Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war — both real fog and stage fog — in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.
And for those who are new here, this is not a mere polite request. We have written site Policies and those who comment have accepted those terms. To prevent having to resort to the nuclear option of shutting comments down entirely until more sanity prevails, as we did during the 2015 Greek bailout negotiations and shortly after the 2020 election, we are going to be ruthless about moderating and blacklisting offenders.
–Yves
P.S. Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:
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***
SIX NOVELS WITH AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF UNEASE, SLOW-BURNING MENACE, AND COERCIVE CONTROL Crime Reads. I’ve only read three of these- Rebecca, Fingersmith, My Cousin Rachel. Each excellent, so I suppose I should check out the other three recommendations.
The Greatest Bourbon Ever Stolen Narratively
10 U.S. State Parks that are Worth a Visit The Discoverer
Saving the tigers Bangkok Post (furzy)
The Jackie Robinson We Didn’t Get to Know Capital & Main
Rescued lions on ‘love drug’ transform from unhappy cats into friendly kitties Daily Maverick (furzy)
Is Croatia Going the Reactionary Route of Poland and Hungary? Literary Hub
Tardigrades may hitchhike on snails … and then suffocate in their slime Live Science (furzy)
Meghalaya’s Living Root Bridges are Headed for Global Recognition The Diplomat
Ajvar: The vegan ‘caviar’ of the Balkans BBC
Turkey: Powerful Explosion Rocks Istanbul; At Least 10 People Injured, Building Evacuated Republic TV
#COVID-19
Japan’s struggling tourism sector despairs at lack of COVID exit Al Jazeera
China doubles down on zero-Covid ahead of Communist Party congress South China Morning Post
WHO Is Disputing India’s COVID Death Numbers, So Govt Wants to Bury Global Report The Wire
Gov. Kathy Hochul says she won’t shut down NY as COVID cases spike NY Post
Officials Adopt New Message on Covid-19 Behaviors: It’s Your Call WSJ
New Not-So-Cold War
6TH” COIN IN HISTORIC MOMENTS SERIES, RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE, HONORING PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY #31 IN SERIES, PRE-ORDER SALE! ALL SHIPMENTS BEGIN ON JUNE 15, 2022 White House Gift Shop (MH)
Calls for US to issue visa bans for UK lawyers enabling Russian oligarchs Guardian (furzy)
***
Pope makes Easter plea for Ukraine peace, cites nuclear risk AP
Missiles strike Lviv, bodies in streets of Mariupol Reuters
LIVEMissiles hit Lviv in Ukraine’s west as Russia bombards cities BBC
Belarus Claims To Be Preparing For Response To Potential Western Aggression: Report Republic TV
Japan Asserts Main Goal Of G20 Meeting Is To Push Reluctant Countries To Sanction Moscow Republic TV. Good luck with that.
Gonzalo Lira is missing! The Saker
It is now safe to assume that @realGonzaloLira has either been abducted by the SBU or killed by Nazi paramilitary units in Kharkov city. Several people from inside the city have messaged me and their i-net works fine. I ask @ChileMFA to look into this matter as he is from Chile!
— UkraineMaps (@MapsUkraine) April 17, 2022
(Chris Coons is 58 years old. A graduate of Yale Law with $10 million net worth, he never served in the military. He has 3 children, all 18 or older, yet none serve in the military. So when he advocates that the US send troops to fight Russia in Ukraine, he means other families). pic.twitter.com/o0txYSvBo1
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 17, 2022
Shortages
Ukraine war: Will the wheat crisis bring more food independence? Deutsche Welle
Class Warfare
Rent Prices Are Truly, Deeply Fucked Right Now Vice (furzy)
Texas Banned Homeless Encampments, So a Guy Made One on His Property Vice (furzy)
Directory of grants for single mothers sSngle Mothers Grants (furzy)
‘I Am Not for Sale,’ Says Nina Turner as Billionaire-Funded Super PAC Backs Opponent Common Dreams
Biden Administration
Kamala Harris keeps traveling to unconventional places. Here’s why. Politico
US to host Asean leaders in mid-May Bangkok Post (furzy)
WITH AN ATTEMPT TO UNSEAT REP. ILHAN OMAR, MINNESOTA HOUSE RACE SETS UP A CONTEST ON POLICING The Intercept (furzy)
La belle France
‘Voting for Marine Le Pen is not an option for women’ France 24 (furzy)
Old Blighty
India
Dalit History Month: 12 books that unveil caste-based atrocities and the ongoing fight against them Scroll
How Community Forest Rights Empowered Gondia’s Women And Youth India Spend
The India Fix: Communal anarchy sweeping the country paints a dark future for India Scroll
Auto, Taxi Drivers Go on Strike in Delhi to Protest Rising CNG Prices The Wire
Indian start-ups have a solution for city-dwellers who can’t install solar panels on their rooftops Scroll
Pakistan
PM Shehbaz writes letter to Modi, says peaceful Pak-India ties imperative for progress of region Dawn
Syraqistan
Deadly Pakistan strikes in Afghanistan reflect growing cross-border tensions Responsible Statecraft
China?
‘Held Hostage’ By Engine Manufacturers, World’s Biggest Naval Power – China Struggles With Submarine Tech Eurasian Times (furzy)
China GDP growth beats forecasts but lockdowns weigh on outlook FT
‘China needs new playbook’ to counter EU’s tougher trade and investment rules South China Morning Post
China Eastern resumes flying Boeing 737-800 jets after crash Bangkok Post (furzy)
Waste Watch
Are microbes the future of recycling? It’s complicated Ars Technica
Plant sunflowers and lavender to save garden species, says RSPB Guardian (furzy)
Climate Change
Iraq’s ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change Guardian
State Approves Massive Electricity Transmission Lines to Power Climate Goals The City
Climate Change Is Bad – But It Doesn’t Deserve All the Blame The Wire
How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town MIT Technology Review
Budapest: You Can’t Build Anything Down American Conservative
‘Once the Federal Government Legalizes, Many More States Would Follow Through’ FAIR
Can we not just have ONE thing that isn’t actively working against us? pic.twitter.com/VjAmYSzH6j
— Sydney Watson (@SydneyLWatson) April 15, 2022
Antidote du Jour (via):
And a bonus video (furzy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
213 comments
Comments are closed.
The pinned tweet from Mr. Lira’s Twitter is grimly ominous, hopefully it’s not predictive.
Some hope for Lira though it is by way of mouth and not actual proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAPc3emHUGU
Not looking good:
https://t.me/intelslava/25858
re: planting Lavender (from seed)
In my experience, it is quite hard to get some varieties of Lavender to germinate. Munstead germinates quite well without cold treatment but Hidcote does not at all without cold treatment. (Aside: the seed source is Outside Pride, which has a wide range of seed for decoratives and ground covers and quite a lot of herbs, too.) This past Winter I tried to cold treat Hidcote seeds by pre-sowing in damp medium in a tray and leaving the tray on the back porch all Winter. The germination rate improved from 0% to about 10%. Due to inattention, the tray badly dried out mid-Winter and I re-hydrated it only once, which may account for the still low germination rate.
If I can get a substantial colony of Hidcote started from seed, I’ll try to take cuttings in future as this “much effort for little product” from-seed approach is wearisome.
I have started both varieties this year, with similar experience. I keep putting the Hidcote planted seeds out in the rain and some continue to sprout. Still about 10% and I have paid close attention. I have Munstead seeds with over 80% germination. Similar results. This is my first time trying them.
They are extremely easy from cuttings, I understand.
My wife has propagated lavender from both cuttings and seeds, she says once a plant is established it will naturally seed and the resulting volunteers are easy to transplant. We live in a semi-arid region which the plant seems to like.
Silly me, initially I thought that WH Zelensky/Ukraine coin was a joke. They really are going all-in on this, aren’t they?
We could start a pool to see what comes first, fall of Zelensky or launch of Zelensky coin.
Zelensky our greatest hero since Gov Cuomo
He better be careful or he’ll have “an accident” “plane crash” or other misfortune, should he be too close to a peace agreement.
The U.S. and it’s financial allies will fight to the last Ukrainian against Russia, the new economic system that’s not cooperating with the old U.S. hegemony.
You should have seen the TV news her in Oz. They were talking about the brave Ukrainians making a final stand in that factory in Mariupol and how they refused to surrender when the Russians gave them an ultimatum. Not once did they give a hint just who those Ukrainians actually were or who else might be with them. They did, however, mentioned that there might be civilians with them but without explaining why civilians would find the need to join a group making a final stand like that. Yeah. The main stream media is nothing more than a psyops campaign.
There is generally only rarely anything heroic about taking a last stand.
The soldiers that surrender when there is no chance of victory or escape, are of course much more commendable than the fanatics who unnecessarily waste lifes, including their own.
I can’t shake the feeling that beside propaganda in the narrower sense, decades of Hollywood entertainment has filled the heads especially of all the media consumers who were never even near any battlefield with such perverse and twisted notions of heroism.
Of course, there is neither a chance of a good outcome for the Azov Nazi scum, nor do they deserve one.
But that all the more makes me think of the way all my life here in German speaking Europe I have constantly been told who absolutely immoral and insane, criminal it was of the real Nazis to pursue their “never surrender, fight to the last senior citizen and young boy” policy for as long as they did.
Despite the fact that of course the allies never tried to spare civilian lifes or infrastructure, quite the contrary.
The Volkssturm was always portrayed as a prime example of how much of an utterly depraved, barbaric, dehumanizing death cult the Nazis were.
