Indian man who fed water to cheetahs in viral video restored in job BBC
Climate/Environment
Exploring the risks of ‘cascading’ tipping points in a warming world Carbon Brief
Pandemics
Research links COVID to poor kidney outcomes in US youth CIDRAP
😮
This is just stunning.*Authorised* illness absence:
still 37% up in Primary Schools
still 50% up in Secondary Schools
and 🚨 an astonishing 74% up in Schools for Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.The most vulnerable children, the children most in… pic.twitter.com/EOvoATucED
— tern (@1goodtern) April 14, 2025
Ever-Shifting Definitions of “Immunity” Pandemic Accountability Index
Texas measles outbreak grows; Michigan, Pennsylvania report new outbreaks CIDRAP
US measles cases are undercounted, experts say, but real numbers are proving hard to pin down CNN
Some measles response plans crash to a halt after Trump cuts Minnesota Reformer
Las Vegas schools face alarming measles vaccination shortfall Las Vegas Review-Journal
‘THE LAST OF US’ SEASON 2’S DYSTOPIA IS MORE MIRROR THAN MAKE-BELIEVE Atmos
The Koreas
The unbearable lightness of Korean cute Chris Arnade Walks the World
China?
U.S. Plans to Use Tariff Negotiations to Isolate China WSJ
US to demand EU pulls away from China in return for cutting tariffs Irish Times
China Q1 GDP growth beats expectations, but US tariff shock dims outlook Business Times
The coming US-China financial divorce Asia Times
1/6
SCMP: “Yu has been outspoken in his advocacy for the reduction of China’s US Treasury bill holdings and has advised Beijing to stay alert for any attempts to use the country’s foreign assets against it.”https://t.co/mFnKRj9Es5 via @scmpnews
— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) April 15, 2025
China’s Ukraine Supporters: an “Infantile Disorder” by Zhang Wenmu Sinification
European Disunion
EU to ban Serbia if president joins Putin’s victory parade The Telegraph
EU rejects overhauling agrifood and tech rules to avoid Trump tariffs Euractiv
US energy envoy urges Europe to lock in long-term LNG deals with American suppliers at Budapest LNG summit Bne Intellinews
Incoming German chancellor intends to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine WSWS
O Canada
On the Historical Unity of Americans and Canadians Nemets
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Tourism Pitch to Canadians is Tone-Deaf and Insulting Dougald Lamont’s Substack
Syraqistan
Fed Up With Israeli Displacement Orders, Palestinians in Gaza City Refuse to Leave Drop Site
Washington prepares new shipment of bombs for Israel ahead of ‘vigorous expansion’ of Gaza assault The Cradle
Yemeni factions plan ground offensive against Houthis amid US strikes, officials say Middle East Eye
Will Yemen turn its missiles on the UAE and Saudi Arabia? The Cradle
US tells Israel it will begin withdrawing troops from Syria within 2 months Ynet
Another US aircraft carrier in Mideast waters ahead of Iran-US nuclear talks AP
Scoop: Trump holds situation room meeting on Iran nuclear deal negotiations Axios
Like ChatGPT, only secret: This is Genie, the IDF’s artificial intelligence Ynet
Africa
America’s tariff wars present no upside opportunities for African economies An Africanist Perspective
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine Confirms Sumy Strike Target – Russian Build Up For Summer Campaign Moon of Alabama
Putin Says Nyet To Trump’s Ultimatum Of Unconditional Ceasefire/Are Russian Forces Gunning To Take Kiev? The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (Video)
Lavrov Paints Fuller Picture in Interview with Kommersant karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
The Ukrainian National Guard’s 12th Azov Brigade announced the formation of the 1st National Guard Azov Corps, which includes the National Guard’s 1st, 12th, 14th, 15th, and 20th brigades.https://t.co/LlxS4HIaoV pic.twitter.com/LxK7ZkSGka
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 15, 2025
One reason why the Ukrainians are so desperate for a ceasefire is that they want to finish their army reforms in peace.
They have been working on introducing a corps system to improve organization, command & control for their brigades. The first such corps has now been…
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) April 15, 2025
South of the Border
10,000 US troops begin arriving at Mexico border Responsible Statecraft
Digital Dams: How U.S.-Brazil AI Cooperation Could Help America’s AI Ambitions Flow RAND
Trump takes aim at a key Cuban export: Its worldwide medical missions New York Times
Trump 2.0
Trump’s Tariff Threat for Imported Medicines Poses Political Risks New York Times
NVIDIA: Made in America (by Taiwan) Interconnected
Trump’s in-the-know plan to demolish the US economy Asia Times
The outlook for new orders from NY Fed regional manufacturers literally hit the lowest level in the history of the survey. (HT: @fcastofthemonth) pic.twitter.com/vkbaVJTG4c
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 15, 2025
***
Judge rebukes Trump officials for not securing return of wrongly deported man The Guardian
Pete Hegseth Is Gutting Pentagon Programs to Reduce Civilian Casualties The Intercept
Top Hegseth adviser Dan Caldwell put on leave in Pentagon leak probe Reuters
Michael Wolff Suggests Trump Team Floated a Don Jr. Outdoors Show as a Way for Warners to Curry Favor With White House Hollywood Reporter
DOGE
Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse Politico
A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data NPR
This Tax Day, an IRS in Crisis Can We Still Govern?
The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers WSJ
SignalGate
Democrats en déshabillé
Biden’s antisemitism envoy on deporting students:
“I’m coming down right smack dab in the middle…I don’t oppose many of the things that are being done. I just wish they would be done more deftly.”
Shameful equivocation by someone who should know better.https://t.co/3rZP0m7jjq
— Dylan Williams (@dylanotes) April 15, 2025
Concerned citizens dissolve a broken political brand Art Cullen’s Notebook
The Two Movements The American Prospect. “The task at hand is to reassure elites who oppose Trump that the public is behind them, and instill in them the will to fight.”
The People Are Resisting While the Elites Are Surrendering The Nation
Police State Watch
What are “Nihilistic Violent Extremists”? Ken Klippenstein
Trump’s AG dodges questions on deporting ‘violent’ US citizens to El Salvador Firstpost
Donald Trump, Silicon Valley, and the Neoliberal Roots of an Unlikely Alliance Vanity Fair
Groves of Academe
Screen recording for proof. This is Columbia’s “resources for international students”, linking to the ICE website to report people. Columbia University is not safe for international students. pic.twitter.com/2RUGCH66Q2
— Layla 🪬 (@itslaylas) April 15, 2025
Supply Chain
FDA warns consumers not to use counterfeit Ozempic (semaglutide) found in U.S. drug supply chain US Food ad Drug Administration (press release)
AI
OpenAI is building a social network The Verge
Healthcare?
