What Would Becky Buy? Los Angeles Review of Books. Anthony L: “I think I lost my faith when they started bringing acoustic guitars into the Mass.”
Operation Nietzsche Commonweal Magazine (Anthony L)
Superfast diamond-laced computer chips now much closer to reality thanks to ‘quantum breakthrough’ LiveScience
Newsom takes aim at dyes and ultraprocessed foods, long criticized by RFK Jr. Washington Examiner
#COVID-19/Pandemics
‘Very different to COVID-19’: What to know about the HMPV outbreak in China SBS Australia (Kevin W)
Health officials downplayed COVID risk by overemphasizing "underlying health conditions," leading many to drop their guard.
Most people have "underlying health conditions." Anyone can be vulnerable. Everyone should take precautions.
They are minimizing bird flu in the same way.
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) January 7, 2025
Long COVID Breakthrough: Spike Proteins Persist in Brain for Years(German study/earlier post)
but now with a New Year's disappointment for anti-vaxxers:
"Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine significantly reduces the accumulation of spike protein in the brain."https://t.co/IOo8VMwJt7
— Harry Spoelstra (@HarrySpoelstra) January 6, 2025
Climate/Environment
Biden Bans New Oil and Gas Drilling Along Most U.S. Coasts New York Times (Kevin W)
China?
“China is starting to offer developing countries subsidized access to scarce chips, and it’s promising to build local AI data centers,” Smith wrote. “The Chinese wisely recognize that if a country standardizes on China’s AI platform, it likely will continue to rely on that…
— Paul Triolo (@pstAsiatech) January 3, 2025
China to Curb Exports of Lithium Battery Tech Oilprice
Chinese ship ‘severs undersea cables around Taiwan’ Telegraph
A bond bubble is developing in Chinese financial markets and regulators are scrambling to contain it and defuse the underlying causes interest.co.nz
Koreas
Deadline for arrest of suspended South Korean president enters final day France24
North Korea fires ballistic missile as Blinken visits Seoul Independent
Africa
We’ve all seen Macron’s recent strategy of positioning himself as the provider of ‘straight talk’ and ‘unfiltered truth’ regarding the relationship between African nations and France. Clearly, he’s targeting a specific audience in the international community. But if African…
— RDC ElokoYaMakasi (@botelema) January 6, 2025
Too many ways to die: inside Sudan’s forgotten war The Times
O Canada
Trudeau’s exit starts clock on leadership race Globe and Mail
Woke Elvis Resigns Matt Taibbi (Robin K)
Another One Down: Anti-Globalist Maelstrom Sweeps Away Trudeau as Larger Storm Looms Simplicius. Right at the top, this piece propagates a widespread misperception about the effect of Trudeau’s resignation. It will set off a new leadership contest in the Liberal Party. It will NOT lead to new elections. Trudeau resigned to forestall that. So all this discussion of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as Prime Minster is wildly premature. See again this tweet that Conor posted yesterday:
If Trudeau resigns, it's to stop the non-confidence vote, and an interim leader will come in, maybe Freeland, and the Liberals will hold on to power until the election on October 27th, 2025.
About 80 MP's pensions count on it.
Reminds me of 1993 Kim Campbell when Mulroney left. https://t.co/4bAsVqQP8P
— Jason Lavigne (@JasonLavigneAB) January 6, 2025
Trump reacts to Trudeau resignation: ‘Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State’ Fox (Kevin W)
European Disunion
How Trump will expose Europe’s weakness Wolfgang Munchau, Unherd
Elon Musk’s European political meddling is ‘worrying,’ says Norway’s PM Politico
Emmanuel Macron joins growing criticism of Elon Musk in Europe Guardian. Never fight with a pig…not that I think much of Macron, but he should know that paying attention to Musk increases Musk’s stature.
Europe’s Summer Will Bring Worries About Next Winter’s Gas Bloomberg
Farmers’ convoys head for Paris to restart protest movement Reuters
Wake up Mats Persson – the companies are going bankrupt Aftonbladet via machine translation. Micael T: “‘Almost every fourth young person is therefore without a job in Sweden. And the only thing we have seen from Labor Market Minister Mats Persson (L) is that he appeared in Aktuellt at the end of November and said that the unemployed are lazy.’ Neoliberalism Rule #2 – go die!”
Denmark Decides to Change National Emblem Ahead of Trump Jr.’s Visit to Greenland TopWar (Micael T). I cannot verify, but if true, this shows the degree to which Trump is living rent free in some people’s brains.
Old Blighty
Starmer attacks spread of ‘lies’ on grooming gangs as he hits back at Musk BBC. Lead story in UK edition. Nowhere on the landing page, even when you scroll down, on the bbc.com edition.
Elon Musk turns on Nigel Farage and calls for new leader of Reform Guardian. I expect Musk’s interventions to backfire somewhat to bigly. Voters do not like rich foreigners telling them who to support.
This is going to be the worst year for restaurants ever Telegraph
Israel v. The Resistance
Is Gaza REALLY Gone? Norman Finkelstein Answers. India & Global Left, YouTube. Finkelstein for some time has been saying that the Palestinians in Gaza had lost, when that was a decidedly minority view among opponents of Israel’s genocide
Economic Protests in Several Iranian Cities: “Enough Warmongering, Our Tables Are Empty” Iran Focus
New Not-So-Cold War
What Does Russia mean by, “Demilitarize and Denazify?” Larry Johnson
Thousands without heating in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region, after Russian gas supplies cut CNN. Note the lack of agency. It was Ukraine that turned off the gas.
Turkiye
Turkey’s carrier battlegroup takes shape Asia Times (Kevin W)
Syraqistan
Syria monitor: 101 killed in battles between pro-Turkey, Kurdish forces France24
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks The Register (Paul R). Confirming my reflex to never never never never never never log in to Apple ID (as in synch to their cloud) or update any OS until absolutely necessary. I cannot stand this business model that equipment I buy outright is treated as jointly owned by the vendor.
Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me reddit (Paul R)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Global Economy Braces for 1930s-Style Unilateralism Bloomberg
US staggers into 2025 buffeted by week of attacks and looming political violence Guardian
Please click through to read the full tweet (hat tip Chuck L). This could as easily be a Class Warfare item, but it illustrates how systems and processes are breaking down and how people are getting chewed up as a result:
How badly broken is the Department of Transportation? Worse than even I imagined.
Today, a maritime academy classmate with called me and said, “one hand” – the secret ship captain signal for “I need immediate help”. His voice was raw. This wasn’t about the sea—it was about his…
— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) January 5, 2025
U.S. Postal Service worker fatally stabbed inside New York City deli, reportedly over food dispute NBC. More loss of impulse control. We see this at the top of the food chain with the new normal of talk/news show hosts talking over or even yelling down guests
Trump 2.0
Yanis Varoufakis: What to watch for in 2025 – Trump, the US dollar, and China YouTube
A battle is brewing over tariffs among Trump’s team CNN (Kevin W)
Trump backs massive single bill for taxes, border and energy Politico
“BadAss Grandmas” Pushed for an Ethics Commission. Then the North Dakota Legislature Limited Its Power. ProPublica (Robin K)
Immigration
Even the best Computer Science graduates with a 4.0 GPA can't get a job in tech pic.twitter.com/9sqzJznEV7
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) January 2, 2025
Our No Longer Free Press
U.S. District Judge rejects "Jews at Haverford" lawsuit over alleged antisemitism on college campus:
"I reject Plaintiff's embedded proposition that any anti-Israel speech is intrinsically antisemitic, because reasonable people acting in good faith can challenge decisions of the… https://t.co/xDqGtERoo1
— AIPAC Tracker (@TrackAIPAC) January 6, 2025
Paper Cuts Washington Post. More layoffs.
Collapsing Empire: RIP CIA Front’s ‘Overt Operations’ Kit Klarenberg:
In recent months, a remarkable development in the Empire’s decline has gone almost entirely unnoticed. The National Endowment for Democracy’s grant database has been removed from the web. Until recently, a searchable interface allowed visitors to view detailed records of Washington-funded NGOs, civil society groups, and media projects in particular countries – covering most of the world – the sums involved, and entities responsible for delivering these initiatives. This resource has now inexplicably vanished, and with it, enormous amounts of incontrovertible, self-incriminating evidence of destructive US skullduggery abroad.
The Bezzle
Where the next financial crisis could emerge Financial Times. The unknown here is how much is held by investors who are payment systems players (banks, securities firm) v. big investors like pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. If virtually all the latter, the result of large losses or failure of these funds to pay out would be zombification due to loss of fund wealth and thus income/assets of end beneficiaries. If there is non-trivial payment systems/dealer exposure (say via some of these deep pockets providing financial guarantees that proved to be no good due to losses on private debt funds), then we could see a good old fashioned crisis.
