partial dismissal of Trump election interference case Courthouse News
Yellen: Debt limit will be hit day after Trump’s inauguration The Hill. Another Biden parting present
U.S. Shale’s Capital Discipline Outweighs Trump’s Pro-Growth Rhetoric OilPrice
Everyone has their reasons Jan-Werner Müller, London Review of Books. Anthony L: “The LRB’s idea of brilliant political analyst is back”
Biden
Remembering The Golden Years: Here Are The 11 Best Moments Of Biden’s Presidency Babylon Bee
Biden in His Bunker Philip Pikington
California Burning
Los Angeles fires survivors face arduous federal aid process, delayed payouts WSWS
Wildfire smoke is always toxic. LA’s is even worse. Grist. Remember the first responders at 9/11? Same potential health damage on a bigger scale
The historic Black neighborhood of Altadena, once home to Jackie Robinson and Octavia Butler, has lost millions in generational wealth from the LA fires.
BT spoke with Altadena resident Kyoko Canizales whose home was lost during the Eaton Fire. The home had been in her family… pic.twitter.com/CxoQfgj3WR
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 16, 2025
Immigration
Senate advances Laken Riley Act, teeing up final vote The Hill
Our No Longer Free Press
Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, Biden stays execution — but broad power now lies with Trump Drop Site (Li)
TikTok says it will ‘go dark’ on Sunday without US government action BBC
here’s your transparency from the military on how it spies on civilians on social media https://t.co/eRCJRNjc7O
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) January 16, 2025
VIDEO: Sam Husseini’s Viral Confrontation With Blinken Decensored. Lambert featured this appalling conduct, but many of the videos were not the best, and this one gives a fuller picture of what transpired.
CNN In DEEP TROUBLE With Defamation Case: Legal Analyst Jonathan Turley Warns Glenn Greenwald
Mr. Market is Moody
Investor who predicted dot-com crash issues chilling three-word warning as another market storm brews Daily Mail (Li)
Trump’s plans could trigger liquidity crises across Europe and Asia South China Morning Post
US financial deregulation would raise crisis risks, French central bank chief says Reuters
AI
Falling for the Algorithm: New Study Reveals Emotional Bonds Between Users and ChatGPT ScienceBlog (Dr. Kevin)
The Bezzle
Wall Street could get a boost from $1 trillion in buybacks, Goldman says Reuters (Michael Hudson)
Regulators are investigating reports of property damage from SpaceX Starship’s explosion CNN (Kevin W)
Class Warfare
GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now Atlantic (Paul R)
Antidote du jour. Lennymemes via Paul R. Legend: “I knew crows were smart but this one is actually dipping his nuggets.”
And a bonus (Chuck L). So why hasn’t this been made into a children’s story?
Cow thinks he's a showjumping horse pic.twitter.com/AVoNOJlXMR
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 17, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
168 comments
Comments are closed.
Working link for “Wall Street could get a boost from $1 trillion in buybacks, Goldman says” article at-
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/wall-street-could-get-boost-1-trillion-buybacks-goldman-says-2025-01-16/
So would I be correct in thinking that this is $1 trillion that won’t be invested in research & development, won’t be used for training & development of personnel, won’t be used for maintaining & upgrading infrastructure but will just be going to bonuses and payouts for investors?
You betcha! This is a primary mechanism of how elites use financial markets to under-invest, and lower long-term productivity growth!
Policymakers used to understand this and the practice used to be banned, and we had punitive tax rates such that it wasn’t worth sucking capital out of enterprises, but, we made a point of forgetting all that.
“So would I be correct in thinking that this is $1 trillion that won’t be invested in research & development…”
There we have a critically important reason that US manufacturing productivity has now been decreasing for 14 years:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mB
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024
* Output per hour of all persons
(Indexed to 1988)
Time for Nancy Pelosi to share with The Blebs some more of her insider trading stock tips like “take a look at defense stocks”. Oh wait she’s not Speaker anymore, so it’s up to (is it Johnson?). But she must still have connections…and a big insider trading broker account. Do you think she is girl friends with once house arrested Martha Stewart?
Just for perspective, according to the congressional budget office, in 2023 the “revenue” of the most “prosperous” nation the world has ever known was $4.4 trillion, and the deficit was $1.7 trillion, making the entire “budget” of this nation of 350 million souls $6.1 trillion.
So depending on the way you look at it, these “companies” have either one quarter of america’s entire revenue or one sixth of the entire amount it takes to “run” this country to spend buying back stock.
This level of financial fuckery is unsustainable. Pure and simple.
Los Angeles fires survivors face arduous federal aid process, delayed payouts WSWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In just 10 days time, a number of homes here that didn’t work as STR’s on account of price and have been on the market for years, have sold to Angelenos presumably sick of the Big Smoke (now with even more deadly smoke!) and wanting to make a fresh start in Tiny Town.
I’d long hoped that in lieu of speculators with no social skin in the game, we’d get interesting people from LA & SF who wanted to put down roots, and I’m thinking this is a good opportunity for said speculators to get out-as the market is really saturated (350 out of 1,100 homes here are STR’s) and I don’t think anybody is really doing all that great on their garage mahals being wannabe Hiltons, from what i’m hearing.
Perhaps I am being unfair to those Angelenos that fled the Big Smoke and came to settle in Tiny Town but I would be wary that once they settle in, that they don’t decide that they want to make the place more like how things are done in LA. If they could afford the house price, then they still have money behind them. The reason that I say this is that over the years I have read people in other States complaining how some Californians fled to their State as they wanted a better life but once there started to push for how things were done in California in their new homes.
It’s quite Lorax-ian here, oak trees dominate the landscape and nobody is of a mind to clearcut them to dot the land with more homes, maybe 30 new homes have been built here in my 20 years.
I use the term Tiny Town as a descriptor, and it’s diminutive in the same way a 6 foot 7 bouncer who weighs 287 pounds gets called Tiny.
There’s 44 square miles of town here, populated largely by trees.
A saying that was used in Oregon years ago.
“Don’t Californicate Oregon”
Following the Harriman’s sale of Sun Valley to a California developer in 1964, we had bumper stickers made that read ”Don’t Californicate Sun Valley”
By the late 1970’s, they had pretty much ruined it.
It is not all that different in the East. Once the “city folk” discover the “scenic”, the”quaint”, the “rustic”, they cannot but want to improve it, add a few “amenities”, mess with local politics, until they have re-created the dystopia they left behind. Then some move on and do the same thing somewhere else. Example: Bozeman, Montana 25 years ago and today.
Now-gov of NH Kelly Ayotte ran on “Don’t Mass up NH”. Unfortunately, it is too late.