Some Tax-Exempt Hospitals Are Building Real Estate Empires HEALTH CARE un-covered
Imperial Collapse Watch
Bad News: The Navy’s Latest Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier Won’t Be Ready Until 2029 1945
Class Warfare
Unions, Not Just Factories, Will Make America Great Labor Politics
Homeless man in SLO just won $1 million on a Lottery scratcher San Luis Obispo Tribune
Time travel, future fear, and the banal indignity of nostalgia thefsb
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Donnie Boy
(melody borrowed from Danny Boy written by Frederic Weatherly in 1910; here performed by Elvis Presley)
O, Donnie Boy, the Stars and Stripes are falling
From pounds to yen the dollar starts to slide
You blather on, but China won’t come crawling
Your brain tissue is slow and most has died
You are a hack who’s fond of braggadocio
Though now your tally’s flush with Elon’s dough
You cannot steer, your policies are hollow
O, Donnie Boy, O Donnie Boy, you’ve got to go!
Your cult is dumb, so dumb they keep complying
Your balding head they worship constantly
You are enshrined which may feel satisfying
Naivete is all you’ll ever see
How many years before this world will judge thee?
You’d best be brave and stay out on the tee
Your sorry end will not be sweet or lovely
One day your dream will cease and you’ll be forced to leave
O, Donnie Boy you’ve got to go . . .
“Putin Says Nyet To Trump’s Ultimatum Of Unconditional Ceasefire/Are Russian Forces Gunning To Take Kiev? ”
Don’t know why I never thought of it before but when the west demands an ‘unconditional ceasefire’, this is just another term for ‘freeze the conflict’ that we heard so often last year. By next year, if the war is still going on, they will probably call it something else.
Unconditional cease fire to The West means Russia and only Russia ceases fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzk6SoZxgPQ
Trump wants to save lives and hardware so that he and Starmer with Reich chancellor Merz can perfect the well armed Azov corps formations so the next U.S. neocon can go after all those resources Hitler fell short of.
Games.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Tourism Pitch to Canadians is Tone-Deaf and Insulting Dougald Lamont’s Substack
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As luck would have it, going down to Palm Springs to hang out with my Canadian cousins who have made good their escape from the Gulag Hockeypelago, a few of whom I now suspect to possibly be spies trying to ascertain how our tariff system works so they too can piss off the rest of the world.
Not to worry though, if we can’t figure out what in the hell Trump is trying to accomplish, what chance do those behind the Muskeg Curtain have?
A US war with Canada would be hell. A polite one but still hell-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vYUB_ClQqF8
A clear line in the sand will be whether you can still order Laura Secord chocolates online for delivery to the USA.
We are talking about Canada, eh? That should be, “A clear line in the snow.”
We’re we not talking about a yellow line in the snow, are we?
I’ve heard that Dominion’ists up over will intentionally not drink anything after noon, lest they have to take a piss outside in the wee hours and endure the wind chill.
Too late. Trump laid that one down weeks ago.
“if we can’t figure out what in the hell Trump is trying to accomplish”
I believe he said it was to have other countries “kiss his a…”. The “emergency,” that per the law justifies the president rather than Congress invoking tariffs, is that not enough countries were doing this.
Shorter Don: L’Etat, c’est moi.
Of course he could just be pulling our leg with the Louis XIV impression but somebody needs to get the hook for this bit of vaudeville.
Benedict Donald initiated a lawsuit every 10 days on average for 30 years before he became President, and perhaps the tariffs are his way of suing the world, with instant summary judgment?
That’s the best i’ve got, and it ain’t much.
10,000 US troops begin arriving at Mexico border
“The grand old Orange Don,
He had ten thousand men
He marched them to the border fence
And he marched them back again
And when they were high, they were high
And when they were drunk, they were drunk
And when they were half way drunk or high
They were neither drunk nor high.”
I noted a problem with NC going blank and throwing up a spammer test yesterday, and there seemed to be a few others with the same issue. The problem seemed like the website was identifying me as a spammer and kicking me off, so I dumped my NC cookies on Firefox. It didn’t help the first time , but the problem hasn’t recurred since I dumped cookies the second time.
I’m having the same problem.
Same here. First comes the warning to ID as a human, something I choose not to do (since I don’t trust that question). On my returning to NC, the screen blanks out a minute or so later. Removing NC cookies (and history) brings back the site.
Mind, this happens to me on my laptop running Windows 11 (with Firefox); it doesn’t happen on my desktop which runs Windows XP (with an older version of Firefox).
Running windows 7 here. The screen just goes blank. Just happened several times. Finally stabilized after many refreshes. Getting worse every day. Starting to question the “We Like You” emails.
Same issue. Looks like the “spammer test” is some kind of malware that’s being delivered through NC for blanking out the NC content display.
I am also having this problem. The suspect page claims to be fighting DDOS attacks. I know NC has had DDOS problems in the past, but this page looks extremely janky and asks for permissions I am not inclined to give.
I had a similar problem with scammy looking McAfee pages a while back, but not nearly as often as this one.
It is not happening on any other site.
I am having similar problems at NC. One time the page that was fighting ‘attacks’ diverted me to a Walmart site to place an order. I never order from Walmart.
Lena,
On my Windows 11 machine with Firefox, I clicked on the Firefox menu (3 horizontal lines in the upper right corner), then:
Settings->Privacy & Security
Then scroll down to Cookies & Site Data and click on Manage Data. Enter nakedcapitalism.com into the search. When the site URL appears on the screen, highlight it and click Remove Selected, then confirm on the next screen.
For some reason, I had to do this twice, but since then the site has worked fine.
Maybe those who use other browsers can give similar instructions for other browsers that are having trouble with the site.
Thanks. I thought it was just my work throwing a spanner in my news consumption and trying to limit my access to the site, so I appreciate the corroboration that it wasn’t just me. There have been many issues for the past week and it reached a peak this morning. Seems more stable right now so thanks to whoever is pulling the levers behind the curtains. We know the NC Team is a hardworking crew and we appreciate you.