All forgotten.
Including by LOTS of people who would be the first to eagerly crawl over each other to surrender the moment war ever came their own neighbourhood.
If they were in danger of being conscripted into Volkssturm themselves, it would immediately stop seeming so awesome.
Pretty much. If you look at how weapons and their effects have been portraid by Hollywood over the decades, they become ever more outlandish as they get further and further away from WW2. And that is perhaps in part because fewer and fewer in both the crew and the audience knew how someone that was shot would act.
In a western filmed right after the war, someone getting shot would stumble and trip. If they ended up going through a window, it was because they fell.
These days, a single revolver shot will lift the opponent off his feet and fling him across the room like he was carried by an explosion. And that is in movies that will otherwise try to present themselves as grim and “realistic” compared to the clean and “wholesome” movies of old.
Also, the protests against the Vietnam war was as much about the draft as it was about the war itself. Students feared, and not without reason, that if they flunked or otherwise left the universities, they would get drafted. So they protested to end the war before that happened.
As best i recall, the war dragged on for some years after the draft ended. And by then most had more or less forgotten about it until the undignified embassy evacuation.
And the lesson Pentagon et al drew from that was to lean less on drafts and more on drumming up how glorious wearing a uniform was (along with recruitment drives targeted more at the poor, and wide use of “contractors”).
In some sense, the state of USA right now reminds one of the state of the British Empire after WW1. Where the meat grinder had depleted them of able, never mind willing, soldiers at home, leaving them to use things like bombing and recruitment from the colonies to bolster ranks.
In the waning days of Stalingrad in 1942, Herman Goering attempted to encourage his troops with thoughts of Leonidas at Thermopylae,
“If you come to Germany, tell them you have seen us fighting in Stalingrad, obedient to the law of honor and warfare”
I heard that only 21 million ZelenskyCoin will ever be minted, assuring it’s status as the go-to cryptocurrency, and should Z be tragically captured or killed (CryptCoin?), the value will surely go up.
My mother recently inquired about her Habsburg Maria Teresa silver thaler coin stamped 1782 – turns out 300 million were minted in the mid-19thC as a medium of exchange for the middle-east, and her example goes for about $70 online.
They’ve been minting 1780 Maria Teresa Thalers for the longest time, I used to buy them by the hundreds from the Austrian mint for around $5 per back in the day.
Fund fact: coins only started having the year of issuance on them in the 1400’s.
I also thought it was a joke. Rather frightening.
If you have a spare 100 bucks to buy a Zelensky coin, then how about another another 100 bucks for the crowdfunding of buying Ukrainian fighter pilots a new jet called ‘Buy Me A Fighter Jet’-
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-pilots-launch-buy-me-a-fighter-jet-crowdfunding-campaign-2022-4
Features the 1:47 minute video of the pleas from this Ukrainian fighter pilot. Totally on the up and up. Not a scam at all. Seriously.
This could be a perfect opportunity to get rid of our defective fleet of F-35’s.
The US has been flying stealth missions with the F-35 dropping stealth bombs in Ukraine and they work so well that they leave no evidence of being there.
We’re gonna need a bigger fundraiser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l25lfykG28w&ab_channel=LenaNews
Watch the ‘buy me a fighter jet’ appeal video. The guy literally has a Nazi Black Sun patch on his arm! The Ukrainian military cannot go five seconds without demonstrating the extent of the far right influence throughout the entirety of their armed forces.
Maybe Scranton Joe thinks Zelensky will win the midterms for him. Since he’s got nothing else to run on.
Team Blue strategerist advice always amounts to “then Republicans will be nice to us” or “then republicans can’t be mean to us.”
Obama said democrats should run on their record. As dumb as this sounds, it’s possible the message was for Biden and other electeds to ignore the Team Blue courtiers and not run on how to get Republican elites to be nice. “No drama, Obama” was the 2008 phrase his campaign used to not get bogged down in Hillary’s various attacks (mailers with Obama’s skin darkened and thieves breaking in, that kind of thing). The record sucks, but it’s still better than the Biden record and kowtowing to the GOP as the GOP only sees that as weakness.
Hillary had a similar line, but I assume that is coincedence as the answer to evil or stupid in her case is both in abundance.
Dems ARE running on their record. Thats why they’re going to get shellacked just like 2010 AGAIN.
It’s a cult, Zelensky’s Witnesses. Funny thing is, only people outside of Ukraine accept Zelensky as their lord and savior.
Flip it and:
Heads: Zelensky wins, US loses.
Tails: US loses, Zelensky wins.
Bah. No maths for you!
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/17/us/florida-math-textbooks-critical-race-theory/index.html
Could the message be any clearer? If you have children or if you teach, GTF out of Florida.
Isn’t an extreme response to be expected though, when the other extreme on the ideological spectrum preaches that math itself normalizes white supremacy? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…
https://www.qwant.com/?q=logic+math+objective+rational+normalize+white+supremacy&t=web
But…but…but mathematics was invented by brown people!
“We start with the birth of written mathematics in Sumeria and Khuzistan (Iraq and W. Iran) around 3200 BCE…”
Prehistoric Origins of Mathematics
This is true, and most people, whites and others, have no problem with this. So your point would be …
Would that be like saying the critique of math as “white supremacist” is “an extreme response to be expected” considering…. well, the list is long on that side of the ideological spectrum?
The conservative movement in the US is what it is. They don’t get to blame anyone else for their agenda.
Um…the people who invented Algebra were brown.
Quite so. And Europe struggled for centuries with this really clumsy system of using letters to stand for numbers, until the numerals 0-9 and decimal place-value notation came along, imported from (brown) India via the (brown) Arabs.
X-IV goodus buddyus, but al ‘Gebra has only grown in numbers among terra’ist groups.
According to BBC “In Our Time”, the Babylonians could do quadratic equations.
The Babylonians’ very versatile number base 60 lives on in our units of time (1 hour = 60 minutes; 1 minute = 60 seconds).
Good book from some 20 years ago, Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Number, (I think). Developed in the mideast, use of zero was forbidden by the church early on and had a lengthy struggle for acceptance.
In music, the so-called “devil’s interval” of a flatted 5th note (also known as a tri-tone) in the western scale was forbidden by the church as well. No doubt this is part of the reason that it is popular among rock and heavy metal musicians… the most well-known example would probably be the intro to Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix.
And in my kids school the top math performers are Indian and Persian and cute girls too!! Of course the Nigerian neurosurgeon’s kids got into Harvard and Yale despite mediocre grades. I guess Indian and Persian are not brown enough. I wish admissions could be color blind or even randomized. The poor kids are presented with a moving goalpost and boy are they cynical. I am sure they will do fine at UC though.
We got a load of this “White Supremacy Culture” BS two years ago during the Wokepocalypse that accompanied the BLM marches.
I found that if your replaced “White Supremacy Culture” with “Capitalist Economic Exploitation” in most instances you got a politically coherent statement.
This then allowed us to talk about what it means to run a business with employees within a capitalist society and all the trade offs that entails. These weren’t easy conversations either, but at least they weren’t pointless name calling. Which, of course, is the purpose of identity politics, pointless name calling as distraction from underlying structural causes.
“Is Croatia Going the Reactionary Route of Poland and Hungary?”
Maybe. Maybe not. But it will be hard to tell in the coming months which way they will go for a simple reason. There are EU countries that are deliberately crashing their own economies in order to punish Russia right now. Scott Ritter mentioned in a video that BASF in Germany put off 40,000 workers as a result and that those jobs are not coming back. This being the case, how many countries will experience a change of government in Europe in the next year or two in exchange for – perhaps conservative – governments that refrain from throwing their voters to the financial wolves? That is what I mean with Croatia. If they go more conservative, will it be a result of internal politics or a result of a wave of change of governments that will sweep Europe?
The situation in Croatia today has little if anything to do with Ukraine. On past evidence, I’d expect the Croats to be enthusiastically in favour of killing Slavs: they always have been. The Croats, who are culturally Catholic, think of themselves as essentially Central Europeans, looking back nostalgically to the Hapsburg era, but unaccountably stranded in the Balkans alongside swarthy Turks and greasy Slavs. Even shortly after the war, the cultural difference was already astonishing: I remember driving a number of times from Sarajevo to Zagreb, and it was a trip between two civilisations. Crossing the border, you could have been in Austria.
Which means the Croat identity has always been based on difference and opposition, and on the fear of being swallowed up by the barbarians who surround them. That partly explains the eagerness of the Croats to collaborate with the Nazis, and perhaps the almost psychopathic violence used by the Croatian SS and Police units, especially against Serbs. the Germans actually became worried that the Croats were overdoing it. Croatian nationalism, it seems to me, has always had this paranoid, xenophobic quality to it, and I never believed that the state created after 1991 was free of it. Tudjman, the authoritarian President, was a military historian who allowed and even encouraged the whitewashing of the Ustashi in WW2 and the use of their red and white checkerboard emblem. Which is to say that nothing has really changed, and that virulent Croatian nationalism has never gone away, it just took a back seat.
It’s also worth pointing out that, as a small nation, the Croats always took their own image and their perception in the eyes of the world, very seriously. Their propaganda during the War was probably as good as that of the Muslims, and they carefully cultivated the image of mainstream civilised Europeans, ready for immediate entry into the EU and NATO. There were, to be fair, quite a number of Croats who did try to put the virulent nationalism behind them (Stjepan Mesic, the President around the turn of the century was a distinguished example) but I don’t think it ever went away. It’s just that the Croats have been more savvy than the Poles and Hungarians about how they present themselves.