More on the above topic: Easy money from risky loans. What could go wrong? Seattle Times
Tesla is now fighting for its future Telegraph
Class Warfare
Americans are taught FDR was the hero of the Great Depression. For one historian, that’s erasure Guardian (Kevin W)
I'm a subject matter expert in a couple different fields and highly capable in numerous others, all essential to private and public sector stability and economic security.
My network is strong and my performance speaks for itself.
Yet, it is still an absolute grind to hustle… https://t.co/GKE0vR2JEE
— HUNTSMAN 🏴☠️ (@maphumanintent) January 6, 2025
Antidote du jour (Tracie H):
And a bonus (guurst):
Где же носит твою мать маленький храбрый воин.😲 pic.twitter.com/y3KOuLq38X
— Просто Женя… (@ehbymuY80nTJqxe) January 1, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“I find it worrying that those with considerable access to social networks and significant economic resources are getting so directly involved in the internal affairs of countries” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
With Starmer coming under attack by a powerful lobby, for guilt by association, in disastrous management of prosecutions for grooming,
Jeremy Corbyn could certainly reassure him that such tactics are likely to come back and haunt the accusers.
Those who live by the sword…
As if it’s something new that oligarchs meddle in politics either directly or via NGO proxies. And it’s especially absurd in this case, because all Musk did was say on his website that Stamer should resign. I guess we can talk about resignations only in case of Putin/Trump/Orban and other official enemies, our beloved leaders are off limits.
Starmer has got a lot to answer for when he was head of public prosecutions. He slow walked prosecutions of those grooming gangs until it got so bad that it could not be ignored anymore. And he was the one talking with the Swedes about entangling up Julian Assange in dubious legal procedures. And I heard some people say that he also gave cover for Jimmy Saville as well and sat on all the evidence. But the British elite thought that he was great which was why they got him a knighthood. Liz could have done everybody a favour and run him through with a sword instead of tapping him on his shoulders instead.
Starmer is also personally corrupt (hiding his expense accounts and receiving gifts for his wife’s underwear and his son’s apartment rental) and not very competent at covering it up. Just as his handler liked him to be. Scholz and Ursula VdL appear similarly compromised and stupid about it.
It seems they can’t even try to be discreet about it anymore. Why bother?
Their corruption is likely their primary qualifications.
With Starmer coming under attack by a powerful lobby …Jeremy Corbyn could certainly reassure him that such tactics are likely to come back and haunt the accusers.
Nice point.
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer is not facing a political lobby run by a foreign government prepared to fund a highly professional communications campaign with the full backing of JC’s bent frontbench along with rightwing backbenchers whose careers have been devoted to cheating and lying and betrayal.
This is obviously not the case when the accusers are the young women whose lives have been ripped apart by grooming gangs, and the more ordinary people talk about, the more victims will come forward, and even more people will talk about until we simply accept that it defines Starmer and the vote grubbing corruption of the modern Labour Party.
It is all the more damning when we remember that the extraordinarily brave Anne Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley, had to deal with charges of racism from her parliamentary colleagues and others, and faced death threats for giving voice to the horrors of child sexual abuse by Asian grooming gangs, along with her opposition to forced marriage and honour killings in her community, while Starmer sat calmly as Director of Public Prosecutions and kept as tight a lid as possible on the issue.
This quote from the BBC article got a chuckle out of me, Reporters were briefed Sir Keir planned a bold defence of his record and his government – and his comments were the most impassioned he has been in his time as prime minister.
When Bold and Most Impassioned are all you’ve got for bullet points on your press briefing…..
‘MenchOsint
Jan 7, 2025
@MenchOsint
⚡️🇫🇷 France’s president Macron insults African leaders
“They (African leaders) forgot to thank us, it’s fine, it’ll come with time … Ingratitude, and i know what im talking about, is a disease that cannot be transmitted to humans” ‘
Who is Macron saying this to? His domestic audience? Certainly not those African nations as they know how much of their wealth has been siphoned off to Paris. And France has been kicked out of how many African nations now? Four now? Maybe more? This is like Biden telling African nations how they should show America more gratitude because of all the work opportunities that they provided for them in earlier years. This will come back to haunt Macron for sure and I still don’t know why he said something so stupid like this.
This reminds me of the loss of impulse control line up above, but it’s no different than Borrell’s jungle garden language or Blinken’s gift of old train cars.
The Western elites are simply pouting when they aren’t treated as white saviors.
And reminds me of a certain set of people who would say to AA people who are descendants of plantation slavery that “they should be thankful their grandparents got a free boat ride to the promised land”.
By curious coincidence, Comrade Stalin once said that gratitude is a dog disease, i.e. one that humans aren’t supposed to catch. He meant that even if someone happened to have done him/Communism/the Party/humanity a favour in the past, that did not necessitate any special political consideration for that someone in the future. I have plenty against Comrade Stalin, but with regard to gratitude in politics, he had a point. Even if one could make the case that African leaders owe the French something, that doesn’t mean they have to show a special gratitude contrary to their interests today. Obviously Macron would prefer it if they thought otherwise. Short of manipulations like that, France’s leverage over them is steadily decreasing.
Unemployment tweet(s) per above, a personal anecdote from recruiter emails and conversations in the last half of 2024 was that companies in this region of South Carolina were still in hiring mode but the process was becoming more specific and highly selective. It seems apparent that those capable employees who jumped to a new role in 2022 chose wisely….
Moreso there has been a concerted move to encourage in office or upfront demand in office. Still, having a remote contract position is a highly valued role to my own circumstances , and I’ll guess my driving mile reduction has helped to add an extra year to my old Honda useful life.
Adding…watching for the worm to turn on the economy headlines and business news. Then I can laugh when I either read or hear that much of our media coverage is not biased.
I’ve not had a single call, LinkedIn message, or email from a recruiter in three months. It could be because I changed my profile to de-emphasize my work history and rewrite it to emphasize my late-in-life student phase. I basically gave the middle finger to tech.
However, I suspect that my info is still in some databases. The contrast with 2021 is stark.
The frequency of people beating on my digital profiles has reduced. I get around 5 calls a month now compared to 20+ in the last few years, only a few LinkedIn messages to deal with. The random texts and requests recruiters from incorrect industries have stopped.
This whole mess frustrates me immensely. We set these kids up for failure and hardship. We lied about the real numbers related to any given economy metric for years. Now that Trump’s coming back we’ll stop lying about one set of data and start lying about a different set of data. Why can’t there ever be an option to not lie about the important details that impact the lives of citizens?
But the bigger point here is one I’ve lived with for a long time. When it comes to employment, or a career, choose something that requires hands on contact and technical skills. If they can outsource you they will try to do so. But it’s hard to replace a plumber or a construction foreman or an electrician with a remote employee from a different country. It’s hard to replace an engineer who can diagnosis an issue with a machine by observing it in the field.
Not sure our glorious leaders will admit any of that though. Why should they? They mainly all work in fields where you have to be a highly credentialed and connected citizen. They’re protected for this kind of competition.
I’m much more concerned for my kids and their generation than myself. I’ve had a good run and can either re-invent myself for some more rewarding work in my 60’s, or stick out the IT world for a few more years and hopefully retire like my parents did. Keeping your health is the most important thing at my age. As long as that holds up, everything else can be improvised, and I am pretty good at improvisation having a background in music.
However, Wall St. is going to keep pushing for higher productivity and fake AI. There seem to be two paths to a career, the first as you say is to learn technical skills and marry it with something requiring personal contact. The other is to get credentialed and then schmooze your way up the ladder.
I learned to install hardwood floors. Was self-employed, and made a good living, for thirty years.
An instructor of a Programmable Logic Controller class at the local junior college stated the “hands on” case for job security about 20 years ago.
Some of the local economy is based on wineries controlled by PLCs.
He noted that workers could be harmed if control systems weren’t working correctly.
Liability concerns meant he had a local job as overseas or offsite remote control and troubleshooting could lead to local employee death or harm with no local oversight.
Fellow Chris and John, yeah, that’s about right. I’ll be fine. I’m worried for my kids and nephews.
My kids have all decided to go into things with real components and requirements. I think they’ll be OK but they’re probably in for a bumpy ride. I’d be surprised if we have fewer crashes during their lifetimes than I’ve been through since ’96.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about any of this. The same people who are planning our wars are planning our national investments and directing the economy. In both cases these people never stop to ask, “what next?” I guess Ricardo makes a lot more sense when capital can’t clear borders. Since we have people who can handsomely profit by destroying our country you’d think that maybe these geniuses would stop to ask how much off shoring, deskilling, reduced investment, is too much?
On the plus side I guess we’ll be treated to a whole generation of bitter, over educated, and impoverished young people who learned to code and are now stuck with students loans because given the option between following the law and abusing people, our tech overlords will double down on abusing the law and whoever they hire.
AI just makes it easier for them to do it. What a shame it would be if this army of angry young people decided to do something about the current state of affairs…
Tech hiring has been a nuclear winter, from what I’ve seen, since at least mid-late 2022. The situation has not improved.
Just adding my 5 cents here regarding the discussion around tech.
