Domino effect YouTube
Brutality-Desensitization Process Nearly Complete The Onion (HT Michael T)
Health
Western diets and chronic diseases Nature Medicine
Does intermittent fasting work? Economist
Pandemics
What to know about the new disease outbreaks in central Africa AP
The US may start vaccinating chickens and cows against bird flu New Scientist
How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right The Atlantic
Climate
Robotics
Robot Kung Fu:
Kung Fu BOT GAME😘
720° Spin Kick – Hear the Impact! Kung Fu BOT Gameplay RAW. (No Speed-Up)
(Do not imitate, please keep a safe distance from the machine)#Unitree #Kungfu #EmbodiedAI #SpringFestivalGalaRobot #AI #Humanoid #Bipedal #WorldModel #Robot pic.twitter.com/0CCAyvKdKV— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) March 4, 2025
China?
Chinese navy ships round out Australian circuit South China Morning Post
This is actually a very important point in the long run.
You can compare it to astronomy: smaller bodies need a stable bigger body to gravitate around if they want to avoid being set on a potentially catastrophic collusion course.
What China is trying to do with the concept of… https://t.co/azgx8GojXo
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 8, 2025
Koreas
South Korea’s gender chasm Nikkei Asia
South Korea’s impeached President Yoon freed from detention but faces ongoing trials CNN
Japan
Japan voices “full” trust in U.S. after Trump questions security pact Kyodo News
Japan’s new 3,000-ton submarine with Harpoon missiles poses threat to China Interesting Engineering
India
Modi and Trump have agreed to advance trade talks The Times of India
Israel v. The Resistance
‘We have nothing left to lose’: Gazans respond to Trump’s warnings Al Jazeera
Gaza ceasefire hits the brick wall of Netanyahu’s agenda Responsible Statecraft
Trump strikes dark tone as he seeks to restart nuclear talks with Iran Politico
Syraqistan
Clashes in Syria between government forces and Assad loyalists AP
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukrainian forces fighting inside Russia are almost surrounded Reuters
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Kiev regime forces surrendering in the Kursk region. pic.twitter.com/ebrtisHVnY
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) March 9, 2025
European Disunion
Total flop: Scrapping premium at 99.3% unused Klimatgranskaren via machine translation. Micael T: “These EU-misleaders can’t do anything properly.”
Old Blighty
Man holding Palestinian flag scales London’s Big Ben CNN
Shock for UK as Bank of England halves its economic growth prediction Euro News
Africa
Trump’s open door to white South Africans Axios
A tinderbox conflict in Congo is ready to explode Reuters
Just Five Countries Make Up Half of Africa’s GDP Visual Capitalist
US-China engagement in Africa Brookings
South of the Border
The real reason behind Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and military buildup Al Jazeera
US poised to order more companies to cease operations in Venezuela Business Standard
Clashes erupt in Argentina during pensioners’ protest Euro News (video)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Key Trends in Poverty in the United States Peterson Foundation
Military Continues to Struggle with F-35 Readiness NGAUS
Who else is being silent about this? President Trump.
He’s not even pretending to care.
He’s bombing Somalia, Yemen, and even places in Syria, just not the head-chopping terrorists and NATO advisers the US itself deliberately installed into power in Damascus.
Trump’s…
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) March 7, 2025
Washington/Trump/DOGE
Satan growing concerned he overpaid for JD Vance’s soul Duffelblog (Micael T)
Trump administration releases list of hundreds of federal buildings targeted for potential sale Spectrum News
Trump says he will ‘probably’ extend TikTok ban deadline The Hill
DOGE staffers bring U.S. marshals to small federal agency WaPo
GOP funding patch boosts defense and deportations, cuts other programs Politico
Trump’s Threat to Take Over Canada Is a Scandal Rolling Stone
Immigration
Federal judge won’t order immigration officials to change school arrests policy AP
Trump’s immigration policy: ‘Give me your oligarchs’ The Hill
Immigrant labor fuels US economy but Trump’s crackdown mostly ignores it AP
Economy
US economic worries mount as Trump implements tariffs, cuts workforce and freezes spending AP
US economy facing potential slowdown The Guardian
US credit card defaults soar Fox News
Consumer confidence registers biggest monthly decline since August 2021 CNN
AI
AI Tries To Cheat At Chess When It’s Losing Slashdot
AI competition is eating the world Politico
Media
Top 35 Social Media Platforms Exploding Topics
Reddit and Digg Cofounders Plan Relaunch of ‘Human-Centered’ Digg With AI Innovations CNBC
The Bezzle
‘You get sucked in’: crypto scam victims on how they lost up to £162,000 The Guardian
From Revolution to Corruption: The Cryptocurrency Scam and the Future of Inflationary Bailouts Neofeudal Review (Micael T)
Class Warfare
America Is Locked in a New Class War Foreign Policy
Antidote du Jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
144 comments
Comments are closed.
“Brutality-Desensitization Process Nearly Complete”
‘I’m doing my part!’ – Quentin Tarantino
And a big NC welcome to Haig Hovaness.
Welcome Haig!
Yes welcome Haig! I hope you will take this as constructive criticism, as I was really disappointed to see so many links from the untrusted mainstream media today. The economist, the AP, the atlantic, ABC News, CNN, BBC, Reuters, politico, axios, brookings, the Peterson foundation, the rolling stone, slate, foreign policy, the guardian, the hill, CNBC: I think Many of these are on my suspect list. For instance politico was the one that was found to be largely funded by USAID right?
Sometimes I may want to go and see what they are saying, but I don’t want a page of links that’s full of approved narrative. I know mainstream sites sometimes break from approved narrative, but if I’m trying to get informed about some new issue that I know little about, I don’t want my first exposure to be from a site that produces approved narratives.
I welcome other commenters to consider and to weigh in.
Welcome Haig!
My 0.02$ Re: too much dog food from our leaders in today’s links, I think getting this kind of a dose on a Sunday is useful. This selection represents the reality a lot of my friends and family are living in right now. There will always be time to share the data from the kinds of sources we regularly see on NC. But I think a time is coming where knowing what to say in public about various matters will be important to many. So I appreciate these links.
Good point. We have to “self-censor” in many public spaces now. Knowing the “Official Narrative” is key to avoiding “Imperial entanglements.”
It also helps to realize just how deranged the “status quo” “thought leaders” are. It makes avoiding their snares easier.
I welcome these MSM links as I trust and rely upon Haig (and those unsung NC contributors who nominate links) to give me a just representation of the sh*t my fellow pharm animals are being fed.
At 77 life is too short to wade (again!) through all that dross.
My apologies for the disappointing sourcing. I am getting acclimated to the demanding environment and the high expectations of NC readers. Better links will be forthcoming.
Don’t worry about it. You saved us all the time of listening to the Sunday talking heads! :D
Do not worry. If we cannot adapt to multiple “points of view,” for whatever reason, then we are failing in our critical thinking tasks.
One basic function of a wider choice of subject matter is that it gives readers the opportunity of reading or not reading a particular source, meme, or point of view. The reader can begin an article and then chose to stop before finishing. Without a wide range of choices, that facility is reduced and enervated. One cannot read something one is not aware of.
The main failing in the DEI “movement” that I could see was that in nature, diversity is a ‘driver’ of survival for the population as a whole. Political DEI has been a targeted policy aimed at favouring certain socio-political ideologies. Natural DEI is a means of insuring the best possible chance of continued survival.
Naked Capitalism has always been a sort of Journal of Natural and Sociological Philosophy. That covers a wide range of subjects.
