Recent Items

Links 6/11/2023

Posted on by

Louisiana man jumps into Busch Gardens alligator pit in mindless bid for social media clout, gets busted by cops New York Post

Octopuses tweak the RNA in their brains to adjust to warmer and cooler waters NPR

Mass 19th century ‘vampire grave’ found during roadworks The First News

Insomnia Symptoms Tied to Stroke a Decade Later MedPage Today

For Some, Sex Is Better Sleep Aid Than Pill, Small Survey Finds MedPage Today

How to Be a Good Citizen During a Housing Crisis How Things Work

Climate/Environment

EPA sued over pesticide-coated seeds’ ‘devastating impacts’ on US wildlife Guardian

Flash droughts are becoming a bigger threat to crops, water supply, shipping, research says Harvest Public Media

Oil Lobby Pushed Pollution Loophole for Wildfire Smoke The Lever

Canadian Wildfires Trigger Unprecedented Solar Energy Decline OilPrice

Wildfire smoke, COVID-19, and striking comparisons Your Local Epidemiologist

 

#COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2 reinfection: Adding insult to dysfunctional endothelium in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease ScienceDirect

 

New York Needs To Find Out Why Its Drivers Keep Hitting Low Bridges Jalopnik

Old Blighty

The end of Boris? Matt Goodwin’s Substack

India

Intergenerational Labour and Just Transition in Coalfields The India Forum

Apple’s biggest gamble isn’t the Vision Pro — it’s India Rest of World

China?

Palestine is ripe for Chinese mediation Indian Punchline

China builds Central Asia infrastructure dominance with new rail plan The Loadstar

***

What if China declared a protectionist trade war on the US and the West? South China Morning Post

India, China have expelled nearly all of each other’s journalists amid fraying ties Straits Times

Canadian official investigating Chinese election interference resigns The Hindustan Times

China warns Europe against official ties with Taiwan ahead of minister’s visit Reuters

Poll: Most Europeans support neutrality in US-China conflict Responsible Statecraft

New Not-So-Cold War

“Let’s Try This Again!” Moon of Alabama

Four more Ukrainian Leopard 2 tanks destroyed – Moscow RT

Rheinmetall CEO tells of German equipment’s performance in Ukraine Ukrinform “Ukrainians’ reviews of German weapons are very positive.”

***

“Ukraine’s phantom Nazis.” Patrick Lawrence, The Scrum

Canada’s Trudeau visits war-time Kyiv, announces military aid Reuters

Peace is not ‘no war’ and derisking has risks: Josep Borrell Straits Times

***

The war in Ukraine and the fight over raw materials WSWS

Sons and daughters of Russia’s ‘White Emigration’ are coming back into the fold Gilbert Doctorow

Top 100 foreign companies still working in Russia see profits soar by half in 2022 to $13bn Intellinews

European Natural Gas Demand Drops As Top Economies Slow OilPrice

Nord Stream saboteurs may have used Poland as base of operations, WSJ reports Politico EU

CIA informed Belgium about Ukraine’s role in Nord Stream sabotage – media RT

Will Moscow join the WHO’s digital “health certificate” system? Edward Slavsquat

Syraqistan

US and Iran held ‘proximity’ nuclear talks in Oman: Report The Cradle

Iran claims back $2.7bln previously frozen by Iraq under US sanctions Al Mayadeen

Israeli leaks seen as trying to derail U.S. effort to avoid Iran nuclear escalation Diplomatic, by Laura Rozen

Spook Country

Paranoid Posting The Baffler

Billionaire Biden Donor Bankrolled 2020 Election Social Media Censorship Effort Lee Fang

Biden Administration

Joe Biden allegedly paid $5M by Burisma executive as part of a bribery scheme, according to FBI document Fox News

The US is building factories at a wildly fast rate Insider

2024

Second Trump indictment trips up 2024 GOP rivals Washington Examiner

Trump

Trump lawyer slams ‘two tier system of justice’ that’s seen former president hit by historic federal indictment over classified documents, with feds yet to charge Hunter Biden with any crime Daily Mail.

 

Realignment and Legitimacy

‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary.’ Politico

Democrats en déshabillé

The Democrats’ long wander into the weeds Art Cullen’s Notebook

The Supremes

Here’s a rough estimate of how many people recent SCOTUS rulings might kill Ars Technica

Woke Watch

Why we should abolish ‘Corporate Pride’ once and for all Canadian Dimension

Healthcare

Amid Congressional PBM scrutiny, CVS/Aetna CFO assures investors of continued profits, even at expense of employers and taxpayers HEALTH CARE un-covered

Why don’t millionaires fund medical students? Becker’s Hospital Review

Capitalists hate capitalism Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic

Police State Watch

NO ONE BELIEVES IN COP CITY. SO WHY DID ATLANTA’S CITY COUNCIL FUND IT? The Intercept 

Gunz

U.S. Gun Violence in 2021: An Accounting of a Public Health Crisis John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.  One death every 11 minutes.

 

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

U.S. continues to take DNA samples from asylum seekers at the border Kansas Reflector

AI

How AI is intensifying Israel’s bombardments of Gaza +972 Magazine

***

Supply Chain

Chemotherapy shortages push cancer centers toward crisis The Hill

 

Our Famously Free Press

The D-Notice: Very British State Censorship Kit Klarenberg, Kit’s Newsletter

Class Warfare

$5.2 billion in cargo stuck off West Coast ports in truck and container bottleneck CNBC

As slowdowns continue on West Coast docks, Chamber of Commerce calls on Biden to force through tentative agreement WSWS.

Jobs at stake as California port terminal upgrades to green technology Reuters

Despite DeSantis’ Anti-Union Law, Florida’s Teachers’ Union Gains 5,000 Members Payday Report

One Metro worker revived 21 riders overdosing on opioids. He’s not alone Los Angeles Times

Michigan bills would give farmers ‘right to repair’ tractors, equipment Bridge Michigan

Sports Desk

The Saudi-PGA Tour Golf Deal Isn’t Going to Happen BIG by Matt Stoller

Antidote du jour (via):

 

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Subscribe to Post Comments
174 comments

    1. griffen

      Quite a few replies are priceless. Especially ones about Epstein. These individuals are just the worst of the worse lot; can we find a Titanic to set sail again, and place them on it. Might need two of them ships for all the lousy, blood sucker politicians.

    2. Benny Profane

      Selling hats and t shirts. Good god. With the insider info they have, they could be approaching a billion in net worth. I want to believe that’s not real.

      1. semper loquitur

        I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but something tells me it doesn’t matter to Hillary if it’s off-loading surplus schwag on suckers or bombing Libya for cool points with the Pentagon as long as she is “winning”…

      4. tegnost

        Sometimes I wonder…
        Why would any blue check bring up hills emails, the ones where she and her lawyer “erased”, with a cloth apparently,incriminating evidence with the fbi blessing in a week when another pubic figure is getting the example treatment. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt…I’ve asked a number of ex military or gov employees what would happen if they did something like that and it was always an unequivocal “I’d be in jail.”

        1. Dr. John Carpenter

          This is my issue with the whole thing. Frankly, they all do it. It’s the hypocrisy that irks me (and I know, I KNOW, I should know better than to care.) The implication that “her emails” weren’t a different flavor at the same ice cream shop and the lack of self-awareness involved with that, it just makes me see red.
          Standard disclaimer: I’m not a fan of Trump. The fact that they all do it disgusts me and I’d like to see all of them swinging from gallows poles or getting a drastic weight reduction from the neck up.

          1. Dr. John Carpenter

            I should add that I think Hills genuinely believes she did nothing wrong and that what Trump is accused of doing is wrong. As has been noted time and time again, Trump is offensive to these people for aesthetic reasons, not reasons of substance. It doesn’t make her tweet any less infuriating. It’s probably more so because I know, in her head, what she did was justified and righteous and what he did was boorish and tacky (and illegal).

            1. chris

              I think the Clinton’s own positions on this have evolved since it happened. They might have kind of acted like it was something they needed to defend once upon a time. Once they discovered it was all part of Blue Anon virtue signaling, and that mentioning it would give a call and respond type response from the true faithful, they lost all sense of shame. If the public and MSDNC had the desire to see that it was her SERVER more than the emails, and the obviously political cover up of the investigation, along with the patently absurd claims about the emails, then maybe they’d have the self awareness to hide. But because The Best Candidate Ever(tm) had that election stolen from her by filthy poor white people who were duped by Putin trolls the entire episode has become one more opportunity to milk money from the masses. They are exactly like Trump! They’re just the kind of crass political celebrities that the PMC can openly say they admire.