Non-native English speaker here(Greek), so please excuse any mistakes of use beforehand.
Been working in tech/software as a developer for the last decade, you’d say I belong to the millennial generation.
Got layed off in fall of 2023, along with half of the dev team from the startup software company I was working, had been there for 3 years.
Found another similar job, but not at a startup this time, in February of 24′. Still working there.
Maybe though, that’s only the case in the south of Europe/Balkans, as many tech companies/firms from northern Europe and the US have outsourced their work down here in the last years.
Probably it was easier for them I guess and with much less cost for their pockets.
But also, I think it made it compelling for us software/tech folks in my generation, to get a decent wage while being in tech, so we could try to live with some dignity in a failed state like Greece for example. That, or immigrate to Northern Europe for ‘better’ opportunities.
With what I’ve seen so far in the tech/software world though, and given the current state of affairs, I believe this bifurcation/crossroads of either going up the ladder or just opting out, is closer now than ever, at least for my case.
Just can’t bear the thought of being an employee for the rest of my life, serving an illiterate, incompetent and sociopathic PMC class.
I’m seriously thinking at some point in this new year to move away from the big city, try to unplug from the tech bubble/matrix and become a farmer.
I’m at the stage of life and career where I’ll be more accepting of whatever lies ahead. It is curious to observe and acknowledge how for example, finance roles that are not accounting broadly expect or require an intermediate knowledge of programming in SQL or in Python. This was seemingly not the case 20 years ago, so there have been iterations forward in reaching this level.
Being able to update or upgrade varied skill sets will no longer be a nice to have, but instead a need to have. I’ll have to adjust accordingly! And for the younger set of career minded adults I’ll suggest as well adding knowledge of power BI into your mix of professional abilities. Hey it’ll be like a 24 / 7 challenge, since if you will not someone else likely and surely will!
And the WSJ if anyone was curious
Unemployed Office Workers Are Having a Harder Time Finding New Jobs (via archive.ph)
“I think I lost my faith when they started bringing acoustic guitars into the Mass.”
Any historian of Christian music, from any era, must contend with the reality that one of the most important outcomes—the spiritual experience of the average listener—is going to be out of reach from the conventional tools of scholarship. Divine work cannot be quantified, and not even human testimony is a reliable dial
The “spiritual experience of the average listener” sitting in the pew listening to sacred music is hard to study is true, like any aesthetic response/interpretation of such diverse creatures as humans . I remember being emotionally stirred to the point of tears when listening to the Ave Maria sung by someone in the choir of a little church while on vacation many years ago, when I used to go to church on Sundays. No guitar, just a single heavenly voice lifted in worship.
It may be true that companies like CCM are just “machine[s] to gain as much money as possible by cranking out artists who can make money,” but ultimately how art, any art music, paintings, literature elevate the soul or cheapen it is to be judged by the listener. A guitar and sacred music do seem to be incompatible, especially when it reaches to point where it is a commodity like any rap, hip hop, jazz, rock song streaming through ever digital orifice of modern day life.
The history of music and the church would be interesting. As an example, up until the mid-19th century, every English church had a choir selected from the parishioners. For the priests they were a pain as getting them to sing those psalms in a pleasing manner was akin to herding cats and they had to contend with all the petty foibles of any group of people. But then mechanical organs became available and for those priests, they could do away with those community choirs altogether and all they needed was just one person to play those organs thus giving them much more control and less problems. But I think that something was lost with this and listening to guitars in modern churches is just more of the same.
This is the theme of Thomas Hardy’s novel Under the Greenwood Tree, made into a charming movie by the BBC.
I grew up Catholic in the Vatican II era and I was always jealous of the Lutherans who still had Bach
Spooky, I just got a copy of ‘History Today’ (Dec ’24) with the sub-headline “The sound of the Reformation: when the organ split the Church’
As an atheist this was memorable for me: Breaking Free – Martin Luther’s Revolution: A Square Dance in Heaven (BBC Radio 3) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ndv33
Pip Pip!
Hi Rev, good line there: “The history of music and the church would be interesting.”
The reason you hear so many “classical” pieces being named “Opus 4”, “Concerto in Bb”, etc. is because a composer who used a popular tune as the basis for a composition would be hung by the church for bringing “bar music” into the congregation. Composers got around that by giving their “variations on bar music” numbers instead of names.
Growing up in flyover country, every school day classes from the parish elementary school would sing the second Mass. Gregorian Chant. Full Latin Rite. From ~ aetat 12 – 14 my friend Bob and I would sing the first Mass, he playing the organ.
An older choir groupie, Chris, made a modest living restoring pipe organs across eastern Wisconsin. He even opened a drive-in hamburger stand featuring a rebuilt pipe organ with Great, Swell, Pedal, and ketchup. In the meantime Bob married a former nun, moved to Milwaukee and played organ for two or three parish choirs.
I left town to go to college, and then the guitars came. To make ends meet, Bob and Mary opened a sex shop, got busted, and around the age of 40 I learned that Bob had committed suicide. When I was sixty and my mom was in the small town Nursing home, Chris convinced her to give him money. Apparently the hamburger stand never really made it. Anyway, he told Mom that he had a friend who really needed money and who was guaranteed to pay it back because he was a Nigerian Prince. He even showed her the emails.
Fortunately, my still-small-town-adjacent sister was receiving Mom’s bank statements. Chris wound up busted, too :-(.
The hydraulic pipe organ emanates from the 2nd Century BC. The Western European bellows organ (air) was very popular in churches in the 10th Century. See: http://www.classichistory.net/archives/organ
Early Roman Church music was predominately Gregorian chant: tonal harmonies of fifth intervals. This was compatible with the early organs as the tonal scale they could produce was limited. Church organs were massive instruments that could produce loud (overpowering) sound, mostly in long, extended tones. (No riffing possible.) This was compatible with the glorious intent of the church service (Priest and patrons).
Today, centuries later, music instruments (including the organ) can produce a chromatic (12-tone) scale with instant response (riffing capable). While the acoustic guitar is a versatile instrument, it doesn’t produce the sustained, glorious tone of an organ or trumpet. (Unless, of course, it is electrified.) Church goers listening to an electrified guitar are more likely channeling Hendrix than the Holy Spirit.
I haven’t read it (yet) but apparently Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, before he became such wrote something of a history of the evolution of music in the liturgy of the Catholic church, treated it as equivalent to prayer, built up an entire theology around it in a book titled ‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’.
And now that piano scene in The Two Popes takes on additional significance, knowing this.
The historian of Christian rock music, Eric Cartman, showed how easy it easy it was to commodify the music many years ago ;)
Ha!!, A Christmas season in Andalucía listening to villancicos and the zambombas in the street for weeks would cure you of your whitebread musical tastes.
When I lived there, I attended the Sunday Eve mass at the local Oxnard, CA parish. They had a group of four musicians with Mexican guitars as accompaniment, including guitarron Mexicano to provide the bass line. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei in particular very nicely done. It helped that they had great singing voices.
The 11:00 had traditional choir, and a pretty decent organ for a smallish church.
I dated an evangelical in college, and she took me to a Michael W. Smith concert, but also to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting. The former was basically rock music straight up, and the latter was creepy AF.
My Grocery Outlet in Godzone plays exclusively evang pop music, and you just better have the word praise somewhere in your ditty, what if the big cheese caught you holding out on adoration?
There’d be hell to pay!
“Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me.”
A sign of things to come. Some may remember that advertising scene from “Minority Report”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ (1:02 mins)
So imagine this. You walk into a store and between your mobile blabbing everything and facial recognition technology, the store know exactly who you are and how much you can spend. So as you pass by a screen, you see yourself in a set of clothes which this store stocks. You go up to it and as you swipe, you see yourself in different outfits so you know how others would see you. When you are happy with what you see, you tap to purchase but don’t worry about details. That store would already have your measurements and banking details on file. I could very easily see this being something planned right now and the best bit? You don’t even get to opt out of this happening to you.
Wow! The implication is that this is either likely illegal, OR how sweeping their T&C’s are that nobody reads. I’m assuming it’s the T&C’s.
I am assuming that simply the act of walking into a store signals your assent.
Tailors and clothiers and such already do this, they’ll have your sizes and dimensions just by looking at you, and they’ll know what looks work for you and what not, can whip out entire wardrobes based on your posture, shape, size, height, personality. I seriously doubt AI would replace that sense of aesthetic, but I wonder if a whole world of bad fashion will ensue from AI-based terrible style choices, might even become the in-thing, or maybe fashion and style won’t matter anymore cuz everyone is equally bad.
Nevertheless, what you describe will happen because, damn, it’s such a major hassle to try on clothes only to find nothing looks good. More so if you’re one of those, like me, where every major clothing chain has nothing in your size (because you’re not a pre-teen stick figure).
Lol, nobody wants to see mrsyk’s ugly pan hawking exercise regiments and dispensary weed, especially me. On the other hand, the fraternal order of fuzzy-faced felines will need to get paid.
