The wildlife all around us is doing fascinating things. Are you noticing? Grist
Climate/Environment
Rare tornado with wind speeds of 85 mph reported near Los Angeles amid fierce storm SF Gate
‘Global weirding’: climate whiplash hitting world’s biggest cities, study reveals The Guardian
Pandemics
“Do They Want Children to Die?” Pandemic Accountability Project
Washtenaw becomes Michigan’s 15th county with CWD-positive wild deer CIDRAP
China?
***
Beijing condemns CK Hutchison’s Panama deal with BlackRock Pekingnology
Trump White House has asked U.S. military to develop options for the Panama Canal, officials say NBC News
***
Walmart clashes with China after asking suppliers to absorb tariffs Axios
Walmart has the gall to demand Chinese suppliers to take 100% of the tariff cost which will push Chinese suppliers into bankruptcy. Now the CPC is getting involved. The CPC will no longer allow foreign companies to press Chinese companies like this…🧵https://t.co/jJlyFldxt5
— Miss Li (@MissQuanyi18) March 13, 2025
European Disunion
Syraqistan
“More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
How to take action and overcome world hunger using Israeli innovation The Jerusalem Post
US Mideast envoy proposes 50-day ceasefire extension in Gaza: Reports Anadolu Agency
***
Treasury Sanctions Iranian Oil Minister, Shadow Fleet Operators US Department of the Treasury (press release)
Qatar to supply gas to Syria via Jordan with a US nod, sources say Reuters
Africa
Mercenary State Phenomenal World. South Africa.
Old Blighty
Why are so many people off work sick? Labour told not to forget the pandemic ahead of benefit cuts The Big Issue
Britain ‘no longer a rich country’ after living standards plunge The Telegraph
We can’t abandon Ukraine, say British aid volunteers amid proposed ceasefire The Independent
New Not-So-Cold War
Joint news conference with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko The Kremlin. Transcript. Towards the end Putin answers question about proposed ceasefire.
Putin’s Polite Diplomatic “Hell No” to Trump The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (Video)
Putin suggests US ceasefire idea for Ukraine needs serious reworking Reuters
Putin says ‘yes’ to ceasefire – but lays down impossible terms for Ukraine The Independent
Camo-Putin Emerges to Punt Ball Back to Trump Simplicius
Trump says talks with Russia ‘going okay’ as efforts to reach Ukraine ceasefire continue ANadolu Agency
Ukraine’s Kursk Collapse & Washington’s Rush to Freeze Conflict Under “Minsk 3” Brian Berletic, The New Atlas (Video)
***
US Restarts GLSDB Shipments to Ukraine After Upgrades to Counter Russian Jamming United24
NATO preparing underwater attacks against Russia – Putin aide RT
Poland demands EU’s help militarizing its borders RT
McDonald’s relaunches breakfast menu in Ukraine amid full-scale war The Kyiv Independent
The Caucasus
Trump 2.0
CAN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ARBITRARILY TAKE MONEY FROM ANYONE’S BANK ACCOUNT? FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S MUGGING OF NEW YORK CITY FOR FEMA FUNDS SUGGESTS YES Notes on the Crises
Trump Issues Ethics Waiver For His AI/Crypto Czar The Lever
Trump Family Has Held Deal Talks With Binance Following Crypto Exchange’s Guilty Plea WSJ. Commentary:
There should be an investigation (Congressional, IG, whatever) into who’s buying $TRUMP, $MELANIA, and $WLFI, and who’s investing in his companies, but somehow the people who are supposed to enforce the law seem to have disappeared.
— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) March 13, 2025
***
USDA ends program that helped schools serve food from local farmers AP
EPA launches attack on ‘holy grail’ of climate science — and dozens of enviro rules Politico
Administration cancels meteorologist disaster training The Hill
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‘Deliberate trauma’: SAMHSA employees detail a federal agency in shambles STAT. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Trump’s policies are destabilizing mental health care for veterans, sources say NPR
Pete Hegseth to overhaul US military lawyers in effort to relax rules of war The Guardian
PENTAGON KEEPS POURING CASH INTO GOLF COURSES — EVEN AS TRUMP SLASHES GOVERNMENT SPENDING The Intercept
***
The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate — Part 2 Unlimited Hangout
DOGE
Musk Shares Claim That Stalin and Hitler Didn’t Murder Millions: ‘Public Sector Employees Did’ Haaretz
A Federal Judge Roasts the DOJ’s “Sham” Excuses for Trump’s Mass Firings Slate
Immigration
ICE Wastes $16M on Guantanamo Bay Operation as All Migrants Returned to US Newsweek
Trump expected to invoke wartime authority to speed up mass deportation effort in coming days CNN
Democrats en déshabillé
Democrats prepare to fold on government shutdown Axios. Naturally. As we linked to yesterday, unions prefer a shutdown to the ongoing carnage.
Antitrust
Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft’s built for Windows 10 users The Register
Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino Daring Fireball
Police State Watch
Groves of Academe
UJB issues expulsions, degree revocations, and suspensions for Hamilton Hall occupation Columbia Spectator. UJB = University Judicial Board.
NEW letter to Columbia from Trump admin lists demands for “continued financial relationship” with the US government”:
—Suspend or expel students for Hamilton Hall protest
—“Time, place, and manner rules”
—Mask ban
—Address “anti-Zionist” discrimination
—Reform admissions
—MORE pic.twitter.com/djCc31Vq2Q— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) March 14, 2025
The Friendly Skies
Passengers evacuated after American Airlines plane fire at Denver International Airport KDVR
AI
Multiple banks deploy DeepSeek AI models for customer service, credit approval Global Times
Europe’s Banks, Unlike U.S. Rivals, Play With DeepSeek
Security vs. innovation: US banks cite security risks, while European banks experiment in controlled environments. 🔒 Is the risk worth the reward?
Dive into the debate: https://t.co/u5L78eZlek#cybersecurity
— The Information (@theinformation) March 12, 2025
OpenAI calls DeepSeek ‘state-controlled,’ calls for bans on ‘PRC-produced’ models TechCrunch
***
Low responsiveness of machine learning models to critical or deteriorating health conditions Communications medicine. “…we find that statistical machine-learning models trained solely from patient data are grossly insufficient and have many dangerous blind spots. Most of the ML models tested fail to respond adequately to critically ill patients.”
The Trans Cult Who Believes AI Will Either Save Us—or Kill Us All The Nation
Mr. Market Goes to Detox
Treasury Secretary Bessent says a ‘detox’ period for the economy does not have to be a recession CNBC
Citigroup cuts US stocks, raises China on pause in US exceptionalism The Business Times
Our Famously Free Press
Imperial Collapse Watch
Love of a Nation The Upheaval. “Our leadership classes’ lack of love for their own people is dissolving our societies.”
That’s an absolutely insane statistic: in 2024 alone a single Chinese firm, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), built more more commercial ships by tonnage than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since the end of World War II.
Source:… pic.twitter.com/jZIadDDyUl
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 13, 2025
Girl Scouts hit with lawsuit over alleged heavy metals, toxins in its cookies USA Today
Congress poised to force $1B cut to local DC budget, surprising many lawmakers The Hill
The Bezzle
Banking Committee chairman @SenatorTimScott says payment stablecoins are “just travelers checks on the blockchain.”
— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) March 13, 2025
Class Warfare
America’s Problems Are Solvable. Look Beyond Our Borders. Jacobin
Wreckage New Left Review
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
159 comments
Comments are closed.
“Pete Hegseth to overhaul US military lawyers in effort to relax rules of war”
When questioned further on this, Peter Hegseth said that it was high time to Make Flamethrowers Great Again.
Make Agent Orange Spray Again.