        2. John Wright

          One can still fault HRC for “erasing” the emails WITHOUT saving a low cost backup on a spare hard drive.

          That someone who was “a lawyer on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon in 1974” would have decided what emails should be erased should have an obvious parallel to allowing Nixon “clean up his tapes” before turning them over.

          Saving a backup before the erasing process, handing the backup to an :”above reproach” individual or organization would have allowed HRC to later prove that there was nothing there in the deleted emails, if questions later arose about the “wiping” process.

          Her handling of the process could lead many people to believe she thought it was far worse for the emails to be completely exposed and the “erasing” was a worthwhile political risk.

          1. ChrisPacific

            I thought it was parody for a moment. Yes, Trump is just as much of a hypocrite as she is. She really thinks that’s something to broadcast?

          2. The Rev Kev

            Because of the lack of security on that server, you could always ask the Chinese for a backup copy, or the Russians, or the Israelis, or the British, or just ask the NSA for their own.

            1. rowlf

              During the 2016 campaign Donald Trump, the cad and a bounder, did ask Russia for a copy of the files to be provided.

      5. Screwball

        This was brought up among some PMC friends as someone claimed it was tacky. One person spoke up right away – no, that is a good thing, the money helps fund planned parenthood and also goes to help other democrats get elected, blah, blah, blah.

        Apparently he thinks Hillary is as clean a fresh snow.

        Yes, we have some that really are that stupid.

    7. Katniss Everdeen

      I hope the Trump campaign puts a generous dollar amount on this tweet and reports it as the campaign “contribution” that it most certainly is.

      Wouldn’t want him to get “impeached,” again, for campaign finance “violations” once he gets re-elected in 2024.

      george stephanopolous and company are verklempt this morning by their very own poll that shows Trump becoming MORE popular since this “indictment.”

  2. griffen

    Darwin award candidacy. Man jumps into alligator pit at Busch Gardens, pretends he is the now-deceased Steve Irwin. Crikey, the cops are coming after me.

    Try it again I’m begging you. You taste like chicken as well!

    1. The Rev Kev

      Maybe they should take him back to that zoo to help feed the alligators at feeding time and let him do it by hand to see how fast they can move. Let him see what he missed out on. But tell him to wear dark brown trousers first.

  3. digi_owl

    Looks like an incomplete tag above the Greenwald tweet, and a extra copy of the WSWS url regarding west coast docks bottleneck.

  4. OnceWere

    Peace is not ‘no war’ and derisking has risks: Josep Borrell Straits Times

    Josep Borrell must be congratulated for his plusgood grasp of the principles of Newspeak. Peace is not “no war” rather it’s the continued pursuit of Russian defeat by means of war. Bb hopes that all the readers of this blog can emulate so goodwise the example of Mr Borrell and that all will accept the doubleplusgood bellyfeel of Mr Borrell’s goodthink.

  5. The Rev Kev

    “For Some, Sex Is Better Sleep Aid Than Pill, Small Survey Finds”

    I’m just going to assume that a large majority of people who found so were men. But when you look into the numbers, it was only a survey of 53 people which is useless research-wise. You would need a survey of tens of thousands of people at a minimum to get some sort of solid results. I wonder if they would be looking for volunteers?

    1. ambrit

      Sorry, but ‘volunteers’ generally have some sort of bias. That would seriously screw with the results.
      Now, a proper “double blind study” on this subject would be if both ‘participants’ wore paper bags over their heads. (But then the increased carbon dioxide concentration in the ‘participant’s’ ambient atmosphere would have to be factored in. De tails, de tails. Science(TM) can be hard.)

      1. ChrisPacific

        That would be removing the visual stimulus, which might be an important factor in the result.

        Perhaps the study assistants could wear paper bags, and the test subjects could go without? As for any potential breathing difficulties among the assistants, you could supply them with an oxygen mask, or just use undergraduates.

      2. The Infamous Oregon Lawhobbit

        “…seriously screw with the results?”

        I see what you did there….

  6. Henry Moon Pie

    Deneen and the postliberals–

    Even through the sneering and finger-wagging tone of the article’s author, I felt as if I’d been missing out on something and intend to read Why Liberalism Failed. Could anything be clearer at this point than that the old Enlightenment, liberal, Freedom!!! worldview is corrosive to families, communities, even whole societies? Drawn to its Randian extreme, many are completely incapable of moving beyond “Me!” to “Us.” My right to flash my expensive caps trumps your right to virus-free air!

    I want to see why Deneen thinks it’s necessary to head back to the past when it comes to sexual mores. You can revive communitarianism without going pre-Stonewall. Otherwise, it’s good to see the rejection of the idiotic “climate change is a hoax” garbage that infests the Right, but the origins of that thinking, beyond the millions spent by the Kochs and others to foster it, are made clearer by Deneen’s full unmasking of liberalism.

    We see that liberals are incapable of dealing with the problems we’re facing because they have no concept of concerted action beyond “nudging” “consumers” around in the omnipotent Market. I’m about ready to ally with Deneen in ending the dominance of a worldview that is the source of so many of our problems.

    1. Aurelien

      Deneen’s book is actually very good, because his argument is less against the principles of Liberalism than the results. He argues (as I’ve argued in a slightly different fashion) that Liberalism has failed because it has succeeded, and its success has demonstrated that a Liberal society is a contradiction in terms. All Liberalism can produce is a group of alienated individuals sharing the same geographical and temporal space, but incapable by definition of being a society. Those who wished for Liberalism should have thought of the consequences if they got it.

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        I will check that out, Aurelian. Covid has really proven this to me. And then you throw in how many mini-Covids there always are from railroad safety to food safety to drug safety, etc.

        We badly misunderstand evolution. Perhaps it was when it appeared, but it was quickly amended by the bourgeois class to “survival of the fittest,” an endless cosmic competition. It’s better understood as selected for ability to fit into an ecosystem. Everybody belongs. Everybody’s needed. You might be a bobcat’s breakfast. but you had a place in the universe.

        We’re learning if you can’t fit in, you risk bringing down yourselves and the whole ecosystem.

        1. Lee

          “Everybody belongs. Everybody’s needed. You might be a bobcat’s breakfast. but you had a place in the universe.”

          Reminds me of Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B.

        2. Mildred Montana

          >”…it [evolution] was quickly amended by the bourgeois class to “survival of the fittest…”

          In other words, to “social Darwinism”. Of which there is no such thing.

          Evolution, properly defined, is an accidental random process played out over many millions of years. It is blind, it doesn’t pick winners and losers, it cannot be manipulated, it only changes the conditions of the environment and then lets the chips fall where they may.

          Evolution has no end goal. It has no preferred survivors. It just happens—over geological time-frames. It cannot be socially engineered in the span of a century or two.

          So those who invoke the phrases “survival of the fittest” and “Darwinism” in a social context use them only because they suit their short-term world-views and purposes. While they depend on the rest of us to see this as a justification for their actions.

          But in so doing, they betray their ignorance—or deliberate misunderstanding—of the principles of evolution.

          1. Daniil Adamov

            “The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest – weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. ‘Fitness,’ then, is only another name for ‘survival.’ Darwinism: That survivors survive.”

            I am pretty sure Charles Fort was thinking more of those Darwinists than Darwin when he wrote that.

          2. Polar Socialist

            Evolution is not random. It may appear as random, but as a process of selection (or surviving long enough to produce progeny), chance and necessity actually set rather strict boundary conditions for the “next step”.

            Other than that, I agree.

            1. Will

              I understood MM to mean that changes in environmental conditions are random not the process of adaptation to those conditions. But perhaps that is incorrect also?

          3. Kouros

            Evolution doesn’t change the environment. Environment, as it was and is on Earth was always in a certain state of flux, given Earth is still a very dynamic planet.

            Evolution pertains to life in its multifaceted manifestations, and the mechanisms Life has come up to “survive” and thrive in a chaotic universe. That is the end goal of Evolution: once kicking, fight against entropy…

            One should read “Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions Of Evolution” by Nick Lane

      2. Ignacio

        As for your simple explanation the success of Liberalism conducts us, necessarily, to some kind of anarchic state if I understand it correctly or something like the mirror image of anarchy?

        Would it be neo-liberalism an attempt to introduce some kind of universal ruling to avoid the mess?