The beauty of this kind of marketing is that you can measure growing user dissatisfaction and then flip to negative ads associating the user’s face with rival brands/candidates/hygiene products.
You don’t need AI to stoop this low. This is exactly the same thing as when Scott Walker’s Wisconsin sold drivers license data to marketers so I could get ‘big and fat’ catalogs mailed to me. In fact, the junk mail showed up way before my drivers license did.
The real victims here will be online readers whose therapists have encouraged them to trust themselves.
>Operation Nietzsche Commonweal Magazine (Anthony L)
Despite living under a Fascist regime, Colli explained to his students that Nietzsche “is the anti-political man par excellence” and that his doctrine “aims for mankind’s total distance from social and political interests.”
Leo Strauss’s audio lectures on Nietzsche are fascinating to listen to, with their classroom setting and students reading sections and asking questions. I’m reminded of Strauss’ statement in one of those lectures that Nietzsche, though being “distant from social and political interest,” bears some responsibility for how his work was subsequently used by the Nazi regime.
https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/audio-transcripts/courses-audio-transcripts/
Is it ok if some of us are totally indifferent to Nietzsche’s “work” whatever its true nature?
“Despite living under a Fascist regime, Colli explained to his students that Nietzsche “is the anti-political man par excellence” and that his doctrine ‘aims for mankind’s total distance from social and political interests.'”
So in other words Nietzsche advocated a different form of sociopathy from the Nazi kind and then died insane in his sister’s attic. Maybe he was just wrong about everything.
Sorry but philosophers cannot fail. They can only be categorized as members of a class of “failed ones.”
The beauty of fascistic systems is that guilt is communal. “For the greater good” covers much.
Contrariwise, in Neoliberal systems, guilt is ‘outsourced.’ It is always someone else’s fault.
Never forget that self-reflection is impossible for vampyres.
Hear hear!!
I’m not a total Nietzsche super-nerd, but I would say sure. The catch is, to paraphrase the old saying about politics, Nietzscheanism may not be indifferent to you. Besides the rhetorical power, I think what ultimately keeps bringing people back to him, despite things like his weird issues with women, is that he still speaks so clearly to a lot of modern life.
Colli sounds really impressive so I feel weird challenging him, but what I have read of Nietzsche, I definitely wouldn’t describe as aiming “for mankind’s total distance from social and political interests.” That’s accurate if you mean politics in a (lower-case “c”) conservative or narrow, bourgeois sense yeah, but definitely not in the wider one. If anything, I wonder if that’s Colli (also in line with Leo Strauss like Zagonostra mentioned) loudly saying something untrue for the fascist censors and leaving his students to tease out the truth between the lines.
I don’t think he was a sociopath either; definitely reckless, temperamentally and in underestimating how cruel and insane people can be. While he refers to things like evil and cruelty to shock people though, I think he’s more like an atheist that likes to tease moralists with anti-social instincts who assume everyone else is malicious without a church or state scaring them straight.
I’m not a Nietzsche scholar myself, but I have read a book or two and some orts and scraps from him. He wrote a tome called “Beyond Good and Evil” and the sentiment he expresses there is, to me, very similar to the one expressed by Rumi in this short poem –
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.”
At a superficial level, the Sufi mystic and whirling dervish Rumi definitely does come across as a lot nicer than the stern Teutonic (and possibly syphilitic) philosopher admired by Hitler.
“stern Teutonic”
Nietzche always struck me as more manic than stern. And, of course, he hated or affected to hate all things German. He claimed to be a pureblooded Polish aristocrat completely free of the German racial taint, but that may well have been trolling.
I wonder if there’s any truth to the story of him going insane after he saw a horse being whipped and rushed over to protect it. As far as I can tell, that’s still in the air.
And Leo Strauss bears a lot of responsibility for how his work was subsequently used by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and the other neocons who continue to set the world on fire with their “noble lies”.
LMAO!!!! Trump – “Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State”
I’d love to see this put to a vote in Canada! I’m betting it would go down by a No vote of close to 85% or more. Only the wealthiest would not be able to resist the implied tax cut they’d receive, but I can’t see the average Canadian wanting to adopt average CURRENT American living standards.
Puerto Rico takes a deep breath, softly whispers “Godspeed”.
I’m alternatively amused/concerned with the latest rhetoric out of the Orangeman. Amused, because he’s saying the quiet part out loud – these places like Canada and Greenland are just resource grabs to him. He could care less about the people living there or whether they die. His viewpoint is no doubt neo-con friendly.
And it’s all part of Clown World. We should expect more of this to come.
However, part of me also suspects a deliberate strategy to demoralize foreign countries’ peoples to the point where they have no more will to fight for their own sovereignty and interests. Argentina comes to mind. The concept of a nation with its own culture, interests, and sovereignty increasingly seems endangered.
To be replaced by Megadeth, Inc.
‘Leavensraum’
or Vonnegut’s Ramjack Corporation.
Not Weyland-Yutani?
How fun would it be to put both Ramjac and Weyland-Yutani in your LinkedIn employment history section? Throw in Contoso, Inc.
And then wait for the recruiters to call. So, can you tell me more about your last role as manager of mergers and acquisitions at RamJAC, Chris?
How about putting down your last job as being in asset disposal with the Umbrella Corporation.
“Yes Mz. Smith. I was lead on the bio-mechanical assets coordination team for the Weyland Yutani merger. I would love to join your organization and help to “Build Better Businesses.”
I am going to put Milo Minderbinder as my mentor & patron, with the University of Brobdingnag as my alma mater, and see what offers I get.
Pip Pip!
My own long -ago abandoned page listed “Credential Factory” under College.
I could see Trump thinking that the International Rules Based Order being a good thing being based on the principal of ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own’. And he and Musk seem to want to be dealing with only far right leaders/governments like Milie in Argentina, AfD for Germany and Tommy Robinson in the UK. Musk right now seems to be wanting to push regime change in the UK and Germany which is no surprise coming from a character who once said ‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.’ It’s going to be a fun four years.
The International Rules-Based Order died in 2003 (Bush Jr./Iraq) and what we’re seeing now is the final rotting away of the corpse. Letting oligarchs run the show is now par for the course. As Frank Zappa famously said, paraphrasing: “the illusion of freedom will be maintained as long as it remains profitable. And then they’ll rip away the curtain and all you’ll see is the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Those are some major dots you connected there with Millei and Tommy Robinson. And you probably just forgot to put “international rules based order” in heavy air-quotes.
You would think that the international rules based order would be thoroughly discredited by now and yet you keep on hearing western politicians keep on using this phrase. It’s like a religious belief for them.
How do they still say it with a straight face?
Pre-knotted knickers.
Richard Feynman
Sorry to answer a question with a question, but the answer to yours is probably contained in the answer to this one:
How do ordinary people still worship them like gods, here in the threatening year of 2025?
Perhaps less like worshiping benevolent gods, and more like fearing capricious gods.
Terran humans are still fighting over the concept of “Divine Right.”
“Letting” is doing some work. Snow Crash meets Joe’s Garage.
“Fascism is as co-constitutive of capitalism as liberalism is. Liberalism corresponds to the operational aspect of surplus value exploitation in the core, whereas fascism corresponds to the operational aspect of primitive accumulation at its temporal and spatial boundaries.”
I think support for nationalists in Europe is not an effort to subjugate the Europeans who are about as subjugated as they can get but to help them begin to stand up. Empire, in my opinion and perhaps Musk’s opinion, is bad for all concerned because Washington sees only one thing–domination of the globe under its imperial aegis. Musk perhaps wants a world approximating the views of Alexander Dugin that each civilization has its own way of life, i.e., multi-polarity. The current “model” of “liberal democracy” is making a world that copies the culture of the United States with its “values”, i.e., money is God and place no other gods before it.
Trump is putting on an act. The flaw in his opponents is the assumption that Obama and the Dem camp and Joe “i’m running the world” Biden aren’t also putting on an act. A charge of unseriousness only works if those making it are themselves serious.
The general unreality at the top is how things like Gaza are able to continue.
Biden knows exactly what he is doing in Gaza.
Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal, Mexico – Manifest Destiny rises again. Don’t kid yourself, either, this isn;t just Trump. He has brought forth a deeply embedded American value that is widespread, and aligns perfectly with the MAGA message. All the NeoCons and liberals are pooh-poohing this, to their peril.
Why would the neocons and liberals pooh-pooh Manifest Destiny? That’s their religion, not the MAGA folks’. What makes the neocon/neolibs uncomfortable is when Trump makes these kinds of ridiculous statements which seem to highlight this worldview. I say “seem to,” because as Carolinian says just above, for Trump this is an act. It’s a WWF performance. He says stuff like this all the time to get a reaction – and he does.
I’d like to see the reverse voted on. I’d bet the prospect of universal health care would pull a majority.
Free stuff is always very popular.
Then drop by and catch my flu.