Re; AI
Before tossing the AI-baby out with the bathwater, this may be something worthy of consideration:
How ProPublica Uses AI Responsibly in Its Investigations
The story was a great example of how artificial intelligence can help reporters analyze large volumes of data and try to identify patterns…
Of course, members of our staff reviewed and confirmed every detail before we published our story, and we called all the named people and agencies seeking comment, which remains a must-do even in the world of AI…
“The tech holds a ton of promise in lead generation and pointing us in the right direction,” he told me. “But in my experience, it still needs a lot of human supervision and vetting. If used correctly, it can both really speed up the process of understanding large sets of information, and if you’re creative with your prompts and critically read the output, it can help uncover things that you may not have thought of.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/using-ai-responsibly-for-reporting
Nominally what you say is quite true as it could be a great tool to use. However – and you knew that there was going to be a however – recent history suggests that the publishers or their owners will see things differently. They will say to themselves as it is working so great, that they can afford mass firings in the newsrooms which has been the general trend going back decades anyway. At that point, the remaining staff will no longer have the time or resources to fact-check that AI output like they did here and will not be able to catch the times that the AI just makes stuff up.
dismantle the masters house with the masters tools etc
Yep. It’s like my career in discrete choice modelling. The computer can do impressive gruntwork but at the end of the day you can’t escape the fact there are multiple solutions compatible with the survey data.
A human must apply common sense and preferably many years of experience to discount the solutions that are nonsense and choose which of the others is most likely true.
Mass firings definitely not the answer. You might need to change the mix of people based on skills but I doubt there is any net loss in numbers of humans employed.
“A human must apply common sense and preferably many years of experience to discount the solutions that are nonsense and choose which of the others is most likely true.”
Sounds exactly like Elon and the wunderkids(tm). Scores of years of varied work-life experience, deep and broad reading. /sarc/
What can possibly go right these days? It’s exhausting, and I can’t breathe as Trump and Musk have sucked all the oxygen from the global atmosphere.
Yep. I’m not going to tire myself and bore regular readers with my reference to mid 1980s statistical paper that means literally every discrete choice study (including RCTs) could be falsely interpreted again.
We devalue human experience at our peril. Anybody who thinks “move fast and break things” is the way to go is someone I want NOTHING to do with.
X was great at first after Musk took over.
Truly open and democratic. Great for local news and instantly postin videos which Youtube would censor for political speech etc.
Now, however X accounts are crippled, slowed down and have limited reach unless you buy a blue checkmark by giving your credit card details to an Israeli company.
Rev, I think that what you say can be true for much of MSM which is already a cesspool of click-baity slop and produces little in the way of original reporting– in part, thanks to decades of cuts and media consolidation. Yes, management will use AI to cut whatever overhead they can and to sex-up stories in order to catch eyeballs and fatten the bottom-line– if AI makes shit up, who cares? They already know that their readers are morons.
The article shows is how AI can be a useful tool for actual reporting— think citizen-journalists who have tiny sites off in the far corners of the web, who have their own substacks or who publish on other hosted sites. AI can be an assistant for those who lack the luxury or burden of a payroll, editorial or research support.
We who follow, support, and post here at NC get to see our hosts and other commentators regularly (and joyfully) eviscerate propagators of bull-oney, so I doubt that any writer who has any integrity to preserve would keep it for long if they didn’t take the time to fact-check their AI-assisted research– mistakes and BS get called-out in a hurry.
How? I see no proof this will not lead to mass AI hallucinations or worse. You think journalism is bad now…
“AI” has been with us for decades, this is just the latest skin with much faster processors.
“Responsibly”, just like “sustainably”, “inclusive”, or “shared”, is the kind of word that has been used so many times to sugar-coat some dastardly deed that I get immediately suspicious when it comes up.
“Investment” is another one. For example, Newsom’s “invested” $9.5 billion in servicing illegals in California, now an additional $3.4 billion borrowed on top of hundred billion deficits, for “investments” in foreign countries’ transitory citizens.
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/newsoms-medi-cal-seeks-34b-bailout-spending-95b-noncitizens
OpenAI calls DeepSeek ‘state-controlled,’ DeepSeek replies, calls Open AI a “cockalorum controlled by snollygosters”.
I know when to tune out
Know when to turn on
Get things done
I catch the paper headlines
But things don’t really change
I’m standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try, I try
There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the blockchain
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try, I try
Never gonna fall for
…works beside me…
(Modem love) works on by
(Modem love) gets me to the church on time
(Church online) terrifies me
(Church online) makes me party
(Church online) puts my trust in bot and man
(Bot and man) no confession
(Bot and man) no religion
(Bot and man) don’t believe in modem love
It’s not really work
It’s just the power to charm
I’m still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye bye
But I try, I try
Never gonna fall for
…works beside me…
(Modem love) works on by
(Modem love) gets me to the church on time
(Church online) terrifies me
(Church online) makes me party
(Church online) puts my trust in bot and man
(Bot and man) no confession
(Bot and man) no religion
(Bot and man) don’t believe in modem love
Modem love, works beside me
(Modem love)
Modem love, works on by
(Modem love)
Modem love, works beside me
(Modem love)
Modem love, works on by
(Modem love)
Never gonna fall for
(Modem love)
(Modem love)
Modern Love, by David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHzVjGBxOJs
Thanks, this one’s a keeper.
Great song! From the great Bowie.
DeepSeek is open-source, and freely downloadable by everybody. Unlike OpenAI, anyone can confirm that there are no Easter Eggs in the code by looking at the code. If you are suspicious of the DeepSeek implementation in China, you are free to customize and spin up your own version.
The idea that DeepSeek open-source code is somehow “state-controlled” is deliberately misleading. It makes me newly more suspicious of the OpenAI model than I am of the DeepSeek model.
Maybe. But AI learns from humans, and humans like to find patterns where none actually exist.
>Beijing condemns CK Hutchison’s Panama deal with BlackRock Pekingnology
We finally have a strong leader in Trump that is standing up for our “National Interest” (sarc)
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has a close personal relationship with Trump and had visited the White House to brief Trump about the acquisition during the negotiation period…BlackRock will control about 10.4% of global container terminal throughput, making it one of the world’s top three port operators…According to a draft executive order from the U.S. government, the U.S. plans to impose special docking fees on Chinese vessels and will push its allies to adopt similar measures, threatening them with retaliation if they refuse.
Sounds like to me that somebody in Hong Kong is about to get the Jack Ma treatment.
When people talk about a “close personal relationship” with the Trump, just remember the words of his former mentor, Roy Cohen: “Donny pisses ice wáter”.
>The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate — Part 2 Unlimited Hangout
…technopopulism promises a new kind of politics based on the belief that the more limited role of elected politicians is to put the appropriate teams of experts together to guide policy and to find technological solutions to social and economic problems, thereby benefiting “ordinary people.” But the apparent technopopulist offer to retain democratic accountability in the US is a deceit.
Almost exactly the sentiments expressed 100 years ago by H.L. Mencken
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy
And the best one that that the devil foisted on humans is that he doesn’t exist.
But of all the psyops foisted upon us, the greatest among them is the millennia-long propaganda campaign to make us believe we are powerless…Recognising the staggering audacity of the globalists’ plans and the enormous resources they presently have under their command is [important] not to be “blackpilled.”
Thanks. I’ve quoted Mencken in public lectures in a previous life. In an ideal world the UK could maintain its House of Commons but with a less bad voting system.
Our second chamber (let’s call it the Senate FWIW) would use some type of multi member version of democracy to give us regions (the “counting regions” in the UK used to date would provide a starting point).