        As you can see I am not versed on political niceties.

        1. Aurelien

          I don’t know about an anarchic state, because there are too many disagreements over what anarchy even means, and for some it’s positive and others not. I think we can say that Liberalism produces a state in which all bonds other than purely economic and contractual ones are dissolved, and thus, apart from economic relationships regulated by law, there are no understandings, agreements, cooperation or collective endeavours at all, only competition to extract the maximum autonomy and financial benefit from society irrespective of the effect on others. In fact, Liberals from Locke onwards have realised that such a society could be very dangerous for property-owners (since there are no obvious incentives for people to obey the law in such a society) so they have always been in favour of strictly enforced laws to protect property, as well as strict enforcement of contract law, which is the only type of personal commitment to others that Liberalism recognises. I do think that, as more and more of the state itself is destroyed, we are actually approaching something like this state of universal alienation.

          For a Liberal state to work, of course, the Market has to be perfect, and laws have to be passed (eg to forbid trades unions) to avoid economic actors making it function imperfectly. Worth also mentioning perhaps the so-called Ordo-Liberals, associated with the German Christian Democrats, who believed that the Market wasn’t automatically perfect, and needed a hand from the state to create the right legal environment and to do things that promote competition.

          2. albrt

            I am a disillusioned lawyer. I don’t think either the market or the law has to be perfect, it just has to be better than obvious alternatives.

            The United States is currently failing that test. Europe probably is as well.

            Historically, the obvious alternative in a corrupt and degraded society is strong man rule. That is where we are – picking a strong man. Russia did a lot better with Putin than we are likely to do in the US.

          3. Ignacio

            Yep I used “anarchic” almost certainly incorrectly, I was meaning chaotic. A chaos within those rules and contracts. No specific direction.

    2. hemeantwell

      The core of his argument against the corrosive effects of the market has been around for quite a long time on both the left and right. If he’s willing to back unions, then I imagine he’s going to have to opt for a form of corporatism in which accumulation pressures tussle with wages and worker protections, a tussle that usually doesn’t go well for workers. But I’ll limit the pooh pooh and pick up an idea from an article by Matt Kellar and Fred Block that recently appeared in Catalyst. In arguing with Dylan Riley and Michael Brenner over the nature of the “political capitalism” that’s developing, they see increasing state intervention as offering opportunities to demand democratic guidance. This is also not new — e.g. it was something in the air back in the US up until the Reuther days in the UAW and has been on the social democratic agenda for a long time. In a way we’re looking a Hayekian nightmare, a renationalization of economic strategy that can revive the democratic politics he sought to snuff with the supranational, bureaucratic-legal model of the EU.

    3. No one

      And I always thought it was the self-styled conservatives who were the exemplars of traditional liberalism to the extent that under Reagan (not to mention all of his successors) the goal of (formerly democratic) government was the abolition of all constraints on economic plunder. It seems hard to believe that the beneficiaries of Reaganism, knaves and fools to a one, would abandon a system that gives them such wealth and power, even as their properties burn up or flood in the global climate change they induced. For all his spouting about economic values, Deneen’s support for authoritarian family mores is a tell. “Make America (or Hungary) Great Again” is shown to be the reigning political philosophy among the DC blob no matter how they try to shroud it.

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        That was one thing I enjoyed about the article was learning more about this intra-Republican fight between the liberal Libertarians and Big Business types and this communitarian wing. Maybe the Libertarians will move over to the Democrats like the Neocons. The Republicans could wind up as even more of a working class party than they are now.

        But you are absolutely right about this retreat to the past strategy. If those values had been working, the Sixties would never have happened. The shallowness of American culture, its crass materialism, were targets of Grace Slick when I was a teenager. With “Mornin’ in ‘Murca,” one generation already tried a retreat to the past, while another became the Pretenders.

        We’ve taken the wrong path. It’s led us to the precipice. Of course, the first step is to retrace your steps, but you don’t turn around and follow the same damn path back to the same damn precipice. I advocate for going back at least to Sixties to the last real challenge to this culture. (Occupy had a bit of that, but it was snuffed so successfully–and nobody saw how to make money from it.) It would be nice having a new path to follow so that we wouldn’t just be stuck in place. Maybe we’ll know to be careful, maybe wary, the next path we explore.

      2. John

        Radical individualism by its very nature is destructive of community. Any “machine” with positive feedback will tear itself apart. Q.E.D.

        1. Kouros

          David Graeber describes in his “The Dawn of Everything” the prehistoric pictographs where one individual is speared to death by the group as such Radical Individual being given his comeuppance by the community…

    4. Amfortas the hippie

      i like Deneen…and remember this is from an actual Lefty…a redneck hippie guy.
      first heard of him in First Things…then rambled into Front Porch Republic…which was my favorite small C conservative site.
      he’s not reactionary, just really thoughtful.
      however…i still do not see our current ruling class as really all that liberal…as i have understood the term.
      i come out of Nietszche and then Kant…and then J.S. Mills…and following along somewhere, Habermas(what we need is not to undo the Enlightenment, rather we need MORE Enlightenment)
      i see the current ruling philosophy as Enlightenment, but with numerous exceptions that serve to shore up existing power structures….democracy…but not too much,lol.
      these exceptions end up making such tangled and myriad contradictions that the whole thing ossifies into what we see before us…as in “Democrats” undoing a Primary in their own party because they didn’t like what the People were after(Twice!).
      the only problem i have with folks like Deneen is the inclusion of abortion and “everybody go to church!” and the sort of shrouded anti gayism.
      like you say, Henry, we dont hafta go back to before Stonewall…or Roe…to amend a lot of whats gone wrong.
      in my view, again, much of whats gone wrong is self defined enlightened PMC kicking the ladder down and burning it.

      1. Amfortas the hippie

        FTA:”In the abstract, Deneen argued, liberal regimes promised their citizens equality, self-government and material prosperity, but in practice, they gave rise to staggering inequality, crushing dependence on corporations and government bureaucracies and the wholesale degradation of the natural environment. At the same time, liberalism’s incessant drive to expand individual freedom had eroded the non-liberal institutions — the nuclear family, local communities, and religious organizations — that kept liberalism’s impulse toward atomization in check.”

        i just dont think it’s “liberalism”…rather Neoliberalism/Neoconservative…ie: something we’ve not defined yet…but which looks pretty darned familiar,lol.
        in my lifelong evolution(!) into the matter, “liberalism”, a la Mill, leads eventually to a sort of socialism with anarchist(all small letters) tendencies.
        everybody always leaves out people like Proudhon in these discussions…and the rest of the actual anarchist tradition…we’re not all Max Stirner, nor bomb throwers.

        1. GramSci

          I’m with you. Amfortas. I grew up thinking ‘liberal’ was something like FDR or J.S. Mill or maybe Clement Atlee. And that ‘progressive’ meant something like Fightin’ Bob LaFollette.

          But now? ‘Democrat’ means ‘Republican’ means ‘conservative’ means ‘populist’ means ‘nationalist’. People seem to use such terms in blind confidence (or in blind indifference) that any listener has a similar understanding.

          I’m not a card-carrying Marxist (he did rather overlook the Fossil Energy Theory of Value), but at least ‘material benefits’ are not meaningless abstractions. If one doesn’t deal in fine print. ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ isn’t really all that abstract, either. Or my long-time favorite, from Jim Hightower’s daddy, “Everybody does better when eveybody does better.”

      2. eg

        Yeah, I read (and enjoyed) Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed as well as Lasch’s Revolt of the Elites (many years ago).

  7. griffen

    Whither our Secretary of Transportation, can he find time on his schedule to make the necessary arrangements for a labor agreement; lest all those freight vessels continue to pile into wait and see mode off the coast of CA? Looks like the complexity of moving freight is once again coming to the forefront. Might be a problem for stocking shelves with all those Christmas holiday goodies.

    Added thought, rerouting those vessels isn’t exactly a no-brainer choice either.

    1. jo6pac

      The slow down/strike is on the entire west coast. I doubt ports in Canada or Mexico could handle the extra traffic. Go Longshoremen the union built by the late Harry Bridges.

      1. Tom Stone

        Harry Bridges secretary was a friend and a tenant of my late Father’s and she made killer chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts.
        I spent quite a few hours talking to her about the old days in SF.
        She was a pistol and no mistake.