Stay safe. Welcome aboard.
No worries about the sourcing. It is a pretty fair selection truth be told. I suppose that after the past few years, readers of NC have learned that the main stream media spreads narratives and not news and so is always met with mistrust. If you want the motto, it might be ‘Mistrust and damn well verify.’
I wish I could see more of the western diet and disease article (oh for the days I had university institutional access) but it looks like a summary of various points made by this site (or links to interesting articles) over the past 10 years: the halving of the number of gut bacteria suspected among the last 3 generations of westerners who increasingly rely on highly processed foods etc.
It does sound intriguing that article but when you look at the average western diet, you can guess at the conclusions. But finding an actual diet is so contentious. We can’t even get the food pyramid right. The BMI Index seems to be a rule of thumb exercise. And some food recommendations appear to have their origin in certain food industries rather than actual science which is why sugar seems to get a big pass. I can never forget the advice of Jamie Oliver about shopping here. He said you read the ingredients and if it sounds like what would be in your grandmother’s pantry, put it into your shopping trolley. If the ingredients sound like something from a chemical lab, put it back on the shelf. That sounds like good advice that.
Dean of my faculty when in Sydney had massive heart attack which he thankfully recovered fully from. Docs immediately told him “sugar is your enemy, not fat”.
Hardly new news but twas an eye opener for me at the time.
John Yudkin’s Pure, White and Deadly was first published in 1972, though the efforts of Ancel Keys and the sugar lobby buried it for decades. I was fortunate to get a copy of the 1986 edition in the late ‘80s.
The food pyramid is better used when upside down. It needs a redo to eliminate the harmful chemicals present in so many of the entries. The glyphosates and artificial this and that lead to inflammation, weight gain and worse outcomes.
European brands would fare better than American ones such as the Italian pasta that doesn’t induce gluten problems.
Grandmother would’ve balked at the additives on US labels now, tsk tsk.
I have a comment in moderation that makes this point…..Australia had in recent decades allowed all sorts of “US style” additives that the precautionary principle in Europe caused them to be banned till shown to be OK.
(I’m half Australian BTW)
“…read the ingredients and if it sounds like what would be in your grandmother’s pantry, put it into your shopping trolley. If the ingredients sound like something from a chemical lab, put it back on the shelf.” – the very advice given to my daughter and one that i’ve followed for over 50 years – highly recommended!
My grandmother’s pantry was entirely from a chemical lab. Wonder bread. Velveeta. Cool Whip. Miracle Whip. Mashed potatoes from a box. Pringles. Coffeemate. Margarine. Processed foods go back well more than a half century.
a simple hypothesis that never gets tested (cuz there is no $$$$$ in prevention)….
pick a random town: assign 100 peeps a pre-1990 Japanese diet (or Hong Kong or Korea or Shanghaiese), a 2nd group a pre-1990 Spanish diet, 3rd is a control, 4th is the AHA/AMA/USDA advocated diet
the interesting outlier is Australia…..long life expectancy w/a western lifestyle. (my limited interaction with Aussies is that they don’t eat much shelf-stable food)….and Oz doesn’t have the same chronic poverty as parts of Europe or USA
’til then….eat mostly plants, not too much, guilty pleasures are ok now and then
It helps that Aussies do not have the sweet tooth that Americans have. Years ago Campbells Soup purchased Arnotts, a local famous biscuit maker. This caused a lot of controversy at the time as people were worried that Campbells would Americanize our biscuits i.e. ramp up the amount of sugar in them to bring them in line with American cookies. Nobody here wanted that-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnott%27s_Group
Oz is indeed an outlier (I’m half Aussie and lived there for 6 years). There are LOADS of additives and preservatives that are banned in the EU and UK. IIRC TimTams can only be sold in those “boutique Australiana shops” in Europe but not in any mainstream shop due to this.
Your core proposal brought a smile to my face……a cluster RCT. Design and analysis of cluster randomised trials was my PhD many moons ago. Just as you say, it didn’t really go anywhere because $$$ is lacking for the interventions where a cluster RCT is warranted.
the list of banned additives/substances in Euro-zone is long and so many are allowed here in the USA – an example is flavor additives, such as menthol, that are banned in tobacco – a close friend that enjoyed smoking a particularly popular menthol cigarettes died quickly once diagnosed with laryngeal cancer – a wake-up to others of our neighborhood group that smoked any cigarettes to stop – tobacco is an insidiously difficult habit to break – next time you buy any bottle of soda take a look at the ingredients and take RK advice about what would be in grandma’s pantry –
just an aside on this thread on what we eat, is what we feed our pets – my daughter began preparing her own food for her pooch rather than from the 20lb bags usually bought – it was definitely beneficial and her pooch’s skin allergy disappeared – she says it costs about the same as the bags and takes an effort to prepare a 4 day supply for her beast but she insists even his behavior is better –
I get most of my calories from antibiotics.
Lol, “Froot-flavored”? I have recently begun eating junky, prepared food, something I’ve mostly avoided til now. This is not a wholesale dive in, just a guilty pleasure here and there. I figure our stupid timeline negates the obvious negative longer term effects.
Do you sometimes think about surviving the stupid timeline to reach the post-stupid future?
I figure the odds are low.
Re intermittent fasting. I kinda concluded what the article did. In moderation it’s helpful but beware going the whole hog (so to speak).
I seem to have a couple of days a week where I don’t exactly fast but I certainly have a calorie deficit. I’ll snack on stuff like carrot batons and yoghurt and wouldn’t say I feel hungry or go to bed hungry. I’ll eat more normally the other 5 days. I’ve lost excess weight but being the wrong side of 50 I’m aware I’m losing muscle mass too and use food supplements, especially because of long covid. So I try to keep an eye on all these things.
>> A study in mice published in Nature in October 2024 found that severe fasting (where calories were cut by 40%) had downsides, including muscle mass loss and, possibly, weakened immune systems.
There is a difference between fasting and ‘calorie restriction’. Fasting kicks in processes that protect muscle mass. For me, there’s a 400 calorie limit that I can track with blood glucose, another benefit that doesn’t get mentioned. Cutting 40% of calories will just dial down your metabolism and make you feel like crap. A one-day fast makes zero difference to this as your body is burning through glycogen stores in the liver.
I’m not aware that altering fat metabolism was a claim before this recent paper. What is the case is that, in the absence of food influx, the body turns to metabolizing its own fats, and doing so very efficiently. There are different autophagies, and by the third day the body is chewing through its junk pile of malformed proteins and the like. (A small amount of food protein interrupts this process.)
I have seen zero information that the immune system is weakened beyond the fasting, which could be inferred from the article. It down-regulates during fasting, which is why I told my godson to not fast when recovering from having a tooth pulled.
Dr. Jason Fung’s work is excellent. Start there if you care.
I spent about a year on the 5-2 diet. Twice a week I fasted for 36 hours – immediately after lunch to the following day dinner for 3 meals giving a total of 6 meals a week. We also attempted to eat breakfast a little later in the day to make meal times cover a shorter period of the day.
I also had to make changes to how I ate. In particular had to stop snacking. Also I noticed that what I ate changed to accommodate fasting. High protein in the meals before fasting helped a lot while carbs made the fast much harder. This was made easier by my wife being diagnosed as pre-diabetic and some other diet changes to accommodate her. The combination worked and I lost about 15 lbs over a year. Things fell apart after the US/Russia war started because of the stress I felt.