Yes, heard versions of that for years (60s-70s) in Idaho, as people headed north as CA was viewed as a place heading rapidly into the dumper at the time. Idahoans were already mad that a large amount of the hydroelectric power generated in the state was being shipped off to CA, rather than lowering rates for residents.
By the way, what does the picture caption mean “… directs his crew while checking homes for structural issues in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire…”? The issue looks to be that there is no structure!
I’d take my chances with Bob & Betty Bitchin’ from Pacific Palisades and their lovely offspring Trevor & Truly wanting to live here-as opposed to being here for a 3 day tour-a 3 day tour.
Our K-8 school went from 220 to 105 students in 20 years, our pharmacy went out of biz, and the feeling is that of a transient locale where nobody knows anybody.
If you move intrastate, is it really Californificaction?
“Tiny Town”, gate way to the sequoias has always been a vacation spot. It was also a major hippy haven in the 60’s-70’s. That is why we moved to the other side of the ridge when we escaped the big city. When our friends back in LA asked us why we moved to a place where our property values wouldn’t increase we told them that was the whole idea.
Many who move here to get out of town find themselves with no entertainment and only last a few years until moving back to town. When we were moving, a friend back in Long Beach, an anesthesiologist who puts people to sleep for a living, asked me who the hell I was going to talk to. He turned out to be more prescient then the real estate vectored friends. Indeed good conversation is hard to come by. However judging from some of the comments here it is obvious the people from CA are markedly smarter then people in other states.
This Sothron begs to differ. What “other states?” The State of Denial? The State of Divided Mind? The District of Columbia? The Pays de Davos?
However, you are forgiven. That smoke is notoriously toxic.
Stay safe, breath free.
I used to smoke the local cabbage but that’s not what destroyed my mind.
They so smart! They vote in Newscum every time.
disclaimer: I lived in Bay Area for 13 years. They less smart now that I moved away! /s
It’s an island of misfit toys, and I fit in nicely.
The incoming governor of New Hampshire ran on the slogan:
Don’t Mass with NH
It was on billboards and everything.
And this variation on Kelly Ayotte’s signs: “Don’t Mass up NH.”
Rev Kev, You have that right. I fled the state sick of very wealthy entitled people every where, my neighbors did as they pleaded. Destroyed peace and quiet. Thought they should be able to do anything they wanted any time they wanted. Everything was about them. Now I have another family from California with a swimming pool and spa that runs in winter with no one using it. Because they can afford it.
This thing buzzes all night long keeps me awake. They watch TV outside by the pool on their 70 inch screen with speakers turned on full blast.
I’m going to have to sell this place and move. Next time I will buy out in the country.
If they don’t have a good outside security camera set up, sneak in and pass an old bass woofer driver magnet by their electronic controls for the television. I guarantee hilarity the next time they try to run the thing.
Don’t try this at home kids! Mom and Pops will be livid!
I don’t know anybody in Tiny Town who locks their doors on homes or cars, must be one scared local somewhere.
My friend who lives in Phoenix says that everyone there complains about the influx from California. On the other hand her house value has more than doubled.
We still don’t see many California plates here in SC. Not enough surfing.
Not a lot of surfing here in Phoenix either.
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-arizona-republic/20221227/281530820095608
But it’s a six hour drive or a 1 hour flight from SoCal and doesn’t get very cold.
Even my Trump supporting father has told our my sister in Phoenix she might consider moving because at some point there will be no water, so Californians moving to Phoenix may be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Here in Knoxville, the post office delivery man told me some folks purchased a huge house nearby and completely gutted it’s interior to do their own redecorating. And the real estate brokers mentioned to me when I recently relocated to Knoxville that a lot of Californians have moved here even a sales clerk at Lowes told me she came here from California. The locals have mentioned precipitation in the summer may not have declined but is becoming less frequent but heavier. Hopefully that is a more distant prelude to what awaits Tennessee in terms of climate change. Regarding winters her in Knoxville I’m slightly surprised how cold it can get in Knoxville yet each time I directly compare our weather to where I came from in Massachusetts, it is warmer in Knoxville.
They’re getting ready to put in an additional 500 house development in my little rural town of 600 people. I think some people are well aware that we’re going to have some real mass migrations in our future and have been preparing to profit from it for quite some time.
I’d be interested in seeing exactly what portion of housing price increases is actually driven by people moving around, and how much is just flat out speculation.
People have ALWAYS moved around in America. In fact, we might be doing it much less now than in the past, yet housing prices did not double in a couple of years in the past.
I suspect that if your country is offshoring it’s manufacturing and other capital intensive investments at the same time it’s just dumping free money at the top of the societal food chain, you get rampant speculation with housing speculation being very high on that list. After all, if there are no good investments in companies that make stuff, you’re going to “invest” (i.e. drive up prices) in things that American must have like housing, healthcare, education, cars, food, etc:
Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes since the Great Recession. Here’s what that means for rental prices
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html
Let’s face it, as soon as “common knowledge” became your house is an investment, families that just want a home were [family blogged].
Wellie Rev Kev … I think Wukc would be served by what has happened all along the northern NSW coast since covid, not that there was a bit of it going on before but, it really ramped up during and post covid.
These once sleepy idealistic towns inhabited for generations by the same mobs have experienced the wealth effect up close both in property prices and lifestyle retail. Just wow at the influx of wellness[tm] centers [micro dosing is a big hit], upscale eateries, boutique clothing shops, not to mention the amount of divorcées related to covid, etc …
Then I again I have watched this dynamic since I was a kid in AZ, gentrification of CBDs across the U.S., Zuma – Palos Verdes, Calif. Boulder, C.O. and now our Cow town Brisbane ….
Good luck Wukc …
I’m not worried all that much, the only thing that could happen badly was if the oak savanna burned up revealing room for 10,000 new homes to be built in their place.
When was the last time an oak forest burned up in Cali?
What are “STR’s”?
Short Term Rentals, AirBnB, VRBO, etc.
I knew that one but I had never heard Garage Mahal. Thank you.
A great example of why people like Saint Milton Friedman, the Saint of Pencils and Free Markets, are now, and always will be wrong :)
Regarding the FOIA’d document about the military and social media:
While it has other uses, from the perspective of the ruling class, social media represents the privatization and crowd-sourcing of mass surveillance, for use by, mainly, advertisers, and, secondarily, police.
> Micael T: “Can you Luigi oligarchs through prayers? Will we see oligarchs with lifeguards protecting them from prayers?”
Consider the Magnificat:
And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” Luke 1:46-55.
He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent away empty.
Esurientes implevit bonis et divites demisit inanes
https://youtu.be/2Amko575QCE
He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent away empty
Esurientes implevit bonis et divites demisit inanes
https://youtu.be/2Amko575QCE
The Magnificat is usually considered a song rather than a prayer. In the next chapter of Luke, you’ll find the Song of Simon, also known in the liturgy as the Nunc dimittis, (the first words of the song in Latin). It contains an “ask” (basically, take me now Lord) typical of a prayer, though not a sine qua non.