I have the same issue. I presume that the screen goes black as the Windows anti-malware (or whatever software decides to puke up the bad scripts) system kicks in.
One solution is to disable javascript in the browser. I’m guessing that it’s the advert delivery network who is causing this issue.
as yet i have not had this happen…old googbook
Same here- problem free for me on several devices.
I haven’t had it happen, but I’m running Firefox on Ubuntu Linux, not on Windows.
So you cannot prove a negative, but all I can report is that I have seen none of this. I’m using Archlinux and Firefox or Ungoogle-chromium and all ads are very effectively blocked (uBlock Origin 1.46.0). I started up a Windows 10 VM, and used the plain jane Firefox to see if I could duplicate this – I could not, but it’s a pretty short sample (and it’s possible Yve’s web team is on it). I never use the VMs for web browsing just specific Windows unique software tasks. I was surprised at the number of ads, and the internet traffic that goes along with it.
Oddly enough, my problem went away at around the same time everybody else’s showed up. Mine was somewhat different from the description here (a fake McAfee page warning about malware infection, more like what was happening to albrt) but similar in character.
I did install ad blockers on both machines to get rid of it, but I’ve tried disabling them on both now and (so far) it hasn’t returned. Given the variation in symptoms, intermittent nature, and the fact that it doesn’t affect everyone equally, I still think one of the ad providers is the most likely culprit.
I have seen the same issue, just once, on a site that wasn’t NC a couple of days ago (a Wiki style informational page of some kind with ads, I forget what exactly).
Trump’s in-the-know plan to demolish the US economy – Asia Times
Infomercial? Really?
Nothing new or secret about how the destructive boom and bust of the economic system works or the desperate need for low interest rates in a hyper-fianancialized world.
Contradicting hyperbole and then says the situation is caused by Biden’s running up of debt.
>>> “The task at hand is to reassure elites who oppose Trump that the public is behind them, and instill in them the will to fight.”
hahaha. I will take the bet that the only thing that the median voters hates more than Trump are the smug, pompous, fake twits that the elite draft to defeat Trump.
Dou….bag verus Turd Sandwich, ca plus change.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd
Those are man boobs, not fake twits!
The Nation. Yes, I am on a tear today about class and various bourgeois excrescences, but surely, The Nation should know better than publishing a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger disquisition of failures of the elite.
Jet Heer should know better, too, but I gather (vividly) that Heer does not. “But overall, this is a dismal time for American higher education, as it is for the American elite in general. Once Trump is defeated, America will need a reckoning with this elite failure.”
Wowsers. Bourgeois universities surrendering (and nary a peep from my beloved alma mater and its infestation of fake-Nobel econ fundies). The Democratic Party and its donors surrendering. Bourgeois lawfirms taking cover. Yet these are the very people who have prospered, along with their pals in the Republican Party, since the passage of the Patriot Act.
Class. There. I have written the dirty word.
The best reckoning with “elite failure” is Dr. Guillotin’s clever invention.
It is, after all, impossible to get a man to understand something when the symbolic order underpinning his entire social existence depends on not understanding it. (Whoops, I better not pick up any chairs, lest I be taken as a Nihilist Violent Extremist!)
Speaking of bourgeois excrescences, but of a more lumpen kind, 4chan was hacked, possibly terminally. I’ll be interested to dig into whether and to what extent the place was, à la the Communist Party (USA) during the Red Scare, propped up by USAID checks and think tanks, or indeed, whether the Defense Digital Service decided to kick over a Fed honeypot on their way out the door.
“Indian man who fed water to cheetahs in viral video restored in job”
So if I got this story right, they initially fired this guy because he was not credentialed?
OpenAI is building a social network – The Verge
They keep thinking of ways to show us how this the most stupid and destructive way to use energy resources.
And most media just mindlessly does PR for the worst BS ever.
My first thought of how OpenAI is building a social network was how could you be sure that the people that you inter-reacted with on that network were not AIs. One tailored specifically to your profile. It has happened before with some dating networks so OpenAI might do the same until they reach critical numbers.
I think this is more evidence that business isn’t looking so good for Sam Altman. They can’t find enough good use cases that involve revenue for AI, so they’re going old-school
2007 called and it wants its use-case back!
They are going to solve physics.
Reminds me of Theranos.
Sam Altman. Who could be more likely to lie?
When ‘AI black box’ becomes ye olde pig in a poke, or a cat in a bag, or a little pup. / heh
Thanks for the Art Cullen link. He’s not wrong. What he doesn’t say, though, is that it was the Dem estab that opened the door to this by undermining Iowa’s and other rural midwestern state Dem parties in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Think back to the 2016 Iowa caucus and what a fiasco that was for the Dem brand, run in effect by the national estab and not by the locals. Think of the 2020 event that saw Buttegeig coming out and claiming he’d won when he hadn’t, all with the Dem estab blessing. If the state parties could get out from under the thumb of the national estab they could start winning again, imo.
It was the national Dem estab that trashed the brand, not current fearless leader and the GOP. They just took advantage of the situation. Same thing is happening in other rural midwestern states.
adding: a Thomas Nast cartoon about Boss Tweed’s machine in New York in the 1800’s.
.
Under the Thumb.
https://thomasnast.com/cartoons/under-the-thumb/
and adding for old, Iowa, Des Moines Register readers, just imagine what Donald Kaul would have written about this. (And no, Des Moines is not pronounced Day Moinay. Anyone telling you that pronunciation is correct is having you on. (It’s been known to happen.) heh) / ;)
and adding: one wonders what DesMoines Register columnist in the 1960s-70s Donald Kaul would make of this. / ;)
He’d say that it was a mad, mad, mad mad world.
Probably, or possibly, or not. I somehow doubt Mr. Kaul was a Mad World devote. He was much more local than that, imo. Though he might had chucked at the premise of the movie. / ;)
Here is the best solution for the “edifice wrecks” – empty office towers zombified by ZIRP, technological change allowing for remote work, and overbuilding:
https://apnews.com/article/implosion-building-louisiana-hurricane-08a5112f503614e3516fb764d9548cff
Implode ’em! Benefits include:
+ Taking office space off the market and preventing negative absorption rates;
+ Friendlier for the environment – can be turned into parks, greenspace;
+ No carrying costs for the bagholders who “owned” the land – heating, electricity, water, vermin control
I believe that it should be public policy to seize any of these vacant towers for the good of the people using eminent domain.
