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Links 10/17/2023

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The dangers of taking on a kangaroo! Social media users joke ‘hench’ animal ‘looks like it escaped from the gym’ as footage shows it attacking a dog and its owner – in latest footage showing fight between man and beast Daily Mail (Li)

Neanderthal cuisine: Excavations reveal Neanderthals were as intelligent as Homo sapiens PhysOrg (Chuck L)

Missing ‘Law of Nature’ Found That Describes The Way All Things Evolve Science Alert (David L)

Milanese friar wrote about North America 150 years before Columbus ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)

‘We can carry on for ever’: meet Iceland’s last whale hunter Guardian (Kevin W)

Hybrid transistors with silk protein set stage for integration of biology and microelectronics TechXplore (Chuck L)

Can Happiness Be Taught? New Yorker (Anthony L)

#COVID-19

Enumerating Exceptional Properties of SARS Cov 2 Anthony Leonardi (fk). Today’s must read.

Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid New York Times (David L)

Climate/Environment

Scientists’ model increases accuracy of tide forecasts PhysOrg (Chuck L)

Gulf Stream weakening now 99% certain, and ramifications will be global Live Science (furzy)

California Begins World’s Largest Dam Removal/River Restoration Projects Arizona Republic

800,000 Tons of Radioactive Oil and Gas Waste From Pennsylvania Unaccounted For Truthout (David L)

Visualized: How Much Do EV Batteries Cost? Visual Capitalist (furzy)

China?

Interview to China Media Group President of Russia (guurst)

Philippines denounces China for ‘dangerous and offensive’ actions in South China Sea Ground

European Disunion

Opposition wins Polish election, according to exit poll Politico

Record wave of cancellations in residential construction Tagesschau (guurst, via machine translation, original here)

Gaza

Info in below reported several places, appears to have been broken at Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says Electronic Initifada

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 9: Water is running out in Gaza, Israel continues to prevent humanitarian aid and This could be my last report from Gaza Mondoweiss (guurst)

List of war crimes and crimes qualifying as genocide committed by Israel in Gaza since 7th October 2023 Yanis Varoufakis

Israel’s Incremental Genocide and Its Genocidal Moment: Finally Time for the World to Use the Genocide Convention? Sam Husseini

* * *

Gaza, beyond de-development to disposability and destruction Adam Tooze (UserFriendly)

Hamas destroyed their Zionist utopia. What would it take for Jews to return? Financial Times

* * *

Biden confirms Israel visit as Iran warns against Gaza offensive BBC

(UPDATE 9:33pm U.S. ET: Yes, he’s [Biden’s] going) Jacob Dreizin. Important military tidbits.

Kanaani: All possibilities ‘open’ if Israeli aggression continues Almayadeen

US senator threatens to force Iran ‘out of oil business’ RT

* * *

Egypt’s FM: Israel has not allowed Rafah crossing to open from Gaza Arab News

* * *

Why Did Noah Smith Post This? Matt Bruenig

US Won’t Draw ‘Red Lines’ on Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus Munitions Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

Billionaires who have pumped $500m into Ivy League schools back out over failure to condemn the Hamas terror attack on Israel: Harvard and UPenn face losing hundreds of millions in future endowments Daily Mail (Li). These institutions are hedge funds with education affiliates.

US faces defeat in geopolitical war in Gaza Indian Punchline

Pulling the Roof Down on Today’s Paradigm Alastair Crooke

New Not So Cold War

The Return Of Several Ukrainian Children Proves That Russia Didn’t Kidnap Them Andrew Korybko

Caucasus

Armenian president approves ICC ratification RT (Kevin W)

Big Brother is Watch

Your Face May Soon Be Your Ticket. Not Everyone Is Smiling. New York Times (Brian C). Times does not make sufficiently clear that you can opt out rather than be photographed (the set up at airport gates winds up, Temple Grandin-like, having passengers act as if it is mandatory). This is about airline convenience (and probable sales of your biometric ID), not TSA or DHS rules.

Can open source be saved from the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act? The Register

Imperial Collapse Watch

[INSERT MILITARY UNIT] Struggling with [INSERT OUTDATED OR PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR] DuffelBlog (Li)

Army general says moldy barracks are a ‘discipline problem’ Task & Purpose. Kevin W: “Well **** him and **** the horse he rode into town on. This is the Army abandoning their direct responsibilities and telling those soldiers and their families that they are on their own.”

US Military Getting ‘Extremely Weak’ Due to Ukraine Aid – American General Sputnik

10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse OK Doomer (Dr. Kevin)

Trump

Judge Imposes Limited Gag Order on Trump in Election Case New York Times (furzy)

Biden

American Political History Might Have Turned Out Differently if a Louisiana Congressman’s Plane Hadn’t Mysteriously Vanished Out of Thin Air 51 Years Ago Covert Action (Chuck L)

Highly Negative Views of American Politics in 2023 Pew. Userfriendly: “Wowzers this is damning.”