Maybe we can get 100 elected Senators but I think we’d ideally also have 50 “expert senators”. A mixture of members of the Royal society to give scientific checks and balances together with people who represent, I dunno, basic infrastructure organisations…. Who’d be the “top plumber”? Dunno but we need this. A written constitution would also be required and my half Aussie nature makes me think voting should be compulsory. Plus “supra-national” issues can’t be passed without a majority in each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Just random thoughts.
That sounds like the Irish Seanad. It has certainly been a better model than a hereditary second house, but its very limited powers has meant that despite having some very high quality individuals, it has (arguably) been ineffective. A key problem in the Irish system is that laws can be rushed through the second house quite quickly, so the theoretical expertise isn’t put to much use. Its also proven very weak at proposing new legislation as the main political parties are quite good at neutering it.
I think almost any system, no matter how theoretically good, will eventually get gamed by those in power. Ireland was a pioneer in citizens juries to deal with difficult legislative issues – initially it was a huge success, but eventually government agencies and NGO’s with agendas learned how to manipulate the process.
You are absolutely right about people gaming the system. Most of my 20+ years in survey research involved me using the mark one eyeball looking at our data to spot how a certain subset of respondents had found out how to game the survey.
This is why I hate the term “fair votes”. Arrow showed this is impossible and we should simply acknowledge this and have some system of checks and balances to try to simply minimise the effects of people gaming the system. Like you imply, it’ll never work 100% but we must try harder.
Why not spruce the Commons with maybe 1/3 picked randomly, by sortition, in the good old original (as in from origines) fashion?
>America’s Problems Are Solvable. Look Beyond Our Borders -Jacobin
Seems to me Jacobin has no idea of what the coming techno-feudalism has in store for us. It’s not that there are no solutions to “America’s Problems,” it’s that powerful forces are gathering to nudge/impose new forms of control. Some over at Jacobin should read The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate
I didn’t expect to be going around the country talking about hope during such a dark moment…[in] dark periods countries experience can yield hopeful, amazing results…
The lesson is that even amid despair, these ideas are taking root. What gave me hope recently was seeing states like Missouri, Alaska, and Nebraska…pass paid sick leave on their ballots with large majorities
When we talk about constituencies, we should focus on building our movements and coalitions, arming ourselves with these success stories from around the world, and being prepared for the next opportunity to get this done.
The whole thing sounds like a rehash of that Michael Moore film from ten years ago – “Where to Invade Next”. The premise of the film was that he would go to different countries and steal their ideas of how to do thing and bring them back home-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_to_Invade_Next
I suspect though that what works against this concept is the idea ‘Not Invented Here’ and the unwillingness to adopt foreign ideas. Having said that, I would not be surprised to learn that a lot of the European countries will seek to cut such ideas out of their society and redirect the money to fighting the Russian bear instead because everybody knows that Putin will not stop until he reaches Lisbon – or at least Paris.
Maybe reality intercedes occasionally. Inventiveness like evolution is mostly mis-understood. Some inventions languish because they are a solution waiting for a problem. Other inventions have multiple inventors in widely separated places because a problem was just ripe for a concept that sees its time.
Has social evolution moved the needle? It is hard to see but complex societies are only 10,000 years old. Maybe social evolution is a mirage. Maybe it will require human evolution at the individual level to cause social evolution. Can it arise out of the current chaos or will it require shrinking the human population to a nexus point.
To the point, societies are coalitions or collections of coalitions and individuals gaming the system is the driving force of evolution not the cooperation of coalitions.. Whether the results are pretty or ugly survival is the only goal. I am ready to throw my limited weight behind a viable solution but raising my children to be critical thinkers is the best thing I can come up with.
Rode into the desert on 239 horses with no name, and re-read Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies and we are so much more utterly complex than any society heretofore, and collapse used to be a regional gig, the Byzantine Empire never knew about Chaco Canyon being abandoned or the Mayan culture up and disappearing. You get the feeling there is the decline of the western empire staring us down, but what about Sequon signing for $41 million a year!
Not really into professional team sports. Much prefer the original Roman circus where they fought to the death. Oh, and the bread had a good crust.
As you say used to be regional but now we all know everyone’s business. One big ship still sinking.
‘Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
That’s an absolutely insane statistic: in 2024 alone a single Chinese firm, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), built more more commercial ships by tonnage than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since the end of World War II.’
For further reading, Asia Times came out with an article about this subject-
https://asiatimes.com/2025/03/no-chance-trump-can-catch-chinas-shipbuilding-juggernaut/
Neoliberalism has done too good a job gutting all of America’s shipyards and decimating the skilled workforce that worked in them. To build them all up again would require a different mindset than neoliberalism so it is now a case of you can’t get there from here. Trump might bluster how China stole America’s shipbuilding but his only solution so far has been tariffist attacks.
>US to send upgraded long-range bombs to Ukraine, Rueters – RT
Moscow has warned the US and its allies against allowing long-range Ukrainian strikes, arguing that this makes NATO a direct participant in the conflict due to Kiev’s reliance on Western-supplied weapons.
Seems to me that in order to understand Trump’s Russian policy one has to be capable of “Doublethink.”
https://www.rt.com/news/614186-us-glsdb-bombs-ukraine/
On the contrary. This makes perfect sense from a Western perspective. Putin has normalized consequence free NATO and US long range strikes into Russia. Russian warnings not to do this have been proven to be meaningless. As Russia continues to decide to limit its own war power, The West has lots of time and opportunities to escalate. Russia holding back responding because Trump said he would not use long range stikes…what were they thinking?
“Escalation” is costly and much of the vaunted high tech is less consequential than Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 campaigns in 1944 and 45.
The US press trumpets the terror bombing that hit civilians as “wins”.
“Escalation” means more empty storage sites in US and EU.
Maybe they have not gotten your memo.
Well, considering the end results of reacting in kind might very well mean we wouldn’t be having this conversation, I completely disagree with your view on how Russia should be responding to the US and NATO.
I’m not saying I have an answer, but I feel the position you appear to support leads to WWIII.
You let it clear that you share the thinking of neocons. Russia is bluff and all that. If you read the article this weapon had already been sent before and proven useless and now they have upgraded it and want to check if it works against Russian jamming. Give it another try. How and when will they try it is not told in the article. Not said how many of these have been or will be delivered and how many in production. Interestingly it had been claimed before that the rockets were not sensitive to jamming and difficult to intercept because they glide. The first claim has proven a false claim. It might be the same with the upgraded version. As a matter of fact this nothing but an attempt on the cheap to revive a project by SAAB and BOEING who had suffered a big blow in Ukraine. A desperate attempt? I don’t know. The range of the rocket is not that long as claimed if it is to be used in non straight trajectories and the explosive load is relatively small. It has jet to demonstrate it “merits” any kind of retaliation of the kind the Russians could resort to. So far it can be considered that the combined effects of Storm Shadows, ATACMS and these and GLSDB aren’t enough to justify due retaliation which would be in a different level of magnitude and a big escalation towards WWIII. The Russians, unlike neocons, seem to be uninterested in WWIII, thanks god.
I think Moscow recognizes the risk of escalation to the tactical nuclear level comes from the west–specifically the US–if they retaliate on European soil outside Ukraine. Because that’s all the West has. So long as civilian casualties are limited–thanks to Russia’s superior air defense systems–that will continue to be the case. But as the idiots in the WH continue to press their luck with another tick in the escalation rachet, all bets will be off. The Russians may finally decide to up the ante on their side, ending the remarkable restraint they’ve shown while waiting for the West (read: US) to come to its senses. The question they’ll ask is whether such an event would bring the US and NATO to their senses, or further their paranoid war fever. As others have commented from time to time, the world is already at risk of an escalatory spiral in the ME. Only the Russian determination to keep the SMO an attrition war is keeping this from going out of control. A proxy attack by the Houthis that takes out certain US or NATO assets in the Middle East might be one option. The more direct route, an attack by Russia on assets outside Ukraine would be seen as fulfilling the prophecies of the deranged Europeans. There are no good options, except perhaps to quicken the pace of the Ukraine war, including turning western Ukraine into a wasteland.