From the biblical genre of blessings and curses, close to a prayer but not quite, here are some sentiments similar to the Magnificat:
Luke 6:24-26 (NRSV)
This is from Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, which he fits into the narrative by calling it the Sermon on the Plain. Matthew does not include any curses, even though the model for this genre comes from Deuteronomy 28, which includes both blessings and curses. Luke is known for often sounding like an old Hebrew prophet with his concern for “the widow and orphan,” so it’s not surprising he lets loose with this Amos-like barrage, but did Matthew include curses originally, only to have them excised by an editor worried about meeting pledge week goals in Ephesus or some place?
For a classic prayer, consider the collect, found towards the beginning of the liturgy. It happens to contain most of the elements considered important by the article’s author.
Maybe Ephesians?
For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
I suspect there are many passages in the Bible that would support our avenging angel’s candidacy for sainthood– Saint Luigi the Adjuster.
Luigi brought insurance practices into light, and the industry’s human cost, or toll of victims. With one murder, Luigi may have saved thousands of lives and prevented an untold amount of suffering. How so? By making “deny, delay, depose” part of our national conversation, even if for only a few weeks or so, thus informing the public of the dangers of privatized insurance: at least some will have given this thought and opted for programs such as traditional Medicare rather than “Advantage” plans and the like.
“Lawsuit alleges Vermont tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable for parenthood’
I lost track of how many red lines Vermont crossed here but this was really ugly. It reminded me of how decades ago here in Oz it could easily happen that a new born baby was snatched by the authorities if the mother did not have a husband and went up for adoption. But there is one thing that I am curious to know about is why Vermont went to all these steps to snatch themselves a free baby. Could it be that there is a shortage of children/babies to be adopted? I seem to recall that a lot of couples went to places like Russia and China to get themselves a new born baby but I believe that both those countries shut that particular door closed. But where there is a market, there is a way so is that the case here? Maybe.
Take it from one who lived there, you need only look at the basics, housing and healthcare, to see how stunning the incompetence of the state government in Vermont is.
I wouldn’t put it past them to try to solve their demographic crisis (which is existential at this point) by grabbing babies at random.
Lack of population density and a northern New Englander’s stubborn addiction to “doing it yourself” have contributed to our “social-libertarian” type environment. Honestly, it could be worse.
An intellectually disabled person’s world is littered with good intentions gone bad. I’d wager this is an example, some do-gooders idea of helping.
About the ACLU lawsuit.
Not the first time this business has happened in the Green Mountain State. Quite a history.
https://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/
https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2022/WorkGroups/Senate%20Government%20Operations/Bills/J.R.H.2/Public%20Comment/J.R.H.2~Charlene%20Galarneau~Chronology%20Update%20-%20VT%20Eugenics~4-22-2021.pdf
https://vermonthistory.org/vermont-eugenics-movement
And it wasn’t just Vermont.
https://www.americanheritage.com/american-eugenics-inspiration-hitler
Regarding Ukraine’s debt, this caught my eye;
Meanwhile, several European private banks such as the Austrian Raiffaisen, the German Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, the Italian Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo have not discontinued their activities in the Russian Federation. In spite of sanctions, they have multiplied their profits fourfold in that country since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. In March-April 2024, they paid EUR 800 million tax on profits to the Russian government without any measures being taken by EU authorities.
I think that all those countries that gave/lent money to the Ukraine can kiss it all goodbye. They will never see that money again. I see too that the IMF has lent them over $17 billion so perhaps they should not have changed that rule about not lending money to countries at war like they did for the Ukraine. Can you imagine what would happen if Russia occupied the bulk of the Ukraine? I bet that all those countries and institutions will threaten to sue Russia to get all their money back – until they realize that there is no court that will hear any such cases that the Russians recognize. Fun times ahead.
Kiss it goodbye, lol yes. I’m curious if the 2024 deal with private bondholders had any language concerning credit default swaps, or perhaps the derivatives market for mitigating risk no longer exists as the western financial industry turns out to be about as “agreement capable” as the US.
Much better a Children’s Story than Scotty in marketing putting mouse ears on the crow or some other danged thing.
An aside Some history about the Rockefellers and the UN.
Connecting the Rockefellers to the United Nations
http://www.connectingtheagenda.com/2016/11/connecting-rockefellers-to-united.html
The connection/history of the Rockefellers in the modern development of the profession/research/accreditation of medicine in the U.S. is fascinating as well.
I think that’s an important reminder – considering one of the top stories this week.
Debt limit will be maximized on Day 2 of Trump 2.0…I am noting from the article that the national debt currently stands about $36 trillion…so anything the Congress or this effort by the DOGE personnel should be perceived as rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic…\sarc
I’ve noticed a trend in more recent times, where business reports make note of interest payments on the existing US debt to roughly add up to nearly $200 to $300 billion per quarter ( quoting from a Rand Paul interview in the past week ). I can’t fathom who it was so long ago that opined that deficits don’t matter? That’s right….it was a Republican VP who said it.
You must mean the Dark Lord himself. :)
Imagine if all we had was paper money in lieu of hiding that $36 trillion in debt away in 0’s and 1’s on a computer, how obvious inflation would be if the manna was in print form?
A trillion bucks is 10 billion Benjamins…
If it was in paper money, would it be enough to buy you a cup of coffee or a loaf of bread? Or would you give blocks of it to your kids to build play castles out of? I suppose the only real reason that it all still works is that all the money in the world is now fiat money which is kinda a first in history I believe.
How’s this for an espresso?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:100.000_$_Bill_1934.jpg
And then there was this-
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/u9f3x4/kids_playing_with_bricks_made_out_of_money_during/
When General Patton was a little boy, he was given blocks of Confederate currency to play with. Can’t do that with a bunch of 1s and 0s.
When I was a little boy I got reproduction Confederate bank notes out of a Cheerios box over breakfast. I, at a most knowledgeable seven years of age, considered these top tier cereal premiums. They’re tucked away in a box somewhere.
Sweet Jee-zuz. Can you imagine what would happen if they tried to do this today? It would be totally worth it to find out.
Agreed, ha!
Kinda similar, but what if some candy purveyor brought back to the US kids, those candy shaped in the form of cigarettes?!?
There’d be an outrageous response. On the various social media platforms naturally.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/marketing-candy-cigarettes-tobacco-halloween/
When I was a kid you could buy brand new 1864 CSA $20 banknotes for a few bucks, how many tens of thousands would you like?
Now, all CSA currency from $1 to $20 denominations are worth more than the face value to collectors, so technically the south did rise again.