Rich kiddies certainly like inheriting free money from their rich parents.
The tech-grads-can’t-find-jobs TikTok video references this James O’Brien linked in post.
The narrator blames this on AI-based automation, which may be a factor, but companies are also becoming less willing to hire tech grads far in advance of their needs. This has been going on a while now. In a former life I recruited CS grads out of universities, and 90% of them are worthless–even from top schools. Of the 10% with some capabilities, about half will become solid performers. When growth expectations are high, corporations are willing to invest highly in sifting through the chaff in search of talent. When the economic outlook is less certain they are much more careful, and jobs for new grads dry up.
Excellent comment! But I go a bit further–academic CS (or any other academic subject) is not the proper way to prepare for anything–it’s a waste of money and time which is why I advise young people to avoid going to college after HS and get involved in real life first particularly since things are changing so fast. Learning to use AI creatively in jobs is the main opportunity for younger people right now, or so a young friend tells me.
“Learning to use AI creatively in jobs” is perhaps the wrong way to look at it. From what I read, AI is using ‘wet world’ Terran humans, not the other way around. The AIs take (steal) “real world” input and return garbage. This isn’t just a ‘slippery slope’ to Hades, it is a ski jump straight into the Inferno.
I’m not sure assigning intention to AI makes sense to me although I’m a fan of Jacques Ellul’s view of tech which gives presents tech as a part of the human brain that focuses on narrow problem solving without reference to higher level thinking or, another way of looking at it is that tech is the left-brain in the flesh, so to speak. Still, programmers are in charge of AI but may be swayed by corporate agendas. Still, some young people are using it creatively–I’ll have to ask my friend (who has mixed feelings on AI) if he feels he’s being manipulated.
That’s a fair comment. I learned computing back in the dinosaur ages when we used punch cards and IBM towers. (I didn’t learn all that much. I’m not the most numerate of people.) The young constantly amaze me with their facility in using “tech.” This makes me consider the proposition that “intelligence” is not strictly innate, but also heavily “nurture” based.
Stay safe.
There was no “solidarity” with factory work when it was offshored. So now when technology allows for higher skill set work to be offshored, there is no material organized resistance. I’ve read accounts of not only programmer/coder jobs being offshored, but xray technicians and even fast food drive through’s being received by someone in India or other English speakers on the otherside of the globe who key in the orders to the person making the meal (which will in time be relegated to machines). I wonder if hairstylist’s and like jobs will be the only ones left in a dystopian future
“And like jobs”
That reminds me; would a robo-colonoscopy require drinking all that “prep”? (There are those who have to take a double dose to be “clear”.)
pip-pip!
In the mid-80s I took an Information Systems degree at a “polytechnic” (now a university) designed to be aligned with what was applicable in the real world, i.e. lots of hands on programming, database design, business courses, systems design, testing design, team dynamics etc. I was stunned when I went to work and all the graduates from the “elite” universities knew lots of theory but not much else.
Later I became an IT manager and then executive and saw exactly the same problems from the elite universities, even graduates who did not know how to use a relational database. Lots of theory, but not nearly enough down to earth skills and lots of retraining time needed. The graduates we would hire from Eastern European, Russian, Chinese, Indian top notch universities all had really good hands on skills from the get go.
The Western elite universities are far too much into proving how “theoretical” they are than producing real world skills. Great if you are going on to do a PhD in computing but not for use in the real world. A CS degree is a professional degree and should be seen that way, not something “above” mere practical skills. Outsourcing and H1-Bs are also a major factor, but a really good development team aligned closely with the business will outperform a bunch of guys in India in a different time zone anytime.
You say that 90% of the CS graduates were “worthless.” Could you tell us how they were worthless? No work ethic? No knowledge of anything related to real life computer work? Something else?
>Collapsing Empire: RIP CIA Front’s ‘Overt Operations’ Kit Klarenberg:
The article ends with: The Empire is on the run.
I’m not so sure. Yesterday Dima had Paul Craig Roberts on his podcast, Dialogue Works. I like listening to PCR when he goes on the show because it contrast so starkly with Dima’s regular guest that are familiar to anyone who follows Judge Napolitano. PCR’s view is contrarian to most of the regular guest. Far from the Empire being on the run, it is solidifying it’s hegemony and it’s able to do so because of Putin’s “weak” response in Ukraine, with Syria being a special case of how Russia is not up to the task of tamping down on AngloAmerican actions across the globe. It may be that NED taking down access to docs is just a manifestation of shoring up some potentially damaging information. Perhaps the cyrptocratic nature of Empire necessitates scrubbing/deleting/re-writing history and events that may be problematic.
Of course, despite NED brazenly purging evidence of its vast operations from the web, that conniving continues apace regardless – now, covertly
Reminds me of Orwell’s 1984 “memory hole”
When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the building
https://www.youtube.com/live/NfxD_4DhxFo?si=jJyKDSJSJfFxxBGD
I think it is more of a draw.
The majority of Georgians were not interested in being Ukraine 2.0, the mask is off in Romania, and public opinion in Europe seems to be slowly waking up (the EU governance structure is democracy-proof, however). UK middle class seems to be faring badly. China is not transitioning very well to a consumer-based consumption economy. but they are moving up the value chain in semiconductors, auto manufacturing and commercial aircaft.
The caravan seems to be still moving on despite Syria
GlennLuk has posted repeatedly and in my opinion pretty convincingly against the “China is not consuming enough” argument. China counts their consumption very differently than most other countries and as a result it looks much lower than it actually is. Pettis and other China doom predictors should have at least checked their information source and assumptions after the first decade of being proven wrong.
https://x.com/GlennLuk/status/1862203556138557615
NATO’s regime change operation against Putin seems to have reached nearly 100% backfire, especially with Canada, Austria, and Romania. What countries are left?
Pollievre is not a Putin lover and he really doesn’t mind the genocide in Gaza…
And Freeland is all in for her Ukraine
Re: Trump and Greenland
If and when it becomes an American possession will they name a new capital after Trump?
Trumpville is too French….Trumpton?
(The original Trumpton)
Maybe they can take a leaf out of the Israeli play book and name a new settlement after him like how the Israelis came up with Trump Heights in the Golan Heights-
https://www.voanews.com/a/in-israeli-settlement-named-after-trump-residents-see-opportunity-after-the-election/7856308.html
Trumpopolis in the state of Trumpistan or maybe Trumpolitania
Donlandia?
There is something off about the flight student link. Too many missing parts. As a retired flight instructor yes there are some people who just can’t do it.
That said, there are thousands of flight instructors across the country. ANY of them can sign you off for being ready to get your check ride. Yes there are formal schools you can go to or go with a small or private person who’s a CFI.
I don’t understand this issue with state by state, flight ratings are federal controlled. My hours with instructor A at school B are completely transferable to school and instructor D. I had this all the time. Yes you had to check
Them out to see what skills they had and what they needed work on, but they didn’t have to start again. Flight Hours are hours. You put them in your log book and they are permanent records.
Private pilot’s license takes minimum 40 hours of flight time. Most do it in like 60-80. Commercial takes aminimum of 250 hours. That technically qualifies you to fly for an airline.
This idea of starting again and moving states and all that isn’t right.
I agree with your analysis. Something doesn’t add up. My two sons started pilot training with an independent training academy that required they take all instruction from them. Like most sons, they went off the reservation and went to another (less expensive) school for a course and were kicked out. Nevertheless, all of their training went with them. When I read the article I thought the young man might be worried about getting a degree but that has nothing to do with gaining your necessary training. (our youngest son did not have a degree during training). Also, you do not have to take any aviation related courses to qualify for a job. (oldest son got a degree in Sociology). Since our boys were lucky enough to pass the basic requirements for a pilot license on 9/10/2001, their job chances with the airlines went out the window. Their workaround was to join the Air National Guard where they began flying C-130s and later transferred to tankers. They loved it and made more money than if they had been hired as beginner commercial airline pilots. 16 years later both got jobs with the legacy airline carriers although 20+ years later they are still serving in the AF. If you are committed to becoming a pilot, there is always a way…it just might not be your first choice.
I don’t know about flight school, but this rang way too familiar for me.
My father was a general practitioner and was on the founding faculty for the local U department of family medicine.
I am an associate Professor and medical director for one of the core departments, a 23 year career in a niche subspecialty.
My son got a solitary B in Calc 2 when it was taught virtually. He keeps being told his MCAT is good enough to get admitted. For the second year in a row he’s been told he doesn’t have enough service. Presumably from the gap during the pandemic until after my father passed away from COVID disseminated intravascular coagulopathy 2/22.
I’ve also been told they favor first generation applications.
I’m looking at other opportunities and wondering if Ken Griffey III would be passed over so underrepresented families can get a chance to play baseball.
Could be COVID. Or one of our quad-demic things.
I would think his father would be able to judge. Vomiting is not a typical Covid symptom. Hank Paulson would vomit when stressed. I know one person who was so stressed he was vomiting every half hour, which led to a hospitalization.