I did not like fasting, but I am in the process of returning. I noticed that I am more irritable when fasting. I do not feel that the 5-2 diet I followed was extreme. My body felt noticeably better after loosing 15 lbs. Probably I needed to lose closer to 40 lbs.
I did not need to do portion control. Calorie counting was required indirectly in that eating out is a very high calorie activity and had to be limited.
We used “The Obesity Code” and “The Diabetes Code” from Dr Fung. It is worth noting that while my wife was talking with a nutritionist the name of Dr. Fung got us a disproving silence. On the other hand the changes my wife was making to her diet were approved of.
I had great success with a modest program of intermittent fasting a few years ago. I found it rather painless, and I lost weight, reduced blood sugar, also seemed to reduce general symptoms of inflammation. Dentist remarked how great my gums looked. It also made flying easier because I can just tell myself I’m fasting and then keep my mask on and not eat without feeling too deprived.
Unfortunately, like most dietary programs, some of the positive effects seemed to diminish over time. The pounds don’t just melt off like they did at first. I’ve maintained a stable weight below what it was before, but not quite at my goal weight. I haven’t tried to escalate into multi-day fasts or anything like that.
I have been on a restricted calorie diet since before I was 20. The NIH should be paying me.
Yep. If only the NIH paid people for the info they give out for free to the tech giants …. info that is then used to screw us.
Intermittent fasting, especially the 36 hrs+ plans, do work wonders for the body. I took the opportunity that the initial stay-at-home covid restrictions in 2020 provided in implementing an exercise and fasting regimen that saw me lose 48 lbs in four months (236->188). I was never as healthy in my entire 45 years than in 2020-21. I could run, bike and cross-country ski for far longer than I have ever done. Jason Fung’s discussions on this were a major help in figuring out what would work for me.
The issue with any fat reduction scheme is that you are not only mentally fighting your own bad habits but also those that the society enforces on you. My job has gone back to being stressful travel every 2-3 weeks and it is just too hard to maintain the discipline that is needed. Fast unhealthy food is just too available and often the only option, and after a grueling day of work and worry there is no energy left to maintain a good fasting habit.
However, whatever discipline I picked up in 2020-21 has let me manage to retain 20lbs of the drop in these subsequent years.
I often eat only one meal a day, and typically only eat between 6-10pm. Unfortunately I had to give up walking (I’m waiting on a hip replacement and the alteration to my gait puts too much pressure on my big toe) so I’m putting some weight back on and eating more during the day because my routine has been interrupted.
Intermittent fasting and keeping sugar to a minimum has been very helpful for controlling my lipid panel — YMMV
Try what might be called fasting-lite.
Limit eating to a shorter window, say 9:00 to 5:00, then layer in smaller meals. That has helped many.
I kinda do that on my “normal” days and I certainly endorse it.
Rubes Have Been Duped
The rubes were not willing to chance a second Democrat term with constant threats of using nukes like the Biden team did – while claiming that it was Russia. I think that you have to go all the way back to the Reagan admin for similar mutterings about using nukes (e.g. ‘The world could survive a limited nuclear war.’).
But the economy and immigration were why they voted for Trump. I haven’t seen much (or anything) in polling that points to your conclusion. I haven’t done a deep dive into the subject, but here’s one article claiming that only 4% of the rubes voted for Trump because of foreign policy. I’d add that those 4% may not have been particularly concerned about nuclear war.
https://abcnews.go.com/538/voters-chose-trump/story?id=115827243
The two party system effectively keeping elite capitalism in charge.
Good to read you again Antifa.
RK your comment “(e.g. ‘The world could survive a limited nuclear war.’)” jarred my memory – in the book “The Rockefellers” there was a footnote about Kissinger and his involvement in the Kennedy-Johnson administration and a subcommittee on international security known as the Special Studies Project, Panel II as it was called, of which Kissinger was the director – the footnote reads:
“Like Nelson himself, Kissinger was just then at a critical juncture in his career. Two years earlier, as an ambitious young instructor in government at Harvard, he had looked beyond the academic world for the experience and exposure that would allow him to return to Cambridge as a tenured faculty member. Early in 1955, he had been considered for the vacant managing editorship of Foreign Affairs…….Harvard Dean McGeorge Bundy had recommended him as rapporteur for a Council on Foreign Relations study group on nuclear weapons…….Kissinger had used the group’s deliberations in his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which argued the feasibility of “limited nuclear war…….” – the footnote goes on to describe how enamored Nelson was with Kissinger – point being the context of considering a limited nuclear war goes back to before Reagan, and Kissinger carried the torch for such nonsense through many administrations – there is quite a bit about this in chapter 19 of the book –
That bit about how the ‘The world could survive a limited nuclear war’ was said by one of Reagan’s “laptop bombardiers” before he won the Presidency. It was noted at the time how these people were so keen for war with a nuclear power and yet not that many years before actively dodging any service in the military much less going to Vietnam. I think that Cheney managed five deferments during the war claiming that he had ‘other priorities.’ Reagan was said to be shocked after watching the TV film “The Day After” and I note that the discovery of the K2 boundary and it’s implication for a post nuclear war world may have taken a lot out of the sails of the pro nuclear war crowd.
Good to hear from you, Antifa. I like your latest parody a lot.
I think the rubes don’t know that they’ve been duped. Perhaps stagflation and the precious “muckets” collapsing will change their attitude, though.
This is link-whoring, a violation of our site Policies. You have agreed to them as a condition of commenting here. Others who have Substacks and are active in comments respect our house rules. We don’t play favorites so need to observe them as well.
How is the use of “rubes” in this parody different than Hillary Clinton’s use of deplorables? What purpose does a parody like this, clever though it may be, serve other than to signal superiority of some kind? Even if the writer of these lyrics believes the disparagement is deserved, do they really think the implicit criticism will be constructive in any way? (As someone who has lived in rural locations my entire adult life, I got news for you.)
If you’re not punching up you’re wasting oxygen.
Kitchen table politics. Late night pillow talk with Mom and Dad about how to pay the rent with all the other bills getting higher. People who were promised a real change are now visiting the local food bank on the regular, and meeting their neighbors there. This is reporting from the street, where men are scraping Trump stickers off their truck, and bitching at the bar about prices for everything from diapers to donuts to diesel fuel. No one in this neck of the woods is the least bit shy about saying they feel like a rube. They’ve seen the bearded lady at the MAGA circus, and feel gypped for ever buying a ticket. They are punching up at Trump, and that’s the news.
Thanks, Antifa! I hope you’re new venture can reach a wider audience!
Lambert would talk about “citizen science”. We need citizen art, too! Arts and Sciences!
The headline is misleading… states are competing with one another to have data centers sited. Corporate welfare for big tech and utilities. This is bipartisan, too.
States use incentives and loosen laws to attract power plants as they face competition from Big Tech | AP News
We gotta win the race! Corporations show up with NASCARs and consumers show up with track shoes. Meanwhile many states are forcing conversion to heat pumps and EVs. One can only imagine what this will do to rates. We can only hope DeepSeek creates stranded investments sooner rather than later.
Does the flow of electricity respect state lines? I can see many of these power projects sending the juice to neighboring states, thereby defeating the purpose of creating “muh AI jobz!” in the home state.
Disconnecting from the grid – is it really even an option for most states?
PJM is the independent system operator for the area from PA/NJ/MD (legacy PJM) and VA west to Illinois. NYISO, NEISO are others. East of the Rockies, excluding TX is a single synchronous grid. Electricity flows freely throughout. A state cannot practically “disconnect”. The ISOs have planning authority for transmission lines and plants in their footprint. What states do is approve rates and building permits. Wannabe 2028 President Shapiro wants his own ISO. Let it suffice to say the laws of physics hold more sway than a politician. Ontario premier Doug Ford is another gridiot that thinks he can disconnect.