Fun with charts…from the ever excellent ST Louis Federal Reserve…a 10 year graphing of Federal receipts…I can’t suggest nor will I put forward any notion of Balanced Budgets or any such scenario but sweet good gracious does all spending generate rainbows with a basket of puppies, such that spending or expense overrun must not be reviewed…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFR
Sheesh. The vertical axis needs to be on a log scale.
Sure, but subtract out social security and the like and you’re down to $27 billion or so. Then subtract out the Fed and it’s more like $22 billion. Still a big number. About $14 billion domestic and $8 billion foreign.
Social Security is still not contributing to the debt. Besides the current income from dedicated FISA taxes, there were decades where those taxes not only paid for every Social Security benefit they put so much money into the system that was “loaned”to the government. So much money that even when that over payment ended and the trust fund had to contribute from what is in other words that supposed interest bearing loan, it was more than adequate to make up the shortfall for years. In fact the last dire estimate doesn’t have that changing for another decade.
Call me wild and crazy but having used a dedicated tax stream to fund things that had nothing to do with what it was dedicated for, and had little to do with benefitting the regular citizens but did probably make a fair number of contractors and lackeys rich…Well it annoys the he** out of me that people who haven’t paid any attention to the real issues of supposed deficit spending still buy the utter bull manure that the program that actually helped the thieves and scoundrels in Congress hide things for their malfeasance like tax cuts. Especially since we now have billionaires who literally pay less in taxes than the poor slubs who need SS so they won’t be homeless in retirement.
If you want to believe deficits matter, and ignore MMT, there are legitimate items to cut, tax cuts to rescind, tax deductions to be limited and eliminated, and most of all people and corporations to require to actually support the public good after years of screwing it. After that talk to me about the drag that Social Security and Medicare and Food Stamps are on the economy and the US and the system. Because in truth all of those do more for our actual boots on the ground economy than most of our financial wizards on any given day.
>Israel Admits Failure in Gaza John Mearshemer
Well what does someone do who “fails?” A weak person would give up, a strong one would try and try again. With the U.S. Congress almost completely bought, one where Bibi or whoever is calling the shots, I don’t think that Israel is weak. Of course failing and doing the same thing over and over is also a sign of weakness, or as some say, insanity. I don’t think Israel is weak/insane in this regard, they achieved the opprobrium of the civilized world, but they gained territory. For the opprobrium they will get their folks at CNN, Pierre Morgan, and the rest to work on mitigating and they will try and ban TikTok and other social media platforms.
Oh I disagree. Israeli power is a house of cards with a huge barrier of PR to keep it from blowing away. This is why Netanyahu fears Trump who is rich enough (and with a new very rich friend) to do what he wants and not kowtow.
Mearsheimer was asked whether the huge amount Trump owed to the Adelson widow would keep him from getting tough with Bibi. I’m not saying Trump isn’t great at repaying loans, but I am reminded of the old saw: ‘if you owe the bank $10,000 you’re in trouble, if you owe the bank $10,000,000, the bank is in trouble.’
CNN actually had a countdown clock today showing viewers how many hours, minutes and seconds were left until the 12:00 midnight TikTok ban goes into effect.
I never understood that quote about doing the same thing and expecting a different result as being insanity. I think that is the definition of stupidity maybe with a tinge of insanity.
Definitely–like most cliches–wants questioning, but it depends on the circumstances, no? In Bibi’s case, it was keeping him out of jail. He saw sacrificing his pawns–Israeli kids, the dwindling number of kidnap victims still alive, as worth his own skin, clearly. A whole lot of far-right Israelis hopped on board. I don’t think Mearsheimer has this completely right, myself. I think it’s a slightly more mixed bag. Yes–on the surface it’s grim for Israel, surprisingly so. Al Qassam has more fighters than ever, is in no way defeated. Palestinians are streaming back into Gaza, and a lot of countries, BRICS and others, will look to help rebuild. Russia has a new security agreement with Iran that may well just tie both Israel AND our hands on any planned-for bombing. (If I’m Iran, I start in on a batch of nukes post haste!) And one has to wonder whether the Saudis have quietly agreed to pony up for something like a Palestinian state now. But Israel has new territory, and what people aren’t asking themselves is what Trump promised Bibi. I’d bet (speculating, yes) that what he got was military cover to grow into the Golan Heights. Because Israel is militarily overextended. And has a hangover from its orgy of slaughter. Well, maybe I’m arguing myself into greater agreement with Measheimer than I began with. The main thing is that the Palestinian people have survived, and so has the dream of a Palestinian state. I am drinking to that hope–and to the hope that the killing stops, at least a little, tonight.
>The Adults in the Room – Michael Ignatieff
Only someone with NLP training (neurolinguistic programing) would start an article that purports to be serious with that tread bare meme, perhaps someone who works not for the dissemination of truth but to frame the subject in such a way as to provide cover or direct the public discourse/understanding in a certain way.
You can practically hear the smug, yet tastefully restrained, intonations of NPR newsreaders. From their perch, everyone else is a non-adult, donors excepted.
Then they return to reading Plato and cherishing their places and roles in The Republic.
Or was it their roles in protecting Democracy? Hard to tell in the shifting PMC world.
Made me think of the classic ‘Schwedi Balls’ sketch on SNL with Alec Baldwin.
He also might want to consider paragraphs.
I’ll be blunt, didn’t read past the first page, didn’t like it. But I’ll say this for Ignatieff : his biography of Isaiah Berlin imho is very good, very well written in terms of style & story telling, and very helpful about “Liberalism” in theory & practice.
Prayer as vulgar problem solving…
I’m starting to think that all Stanford post docs do is scroll through grant proposals, send people surveys designed to confirm the grant owner’s theory, and collect the check.
‘send people surveys’?
You mean like WEIRD people? As in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic people that might make up most of the Stanford student body? It’s a lazy way of doing research but for a very long time it was the standard – and maybe still is.
>Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban
It doesn’t matter that Trump can stay the ban. The Congress and now the Supreme Court have revealed themselves to those who did not understand or didn’t care how rotten the government and the oligarchs who control it are. Could this be on giant psyop where Trump saves the day, just like the iconic photo of him pumping his fist in the air post being shot. I think it doesn’t matter. I’ve been browsing RedBook, and if the continues to gain American youth, and older curmudgeons like me, it will have opened up a new avenue for the population to share their disgust…as well as sharing the lighter, less serious side of life and art and increase cross-cultural exchange.
The whole thing reminds me of Xmas on the Western Front 1914.
A really smart crow would not eat junk food.
French kids learned about the crows and ravens in La Fontaine’s fables while in primary school.
My old friend was the daughter of an Institutrice. Her mum would hum the opening lines, and the kids then wrote down the words. They also learned about what crows and other characters, like foxes, represented. One famous example is Le Corbeau et Le Renard.
Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Spoiler alert: The fox flatters the crow, who drops the cheese.
Master Crow perched on a tree,
Was holding a cheese in his beak.
Master Fox attracted by the smell
Said something like this:
“Well, Hello Mister Crow!
How pretty you are! How beautiful you seem to me!
I’m not lying, if your voice
Is like your plumage,
You are the phoenix of all the inhabitants of these woods.”
At these words, the Crow is overjoyed.
And in order to show off his beautiful voice,
He opens his beak wide, lets his prey fall
The Fox grabs it, and says: “My good man,
Learn that every flatterer
Lives at the expense of the one who listens to him.
This lesson, without doubt, is well worth a cheese.”
The Crow, ashamed and embarrassed,
Swore, but a little late, that he would not be taken again.
My junior high French teacher, a Vietnamese woman, taught us that poem. Trump lovers beware.
Come now, it’s a bit much to expect them to be THAT much smarter than us.
“Israel Admits Failure in Gaza”
This must be a very bitter pill for Netanyahu and the hard right to swallow. That not only is Hamas still there but it is still fighting. Even Blinken was forced to publicly admit that they have recruited the numbers to make up for all those that they lost. I guess that when your family has been wiped out by a bomb, that the road is clear to join Hamas to fight the IDF. It seems that no matter how many civilians they slaughter, it does not have the effect of making those people abandon Hamas as who else is fighting for them – apart from Yemen. They know by now that although the Middle eastern countries are not stopping Israel, neither will they accept 2 million Palestinians. And with Trump coming in it is not guaranteed that he will let the slaughter continue either. Certainly the Israelis are not ready to negotiate with the Palestinians and there are a lot of groups demanding that the killing continue. Sounds like the Israelis have boxed themselves into a corner and may need somebody like Trump to get them out of it as they can’t do so for themselves.
Abraham Accords, The Sequel, incoming soon.
RE: Three million years ago, our ancestors were vegetarian
Well, that was three million years ago. Those people spread out all over the world, some of them ending up above the Arctic Circle and places like Northern Finland when my people come from. They are called the Sami and we eat very little vegetables but we love our berries. Like our land brothers, the Inuit, people are amazed that we can survive on our ancestral diet, but that is a diet only for us. When we eat like the southern farming people we get sick.
We are shaped as a people by that land we inhabit, this is our ancestral legacy we cannot escape.
This article makes a broad conclusion based on a small sample of australopithecines – it’s like sampling from a Jain cemetery and concluding that all modern humans are vegetarian.
Further, it’s not clear that australopithecines are in the human ancestral lineage, or but one of several african hominims that coexisted over millions of years.
Finally, what is very clear is that roughly 2 million years ago, humans (named “homo erectus” ) had developed a tool kit – control of fire; stone tools; and eating cooked meat – that allowed an explosive expansion. To Java and China in about 200k years. We are the living result and carry the evidence of that expansion in our genetics.
Australopithecines! don’t make me laugh. They didn’t survive. I’ve seen a few in Walmart and they didn’t look all that healthy. More refined homos living in the bay area but mostly neanderthals around here. I think they eat their young.
Human evolution is more like a very bushy bush than a tree. There were a number of species and subspecies that overlap both geographically and temporally sometimes for hundreds of thousands of years. Since we don’t have any genetic material aside from the Neaderthals and Cro-magnon from a few tens of thousands of years ago, and humans (hominids) have been around in some distinct form for a few million years, trying to find the line of ancestry, never mind who are ancestors were, is problematic, if not impossible. Again, our ancestry is more a messy bush than a neat tree.
I once read that you could say that present day humanity is just one surviving twig coming off a luxuriant bush.
That’s true, but many of those twigs combined and separated and sometimes more than once as happened with Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon/Denisovans and the ancestors of the chimpanzee/hominid. Our ancestors liked to have sex with anyone remotely compatible and did so for millions of years. Sometimes even after being separated for hundreds of thousands of years. Really, even if we could follow our exact ancestral lineage, it would still have multiple separations and combinations of multiple subspecies at least.
I think it fascinating that for almost all of millions of years of human existence there were multiple species and subspecies of humanity, which only ended a few tens of thousands of years ago. Of course, the twig that became us almost became extinct twice with population of less than ten thousand in total. This has given us very little genetic variation compared to most other animals especially when compared to the chimpanzees. It’s not as bad as the cheetah, but it’s not good.
Throwing this over the transom.
Several major banks have suffered online transaction “delays” and “outages” due to troubles with a major third party services vendor, Fidelity National Information Services Inc. Right on “Pay Day” for many in the working world, direct deposits blocked. The problem being “handled” by “hand” in the affected bank’s back rooms.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIS_(company)
Naturally, the affected banks are being as obscurantist as they can be concerning this. Boilerplate BS all the way down. Anyone else see anything about this on legacy media? I thought not.
The above has validated our decision several years ago to lay in a small stock of physical currency for “emergencies.”
See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capital-one-direct-deposit-issues/
Stay safe. Stay a little liquid.
I noticed an email with the headline late yesterday, like a summary of sorts via LinkedIn…I did not look further but hey it’s a three day weekend for many, but not all and a Federal holiday on Monday. Never a good look, and then wait for the PR spin…
Cash on hand went from a nice to have it, into the you better have it during the first few days after hurricane Helene hereabouts. Very few locations were equipped for accepting a plastic card form of exchange for their services. Took the local grocery chain two or so days longer to reopen, but they opened for as much as they had to sell….shelves looking bare almost like March 2020 yet again.
Don’t know why the “Authorities” are concerned about violence during the inauguration. Liberals are mostly a passive-aggressive bunch. They’ll stage whisper threats to their friends at brunch or offer up a snide comment to the checker at Whole Foods or draft a scathing rebuke of the political process on Bluesky and how it was upended by Russia ad buys and propagandized Muslim women in Michigan…
but Liberals will never threaten what they perceive as a temporary stall in the progression to having their WEF-sponsored candidate finally sworn in.
re: TikTok says it will ‘go dark’ on Sunday without US government action BBC
It seems not to occur to Merrick Garland or anyone in US government (except perhaps Trump, it seems) that a GOVERNMENT OR STATE BANNING SPEECH amounts to CENSORSHIP and therefore, in this case, it’s the US that is being authoritarian – and tends to prove that China is NOT authoritarian, at least in this regard.
China banned tiktok in china
There’s a different version of TikTok in China. I’m not aware of an outright Chinese ban, but perhaps someone with inside knowledge can speak to this. Hey, maybe we could ask people on Redbook.
Nevertheless, if the US goes forth with this ban, that still makes it state censorship.
>>>Nevertheless, if the US goes forth with this ban, that still makes it state censorship.