      2. Michael Fiorillo

        The ILWU has long been a locus of West Coast radicalism, and was frequently a place where radicals unemployable elsewhere – in the Bay Area, a good number of them were former Panthers – got hired on.

        Bridges and those Popular Front era Reds were really something.

  8. The Rev Kev

    “Rheinmetall CEO tells of German equipment’s performance in Ukraine”

    That’s not the only thing that that Rheinmetall CEO was saying. He was also saying that he wants to have a factory in the Ukraine set up in 15 to 20 months time so that they can build German tanks in the Ukraine. So when Russia’s Dimitri Medvedev heard this, he said that’s great and can they have the coordinates please. Rheinmetall is apparently one of the manufacturers of the Leopard 2 tank. If so, I wonder how their shares went after all those video clips emerged of Leopard 2 tanks being destroyed?

    1. Wæsfjord

      What a contrast in intelligence to the Rheinmetall founder: Lorenz Zuckermandel (sweet almond!) came from small farmers. He was always the best in his class and worked his way up the banking world to start many firms. He was fluent in half a dozen languages, with a particular love of Italian art, language and culture. He translated many academic works from other languages, which were well received. What a contrast to the nincompoops who make up today’s elite.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Thanks for that. Looks like this war was really good for them. Well, perhaps not the past week. Just wait until the Pentagon tells countries around the world that it is still illegal to buy Russian tanks, that Leopard 2s are rubbish as seen in the Ukraine, so buy American and get some of those great Abrams tanks instead (financing available).

    1. jefemt

      Apparently most of the gorgeous pre-planted hanging flower planters at big boxes— Walmart, Home Despot, Lowes etc are propagated using neonics. Folks are (likely unwittingly) importing death into their yards and home areas simply trying to have some floral seasonal joy.

      I think a few wholesalers have pledged to stop, ‘in a few years’.

      Criminy… big ag, big petrochemicals, big pharma.. big trouble!

  10. Edward

    (I assume this question’s appropriate for this forum.)

    Obviously Daily Beast produces many reports and opinion pieces which are just rank anti-Russian rhetoric. But to what degree is that the case? A little, a fair amount, or remarkably so?

    I’m asking because yesterday Daily Beast and Reuters published widely conflicting accounts of what Putin actually said in his Saturday speech. He spoke of “significant” casualties, but Reuters says he meant Ukrainian casualties and Daily Beast says the exact opposite, that – allegedly – Putin meant Russian casualties.

    Putin’s exact words are in Russian but I can’t read them because I know too little of the language.

    Daily Beast is more likely wrong than Reuters. If so, this (maybe) is a new low for the people who write their Russia-related pieces.

    1. Lex

      http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts

      The Kremlin and the ministry of foreign affairs transcribes and translates all the major speeches. Sometimes takes a couple of days but the translations are excellent and manage the pitfalls of intent and idiom more accurately than most others.

      On this particular issue he was talking about Ukrainian losses and the ratio being far larger than the classically assumed 3:1 for attackers. But he refused to give specific numbers for either side. He also said that Ukraine’s offensive potential was not yet significantly degraded.

      1. The Rev Kev

        That last bit must be because the main Ukrainian reserves are not being used yet but are still in the rear. They waiting for one of those attacks against the Russians to succeed in punching a hole in their defenses so that these reserves can pour in to exploit it.

        1. Edward

          I’m fairly certain Putin – and “expert analysts” – believe Ukraine has committed reserves in this week’s attacks. That’s the factor which supposedly proves Kiev/NATO’s long-awaited counteroffensive has finally begun.

          And I think they were talking about Ukraine’s strategic reserves.

          I might be wrong, but I’m fairly confident this belief is circulating among well-informed types who comment on the war.

          1. hemeantwell

            Yes, I recall seeing — maybe Simplicius — that one of the Ukr units that got crumpled in the crumple zone was a “volunteer” unit, so-called because the most eager and well-trained soldiers want to use the best equipment. That explains why a good portion of the destroyed equipment was supposedly top notch.

            1. ambrit

              The Intermarium was a political scheme thought up, or at least promoted by Polish Strongman Pilsudsky.
              Tellingly, Pilsudsky’s other major political project was something called Prometheism. Prometheism was dedicated to the dismemberment of the Russian State.
              Where have we heard this idea promoted recently?
              See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheism
              The Alchemists are right: “Everything old is new again.”

              1. Edward

                Yes, I’ve always been aware of 1920s Polish Intermarium ambitions. And of course, in the decades since 1991, new Intermarium types have arisen among Poland’s elites and FP establishment. Brzezinski is one example. Radosław Sikorski and his wife Anne Applebaum are others.

              1. ambrit

                Now that the main river bridge from Moldova into Southern Ukraine has been “interdicted” by the Russians, I guess it will have to be from Poland. Imagine all those 101st Airborne helicopters full of troops being shot down by the Russian air defense. If I can ‘imagine’ this, so can the forward planners for the 101st Airborne. As the S400 operators like to say; “Your air mileage may vary.” YAMMV

          3. Ignacio

            Yes, strategic reserves, possibly the “elite” of these since the first breakthrough would require the best trained troops. Yet, not all of them or the main/bulk of reserves as Rev Kev noted. Besides, reserves that were located near Kherson have been redeployed to Zhaporozhye suggesting this could be one of the objectives of the dam collapsing: increase the concentration in Zhaporozhye. According to some analysts Ukraine is in urgent need to show some success before NATO meeting. Urgency is not best advisor for military operations.

    2. R.S.

      The English translation (with some typos?) of Putin’s answers can be found here:
      http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71329

      I’ll also copy my own word-for-word-ish translation from my answer from yesterday, done from the video at
      http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/press_conferences/71329
      ===
      Over/during these days, we see significant casualties of the troops of the Ukrainian regime. It is known that during offensive operations losses are about three to one, that’s classical. But in this case, it is much higher than classical numbers. I won’t give the figures now, but they are striking.
      ===

    3. LadyXoc

      Why don’t you read Kremlin or Russian MoD read-outs? Easily found if looked for. Reuters and Daily Beast do not a newsfeed make.

    4. Edward

      Yves & Co – This post is a duplicate of one you answered yesterday. But people are replying, so I’ll ask you to keep it up rather than delete.

  11. Wukchumni

    Whacking off weeds is so much more of a chore this year, everything waited for the rain to finally stop and then it was off to the races, so much higher & thicker than usual, if I didn’t know any better i’d say Mother Nature is setting up Cali for the old 1-2 punch of crazy amounts of water followed by crazy amounts of fire.

    The spanner in the works, or lack of spanner is the idea that there are an awful lot of sections of damaged roads which are impassable on the western flank of the Sierra Nevada that quite simply aren’t going to be fixed as the 100 days of 100 degrees descends on Godzone and then come the fall, prime time for fuego. Fighting a fire would be highly problematic, as everything would have to be attacked from the air by & large, with firefighters and resources helicoptered in.

  12. Lexx

    ‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary.’

    Too upper middle class and too white, looking like they’re sitting on pews for the Sunday sermon. More revolutionary is trading one set of elites for another? Blech!

    It could just be my read but it sounds like yet another political circle jerk.

  13. Henry Moon Pie

    A very sober and sobering podcast from Nate Hagens re: not the latest bad news about the planet but about the upcoming NATO air exercises and the growing risk of strategic nuclear war.

    2. dftbs

      Thank you for sharing. As our society circles the drain, I used to share the frustration with the rosy, detached from reality, perception of our position; whether with respect to the War, the economy, or even purposefully detaching individuals from material reality via idpol.

      I’m not trying to sound pessimistic, but I think our (American/Western) preoccupation with the power of “narrative” is futile. I don’t think the “truth” will change minds, but I also don’t think it’s necessary to do so. There is no agency in the West, if we avoid WW3 it won’t be because the American people had an epiphany and challenged the tyranny of their system. We’ll avoid the end of the world because those competitors we call “authoritarian” are out and out humanists in comparison to the lizards at the top of our hierarchy. They are the proverbial adults.

      The narrative isn’t important anymore because reality has outrun it and lapped it multiple times. Our rulers can shape it anyway they want. They will feed us cultural narcotics via streaming platforms and AR goggles, they will feed us actual narcotics and blame it on Mexican cartels, but they’re building a sandcastle at high tide. The future, as always was always here, the West is just not going to be there with it.