“The question they’ll ask is whether such an event would bring the US and NATO to their senses…”
IMHO the US rulers are being sensible, in their own way, considering the difficulty for anyone attacking the US mainland (with less than nukes). A major escalation that decimates Europe and weakens Russia would be to the US’s advantage.
For the US rulers I’m sure this makes a lot of sense. Think of these people as severe sociopaths who care nothing for anyone else’s life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness but care only for their own amassing of wealth and power and you’ll see their sensibility in war, especially on someone else’s soil.
Yes. Seen in that light, US continuing to send long-range weapons to Ukraine makes sense. But your suggestion also implies our sociopaths have a plan, however deranged it may be. I don’t think Trump has plans; he runs on feral instincts. I’m still hopeful of a deus ex machina that will rescue us from the path we’re on. It would be a JFK moment as during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But then, JFK was murdered for doing just that.
The modified bombs have to be tested to see if they work against Russian jamming and EW…
Britain ‘no longer a rich country’ after living standards plunge The Telegraphsue
Russia is a rich country. The World Bank said so when it abandoned its anti Russian propaganda to dramaticly increase the size of its economy and reclassified Russia as a high income nation. Maybe Euro press folks should start asking why are their standards of living plummeting as Russia’s rise.
Britain invaded the world, much of it under that imperial era sun, then invited the commonwealth countries and then more from wherever. Those they didn’t invite came anyway for some mutual cultural enrichment. In the meantime, the legal system metastasized into criminalizing some activities and thoughts. MPs, mayors and others let that happen, while seemingly denying or obfuscating their agency.
Now citizens may mutter I’m not alright, Jack while hoping anyone is listening.
‘Britain invaded the world’
Say, did you ever see that map of countries that Britain never invaded?
https://www.mapsofworld.com/answers/history/countries-never-invaded-by-british/amp/
The UK invaded Kazakhstan, Hungary, and Switzerland? When?
I don’t know about Hungary or Switzerland, but Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire during the British intervention into the Russian Civil War, so technically it was invaded. Actually, if we use this broad definition, then the map needs to be reduced from 22 to 18 countries: Belarus and the three -Stans on the map were also part of the empire in 1918.
But since these other countries are not counted as invaded ones, the criterion must be something else than having been part of a larger entity at the time the UK attacked it. So what was it?
I can only guess that the ‘invasion’ of Switzerland had something to do with the Napoleonic wars and that the ‘invasion’ of Hungary had something to do with WW1 (there were British troops in Italy and in the Balkans), quite a stretch in both cases to label them invasions. The map is just for fun, not for use in a serious history class. Still, Ye Olde British Empire certainly had its fingers in many pies!
“Invaded” is doing a lot of work here.
Evidently if at least one British soldier ever trod on the country’s soil, that counts as an invasion.
Don’t sell United States short, however. I think this map puts the British Empire to shame. For every square inch of land on planet Earth, there is a US military command standing by 24/7, ready to send US soldiers to invade it.
This is a deeply imperialist document, probably created by no other nation in history.
I was almost stunned to see this admission against interest from the Hill:
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5193811-tech-stocks-tumble-as-ai-boom-fizzles-out/
“AI boom fizzles out” … well, now there is a nice piping hot cup-o-truth for ya!
Press accidentally acknowledging that AI is a bubble -Booyah!
“Putin suggests US ceasefire idea for Ukraine needs serious reworking”
When Rubio flew to Moscow, he demanded that Trump’s offer be accepted as it was with no changes so here Rubio was wearing his Neocon suit thinking he had the upper hand. But then Putin adopted Captain America’s advice of ‘Have you got a suit? Then suit up’ and put on his Lawyer suit. He started picking all the holes in this “deal” such as how could they let the Ukraine re-arm in that 30 days when the US itself just announced a resumption of weapons shipments. And in the Ukraine 30 days is enough to – kinda – train up a new recruit. Who would stop the Ukraine recruiting new brigades? Or re-building fortifications? Who is there that could monitor such stuff? Will the US have a secret agreement with the Ukraine to keep on hitting Russia anyway like they did for Israel against Lebanon? Some of this stuff is impossible for Trump or Rubio to answer as there is no answer. It’s all a mini-Minsk 3 and everybody knows it. Trump and the Collective West said in lockstep that the ball was in Russia’s court but I would say that Putin just used his lawyer powers to backhand it into the far court again.
It was a stupid deal anyway.
We need a peace commission.
Is the room in Paris where Kissinger met with the North Vietnamese available? A multi year lease?
WSJ headline about Putin impediments to a “deal” that is all wrong!
Putin could always spin out these so-called negotiations the way that it went down with Paris negotiations. He could start by saying – ‘Gentlemen. First we need to discuss the shape of the table that we will be sitting at…’
https://defenceindepth.co/2017/05/19/stuck-in-endless-preliminaries-vietnam-and-the-battle-of-the-paris-peace-table-november-1968-january-1969/
Rubio is not president. I for one think Trump really wants a deal because why would he not? Ukraine was the war of Biden and his central Europe oriented cronies. Whereas Trump’s cronies are all Middle East oriented.
Plus conflict with a nuclear power could be bad for the hotel business. The Bidenistas, if not necessarily the out of it Biden, seemed more than willing to flirt with Armageddon.
Meanwhile Putin humors Trump even while restating Russia’s position. In this game of manipulation here’s suggesting that Putin is far more likely to manipulate Trump than the other way around. Plus Putin wears suits (or camo) and not his PJs and favors Trump’s retro gold curtain style of interior decoration.
Here’s guessing the peace game is still afoot.
I’m afraid that I am more pessimistic here about Trump. He may want a deal but he wants one where he is established as the “winner” and therefore Russia must be seen to be the loser of this war. He cannot stand the thought of having his own Afghanistan and his whole persona is, after all, all about ‘winning.” This was made clear to me when Rubio was talking about building up a powerful Ukrainian military after the war as a “deterrence.” Sure, Rubio is not the President but I note that nobody in the government disputed what he said and certainly not Trump. And saying that you want a 30-day ceasefire on the same day that you announce that you will be shipping more weapons and intelligence into the Ukraine has me thinking that Trump feels that he has all the cards. And that ain’t necessarily so.
Robert Scheer did an article about this and said just as Nixon goes to China was a big deal, Trump goes to Moscow would be an equally big deal. Here’s suggesting that for Trump, a businessman and not a bureaucrat or politician, making peace would be very good for his kind of business not to mention his ego.
There is a libertarian branch of the Republicans that believes “war is the health of the state” and they don’t like (or see themselves in competition with) the state. Antiwar.com is an outlet of this branch. Worth noting that Judge Nap and Larry Johnson and other war critics that we read here are conservatives. Nixon was too of course.
Meanwhile a lot of “liberal” politicians think they have to be more Catholic than the Pope when it comes to war and proclaim themselves “very good at killing people” or turn into chicken hawks like LBJ and that ultimate disaster in the 1960s.
If the Dems and the left want to once again become forces for antiwar then that would be a welcome change indeed. It looks like Trump’s ME policies are going to need a lot of resisting.