A key point to remember is that ISOs are an artificial construct imposed of utilities to facilitate trading of electricity and transmission rights by the likes of Enron and financial firms. This was a Clinton thing. Previously utilities were vertically integrated and all rates were regulated. Now states only set delivery rates and the supply and transmission are set by the invisible hand (that’s in your pocket!)
Yes. Move here to Hawaii and enjoy the benefits of the PUC controlling all areas of electric utility and also the highest rates.
Gave me a good laugh with “corporations show up with NASCARs”, remembering NASCAR’s unofficial motto “if ya ain’t cheatin’ ya ain’t trying” ;)
Came across this Ed Zitron piece Power Cut about Microsoft data centers. Maybe the politicians are racing with very sick horses?
Apologize if previously posted.
About Satan and the vice president, his chosen abbreviated moniker doesn’t sit right with me. I call him Jimmy Vance. That sounds fitting for him.
Lambert is good with appellations and I adopted DOGEbags (soft G) but, for when you prefer the hard G, I offer DOGE stylists.
Yesterday was a new low for the MSM reporting on Syria:
1) The NYT had an article that referred “dictator Bashar Assad” but didn’t mention the current “leader” has no interest in elections, did not mention, referred to HTS affiliates as “security forces”, and unlike October 7 was very judicious that claims of large numbers of killings “could not be verified”, and no mention of alleged purported beheadings or other slaughters on X.
– I largely subscribe to the NYT to hear what the PMC is being fed and recently subscribed to the LA Times to see if they were any better. Interestingly their coverage yesterday one or two paragraphs that were quite specific and almost graphic on the atrocities.
2) While HTS was slaughtering Alawaites (who appear to be most similar to Shia but have elements of Orthodox beliefs such as celebrating Christmas), Fox, per above, had wall-to-wall coverage about Iran’s links to terrorism.
3) The EU had a comment on X condemning Assad Loyalists for the massacres. The Comments section below the tweet begged to differ.
The problem is that our western political culture is incapable of nuance, and requires everything to be black or white, good or bad, for or against. The idea that different things can be true simultaneously, for example that Assad was a bloody dictator but that HTS, like all Islamist groups, regards elections as illegitimate, is too much for our political class and its media parasites, and would make their heads explode. Every political or militant movement has to be reductively labelled as “pro” “anti” “aligned” “supported” or whatever, rather than actually considered as an independent actor. You or I can understand that certain armed groups in Syria might have been happy to see Assad go, but not want him to be replaced by jihadists. But that’s too subtle for the MSM to get its brain around.
But they’re our terrorists! Note the US Humvee, delivered via Turkey or Raqqa in this Reuters photo. Sure ISIS grabbed some in Iraq, but it strains credulity that the US and Israel didn’t materially support the HTS headchoppers with plenty of kit. No nuance here.
Wars and disorder in the Muslim world has been F-UK-US policy for over a hundred years.
Whether they can’t or won’t handle nuance…sometimes it’s indistinguishable. That presents problems.
Saw a report somewhere that hundreds of women and children killed, likely because of a few firefights with Damascus forces. Who invaded the area.
Compare to Oct 7…..
The State department clears it’s throat:
The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days. The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.
https://www.state.gov/the-escalation-of-fighting-and-civilian-deaths-in-syria/
‘COMBATE |🇵🇷
@upholdreality
🇨🇳 China Foreign Minister: “President Xi Jinping has proposed building a community with a shared future for mankind… History will prove that the real winner is the one that keeps in mind the interests of all” ‘
If that is not a direct challenge to the concept and practice of Trump’s MAGA, then I don’t know what is.
If one had to choose whether to ally with the u.s. or with China, the Chinese vision presented in this statement, in addition to the Chinese actions behind this statement, stunningly contrast with the u.s. babble about MAGA combined with the u.s. past and current actions. The u.s. is making the choice an easy one.
– ‘Clashes in Syria between government forces and Assad loyalists’ – AP
Opening paragraph:
“Fighters siding with Syria’s new government stormed several villages near the country’s coast, killing dozens of men in response to recent attacks on government security forces by loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad, a war monitor said.”
Glad to see the Western media is still doing its job in Syria. I sure wish those Assad loyalists would quit forcing the new government to “respond” as they are currently. After all, Al-Shara just wants peace, he says.
I’m sure there will be a harrowing article on the current massacres appearing in the New Yorker any day now.
Western media seems to be leaving out the bit where hundreds of women and children are also being butchered by the mild head-choppers and there are at least a thousand dead – mostly Alawites and Christians. Will Trump threaten to bomb them if they don’t stop? Will EU countries suspend all trade and aid unless they quit? Will Erdogan yank their leash and tell them to stop making him look so bad? Of course not. Letting the Jihadist have free reign was the plan all along. The only one looking halfway good are the Russians who are trying to protect as many people as they can at their air base. But then again, they don’t follow traditional western values, do they?
Israel is giving Syria the Libya treatment. Israel believes that spreading anarchy and chaos in adjacent countries is going to improve its security. The situation will develop not necessarily to Israel’s advantage.
I agree with Haig: Syria might be getting “The Libya Treatment.”
I doubt that Al-Golani wants this chaos.
1. HTS didn’t win the war militarily. The new regime took Damascus in a political deal, involving the cooperation of some pro-Assad factions.
2. I think that the Assad government fell because during the several years of ceasefire from ’20-’24, they couldn’t renormalize Syria’s relations with the region or with the West. If the new government can’t get sanctions removed, they might not be able to hold power, either, which means there would be no effective Syrian state.
I guess I could say that I’m “objectively pro-Al-Golani” today, for the same reason why I was “objectively pro-Assad” yesterday. I want there to be a Syrian state. If the Ba’ath can no longer govern, then let HTS try. HTS is the only rebel faction, aside from ISIS, that has ever shown any ability to govern. But if they fall, too, then stateless chaos means nothing but endemic war and famine.
3. Erdogan certainly doesn’t want the war to continue. He’s trying to get the Syrian refugees repatriated, and he’s trying to reach a deal with the Kurds. Neither effort will succeed if the war goes on.
Condiments and the further links about “nobody wants your familyblogging home-made ketchup”
I started to make our own ketchup at home when we got kids and began eating burgers, hot dogs, fries and other ketchup-carrying food. I do like Heinz ketchup too but working on the harm-reduction thesis (less sugar in food) I do make a ketchup that is tasty and similar enough to Heinz enough. The kids love it because they started their life with it. Now after a few years with this I find Heinz too sweet.
Only a couple of times have I recieved compliments from outsiders in the form of eating it all. Nobody has not liked it though.
If you want to try for yourself:
1 dose Mutti polpa or other finely chopped tomato.
2-3 generous tablespoons tomatoe paste
2-3 tablespoons red vinegar
1-3 teaspoons cinnamon
1-2 bay leaves
3-4 cloves
A few generous pinches of brown sugar
Boil slowly until the right consistency (Heinz-like).
After I started to make mayonnaise at home I can’t eat the industry version. The home-made version is so easy to make and so much tastier. Also, you know what is in it: egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. The colour is also more beautiful.
I haven’t calculated the costs vs bought versions because we don’t eat lot of it so it is not a cost that is make it or break it in our budget if you think about it from a class perspective.