Americans differ over how important it is for political candidates they support to share their personal traits Pew. Userfriendly: “What do you know, voters want to support the only kind of candidate neither party will ever nominate, someone who shares their economic background.”

GOP Clown Car

The continued Speaker impasse is going to undermine a key Republican aim, that of not voting through one giant funding bill but instead a bunch of smaller ones so they can argue a bit over what is in them. The way this is going, the row will run into the time needed to pass another stopgap funding bill (Nov 17).

Senators flummoxed, ‘horrified’ by House leadership vacuum The Hill

Our No Longer Free Press

Automakers Have Big Hopes for EVs; Buyers Aren’t Cooperating Wall Street Journal (Brian C)

Driverless cars go rogue on San Francisco’s anarchic streets Telegraph (Brian C)

AI

ChatGPT use shows that the grant-application system is broken Nature (KLG)

AI Could Spur an Economic Boom. Humans Are in the Way. Wall Street Journal (David L).

The Bezzle

Secret audio, a star witness, and ‘Thai prostitutes’ complicate Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense CNN (Kevin W)

FTX Plans to Return 90% of Customer Funds, But There’s a Catch Coindeak

Class Warfare

Billion-dollar supersize prisons are slated to be built across the U.S. But do they help or hurt public safety? Yahoo! News (Kevin W)

Have Economists Contributed to Inequality? Fast Company. Seriously, someone has to ask?

Antidote du jour. Robert H: “White-lipped snail atop Queen Anne’s Lace, Maine coast.”

And a bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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209 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Crazy Clips
    @crazyclipsonly
    Just another day in Australia’

    Aww, it’s just a Hunstman spider. They can get big but are not considered dangerous and don’t go out of their way to bite people. If any remember that Jeff Daniels 1990 film “Arachnophobia”, the spiders used in that were New Zealand Avondale spiders descended from Aussie Huntsman spiders that got into the country about a century ago-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2EZkRcw3LA (2:05 mins)

      1. The Rev Kev

        They’re harmless and are best captured and turfed outside. That one in the video was obviously scared. They’re not like a Red Back spider or a Funnel Web spider which can kill you, though since they developed anti-venoms deaths are rare now

        2. ChrisPacific

          You can tell it’s a huntsman because they have a kind of ‘squashed’ look, with the legs parallel to the floor and the joints angled backwards (I assume this is so they can get into narrow spaces). I would try to engage my ‘cute’ filter rather than my ‘horrifying’ filter when dealing with this one, although the size would make it a challenge. I normally trap them with a glass and slide a piece of paper or card under for safe removal, although it might be tricky finding a big enough glass for this one.

          For more of a mini-Shelob appearance, look up funnel web spiders, which are genuinely dangerous as they are very poisonous and will bite defensively. We have a near but non-poisonous relative in New Zealand, the tunnel web spider, which we found in our bathroom once.

  2. zagonostra

    >Hybrid transistors with silk protein set stage for integration of biology and microelectronics TechXplore (Chuck L)

    But what if you could make these fundamental electronic components part biological, able to respond directly to the environment and change like living tissue?

    With all the depravity of killing going on in the world less than 100 years from WWII, I find no comfort in advances in biotech, in fact it worries me even more. Until society stops worshiping Thanatos, techne will not improve man’s inhumanity to man.

    1. JBird4049

      Thanatos? If only that.

      It seems like nihilism, and its Russian form at that, is what is being worshipped. Nothing matters, nothing is real, there is no intrinsic meaning in anything. Meaninglessness is what is being worshipped. Maybe it could be called essentialism without the hope, not death, unless it is the death of humanity’s humanness.

  3. The Rev Kev

    ‘Steven Donziger
    @SDonziger
    BREAKING: Journalist @fatenelwan
    reports Israeli airstrikes have destroyed UN warehouses in Gaza used to hold relief supplies for civilians. Israel already cut food and electricity to Gaza.
    Forced hunger must not be used as a weapon of war.’

    And this is not the first war that they have done this in either. As the UN would have given the Israelis the exact latitude and longitude of their facilities in Gaza to keep them safe, it can only mean that the Israelis used those coordinates as targeting data. There was no ‘mistake.’

    ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time’ – Maya Angelou

    1. Daryl

      If I were a sailor on one of the USN ships in the mediterranean or headed there, I would be mighty worried about my coordinates also being shared with Israel for “safety.” Another USS Liberty would probably line up with the goals of the current Israeli administration.

    2. Tom Stone

      It’s God Swill.
      It’s God Swill that the Jews will regain their ancestral lands, rebuild the Temple and bring about heaven on earth.
      And it’s God Swill that the Palestinian people will regain their homeland and evict the surviving invaders.
      If you are stealing the land and killing the prior inhabitants it is much more comfortable knowing that you are doing God Swill while describing your victims as Orcs or “Human Animals”.
      California is a case in point.