Veteran airline pilot here, from Europe. Got the same feeling as Mica T. I understand that not all details of the story fit in a tweet, but some parts seem off. First, starting from scratch at a different school due to lack of an examiner. How does this make sense? Surely the waiting time for an examiner cannot exceed the time to do the training all over again?
Then the alleged Catch-22 situation: As Mica T states, since hours are transferable, I don’t follow the logic there.
On the other hand, I did hear anecdotal stories that unscrupulous flight instructors squeeezed excess hours out of their students, in order to log more hours themselves. Reason being that nowadays you need 1500 hours to qualify for an airline in the US.
So there might be some malpractice going on or the student might have difficulty to perform or both- no way to diagnose from afar. But the tweet surely doesn’t give a clear picture of the situation.
Could this be Ab Initio training with a contract and expected employment at an airline? Other than that, in FAA training hours are hours for pilots and mechanics, er, technicians. I had many fellow students in the aircraft mechanic school I attended that were able to bring in their training hours from other locations.
“Newsom takes aim at dyes and ultraprocessed foods, long criticized by RFK Jr.”
Unintentionally funny this. Gavin Newsom has been California’s Governor for about five years now and now suddenly, with Trump due to be sworn in very shortly, becomes a true believer in the dangers of dyes and ultraprocessed foods which aligns him with RFK jr who is in Trump’s cabinet. Methinks that Newsom is running fast to be at the head of the parade and get in Trump’s good books by being an ally of JFK jnr. He knows which way the political winds are blowing and he is not one to be left behind.
Sounds about right. We have entire grocery store brands and thousands of products with names (Whole Foods, Nature’s Best) appealing to widespread concerns about what we eat. If someone wants to get political all of a sudden, I just write it off as a gift or posturing.
(Remember: RFK jf uses organic locally-sourced artesianal bioidentical supplements, not the nasty steroids from big pharma. Identical to what his own body creates… but not enough I guess.)
On the Finklestein interview: I didn’t listen to the whole thing–too long; but I have listened to him elsewhere and understand his analysis which is very simple and has been my own since the end of the Oslo process undermined by Clinton. Israel is dominated by religious fanatics whose religion is not God but Israel and Judaism. Finklestein is a realist and sees the situation for what it is, i.e., a genocide and it is consistent with the goals and, to a minor extent, the rituals and policies of ancient Israel, i.e., entitles Jews to commit genocide against non-Jews.
Palestinians are doomed and have been since the 90s. This fake notion of a “Palestinian State” has not been even a remote possibility as I knew in the 90s. The whole idea of international law has been negated chiefly by Israel and backed up by the USA which copied Israeli contempt for the law since then. At least we can say that the Washington inhibits Israel from building ovens to roast Palestinians, not for moral reasons, but because it would look bad and inhibit the ambition of Washington.
The reasons Israel hasn’t built gas chambers are:
1. Their soldiers are evidently monstrous enough to kill civilians directly and enjoy it as a sport. So no need to industrialize it to spare IDF of PTSD.
2. Too hard to hide and might be slightly tricky for Western regimes to explain away (though they will, just as they continue to speak of rapes and beheaded babies even though Israeli prosecutor now stated that there were zero rape claims).
3. Too hard to capture sufficient civilians to make it worthwhile. They haven’t captured sieged and zero air defense Gaza in over a year. Compare that to their effortless advances in earlier “wars” and against Southern Syria.
Emma,
Two years ago I’d have viewed your three reasons as satirically biting commentary – now I accept them as absolute truth. Everything reasonable people would view as red lines have been crossed with complete impunity and bolstered by western media. There is no limit to what the US and its rabid proxy fellow settler/colonizers will do.
I think the point is and has been by the US and Israel over the past few decades is to cross red-lines as a pleasure in itself. I’ve known people like that in covert ops who take pleasure in crossing moral lines–but they were just the grunts so to speak.
Maybe. I would caution against taking Finkelstein as a realist. He just doesn’t know Israeli or Palestinian societies that well, doesn’t speak the languages and seem pretty ignorant of the current conditions on the ground (he considers the Gaza resistance forces to be essentially irrelevant when they’ve fought back and exacted casualties for 450+ days and might have had a chance but for Syria – not just the current loss but Assad government’s unwillingness to allow any attack against Israel to be staged from Syria – otherwise the Yemenese troops might have liberated the Golan Heights and West Bank by now.)
Conspiracy is an excellent made film abaut the Wansee conference:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266425/
In which one finds out that German soldiers got PTSD from shooting at and killing unarmed and half naked Jews from all over Europe…
When even Nazzzzies look better…
Those Nazis who got PTSD (and there really was epic amounts of it and alcoholism in those units even or especially in the einsatzgruppen) were shooting naked men, women, and children in the back of the head and neck for hours at a time, often over several days at a time in front of gigantic burial pits. Unlike with the soldiers of the IDF, there was no separation from the act of murder, nor any excuse ultimately and easily acceptable emotionally to their acts; using bombs, shells, missiles, drones, disease, thirst, and starvation to commit mass murder allows for an emotional separation from their acts.
There are undoubtedly many Israelis suffering from PTSD now with many more to come as their subconscious loses its ability to suppress the memories of past actions, but for now, I suspect that it is not quite the problem for the IDF as it was for the Wehrmacht. However, most people simply can’t remain truly mentally healthy after committing a certain level of violence especially if they ignore it. It might take years or decades, but it comes out. Somehow. If I live long enough, it will be interesting to read the articles, books, and documentaries on the IDF’s in particular and Israeli society’s in general reactions to what they did because there is going to be emotional blowback no matter how much they deny the evil that they did.
It’s not the physical separation issue. The drone operators go for double taps against rescuers. The snipers aim for the heads of little children. The bulldozer drivers run over hundreds of Palestinian bodies, dead or still alive. They film themselves celebrating their war crimes large and small.
Are there some PTSD cases? Maybe a few, though the accounts suggest that they’re having more problems with being in combat for a prolonged period than with killing civilians.
A child imploring her classmates to acknowledge Palestinian suffering is nearly lynched and kicked out of school. This is repeated for the very few Israelis who are brave enough to still speak of Palestinian humanity.
I really like your comments Emma.
1 caveat I’ll add: that the Israeli soldiers (and people) are currently not that affected by PTSD from killing babies, doesn’t mean it won’t come.
I treat people with PTSD and childhood trauma. I’ve worked with a number of ex-special forces guys who killed civilians in Afghanistan. At some point the delusions that led them to be able to kill mothers and babies dropped, and their innate human nature reasserted itself. Years later it is the faces of these civilians (as well as combat horrors) that wake them up screaming at night.
Some idf will go the graves with their moral righteousness and ethnic superiority still protecting them. But these are just tissues of thought. Trauma exists in the body, and mental beliefs do not change that. The mind may believe it was right, but the body knows something terrible was done. For the majority, I suspect the piper will need to be paid.
Of course none of this helps the genocided population. I only add it for academic interest.
[I no longer accept clients with this type of history. It’s not something I can fix in them]
Also:
4. Too similar to the death camps of WW2.
But I think they will, if they haven’t begun already.
Perhaps. They’ll dump what’s what’s left of the population into the Sinai, Jordan, and possibly Southern Syria, in a series of high surveillance holding pens where they’ll try to eventually ship them off to whoever America can force to take Palestinians.
But how much more run way does the American empire have in West Asia? Because once America is gone, Israel will be as well.
Israel is the instantiation of the dark heart of America
100%, everything the US stands for and was built upon.
The ghost of British Empire demurs.
Just the most brazen recent episode, but only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the darkness of the American Empire, which started with killing/enslaving tens/hundreds of millions of native Americans and African, made great fortunes in getting the Chinese addicted to opium, and killed millions in their various colonial wars in the Philippines, Korea, etc.
“Justin Trudeau’s exit shuts down Parliament, starts the clock on spring election”
Since there won’t be an election as Justin simply resigned his position as the head of the Liberal party, it could very well be that it will be somebody like Chrystia Freeland that becomes Canada’s next leader. But still, it is nice to see that the Zelensky Curse is still working overtime-
https://xcancel.com/RT_com/status/1876087146307817672#m
Z, “Who will pay?”
“The Zelensky Curse.” King Tut has a competitor. / ;)
Allistair Crooke yesterday on Napolitano said with Syria gone, Iran is now facing a new paradigm – the sane one Syria succumbed to which strangulation by sanctions. He suggested Iran must face up to this and change strategies. She might consider altering the paradigm by attacking Israel but this time with MAXIMUM destruction and pain. I have long believed Iran past attacks were weak, fake, pretend attacks that grestly weakened her position and that invite opponents who think like Israel & US to interpret that as weakness and unwillingness to properly defend one’s self, thus providing zero deterant
Economic Protests in Several Iranian Cities: “Enough Warmongering, Our Tables Are Empty” Iran Focus
Real war, not just warmongering?
Real war against Iran is already here and has been for some time.