Nixon going to China made great sense in that Communism had divided into different camps and he was playing one against the other, in what would be mostly the only decade in which we weren’t at war with anybody after the early 70’s, in fact when I was in high school in the later 70’s, it was thought that only losers went into the military, or those legacy types. (My daddy stormed the beach on Normandy @ D-Day+ 23)
China was traditionally a mercantile country, and it so far has been to our great advantage to be able to purchase a toaster made there for almost nothing and think so lowly of its prospects, that when it gives up the ghost a year later, buy another one to replace it on the cheap, crawling from the wreckage as it were.
Russia was never really a mercantile kind of place, the only Soviet import available on the shelf of a retailer in the USA during the Cold War being Stolichnaya vodka, best served chilled.
Russia was never really a mercantile kind of place, the only Soviet import available on the shelf of a retailer in the USA during the Cold War being Stolichnaya vodka, best served chilled.
Russia has been under sanctions since the October Revolution, with a brief interlude during the Yeltsin Era. Why would America offer them market share for any product? Not even forest fruit or mushroom preserves were welcomed (which I can assure you would have been of much higher quality than their American counterparts).
“Russia was never really a mercantile kind of place, the only Soviet import available on the shelf of a retailer in the USA during the Cold War being Stolichnaya vodka, best served chilled.”
Well, not compared to China and not in most of the Soviet era (unless you count the illegal part of the economy, which was vibrant but largely small-scale and obviously not very relevant to Americans), which is what I assume you mean. Otherwise I might ask where the English got most of their furs for much of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
Also, lumber, tar and other shipbuilding supplies. I’ll confess that these necessarily went to Britain, but the dependence on Russia for these goods, I wonder, prompted the British to develop Canada as a colony.
Actually, one of the reasons that Australia was developed as a colony was the availability of tall straight trees for use as masts by the Royal Navy.
After the Napoleonic Wars there was apparently some problem with Russia continuing to supply these.
>lumber. I once worked in a shop where we used Baltic Birch plywood from the USSR to build large sit-down chambers for a medical device. It was void-free and great for making other jigs and fixtures, though I never fancied the smell when cutting it on a table saw.
Fun and interesting subthread with a lot of good theories. Two things strike me that haven’t been mentioned explicitly. First, Trump and even Rubio lately have been less delusional in some of what they’re saying than Blinken, Sullivan, Applebaum, etc. That’s a little reassuring to me. Second, it seems to me Putin and especially Trump face serious obstacles with respect to selling a deal in which both comprise at least a little when it comes time to sell it to various powerful forces in their respective homes. It will take some head fakes, it seems to me, for these guys to get it done even if both are in good faith.
One can hope those two are speaking frequently, and telling each other, “I’m going to say ‘X,’ but don’t take it seriously.”
Trump is akin to a poker player who bluffs constantly-yet never has to show his cards…bringing up the strategy of a certain somebody in the late 1930’s
Maybe the worst thing being, that perhaps Trump was given the talk by the MIC, that if he didn’t perpetuate the war in the Ukraine-everybody’s rice bowls might get emptied out.
Agree with you. He doesn’t want a deal, he wants a “win.”
Outside of money for himself, he has zero interest in anything. Kiev is a smoking crater, Kiev is saved. Makes no difference as long as he can claim a win.
The Western spin strategy is trumpeted by The Independent headline:
“Putin says ‘yes’ to ceasefire – but lays down impossible terms for Ukraine”
As Yves and many others have been pointing out, you make Russia an offer they have to refuse, claim “the ball is now in their court,” and then screech about their refusing the “peace” proposal. Is Trump in on this, or is he just too dumb to know what’s going on?
I scrolled through Links. Nothing appeared with which I was not either already quite familiar or I found dispiriting and disheartening. The US is marching toward dystopia. Leave it to The Don.
The express train to dystopia has a bipartisan crew, friend. And it’s been 30 years in motion.
Indeed. Though there are stories about the UK and other countries that are just as bad, it is understandable that they fall beneath the radar given the constraints on time and energy of the NC crew.
FWIW although I treasured Lambert’s contributions, the new setup with a day set aside to for instance UK stuff is brilliant. I think Yves has hit the ground running with the new setup. If the content is depressing then that’s just NC holding up a mirror to society.
I trace it back to Kent State. Seriously. It turns out Nixon and Haldeman were right:
(spoken in the context of the Attica slaughter)
We spent the summer of ’69 living in Port Washington on Long Island in preparation for our family to move there so daddy-o* could be closer to the action, but corresponding with Kent State was a sharp drop in the Dow Jones, so we never made it permanently to Davy Jones Locker-adjacent on the Atlantic, as my dad was out of work for a few years, c’est LA vie.
* he had an apartment in Manhattan and would fly to JFK and back 2 to 3x a month in the late 60’s from LA.
80.5 years since the 1944 Democratic National Convention.
McDonald’s relaunches breakfast menu in Ukraine amid full-scale war
the “full-scale” macro seems to have a glitch…
I don’t know what a full-scale Russian is, but I think I’ll stick with the unprovoked Egg McMuffin and a small filter coffee.
There’s a $.50 surcharge for that aig.
Full-scale Russian is a white Russian with everything but vodka left out.
‘Miss Li
@MissQuanyi18
Mar 13
Walmart has the gall to demand Chinese suppliers to take 100% of the tariff cost which will push Chinese suppliers into bankruptcy. Now the CPC is getting involved. The CPC will no longer allow foreign companies to press Chinese companies like this…🧵’
Here is a link for those who would like to read that thread and she gets a bit brutal with the truth. Come to think of it – what Walmart tried to do with those Chinese suppliers. Isn’t that what Amazon does with its suppliers? I mean force them to accept only razor-thin profit margins while Amazon takes most of the profit? Here Walmart went beyond that and got too greedy by trying to screwing over their Chinese suppliers. I suspect that Walmart’s shelves may get a bit empty this year.
Do’h! Forgot to add the link. Sorry-
https://xcancel.com/MissQuanyi18/status/1899984050225635387
Following on from your point about exploiting suppliers, it seems UK supermarkets might be getting a taste of their own medicine.
Ones at the top end (Sainsbury’s) right down to bottom end (ASDA) have been radically changing their stores recently to prevent empty shelves. I do most of the family shopping and have spotted the vast reduction in choice but also the revamping of the aisles to try to cover this up.
Interestingly, LIDL and ALDI have not needed to make any such changes. The worm has turned. What’s happening in Coles and Woolies?
No idea really as we don’t have either of them in the nearby town. But I have noticed over the past few years where a lot of the cheap no-frills products are no longer on the shelves anymore in Woolies at least so maybe this was a way of upping their prices.
Thanks, interesting. I wonder if IGA are getting more business.
That is interesting Rev.
I remember that a few years ago it was part of Woolies strategic plan to stock more “own brand” items as they are more profitable apparently.
No need to hand over so much to the suppliers for their brand name stuff.
A suburb near us will be getting an ALDI. We have a Trader Joe’s already. What can we expect from ALDI?
@GF
Going by the experience of the ones I have been to here in Oz, much cheaper prices compared to the big supermarket chains. Maybe not so much variety as the later but you will see the price differences so it will not matter. Whenever we are out and need to do some shopping, the Aldi is the one we hit up.
Walmart is just being Walmart. Walmart was a big reason US manufacturing was moving to China to meet Walmart’s demands for ever lower prices or else be dropped from the Walmart shelves. That drove a lot of manufacturing off shore, especially in the 1990’s, and a lot of Main Street businesses out of business.
Walmart began in and is still headquartered in the US state of Arkansas.
Come to think of it, Bill Clinton was first an Arkansas gov before becoming president and Hills was on the Walmart BoD from 1986 – 1992. / ;)
I’m a loyal Wal*Mart shopper, how long before I see the tariffist attacks reflected in higher price tags on the shelves, ala Trump Inflation Protocol?