I used to think Heinz’s secret ingredient was tarragon. Now I can no longer detect it, though, perhaps because of COVID.
Could you taste tarrgon in Heinz Baked Beans too?
I tried this recipe and it came very close
https://www.recipetineats.com/homemade-baked-beans-recipe-heinz/
There are economies of scale reasons to suspect that the baked beans also would have the tarragon taste.
I will try with tarragon next time.
Sodium benzoate was once used as a preservative in tomato ketchup, but the anti-preservative movement led by Dr. Harvey Wiley, who worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the early 20th century, raised concerns about its health effects. As part of the trend to eliminate preservatives, Dr. Katherine Bitting showed in 1907 that ketchup could be made to last longer without preservatives by adding more sugar and vinegar. Based on this discovery, a sweet ketchup with large amounts of sugar and vinegar was marketed by…yes, Heinz. Ironically, the sugary sweet ketchup was a product of the food safety movement.
For better or worse, I just buy Heinz low sugar. I’ve never looked at the ingredients list, probably still loaded down with mystery stuff. Agree the normal stuff is too sweet, and I feel bad after eating it.
Mayonnaise the problem I’ve found is that you just cannot get one without a load of soybean oil, except maybe ultra expensive organic hippie store mayo. Have to make your own to get around it.
Wow the Onion article was published in 1999!
I assumed that was the point!
What was weirder is that the “Bank of England cuts growth forecast” article is from the beginning of February. It might have been news then but it is not now and the trends behind this have been discussed a lot here.
Those trends are not looking any better but we have a shiny new toy of a European Arms Race so everybody’s talking guns and nobody’s missing the butter this month….
“Trump’s immigration policy: ‘Give me your oligarchs, your rich…’ ”
Not even a new impulse this. About ten or twenty years ago the Pentagon did a study of how to deal with a world that experiences major climate collapse. Their main conclusion was for America to pull up the drawbridges – their words, not mine – and for the country to hunker down behind Fortress America. But while this was happening, they would ensure that all the oligarchs, errr, billionaires, in places like Europe would be able to flee to America with their money first. Of course in that era, the thought that climate change would severely hit America too was not really considered.
Doesn’t Australia ask what you are bringing to the table before granting citizenship to foreigners? And Canada? A friend of my brother’s once wanted to move to Canada and the requirements were not encouraging.
FYI – Canada has a menu of ‘points’ for stuff like age, education, skills, language proficiency etc etc for immigration. (ie permanent residency)
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/check-score/crs-criteria.html
Once you’re in, citizenship is pretty much automatic. (you need to know the words to O Canada. : )
Of course when Trump conquers Canada all these requirements will be waved.
My brother’s friend decided to stay American and avoid the frostbite. The last time I was up that way they were having a heat wave but I took a train up to Hudson’s Bay where it was quite nippy. We southrons are wimps for cold.
That sounds an optimistic view of the Canadian immigration process.
My friend is Canadian (mother’s side, possibly father’s too, relatives all there, family had a place in Ottawa he was moving into and his parents had retired to the Gatineau). He had to fill out immense forms for he and his British-Polish wife to move to the promised land. It was clear the forms prioritised refugees, LGBTQIA2S migration over white European.
Amusing but telling postscript, in the light of Western derangement: they came back to the UK within a year or two because Ottawan life was all too woke. And these are liberal PMC types (local government civil servant, child psychologist) – and this was in the late 1990’s!
Who said anything about ‘optimistic’? It’s the system in place for skilled workers. There are many different other tracks for refugees, relatives, you name it. And yeah, they all require a mountain of paperwork and lots of waiting. That said, I understand it’s a lot easier than the hoops required to get a US green card. There’s a steady stream of multinational tech positions where the worker is parked at a desk here while they’re waiting for the green card, it’s an open secret in the community.
OK, rose-tinted, then. The dominant factors in immigrating to Canada appear to be woke ones rather than actual skills (or in my friend’s case preexisting Canadian citizenship, which didn’t seem to help his wife!). The Australian States genuinely favour immigrants in shortage occupations in an antecedents-blind fashion. Canada seemingly not so much, other social engineering factors dominate.
N of 1 though, maybe he was just unlucky and Canada is a promised land. But I think it is notable that it is very rarely mentioned as either an origin of immigrants to the UK or a destination of emigrants, compared to USA, EU, Australia, NZ, HK, Singapore and Dubai. I think Canada has aligned itself with US immigration and then some!
For quite a while, Canada had an “immigrant investor” category, which meant that wealthy foreigners could pretty much buy citizenship. I believe that Trudeau actually phased out this program, as part of the quarrel he’s having with China.
Why do they think “their money” will be of any use in Fortress America if nothing is being produced within its walls to buy?
Unfortunately nationalism is inseparable from its nasty twin, xenophobia. As long as politicians use hatred as the easiest path to power, we will be hearing chants of USA, USA, USA or any other nation uber alles. It takes a lot of prosperity to suppress tribal hatred. The Chinese are trying to build a prosperous world. The U.S. just wants to maintain its dominance and projects the same motive on its “adversaries.”
Undertaking world war in the nuclear era is stunningly stupid, but stupidity among world leaders was abundant in 1914 and 1939, and it has characterized U.S. foreign policy since 1945. Perhaps Trump, the Great Orange Satan, is not stupid in this way.
It takes a lot of prosperity or a lot of propaganda. I’ve taken to blaming Charles Darwin, not just everybody’s favorite columnist for The Economist, Herbert Spencer.
Darwin didn’t have to subtitle his book, “or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”, but he had a sure instinct for what would sell.
Aren’t the Chinese and Russian leaders also nationalists? It may depend more on the circumstances of the individual country whether “patriotism is the last refuge of the soundrel.”
Here in America we are protected by two oceans and nuclear weapons and a far away world full of countries more interested in fighting each other than the US. Our no doubt temporary success breeds arrogance and “end of history” fantasies.
” Trump strikes dark tone as he seeks to restart nuclear talks with Iran”
Dealing with Trump is like when Putin has to deal with Erdogan – its exhausting. The broken promises, the randomness of his policies, the self-serving attitudes. Most of all when he does stuff because he thinks its a bright idea when it causes chaos for Turkiye. Trump is a lot like that. He says that he wants a deal with Iran but he was the one that reneged on the nuke deal the first time he was in office. They are not going to reduce their nuclear stockpiles to near zero in return for sanctions relief when they can be revoked in minutes. Does Trump know that Iran is not going for nukes and that if he went to war with Iran, that it would take about a decade for it to play out to an uncertain end? Goodbye domestic program. I think that what Trump really wants is for Iran to reduce the number of missiles that they have and to vastly scale back their missile program. As that is just an open invitation for the US and Israel to attack Iran, not gunna happen. Like with North Korea, he is going to have to learn to settle for the situation, much of it his own making.
I don’t agree that the situation is of his making but do agree that that his motives are suspect and his methods are haphazard. Still, maybe we will get some peace out of it in the end.
He made the situation by cancelling America’s adherence to the JCPOA. Biden preserved the situation Trump made by refusing to cleanly rejoin the JCPOA without seeking to extort concessions from Iran in return for rejoining the JCPOA.
So Biden preserved and handed right back to Trump the situation Trump created deliberately and on purpose out of spite at having seen Obama make a genuine foreign policy achievement.
Trumps appeal team are trying to move “hush money” conviction to federal court..
No doubt in my mind that if moved to federal court, Trump will want to try the self-pardon thing to further cement his feeling that If the president does it it aint a crime or a misdemenor committed by a person in high office.