        1. ambrit

          A modern retelling of the Homeland Origin Myth; “Triumph of Swill.”
          ‘They’ can get the director who helmed “Zero Dark: The Franchise” to do it.
          [Superhero movies are still the faves of rageaholics everywhere!]

  4. Louis Fyne

    Automakers Have Big Hopes for EVs; Buyers Aren’t Cooperating …

    When the subsidies are this high (>$7.5k in federal and state subsidies, people are not luddites they have their brains open).

    There are nots of sensible reasons not to go EV:

    climate (no surprise EVs have the best success in the Sun Belt), Tesla doesn’t have the dealership, Tesla doesn’t really advertise so don’t know about the latest massive price cuts, personal preference: $33k for a Model 3 sedan or conventional compact SUV,

    battery….yes those batteries generally can last for years past the warranty, but if you hit the long odds and have a battery failure outside warranty, it’s $$$$$.

    and finally, electricity has gotten much more expensive (in my neck of woods). $0.16 kWh when you include everything including taxes, delivery, meter fee, electricity cost, and the local 2% tenewable energy transition tax. Still cheaper than gasoline…but not the $0.08/kWh from less than 10 years ago

    1. Louis Fyne

      (arguably) for a many people, a Toyota hybrid or plug-in hybrid is a better choice….if you can find one in stock.

      (cuz of the very-long-term reliability of the Toyota system)

      1. CanCyn

        A hybrid continues to be my plan as my car comes to the end of its reliable life. I do worry that I am just embracing both evils – the combustion engine’s need for fossil fuel and the ev lithium battery and all those ills. But having chosen to live where a car is necessary, I gotta do what I gotta do. On my own I could see myself car-less is a more urban area (let’s face it, behaviour not technology is what will (or not) save the planet …but I’d have to get a divorce or live separately from Hubble in order to live in a city

      2. Grumpy Engineer

        Yep. The plug-in hybrid is the right answer, at least for the battery technologies we’re using today. Three major reasons:

        1. It eliminates “range anxiety”. You can quickly re-fuel during long trips as necessary.
        2. It stretches finite lithium resources farther. At today’s lithium production rates, we can convert only 10% of global new car sales to EVs. Using 7 kWh batteries for a 25-mile battery-only range would permit conversion to 100% plug-in.
        3. Battery replacements would be much cheaper.

        And to discourage people from cheating and never charging with electricity from the grid, taxes on gasoline/diesel would have to be substantially increased.

        Unless we’re rescued by the “technology fairy”, where somebody manages to develop a cheaper, higher-density, and higher-reliability battery from much more prevalent sodium, the plug-in hybrid really is the better answer.

        Of course, if we keep trying to duplicate the European approach to de-carbonizing the grid, we’re going to end up with European electricity prices and people will turn away from EVs (or plug-in hybrids) because it’s too darned expensive to charge their cars. The numbers at the bottom of the list are dominated by European countries (and are pretty horrifying): https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/.

        1. vao

          I always have the feeling that, for a specific manufacturer, its hybrid cars will be less reliable than its other ICE or pure BEV products, since:

          (1) they will exhibit the faults of an ICE as such;
          (2) and those associated to a BEV itself;
          (3) plus the faults resulting from interconnecting and coordinating the electric and petrol driven mechanisms.

          It should be all right when the vehicles are fairly new, but nowadays car components are typically designed to last 120000 km only, and I shudder to think about the repair and maintenance costs for a dual engine when the automobile reaches the fatidic age.

          1. Louis Fyne

            Not Toyota….other manufacturers, no comment—but lots of reliable information online or from your local mechanic.

            1. jsckiebass

              I own a Toyota hybrid and love it. Probably one of the best cars I have ever owned. I’ve have owned several Toyotas and haven’t had a problem with any of them.An added plus is they have a very good trade in value and two years of free service.

        2. Katniss Everdeen

          Plenty of people suspect that “a 25-mile battery-only range” is the holy grail of control that this whole EV “conversion” is intended to facilitate. As is plugging into a centrally-controlled electric grid to “fuel” your personal transportation.

          But could you please explain how substantially increasing taxes on gasoline “discourage[s] people from cheating and never charging with electricity from the grid?” I would think it’s exactly the other way around.

          1. Grumpy Engineer

            One problem that’s been seen with fleets of plug-in hybrids in the past is that many people never plugged them in. They simply added more gasoline and used the internal combustion engine to charge the battery. The result was increased CO2 emissions, and the environmental benefits were significantly reduced.

            To avoid these extra emissions, we’d want to encourage people to “plug in their cars” and charge their batteries with energy from the grid instead. An increased fuel tax would help motivate people to keep their batteries “topped off” so that they could travel as far as possible before the engine started burning costly fuel.

            And in terms of “the holy grail of control”, the plug-in hybrid offers drivers the most freedom. If you want to limit the amount of money you send to Big Oil, keep that car plugged in as much as possible. If you find government-imposed time-of-day restrictions on charging too restrictive, buy gasoline instead. If you buy a pure gasoline or pure electric vehicle, you get no choice.