So much of our perception of other countries really comes down to how smart they are at hiding their less desirable impulses. The Serbs in the former Yugoslavia were far too slow to realise that perception matters – once the Croats, Slovenians, etc., managed to portray themselves as the nice guys, the ‘real’ westerners, the Serbs were always going to be on their own. I don’t think the Serbs will ever shake off that perception. Mind you, the Armenians were among the first to try it against the Turks (they thought that by playing the religion card the worlds Christians would come to help them out – big mistake), and they failed catastrophically.
And of course its often convenient for the west or others to overlook things when suitable – the Ukrainians aren’t the first people to have their Nazi elements overlooked when convenient (at the very least, it goes back to the Finns in the 1930’s). Its often forgotten that the nascent Japanese empire was very popular around the world in the early 20th Century as they were seen as plucky upstarts upsetting the big five. There were celebrations on the streets of Dublin in 1908 news came out that they had destroyed the Russian fleet.
In general I think this is a game that smaller countries are generally better at. Once countries get big enough to start talking about spheres of influence, arrogance tends to set in. It seems a common factor among powerful countries, whether on a global or regional scale, that they think everyone else likes them more than the really do. The Russians seem to have fallen into this trap in their Ukraine planning.
My experience with the Croatian diaspora supports your observations concerning ultra-nationalist tendencies. I prefer avoidance where possible.
As we lurched into this crisis, I read Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte in Italian–its style is highly evocative and incantatory. Kaputt is available in English, and I will recommend it again.
But Kaputt is also emotionally difficult and grim: The chapter on Croatia, called A Basket of Oysters, is hard to get out of one’s mind. The oysters aren’t oysters.
It’s as if we collectively haven’t learned a thing.
Yes, it’s a book I often recommend too. As you say, the oysters aren’t oysters. I don’t know whether Pavelic and Bandera met, but they would probably have had a good laugh together, if they did.
Below a very good interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, describing how the 2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine was captured by several agents, one of which was the bloc of West-facing ngos and media organizations, which operated more like professional firms than community mobilizers, with the lion’s share of their budgets usually coming from Western donors… “creating the image of the Euromaidan that was disseminated to international audiences; they were primarily responsible for the narrative about a democratic revolution that represented the civic identity and diversity of the Ukrainian people against an authoritarian government”.
In other words, image creation was basically outsourced and funded by western donors. It has obviously worked extremely well.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/volodymyr-ishchenko-towards-the-abyss
I found the interview lacking depth with respect to the US influence on Ukraine post 2014. He totally oversteps the strategic issues and the Russian fears of US encroachment (with or without NATO) in Ukraine. Otherwise, a great window into internal Ukrainian issues.
Brudermueller, the CEO of BASF, said in an interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine recently that the company would have to shut its main production site in the event of a stop to gas imports from Russia. To my knowledge, the company has not done so yet, though it may still come to pass in the sanctions frenzy. I agree those jobs would like be lost and probably many more amongst suppliers services. In short: has not happened yet, but may well be worse than 40000 jobs if it does.
The German government may think themselves safe as the next Federal election is not until 2025 but I do not think that the people will wait that long. A quick bit of research shows there to be three State elections coming up this year alone for Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia & Lower Saxony. People will let their feelings be known-
https://www.bundesrat.de/EN/organisation-en/laender-en/wahltermine-en/wahltermine-en-node.html
All the major parties except the AfD are in coalitions with each other, though (except that CDU and FDP don’t yet directly ally with the Left Party anywhere).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Composition_of_the_German_Bundesrat_as_a_pie_chart_small.svg
So a sudden big shift to the AfD is the only protest gesture that would actually move the needle enough to not be spun as a continued endorsement of the all-party-except-for-you-know-who mainstream consensus.
I’m not yet seeing signs of great enough desperation in Germany that heretofore “respectable” folk would vote for the AfD.
Indeed I also looked at European elections this year and don’t see anything shifting what seems to be a “war consensus”. I suppose Germans could vote for the Left Party – they are explicitly against the war and re-arming, but they are not set to clear the minimum 5% hurdle in present opinion polls.
Site that tracks polls in Germany reporting parties’ likely percentage of vote in state and federal elections:
https://dawum.de/
BASF you say? They’re the ones who make ABS plastic for LEGO. Looks like toys are about to get a lot more expensive. (I notice that several years ago LEGO began exploring sustainable sources of plastic feedstock, presumably because they saw the way the wind was blowing.)
We lived in Istria for a few years, and while that area is even more “European” and Roman Catholic than Slavonia or even Zagreb, there were plenty of echoes of this Ustasche element when we were there during the Bush reign.
My daughter attended high school, and her Croatian teacher was a hyper-nationalist. Her selections from Croatian literature tended to highlight this perspective. When a new student joined the class mid-year, a student from Bosnia, she picked on him to the point that the rest of the class staged a walkout, demanding fair treatment for the boy. The principal intervened, and there was improvement.
Most of the people we talked to, however, had little use for this nationalist attitude. They regretted the abuse that their Serbian friends endured after the breakup and during the war. They also had no love for the privatization that took place after Yugoslavia’s fall. They had plenty of good things to say about Tito.
Most of the people we talked to, however, had little use for this nationalist attitude. They regretted the abuse that their Serbian friends endured after the breakup and during the war. They also had no love for the privatization that took place after Yugoslavia’s fall. They had plenty of good things to say about Tito.
This describes well my Croatian friends, most of whom are fine musicians and artists.
And also The Wire. Friederike Otto: Climate Change is Bad but it Doesn’t Deserve All the Blame. Kind of a subtle analysis about good government. “It helps no one if we simplify the climate story so much that it becomes false.” Instead we should create responsible government, “good governance and functioning infrastructure…. rather than big development loans that fund large infra projects like dams.” She advocates longer-term programs that improve governance, reduce poverty, fight corruption and improve education. Not that this is what Germany needs because they already have it. But it is definitely what Africa needs, where Germany offshores. This reads like an argument for economies to not be based on quick profits. It almost sounds like an approach to a new kind of neoliberal conservative and localized government. But Neoliberal (she doesn’t say this) because it sounds like a new spending priority that could be organized globally. And in a social sense it fits because manufacturing has been established globally. Volks Wagen manufactures all over the world, etc. Could this be the start of a neoliberal social revolution based on sustainability?
I was greatly disappointed that the author never mentioned the real underlying issue behind most of the things he noted.
Overpopulation.
It’s why areas with ongoing rain issues suddenly have severe food problems.
It’s WHY Germany paved over all that area.
Etc. etc.
Yet it was never mentioned directly.
It’s the “O” word.
Bad link on the front page antidote:
links-4-18-2022-htm
Fixed it – thanks!
re. State Approves Massive Electricity Transmission Lines to Power Climate Goals The City
The Cuomo appointed PSC greenlights a Blackstone-backed transmission toll road to supply NYC… for some reason the New York Power Authority, a public agency, isn’t building the line. NYPA is the largest state owned generation and transmission company in the US. it operates 3 huge hydropower projects (2 dams and 2 pump storage) and 1400 miles of high voltage transmission, including a 765 kv line built in the 1980s to transfer power from Quebec. They have the technical and managerial expertise to build and operate large transmission projects.
Obviously handing out a toll road to Blackstone is another example of neoliberal corruption by our beloved democrats…
[I’ve taken a break from here for the duration of the Ukraine war cuz reasons]
…But I will note that laying and covering bipole HVDC transmission cables in (a) Richelieu River (b) Lake Champlain (c) a rail bed and (d) the Hudson-Harlem rivers is, ohh, a little… expensive. Round numbers $10 billion or somesuch.
The entire reason for doing this is that nobody upstate wants to look at conventional transmission towers — which would be about 1/10th the cost — taking power to the overlords downstate. But NYPA would be no better placed to steer a conventional EHV right-of-way through hundreds of miles of furious NIMBY intervenors than any private developer. Far worse off, actually, being a political creature of the Governor….
But being able to earn generous FERC (Federal taxpayer) guaranteed equity returns on a low risk utility ratebase of 12 billion (including funding costs kaching), plus ‘capacity charges’ — which is to say the owners get paid for decades even if no power is flowing — is the key to this entire thing for Blackstone, whose power division is (or used to be), appropriately, “Sithe.”
Private profit / public risk. Same as it ever was.
Gabriel Weinberg’s thread started with: “Hoping to clear up some misconceptions about our private search engine. First. There is a completely made up headline going around this weekend. We are not “purging” any media outlets from results. Anyone can verify this by searching for an outlet and see it come up in results.”
“Similarly, we are not “purging” YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if your search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into.”
https://geeknewscentral.com/2022/04/17/duckduckgo-did-not-purge-websites/
I found a similar link implying it was all linked back to a ‘newspunch’ article with a misleading or deceptive headline.
https://heavy.com/news/duckduckgo-ceo-not-purging-independent-media/
I believe the original story did say downranked rather than blocked and while I rarely use Google these days downranking has been the charge against them as well when it comes to their search engine. Youtube does block.
Indeed some time back there was a debate here at NC about Google manipulating their search rankings and whether it was only about “relevance” as they claimed. Whatever the truth then, there seems little doubt that Google is being “evil” now if free speech is a thing.
Of course our ever more powerful corporations are eager to use free speech to defend themselves–when convenient to them–and even claim to be persons under the law to prop this up. One could only wish that the 2nd amendment obsession among the public could be more focused on the 1st. Words will be a better defense against our lying liars than guns.