– farce argument –
I suppose both dems and repubs will be all ‘secretly’ behind this so they can excuse themselves for all the misdemenors and high crimes committed on a daily basis.
Lots of reporting and interantional action is based on assumed intent, speculative motivations, secretely desirous outcomes and pretended fears.
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” -James Madison
I suppose our parties pretend that ‘it’ could never establish a roost in the USA – ‘it’ defined by adding to the above quote – and at home –
“Ukrainian forces fighting inside Russia are almost surrounded, open source maps show”
There goes Zelensky’s last card.
The Duran, utube, ~1hr+
The US Push for Peace & Europe Panics – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9CtLw_poA
Interesting Links today. Thank you.
The CNN story says that protestors also vandalized a Trump golf course in Scotland and painted “Gaza is not for sale” on the grass. Since the Trump/Kushner real estate empire makes a fat overstuffed target will the Riviera hungry Jared be next? Slaughtering thousands may be bad resort PR.
I hope my fellow Brits continue to do their best to sabotage Trump presidency.
(Wording this carefully so as not to break laws).
Videos I’ve been suggested on YT talk about alternative suppliers for the UK…..interesting……
Another data point for Canadian resistance: brewery introduces “Presidential Pack” with enough cans to get you through to 2029.
And another.
>>>(Wording this carefully so as not to break laws).
It just may be that I’m too American, but wtf?
Of course, freedom of speech is just about the only effective right that we have left.
Well. . . we also have the freedom to “boycott this” and “support that” . . . within the limits of our budget and money.
If I want to show my non-support for ” annex Canada”, I can keep right on buying Brunswick sardines and Beach Cliff kippered herring just like I used to, for instance.
Certain forms of spoken or written “dissent” are now formally illegal in England.
Even Wikipedia “gets it”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom
Mr. Flynn, living in England, could be prosecuted for posting certain “unapproved” points of view on the internet.
America had better learn that lesson and strongly support the First Amendment.
Rage against the machine:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/08/elon-musk-tesla-protest-violence-vandalism/
If you’re rejecting the time change today as I am and you’ve only recently awoken, here’s the archive:
Anger at Elon Musk turns violent with molotov cocktails and gunfire at Tesla lots
The only way to destroy Musk is to destroy every one of his companies all the way down to zero and to non-existence.
Preferably non-violently, which still allows for a whole lot of legal approaches.
But it is not enough for Musk to resign from Tesla. He will still own shares in Tesla. The only way to abolish those shares from existence is to abolish Tesla from existence.
Same for Starlink. Same for twitterX. Hard to do. Maybe not possible. Still, would it be possible to organized multi-hundred-million-people boycotts of every advertiser seen advertising on twitterX? At least turn twitterX into a money pit for Mister Musk?
And what if the world’s flying public all boycotted American owned airlines and refused to fly into the US at all for any reason until SpaceX were definitely deprived of that FAA contract that SpaceX is working on taking away from Verizon?
An anecdote about improving Government efficiency:
I had coffee with my daughter and her long time partner yesterday, He’s someone who decided he was going to work at NASA when he was 5 years old.
Top of his class at a good HS with multiple awards including two for citizenship, full ride scholarship to Cal Poly in Aerospace Engineering, then the same for his Master’s, he won his first Scientific award before his Master’s was complete and his second during his probationary first Year at NASA.
He was fired with no notice the Thursday before President’s day and unfired the following Tuesday.
He has been unable to find out whether he is again a probationary employee or how being fired and unfired has affected his benefits, no one at NASA HR knows.
He HAS been told that he will be riffed sometime this year because that is being done solely on the basis of seniority.
This is someone who turned down an offer from Lockheed Martin that would have paid 25% more than NASA offered.
Since he does not want to work on weapons systems he is planning to get certified as a welder…
Aren’t SpaceX or Blue Origin hiring? Starlink?
Just to let you know Tom, I own two NASA t-shirts and a cap. I love NASA, I really do love NASA.
I think there are some things that need to be said about Gene Hackman and his wife.
I must admit that hantavirus was not really on the list of diagnoses in my brain when I first heard the story. There are about 10-15 deaths on average in the USA from this virus every year. Mostly right there in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. It is from a virus that is inhaled from mouse droppings. It is fatal about a third to a half the time – the older and more unwell you are, the more likely you are to die. There is nothing to be done, the patient must be supported and/or ventilated in the hospital setting until they resolve.
The more instructive part of the tragedy, however, is what happened to Gene Hackman. Apparently, the wife died of hantavirus, and then about a week later, he passed – probably from exposure, dehydration and starving. From what I have been able to tell, he had a diagnosis of dementia. He was really too old for this to be Alzheimer’s, but there are plenty of other types of all-encompassing dementia that can happen to 90 year olds. Pretty much all of these can only be diagnosed officially on an autopsy. We have developed a habit in this country to refer to all of these dementia types as “Alzheimer’s” but this is not really the case. She was his only caregiver and apparently died first. They were living the very isolated life so common in the Mountain West and no one checked on them or had a clue there was a problem. Based on his pacemaker telemetry, a good estimate was that he lived about a week after she passed.
This is a commentary of our entire society and culture. Yes, people want to be left alone. We have elderly neighbors within walking distance where we live…….and they very much want to be alone and they are for the most part. However, my sons and other kids in the area keep an eagle eye on them all the time. They both have what I would call multi-infarct dementia – the husband worse than the wife. This is the most common dementia in the 80 and up crowd. It is not all-encompassing, they are often hilarious in their loss of filter, they still have emotions, and they can tell the best stories ever. My kids love to sit on the bench outside their house and just listen. However, these people cannot be left alone. We and the other families around bring them eggs, vegetables, meat, and fresh bread all the time. Except for the 15 minutes or so of interaction with the neighbors, they are totally alone. We all help them with their yard, and their other housekeeping duties.
I get the idea from my own grandparents that this is the way our society was when they were kids. It is certainly the way things are where I live.
However, this neighborhood interaction is certainly not common at all if even present in the big city where we used to live. These types of people were institutionalized in a heart beat. The pace of life was so fast in the city, that no one could spare one moment, often not even their own children.
I am very thankful we have those elderly neighbors. We spend some time of our own lives taking care of them and their property, etc – however, the reward for my own kids has been without parallel. I don’t know. I really do at times think we need to rethink our entire way of life. As I have said so many times, the vast majority of my patients and their medical problems and their psychiatric issues are literally CAUSED by the modern American way of life. We are literally allergic to how we have chosen to live as a society. Our health care system does nothing to address these issues – indeed, in almost every respect, pill pushing just makes things worse. As I get older, I despair that this may not be fixable.
Thank you. And the way this went down seems horrible but perhaps they enjoyed their isolation. Reports say they had been involved in the community during previous years. Certainly we can assume that as a movie star Hackman and wife were well off enough to afford other options. His last film was in the early noughts.
Bruce Willis has now quit his latter day B movie career due to Alzheimer’s and Jack Nicholson is said to be in the same condition.
Many cannot afford care workers to come in. Their adult children often live at a distance and have such busy lives raising their own children it would be difficult to make time for their parents even if they did live nearby. Moving to senior care facilities is expensive and as you say many seniors wish to live more private lives as long as possible. Moving in with adult children can be problematic also. If we did not move around so much (often for jobs) the extended family might be near enough to check on the elderly. Trying to stay healthy to live independently as long as possible is a good goal, but does not prevent the inevitable.