Gotta get your ducts in a row on those edifice wrecks, if we’re gonna go the Brazil route.
That’s really very good. “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” good. Bravo!
I love that scene.
Last time they practiced, and got pretty good, was on 9-11 a decade or so ago.
Better still, let’s dis-assemble them and recycle the materials for housing: more labor-intensive, and a work-around for tariffs!
DeepSeek Is Already Being Applied Widely Across China’s Industries, And Used For Government Surveillance And Propaganda – TechDirt
Oooohh. Better make sure we don’t fall behind. (big eye roll)
Again:
DeepSeek is open source. You can download a legit copy on GitHub, right now. It is an existential threat to the US AI industry. If I was China, I would open source all of my fundamental coding advances going forward (instantly becoming a global hero by liberating software from enshittifying intellectual property corporations), and destroy the US electron-based proprietary profit model by building advanced versions of things made out of protons, all of which use excellent, freely available open source code.
It is an order of magnitude more energy efficient. A DeepSeek AI world would not require US electricity customers to pony up hundreds of billions of dollars building new coal plants for AI that doesn’t help anyone but AI zillionaires.
Yeah, it’s reasonable to assume that the Chinese government has their grubby little paws all over the DeepSeek servers in China. But did I mention that DeepSeek is open source? You don’t have to use the DeepSeek servers in China. You can run it on your own servers. You can review, slice, dice, julienne, and modify the open source code any way you like, and be absolutely confident that China can’t touch your implementation via a hidden back door – did I mention that you have complete access to the open source DeepSeek code? Heck, you don’t need to connect it to the internet at all, if you don’t want to. It’s open source. You can do whatever you want.
The surveillance and propaganda aspects are what TPTB are excited about and worried about “competing” with. And that’s what I was referring to.
We’ll see how the “democratization” of these technologies turns out.
It’s open source. You can do whatever you want.
In general this is not correct. All “serious” open source projects are covered by appropriate IP licenses. Of course, you can chose to ignore the license but that may have consequences.
There are licenses under the broad heading of “copy-left” that might approximate a “do whatever you want” but for example, Deep Seek is not published under such a license.
I personally have published open source; depending on the context I use GNU General Public License or Creative Commons.
“Bad News: The Navy’s Latest Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier Won’t Be Ready Until 2029”
‘Likewise, it is unclear if Australia would use those submarines against China should war break out. Australia has indicated it would prefer to use American-supplied nuclear submarines to secure maritime routes to Australia and monitor maritime traffic.
In previous comments, Elbridge Colby, a newly appointed member of the Trump administration’s Defense Department, has cast doubt on the wisdom of giving submarines to Australia if that country is unwilling to leverage them against China.’
And there it is. They only want to supply those subs if they will be under operational control of the US. Which means that if the US gets into a military spat with China, it will not be Australia that decides if we go to war with China as well but will be decided by some US career admiral somewhere by ordering an Aussie nuke boat to sink Chinese ships. And we may not even know about it until it has happened.
On the Breach
…coming soon to a theater near you!
How about a different title – ‘Between Wind and Water.’
A film by Never Shoot.
Ford class science projects, F-35, F-47, F/A-XX. (Navy unique tag off F-47), B-21……. I wonder what US Army contributes to MICIMATT profit for unilateral disarmament?
“citing “critical path challenges” particularly in reference to the aircraft carrier’s Advanced Weapons Elevators and Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment.”
In other words, the lifts inside the ship, the catapult, and the arresting gear.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren’t these elements precisely the ones that had caused endless delays during the construction and testing of the very first Ford-class carrier (CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford), because they just did not work? I remember to have read that of the 11 lifts aboard the ship, there were on average 4 that were out of order and inoperable at any time.
And now they are having problems with them again, causing plenty of delays?
So they did not really find a solution to the issues with those pieces of equipment?
This probably means that it is not an issue of fine-tuning or a very, very flat learning curve, but that there are fundamental design problems with those aircraft carriers.
I am not really surprised. Consider: construction of the first Ford-carrier started in 2005; construction of the first Nimitz-carrier in 1968. In other words, their designs lie 40 years apart. This implies that by the time the Ford was being designed, all old-timers who designed the Nimitz were gone — know-how had been lost (not knowledge, which is stored in books, reports, documents, but know-how, which is stored in brains and hands). Perhaps the Gerald-Ford-class will end up being a dockyard queen, just like the British Queen-Elisabeth-class.
I think you are correct.
The three high tech innovations are not performing and have unresolved reliability and repair problems.
How can the navy kill $15 billion ships that are needed for replacing rust buckets that need excessive port time and have aircraft with short range that lead them to be in range of ashore fires?
The post-delivery testing in Ford I assume required contract mods for JFK for modified GFE as well as construction, integration, and test so getting those mods under contract and any associated re-work would impact schedule. And it appears generating labor man-days at any cost is very difficult. Some things like integration and test aren’t really susceptible to throwing man-days against.
Occasionally, too often in DoD procurement, “contract mods” from testing are paying again to deliver the baseline already paid for.
Test that rove production should be passed before you pay for the item.
Hiding cost overruns from paying twice ( or more times) to maybe “get it right”.
Here’s what’s available from the DOD:
DOT&E FY2024 Annual Report – Navy – CVN 78 https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2024/navy/2024cvn78.pdf?ver=1HIFsfmEEV4I2B6i9LMjxw%3d%3d
And more on the Ford class here:
Ford Class https://www.twz.com/category/ford-class
Nothing on reliability numbers except that the USN requirements are not being met.
Best comment (youtube) on the issue, ever! “And that doesn’t strike anyone at this table as odd?”
I wish my country had something like this or The Honest Government Ads, but no.
“… the wisdom of giving submarines to Australia…”
Did the honorable Elbridge Colby miss the bit where Australia pays $368 billion for the “gift”? With an immediate down payment of $3 billion to keep poor old US’s struggling submarine building industry afloat?
Australia’s chump voters certainly noticed.
That name seemed odd, Elbridge Colby. Turns out his grandfather was William Colby. I guess it really is true that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
>>>Homeless man in SLO just won $1 million on a Lottery scratcher San Luis Obispo
absolute best case scenario, you net about $500,000 (assuming it’s really $ 1MM and not the present value of an annuity).
that ain’t a lot in most of California… I hope that winner doesn’t get swindled or bad advice or carried away w/spending.