Like with all the other laws and rules that are supposed to keep us all “safe” the excuse given is that it is all for the children. If you object, you must hate the children.
Redbook? Isn’t it Red Note … Xiaohongshu
Yes, oops! Thank you.
Taken literally, the separate syllables of Xiaohongshu are translated as “Little Red Book.” Of course, that’s not how language actually works.
“different version of TikTok in China”
So, you can’t use tiktok in china? You are forced to a different one?
You can be against censorship and also admit that china is good at censorship.
Tiktok is not banned in China, the app is called Douyin over there.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1880655911712366792
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
A somewhat official statement by China on Xiaohongshu/REDnote with Hua Chunying, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, saying in English that she “loves to see that”.
Probably means that the rumors that China will ask REDnote to separate the users are false.
https://x.com/i/status/1880655911712366792
11:38 AM · Jan 18, 2025
Logging off for the night but before I do-
https://xcancel.com/LailaAlarian/status/1880050755299877116#m
Can you imagine if there was a Rednote for Palestinians?
The Israeli Zionists, as distinct from “regular” Israelis, do have one for the Palestinians. They call it “RedMist.”
CNN suit.
Looks like they lost and then settled out of court before the big $ hit them.
Poor Fake Fapper! What will he do now? Go into business with Don Lemon?
They could tag-team a new What’s My Line show online, with audience interaction like those talent shows. /s
Losing wars tops threats to globalization by the davos elite to retrench and rally their embattled academic and business leader troops who were sure they already controlled the world and were too busy cashing in as they gathered in the shadows misinforming/disinforming the stupid plebes to notice otherwise.
There, kind of long for a headline but sort of fixed it
“GoFundMe Is a Healthcare Utility” is still germane, but it was published in Feb. 2024.
Biden in His Bunker hits the target squarely.
“There is no method to this madness; it is purely a case of an old man whose policies have failed taking out his anger on those around him.”
And Dem party itself seems to be bitter at all the deplorables who have failed them. And while many would object I agree with this, being a Boomer.
“The Baby Boomer generation has long claimed to be the generation that embodies a whole host of virtuous ideals. This is the generation that cut its teeth opposing the Vietnam War and pushing for greater personal freedom. In its twilight hours, however, this generation has revealed a much darker side of its personality. This raises the obvious question: are these final acts in the Baby Boomer play revealing the truth of this generation, the real instincts behind the lofty ideals? It is hard to think otherwise: we can, after all, only judge a tree by its fruits.”
With the Vietnam war on the way out those war protests–often more about the draft–faded all too willingly into the Me Decade. What the Boomers did have however was the energy of a country at the peak of its powers and this carried over into a creative explosion that has yet to be matched.
In the end America won this cultural war but the rest of the planet may be having second thoughts.
– ‘Honey, I forgot to duck’ – Jackson Lears London Review of Books (Anthony L). On Max Boot on Reagan.
Years ago when I was in grad school I came across one of the best discussions of Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony I’ve ever read. It was by Jackson Lears. I’ve been a fan ever since. Here he uses the excuse of reviewing a book by the miserable Max Boot to write what is one of the best essays on Reagan I’ve ever read. Not surprising, given Lears’ deep cultural understanding of why Reagan was the perfect front-man for his times. He even convinces me that Boot has something useful, if limited, to contribute to our understanding of Reagan. I wouldn’t have thought that he had anything useful to say about anything. An excellent essay, well-worth the time.
By the way, here is the Lears essay on hegemony. I think I still have at least two dog-eared and marked up copies in a file box somewhere in my basement. Maybe I’ll dig them out; I’m sure it’s still worth reading today.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1860957
Larry Johnson has got himself confused over the Russo-Iranian Treaty. It’s not the game-changer he thinks it is.
He cites Article 3:
“In the event that either Contracting Party is subject to aggression, the other Contracting Party shall not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor which would contribute to the continued aggression, and shall help to ensure that the differences that have arisen are settled on the basis of the United Nations Charter and other applicable rules of international law.”
This means what it says, as far as I can tell. The first half-sentence is the bare minimum that any treaty like this could possibly contain, and I imagine that the Iranians would have wanted more. The second promises, effectively, Russian support in the Security Council and the General Assembly for a settlement of “the differences” by the UN rules for peaceful resolution of disputes. What that means is that, in the event of an Israeli attack, Russia undertakes to rally political support for Iran and promote a peaceful settlement. That’s it.
It says nothing about military action, and nothing about Russian military “support” for Iran. Indeed, the text very noticeably stops short of saying anything that could be interpreted as that. The reference to Art 51 of the UN Charter is a red herring. That Article is just a footnote to the Charter that says that of course a nation doesn’t have to wait passively while the UN comes to its rescue, it retains the inherent right of self-defence that nations have always had. And the Iranians could ask for Russian support if they wanted to, and the Russians would have there right to support them if they wanted to. Nothing in this Treaty changes any of that.
Article 4, so far as I can see, doesn’t say that intelligence cooperation is already happening, it says that the countries “shall” cooperate in agreements that have yet to be written. But as Johnson obviously knows, nations trade intelligence all the time, without written agreements, including with states that they are otherwise at odds with. All this means is that the US and others are being put formally on notice that the Russians will pass the Iranians intelligence material if they feel like it.
BRICS member countries are China, India, Russia, Indonesia and Brazil in order of GDP. That is the largest country by far, and 5 of the 8 largest countries in GDP. These 8 BRICS countries are far larger in GDP than the G7 countries.
South Africa is also a BRICS member country. There are as well important BRICS partner countries such as Belarus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand and Uzbekistan…
The point is that these BRICS countries will deal with each other just as they wish, and Russia in particular has made it clear that from here Iran will not be isolated diplomatically or economically.
Thanks for covering this.
>”and shall help to ensure that the differences that have arisen are settled on the basis of the United Nations Charter and other applicable rules of international law.”
But wouldn´t you think this is also a necessary assurance to the Global South that Ukraine was indeed not a war of aggression and thus an outlier? On that level of officialdom not meaningless. To “build trust”. Eventually these agreements are written down and can be referenced.
As military goes – S-400 /SU-34 (and may be more) for Iran are not insignificant. Yet need not be covered in particular via treaty.
Martyanov’s blog (as well as “Sonar” I assume) – compared to how they argue when with other guests – I feel are also an amplifier for their own fans and readership. Which leads to more extreme comments and evaluations than either – Martyanov or Johnson – would privately concede or when outside their blogs.
Exaggerations are part of the “product” and the entertainment (which is a major part of this whether they admit it or not. Vanity and showmanship are part of this medium. Have to be. But that goes against 100% scholarship and 100% objectivity and 0%PR.)
I think that’s fair: this is essentially a political agreement, and seems to have a number of messages hidden in it for those with eyes to see.