  14. upstater

    Re. New York Needs To Find Out Why Its Drivers Keep Hitting Low Bridges

    Google Maps and other GPS have been implicated in many of the crashes on the Onondaga Lake Parkway. Being a state highway, it is the default route when going from I-81 to the northwest suburbs. Trucks often use their personal GPS and are distracted, ignoring the many warning signs with flashing lights at either end of the parkway and before the bridge.

    There isn’t anything to “study”. Drivers ignore clear warnings. The problem has much worse prior to common GPS and smartphones.

    My road ends with a 60 degree angle at a state highway that has a blind curve at the base of a steep hill. Only an idiot and Google maps would ever suggest a right turn off my road on to the highway or a left turn onto my road. You can always tell a GPS user with out of state plates or trucks making deliveries making these dangerous turns based on GPS.

    The population has been seriously dumbed down and it looks to get far worse.

    1. griffen

      Curious about the low clearance issue, I clicked to read the article. Poor engineering design for the build and implementation; I mean who in their right mind thinks that one bridge has a proper clearance? I am frequently amazed at the self inflicted wounds when it comes to how these structures are built.

      And to be a little regional minded, it’s not specific to the northeast. North Carolina has prior form on this matter as well, per the below example from 2005 to 2006.

      https://www.wral.com/story/1108397/

    2. Louis Fyne

      in my opinion, tell a generation(s) that “low bridges” are a thing and you’ll get a DIV/#0 look on their faces.

      poor drivers ed. + GPS + electronics distraction + poor situational awarrness skills

    3. Screwball

      Not just NY. I live in a small rural town in NW Ohio. We have 2 railroad viaducts that traffic must go under. One is a main highway, but only 2 lanes, the other a 25 mph street. The main highway viaduct is only 11 ft clearance. It has plenty of warning signs before the viaduct, blinking lights, and a huge sign right on the bridge.

      It has been hit more times in the last few years than since it existed. I have lost count so many. Most of those hits were 18 wheelers or a car carrier semi (boy did that one destroy some cars).

      Last week, the other viaduct got hit. This one usually gobbles up U-Hauls because it is only 9 feet clearance and not a truck route so not many trucks go this way. A local food distribution company’s truck mashed this one last week. 13 ft truck won’t fit under a 9 ft viaduct – who knew? I almost saw it happen live so I got a really good look (and pictures). The guy just mashed it. They even shut down the trains until it was inspected/repaired (bet that didn’t fit the PSR model).

      As it turned out, I ran into another driver for that company the next day so I quizzed him about what happened. The kid that hit the bridge was only 20, was his second day on the job alone, as he spent the week before “training.” The truck was a single axle straight truck. No air brakes – which is key. He doesn’t need a CDL because there are no air brakes and no double axle, as I understand it. I’m guessing that is by design so these companies can hire younger and less qualified drivers, which they do.

      He wasn’t fired because they can’t find anyone to work, which is kind of amazing, but only kind of. I hear that problem a lot around here. And maybe they are blaming themselves for sending him out alone when he wasn’t ready. They also may think “he’ll never do that again.”

      IMO, there still is no excuse. One of the first things you would want to know is; how high is my truck, rather it is a vehicle requiring a CDL or not. This should also be one of the first things they are taught – CDL or not.

    4. rowlf

      There are special maps for truckers showing clearances, road and bridge weights, etc. These had to have become computerized. Maybe some trucking companies are trying to use car gps?

    5. The Infamous Oregon Lawhobbit

      Large signs – “No Trucks In Town.”

      Inevitable defense – “My GPS said to go that way.”

  16. Wukchumni

    When David in the guise of a cheap drone can take out Goliath in a state of the art expensive German tank, slings change.

    3. ambrit

      Are you possibly suggesting that Mitteleuropa is full of Philistines?
      “Eyeless in Gaza, at the Ukraine among slavs.”

  17. digi_owl

    Shave the cyrillic off, and those ATGM strikes could just as well be shot from an AH-64.

    Should be a nice sobering reminder that a direct exchange between NATO and Russia, or NATO and China for that matter, will be nothing like the “police actions” of the previous 20+ years. But i suspect the last think the blob wants to be right now is sober.

  18. Josh E.

    Regard public spirit in a housing crisis
    ———–

    I would like to see an comparable article that says “Time for developers and apartment owners to rethink their public spirit”.

    In Austin (where I have lived for 50+ years), we are engaged in converting small low income neighborhoods with single family homes into large luxury apartments and dense townhomes for the tech gentry (of which I am one).

    They don’t build higher than 3 stories due to increased costs so the Council is going to sacrifice many more homes in the name of affordability than your starting picture implies.

    It appears that the developer crowd have found a clever way to socialize the risk and privatize the profits by using “affordability” and “NIMBY” framing to destroy the power of the neighborhoods. The wealthier west side of Austin is minimally impacted due to land prices and political muscle.

    To make matters worse, the buildings are constructed on imported labor (not that I have anything against that except that it tends be a way to pay workers less) and out-of-state capital so little of the money flows back in community.

    The shift to apartments is also problematic because renters don’t have the same political rights.

    Unfortunately, I don’t see any solutions. I’m helping a local non-profit that is developing a workforce program for people who are unhoused. That’s my public contribution. Then I’m probably going to move out of Austin for the first time in my life.

    1. tegnost

      15 years of zirp was a mind boggling wealth transfer, a sort of paying one half to kill off the other half. I can only figure that the empty units won’t be made cheaper but rather are very nice tax write offs, but I am not an accountant…

    3. Kendra

      Most importantly, another generation is denied the ability to build equity and stable family housing from generation to generation, a.k.a. as “community.”

      Instead their monthly rent payments flow upward to the PhD pushcart parasites.

  19. The Rev Kev

    “Trudeau announces military aid, addresses Ukraine parliament”

    I like the way that they left mention of that Antonov-124 cargo plane to the end. Back in 2022 it landed in Canada to deliver Covid test kits from China and as they closed Canadian airspace that same day, they swiped that plane quicker than a Canadian truck protestor’s bank account. I don’t know what the Ukrainians are going to do with that plane. The moment it enters Ukrainian airspace it becomes a target for the Russians. Trudeau just announced another $500 million for the Ukraine but when he gets back to Canada, will he be as generous with victims of Canada’s fire disasters? Something tells me no.

    1. tevhatch

      I believe it was June 8, rather than June 9, but I wasn’t aware of the Soviet offer of aid. Interesting that the CIA/NED encyclopedia of propaganda does not report it, but rather that those mad Israelis were planning to attack Russian destroyers. Not sure which is worse, the omission or the early indication that the Zionist are looking to start Armageddon already.

      1. The Rev Kev

        If that US Navy task force had splashed those Israeli fighters and sunk those Israeli boats before apologizing and saying that they thought that they were “Arab” boats, the Israelis would never have tried that sort of crap again. Instead the lesson that they learned was ‘Hey, we can get away with anything with these Americans and they will just roll over for us.’

        1. Daniil Adamov

          They did arrest an Israeli spy eventually, which I am told caused quite a shock – not least of all among liberal dissidents in the USSR, with their kneejerk loyalty to both Israel and the USA.

  21. Lex

    I remain amazed that for all the talk of a grand Ukrainian offensive, planned and equipped by the brightest minds in the Biden administration, the end result (so far) is a frontal assault on the most obvious and telegraphed axis through minefields and into the teeth of well-prepared defensive fortifications. They knew there wouldn’t be air support and that artillery support would less than doctrinally supposed. And yet they did it anyway.

    Nothing’s over yet, but we’re almost a week into the offensive and the total success is a few shattered villages in the grey zone in low lying areas. Looks like the military plans are as well developed as the sanctions regime that would crush the Russian economy in a month or two. In both cases, everything resting on the best case scenario.

    1. hemeantwell

      One bit of military tech that’s suddenly getting notice has been the Russian use of Family of Scatterable Mines (FASCAM) to quickly distribute mines both in front of attackers but also behind them to mess up reinforcement or retreating. If you go to the Wiki page you’ll see the article refers to US tech. I imagine the shoe can go on the other foot should Russia try to counterattack beyond its established lines.

    2. Polar Socialist

      You have to take into account that the offensive was kinda forced on the Ukrainians, and the only place they can actually achieve something worth achieving (cutting access to Crimea) was obvious to everyone from the get go.

      The most amazing thing, to me, is that given the givens, Ukrainians still decided to attack on many directions at the same time, thus diluting their forces at the only direction that matters. I’m no strategist, but even I know that pushing trough a deep, fortified zone requires all the forces you have — and then some, if you want to exploit the success.