MaryLand, you’ve touched on an important point. For decades now, people have been forced to move in order to keep their jobs or to find new ones Those who refused have been accused of lacking the famous “work ethic”
Now, the many who have had family ties and community friendships disrupted are being accused of lacking family feeling or a respect for traditional values. It was the requirements of US business and political interests that insisted on disruption. True, Americans are a nation of immigrants, many of whom spread out to fill up the continent, but let’s look at employers’ demands for “mobility” as at least a partial cause of a failure to maintain traditional ties.
Dementia is rife in our family, last few years we have had to put our parents and one sibling into nursing homes. When they need 24 hr care nothing else works and they become a danger to themselves, hiding their problems in a bizarre manner. We are lucky to have the Australian system and know a good home but it is still heartbreaking. I often think this would be a good place for AI to develop an imaginary friend for people with moderate dementia who are left on their own in nursing homes like my mother or their own homes.
The biggest shock in my life was when I looked around my parent’s unit after we laid down the law and took them to the home. Their whole life and most of their memories was left behind apart from what mementoes we took to our places and the personal items they took to the home. You really can’t take it with you. And get the youngest EPOA organised you can if you are organically sound, old children can die leaving you to the tender mercies of the official vultures.
I can read your posts but I just can´t watch this e.g.
Michael Haneke´s “Amour” (2012)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amour_(2012_film)
It was his most successful movie so far…
>I don’t know. I really do at times think we need to rethink our entire way of life. As I have said so many times, the vast majority of my patients and their medical problems and their psychiatric issues are literally CAUSED by the modern American way of life. We are literally allergic to how we have chosen to live as a society. Our health care system does nothing to address these issues – indeed, in almost every respect, pill pushing just makes things worse. As I get older, I despair that this may not be fixable.
Thank You IM Doc
I think it is repairable, it’s just so unfortunate that it’s likely that society will have to collapse first before it can be rebuilt. I think we are well on our way with the inequality and destruction of what little is remaining of government services ( both State and Federal) for our most vulnerable. We may be able to do things in our own little pockets but until we have a new awakening around here as a nation, I have little hope for the big picture.
I am reminded of the discussion of tactics of a soccer coach instructing a club team my son was on, “Sometimes you have to backwards to go forwards”
Appears to be a truism of life in general.
Now that the AFU forces in the Kursk salient are surrounded (one commentator suggested that the AFU had allowed itself to be encircled more than any army in memory), “the North Koreans” have made their reappearance on the battlefield in the MSM right on cue.
Supreme Commander Zelensky, Pockets & Pipes
Darn it. The Ukrainians would have succeeded in their Kursk attack except for those meddlesome North Koreans who have mastered the art of camouflage so well, that nobody can see or find them.
Pipe Dreams ….
re: America Is Locked in a New Class War
Strikes me that, in connection with the idea of economic uplift for everyone rather than redistribution, Tooze should have described the progressive vision of anti-trust.
archive link for anyone interested: https://archive.is/DYFli
re: on Germany at large
Tarik Cyril Amar
Matrix of Failure
Germany is a country misaligned with its time and place.
7/3/25
https://www.newglobalpolitics.org/matrix-of-failure/
Via his hyperlinks (which are many) I ended up – again – with Jacobin´s harrowing testimonies of German crimes and double standard towards Palestine, which never cease to shock:
twice items by Ruairí Casey
Germany’s Next Government Could Be Even Worse on Palestine
Sunday’s German election brought victory for Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. Despite the fragile cease-fire in Gaza, the incoming government threatens even sharper repression against the pro-Palestinian movement.
27/2/25
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/germany-palestine-merz-antisemitism-repression
An interview with
Esra Özyürek
Germany Should Stop Outsourcing Its Shame Over Historic Antisemitism to Migrants
German politicians often boast of having atoned for their ancestors’ crimes — but then claim that antisemitism is an ill imported by migrants. Far from a model, German memory culture has created an exceptionalist myth that Germans understand racism best.
12/5/24
https://jacobin.com/2023/12/germany-holocaust-memory-migrants-islamophobia-antisemitism-israel-gaza
Was just again considering the Democrat Party. And it’s interesting to note that, democracy promotion is definitely not a core party function. Within the party, Democrats ensured that the 2024 primary was rigged heavily in Biden’s favor. Meanwhile, they spare no expense ensuring that Green party candidates never see a ballot line.
Quite a democratic party you got there, yeah?
Fundraising meanwhile is a core party function; it seems to be an end unto itself, so much so that even wealthy donors are aghast that liberal Democrats aren’t actually doing much of anything in opposition to Trump’s second term.
What a stupid timeline.
A guy tinkering in electronics makes portable CO2 Sensor and open sources its design:
https://chaos.social/@blinry/114133853439395744
Since COVID is kind of my wheelhouse, and welcome to year 6 by the way, here’s the archive.ph
How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right
So, public health is to blame:
Basically, lockdowns did it
(bold mine)
Nothing, of course, about the the west mandating a non-sterilizing experimental vaccine, which at least the US had to be taken, under pain of loss of employment, in many cases. That’s gonna lead to some simmering rage, I think.
Of course, public health, hollowed out as it was at the start of the Pandemic, had a tough slog regardless, as it would have had to successfully facedown neoliberal financial capitalisms’ absolute necessity to keep people working, without the provisioning of any social goods at all. This circle probably couldn’t have been squared anyway in low-trust America, where in many places contact tracers were having trouble getting people to even answer the phone early in the Pandemic.
And then piling in mixed messaging, with different states, localities, and the federal government all suggesting differing levels of risk in the early days.
Regardless, this article entirely misses the point, maybe by design.
Basically just hangs its hat on this study:
So, whatever, I guess. Not much in the way of useful introspection on public health, the Pandemic, and the ostensible right-ward shift of the youth vote across the West.
‘people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership.’
I’m a lot older than 18 to 25 but I have far less confidence in the scientific and political leadership as well. They threw us to the wolves just to keep the 2019 economy going. I saw medical doctors being interviewed talking much more about the economy (and their portfolios?) than actual medical stuff. Governments going with “herd immunity” as the way to go as assured by medical authorities who would have learned in medical school that that was not possible with a Coronavirus. Those kids are right for their mistrust. The only difference is that they were taught these important lessons at a young age.
From Trump’s Threat to Take Over Canada Is a Scandal
Wowzers, Rolling Stone editors aren’t big on foreign policy, are they? This is a huge, massive editorial fail:
(bold is mine, the false assertion is the author’s)
But we know it was Trump that wanted out of Afghanistan, and the two links to the Daily Beast in that very same paragraph offered as evidence of this Afghanistan escalation are actually on Trump escalating the war in Yemen and Somalia.
Oops.
Literally one is: Trump Escalated Obama’s War in Yemen
COVID brain damage?
That’s a good find. And it reminds me of these Zappa Lyrics:
With a big old lie and a flag, and a pie, and a mom and a bible
most folks are just liable, to buy any line, any place, any time
When the Lie’s so Big, Frank Zappa
Biden ended it by losing.
I stopped reading it right there. The deal with the Taliban was negotiated by Pompeo and was ready to roll when Biden took office. That’s just common knowledge. Biden’s foreign policy jockeys messed up the withdrawal by getting timing and logistics all wrong. This is just my memory of recent events and I’m no genius journalist at the Rolling Stone, for the love of Pete.
Looking at the quality of the vast number of people who have evidently sold their soul to the devil, it does seem like he overpaid for all of them.
The puppet masters have been firing the smart ones that wouldn’t do what they were told and hiring dumb ones that would for so long, the current crop of talking heads are really scrapping the bottom of the barrel.