You can’t blame Walmart for tryin’. But if they’re smart they’ll eat some, if not all, of any tariff increases and make sure absolutely everyone knows it, and in the process create loyal customers who would walk over hot coals to hand over their dwindling cash at the Wally World register.
wall street will undoubtedly punish such heresy at first, until it becomes a winning strategy with MAGA world.
Not headquartered in Arkansas technically. Evidently they’ve found a state even more lawless. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/03/06/walmart-considers-moving-legal-home-out-of-delaware-semafor.html
re: Jack Teixeira 2nd trial
Pentagon leaker pleads guilty to obstructing justice, attacks Biden in defending his actions
https://apnews.com/article/jack-teixeira-pentagon-leak-court-martial-eff6e9f50a8857134b91cdb68e98526f
Happy Pi day. Or π day. / ;)
Thanks!
Celebration planning commences forthwith. :p
Time for the Engineer’s Cheer:
Followed by referenced hand gesture.
…at about 3.48 in the morning, to be precise.
So Huawei-bribery rocks the EU-parliament but not Pfizer-bribery?
These Eurotards are a special kind of idiots.
Not at all: the Commission are really happy to see someone (like themselves?) stick it to the Parliament. Tilts power even more in the EC’s direction (not that the Parliament really had any).
This is a fascinating horror story if you dig into it. The Zizians have a Rationalist (fringe) Game Theory argument to justify the cult violence. They used to be welcome at Bay Area Rationalist functions and now they are not even spoken about or acknowledged.
Zvi Moshowitz had a good rundown in his January summary and finished his seven paragraph report with something along the lines of I have no firsthand knowledge of any of this. Elizier Yudkowsky has said no comment. Scott Alexander has written nothing on it that I have seen and that guy writes about everything.
The Daily Mail has had the most reporting. At least the first five stories I saw omitted the sex detail. Then after about a week the Daily Mail reported Ziz was trans. About a week later they all were described as trans. And now The Nation has a headline they are a trans cult. This is the first place I have seen this description.
The labels have been in chronological order: Rationalist, Vegan, Violent (as in homicidal), Trans. Posts and comments in r/slatestarcodex get rapidly downvoted to oblivion and deleted.
There is nothing new in The Nation story but they do repeat the stupid bit that Elon Musk and Grimes first got acquainted discussing Roko’s Basilisk.
Thank you, Conor.
The NC community may be interested in this report from France’s TF1 news yesterday evening. It’s about the homeless in Las Vegas: https://www.tf1info.fr/international/video-grand-reportage-tf1-ils-sont-de-plus-en-plus-nombreux-sous-les-casinos-de-las-vegas-des-sans-abri-survivent-dans-des-tunnels-2359200.html.
As mum and I watched, we wondered when, if ever, the US will devote its resources and attention to its own people.
In January, we heard from a French architect about the commissions she’s getting from Americans settling in Mauritius. My parents and I met some last year.
Further to South Africa’s mercenaries, in the noughties, my former bank employer used them when we took possession of property and goods that formed part of transactions, and to guard some buildings and clients. We met the representatives and / or leaders in Mayfair. There was often a posh British or Anglo-South African former officer at the discussions. There was talk of Executive Outcomes reforming under that name some years ago. The brand carries weight in the relevant circles.
“a French architect about the commissions she’s getting from Americans settling in Mauritius”
The mind boggles.
What kind of market canvassing leads a French architect to get commissions from the USA for buildings in Mauritius?
I know we live in a globalized world, but I thought that, except for those worldwide famous “starchitects”, this would be the kind of service provided with local providers.
The new business school building of University of Technology Sydney might provide an answer. Check on the funding. Germaine Greer coined one of the epithets (brown trash bag or similar).
When I walked through it my main thought was “if I worked here daily I’d go insane”.
Truly awful building. But hey, it has loads of PCs and bean bags for students!
>>>As mum and I watched, we wondered when, if ever, the US will devote its resources and attention to its own people.
That has not been en vogue for over forty years. About Las Vegas, it does not rain much, but like with California, it can really pour when it does. I have heard of bad things happening in Las Vegas’ rain tunnels with the flash flooding. Years of accumulated buildup getting cleaned out like with all the oil and dirt on the city’s streets. Maybe the city leaders think it a good way to get rid of those pesky “shadow people.” But it is like with San Francisco with the fifteen thousand, more or less, of the population being homeless or just just under two percent being so.
Re The Register on Apple–my brother gave me an iPad. While some of the apps are very good and I now use it to read ebooks, I prefer my dual boot Chromebook/Linux (hardly ever use the Chrome) for portable computing. Why give up the advantages of a physical keyboard and three button mousing for chic and ultrathin?
And the article’s complaints about lack of a full function terminal are spot on. Functionality beats aesthetics when it comes to machines. Plus I still have the iPad if feeling artistic.
David Hockney uses the iPad medium, too.
https://www.hockney.com/index.php/works/digital/ipad
Couple quick points, on the CR that has to pass else we get a shutdown tonight:
1. To me, the worst part of the bill is that it doesn’t take out USAID funding. There is nary a word about that. So, assuming that Trump/Musk don’t try to impound the funding, SoS Rubio is free to spend on new color revolutions, skull-and-dagger ops, etc. Maybe some rainbow-colored condoms for that Al-Jolani dude? Or how about paying Ukraine’s debt off?
2. Earmarks got the Makita chainsaw treatment: (NY Times sob story below)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/congress-spending-bill-shutdown-earmarks.html
“Camo-Putin Emerges to Punt Ball Back to Trump”
‘Today, Trump even suggested that Russia may have to give the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant back to Ukraine as part of the final peace deal’
Trump must be still thinking of all those Ukrainian minerals. You need a lot of power to run mines it seems and the Ukrainian electrical grid has been mostly wrecked by the Russians with only them capable of actually repairing them. So I would guess that he wants the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant returned to the Ukraine so he can use it to power those mines he wants to set up. He is not likely to go begging the EU for some of their juice after all.
He is not thinking of anything. The idea of Russians giving the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to Ukraine can only exist in a vacuum (of his mind).
He’s more likely to get a pony.
Re Putin and nuances —
In my business dealings with Russians, the phrase “there are nuances” was a hint that tough discussions lay ahead. When my interlocutor across the table would nod his head and say that he’s ready in principle to sign a contract with us but “there are some nuances we need to address”, this was often codeword for “I’m not signing anything until we agree on the size of my kickback”.
Along with donning camouflage and suggesting to his military commanders in Kursk that they should establish a buffer zone inside UKR, this was Putin politely telling the USA to go fly a kite. My main concern is that he is being too subtle; whereas native Russian speakers (including Zelensky) understood him perfectly, I’m afraid that his nuanced language might be lost on westerners. And Trump isn’t noted for his subtlety.
In America, kickbacks are illegals.
Thanks for your nuanced view of goings on from the other side, as it were.
Yes aren’t kickbacks simply called 10% (or whatever the current sum is) for the Big Guy?
So are undocumented dishwashers, housecleaners and nannies! ; )
They’re illegal in Russia too, but there are some nuances with that as well.
Johnson channeling Martyanov says that “nuances” refer to an off color Russian joke, that Putin is telling Trump to get Effed.
https://sonar21.com/regarding-a-ceasefire-putin-says-it-is-about-nuance/
Martyanov is a sailor (rum, sodomy and the lash).
Churchill came up with that insult but that was only because he was an elitist cavalry wonk.