  22. griffen

    Stoller column about the SA / PGA Tour deal not happening. I can easily lift my comments from the late afternoon of June 9, 2023, having mostly finished the day’s work of filing TPS reports. An additional fact I learned yesterday, once the golf coverage on CBS flipped over to the Canadian Open for the third round. The PGA Tour was in the position of possibly, to likely, exhausting the Tour reserves which I presume means the lawyers were not working pro bono of course. The situation continues to be in a highly fluid / daily updating mode it appears.

    Paraphrasing my response…
    “I agree with a few his points. The suggestion of legal discovery required in this litigation probably means throwing a wet blanket on said litigation ( albeit I’m not a lawyer ). For immediate reference, please see the recent example of Daniel Snyder as owner of the Washington Commanders…Some dudes win quickly out of the gate like a Tiger Woods or a Jordan Spieth, but many grind away for years and maybe the mini tours as well…mini tours are not glamorous.”

    1. Wukchumni

      About every 3 days a golf course gets outsourced in the USA, usually turned into something useful such as housing.

      We turned 9 irons into Dow Shares…

      Let the Saudis have a dying sport~

    2. griffen

      I also had a finishing thought…an updated Caddyshack tale for the modern era. Instead of the original film portraying Snobs vs Slobs, the newer film will portray Snobs vs Richer Snobs. The PIF investment fund of the Saudi Arabia kingdom lists a generous $650 billion. Which is really odd to view from a distance, based on what I can recall about them such sovereign wealth funds exist and invest for the good of their loyal citizens. IE, Norway has a model fund that I believe does that.

    3. CanCyn

      And here’s another perspective. https://www.thestar.com/sports/golf/opinion/2023/06/09/the-simplistic-truth-about-the-pga-liv-golf-deal-its-bigger-than-sportswashing.html
      I hadn’t really considered the players’ lack of solidarity before but of course that makes sense. Not that I have any sympathy for rich golfers but we know a guy whose brother-in-law is a Canadian pro. Those guys do spend their own money on coaching, Physio, etc. it ain’t cheap to be a PGA pro.

      1. Benny Profane

        It’s not easy to play in a sport with no long term contracts.
        I didn’t really appreciate the hard work required to do well in the sport until I started to play in the 90s (along with a lot of other people in that boom period), and that’s the reason I stopped, because I realized it needed three days a week from me, at least, to do well. Pro golfers are some of the hardest working athletes in pro sports, along with pro cyclists. Always, always practicing and training, if not playing.

    4. ArvidMartensen

      Golf has been a vehicle for decades for the US to spread its cultural hegemony across the world. Golf was a businessman’s sport and a President’s sport. With such cache, it seems to have made its own rules about remuneration.
      I can’t see the US letting the Saudis, who seemingly have been courting that most hated enemy of the US, Russia, letting golf go to them even as partners. No siree.
      I don’t think the Saudis will get to control golf for this very reason, since the US is struggling to maintain its status as the undisputed king of the world.

    1. Katniss Everdeen

      The only reason there are “laws” in this country these days is so Donald Trump and his supporters can be “indicted” and jailed, without bail, for violating them.

      1. flora

        I still don’t understand why mechanical raise/lower, white/orange crossing gate arms with a military control station and attendant officer, very visible from the main street, aren’t installed at these new WH gate sites; new sites which I think are gated crossings across recently – now formerly – open roadways. Someone from D.C. correct me about this if I’m wrong.

  24. The Rev Kev

    “Nord Stream saboteurs may have used Poland as base of operations, WSJ reports”

    “CIA informed Belgium about Ukraine’s role in Nord Stream sabotage”

    Not going to really read them for the simple reason is that both stories are the result of Washington throwing crap at a wall to see what will stick. Seymour Hersh already told us who was responsible and how it was done but for weeks now, there have been stories appearing saying that it was all the fault of the SS Minnow, err, the yacht Andromeda. Here it is the Wall Street Journal and the newspaper De Tijd being used to spread this deliberate misinformation but being asked to believe these stories seem somehow insulting.

  25. cnchal

    This week was brutal.

    At the end, why Trump kept those documents was a mystery to all. Narcissist keeping a trophy never entered their minds.

    1. The Rev Kev

      It was the same with Biden who had secret files parked at that wonky university think tank and in his garage and in his home and wherever else he had them. Biden collected secret documents in the same way that squirrels collected nuts but do you think that the FBI are going to do anything about that?

        1. Screwball

          He should be. No Trump fan here, but to state the obligatory…

          I despise all of the pukes who inhabit DC and our 3 letter agencies – and so many things they are doing has a really bad stinky crooked look. I don’t care if they haul Trump off in chains, but what about all the other stuff we see that never sees a lick of print, or even questioned.

          This is all Banana Republic stuff IMO. *spit*

          1. Carolinian

            Yepster. Dershowitz has written a column that says the heart of the indictment is a claimed audio recording (by whom?) where Trump waves around or shows (a key point) what he himself calls a classified plan for bombing Iran. Therefore the “espionage” consists of him potentially letting the cat out of the bag re some mad plan–which Trump may have favored–for attacking Iran.

            Needless to say this will resonate in some quarters because our undeclared war against the world must be treated as a sacred cause. Of course the Bidens taking bribes to genuinely threaten the national interest (if only by saddling the country with Bidens) is a “see no evil, hear no evil” proposition.

            Trump may be in big trouble but the victory for cackling Hillary and her party may be pyrrhic. Or at least here’s hoping. Trump was bad. Joe is way worse.

            1. The Rev Kev

              That classified plan for bombing Iran may have been Trump’s own plan which was why he was highlighting it. Remember when in power he threatened to bomb every cultural building and landmark in the country? That might have been it. By definition that is a war crime but so is stealing another country’s oil like he did in Syria.

        1. ThirtyOne

          That takes me back.
          A few of those faces are dead (the Reagans) or disgraced (Cosby).
          Not much has changed, has it?

            1. Screwball

              I remember that song well. I live about 2 hours away, knew people who were there, both students and guard. That song still gives me chills.

              This is what they do to people who protest too much, especially against war.

              WTF is wrong with people. I love that song, it’s on my playlist. Just after is “Imagine” by John Lennon.

              We live in an insane world.

              **OT: always love your links flora – thank you

              1. Jen G

                There was also the Jackson State University killings of protesters in Mississippi 11 days after Kent State.

        2. petal

          That song has been my personal soundtrack to the happenings of the last few years. Almost 40 years old but scarily hits the spot.

  26. pjay

    – ‘Paranoid Posting’ – The Baffler

    So I was reading along in this article, nodding in agreement on several points. Yet something was off. I could not quite put my finger on it until I got to this paragraph, when everything fell into place:

    “The real novelty of “psyop realism” is that the military is now proudly aggravating American conspiratorialism across social media. Perhaps this is in response to the heightened visibility of racist paranoia throughout the armed forces. FBI infiltrated far-right chat rooms and Facebook pages reveal QAnon and Great Replacement Theories swirling across bases named after Confederate generals—including Lujan’s Fort Bragg. Chronic Trumpism among the military’s ranks has some retired generals worried that the 2024 elections will yield a successful coup attempt. Sowing deep-state intrigue through official and unofficial channels, from recruiting videos to influencers, helps the military maintain its dominance over an American public.”

    See, the real danger of “psyops” today is not the NY Times, Washington Post, NBC News, etc., along with their allies in other Western media, blatantly disseminating disinformation about Russia, China, the Ukraine war… or Donald Trump himself. No. the *real* danger is that cute Tic Toc girls will sow confusion and conspiracy theorizing among racist Trumpers! As usual in such “exposes,” it’s the right-wing Pentagon or, more accurately, the ignorant right-wing members of the military that take the hit, not the CIA and its educated “liberal” lackeys.

    Here is the bio of the author:

    “Sophia Goodfriend is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Duke University, with expertise in surveillance and digital rights in Israel/Palestine. She is currently based in Tel Aviv. She is on Twitter @sopgood.”

    Now, if I were a paranoid Q-Anon follower all confused by the “psyops realism” of Tic Toc girls, I might read this bio and draw all kinds of paranoid conspiratorial conclusions about the author’s background and intent. But since I’m not, I’m just going to chalk it up as the usual unwitting liberal media assistance to our intrepid intelligence community. Anyway, thanks for the “psyop” lesson.

  27. Carolinian

    Re the Omidyar Intercept on Atlanta Training Center–no terrorism here.