My bank hit a $17 million lottery split between 18 employees around the turn of the century.
LA was or still is the bank robbery capital of the world, and this Bank of America had a fellow in the parking lot who wasn’t a security guard, but was there as more of a presence in case you wanted to rob the joint, you might consider going after Union Bank instead.
I got out of my car, and Man Friday is quite drunk early in the morning, and I thought, oh jeez, I gotta tell the bank manager about this, and when I walked in, she was the one who told me the news.
In theory each of them won $964k, and they had opted for 26 annual payments and what a scam!
They got $20k a year for a decade, and then it creep’d up to where you were getting $60k a year the last 6 years or something.
The fun part for yours truly was asking the tellers i’d encounter, what they were doing with their gotten gains, and the most anybody could get for right now money for their nearly million bucks windfall was $200k.
What are “Nihilistic Violent Extremists”? -Ken Klippenstein
“Both documents define the term as criminality intended to bring about societal breakdown.”
Hey, Beltway intelligence agencies: “The call is coming from inside the house!”
Reading the Jeffrey Race Asia Times piece about Bradley Thomas and how these clowns (Trump, Musk, Theil, Ellison, Bezos, etc.) think that they can harness “Creative Destruction” and profit from cratering the world economy back-to-back with Klippenstein’s exposé of “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” called to mind the old saw: If the shoe fits…
Thanks for the note, HMP. The blank screen business has been driving me nuts.
“Economist says China’s overseas assets at risk as trade war hits boiling point”
It looks like Trump wants to ramp this trade war with China up to level 11-
‘US officials aim to convince trade partners to accept permanent tariff cuts in exchange for curbing their economic engagement with China, according to the WSJ. Proposed commitments may vary by country, but could reportedly include stopping China from rerouting exports through third-party nations, banning Chinese firms from setting up operations locally to avoid US tariffs, and limiting imports of low-cost Chinese industrial goods.’
https://www.rt.com/news/615821-tariffs-trump-ditch-china/
Pretty soon they will threaten countries to withdraw from BRICS or have special tariffs leveled on them. Perhaps the Trump regime will promise Iran sanctions relief if they kick the Chinese out of their country and I am sure that such a promise will be always honoured. This is all apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s plan but China will have to react or let the US cut China off not only from the US but also the rest of the world. The Chinese have already seen this done to Russia. So maybe quietly halting ALL rare earth shipments to the US along with any equipment that has a dual use military possibility as well as withdrawing all investments in the US lest they be frozen. This is one fight where both sides are taking off the gloves.
‘Russians With Attitude
@RWApodcast
One reason why the Ukrainians are so desperate for a ceasefire is that they want to finish their army reforms in peace. They have been working on introducing a corps system to improve organization, command & control for their brigades. The first such corps has now been officially formed… Before expanding it to the AFU, they’re trying with their National Guard units.’
The New York Times article showed clearly that it is the US running this war with the Ukrainians only doing the fighting and the dying. It seems also that the US among others is using this country as a test bed for weapons and doctrine. So maybe this move to use a corps system is an experiment by the US military to see if they should adopt it and are using the Ukrainians to test it for them in an actual war.
If the u.s. is “using this country[Ukraine] as a test bed for weapons and doctrine”, I can only wonder what and how much has been learned. The u.s. and NATO weapons systems have proven no match against their Russian counterparts. The effects of u.s. doctrine, strategy, and tactics give serious competition to doctrines General Douglas Haig applied at the Somme. Is TRADOC burning the midnight oil to modify doctrine and their procurement strategy?
Admittedly I have read not much about this reform, but frankly, it sounds to me it’s more about improving the tooth-to-tail ratio of the existing armed forces. It seem that they just can’t “volunteer” enough men to cover the losses, while they have (if you believe Ukrainian media) a lot of people in the military who have not been on the front at all during the three years of war.
As far as I’ve understood, this is more about pulling the hard-core brigades (like Azov) from the front-line and using them as the core for the new corps. Someone more cynical than me could see it as one “blocking” battalion in each brigade to keep the three battalions formed from non-combat troops fighting for each brigade of the new corps.
Trump takes aim at a key Cuban export: Its worldwide medical missions New York Times
This appears to describe enslaved Cuban doctors sent abroad to earn money for the Cuban government. Based on brief searching, the author may not be sympathetic to socialist regimes. I suppose this reporting could be true—heck, the world could be flat, the moon landings faked, and President Trump a great benefice to humanity. Are there any thoughts on the true nature of these medical missions? Thanks.
They are kinda like the Cuban equivalent of the US Peace Corps. Trouble is that if the US forces those countries to expel those medical doctors, there will be nobody to replace them and the death toll in those countries will start to rise. Certainly the US won’t bother replacing them.
Let me inform you that, at least in the recent past, those Cuban physicians were gladly received in the national health systems of a couple of European countries (at least Italy and Portugal) trying to cope with the departure of their medical personnel for greener pa$tures$.
There are lots of Cuban doctors in Mexico from precisely these type of missions. They are usually folded into the public health system and their working conditions are no worse than those of their Mexican counterparts. The Cuban government obviously gets their money and the doctors get a cut, but it is hardly what i would call a fair deal for the Cuban doctors who do not receive most of the wages gained for their work. Cuban medical missions are very well regarded in Mexico and the rest of Latin America because the doctors are very competent and do not overrely on costly medical tests for diagnosis; they know how to give the best medical help within the constraints of a 3rd world healthcare system. The conditions are exploitative but i don’t think that they are worse than what most migrant workers experience, and at least the Cuban government keeps track of them and makes sure that they come back intact.
Thanks, Li, and all who replied. It sounds like it may not be as “good” a project as I had thought, but certainly not as bad as the article sometimes projects. Obviously, Cuba does not have the resources to send highly paid doctors all over the world for nothing. They have fewer resources since U.S. sanctions have tightened over the last 8 years. A pessimistic article from the GrayZone. I must remember that everything is a trade-off.
On rereading, I don’t get much clarity from this piece. Bits of information spattered about, on many topics. It alternates between very briefly suggesting sinister control and exploitation of the healthcare workers, and more positive quotes, IMHO, to make it seem objective. The slant seems pretty negative to me.
It relies heavily on the Cuba Archive, a non-profit with a Florida address, but registered in DC. I can’t find anything about it’s funding, but it has a lot of financial people in it. Not very positive toward the Cuban government.