          2. Amfortas the Hippie

            aye. i’m still leaning more and more towards a mule…or even a donkey or two.
            i grew up with a lot of donkeys, and while their famous stubbornness is a thing…they are friendly and can be encouraged to get moving, if you maintain the relationship(i always told my wife that i learned how to be an husband from all those donkey/sisters)
            not near as finicky as horses…they dig all the “trash trees” around here, a lot(cedar elm, especially).
            now that i dont really hafta go anywhere anymore, i’m seriously thinking about this method of transportation, now.(been threatening for decades)
            once or twice a month for a keg and cigs….via buckboard,lol.
            fits in with my overall elan, too.
            no drivers’ license,no insurance, no $ to big oil or big electricity…and little threat of dui’s, etc…out here, at least.
            range is limited by fodder on side of road, and availability of water.(all these little towns out here are 35-45 miles apart…which is apparently a”a day’s ride”(but that’s on horseback, not with a wagon)

            2. Lexx

              What if the mules/donkeys get drunk on fermented fruit? Are they fond of apples on the ground this time of year?

        3. Lex

          I would prefer to see the “hybrid” format of the Chevy Volt where the ICE never drives the wheels but only charges the battery. The limited rev band would allow maximum efficiency of the ICE. And the onboard charging means a smaller battery that’s always managed appropriately. With the onboard ICE there’s another option for battery temp conditioning as well. And there’s reduced engineering complexity in not having two different drivetrains.

          1. jsn

            Yes! Maximum regularity of ICE use means maximum life, minimum maintenance for that, the most complex/least durable component.

          2. Grumpy Engineer

            @Lex: Oh, yes. I very much agree. If we demoted the ICE to a “backup charging system” or “range extender” without any mechanical connection to the drive train, then we can simplify the design. The engine can be smaller and cheaper and always operated at the maximum efficiency point.

            Heck, I’d like to see miniature gas turbines used for the task. Gas turbines in cars were notoriously thirsty in the past, but that’s because they had to operate over a wide range of speeds and torques, and gas turbines don’t do that well. But for charger duty, they’d be operated at the peak efficiency point, which can be very good on a gas turbine. And there are two additional bonuses: [1] The entire liquid cooling system could be eliminated, so no more radiators, water pumps, etc. [2] Because of the higher RPMs, the generator attached to the turbine could be smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

            You really only need a 7HP engine to keep a car running indefinitely. Even at highway speeds.

            2. ex-PFC Chuck

              How would a GT heat the passenger cabin w/o the water/anti-freeze to transfer the heat? With air heated by passing it through a shroud that surrounds the engine? It’ll be a while yet before we don’t need to heat our cars in winter here in MN.

              1. Grumpy Engineer

                Oh, that’s a good point. The most efficient option would be to use an air-to-air heat exchanger on the GT exhaust, which is a variant of the “shroud that surrounds the engine” that you describe. But both of these solutions suffer the same technical weakness in that neither provides any heat at all when the engine isn’t running. And the whole point of the plug-in hybrid is to minimize engine operating time.

                For a fallback, you’d have to implement a heat pump (which is more efficient, but is complex and costly and works poorly in extreme cold) or resistive coils (which are less efficient, but are simple and cheap and very reliable). Of course, these are the same solutions that are being used in pure EVs today, which is likely one of the reasons they don’t sell as well in Minnesota as they do in California.

    2. The Rev Kev

      ’battery….yes those batteries generally can last for years past the warranty, but if you hit the long odds and have a battery failure outside warranty, it’s $$$$$’

      Got that one right. Was just reading earlier today about a Scottish couple who had to have their Tesla repaired after it broke down. Turns out that rain had damaged the battery and who honestly knew that it rains in Scotland? The bill that they got was for £17,374 (about $21,000) no joke-

      https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/edinburgh-couple-fume-handed-17k-27906242

    3. cnchal

      > . . . Buyers Aren’t Cooperating … When the subsidies are this high (>$7.5k . . .

      Dogs are not eating the dog food. And, that war has erupted unplanned by TBTB in the most inconvenient place and is watched by the world is not a confidence booster.

      Why not go hawg wild and slap on a $25K subsidy to move them? That will make it taste better.

    4. Ignacio

      And per the link provided on: Visualized: How Much Do EV Batteries Cost? Visual Capitalist (furzy)

      There is a monster called 2025 RAM 1500 Limited with a battery that by itself would suffice to provide battery necessities for 23 homes with average Spanish household consumption. A waste of resources.

      1. Lex

        The hybrid full sized trucks are more than a status symbol, though maybe not much more. Most US contractors work out of trucks and these have the ability to power a job site. US auto companies, especially the Ram truck brand, do however love to go overboard for the marketing department. I believe Ford’s system is 7 kWh. But the point of these systems is also that the ICE engine auto starts and functions as a generator to charge the battery as needed, so a massive battery isn’t necessarily needed.