    Moments after the vote, activists shouted threats at City Council members. At one point, an activist lunged over the railing between the crowd and the dais to shout, “I will fucking find your ass,” at council member Jason Winston, a ring of cops separating the two.

    Meanwhile burying the lead

    Most Atlanta residents are neither policing abolitionists nor cop cheerleaders. Many neighborhoods, including majority-Black, overwhelmingly Democratic communities on Atlanta’s Westside, measure the city by its responsiveness to neighborhood blight, traffic problems, and crime. Conceptually, a police training center isn’t inherently controversial to most Atlantans.

    But of course it has always been a national movement driving this and many of those arrested and awaiting trial were from out of state. The tone deafness of this entire movement consists of an assumption that Atlanta and the South in general have the same attitude toward these matters as those Northern cities where most of the riots have taken place. My town is 50/50 black/white. Portland, OR has hardly any black people. King and his colleagues thought integration–propinquity–was the solution to the race problem. But nonviolence is anathema to some.

    1. Henry Moon Pie

      The Omidyar Intercept. I like that. Those billionaires are complicated people. With one checkbook, Omidyar is pushing a police state, censorship, surveillance. With the other, he’s financing a reporter who writes about this battle in Atlanta, highlighting a pretty quixotic subculture of the anti-Establishment among us. Greenwald was smart to get away from him.

  28. Roger Blakely

    Why we should abolish ‘Corporate Pride’ once and for all Canadian Dimension

    From the article:

    “What I am opposed to about Corporate Pride is that queer and trans people are now uniformly turned into entertainment for the heterosexual gaze. Even if we, queers and trans people, continue to think we are doing it for ourselves—adorned with rainbow colours, donning drag for the parade, exposing tits to challenge the patriarchy, wearing assless chaps, or showing off chiseled bodies—Pride has now become a festival of performative queerness with no program or even a hint towards liberation.”

    “I resign from being gay during June because I want no part of a Pride festival that cannot dance and do politics at the same time.”

  30. Jason Boxman

    The US justice system has no legitimacy, at all. This was posted here recently, but it’s worth reposting because these doctors maimed people, and were allowed to continue practicing medicine by state boards, and not criminally prosecuted:

    How doctors buy their way out of trouble

    Meanwhile, look at the resources expended on trying to “get” Trump, while Clinton and Biden walk free. The FBI went out of its way to let Hilary Clinton get away with destroying evidence and imperiling national security. A private email server that is known is infinitely more hackable than a box of documents in some wanker’s garage, even if that wanker is a former president of the United States.

    This is a complete, pathetic joke.

  31. Carolinian

    Thanks for the WSWS on Ukraine raw materials–an important article.

    Of course if the Euros are expecting the war to gain them access to those Donbas lithium mines then they have bet on the wrong horse. Boy, did they ever.

    1. Susan the other

      Just connecting the dots. Patrick Lawrence was spot on exposing the new gaslight for the Ukrainian nazis. It’s rising like fog – what Nazis, there aren’t any Nazis here. They are more like patriotic anarchists…. Well maybe that’s a contradiction in terms. Let’s just say the proud fighting men of Ukraine are totally honorable. Even if totally incompetent. And even Henry the K is saying we need to fold Ukraine into NATO only for disciplinary purposes to preclude a nuclear war. the Russians are pretty touchy. The double talk is going exponential because nobody will admit the conflict is anything but rules-based “competitive cooperation” – just ask HR McMaster. It is not racketeering with weapons of mass destruction. Gee, what’s wrong with Russia. The Russians take everything so seriously. They are so paranoid.

  32. flora

    From the Last American Vagabond, about the WHO’s digital passport and the entities behind it.

    Technocracy in Action: WHO and European Commission Partner for ‘Digital Health’ with New COVID-19 Digital Certificate

    ….The push for vaccine passports or digital identities is not coming from the people. There is no genuine call for these policies rising up from the grassroots. It is coming from various organizations, such as the Better Identity Coalition, with ties to cybersecurity spooks with connections to the national security state, U.S. and Israeli intelligence, banks, and corporations.

    These schemes are also being sold to the people of the world under the guise of building a more equitable, sustainable, and just world. The United Nations is promoting the idea that digital identity is a human right in an effort to persuade the Global South and developing nations to participate. This is a scam.

    In fact, in June 2022, New York University’s (NYU) School of Law issued a 100-page report detailing the growing dangers of a reliance on digital identity around the world. The report, titled Paving a Digital Road to Hell?, examines the role of the World Bank and other international networks which have been promoting the use of digital ID in recent years….

    https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/who-eu-digital-health/

    1. Milton

      Wow! Two entries today for the George Orwell directive of the week.

      – digital identity is a human right
      – Peace is not ‘no war’

        1. ambrit

          Perhaps; “One Ring to rule them all…”
          “Alexa. What’s the best way to get to Mount Doom?”

  33. Jason Boxman

    From Chemotherapy shortages push cancer centers toward crisis

    The FDA is working with Qilu Pharmaceuticals in China to increase the availability of cisplatin and Canadian pharmaceutical company Apotex to distribute it.

    So a real, hot war with China would kill how many cancer patients in the United States? And this is just this one drug that is partially sourced from China. Executive function is sorely lacking in Washington.

    “Paradoxically, low drug prices are a key driver of this shortage. We often hear about how the US overpays for drugs, but that conversation is primarily related to brand-name drugs,” said Schatz. “Generics manufacturers operate on a razor thin margin and that can lead to quality and supply issues.”

    Stoller has described how this is a consequence of PBMs; Three companies control basically all drug distribution in the entire country.

  34. Tom Stone

    I see the indictment of Trump as bot a message and a provocation.
    The message is aimed at every US Billionaire and people like Scholz, Trudeau and Sunak, and it is on the level of “We know where your children live”.
    It is also aimed at provoking a violent response with which to justify a “Domestiic Terrorism Bill” which will include asset forfeiture.
    The Biden administration is all about messaging which is why “Jen, the talking Horse” was replaced with “Karine, the Human Coral snake”.
    IMO any alleged conspiracy that consists of more than 3 people will have FBI involvement because the current surveillance State really is that comprehensive.

  35. Glen

    A caste system for America?

    America’s New Caste System, EXPOSED
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pvW2AFony0

    Passing state laws so that your kids go to work, and their kids go to private schools paid for with your tax dollars. All being done by hedge fund billionaires. Ya can’t make this $hit up.

    If I had read this stuff in a Gibson cyberpunk novel forty years ago (has it really been that long?), it’s like, this is great sci-fi! Now, it’s like, here comes the Jackpot. Great, just [family blogging] great…

    1. digi_owl

      For a while now i have been thinking that the English class system and the Indian caste system kinda sorta overlap. And i suspect the English system came across to the colonies back in the day, even if in subdued form.

    1. Maxwell Johnston

      A fun read (though littered with the usual military acronyms); thanks for posting. It’s not a bad analysis, but the authors cannot escape from their Pentagon/MIC obsession with hi-tech gee-whiz weapons technology. Of 50+ pages, only one short paragraph refers briefly to RU artillery doctrine. But so far, the UKR conflict has been overwhelmingly about RU using artillery (with surveillance drones to spot targets) with deadly effectiveness. And of course they completely missed the return of industrial warfare (i.e., the need to manufacture huge amounts of ammo and weaponry to replace battlefield losses), though to be fair nobody seems to have anticipated this either. When technology changes, it’s hard to foresee how it will change warfare and usually catches even the experts by surprise.

  37. chris

    This is another cultural sharing type of link since Lambert and others have asked about gamer culture. The “Kill 6 Billion Demons” webcomic has deep lore associated with extensive worldbuilding and a unique art style that has become more popular over time. The latest updates have discussed a lot of important philosophy as the characters struggle during the resolution of many things that have happened over the arc of the comic. The people behind the comic have started developing games.

    Tom Parkinson-Morgan, the artist/writer behind that comic, is also the co-creator of the Lancer RPG. Here’s a review of that RPG before it released. Now, what I find interesting and that maybe others in the commentariat will consider interesting, is how the concepts in the game rapidly evolved beyond the creators intentions because the ideals in the game created a unique audience. As one example of that, Lancer has one of the more ardent LGBT+ groups of fans and gamers for a game that was never advertised as being LGBT+ friendly. Here’s one example Reddit thread discussing it.