I can’t find much on the author, although she was apparently attacked in Nicaragua by Sandinistas a while back.
I wouldn’t describe the health care system here as 3rd World, at least in a pejorative way, and certainly not in terms of outcomes, in comparison to, say, the USA. And Cuba has probably the best health care system in the Western Hemisphere.
The American factory workers should be proud. They are more free than Cuban doctors. /s
Here’s one article to counter NYT’s piece.
“The United States calls Cuba’s medical internationalism “human trafficking” — but it’s really an internationalist lifeline for the Global South.”
Thanks, it looks a lot more comprehensive than NYT’s. I look forward to reading it all. I need to put the Jacobin on my link list.
the supreme court order that compelled [The Administration] to “facilitate” the return of Ábrego García…
The Supreme Court did not order the Administration to facilitate Ábrego García’s return, but release. The tendentious reading is that they should facilitate his release so he can live as a peaceful El Salvadoran citizen, in El Salvador, but that he is not welcome back into the US. It is impossible to read it as saying they should facilitate his return, if he happens to be released.
Isn’t there another caveat in terms of a president violating a court order, as I thought that a sitting president cannot be arrested. In order to be arrested, doesn’t a sitting president have to be impeached first? If so, good luck getting that through a Republican-dominated Congress.
“Time travel, future fear, and the banal indignity of nostalgia”
‘I may finally be ready to sell my soul to the devil if the bargain is right. Enjoy your nostalgia. I want progress.’
Yeah, nah. Progress used to mean getting better but is no longer true. As a quick example, are the white goods that people buy as good as the ones from a few decades ago? Are computer programs better now? Nostalgia does have a point. It lets you put your life into context as in are things better now as they once were? Young kids growing up today cannot conceive of what life was like in the 70s for example. But to make the point, those readers who grew up in the 80s would recognize a lot on this tweet thread and make you ask yourself have things gotten better-
https://xcancel.com/JamesLucasIT/status/1903891272496029709#m (NSFW)
We pre-internetists were amazingly single minded, yeah the media of the era did shape us somewhat, but we weren’t of hive mind yet.
5 of the Dartful Codgers in Colorado on a ski trip there were born within 6 months of me in either direction, and we all went to different high schools together, as luck would have it.
All were raised free range in such a simpler time, nothing was asked of males aside from signing a selective service agreement when we were 18 which petered out by the time we hit 30, about the time many of us bought a house before prices got whacko.
Hell yeah, i’m for nostalgia.
That was hilarious!
Telus motto: “the future is friendly” Not the present is friendly. Not our service is friendly. Not our prices are friendly.
The functional deconstruction of the regulatory state is a sight to behold. If liberal Democrats regain the house in 2028, it seems that they could schedule unlimited hearings with subpoena power, compelling cabinet officials and political appointees to attend hearings, simply to pin them down and try to obstruct their ability to run their agencies. What’s more, anyone that defies can and should be arrested for contempt of Congress. But what are the odds that liberal Democrats would weaponize hearings, rather than finger wag?
Zero.
That would be some real resistance, though.
Instead we get the Sanders and AOC show, and whatever Sanders might have been in the past, he’s the Democrat sheepdog show today.
If you thought that Biden was churning out pardons like they were going out of style, just wait till Trump nears his end of term. I wouldn’t worry about Sanders and AOC though. They will do these shows up until 2028 when they will overnight fold and demand their supporters vote for Gavin Newson as the Democrat Presidential nominee.
that seoul travelogue
>>>. Simple human courtesy is the glue that holds societies together without the need of the heavy hand of the state (i.e police), and Korea, like most of Asia, has it in spades.
lol, ummm. pro tip: East Asian ( JP KR TW CN, and i’ll count SG as E asiaN) criminal justice is not like Scandi-land.
Skynet is watching, even in korea
>What are “Nihilistic Violent Extremists”?
Interestingly, nihilism was synonymous with terrorism in 19th century Russia. Is the United States, under the reign of Donald I, on the verge of a return to feudalism?
Fear not Goodperson ciroc. We are enlightened despots today. Keep to your divinely appointed role in society and all will be well.
Stay safe. (From whom, I dare not say.)
From The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers
Musk really is a sick, deprived, delusional person.
Months ago, people were pointing out he was using his kid as a human shield. I thought that both plausible but not necessarily the case. Well, it is the case:
So he was using his kid as a human shield after all.
He’s also extremely vindictive:
I would also note that St. Clair’s legal fee structure is a form of class warfare. A quarter of a million dollars for a child support case? And no judgement in sight?
I look at all these genius level plans by the smartest people in the whole wide world and they all seem to ignore Covid and a collapsing infrastructure.
Perhaps I’m sniffing the wrong brand of Glue?
I just wrote IM Doc about scary signs of cognitive impairment I am seeing around me and he wrote back that he is seeing it aplenty, with many illustrations.
What’s maddening to me is I know the statistics, the science, what anecdotes I see on Twitter, but in real life I rarely need to go anywhere or interact with anyone, so what little I see looks mostly “normal”, other than people being sick at work way more often than I ever recall happening, including multi-month long coughs that never seem to subside.
The psychological cost is unpleasant to bear.
It’s hard to be optimistic about where all of this leads.
Something I’ve noticed in the last year or so is that some, usually younger employees in stores or banks or med centers seem, I don’t know quite how to put it, they seem distracted or suffering from some kind of attention span deficit. At first thought it was simply they’d spent too much time on social media affecting their attention span. But maybe not. In other ways, they almost to a person are bright, attentive, engaged in the moment, etc., and yet the attentiveness is sort of like a cognitively declining person who is very attentive but can’t remember what one said 5 minutes ago, or what the next step should be in the process. And again, I don’t know what’s going on. Too much computer time shrinking their attention span? New employees who aren’t sure yet how to handle regular request because they’re still in training? Something else? I don’t know. It’s now happened often enough that I notice it, and notice it as unusual from earlier times, times which also of course had younger employees.
I’ve had multiple people recently at a financial firm not do what I’ve asked, one of which was a scheduled call which went missed, including email warnings prior to, that I never heard from anyone about ever again.
Too few data points to be sure, though.
We’ve had that happen twice recently (different employees) when dealing with a big mutual fund company. They simply didn’t do what they said they would do. And also with our credit union; twice now, different people. It’s like the person will say s/he will do it, and then forget to, or not actually know how to.