    5. CaliDan

      So I’m a long time Jeeper––mountains, dirt roads, various road-blocking obstacles where I live––and feel obligated to wade through the muck, literally, as well as the muck at various Jeep forums from time to time. While plenty of thoughts there about EVs are silly or of the hyper-masculine variety, there is one point that keeps coming up that seems halfway reasonable, namely that gas taxes, especially here in CA, go toward road/road infrastructure maintenance. And if I’m not mistaken the number of cars remains the same in this future EV scenario so road maintenance needs will also remain the same. The accompanying unanswered question therefore is how will an increasing number of EV drivers, who don’t have to pay gas taxes, change that dynamic? Where will the money come from next? I can’t imagine a scenario where the burden is transferred to the maunfacturer/consumer (see: EV incentives). Or will the roads simply suffer in this the Lord’s era of privatization and land grabs?

      1. Duke of Prunes

        Here in IL, EVs license plates coat much more than gas cars to make up for the lack of gas taxes. Luckily, my plug-in hybrid counts as gas so no expensive license plate for me.

      2. juno mas

        The cost of maintenance on a freeway (Interstate) is driven mostly by the weight of the vehicles. Eighteen-wheelers damage the road the most and pay the most road tax.

    6. kemerd

      you got it cheap, here in Netherlands the price of charging on public stations is around €0.60 / kWh. I also have a plugin hybrid and I don’t bother to charge in winter as the range drops to half and gas which is €2/lt costs less.

      1. Jabura Basaidai

        your comment reminded me of ‘Cape Fear’ and the first scene with DeNiro’s character doing dips in his cell – also a local guy we all knew who was someone’s cousin and was in and out a few times till his ticket got punched – looked juiced – crazy tough – but only for so long

  6. Insouciant Iowan

    Neandrathals “as smart as Homo Sapiens.”
    Low bar. No one is elevated by downward comparisons

    2. The Rev Kev

      I would suggest that it is not a downwards comparison at all. They were just like us – people. The made tools, they used fire and cooked their own food, they had art, they communicated with each other, they thought tactically as shown in how they located their caves in defensible positions. In short, they not only survived but thrived for a very long time. There is so much that we do not know about our cousins and the more we study them, the more we learn their abilities and have to revise our opinions of them. As a people they may be gone but they still live on in our DNA and are now a permanent part of us.

  7. Will

    Interesting tidbit from Gilbert Doctorow’s latest. Russian talk show reporting that during a recent state visit by the emir of Qatar to Germany, Scholz was told that Qatari supplies of LNG to Europe are at risk because of support of Israel.

    if the Europeans persist in giving unqualified support to Israel for its pending land invasion of Gaza then the emirate will halt all further deliveries of natural gas to Europe

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/10/16/what-the-russians-are-saying-on-televised-talk-shows-about-the-israeli-hamas-war/

    2. The Rev Kev

      That would be terrible news for the EU if that happened. It’s not like they can just shrug their shoulders and start making phone calls to see who else has some spare LNG. This might suggest that some countries like Qatar are waiting to see if the Israelis actually go in to take over Gaza and whether certain countries will fully back the Israelis doing this instead of working for peace. Qatar may not be the only country planning to take action if this invasion happens.

      1. Reply

        Germany may have time to consider recriminations over its energy policy. That could include time to ponder model changes for black or grey swans and over-reliance on virtuous desires. The triumph of hope over experience, almost autocorrected to hope over expedience, struggles on. Winter beckons.

        1. JohnA

          Putin recently claimed that one of the nordstream pipelines was intact and could pump gas to Germany. Time for Schulz to grow a pair, sack Baerbock and make nice with Russia again. Especially now Ukraine is out of the headlines.

          1. Feral Finster

            Don’t kid yourself. Scholz’s American master would never allow it, and neither he nor Master care in the least whether Germans freeze, starve or lose their jobs.

            1. nippersdad

              As with Zelenski, does he too have a palazzo in Italy? Is that even far enough away to avert the crowds with torches? At some point he needs to face reality, if only for self preservation.

        1. Ignacio

          One reply to that tweet said that Jeremy Corbyn is calling for continuous demonstrations to stop the massacre in Gaza. And then Craig Murray detained because Anti Terrorism Act? Go and put likes on those tweets pronto! I regret to see how UK politics and MSM have been degraded to such BS.

      2. ilsm

        dunk….. carpetbaggers having a rock concert outside the barbed wire fence of their concentration camp…..

  8. .Tom

    I don’t get the FT but the headline “Hamas destroyed their Zionist utopia. What would it take for Jews to return?” is very interesting. I hadn’t thought if Israel as a utopia before. Utopia projects, from the Soviet Union to Jonestown, have a history and now I want to understand their common features.

      1. flora

        Jim Jones, and Herr Mustache, and Shtallin were zealots. Genocide was for them an acceptable solution to political challenges to their rule.