Oh, this is definitely not paranoia. Google did multiple downrankings. We got hit first in 2014 by one called Panda that punished sites that did aggregation like these very Links, as in competing with Google News. They later started aggressively preferring “authoritative” sites; that was when WSWS, The Intercept, Counterpunch etc saw big drops in search traffic. Then they started prioritizing recency.
Google is also censoring emails. Anything political that they don’t agree with may end up in spam, or mysteriously doesn’t get sent.
https://www.webmasterworld.com/gmail_advertising/4005640.htm
for what it’s worth…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ukraine+nakedcapitalism.com&hps=1&atb=v316-1&ia=web
I still have to scroll past naked mole rat every day, after accident deleted the bookmark.
Glad to get the clarification, thanks. There is nonetheless a distinction between naming a particular site directly in a query and having the site come up automatically when related to and or appropriate for a given query but not necessarily directly asked for. It’s that latter that I would most want assurances on. If DDG is filtering sites it doesn’t approve of politically or ideologically, or because someone has made it profitable to do so, except when you specify them directly in a query, then time to find another search engine.
I just did a duckduckgo search for “is duckduckgo now a wholly owned subsidiary of the fbi or the cia?”
First three responses were random links about intel agencies, fourth response was to an article telling me how bad Putin is.
DuckDuckGo is awful at natural language search. You have to use it like an old style pure keyword search engine (because that’s pretty much what it is). Phrases like the one you used will produce no useful results, as you discovered.
Sadly there are some things Google still does a lot better.
The sentence wording is for the benefit of any human that might review search terms. I assumed DDG would only see “duckduckgo, subsidiary, fbi, cia.”
So I just repeated the search with only those keywords and oh my but how the results differed (in a way that reflects somewhat well on DDG!
Thanks for the tip, I just assumed I knew how DDG operated which is dumb since I was trained in by the original Google and those rules are severely outdated now.
This hoax was easy to double-check and should never have been posted here, given its inflammatory nature. I know NC isn’t an old-line newspaper with a full-fledged fact-checking department but nevertheless…
It is not a hoax, DDG ceo on that thread admits to downranking sites based on perceived Russian government influence, because he “stands with Ukraine”.
https://mobile.twitter.com/HateTheState76/status/1515322451483406340/photo/1
–Calls for US to issue visa bans for UK lawyers enabling Russian oligarchs–
More woke tyranny. Do you remember when the Left said that Gitmo detainees get due process? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I’m sorry, but CommonDreams removed any attempt at citation of various astute, fact-checked and TOTALLY pertinent links, on Turner’s being crushed by Koch’s DCCC in advance of the special primary. They’ve done great service to primary-ing popular, electable DEMOCRATIC candidates, while ignoring MO, PA, NY… contests, handing Congress to that OTHER Republican party?
https://www.levernews.com/oil-mogul-bankrolls-attempt-to-buy-democratic-primary/
pretty funny if the Kochs are bankrolling Team Blue now… no wonder they won’t make a real abortion rights move that matters.
Even CommonDreams was covering funding, not JUST to individual libertarian or “conservative” candidates; but as a systemic part of crushing DSA, Green or ANY remotely Democratic policy-espousing lefty Cheri or tio Thomas dutifully fed to reactionary, usually ex-spook, Energy In Depth pantsuit lady, or pro-MIC patriot WARRIOR kleptocrat in AZ, WV, FL, PA, NJ… basically Debbie Wasserman Schultz wannabees. LOTE and the choice is TWO Republican parties: theocratic Nazis or senile, zombie gangsters? CommonDreams cherry-picks, straw-mans then spins your link to fit their DNC™ LLC narrative? Then deletes the citation.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/14/dccc-backed-incumbent-henry-cuellar-gets-support-koch-network-progressive-primary
Smart capitalists always donate to both parties.
Not a donation, really, but an investment in that order of society where people are ready to be ruled by their passions and competitive spirit.
Only to discover, BOTH halfs of the haves have stripped Medicaid & SSI that you can’t pull a Ayn Rand, once dying from your piss-poor impulse control, substance abuse to mollify unresolved childhood trauma? Innovation is for suckers, dreamers & marks. Competition is a delusion of cartel Capital, who bought up any regulators, 3-4 generations ago.
Gabriel Weinberg, however, had already set the avalanche in motion a month ago by ordering DuckDuckGo to “downrank Russian disinformation.” With that move, he himself primed people’s perceptions against DDG as a busybody, nanny, and censor. So it’s hard to feel any sympathy.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disinformation-downranking.html
Remember the Washington Post’s PropOrNot psyop? This very site, NC itself, was libelled as supposedly being a conduit for “Russian disinformation.”
That is exactly how I found out about NC. From the prop or not psyop. I think they have managed to take most of them down at this point.
ProPornOT intentionally conflated the independent research bloggers with smutty tabloid click-farmers, to create a case for property and authority over the mass mind. That most of the tabloids are gone is, in itself, nothing to cry over.
Right. That was from the horse’s mouth and not a technical glitch.
I have an impression that some, or many, may be having second thoughts about their poorly informed virtue signaling over Ukraine. One of my neighbors has even hung a Ukrainian flag on her house as though such a gesture was as uncontroversial as proclaiming that “black lives matter” (lots of those signs).
Perhaps more info about the Banderites, the human shields, the torture prisons need to leak out to goodthinking liberals.
I remember it well. It came out on Thanksgiving when nobody was looking or paying attention. PropOrNot was the trial balloon to see what they could get away with. Turns out a quite lot. And as Jimmy Dore long ago pointed out, the Washington Post’s motto of “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is actually a mission statement.
BTW: I believe Alternet mysteriously misplaced Ames’ typically prescient original?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/site-behind-washington-posts-mccarthyite-blacklist-appears-to-be-linked-to-ukrainian-fascism-and-cia-spying.html
Thanks for that additional background. Funny how shady Ukrainian operators and grifters keep popping up at all points in the political sausage-making process.
Well, maybe not ha-haw funny? I’d been afraid to look it up on Google or now, DuckDuckGo & have some FakeNooz algorithm get by Firefox’s blocking… or Kaspersky? It wasn’t warranted! Now, Googling ANYTHING with that search string, ONLY returns fawning agitprop that’d make Don Draper blush!
https://thewallwillfall.org/2022/03/14/how-one-ukrainian-billionaire-funded-hunter-biden-president-volodymyr-zelensky-and-the-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
Chris Coons: U.S. Should Consider Sending Troops to Ukraine
This man is insane.
Of course you could not have US troops fighting in the Ukraine without first establishing a “no-fly zone” and total aerial dominace. Otherwise, you would risk having a US brigade experience a Zelenopillia-style rocket barrage by the Russians like happened with a Ukrainian brigade back in 2014-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCIhz-IHzZQ (3:34 mins)
So it is a backdoor way of bringing in a no-fly zone and he knows it. Coons must be a graduate of the John McCain School of Diplomatic Relations.
Even with a no-fly zone, American air defense would have to prove itself able to intercept Kinzhals or the safety of a ground operation’s command staff couldn’t be guaranteed.
Maybe Pentagon strategic plans should carry a warning at the bottom saying ‘Performance quoted represents past performance and does not guarantee future results.’
Interestingly enough, there seem to be an equal number of Coons-type characters over in the Russian Duma.
I almost never bother to remember the deputies’ names, mostly because the United Russia faction members are so interchangeable. However, over the past couple of months various leftist resources in Russia have repeatedly highlighted public statements (TV, video streams, pressers) of at least a couple of guys that, I kid you not, advocate a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the US as a means of “resolving” US involvement in Ukraine. All United Russia members, so we are not talking some nationalists freelancing.
I have to believe the Russian government is more than aware. Maybe they think that letting these guys shoot their mouth off paints the Kremlin as a model of restraint. Or maybe they just want to score points with the nationalist vote, which had been quite helpful to Putin in 2018. Similarly, I imagine Coons & Co. are not saying these things because they themselves have sat down, evaluated the military and foreign policy situation from every conceivable angle, and come to a reasoned conclusion that the US needs to escalate – some of their sponsors, or someone they want to get in bed with politically, is pushing this. We already know that Washington has different foreign policy factions, e.g. remember the China-or-Russia debate in the Obama White House. Maybe the hardcore neocons and whoever the hell funds them want to push Biden this way.
Its a very old trick to shift the Overton Window over to where it suits you – have some suitable useful idiot start arguing for something over the top and untenable, then position yourself just on the respectable side of that argument, even if that position would once have been seen as extreme. The right have been doing this for year to mainstream what were once seen as psychopathic policies.
Exactly right on the Overton Window observation. Now the New Democrats play the moderate right-wing role the old Republican party played, while the current Republicans play the role of far-right lunatic fringe.
Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton’s Five Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives
“Clinton had five major achievements as president: NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget. All of them — every single one — were longstanding Republican objectives. His smaller achievements were more traditionally Democratic (he raised the earned-income tax credit and the minimum wage), but his big accomplishments all enacted conservative wishes, and then all of them ended in disaster.”
Obama says Richard Nixon is more Left Wing than I am
“OBAMA: You know, the truth of the matter is when you look at some of my policies, in a lot of ways Richard Nixon was more liberal than I am. Nixon started the E.P.A, started a whole lot of the regulatory state that helped make our air and water clean.”