Could add “a few hours of swiping TikTok each day” to the list.
I don’t get out much, or drive much.
My average drive is about 6 Miles round trip, however I see extremely risky or bad driving on about 1/2 of those trips.
Today it was someone coming to a full stop in the middle lane of three and when the left only arrow lit up they drove straight through the intersection, very narrowly missing two cars making a left turn.
These days I frequently notice older people, say in their mid 70s, fumbling contactless payment. Today at my usual morning coffee shop (I sit outside!), the two women ahead of me had to be helped by the cashier to complete payment. I’m in incipient geezer territory myself (65 y.o.), so this observation is sobering. This is not something I remember seeing to this extent in the Before Days.
I’ve worked remotely for a continental European academic editing agency since late 1999. In the last three years the scheduling has gone haywire: prescheduled jobs cancelled, large last-minute jobs, and an overall decline in the volume of work. Something is clearly not right.
eh, when the tech changes every 3 years that’s what you’re gonna get. The CC payment card reader modules noticably recently changed. Aka, I knew how to do this 3 years ago, knew how to use the CC machine. What changed?
I pay cash. / heh.
Oh, I go to this coffee shop regularly, and their system hasn’t changed in several years, nor has the system at the nearby organic market where I’ve also been seeing this confusion. My assumption is that half a dozen Covid infections are starting to bit.
I’m younger than you and I use contactless payment so rarely that I usually need to ask how to use it. Every machine seems to be different.
I hate to ask this but any glimmer of chance we could be gifted a posting on this by IM Doc?
I hope we do. I am seeing a lot of people with cognitive changes.
>Like ChatGPT, only secret: This is Genie, the IDF’s artificial intelligence
Wow, whose idea was it to name an AI designed to kill Palestinians after an Islamic mythological spirit?
As Fentanyl Deaths Slow, Meth Comes for Maine
Making America Great Again!
This fascinating sentence appears in the first photo caption in the article:
Interesting if true. It would mean the Navy is still getting slammed by covid and is taking extreme measures to quarantine their crews in case they are suddenly needed for some ridiculous war.
Is this kind of thing going on throughout the armed forces? It makes sense to me, I suppose, though it’s at violent odds with the propaganda that covid is behind us.
14 Apr 25: Aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), with Carrier Air Wing 1 embarked, is operating in the Red Sea. Probably not going to make any port calls any time soon.
There are one of two CVN in “refuel” a process that takes two years minimum, happens every XX years for each nuclear carrier.
IIRC Truman is long into its standard time on deployment, Stennis coming to Arabian Sea is early replacement.
Racket News latest, no paywall.
A Reckoning is Coming For the Private Equity Economy
PE titans could lose millions, but working-class Americans might pay a bigger price
-by Eric Salzman
https://www.racket.news/p/a-reckoning-is-coming-for-the-private
Separate topic, but I think it is interesting if more people can analyze the Ecuador Presidential Election. If it was not fraud, it should be a case study on how to absolutely crush a second round, as Noboa somehow won over 89% of the votes up for grabs (1,212,723 votes that went to candidates that did not pass first round plus 159,000 more voters= 1,321,631), despite the majority (60%) of those other first round candidates being of parties on the left. Is there anyone with experience in statistics that can figure out the probability of this happening? The results did not reflect polls either.
re: tariffs – German comment
The big free trade lie: Why Germany is deceiving itself
by Heiner Flassbeck
“Germany celebrates itself as the world’s export champion. Foreign trade surpluses are considered a success. This could quickly backfire. A guest article.”
April 16, 2025
https://archive.is/afUYl
My apologies if this has previously been noted in links or comments (I missed that if it happened) —
A debate between Steven Moore and Stephanie Kelton on the Federal Debt, live tonight (8PM ET)
I dislike debates; in my experience rhetoric tends to eclipse clarity of argument, but perhaps this one will be more light and less smoke.
Changes to the banks supplementary leverage ratio and central clearing of treasuries coming up. US Treasury will probably end up buying its own bonds if the Fed won’t. Mr Bessent already said a new big buyer of treasuries is needed, that will probably be the US Treasury itself at this rate. He will have no problem with this as it is what hedge funds do and he thinks of the US Treasury as a hedge fund for his ideas.
Of course the Fed will be buying when unemployment starts to spike, but the question remains, who gets the bailout this time.
I know nothing of this.
Am curious — if Treasury purchases its own issues, will the funds source be borrowings from the Fed or from the bank sector? Presumably it won’t be “The Coin”.
~45 minutes in — IMO this is very good.
The debate is civil, focus is on facts more than ideology.
Well moderated.
There will be a permanently-archived recording. I think it’s worth hearing.
Ta mate, albeit the intro … groan … funding funding funding[zero incentive ] … gave at the office … Adam Smith Society level bastardization of terms like freedom and liberty buttressed by vacuous references to founding fathers … oh my … Adolf Coors noted … I regress …
Anyway here I go …
PS first speaker banging on about national debt when sectoral balances are juxtaposed.
OK …So Steve Moore is a dead set rusted on indoctrinated ideologue, with a perch at a rich people funded think[????] tank, which uses cold reading rhetorical ploys like “you all know that is true/obvious to the crowd. Seems completely ignorant[tm] of the changes in monetary systems since Rome and worse the last 100 years in the US alone.
Completely/stakes stuck into the ground, no matter what, that taxes pay for government and not that government provides fiat to get the ball rolling aka the state is the dominate player in markets as it sets the stage both the laws which shape it and provides the initial funds which allow it to operate.
Completely white washes decades of neoliberal agenda and its outcomes regardless of political party. Dbl downs on markets are the most efficient means to structure any society and blames it all on government. So less government via comments about Musk/Doge is about rooting out so called fraud on tax payers [lmmao – see Corps] and its the little people fraud that is the big issue wrt stealing stuff.
At the end of the day Kelton will not put a dent in this unless people in the less than 10% can start informing others in their daily lives. Not on a religious or fundamentalist level, just dropping a dime here and there as is on offer, should not be a conflict, not adversarial, just present a different view of reality past and present and then allow them to reconcile it vs the reality that is unfolding at present. Then they might ask more questions and that allows space for a more deeper conversation.