    2. Carolinian

      It was a “land without people” full of “milk and honey” and happy socialist Kibbutzers “making the desert bloom.” Or so we were told back in the day. There was even an epic Hollywood movie about it starring Paul Newman. In their latest talk Walter Kirn–once a Mormon according to Wiki–tells Taibbi that he is shocked and horrified by the Hamas attack on a country that he was always told was about the Holocaust–in other words the Otto Preminger version.

      So what the FT is saying is how can we roll things back to the 1960s when most people –and certainly yours truly–had never heard of the Palestinians. I don’t think we can.

      1. .Tom

        We shut off that episode of America This Week after 25 minutes. It was embarrassing. I’m curious to see how Taibbi responds to the oceans of negative comments on the corresponding Substack page.

        1. lyman alpha blob

          While I don’t necessarily agree with everything Kirn said, I do think he did a good job admitting and explaining his own personal bias. They did both say they were reluctant to discuss the issue at all, and I certainly wouldn’t have minded if they gave it a pass.

          Just took a peek at the comments. It reminded me why I stopped reading comments about the I/P issue years ago. Maybe it’s the NC moderators whacking the really nasty stuff, but I’d link to think NC commenters are just better behaved than your average internet denizens. Again, comment section here feels like an oasis of sanity, especially on this issue.

          I did listen to all of that “America This Week” though. You should listen to the end of it – the literary discussion was again quite good and has fast become my favorite part of their podcast.

    4. DJ Forestree

      (Reply to .Tom at 8:54 am):
      I may suggest watching “Metropolis” (1927), for a classic take on utopias. A German perspective turned film at a crucial time in history. The line between utopia and dystopia can be often blurred.

    1. Wukchumni

      How could hackers do their thing without crypto?

      ‘Ok, here’s the deal, if you ever want to use that computer system of yours again, leave $30 million in Benjamins in a steamer trunk under the 3rd park bench on left just outside the Central Park Zoo, are we clear on this?!’

        3. Jabura Basaidai

          gift cards strictly penny ante nickel and dime grift – no intimate knowledge of crypto but from what i’ve read much more flexible and utility for large amounts – different from time i’m familiar with when it was all pagers and pay phones –

  10. ChrisFromGA

    Bestow upon me knowledge
    Wizard Sam, all-knowing, all-wise
    I want to rule this cryptoverse
    Make sweet the accounting, now defiled

    Dethrone the evil SEC’s iron fists
    In velvet gloves of sin
    Parade the grey-robed accountants
    The vestal virgins wheel the Skilling’s in

    Let the ceremony consecrate the common-law marriage
    Let me be the protégé of seven balance sheets
    Give me alchemy, give me wizardry
    Give me sorcery, nusmismatics
    Electricity, magic if you please
    Master all of these, bring the lender to his knees

    I master seven balance sheets
    I master seven balance sheets
    I master seven balance sheets
    I master seven balance sheets

    Possessed with hellish torment (possessed with hellish torment)
    I master balance sheet five (I master balance sheet five)
    Stock in the abyss lord (stock in the abyss lord)
    Only one will stay alive (only one will stay alive)
    He who lives by the bezzle (he who lives by the bezzle)
    Will surely also die (will surely also die)
    He who lives in sin (he who lives in sin)
    Will surely live the lie

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkXAAHDIN7U

    1. Wukchumni

      Bravo!

      Caroline, you send me
      I know you send me
      Darling, you’ll send me up
      Honest, you do, honest, you do
      Honest, you do, whoa

      You kill me
      I know you, you, you are killing me
      Darling, you, you, you, you are killing me
      Honest, you do

      At first I thought it was all about expropriation
      But, woo, it’s lasted so long
      Now I find myself wanting
      To be playing League of Legends @ home, whoa

      You, you, you, you send me
      I know you send me
      I know you’ll send me up
      Honest you do

      Whoa-oh-oh, whenever I’m doing a deal with Thai prostitutes
      I know, I know, I know, especially when the deal looks bullet proof
      Mm hmm, mmm hmm, dishonesty, I do, dishonesty, I do
      Whoa-oh-oh, I know-oh-oh-oh

      I know, I know, I know, when you scold me
      Whoa, whenever you diss me
      Mm hmm, mm hmm, honest you do

      At first I thought it was all about expropriation
      But, woo, it’s lasted so long
      Now I find myself wanting
      To be playing League of Legends @ home, whoa

      I know, I know, I know you send me
      I know you send me
      Whoa, you, you, you, you’ll send me to prison
      Honest you do

      You Send Me, by Sam Cooke

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrwfB4aAZZc

  11. Wukchumni

    Biden going to the Middle East & Israel has a similarity to the Shah arriving in the USA on October 22, 1979, albeit in reverse…

    …you can practically feel the turn of events to come

        1. Wukchumni

          50 years ago I was 11 when the oil embargo hit, and the first of 2 gas lines in the 70’s combined with the price rising from around 35¢ early in the decade to 85¢ per gallon by 1979.