There are no New Democrats as green as Richard Nixon was because now there is no left wing in the American government. Whenever the media says “The Left,” it is nothing more than a strawman pose. The Overton Window of the mainstream media only looks out the right eye because the Triangulatin’ Democratic party Crazy-Glued the left one shut.
During his re-election campaign I spoke to friends about my determination that I could never vote for Obama. I eventually accepted that those that loved him would never acknowledge that the copious failures of his administration were his desired results, and those that recognized how badly he was governing were not yet ready to give up LOTE voting. I finally just stated that after years of disparaging Richard Nixon, I couldn’t in all conscience vote for someone who made me long for his return.
One of my LOTE friends sent me the link to that clip when it dropped with a note that said they had thought I was unhinged when I made the Nixon comparison and that they had to apologize, I had it right and Obama agreed. And now so did they.
I am still gobsmacked by how so many people my age or close still haven’t realized that Obama would have been an outlier to the right of most Republicans on most of his policy positions in the 60’s and early 70’s.
Pat ~ Tell your friends Obama openly advocates Republican ideas. He says his main achievement in office – the Affordable Care Act – comes from the Heritage Foundation (e.g., Koch Enterprises):
Obama: “When you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators said this is similar to the bill Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts. A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, originated from the Heritage Foundation.”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/apr/01/barack-obama/obama-says-heritage-foundation-source-health-excha/
The “lesser of two evils” is still evil.
Grifter Obama’s so proud of his accomplishments that he shamelessly admits to be to the right of Tricky Dicky. The fawning PMC must be so happy.
Could it be that Coons et al are attempting to shift the Overton Window so that when the Russians reveal US commanders and NATO “mercenaries” are already on the ground helping Ukraine there won’t be an outcry of protest? In other words, they’re taking such an extreme position to get out ahead of Russia when they reveal how much the US and NATO are already involved?
The pentagon is a master of moving the window — when it’s defense budget time, ask for the moon and then be perfectly happy when you get half of that.
But they never “get half of that.” They always get at least what they ask for, and often get (much?) more.
real no flyzone = the US Air Force loses years worth of aircraft deliveries in months.
it is not like WWII when you could shut down a vanilla car factory, add new tooling and have it churn out P51s
Chris Coons is a corporate bankster shill. He is the one that ran against the woman with the I am not a witch ad. Now people wish they had voted for the witch.
And Coons stood with Manchin and Sinema to vote against the $15 minimum wage increase.
He’s also Biden’s conduit to the senate (or whomever is running the show at the WH). He speaks for more than Delaware.
Domestically, but like Pelosi’s covid bout canceling her trip to Taiwan, I suspect congressional dems are just running their own foreign policy with the Pentagon likely putting the brakes on State at the White House. He isn’t on the armed services committees.
Its a party moving into re-elect. They want to look like tough guys.
About thirty years ago John Gregory Dunne, husband of Joan Didion, wrote a great essay entitled ????’? (it was contained in his collection of essays ????????).
In it, he pointed out that during the Vietnam War, the grunts doing the fighting and taking the bullets called their commanders in the rear REMF’s. Rear-Echelon Mother-F**kers.
According to Dunne, one of the outstanding REMF’s at the time was Newt Gingrich who, when asked why he and so many of his colleagues hadn’t served in Vietnam, replied: “We had bigger battles to fight in Congress.”
So, the glorious history of REMF’s having been established, it is time to award the prize for “REMF of 2022”. It was a difficult choice from among many contenders, but…the winner is…CHRIS COONS!!!
Lots of Dems in the ranks of the Chickenhawks although perhaps more now than then. Perhaps one should comment on the true injustice of the college deferment (myself a beneficiary) that allowed the lowers to be consigned to cannon fodder while others pursued their allegedly higher calling. Of course those middle class kids did protest Vietnam, although take away the draft and a lot fewer are protesting now when war and imperialism are still very much a racket.
Re REMF
I was a Vietnam draftee into the Infantry. Got to do what I call “the walking tour” or “Have Gun, Will Travel” (those of a certain age will recognize that from TV). I was then of the species Grunt.
The REMF were not just the commanders, they were everyone back at the big bases, supply sargents, truck drivers, cooks, on up to high-ranking officers. Anyone OTG (Other Than Grunt).
I have been to a few reunions for Vietnam Vets over the last couple decades. At one a few years back I was walking in a hallway near the hotel lobby and passed a guy. It slowly registered to me that he was wearing a neatly made badge that read REMF. I turned and congratulated him on his honest badge, and thanked him for the support.
I think Newt wasn’t a REMF, he was a draft dodger. To be a REMF you had to be in-country.
Heard about a patrol walking out into the bush in Vietnam. One guy had taken point and was slowly making his way forward when he stopped, turned around to the rest of the patrol and said ‘What are you REMFs doing all the way back there!’
>”I think Newt wasn’t a REMF, he was a draft dodger. To be a REMF you had to be in-country.”
Yeah, I stretched the definition of REMF to make a point. Perhaps the chickenhawks in Washington should more properly be called RREMF’s: Rear-Rear-Echelon MF’s.
Well, all modern armies are 90% support personnel. Combat soldiers have been a minority since WW2 at least (I recall a stat that in WW1 about 50% were combat, so it’s a long term trend). I agree the U.S. should have a universal draft. If a congressperson’s child or grandchild had a chance of ending up in combat it might affect their votes.
Give him letters of marque and reprisal, a rifle, and place his [family blog] on the Ukrainian front lines if he feels so strongly.
It’s all a risky move-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pTL6PVAjkE (1:01 mins)
He is also reputed to be Joe Biden’s closest friend in the US Senate. I simply can’t imagine him saying this on a talking head show without Biden signing off on it.
That segment scared me more than just about anything I’ve seen on this mess. Because it sure looks like a trial balloon to me.
The comments from Coons could be directed at Russia. The Mad Man Theory was tried in Vietnam and used to get North Vietnam to the negotiating table. Nixon made it appear (at least) that he would be willing to use nuclear weapons against the north. Biden (via Coons) may be attempting something similar, even if a bit subtle. As we all know, the US government is mad, so anything is possible.
The man is insane.
He is not alone, and I suspect there are blob people pushing this stance. Yesterday I saw a PMC posting of a Tweet from Ukraine. It looks like some official Ukraine Twitter account. It had a picture of some young girl who was bloodied in the face and injured. Awful, no doubt. His response; “It’s time the US get boots on the ground in Ukraine and stop Putin before this gets worse.” Others were all for it as well, with some even calling for a “tactical” nuclear warhead aimed directly at Putin as to take him out, and thus end the war.
Oh, brother! Such outrage over this, yet crickets over the millions of brown people we have turned into dust in the Middle East over the years, or the sanctions that starved so many people in so many countries as well. But Ukraine is too much to bear… WTF? And tactical nukes?
Chris Coons isn’t the only one insane in this country.
In this case I appreciate an insane person stating the obvious out loud. Anything which allows US citizens and bureaucratic weasel wordsmiths to pretend we are not at war with Russia is absurd. Congress should either declare or back way tf off. Of course I demand the latter.
The War Prayer, by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism … on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun … nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. …
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! … The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said …
https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/19-american-empire/mark-twain-the-war-prayer-ca-1904-5/
Funny how my favorite Mark Twain work is not taught in school. I was middle age before I discovered it. I’ve recommended it to friends; so far, none had ever heard of it.
Clemmens withheld his auto-biography from publication ’till 100 years after his death. Three large volumes! He did not want to criticize/embarrass any living persons. There were many.
War speech by Theon Greyjoy
– ‘Voting for Marine Le Pen is not an option for women’ France 24 (furzy) –
Voting Le Pen is not an option for anyone but the rich. Her program includes :
– Lowering worker rights (“Flexibiliser le droit du travail”).
– Going harder on the drug war (“Ne pas légaliser et renforcer la répression du cannabis”).
– Large inbcrease in the defense budget (“Augmenter le budget à 55 milliards d’euros par an d’ici 2027”).
– Austerity to repay the public debt (“« une dette doit être remboursée. Il y a là un aspect moral essentiel »”).
– Lower tax on wealth (“Remplacer l’Impot sur la fortue immobilière par une flat tax sur la fortune financière”).
– Lowering tax on wealth transmission (total exonration until 300 000 euro per children).
– Lowering fiscal progressivity (zero tax on people under 30 regardless of income).
Etc. Etc… On the neoliberal agenda, Le Pen is to the right of Macron. Let’s not even talk about the racial and cultural aspects of her program (Who cares about the foreigners anymore…)
Source : https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/04/11/election-presidentielle-2022-comparez-les-programmes-d-emmanuel-macron-et-de-marine-le-pen_6121622_4355770.html
Sounds like the classic definition of an American FRightwingnut to me. They’ve done a very competent job of wrecking my country over the last 40-50 years. The French people have my sincere best wishes.
The propaganda will only increase over the next six days. If le Pen seems to have a chance, I would not be surprised to see the appearance of another “crazed, lone gunman” who single-handedly changes the course of the nation. Next weeks election will be a referendum on whether the French believe in an independent France or whether they are more comfortable being lapdogs for American foreign policy. This is a highly unusual choice for any European electorate and the result will be significant for the future of France and the EU.
The “crazed lone gunman” solution seems to have worked in the case of the Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn, when it looked like his movement was going to win the 2002 national election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Pim_Fortuyn
One could very well think that The Powers That Be do indeed play dirty, and play for keeps.