    There are a lot of gay/non-binary themes discussed and shown in Kill 6 Billion Demons. As Lancer is an RPG, it has whatever themes in it you want there to be but the concept of putting on a skin to accomplish something obviously speaks to non-binary gamers. What I’d say is that in each story those themes are not done in any token fashion and non-LGBT people are invited to enjoy them. Because it’s a good story with those themes in it, as opposed to a good story despite those themes being discussed.

    A lot of games create memes or set in motion ideas that animate communities. Lancer and K6BD are different in that they really feel like they’ve been created by voices that are not typically represented in sci-fi or fantasy, and those voices are not looking at these things as jaded observers like the boys at Penny Arcade. The ideas in Lancer aren’t in your face sciency like the way XKCD does things or bleakly funny existential humor like the way it’s done in Existencial Comics. Lancer is post-scarcity and written from a positive/affirmative perspective, in part as a response to what the gaming community felt were negative politics behind D&D.

    I wouldn’t assert that RPGs and mecha are mainstream but I think the concepts in Lancer/K6BD and the community response to those themes are a sign of what is coming next in the main stream. I think this is where the young people who don’t agree with the Davos elite or the tactics of Greta Thunberg want to go. I think this is the future they want to imagine. A society free of want. A life where you have something to fight for. Ways to exist that include everyone. I feel hopeful that there are still communities where the members can imagine such a different future.

  38. Pat

    I fully admit that I am dismissing a premise without reading the article, but the fact that it is in the Washington Post and is a defense of Biden and Clinton immediately makes me discount it.
    But for those that want to go in search of it, the Post decides to let us know how Biden and Clinton mishandling classified documents is different than Donald Trump doing so, I am assuming without the real reason that he is not an insider and they are.

    I know too much about Clinton’s email server to think for a moment that the documents housed in Florida in boxes were more of a security risk and more likely for sale than anything housed on an insecure server in Clinton’s home. I realize that they are accusing Trump of espionage, but anyone who doesn’t thnk that Clinton wouldn’t have traded information for both money and power in a hot minute did not pay attention to the influence peddling done by the Clinton Foundation during her tenure at State. I will also say that while so far everything was clearly more for profit if anyone thinks that security concerns would have stopped Biden for selling influence to the deeply corrupt Ukrainian business community also was not paying attention.

    I really really hope that this comes back to bite the bureaucratic insiders who inflate riots and insurrection and think this proves espionage, since we all know this is more about Trump winning and now having the audacity to run again, And he is polling well enough to be a threat to the failing figurehead currently in the White House!

    Because if it wasn’t we would have had a prosecution of Clinton and Biden would never have made it to the White House because he and Hunter would have been facing prison.

  39. Kouros

    Canadian official investigating Chinese election interference resigns

    The guy seemed to be impartial and trying to do a decent job, which would not have resulted in a flagrant interference with the “Canadian democracy” (Canada is a constitutional monarchy with FPTP electoral system, so it cannot be called by any stretch of imagination a “democracy”).

    Such an outcome is definitely not conducive to pushing Canada in full alignment with the US interests, and with a legal alignment that puts Canada in a tight straightjacket when it comes to dealing with China.

    Peter Lee has unlocked one of his episodes, dealing with this US effort to put the Anglosphere on the same war path against China: Talking 2023: America’s Miracle Anti-China Year
    https://www.patreon.com/posts/talking-2023-83691653?utm_medium=post_notification_email&utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link

  41. Watt4Bob

    My grandparents lived near a viaduct on the south side of Chicago. I was visiting one summer in the early 60s when a wooden bodied cattle truck headed to the stockyards hit the low structure and turned the truck to matchsticks, allowing its load of sheep to escape into the urban neighborhood.

    Kids from the vicinity where chasing sheep and catching them and it was clear that most of them didn’t even know what these animals were,

  42. marym

    The FBI document referenced in the Fox link about a Biden bribe is an uncorroborated report of conversations between an executive of Burisma (not named in the Fox link) and a “highly credible” (it’s in quotes in the Fox report, so I guess it’s in the FBI report?) confidential human source who was interviewed by the FBI. There may be more in the document that’s not quoted, but what’s in the link, if the sequence of the conversations is correct, doesn’t actually say a bribe was paid. The exec says they “had to pay,” the human source advises him to pay $50K, and he replies it’s $5M.

    There are other media reports that the FBI conducted the interview based on a tip from Giuliani. “There’s an awkward circularity in there. Republicans are alleging the FBI under the Biden administration tried to cover up an investigation of a tip given to the FBI by Giuliani during the Trump administration, and which even Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, treated with extreme care.”
    https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/politics/hunter-biden-republicans-what-matters/index.html

    The Trump DOJ and State Department also investigated Clinton’s emails and the Clinton Foundation.
    https://www.salon.com/2020/01/10/investigation-into-hillary-clinton-pushed-by-trump-comes-up-empty-after-two-years-report/

    Trump also tried to get information from Ukraine about the Bidens and about Clinton’s server.

    Whether there was a bribe, or in what ways the Clintons and Bidens may be corrupt, neither Trump and his cronies nor Republicans in Congress seem to know what or how to “investigate.”

  43. Will

    Employee of Radio New Zealand, the public broadcaster, suspended for inserting “pro-Russian” edits to Reuters and other wire service stories.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/radio-new-zealand-employee-placed-on-leave-amid-investigation-into-pro-russia-editing-of-ukraine-reports

    The changes described seem entirely reasonable and true. The only one that the article states is false relates to the annexation of Crimea and the only support given for that assertion is statements of the Ukrainian government.

    Selfishly, I want a public hearing so that the employee can try to rely on the truth of the edits as a defence.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Was thinking the same myself. Challenge the truth or otherwise of what was changed and have them have to admit that the changes were nearly entirely truthful. Here in Oz the media is Ukrainian to the point of derangement and I would not be surprised to see the same true of New Zealand. That could be a new medial condition that – Ukraine Derangement Syndrome (UDS).

  44. Will

    From Friday – the American Enterprise Institute runs an op-ed by a senior fellow calling for the US to promise to give Ukraine nukes with no constraints on use if Russia uses a nuke first.

    https://www.aei.org/op-eds/can-biden-deter-a-russia-nuclear-attack-on-ukraine-yes-if-he-gives-ukraine-tactical-nukes/

    The logic(?) is so deranged I don’t understand. I think basically he’s saying the US needs to be tough else Putin will be emboldened by the fear? Cuz he’s addicted to the smell of fear?

    For Putin, an adversary’s fear is as addictive as cocaine. Should he sense White House fear might bring triumph, he would take another snort: his provocations would only increase, not only against Ukraine but also against Moldova and the Baltic States.

    Also, they only just agreed to give F-16s. Skipping straight to nukes is F-35 erasure. This disrespect must not be tolerated!

    2. Glen

      Good grief! That’s just going to crazy town. If America is really starting to consider a “frozen conflict” solution based on the Korean war, then the highly educated types at the AEI should review the history:

      Relief of Douglas MacArthur
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur

      At the time, there was concern by Truman that nukes were under consideration by MacArthur. De-classified records later showed that MacArthur had been asked about potential targets, but had never said nukes should be used. But there were diplomatic intercepts where MacArthur discussed confidence in expanding the war into a major conflict. This, and other acts eventually resulted in his relief.

      At NO TIME in all of the above was somebody STUPID ENOUGH to propose GIVING NUKES to the S Korean government or any other government. Already in the Ukraine conflict we have seen that Biden’s control of the use of the arms provided to Ukraine seems to be tenuous at best. Plus, Ukraine is right in the middle of a very intense existential war which may not be going very well for them. The pressure to just do something like nuke a major city would be overwhelming, and Russia would respond in kind. Escalation into a world ending conflict would be almost a certainty.

      This is just NOT a serious proposal AT ALL. In fact, the only data I can infer from such a completely insane proposal is that the DC bubble is starting to realize that the Ukraine war is lost.

  45. David in Friday Harbor

    Can’t believe there’s not discussion here about Anthony Rowley’s SCMP piece on China possibly devaluing the yuan and declaring a trade war with the west. Everything in the USA,! USA! would break down in a heartbeat: devastating shortages of medicines and medical equipment; bottles, cans, and packaging, electronics, building materials, auto parts. It’s a horror show.

    That murderous cretin Blinken, his buffoon-in-chief, and the Orange Foolius Party are too racist to give Xi Jinping credit for understanding how dependent the west is on Chinese production. These clowns will bring on The Jackpot.

Comments are closed.