Did you see how Moore several times looked at the audience and uttered like a cold reader “you all know this is true” or its equivalent. Without anything to back it up as he said so and gezz look at mangled historical data I have provided [barge of ideological driven drivel]. Where Kelton up packs everything she proffers, completely opposite of his position.
I noticed this rhetorical ploy that SM repeatedly employed; there must be a technical term for this fallacy. “Appeal to widespread misconception” or something like that.
Amusingly, SM asserted in his initial position statement that he is less concerned about the absolute size of the deficit than he is about growth rate of the economy. I think his position is (or perhaps I am simply charitably interpreting) that he wants to see GDP annual % growth larger than deficit as % of GDP, so that the ratio of debt to GDP declines over time. He is not pre-occupied with the absolute size of the deficit — a point of agreement with SK.
Other of his statements are consistent with this, such as his preference for taking on additional federal debt for use in spending projects that would promote future GDP growth.
Perhaps one could consider this a flaw in the formulation of the debate proposition, which could have been more clearly formulated to indicate whether “absolute” or “relative to GDP” size of the deficit was in view.
I got the distinct impression that at places SM completely misunderstood what SK was saying. For example, toward the end, when SM was catastrophising about an interest cost spiral, SK said that we could avoid that by simply rolling maturing Treasuries into Fed reserve balances (ie, if I am interpreting her correctly, have the Fed, in effect, monetize new Treasury issues — I think this would require a change in law as current arrangements (SK calls these “habits”) require new Treasury issues to offset net State Money injections into the economy) and pay no interest on these balances.* IIRC, SM made noises like he thought this was impossible.
*Alternatively, as SK has written and as she suggested again in this discussion, Treasury could limit its new issues to very short term Bills and the Fed could pin the short-term interest rate to near zero. This would, however, require the Fed to surrender its control of the interest rate policy instrument. This does not trouble MMT advocates as they consider monetary policy a blunt and relatively ineffective instrument and prefer that State economic goals be pursued instead through fiscal policy. Inflationary pressures would be dealt with by raising taxes and/or reducing Federal expenditure, deflationary pressures by lowering taxes and/or increasing Federal expenditure.
—–
I note with interest that SM sounded sympathetic to the MMT Job Guarantee concept.
SK’s closing argument was IMO very effective — recounting her time as minority staff Chief Economist on the Senate Banking Committee, asking “would you eliminate the debt if you could?” — Senators would — and then “would you eliminate all Treasury-issued assets held by the public?” — Senators wouldn’t. It’s a nice illustration of the one-sidedness of the understanding of the meaning of the public debt, on the part of the typical deficit hawk, including the people who make our laws, who ought to know better,
Yes, SK’s observation at the end shows the cognitive state some are beholden too, wrt the term debt. You could really see SM’s colours when he talked about people working, his solution is to end/reduce payments and – force them – to get an imaginary job in the private sector. Damn all the social consequences or as SK points out how the private sector rejects the defectives.
Gosh I can remember when people in his corner were banging on about how a MMT JG was stealing from the private sector or would usher in hyperinflation. Also how KS came around after being educate in orthodox econ, did the research, and could not deny the evidence. Only sticking point now is how the parts are assembled, because that effects the narrative and not the function.
When you looked into tariff size
Wall*Street stood there like it was hypnotized
You sent a feeling down Main Street’s spine
A feeling not so warm and smooth and fine
But all business could do was stand there paralyzed
When you dissed somebody, ooh, what a thrill
You took Elon on as a hired hand and, ooh baby, what a chill
He felt like grabbin’ the reins real tight
Squeeze and squeeze out jobs with all his might
All business could do was stand there paralyzed
Oh yeah lucky me, i’m singing ev’ry day, ooh-ooh-ooh
Ever since January 20th when you came back my way, ooh-ooh-ooh
You made my life for me, just one big happy word spiel
I’m game ev’ry morning, At night i’ll probably yield
When you held the bible and swore to the constitution that you’d be true
In front of a preacher you said I do
I couldn’t say what people are thinking of you
All business could do was stand there paralyzed
Oh lucky me, i’m singing ev’ry day, ooh-ooh-ooh
Ever since January 20th when you came back my way, ooh-ooh-ooh
You made my life for me, just one big happy word spiel
I’m game ev’ry morning, At night i’ll probably yield
Do you remember that wonderful time
When you held a Bible in your hand and swore to the constitution you’d be true
In front of the preacher you said I do
I couldn’t say what people are thinking of you
All business could do was stand there paralyzed
All the country could do was stand there paralyzed
Paralyzed, performed by Elvis Presley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR8auJHdex8
OK, help me with this — if Chevron can get a federal judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, to appoint another judge, Loretta Preska, to convict Steven Donziger for criminal contempt (using a private prosecutor and with no involvement of U.S. DOJ in the indictment or prosecution) and send him to federal prison, what’s to stop judges Boasberg or Xinis from ordering up similar ‘special prosecutor’ judges to directly bring federal criminal contempt charges against individual members of the Trump mob? Other than “tradition”? Why involve the corrupt U.S. Dept. of Justice, under mob control and deeply conflicted? What if U.S.A.G. Pam Bondi herself is alleged to have participated?
To hell with tradition; special circumstances require special means. Apparently, this is legally within a federal district court judge’s authority to do, since Kaplan got away with it.
Am I just flat wrong here? Somebody tell me how, please.
Not sure what to make of Casablanca in Humordor all decked out in gilt giving it a Louis XIVk feel, its a look that Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch would be proud of.
Trump Waved Off Israeli Strike After Divisions Emerged in His Administration NY Times
The Israelis are insane.
American Concentration Camps
Once a regime starts to send people to concentration camps — including those in El Salvador — it creates a system of detention that eschews due process and disappears citizens into black holes.
Chris Hedges
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/american-concentration-camps
re: US trade unions
JACOBIN
Shawn Fain: We Need a Political Movement for Workers
by Shawn Fain
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain explains his union’s position on tariffs and argues that we need a political movement that puts working-class people first to address the current political crisis in the US.
https://jacobin.com/2025/04/fain-uaw-tariffs-working-class
From Fain’s piece; “… we’re going to need working-class people to step up, to speak up, and take on corporate America, from the bargaining table to the ballot box.”
I’ll add to that the observation that political violence was a part of most previous union movements in America. The owners utilized organizations such as the Pinkertons and the National Guard to physically stop union organizing. The unions had to fight back to succeed. Blood flowed and explosives thundered.
Stay safe.