You answered my comment, yet don’t seem to have read it…
Even if Le Pen wins the election (I would give her about a 40% chance), it’s accepted that she would never be able to implement her programme, simply because the other parties will gang up to prevent her having many members of parliament, and then move to block her in every possible way. Le Pen’s attraction is as a battering ram to destroy the system now, and quickly, as opposed to have Macron destroy it slowly. Her policies (like his in many ways) are not really the issue.
The anti-Le Pen hysteria has from the beginning been frustrated by her sex. In today’s France, having women in positions of power is an end in itself (apart, curiously from Le Pen), and the wokistas have by and large simply tried to avoid mentioning her by name at all. The feebly-attended rallies organised last weekend were against the “extreme right.” Everybody knows what that means in practice, but trying to explain why women should always vote for women except in this one particular case would make the wokistas’ brains explode.
That list is a bit of an over-simplification and misrepresents some policies.
– She proposes removing the tax on real estate and replacing it with a tax on financial assets. Also, a 300,000 Euro inheritance exemption for each child. Given house prices, most beneficiaries will be middle class, not “wealthy”. The tax on financial wealth will increase taxes on the wealthy.
– She proposes lifting the restriction on borrowing money at zero interest rates from the central bank, which will greatly help in reducing interest costs on the debt. She has said that the debt should be paid down (perhaps replace bonds held by private holders with those held by the central bank which is owned by the state?). Nowhere is it stated that there will be austerity.
– No taxes for those under 30, free rail travel for those 16-25, lower VAT on energy to 5.5%, all benefit the young who are currently struggling.
– Wants to reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60, while Macron wants to raise it to 65
– Wants Proportional Representation, Referendums on important issues, and a return to fixed non-renewable 7-year Presidential terms: all to improve democracy.
– The “lowering workers rights” seems to be limited to seasonal work.
– Wants to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict
– Her climate change policy of build more reactors and a stop to win and solar investments is definitely questionable.
Macron is a neoliberal shill who has done much to damage worker rights and to undermine democracy. The contest is Macron vs. Le Pen, not some imaginary progressive vs. Le Pen. Le Monde is also fully behind the establishment, so I am not surprised at their obvious slanting of some of the text.
Re: six creepy novels, e.g., ‘Fingersmith’.
Sarah Waters is great! My favorite is ‘Affinity’, a story involving a mid- Victorian young ‘spinster’ who decides to go into a rough womens prison to speak with and befriend some of the inmates. With one of the women she gets more than she planned for.
Yes she is. A great novelist! I treasure her books.
I’ve never read Fingersmith, but the Korean film adaption The Handmaiden is stunning good.
I’m recently converted to Korean films. Handmaiden is indeed fantastic. So is The Wailing.
There are so many good drams and movies on Korean drama streaming sites. The sites are always changing their URL to avoid being served notices from the DRM guys. It’s a cat and mouse game. Many are located in China out of reach from these shysters.
Add Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch to the list of nominees for Lambert’s Sociopath of the Day™ award:
COVID case counts are total nonsense — hospitalizations, deaths are what matter [NY Post Editorial Board]
Whatever that means.
Apparently it means we’re supposed to let the pandemic wreak havoc before we take any action to mitigate its impact.
RE: DDG tweet
The tweet is either b.s. or hugely over-stated.
According to this guy over on medium, Yandex is the best search engine with regards to censorship (and results).
I am giving it a whirl.
My opinions: Brave search is pretty lame. DDG was never great. Bing is probably alright but [family blog] Microsoft. Same attitude towards Google. Qwant is OK.
I am not a heavy user of search engines these days, but I remember when AltaVista was a good search engine. (The internet was much smaller in those days.)
I am curious what heavy users of search engines think of Yandex.
Substack not Medium
I’ve been using Brave for at least a couple of years and I, personally, find it buggy and difficult. To the point that seeing the logo is annoying.
Swiss Cows makes fancy claims and so far, once you get past the ads, does a decent job . They old be selling me out or taking money from the Koch Bros for all I know, though.
I like Yandex but they do nag you to register. I finally decided to register and couldn’t because Yandex wants your phone number (which I still, happily, do not have).
Using Yandex does produce remarkably different — and in my opinion, better — search results…usually. Old Google was the best, but saying that is like trying to remind people that the morbidly obese gun-obsessed neo-Nazi alcoholic down the street used to be a beautiful child.
Now taking search engine recommendations. Anybody got one that doesn’t censor their results?
Further investigation (and comments above) lead me to believe DDG is probably not doing what they are charged with. If I had seen the tweet was from a Blaze TV personality, I would have discounted it more than I did. Still, never a bad idea to have backups ready to go, just in case.
10 U.S. State Parks that are Worth a Visit The Discoverer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There’s some gems in there including my favorite state park, Valley of Fire state park, about an hour from Pavlovegas.
If you find yourself stuck in sin city in the non summer months (do NOT go there in the blazing heat…)
We’ve often taken friends there for their first time after kayaking the Colorado River and you don’t see much in the dark when you arrive, but when they wake up the next morning, its as if they are on Mars, is the typical reaction.
There must be close to a thousand 2,500 year old petroglyphs on the walls, including many bighorn sheep, and if you’re lucky you’ll see a herd of them hanging out below the walls.
One of my favorite panels is on the Mouse’s Tank trail, and it’s hidden away, most people miss it. The panel has what is termed ‘the snake dance’ with 2 human figures & 2 peckmarked fellows with tails & horns. (8th photo down in the link)
https://www.evansoutdooradventures.com/adventure-log-nevadas-valley-of-fire-state-park/
It’s definitely a bit obscure as my visit was purely a matter of serendipity–having seen the sign from the road.
But there are lots of moonscapes out West with the ever varying geology a treat if you’re into that. Tourists jam into the National Parks while getting there can often be just as visually stunning.
Thanks for that link. I am bookmarking it now so I can slowly go through it tomorrow. It looks like a great place to visit.
…and after you’re finished exploring Nevada’s Valley of Fire you can drive north up US Hwy. 93 a few hundred miles (turn east on Hwy 6) and visit the cool subterranian caves at Great Basin NP, Nevada’s only NP. (Nevada is full of surprise and serenity.)
Also a bit out of the way. I believe that one has the record of the country’s least visited National Park (including by me). Also a slight quibble that Death Valley has a toe in Nevada.
I had driven central Nevada basin and range and thought of it as rather stark but a more recent trip in northern Nevada turned out to be quite scenic. However for sheer scenery surely Utah is the champ.
Everything in Nevada is a bit out of the way. That’s why Area 51 is there. And Ely, NV is the most remote city in the continental US. You’ll find it further north up that same US Hwy. 93 where it crosses the Loneliest Road in America. (Heck, even commercial overflights avoid it.)
I have been to Ely, just before driving “the loneliest road in America” across central Nevada to California. Being into elbow room I love driving in the West.
I highly suggest a visit to Goblin Valley in Utah. If you are of the mind, adding psychedelics to your visit is also highly recommended, but not at all needed to feel as if you have landed on an alien world. Spectacular.
One of my favorites too.
Years ago I was impressed by Dead Horse Point State Park in southern Utah.
Valley of Fire is magic. Do not miss. Blazing heat requires max air in the vehicle but people do it.
Camped there as a Boy Scout in the 1960s. Mt. Charleston and VoF must see attractions as much as if not more than the Strip.
The article by the wire:
A pretty typical anti climate change group.
It’s basically true that it’s very difficult to prove that this storm or that hurricane or tornado is caused by CC. So it’s easy to say what the article says and you can’t really be proven wrong.
Or that the IPCC says X. But the IPCC doesn’t write papers or do research, only compile and review the papers it wants to. The IPCC reports have been underestimating CC since the get go, because of USA control, thanks Obama.
Where you live is the weather/climate like it was10, 20,30,40,60 years ago?
Just another climate change isn’t as bad as everyone is making it out to be article that continues to muddy the information and continue to make people skeptical of the actual climate science.
It sure is successful
Ah, so that two to three inch downpour we had last night was not an indication of climate “disruption.” It’s glad to know that ‘our lying eyes’ are misrepresenting to our brains the ‘statistical reality curve’ of local weather.
There is a counter argument of sorts; climate is not weather. Under such a metric, we must wait a century or so to see whether we should change our ways today. Interesting conundrum, no?
We’re supposed to get an angry inch worth of the precious later in the week, which is definitely not the normal for later in April around these parts, but you go with the precip you’ve got-not the precip you want.
And besides, it allows me a fortnight leeway in starting to do the weed whacking-lest you do it too soon after rain-you’ll have to do it again.
And on the other side of the equation, I see it’s a yes on burn piles today according to the county, so i’m fixin’ to have fuego meet it’s match with the apogee of one wheelbarrow worth being 6 to 7 feet before flaming out 10 minutes later.
Where I live no one is talking about this storm or that hurricane…what they are talking about is the cold, the fact that we are still waiting for spring, that there is 2-4″ of snow forecast for later today.
I have lived and gardened in this yard for 44 years and had never seen a spring this bad…..usually by this time I am contemplating where to start putting my veggies in. This year I can’t even get the pea seeds in because of the rain and the sodden ground.
We got the March winds last week after the torrential rain the week before. One of my 15′ cedar trees blew down…pulled right out of the ground.
When I complain about it now I get folk nodding their heads and telling me “it’s climate change”
So that is probably a good thing that folk are more aware now….but not for the planet and the creatures who inhabit it (and I’m not including us humans in that)
marieann
We live on the southwest coast of Canada (Vancouver Island). The owner of a major garden centre nearby estimates that our weather has put the local growing season at least 3 weeks behind normal. While we have not been inundated by rainfall, it has been nearly every day threatening rain. Our backyard garden area, other than the 30 inch high raised beds I’ve built over the last several years, is soaking wet with water on the surface ( clay soil). There has not been more than two days in the past month when the daytime temperature has risen to “normal”, and many nights have been frosty, even though cloudy. The long range forecast indicates it will be like this until the end of May.