Yes, and when Iran gets it’s complement of mobile Oreshnik’s after Jan. 17, the ‘real’ war will be on.
Iran would have more career in smacking the Emirs for sidling up to the US/Israel.
Otherwise, I am not sure Napolitano’s guests should trot out the domino theory for the Shi’a sphere of the Muslim world.
Syria may (have) be(en) the resistances version of (too rotted to save) S. Vietnam.
Iran Focus seems to have a lot of bad news about Iran.
Both Iran and the Houthis get good marks for effort, but at some point they have to actually hit something, meaning something strategic that causes real damage rather than just bruised feelings for Israel. The Israeli air force never seems to lose any of the jets they bomb everyone with, and that’s like 90% of their military capacity. Either they are keeping them in hardened hangars or taking some other measures to protect them…or the Resistance is just plain missing with everything they launch.
They didn’t have to do anything. Everything they’ve done had based on moral obligations to defend Palestinians, ditto Hezbollah.
Meanwhile actual Arab Sunni governments and a significant portion of their Al Jeezra brainwashed public are cheering for the HTS headchoppers and still trading with Israel. Egypt, Jordan, and the PA worst of all.
Houthis, I think, have already done the one actually important thing they could have done, which was disrupt Red Sea shipping. That did more harm to the Israeli economy and morale than a thousand well-aimed missiles.
That aside, admittedly I am far from being a missile warfare expert, but I can’t help suspecting that if they could actually hit something important reliably, they probably would have by now. Does it really seem credible that Iran could cripple Israel with missile attacks and is holding back, especially when Israel keeps hitting strategic targets in Iran? Are they afraid Israel will keep doing what it is already doing, or that America will start helping Israel even more than it already is? Maybe they could be doing more, but I suspect not that much more, not enough to be worth even those limited risks.
My money now is on Iran forging ahead with their nuclear bomb program so as to have a seriously credible counter threat to the Israeli nukes. From what I have seen, the present government in Tel Aviv is delusional enough to be more than willing to go down in a nuclear fire that will incinerate the entire Middle East.
While there may be protests in Iran, that article was a little dubious. There was this in an attempt to make a point –
“The expansion of economic protests comes as state media reported that Iran’s monthly minimum wage, which was approximately $113 in early 2024, has dropped to around $88 in the final months of the year due to ongoing currency fluctuations in January.”
Read that quickly and you might think Iran had lowered wages. But Iran does not pay people in US$ – it’s just that the US$ has increased in value vs. the rial. That’s also a very confusing sentence – last I checked January was not one of the final months of 2024.
Also, according to this, Iran Focus is not based in Iran, but in the UK – quelle surprise! And no sources of funding are given – imagine that!
Yves and others have the financial expertise so I would definitely be interested in a correction if I’m wrong. But AFAIK, just like you said, the USD-IRR exchange rate is another one of those zombie propaganda points about Iran that pops up a lot. It sounds ominous at first, but then doesn’t make sense once you think about it a little.
The sanctions between Iran and the dollar-based global economy are total enough that a direct exchange rate really doesn’t mean much. There are so many layers of money-laundering and sanctions-busting involved that even arbitrage through a third currency is limited. It’s like the forex version of a penny stock, and just like a penny stock, the market is almost entirely speculative, which is why it fluctuates wildly on news. There may be some Iranian households that still convert their savings to dollars (which is arguably much worse from the Iranian government’s perspective), but I think the extreme fluctuations and conversion headaches ironically discourage that.
The government does still set an official, soft-peg to the dollar for a few things, but I’m not entirely clear on how those work. I think they’re tied to the few exceptions in the US sanctions? If so, that sort of implies the higher government exchange rate is actually more the “real” one in the sense of money really being worth what it buys.
On the bit about January being towards the end of the year though, that might actually not be wrong. If they’re referring to the Iranian calendar, the new year happens on the spring equinox.
But an attack by Iran (cheered on by much of the world) on Israel would need to be calibrated/ targeted to take out most of Israel’s military while avoiding civilian deaths as much as possible, in order to avoid triggering Israel’s Samson Option, or similar response by the US. I would think that more missile defense is being rushed to Iran from Russia, so that an attack or retaliation by Israel can be minimized. In which case, Iran would seem justified in attacking Israel, as preemptive strike and as response to the on-going mass murder of Palestinians. That said, I think any escalation of hostilities by either country almost guarantees Israel’s resort to nuclear weapons. Can’t see Trump or Biden seriously objecting in the event.
Just writing this makes me realize how the world has changed in a year and a half. Meanwhile, the pretense of normality continues here in the USA, the belly of the beast, and where it all begins.
File under Class Warfare. Jimmy Dore, utube, ~16 minutes.
THIS Is Why Steve Bannon TERRIFIES The Establishment!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U6yCydhGJ0
Funny thing about Jimmy Dore, is that I’ve stopped listening to him when I started a Twitter account. It seems that all his material is garnered from Twitter and I can get the same info in a fraction of the time in which he covers it.
His appeal has worn off, maybe it has something to do with his sophomoric interplay with his regular side kick, Kurt Metzger. I still respect him bringing the internal contradictions of empire to a wider audience.
Yeah, Dore’s style isn’t for everyone, imo. His info is solid. So there’s that.
Ah, twtr. Musk has added a new wrinkle. / ;)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-announces-changes-as-too-much-negativity-being-pushed-on-x/ar-AA1wXF5N
Not on Covid.
more changes coming to twtr.
Whitney Webb on Jimmy Dore show hosted by the Due Dissidence guys. utube, ~11+ minutes.
Musk Building X Into MASSIVE Surveillance Tool! w/ Whitney Webb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fD5rRG4OU
“US staggers into 2025 buffeted by week of attacks and looming political violence”
This Guardian article from today’s Links sounds more like an entire X/tweet from @gathara.
Taibbi’s latest, no paywall.
Why is Russiagate’s Origin Story Redacted?
In a parting gesture of defiance, the FBI releases a long-awaited document, blotting most of it out. Journalist Aaron Maté explains why the Bureau’s FOIA follies matter
https://www.racket.news/p/why-is-russiagates-origin-story-redacted
Mini-Zeitgeist Report
Tooling around town in the eternal search for “affordable living,” I observed numerous ‘homeless’ people wandering the streets.
With the cold weather making itself known with a vengeance here in the North American Deep South now, it is no surprise that the local “Homeless shelters” are full to capacity. Even the ‘ravers’ are hieing themselves to the warm places, and enduring the obligatory sermons in expiation for their myriad sins, one of which is not having been born with fur coats. Even our meowser has come inside to sleep; she voluntarily trots outside again when the temperature gets above freezing.
As a sign of the times, State Security Version, I was in the queue at the “convenience” store to pre-pay for petrol and a man in front of me was denied the right to purchase some beer because he did not have a picture identification card. This was a fifty-something in decent looking shape. I leaned over and asked if I could help with the identification issue. “NO!,” the clerk almost yelled at me. I did not evince anger and asked her, “So, you would get into trouble?” “Yes,” she replied in a calmer tone, “Everything I do is being recorded and run through some sort of automatic screening process. I could lose my job.” Thus doth the Panopticon creep into our daily lives.
Stay safe.
Its a bitterly cold day on skid row in Mammoth with wind gusts up to 70 mph forecast, lotsa human popsicles on the slopes.
Pop-sicles. Was that a Stealth Dad joke?
Describes the denizens of the biker bar down the road.
Gadzooks! No “Dirty Shirt” bikers in that place I warrant.
Whoa, wait, is it winter?
200-acre fire erupts in Pacific Palisades, evacuation order issued amid strong windstorm: WATCH LIVE
https://abc7.com/post/brush-fire-erupts-pacific-palisades-threatens-structures-amid-powerful-windstorm/15772178/
Or does LA just get wildfires year round now?
No rain to speak of in the SoCalist Movement the past 6 months…
@ambrit, 11:29 am
Well… about 15 years ago when I was in my late fifties I was asked for my ID at O’Hare airport in Chicago when buying a beer before a flight. I told the barman I took it as a compliment. Clearly they had a policy of asking everyone for ID. I didn’t really know what to make of it.
Where I live the 7/11 cards everybody buying alcohol. The supermarket doesn’t but it may have age info connected with people’s discount cards. Not sure why, but my guess is that alcohol sales have to be recorded and/or reported with some sort of age verification.
California now requires a documented date of birth for all liquor purchases. I’m no longer flattered. Coming to a ‘convenience’ store near you.
Last year, back in Outer Pentagonia, I was carded at age 77. I think the clerk typed a few digits of my driver’s license into the register/terminal. That way, if some kids get drunk on the store’s booze, the store can possibly shed the penalty onto the of-age provider.
This concerns me because I probably have a record as a serial corrupter of the young.
Yo, Socrates! / ;)
“… a serial corrupter of the young.”
You worked for the Pentagon in Public Relations, Hollywood meme propagation, recruitment?