The messages are there:
https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/1644368570141507584
ShanghaiPanda @thinking_panda
President Xi told a story to President Macron:
Chinese ancient musicians Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi’s friendship was strengthened by music. Boya played a piece of music that only Ziqi could understand, demonstrating that true friendship requires mutual understanding and appreciation.
11:56 AM · Apr 7, 2023
This story implies that in international politics, mutual understanding and appreciation are key to building strong relationships between nations. By valuing and respecting each other’s differences, nations can find common ground and work together towards common goals.
Despite having different political systems, ideologies and histories, both China & France are major powers with significant geopolitical and economic influence.
Both countries should seek common ground while respecting differences; together maintain peace and prosperity for both nations.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtH6VGWaEAEL0vA?format=jpg&name=small
Martyanov speaks of future security agreements that were announced and could very well be secret.
Yes, it is pretty weak sauce for those looking for a military pact, however it is very comprehensive. The Russians are not going to fight anyone’s wars for them, however they will help those who want to help themselves to independence. They could well have to convoy their sea trade eventually where it is out of missile range, can’t see sanctions stopping their slow ramp up even if they have to go unofficial.
Something like this is all in the implementation, given good leadership and goodwill this can transform Iran over the next 20 years. The question is will they get that 20 years, all depends if people keep taking the US Congress’s paper that long.
‘This means…Russian support in the Security Council and the General Assembly for a settlement of “the differences” by the UN rules for peaceful resolution of disputes. What that means is that, in the event of an Israeli attack, Russia undertakes to rally political support for Iran and promote a peaceful settlement. That’s it…’
This agreement, given the political-economic strength of Russia and the overwhelming strength of BRICS is almost certainly sufficient to protect Iran. Just as Russia is strengthened by BRICS, with no defense alliance necessary. How, for instance, is the United States with or without NATO and ANKUS going to contain a China in BRICS, let alone Belt and Road countries?
Speaking of BRICS, China was not part of this particular agreement at this time.
“China was not part of this particular agreement at this time.”
Thank you for clarifying. My intent is to understand and portray the ways in which China perceives relations among BRICS or Belt and Road countries beyond several free trade pacts. China does not do alliances.
Jury is still out on whether more of those BRICS + can be picked off… like say…Argentina.
Until Russia finalizes its SMO, it won’t be known how much game this will change.
I wonder if there might not be some secret annexes to that treaty that deal with some very sensitive points such as a combined US-Israeli attempted attack on Iran again. Here the devil may be in the details not published.
It is still a win for Iran. Remember that last time Iran was in a war (with Iraq), USSR helped Iraq…
As for military aid, if Iran gets some umph from the economic side of the agreement, it will have the money to purchase Russian proven military equipment. It would be also a nice finger given to the US, if US is getting dragged in such a war…
Re: Smart crows. I have seen crows move road kill, flat squirrels, into our birdbath and then return hours later to eat.
Suicides, new tactics and propaganda iPads: details from captured North Koreans expose new foe in Ukraine (Guardian)
Discovery of two injured servicemen sent from Pyongyang and disguised as Russian fighters blows apart myth that Zelenskyy’s fight is solely with Moscow
BP: Without clicking on the link, can you guess which Guardian ‘journalist’ wrote this in depth piece full of tidbits fed from the Ukrainian military machine.
I cannot make the link format correctly but here it is
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/18/suicides-new-tactics-and-propaganda-ipads-details-from-captured-north-koreans-expose-new-foe-in-ukraine
Yes, it had to be Harding. In the meantime, the Daily Mail, not to be outdone on the Mad Vlad propaganda, today ran a huge splash claiming Putin bathed in stag blood over the orthodox New Year, as part of a program to keep him eternally young. The same rag that has printed all sorts of articles about Putin’s failing health and being at death’s door for several years now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14299191/putin-break-sibera-moscow-mountain-palace.html
Harding? Seriously?
He must be burnt so badly by now.
Who is taking him seriously any more…
I hope for his sake the story will hold up longer than those 12 hours of THE TELEGRAPH and its photo-shopped NK women…
For now particular reason, the infamous interview from 2017 in which Aaron Maté destroys Harding:
https://youtu.be/9Ikf1uZli4g
Never gets old :)
Thanks.
There is Harding’s infamous “I am a journalist, I am a storyteller” – it can’t be both, darling…
Which brings me to the question:
How harmful to investigative and political reporting culture was the advent of New Journalism?
IPads do not appear to be somethong that Russians, let alone North Koreans, would be using in their military.
I thought for a moment that it was going to be Simon Tisdall.
re: Sam Biddle
Just from scrolling down his posts…
I won’t agree with him on his hate speech mania – but maaaan, MSM really would have so much to report on every single day – doing actual news. Yet none of that shit appears in the national media ever.
Re: Turley on Greenwald
Jury came back with a verdict and, as Turley predicted, found for the plaintiff. The settlement is confidential, but CNN did get its @$$ handed to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBbfw1I8_9U
This is just so perfect: clicking on the link to the piece by Michael Ignatieff – the most ineffectual of modern leaders of the Canadian federal Liberal Party – leads to a centrist thinkpiece with an archetypically condescending title (“The Adults in the Room”) which gradually fades into illegibility as you scroll down until you hit a paywall. To paraphrase another Canadian, the medium really is the message.
I think the irony is lost on Ignatieff that he has now become another long winded writer who fawns over his prose like the grandfather of the style, Conrad Black.
That’s a great comparison! Although I’m sure that it would hurt Iggy’s feelings.
“This is just so perfect: clicking on the link to the piece by Michael Ignatieff…”
Perfectly pretentious, perfectly mean-spirited.
To be fair or fairer, before becoming a neo-conservative or neo-imperialist, Michael Ignatieff was attracted to liberal thinkers and would ultimately write a fine biography:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/29/reviews/981129.29marcust.html
November 29, 1998
Both Fox and Hedgehog: Isaiah Berlin’s Big Idea was That There Isn’t Any Big Idea.
By STEVEN MARCUS
ISAIAH BERLIN
A Life.
By Michael Ignatieff.
When Isaiah Berlin died last year, obituary notices on both sides of the Atlantic were long, appreciative and respectful. Not all of them, however. Snipings from the ideological left and right made it clear that this philosopher and historian of ideas, who was also the chief voice of liberalism in the second half of the 20th century, would not depart unscathed. They were a reminder, too, that the middle ground on which classical modern liberalism stands is narrower now than most of us suppose, that it has shrunk as it has been contested, and that liberalism is indeed an embattled perspective.