I like the title of George Melly’s autobiography:
“Rum, bum and concertina”
Taibbi and Kirn live streaming ATW right now. Talking about the cease fire proposal. Victoria Nuland isn’t happy about the proposed cease fire. No surprise. No paywall so far. utube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZGNl2C8Yzs
Rare tornado with wind speeds of 85 mph reported near Los Angeles amid fierce storm SF Gate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, a tornado* hitting LA less than 10 miles from where I grew up…
…that wasn’t on my bingo card
The Big Heat® isn’t just wildfires any old time of year!
* Full Disclosure: my dad had an Olds Toronado in the late 60’s, a cool looking lemon that was a service station’s whet dream as it was up on the racks more often than not.
Whilst we all know that the movie “Day after Tomorrow” took liberties with the science (most notably speeding up the effect of the “cold blob” in northern Atlantic) it turns out that its exaggeration might not be as egregious as we thought.
Tornadoes near LA? WTF?
Its gonna be a frightening thing, learning the ropes to climactic climatic events without precedence, nor with leadership up to the task.
re: EPA launches attack on ‘holy grail’ of climate science — and dozens of enviro rules Politico
Not too long ago Toronto had coal-fired power plants. It was noticed that within a certain radius of these plants there was a higher than normal incidence of medical diagnoses and hospital visits relative to surrounding population. This was the impetus for shutting down the plants. And once the plants were shut down, it was also noticed the incidents declined. Pretty sure this was probably happening across the US as well.
This was even without reference to climate change. Pollution is simply bad for your health, you don’t need climate science to establish this, you just need a map overlaid with medical data.
But because the same pollution is elsewhere called “greenhouse gases”, which they are, the climate deniers see an opportunity here to use it to attack the established medical findings. Should be interesting.
>How to take action and overcome world hunger using Israeli innovation
Spoiler alert: This article never mentions the words “Gaza” or “Palestine” (as expected).
A modest proposal?
One of the most effective ways that the British government has found to cure hunger is to support Israel to ensure that they have an adequate supply of weapons to kill the hungry. This is 403ed it the UK so you’ll need a VPN to clock it:
https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-held-secret-meeting-with-top-israeli-arms-firm/
A modest proposal.
Bonus antidote du jour, last two minutes of Mike Jones’ video:
https://foreignagentintel.substack.com/p/russias-demands-are-clearwill-trump
(as a bonus to bonus, there is an accompanying geopolitical commentary too)
Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Schumer Retreats on Shutdown
LOL.
I dunno.
Remember when we had to fight fascism, and if Trump wins, he’s going to end Democracy. Yeah, I guess that urgency somehow evaporated.
Oops.
It’s almost like liberal Democrats are both degenerate liars and incompetent.
Seriously, kill me. This timeline is stupid.
Can you remember the good old days when The Government was going to get out of the Censorship Biz, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the VA were sacrosanct and President Chump was going to end the War in Ukraine?
Good times, Good times.
Once we have gone through a period of adjustment and Covid and Bird Flu have rightsized the population the future will be so bright you will need shades!
And lots of sunscreen.
Well it wasn’t Black Friday over on Wall st. but the bounce looks positively feline. Declining volume tells me the retail investor is buying and the pros are biding their bedding.
Sure seemed like Black Friday over in the Senate thanks to the declining volume of Donkey Show empathy, as in they predictably knuckled under.
Excellent lineup today Connor, grimmer than usual, but an excellent selection for those of us who want to keep up with the West’s accelerating descent into fascism and global war.
America’s problems are solvable. Look beyond our borders: I don’t understand who exactly I supposed to obtain these concessions from the ruling classes. Healthcare, pensions, education reforms… this would mean a fully-fledged welfare state.
The US has the skimpiest welfare state in the developed world because of the historical weakness of its working classes and the unfavourable balance of power. To control the pathologies of capitalism, America’s elites opted instead for the criminalization of poverty and world’s largest carceral state, given that “it is much cheaper to build a harsh penal apparatus than a generous welfare state.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349884030_The_Economic_Origins_of_Mass_Incarceration
In 2019 when this splendid essay was published in Catalyst, America was spending “roughly $250 billion a year on prisons, police, and the courts, at all levels of government, considerably more than any other state in world history”, and upwards of $3 trillion on social policy. This means one order of magnitude between the cost of the harshest penal state in the advanced world and the cost of its stingiest welfare state.
And although the American people were not able to get anything better in the best of times, somehow they are supposed to miraculously get results in the current dystopic conjecture, when the ruling elites are explicitly planning wars with both Russia and China, and the Trump-Musk billionaire diarchy has taken a chainsaw to the social security institutions, so that all efforts can be directed to the coming wars.
More maladaptive daydreaming is not what we need right now.
Conjuncture, not conjecture, sorry. First signs of Alzheimer…
Regarding
This is a hateful screed with no useful information. Mind you, I’m no fan of RFK.
In fact, my only thought concerning RFK is to wonder “How in the heck he’s going to “Make America Healthy Again” when/if the Trump administration cuts Medicaid and food benefits to poor children?” He looks to be the biggest chump, as he campaigned a lot for Trump so that he could work on a good goal of improving American’s health, only to have his entire program shot in both knees!
Even if he were able to change the food industry and the Pharma industry in ways to benefit health, those benefits would be completely wiped out by the other changes of this administration.
Mask bans always seem like the most Orwellian laws and rules it’s possible to imagine. Presumably, the goal is to make it so that people can not conceal their own identity in a public space.
I have to admit that part of me always sees such rules as a challenge. Is this really something that’s possible?
We got something of a feel for this with red light traffic cameras, where it was necessary to identify the driver of a car captured by the camera in order to issue a ticket. Most jurisdictions had to spin up rather elaborate procedures to deal with photos where the driver could not be identified, for example, implicating the registered owner of the car in some fashion. This won’t be possible for people just walking around unless we make a requirement that they wear a license plate around their necks or something.
Perhaps a low level of accuracy is enough to accomplish the goal here, which is to discourage people from attending protests and marches.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds going forward.
How can you ban masks and still comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act?
I’m a cancer survivor FFS.
Mask bans have been very explicitly tied to anti-protest efforts, esp Palestine-related. It’s simply a way for the rulers to scare people into submission. When enough pf the ruling class aligns on a project, Legality and Constitutionality have nothing to do with it.
Wow – did not expect a link to Essex Hemphill’s work (Wreckage) on NC. Guess I should hang on to my copy of Ceremonies.
Thanks for being such an eclectic source.
I really should not take this bait, but really, does Elon Musk believe that obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Haydriech and the nice people in the einsatzgruppen were just state employees or bureaucrats? At least, he has not said anything about work setting you free although this seems to be the belief of our ruling class.
Just how does one parody this?
Mark Carney sworn in as PM today in Ottawa. Immediately cancels the carbon tax on consumers. Carney Sez:
– We are not the U.S. I will meet with Trump when it is appropriate.
– Our economy needs to be stronger – I will reduce the capital gains tax.
– I will remove barriers to interprovincial trade.
– I have been invited to Paris and London and I will go in the next few days.
Appoints a new, smaller cabinet made up of former Trudeau ministers, including Chrystia Freeland.
Jagmeet Singh (leader of the New Democratic Party NDP) sez:
– No minister for labour? No minister for women? No minister for youth? Even Stephen Harper had a minister for labour.
– This is a race to the right, Carney against Poilieve.
– Karina Gould not in cabinet means the progressive wing of the Liberals is being locked out.
Poilievre sez:
– I will enact more counter tariffs.
– This is just more Trudeau, a fourth term for Trudeau.
– Carney is “hiding” the carbon tax. The day after the election he will bring it back.
– The procedure for Liberals to vote for leader was very suspicious
– I will lower your taxes
– If you are willing to work hard you will have a good job, a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, protected by our brave soldiers under our own flag. (He said this about 8k times)
Don’t forget dental care. Phase 2 of dental care was going to be for all Canadians who earn less than 90K a year. Set to take effect this year, but dead on the order paper.