Rescued lions on ‘love drug’ transform from unhappy cats into friendly kitties Daily Maverick (furzy)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the midst of the sexual revolution in the 70’s, along comes the coolest cat of all, Frasier: the Sensuous Lion, and Barry White music shows up about the same time, coincidence? I think not.
https://www.avclub.com/this-lion-fucks-1844904182
Wuk
From the article:
Lions were chosen for the experiment because of their sociability. It still proved tricky at times as the hormone had to be administered as a nasal spray, which meant getting up close. Burkhart eventually got a system going that required some deft moves – as well as a little deception.
“We tried all types of things – plastic tongs, metal tongs, whatever – but my sure method is to take a long stick and put a chunk of meat on the end of it. I then stick it against the fence, using my foot to hold it.
“The lion will come and pull on the meat and, while they are doing that, I quickly squirt the oxytocin up their nose.”
===============================================
Putting a piece of meat on a stick – I never would have thought of that…
Looks like the Oxy (mentioned in the story) owners just aren’t going away. Get those Big Pharma Reps with their laptops loaded with info on all the Vets and Zoos and turn ’em loose. Kachingaling!
There is an excellent book on Big Pharma Sales Rep Perps and the “techniques” (fraud) they use. It is about a fentanly sublingual product and the gaming of the rules to jack the profits. The perps even bring in a Stripper to be a sales manager! Enticing! Great listen. Got it at my local Government library and am wondering how it ever slipped through the censorship system.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605001/the-hard-sell-by-evan-hughes/
The list of state parks trends mountainous. There are also some nice coastal state parks. It is not as easy to get the grand majestic photo, but they can be pretty awsome.
https://www.ncdcr.gov/experiences/state-parks/coast-region-state-parks
That is a good listing of coastal NC parks. I spent a lot of school field trips visiting the state park at Creswell, and also in Morehead City to visit Fort Macon. On the west side of the state, Gorges in Sapphire is worth visiting.
And in Georgia, the Tallullah Gorge park is a can’t miss visit. Not so much the hiking distances but you will take a lot of stairs, downward and upward.
NASA rolling Artemis back to VAB
https://www.space.com/nasa-artemis-1-moon-rocket-rolling-off-launch-pad
Interesting times, comparing the development methodologies of NASA and SpaceX, the Waterfall model vs Spiral/Rapid Prototyping/Agile model(s). It appears that Musk’s building rockets the same way that San Josie startups build software may actually be a better way if you can afford it. Being afraid to fail continues to be a problem for government-funded researchers.
Looks like third time was not the charm.
Maybe NASA should investigate what a Russian official suggested after the sanctions boom was lowered on his country: since Americans want to cancel Russia and don’t want to cooperate in space any longer, perhaps the Americans can get to space on their brooms. I wonder if they had Victoria Nuland in mind when they said that.
One could argue that SpaceX is doing it the way the original space program (Mercury/Gemini/Apollo) did it – they would iteratively set bigger and bigger goals, refining their work along the way. If you look at the way it was done, each launch had a somewhat bigger goal; for example, Shepard did a simple up & down to test the heat shield, 2 flights later Glenn did a full orbit, etc. In between, Grissom’s flight had a failed recovery of the capsule, which eventually led to discontinuing the explosive hatch system.
In some ways, you can’t engineer that stuff without risking failure, the point of Agile (well, before it got corrupted by management consultants) is that you can design your project to incrementally prove your approach before risking it all on one big shot. You could also compare the Wright Brothers approach vs. what Samuel Langley’s approach to powered flight, where the Wrights did many experiments over many years, starting with a glider, then adding an engine. Langley spent years working on a design without ever trying to prove it and when he finally attempted a powered flight, it failed miserably. The Wrights found a design that would fly, then tried to design a way to control it in the air, and then tried to add an engine to it. Langley essentially figured that anything would fly with a big enough engine.
There’s sense in this BUT… incrementalism was at one time favoured by NASA and only the appointment of George Mueller got the Apollo programme back on track by insisting in “all up” testing, j.e. testing the whole rocket, not individual stages and systems.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mueller_(NASA)
On that topic, a question to the NC brains trust: does anyone know the origin of the claim that a good startup is a cult like the “Apollo Mission”? Because the descriptions of Apollo seem less like a cult than anything I can imagine!
From the “old” NASA Mission control: 100 rules for NASA project management
The “new” NASA has been squeezed between the politics of too-high goals and too-low funding (and time allowed). So any failure in performance or schedule finds NASA leadership testifying to multiple Congressional committees. And thus failure avoidance spreads downwards to the engineer level with blame outsourced to industry. To which industry responds telling Congress we can do it better without NASA interference. Replacing the partnership of the “old” NASA with competition if not antagonism.
I imagine when Musk launched his Tesla into orbit about 20% of NASA’s young engineers submitted their resumes to SpaceX saying I want a job with you — any job — please.
Much the same has occurred in DoD. Whatever you think of NASA’s 100 Rules I doubt 1% of government engineers and managers are aware of them. The skill and time demands are above government salaries and crushing bureaucracy so those having them go elsewhere.
And here we are…
> I imagine when Musk launched his Tesla into orbit about 20% of NASA’s young
> engineers submitted their resumes to SpaceX
I think you’ve identified the reason why SpaceX and Blue Origin have opened facilities here in the Huntsville area. However, “old” NASA’s List of 100 Rules doesn’t really have much meaning in a world where the contractors call the shots.
There is a reason SLS (Artemis) is called the Senate Launch System [snark: Mike Griffin Launch System didn’t really roll off the tongue]. Just hope they get to launch before Sen. Shelby retires in January.
“Ukraine war: Will the wheat crisis bring more food independence?”
Seriously doubt it, especially with climate change wrecking havoc across so many regions. Places like Syria are already getting hammered with a drought and water shortages so how are all these places suppose to grow wheat if the water is not there? The CSIRO here in Oz estimates that it takes over a 1,000 kg of water just to grow 1 kg of wheat. And you can’t assume water no matter how much you try.
Some hope for Lira though it is by way of mouth and not actual proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAPc3emHUGU
Thanks so much for the reassuring link. Comments in the above links noted that the internet was working fine for others in the area, but maybe forgot that some internet connections require electrical power, and power outages can be very localized.
Opposing narrative: this Democrat bench-warmer in Nevada has decided to hunt journalists for the glory of her party, and Lira was one of them. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that a Democrat identity hack took credit for something that didn’t really happen and which they had no actual hand in, but.
Not the focus of the Guardian story, but look at 1961 calorie sources! Sugar is second only to Wheat as a calorie source in the US!
https://www.theguardian.com/food/ng-interactive/2022/apr/14/climate-crisis-food-systems-not-ready-biodiversity
Quick observation that Orthodox Easter is April 24th, and presumably the pope knows that.
Some call for peace.
“Japan Asserts Main Goal Of G20 Meeting Is To Push Reluctant Countries To Sanction Moscow”
Not every day that you see an entire country’s foreign policy commit Seppuku.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I often hike with an French ex-pat couple who’ve been livin’ la vida CVBB for about a dozen years now, and he’s a software engineer for a French firm who have their fingers in four and twenty fruit pies all over the world, as the leader in automated fruit sorting, and as a result he gets to go to all of the orchards in North & South America that they have operations nearby.
He told me what a disaster the Washington state apple & cherry season will be this year, as too much snow came precisely at the worst time last week.
Notice the trend in crops being wiped out all over the world?
Subtitled interview with Zelensky’s military adviser, Alexey Arestovich from 2019
Predicted Russian – Ukrainian war. Encouraged, because the destruction of Ukraine is inevitable in order to join NATO. Gives an accurate description of phase 1of Russia’s invasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=1xNHmHpERH8
Yeah, that guy was linked to here at least once before, and I believe also in Catherine Johnstone’s commentsection.
How anyone in Ukraine can see this psychopath and anyone associated with him as anything but a criminal traitor to his own people to be hanged from the highest pole immediately, utterly baffles me.
It’s not new, but arguably this guy should beat all rivals for sociopath of the day (decade?) nonetheless.
It is always worth remembering that ultranationalists mean things that remotely sane and humane people wouldn’t recognize when they talk about patriotism.
They certainly never give the tiniest familyblog about the lifes of “their” people.
“With a 99.9% chance our price for joining NATO is a full-scale war with Russia”, he says. And he’s all for that because he’s absolutely certain Ukraine will win. Hard to argue that the Ukrainian leadership didn’t walk into this with their eyes wide open. According to the swivel-eyed loons advising Zelensky, everything is probably still going according to plan. Once they’ve proved their ability to fight off the Russians, NATO will be gagging to offer them membership.
If this guy is indicative of the leadership of Ukraine, they didn’t just walk in with their eyes open, they actively sought this path. The idea of neutrality was completely anathema because to paraphrase him, it would involve sliding in one direction or another, and god forbid that it be towards Russia, because as he says, Russia’s trying to recreate the Soviet Union. The problem he has is that half the country is ok with that. And he’s not willing to make an accommodation with that half, nor give peace a chance. The other problem he has is that he thinks that after Ukraine has been destroyed, it will ultimately win, because, touchingly, his faith in the power and strength of the west, and well, because… reasons. Then there’ll be a clash in the Russian elites. Putin will be deposed. Good Russia, liberal Russia, will return and Ukraine will be anointed. As I said, if this guy is who he’s claimed to be, well, my god, Ukraine, I feel sorry for you but … well, I’m truly speechless.