It’s Carney.
The vampire squid strangles the world.
We are afflicted with Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, I’m afraid … 🤨
OT: G.W. Bush
One year ago in a thread Yves mentioned Dan Rather´s unfortunate story abourt George W. Bush´s dishonesty over his National Guard time and how Rather fell for fabricated evidence for accurate facts.
There is actually a movie made about this tragic episode, TRUTH (2015), with Blanchett, Redford.
It´s not perfect but worthwhile:
trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqOz8-Sto1g
“Maye Musk has a very significant influence on her son, and therefore, disturbingly, the world at large.
Maye Musk is the daughter of Joshua Haldeman, a pro-Hitler, antisemitic racist who moved his family to apartheid South Africa in 1950. Below is a short compilation of her complaining about people describing her son as a “billionaire” because “he’s the genius of the world.”….
Joshua Haldeman was a Canadian leader of “Technocracy, Inc.” — a movement to replace world government with a group of “technocrats” — experts, scientists and engineers — who would alleviate the population of the need of making decisions for themselves. But importantly, as I’ve written, he also wanted a “Technate of America” spanning Greenland to Colombia….”
Jim Stewartson, March 3, 2025 [MindWar] (via Tony Wikrent’s Week-end Wrap at Ian Welsh’s blog)
With you Ann on Technocracy, Inc. as a good framework for understanding DOGE and Musk, hence why I referred to it sometime ago on NC. Trump not so much as he is not encumbered by anything and just plays the game he always has = what is good for Trump is good for America. Just a brand name looking for market share.
I gather that Trump believes that if you are rich, you must be smart. If you are very rich, you must be very smart.
Perhaps Trump believes that since Musk is 400 times richer than Trump, that Musk is 400 times smarter than Trump? Could that be a source of Trump’s servile loyalty to the very unstable Nazi keta-head genius?
OT #2: Navalny
On the – by me above mentioned – one-year old thread on Navalny, NC-commenter Cat Burglar had put up an episode of “War Nerd” (thanks to Cat Burglar and all the other great comments back then) on Navalny´s death, with Mark Ames.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/navalny-organization-splits-into-whites-and-reds-as-lies-multiply.html
https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-radio-99346573
Listening to it: Is it possible that Ames single-handedly has done more to disinform us with dark fairy-tales and half-truths about Russia than any other one person? Anything he says is without exception – as he himself put it – “Goodfellas”-stuff, à la Russie.
How many truly knowledgeable and publicly well-known Americans are there who have lived in Russia and have enough understanding to inform us in a serious and mature way (i.e. not your usual VoA correspondent).
Anyone except Taibbi and Ames (and vanden Heuvel), who haven´t been to Russia for 2 decades I assume?
That is not many for a place like the U.S. to put it mildly. And besides when in “RU” (or rather Moscow…) they had been part of a tiny rich elite there.
Ames being friends with Khodorkovsky´s lawyers??? Is that a normal thing do to understanding how a country really is ticking?
So even if they quoted native Russians those will most likely be people of the same ilk and confirm the views of the American interviewer.
Looking into this, learning a lot from all players, but it remains a truism that the West is third rate when it comes to insight on countries outside their real sphere of influence.
p.s. Forgive me for doing this akward circling back in time – but Mark Ames in above 2024 podcast describes the RU liberals´ plan when installing Putin:
They intended a European-style liberal Pinochet…..heh?
What the fuck is Ames fabricating there?
3.000 people got massacred, 30.000 tortured.
It was a vicious dictatorship.
And he talks about Milton Friedman?
Ames: “Putin started out as a liberal in the European sense – kinda Pinochet”. 😳
i.e. to say: Apparently in Ames´s view Pinochet (= the early “good” progressive Putin) was better then the Putin we have now. I am at a loss of words about this level of incompetence of someone with this media reach.
Sorry but listening to this was sometimes infuriating. Also the constant repetition of the poison lie and his picturing Navalny as some saviour who should and could have become president? Neither of which is true if he had just remembered the Levada polls. Oh and of course it was all politically motivated charges by Russian law enforcement.
Also it means nothing if even Amnesty deprived Navalny of his POC (Prisoner of Conscience) status because he had never recanted his racist comments. One month AFTER they had called him POC.
17. Jan. 2021
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/01/russia-aleksei-navalny-becomes-prisoner-of-conscience-after-arrest-on-arrival-in-moscow/
25. Febr.. 2021
https://archive.is/FUV2L
Not a word of the excess deaths per year in Russia as a consequence of what Ames still calls “liberalism“:
According to NIH: „1992-2001 is likely to have led to 2.5-3 million extra deaths in young and middle aged Russian adults.“
That´s 300.000 excess death annually. Not to mention the awful year 1991.
I remember what a huge fuss we have had when during Covid in Germany there were discussions of an excess death rate of 50.000. Since we had that only once in the preceding 10 years. With a population 60% of that of RU in the 1990s
See TC: 80:00+ for a few outrageous, typically US forms of cluelessness by Mr. Ames.
To calm down: A good take on Navalny from 2023 by Jacques Baud:
Alexei Navalny: The Real Story
Jacques Baud / June 1, 2023
https://www.thepostil.com/alexei-navalny-the-real-story/
Yes, Ames is blinded by his Putin hatred. And this is with Medvedev, not Putin, having been the one to kick The eXile out of Russia.
I first encountered the name Ames on NC. And was a bit surprised how large the difference in his understanding of domestic policies vs. foreign.
Something btw that too struck me with Ralph Nader vis-a-vis Russia (Putin=dictator). Whilst he understands the Palestine issue speaking fluent Arabic.
But then, even Chris Hedges has his oddities. In his most recent Q&A calling Trump/Vance “thuggish” when confronting Z in the WH. Who the hell was responsible for 1,5M dead AFU? If not Zelensky. Joe Lauria has a much more realistic view on this apparently than Hedges…
edit typo: 1,1 M dead AFU
Ha!
Having fun with this NC post which was linked by Natylie Baldwin 2021:
John Helmer: The Western Press Incorrectly Depicts Putin as on the Wrong Side of a Feminist Issue
Posted on January 27, 2017
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/102058.html
p.s. I am never sure if blog creators are aware of how important their archives have truly become…if internet has achieved something positive it is to be found in these “back” issues. Be it NC, Craig Murray, Moon of Alabama, Natylie and those many others who were among the pioneers.
new new new:
Georgescu excluded from Romania elections………………..
Here’s what the inimitable Carl Sagan wrote:
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
I’ll suggest that the vast majority of the populace never left the old world of “superstition and darkness.”
It is a truism that proper revolutionaries seize the police functions first in the initial phase of the change. Then they seize the methods of communication, and, thinking long term, the education system. Is it then any surprise that the Neo-liberal Counter-revolution should work to destroy the unified educational system? A “dumb” populace is easier to “advise and lead” into the “paths of righteousness.”
Stay safe over there in the Antipodes.
FBI Due to Release List of Seth Rich Files Monday
A federal judge in Texas ordered in a FOIA case against the F.B.I. that the bureau must produce a list of the contents of Seth Rich’s laptop computers by Monday, reports Joe Lauria.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/09/fbi-due-to-release-list-of-seth-rich-files-monday/
re: CIA history
via Tom Griffin´s informative Substack on secret intelligence
A collection of reviews + response by the author
“The CIA: An Imperial History”, by Hugh Wilford
https://issforum.org/roundtables/h-diplo-rjissf-roundtable-16-26-on-wilford-the-cia#simon