I figured out how the USA can invade China without any ships with which to transport Soldiers and Supplies.
THE BORING COMPANY!
Yes, simply have the Boring Company drill a few dozen tunnels and the USA can do what the Russkies did in Kursk, on a YUUUUUGE scale.
Maybe like that old film “Battle Beneath the Earth” where a Chinese general goes nuts and has a system of tunnels dug all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean, so that atomic bombs can be planted under US cities-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Beneath_the_Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dVu2KLtEYA (2:14 mins)
Like many a tyke, I dug to China but its a bit of a misnomer as I ended up in the south Indian Ocean-the antipodes to LA, and had to swim from there.
Since this film was in the 60s, maybe the Chinese just enlarged some Viet Cong tunnels.
Bugs Bunny gone rogue.
There are a few period pieces about miners used in wars to blow up enemy positions from below. Bakhmut-style (or what Ukie fortress was it?).
like “The War Below”
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt10381014/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_the%2520war%2520below
The drain pipe was in south Avdeevka. Before that there were two short tunnels somewhere in Donbass (I remember commander of Pyatnashka unit talking about one, but can’t remember details of the other).
As far as old movies and going to China go,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome
The wildlife all around us is doing fascinating things. Are you noticing? Grist
~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the things I got used to living in Tiny Town, were kamikaze quail, they would practically lunge at your wheel wells when you were going around a corner, and always make it out alive to share the tale with other bird brains, and thus California Quail made themselves known to me, along with mom and her 17 little charges following her every move in a single file line, how adorable.
I’d see them by the hundreds on a drive, now I see about 100 a year.
They do a fascinating thing in that their nests are on the ground-not in a tree, and usually have around 20-25 eggs.
Enter wild turkeys, another bird that would rather walk, and their numbers went from a dozen to perhaps 1,500 in my 20 years here. I’m thinking the turkeys are the quail eggs, hasta la vista rival.
You might call it a Henicide, I suppose. All happening under our very eyes.
I did not appreciate Clapton’s blues playing, and songwriting until I got older.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH8F6nllA9Y
re: Antidote
may be one of the best in recent times among others simply because it´s B&W with classical grades of grey. It also does not attempt to antropomorphize the animal.
Re South Africa. At the age of about 28 I was in the boardroom of a subsidiary of the Anglo American Corporation in Cape Town watching the current president of South Africa sign up to capitalism. He was a union leader.
Maybe my search skills are fading, but I can’t believe that there doesn’t appear to be a huge Comment-storm about the Tankus Notes on the Crisis piece in today’s Links about FEMA fraudulently debiting $81.5M from a NYC account at Citibank using the ACH system (as warned by Lambert last month). This development is highly disturbing. The basic normative and legal assumptions underlying the ACH system are that accounts may only be debited with the consent of the account holder (express or clearly implied) or with a valid court order.
This is not only an end run around the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The subversion of the ACH payments system undermines the entire banking system and the common law of contracts. So much for “limited government” under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The State of New York should be investigating whether employees of FEMA and the Bureau of Fiscal Service conspired to commit theft by fraud.
Of course, “important people” don’t go to jail for theft by fraud anymore. Thanks Obama… Thanks Judge Merchan…
Oops … China bans Tesla’s.
Now that’s a damn shame. You can be sure that Elon is going to complain to his big buddy to get him to sanction them or something.
see below
re: Germany post-elections
BSW in the federal election
Failed even more narrowly
Final results of the federal election announced. BSW receives over 4,000 more votes. Around 9,500 votes short of entering parliament.
By Karim Natour
JUNGE WELT daily:
Even after the final results of the federal election, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is not represented in the Bundestag. On Friday, the Federal Electoral Committee presented the results from February 23. According to Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand in Berlin, the young party received 2.473 million second votes. This is 4,277 more votes than the preliminary result immediately after the election and 4.981 percent of the vote. The party is 9,528 votes short of a seat. The corrections in the individual federal states were already made public on Thursday.
BSW head Wagenknecht criticized the lack of comprehensive investigation into possible counting errors and again called for a complete recount. She argued that it “calls into question the foundations of our democracy” that until such a recount is conducted, the composition of the Bundestag “will most likely not reflect the will of the voters.”
On Thursday evening, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected several of the party’s requests for a nationwide recount of the election before the official final results were announced. The Wahlrecht.de association criticized the “still non-transparent practice” on its website, which hampers a comprehensive evaluation of the federal election. For example, the preliminary and final election results at the constituency level in the states are not published centrally. In its decision, the court in Karlsruhe referred to the usual election review process and stated: “Just as before the election, legal protection with regard to this election is only possible to a limited extent before the final election result is announced.” Party founder Sahra Wagenknecht called the decision on Thursday evening “regrettable.” She said it showed that there is a “significant need for reform” in the legal options for election review.
The Electoral Scrutiny Act stipulates that any eligible voter may only submit written, reasoned objections to the Bundestag after the official final results have been announced. Parliament then decides on the objection. An appeal against the plenary session’s decision can then be filed with the Federal Constitutional Court within two months. The problem: The process takes months. And if the BSW were to enter the Bundestag, it would have consequences, including for the current coalition negotiations between the SPD and the CDU/CSU. With the BSW in parliament, the “black-red” coalition would also need the Greens to form a government capable of gaining a majority. It can be assumed that the BSW still wants to enter parliament this way.
No party has ever failed to clear the five percent hurdle by such a narrow margin. Due to discrepancies, the BSW had therefore insisted on ordering a nationwide recount before the final results were announced. On Thursday, Wagenknecht criticized the checks carried out so far, stating that recounts had only taken place in a few polling stations. The fact that “even these relatively few checks have led to the discovery of over 4,000 additional votes” is an indicator that the party may have exceeded the five percent hurdle. There are still constituencies in which “the BSW allegedly has zero votes and small parties like Bündnis Deutschland have an incredibly large number.” In addition, confusion between BSW and Bündnis Deutschland votes and incorrectly counted invalid votes may have occurred in “every one of the approximately 90,000 constituencies.”
Other parties also made slight adjustments to their vote totals. This was also the case in previous federal elections. The CDU gained 1,674 votes, the SPD 840, and the AfD 1,632. However, the seat distribution remained unchanged compared to the preliminary results.
BSW MEP Fabio De Masi had already drawn attention to inconsistencies in the results immediately after the elections. On Thursday, he told X that he was “proud and grateful for how many people” had supported the BSW in its “hunt for lost votes.” He added that they had “achieved, one way or another, what no party had ever achieved in its first election appearance.” De Masi also criticized the official election review process. The Bundestag, as “a judge in its own case, could now take virtually unlimited time to consider an election challenge.”
Heaps of blokes are buying the BYD UTE mate, around here. At bottelo 4069 two blokes were grousing for yonks about the deal, owner was chuffed. He knew all the history behind both brands and who wants to look like a spastic driving a space truck just because Elon = Victory in life.
On another note heaps of mates that work in financial stuff are all having a wee brake down. Trump and his crew seem to have made international investors seriously concerned as him&his wreaking ball do their thing all whilst Russia is having none of the PR/Marketing his mob is spewing.
Best yet is these ninnies don’t seem to understand wrong or right you just cant end flow of funds to something and not have it go boom without any offsets. Fn live goats and greyhound racing around here for an example.
Did you hear that Trump may be soon targeting our pharmaceutical benefits scheme because Big Pharma in America is complaining that they don’t make enough profits?
Yeah … seems barging power against US corp is akin to commie stuff and needs to be stopped … otherwise per Trump everyone has been stealing US wealth …
commie stuff, like free healthcare