          $10 or $20 per gallon gas could be a real downer for brick & mortar visitations, but just buy everything online and learn to cope.

          Ask not what your GDP can do for you, ask what you can do for your GDP~

          1. jefemt

            Garden seeds and supplies for putting food by futures… not a spec of digital currency
            (digicur?)

            1. Reply

              Does Gov. Whitmer allow seeds now? Or do Yoopers have to trek to Minnesota or, gasp, Canada to stock up?
              Asking for a friend. /s

          2. SocalJimObjects

            Everything? Luxury goods have not done well. Rolex prices have come down a lot, and even LVMH is struggling. Regular customers? They keep chugging. Same old religion, don’t need a new one.

            1. SocalJimObjects

              Analaysis from Wolf, https://wolfstreet.com/2023/10/17/retail-sales-drunken-sailors-guzzling-directly-from-punch-bowl-powell-are-you-looking-splurging-online-at-restaurants-auto-dealers-yolo/

              “Retail sales outran inflation in goods by a wide margin. Retailers sell goods, and inflation has shifted from goods (from retailers) to services that retailers don’t sell, and the prices of many goods that retailers sell have dropped. The CPI for durable goods has dropped 2.2% year-over-year. The CPI for nondurable goods rose 3.2% year-over-year. Combined, total goods inflation rose by 1.5% year-over-year, less than half the year-over-year increase of retail sales of 3.8% (my discussion of CPI inflation, including lots of charts, is here).”

    2. pjay

      Israel’s response has already stopped (or slowed) the Saudi “normalization” and brought Islamic states together in condemnation. A question I have not seen discussed much: what will be the effect on the “moderate” Islamic militants we have been supporting in Syria, and which tend to be hanging out in the vicinity of our undermanned military bases? The same question applies to those controlled by Turkey.

      1. TimH

        Islamic countries: the enemy of our enemies is also Israel.

        EU is making a mistake sancifying Israel, particularly since Netanyahu will initiate terrible actions to save his position.

        1. Feral Finster

          The EU and its members are lackeys, glorified puppets.

          The comedy is when American conservatives insist that European nations are not sufficiently all-in for Israel. As to what more they could do to demonstrate their slavishness? I can’t seem to get an answer, but they just know.

      2. hk

        I am fairly positive that some Hamas factions sent militants to Syria as part of the attempt to topple Assad and maybe they are still there. I think US troops and contractors in Syria should really watch their backs, at least.

        1. NotTimothyGeithner

          My theory has always been that the Saudis send the hot heads away with religious indoctrination before they are exposed to ideas like unionizing, but theyve been keeping them away from Western targets, hence Libya, Syria, and Iraq/ISIS.

          It wouldn’t take much for the Wahaabiists to change up their preaching.

      3. The Rev Kev

        I saw a video recently of Muslim Chechen fighters in the Ukraine and let me tell you, they were not happy that Zelensky fully backed Israel in this fight.

  12. Benny Profane

    “Was Sam a pimp of sorts?”

    Well, with Epstein gone, there was a vacuum to fill. Question is, who’s the pimp today?

  13. The Rev Kev

    ‘Gregg Carlstrom
    @glcarlstrom
    “In Riyadh, the Saudi ruler kept Blinken waiting several hours for a meeting presumed to happen in the evening but which the crown prince only showed up for the next morning.”

    I wonder when he left if he had to lug his own baggage through customs like von der Leyen had to when leaving China not that long ago. When he went to Tel Aviv the other day, one of the first things that he said was ‘I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State but also as a Jew.’ And with that statement he eliminated himself – and the US as a consequence – as an honest broker for this conflict. (Picard facepalm)

    2. NotTimothyGeithner

      Interesting. Not that Blinken is much of an intellect, but I’ll note JFK’s line was “who happens to also be a Catholic.”

      The Plantation watches the US closely, not to mention diplomatic language. Regardless of what passes for thoughts passing through Blinken’s head (he’s a confidant of Biden), you can bet the Saudis are erring on the side of Blinken sending a message.

      1. Old Sovietologist

        The US is doing everything to put out the fire in the Middle East. Pressure, bribery, blackmail, persuasion. It’s working with both Arab countries and Israel to combat Israel’s desire to burn Gaza.

        Iranian media has reported that $10 billion of Iranian assets that had been frozen in Iraq have suddenly been released. The price the US has paid to keep Hezbollah out of the conflict? A nice win for Iran there.

        The US administration needs to keep a lid on things in the Middle East and to be fair its various forms of diplomacy seem to be working.

        Biden going to the polls under the slogan of the great Middle East Peacemaker is looking good so far.

        1. nippersdad

          IIRC, Hezbollah is not controlled by Iran, merely supported by them as with other groups that Soleimani used to work with prior to his assassination. It might not be in Irans interest to corral them too tightly lest they turn their attentions on them. They might not take to the idea that Iran has been bought off by the Great Satan.