Such an observation would have come as no surprise to Berlin. As he conceived of it, this view of the world included philosophical doctrines, political convictions and social theories about what constituted being human. He also referred to it as pluralism, and he never tired of setting it forth. In essay after essay, he delineated it as a minority view, standing outside of, and resisting and confronting, the mainstream of the Western tradition of philosophical beliefs. That tradition was, according to Berlin’s spirited accounts and summaries, formed in two heroic episodes: the first embodied by Plato and the classical Greeks; the second, the grand modern resumptions of the mathematical and scientific revolutions of the 17th century, played through in the philosophical and social theories of the Enlightenment. A number of interconnected presuppositions are organized into this mighty intellectual fabric. First, as in the natural sciences, ”all genuine questions must have one true answer”; in Berlin’s amiable formulation, the answers must be true for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Second, a reproducible path toward the discovery of these truths must be in principle accessible to everyone. Third, ”the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole.”
To be sure, opinions differed dramatically on how to find the right way: some found it in churches, others in laboratories; some trusted in intuition, others in experiment; some invested in visions, others in mathematics. All shared the fundamental belief that there is a system that weaves everything together. As Berlin remarked in a characteristic passage of galloping hyperbole: ”The answers must be known to someone: perhaps Adam in Paradise knew; perhaps we shall only reach them at the end of days; if men cannot know them, perhaps the angels know; and if not the angels, then God knows. These timeless truths must in principle be knowable.” Ultimately the grand narrative of culture and history would progress to the best of all possible worlds…
Thanks!
Yeah, mostly they start somewhere – until they make the corrupting deals necessary, which are kept secret or out of the public.
To quote the Coen Brothers’ “Incredible Cruelty” – Tenzing Norgay scene:
40 sec. (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85hkQCv1K0Y
I landed in cardiac ICU after the Tubbs fire and my Cardiologist told me he was seeing people five years earlier than he would have expected after that fire.
The ones that made it, as he put it.
Patrick Devlin, now retired.
One of the best MD’s I have encountered, he actually listened to me when I talked about my prior complicated medical history and took me seriously.
Everyone exposed to that smoke will experience the consequences for the rest of their lives.
After the chemical fire late last year near Atlanta, where no one will be held accountable I suspect as usual (that plant had a long history of such fires under different owners), I thought about getting a P100 with a chem filter, but mine doesn’t accept the cartridge, so I need a different P100 as well.
I let it go, but I guess this is a good time to revisit making the purchase. Who knew I’d need chem filters in addition to the regular that filters level 3 biohazards?
This year is gonna be lit.
Take care, Tom.
If this hasn’t been linked before this is good–from Mike Davis.
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Thanks.
I have learned a lot from his US coverage.
His accusatory tone on other areas however was not always of help, such as his “Holodomor”-talk or more complex geopolitical issues that might not have all been in his expertise.
Apodictic judgements are well received by communities and easily quoted of course.
I assume he was angry about what he saw was done to the people. And him not giving into money jobs was remarkable. May be you have to become relentless at some point to not go mad.
Anybody can only take that much. I think he once said something like “reading and teaching saved him”…I have the highest regards for this generation of US activists/scholars/reporters who know the “dirt”. It doesn’t make them saint, but honest. Sadly it is the generation that is now dying, naturally. Same in my spaces in Germany. Just last week a former editor and poet died, alone in his apartment. A great mind, no money, nobody taking care of him because he had no children, had always rejected the money-projects. So it goes.
In other news, ICC meets former ISIS and Al Qaeda leader.
https://x.com/IntlCrimCourt/status/1880268135099728193
#ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC met today w/ Ahmed Al-Sharaa & #Syria Foreign Minister @Asaad_Shaibani in #Damascus.
Prosecutor Khan grateful to Syrian authorities for open & constructive
discussions on building partnership towards accountability for crimes committed in #Syria.
Finkelstein called Khan “a sack of shit”…
see TC 4:30
Dr. Norman Finkelstein | International Law, The U.S. & Israel’s Weaknesses
https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/dr-norman-finkelstein-international-law-the-u-s-israels-weaknesses/
this was on Dec. 2 but it´s still worth the time (24 min.)
ICC (and its predecessors) is basically a tertorist organization by itself, I think.
Lindsey said that they were made for “them” and not for “us”. ISIS fits in the “US” gang.
That’s a bit on the nose that. That is like twenty years ago the ICC meeting with the original Al-Qaeda to talk about investigating the crimes of the people in the Twin Towers.
re: immigration / COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE
part 1 of 2 texts:
Immigration and its Discontent: Past and Present
By
James Phillips
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/01/16/immigration-and-its-discontent-past-and-present/
Wed or I’ll shoot: Inside the criminal world where young men are forced to marry at gunpoint – RT
Essentially, the woman in these situations is being forced at gunpoint as well.
GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now (archive.ph)
From 5 Feb 2024.
There’s actually a GFM right now for someone in the CC community Saturday Zoom, she needs funds to help with a deteriorating health situation.
Uniquely American. Can you believe not one of those gofund me campaigns even gives thanks to Obama?
What else is uniquely American? Someone is joining the Pandemic call tonight finally, and he said that he hasn’t had budget for a 4 hour call, but he found a Laundromat that has good coverage. He’s in his car.
This country is a joke.
Anyone else darkly fascinated by Donald Trump’s meme coin?
https://x.com/coffeebreak_YT/status/1880538404058005898?t=v6JrGmFm4y13RT_0OB-BUQ&s=19
I thought $ is going to be Donald Trump’s meme coin.
Trump’s plans could trigger liquidity crises across Europe and Asia – South China Morning Post
This part stood out:
“Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic, US companies and government agencies are still having a hard time getting staff to return to work in the office. There is very little chance of productivity bringing down inflation.”
1) They still want people to believe it was sitting in cubicles and not easy money that was most responsible for a lot of that “productivity”
2) Still butt-hurt about what happened to commercial real estate. But that shit was already previously creating problems with high rents before.
Taibbi’s latest. Public excerpt:
Goodbye to Joe Biden, and Whoever Was President the Last Four Years
The “Invisible Presidency” is an all-time criminal, and must not be allowed to flee
https://www.racket.news/p/goodbye-to-joe-biden-and-whoever
Jake “the snake” Sullivan seems to have been in charge of foreign affairs and it came out that a month or so ago he tried to get Biden to launch a military attack on Iran. Probably Blinken would have been in on this meeting as well acting as Netanyahu’s Secretary of State.
Capital One gives update on deposit issues as customers demand answers
Oops.
Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump (NY Times via archive.ph)
Liberal Democrats: whoops
And
How about that.
Excellent overview of the exceptional once in 144 years Maha Kumbh gathering in Uttar Pradesh; religious, political, cultural, economic, historical aspects included. The level of journalism in The Hindu sometimes amazes me.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/maha-kumbh-a-confluence-of-faith-and-culture/article69114141.ece
archive.ph works to read without a subscription