The other dimension of that “few digits of my driver’s license” is that this would be data gathered for a database concerning alcohol consumption. Lots of “fun” can be had with that information.
I can imagine the dialogue in my trial for “Thoughtcrime.”
State Prosecutor: “So Citizen, can you tell the court when you ceased drinking to excess?”
Citizen ambrit: “No, I do not recall drinking to excess.”
State Prosecutor: “Ah, so then it is possible that your protestations of innocence rely on a faulty memory. Admit it now. You do not even remember committing the crime because you were drunk at the time! The records of your alcohol purchases from your Permanent File indicate the probability. As any competent Attorney will tell you, intoxication is no defense.”
Citizen ambrit: “Oh well. Fair cop. I guess it must have been the effects of those Covid vaccines I…”
State Prosecutor: “Your Honour! I move that the last statement of the Accused be stricken from the record. The Coronavirus vaccines are approved medications and thus immune from denigration, question, or obloquy.”
Judge: “So ordered. Citizen, remember the proprieties. State approved medications are above reproach. Do you wish a second charge of Social Subversion to be lodged against you?”
Citizen ambrit: “What? Er… Now I really do need a drink!”
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1876418690385928580
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Indonesia joins BRICS as a full member, on par with China, Russia or India.
https://reuters.com/world/indonesia-join-brics-bloc-full-member-brazil-says-2025-01-06/ *
This is a huge addition: 4th most populated country in the world, projected to be the world’s 4th biggest economy by 2050.
Which means that according to my calculations with the addition of Indonesia BRICS is now approximately half the world’s population (vs 10% for G7) and 40% of the world’s GDP PPP (vs 30% for the G7).
* Indonesia to join BRICS bloc as full member, Brazil says
7:00 PM · Jan 6, 2025
It is also conveniently located. Good choice!
Regarding the article: “Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine significantly reduces the accumulation of spike protein in the brain.
Well, beware both the virus itself and our friend, the vaccine. Here’s a paper from 8-23: ‘Spikeopathy’: COVID-19 Spike Protein Is Pathogenic, from Both Virus and Vaccine mRNA
Here’s my favorite line from the introduction: “the spike protein—both from the virus and also when produced by gene codes in the novel COVID-19 mRNA and adenovector DNA vaccines “…….. then paste how the spike protein accumulates in the brain from the linked article. It couldn’t come from the vaccine because Pfizer says so.
I read this when it came out, and it seemed like the claim was that vaccinated patients had less accumulation of spike protein. All of the subjects had had covid, so the study casts no light on whether SpikeVax™ alone could cause spike protein buildup, nor on whether vaccination after the fact could reduce accumulation. In short, the Pfizer plug in the press release was mostly product placement.
Mice are not humans. But what I want to know is why they did not comment on vaccination status in the human studies they elaborate on in the first part of the paper?
Data-geeks might enjoy chewing on this for a while, as the authors illustrate the many difficulties of sorting good data from bad.
For us laymen, punchline below:
How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction
Overall, we conclude that unless rapid and significant reductions in global oil demand are achieved by political measures to tackle climate change, the resource-limited oil supply constraints identified in this paper will continue to have increasingly significant economic and political consequences, and can be expected to have significant impacts on sustainability however defined.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666049022000524
Taken hand-in-hand with the post below that was run in “Links” last week, it’s apparant that
we’re screwed“this is as good as it gets.”The Depletion Paradox
https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-depletion-paradox
“Political consequences…”, my take:
• We hang on to Eastern Syria.
• Israel begins oil and gas production off Gaza.
•Russia’s resources become truly irresistable, so we nuke ’em.
•Canada resists statehood; we invade.
•US “regime-changes” Denmark, gets Greenland as token of appreciation from new, pro-west government (Arctic nation has no active oil fields but U.S. estimates there could be 17.5 billion barrels undiscovered https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greenland-oil-1.6105230 )
Oh, so the US does know what genocide looks like after all? Just selectively.
Sudanese Paramilitary Group Committed Genocide, U.S. Says
I understand that you are being sarcastic, but it must be reiterated that the United States does not recognized warcrimes of its client states especially if it is involved even peripherally. For example, read about the Jakarta Method or the Mayan genocide in Guatemala. Gaza is just the latest incident.
Any recommended source on “the Jakarta Method”? I know about G30S, but I’m curious about the role that the US played.
During his first administration Trump provided concrete material benefits to a lot of Americans, will he do so again?
His position on H1-B visas says no, which is, IMO a serious mistake.
We have one pandemic raging uncontrolled and ignored by TPTB and in all likelihood another on the way.
Too many critical systems are on the verge of collapse and with the loss of societal trust systemic failure is a real possibility in 2025.
As much as I do not like President Trump, the Orange Man Bad, I am in the weird bind of also believing that he just might be the final, last hope before a collapse, if for no other reason than he seems to be less welded to sheer greed* and/or blind ideology than most of the elites. Also, he might be concerned about a legacy, which means meeting disaster head-on. The United States has been lucky to have leaders who meet the needs of the moment when it gets bad.
*there is greed and then there is greed, if that makes sense.
Not sure about greed but I have always thought the first and final real argument for Trump is that he is independent from the US elite political consensus, which includes some very stupid and/or evil notions indeed. The problem is that he is not independent from the US elite itself, so most of that advantage ends up being very theoretical. He may not be as blind in their particular way, but he will let himself be led by the blind most of the time.
Plus he probably realises if he strays too far from the desired policies, he can be whacked and replaced by VC creature Vance.
My most tinfoil belief is that the Routh assassination ‘attempt’ was a message to Trump.
” Drill baby drill” will just lock in the ongoing carbon skyflooding disaster even more locked-infully.
Does Trump offer a final last hope of some other sort to offset “drill baby drill”?
What could go wrong? https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Shadow-Banks
Regulated banks have roughly 2x the capital they had in 2008, but that wont help much if lending just migrates to unregulated shadow banks.
“Mice vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine showed lower levels of spike protein in both brain tissue and the skull’s bone marrow compared to unvaccinated mice. “
And what was their overall mortality? Asking for a friend.
an aside: I’ve been mostly following the US and international political links for a long time. This year I think I’ll be following the US and international financial story links more closely. Not sure why.
So thanks again to NC for all the financial links, for the Michael Hudson posts, Nick Corbishley posts, and Yves financial posts,
Apple: file under big brother or big tech.
Apple’s $95 million Siri settlement could mean a payout for you – here’s how much
A class action suit contends that Siri recorded and shared Apple users’ conversations – and Google is under fire, too.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-95-million-siri-settlement-could-mean-a-payout-for-you-heres-how-much/
“Known as Lopez v. Apple, Inc., the class action lawsuit was filed by three plaintiffs who alleged that Apple programmed Siri to intercept conversations even when no hot word, such as “Hey Siri,” was spoken. Further, the plaintiffs claimed that Apple violated their privacy by sharing recordings of the conversations with third-party contractors.”
>Is Gaza REALLY Gone? Norman Finkelstein Answers
A UN report has said the 90%+ of Gazans have been displaced and are living, at best, in tents. That’s 1.8 million. They have no drinkable water, precious little food, and no sanitation. The medical system has been destroyed, 1,000+ medical workers killed, Doctors arrested. The infrastructure has been crushed. Finkelstein says it would take 15 years to clear the rubble. How long can human beings survive such conditions?
I don’t know where such estimates come from, but people in Europe after WW2 didn’t live amid rubble up to sixties. It all hinges on Israel being able to block any recovery, but if it will be up to them, then the rubble will be there as long as any living Palestinian remains hiding in it.
re: Woke Elvis
Oh yeah. The generation of women feminists I knew saw that shtick as either
poser, or is that ‘posuer’, or as predatory. The feminists I knew back then mocked that self-centered male “I’m a feminist” shtick, and for good reasons. / ;)
re: EV sales – GB vs. FRG
BERLINER ZEITUNG
Great Britain overtakes Germany in electric cars: “Habeck has destroyed the market”
The demand for electric cars in Germany has fallen dramatically in 2024. Even the British now sell more electric cars than the Germans. Why is that?
https://archive.is/gI6r0
“Demand for electric cars has declined steadily over the past year. According to new data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), the number of new registrations of electric cars in Germany in 2024 fell by 27.4 percent compared to the previous year. The share of electric vehicles in all newly registered vehicles fell by five to 13.5 percent. The traffic light government’s goal of putting 15 million electric cars on German roads by 2030 thus seems increasingly unattainable.
Meanwhile, demand for electric cars in Great Britain has increased significantly over the past year. The British even overtook Germany in the number of new registrations in 2024 and are now the leaders in Europe. How can that be?
(…)
In fact, the UK has much stricter requirements for achieving the targets for expanding electromobility than Germany and other parts of Europe.
(…)
According to the SMMT, manufacturers have granted price discounts totaling more than £4.5 billion in 2024. In the long term, however, this is “unsustainable,” says the British association’s report.”