Yep, I posted a link here to this video very early on in the war. I think it is a very important video. He is a very senior advisor and was the Ukrainian man in charge of Donbass negotiations when he was appointed – which explains why the Minsk agreement was never implemented.
It’s an important video because it shows that the Ukrainian leadership wanted this war, they knew exactly what level of destruction would occur and they thought, to quote another sociopath, “that the price was worth it”. I said at the time it is the concept of razing the village to save it, except that it is your own village. Who does that?!
Also in many videos Zelensky’s behaviour is very odd and would seem to show, like many say, that he is on some sort of drug, cocaine etc. Put these two men together and we can’t surprised with what has happened. And easy for the US to get them to fight to the last Ukrainian. It’s actually what the Ukrainian leadership wanted.
It really is quite incredible that they were willing and knew that their country would be destroyed.
Incredible. So, the EU is being played by BOTH the US and the Ukrainians?
I guess that in a country that sits right between two power blocs and has been the playball of foreign powers on both sides, and with the added complication of different ethnic groups/regions being played out against one another, and added its complicated political history, it would be extremely suprising if the desire to establish an independent and powerful nation, with nationalist, cultural and historic unified identity (and “gleichschaltung”) would NOT propogate. Nor the discussion on how to achieve this. No doubt that this war will help that along.
The real question is how this person ended up being a senior advisor to a supposed “peacenik” president and how this is never seriously exposed by western observers. I have no doubt that in Russia they have been fully aware of the trap set to them, and decided to take the bait nevertheless.
Of course, even if such a monstrous plan were to work, and the maniacs in charge to get away with deliberately arranging for their own people to be slaughtered (and admittedly, if the rest of the plan worked out, they would of course at least get away with that), they’d never have any chance of being a truly souvereign nation or a serious power in their own right.
They’d always stay a poor, corrupt, exploited banana republic without bananas.
It’s one thing to run for election on a hard-line platform of confrontation with Russia in pursuit of an independent national identity. I don’t think that’s a wise line to take but I could respect it if it’s put to the people and wins a majority. It’s an entirely different matter to hire an actor to run on a platform of reconciliation with the Donbass while secretly planning to provoke an all-out war. I have nothing but sympathy for the majority of people in Ukraine but their leadership is scum. This from someone who, a couple of days into the war, praised Zelensky on this forum for being brave enough to stay in Kiev and rally his country. Now that I’ve seen more of him and his coterie, I’m embarrassed being taken in by his act.
It happens to all of us. Most important thing is to view the mistake as a learning opportunity, rather something to beat ourselves over the head with, IMHO.
Say what you will about Paper Mills in Wisconsin. They did employ local people.
Now one of those shuttered mills is being repurposed for crytocurrency by a Chinese company.
Before the mill closed for the last time (April 2021) it was owned, or partially owned, by a group of investors in China. Rumor had it that the mill was making money but it wasn’t going back to the mill.
There were a group of local investors / workers who had asked the state for a loan guarantee. About $15 million. The governor vetoed the monies (for the small Park Falls and large Wisconsin mills) because they used federal Covid relief funds to provide the guarantees rather than state money in July. Then the legislature fumbles the ball.
However, last month the local hospital system received about a $20 million grant to upgrade the facility and a YMCA headquartered about 75 miles away is receiving a $5.6 million dollar grant to build a YMCA.
https://www.wjfw.com/news/local/park-falls-community-receives-two-grants-worth-more-than-25-million/article_c6a95fca-a004-11ec-9b68-3755b1cc5a89.html
This was a small mill. The mill in Wisconsin Rapids is / was much larger. I’m left wondering whether more of these paper mills sites or other industrial sites will also be converted since many of them have access to water and power.
Anyway, the Chinese company founded in the US in April 2021, according to their about page, has blockchain plans for Wisconsin and Texas. So perhaps someone from Texas has information on them. about page.
No offense to crypto fans but what a complete waste of resources to dedicate to an entirely fictional product. The facility will most likely employee only a few locally based employees. Most of those from China at a guess.
https://www.wipaper.org/paper-news/2022/3/5/former-park-falls-paper-mill-may-become-a-mine
Here’s a basic timeline story.
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/11/30/struggling-to-save-the-park-falls-paper-mill/
The new YMCA to be built with the $5.6 million grant will be located in Park Falls.
Interesting piece about the expensive “Pappy” bourbon. I have tried the regular Buffalo Trace bourbon, my sis-in-law is a fan of good whiskey. Although it was the least expensive in the Buffalo Trace lineup, it was still very very good.
Interestingly, his last sentence is “we cannot lose” because of US/NATO military support. So far, it seems to me that this military support is forcing a change towards more destructive Russian tactics in phase II, making it more likely that the war will be more destructive for Ukraine and Ukrainians. That’s a high price to pay for “not losing”, if indeed that will be the outcome (also bearing in mind the excellent links to non-MSM views here on NC).
Sorry, this was meant as reply to bwilli123 above.
Why Kamala Harris is going to remote places…….why?
Remote places with high levels of less educated poor blacks, who probably don’t know Harris is at best, 1/6 black, comes from a slave owning family in Jamaica and is married to a corporate billionaire who helped impoverish them?
Shush you! Kamala has giggles to spare.
From Bart the grammar cop, a line item in my county’s upcoming board meeting:
“Public Hearing to Consider the Adoption of an Ordinance to Exempt Real Property Owned by Surviving Spouses of Certain Persons Killed in the Line of Duty from Taxation”
And this is from a Dem leaning Board.
“Killed…from taxation.” Yup!
I heard ambuchaser extraordinaire David Boies has submitted a 300 page brief on that line item.
India
This cancellation is typical To boost Make in India, IAF cancels plans to buy 48 Mi-17 choppers from Russia The Indian Air Force has decided to cancel plans to buy Mi-17 V5 helicopters from Russia in order to boost the government’s Make in India initiative, said sources.
India’s weapons procurement is rife with these stories which is why China is leading with Better-Faster-Cheaper. An example is A Tale of 2 Navies: Reviewing India and China’s Aircraft Carrier Procurement The 21st century carrier programs in India and China are fascinating for their similarities – and for their differences.
Looks like someone didn’t pay the right bribe.
https://twitter.com/CDCDirector/status/1515079718550360066?cxt=HHwWhMC-6cG-0oYqAAAA
If you can stomach the video, you will not see any masks.
So, Rochelle, how’s the ventilation in the CDC offices?
antidic
Oh, she has her fans.
Ajvar!
I have been looking for a nice brand for 20 years now – I am partial with the recipe that includes aubergines (egg plants), but I couldn’t find anything that would come even close to what my mom would make. In Romania would call something like that zacusca, which is from Slavic/Russian and means aperitif.
And my wife, who’s really into cooking as a science agrees.
I remember the contest like efforts in the fall of women in the old country to make all sorts of preserves: jams, serbets, pickled everything (from baby cornichons to green walnuts and very small watermellons), and zacusca, which could be with egg plants, or mushrooms, or beans. Ooh, the life!
And my plan B is to start such a business to make a living, if everything else falls to the side.
Look for Bulgarian lutenitza – it is made with eggplant (base of ground roasted big sweet red peppers + tomatoes), Trader Joes used to carry it, maybe still does. Not spicy like ajvar and is supposed to be made without the pepper skins unlike ajvar, the skin bits can be unpleasant if too prominent.
Never seen that one in my part of North America. Thanks!
China?
China says the international order is US and China joint responsibility.
Qin Gang, Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to the United States Chinese Ambassador: The Ukraine Crisis and Its Aftermath China supports all efforts that can deliver a ceasefire and relieve the humanitarian crisis on the ground, and will continue to play a constructive role toward this end.
Beginning with Obama and Xi meeting in Hawaii, China has told the US it’s just the two of us at the top so let’s get the job done before rapid climate change does it for us.
The US ain’t into joint.
New Not-So-Cold War
Another review of Nicholas Mulder’s The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War In War, the Economic Weapon Is No Silver Bullet Nicholas Mulder has detailed the history of a sanctions tool that many governments often take for granted.
Here’s the review that led me to buy Mulder’s book RobertC March 16, 2022 at 10:58 pm but dang my reading backlog hasn’t allowed me to crack open the cover. I’m thinking Daleep Singh and Daniel Fried haven’t either.
Chinese are not blocked on engines for their submarines. The Germans have been blocking the Thai sub deal for a while it is not new news. It is just an excuse to either save money or please the Americans. The Chinese have replica engines that are just as good. They pass all tests in the lab, just doesn’t have real world operational track record yet. The chinese have some of the newest designs for diesel electric subs in the world given they operate the largest fleet of these in the world for quite some time now. They have the best stirling engines by quite a distance. They are one of the few countries with their own AIP submarine power systems. Their diesel engines are not far behind and only lack slightly because they haven’t had them for a long enough time to build their track record yet. These engines are not as difficult or as secrete as other engines so they have been a lower priority. Contrary to what the article claims. Chinese aircraft engine have a larger development time gap to their western counterparts than diesel sub engines. China is likely 5-10 yrs behind still on turbofan engines but only 2-5 yrs behind on diesel engines. So the jet engines are still a significant issue but the submarine engines are not.