        2. ChrisFromGA

          I think your interpretation is correct, but there is a bigger problem insofar as 1 Million refugees with nowhere to go and nobody willing to take them.

          Bribery only goes so far, if what you’re willing to offer as a bribe has little value. All the “printer go brrrr!” in the world won’t grow the food, create empty land, governance, and shelter needed to house 1M traumatized people. Any country that takes them needs more than “printer go brrrr!” they need essentially laws of physics to change.

          1. Kouros

            1 million? So, if 1 million remains in S Gaza and Hamas, among them, fights and rotates troops against the invading Israelis in N Gaza, what then?

  14. DJG, Reality Czar

    “Missing Law of Nature.” Well, maybe. I went to the underlying main article, where I find this interesting assertion:

    “Our universe is not that imaginary universe: It produces entities that do not take the most direct paths to their highest entropy states.”

    Or, to paraphrase Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, it’s that darn swerve that he and Epicurus posited to understand free will.

    The underlying main article, though, gets into a concept called “functional information” to explain the drive toward evolution. I’m skeptical. Despite all of the fancy notation, with subscripts!, I find that dragging in concepts from the world of computers is not likely to pan out. A computer is a machine, not a model of the Cosmos. I am reminded of how the concept of binary, which is derived mainly from computing, and wasn’t even used in normal conversations twenty years ago, is now all the rage.

    “Functional information”? I will ask the scientists here to assess the assertions:

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120

    1. JP

      I really don’t think the missing law is missing. The law is entropy but it doesn’t take a genius to see a counterflow towards increasing complexity. Someone just needed to wrap it in jargon and say look at me.

  15. The Rev Kev

    ‘Mark Hirst
    @Documark
    Earlier today @CraigMurrayOrg
    was detained, returning from Iceland, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
    He was there meeting other #FreeAssangeNOW activists and Wikileaks.
    He was also questioned about his attendance at a #Palestinian protest outside the Icelandic Parliament.’

    It is remarkable how so little dissent is tolerated by our leaders these days. Even the possibility of dissent is not to be allowed so three Arabic TV hosts were taken off the air in the US while in the UK six reporters are being investigated as they support the Palestinians. And look at what happened to those dissenting Harvard students. This dissent intolerance really took off after Russia went into the Ukraine but now that Israel is involved it is going into hyperdrive. They really are afraid of the truth getting out and I would not be surprised to see loud calls for major censorship of social media across the world soon. I say the world because not only will it happen in the Collective West but the Collective West will also demand that all Global Majority countries do the same as well.

    1. Allourproblemsstemfrom2008

      “This dissent intolerance really took off after Russia went into the Ukraine”

      Started in 2016, really took off in 2020.

      1. Cassandra

        “This dissent intolerance really took off after Russia went into the Ukraine”

        “Started in 2016, really took off in 2020.”

        Julian Assange would have a few comments about that…

      2. Vandemonian

        Maybe started a bit before that.

        Why did WTC Building 7 collapse the way it did (and who were those dancing Israelis)? Whatever happened to Saddam’s WMDs? What was Oliver North up to in Nicaragua? Why did Dag Hammarskold’s plane fall out of the sky? What happened to MLK? What caused that “magic bullet” to behave so erratically during the Dallas motorcade?

        So many curious things that only “conspiracy theorist” would dare to talk about…

    2. nippersdad

      That article about the polling on how happy people are with their governance must be hitting home. Their democracy is endangered, so all means must be used to protect themselves from the real thing.

  16. The Rev Kev

    “Milanese friar wrote about North America 150 years before Columbus”

    Maybe Columbus is smarter than we realize. There must have been a lot of sailor’s scuttlebutt around the taverns of the Mediterranean about lands that sailors had visited decades ago. Columbus, being a sailor, would have heard all these stories. And there would have been talk also of the Viking colony set up in these cold lands in the north and what it would have been like living there, especially in the winter. So what did Columbus do? He went there but by a much more southerly approach so that he was in the warmer climes and not the frozen northerly ones. In fact, he went to the Caribbean before there was even a tourist to be seen. Smart man.

  17. Feral Finster

    The ongoing speakership fiasco shows that, contrary to Team D mythology, Team R is not The Borg or a bunch of fascists mindlessly goose-stepping to whatever Trump orders them to support.

    Otherwise, Trump could simply give the word “The Speaker Of The House Shall Be Mickey Mouse!” and Team R would intone in unison “So Let It Be Done, So Let It Be Written!“

  18. Acacia

    BTC may be hanging in because there are rumors a Spot ETF will be approved.

    It hasn’t thus far, tho.

    More pertinently, some EV stonks have taken a beating, but if investors are selling those, what are they buying?

  19. Alice X

    Gaza has no water, food or fuel, because the Israelis has cut them off. The US has vetoed a Russian Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. Biden is traveling to Israel. How long will the world permit this?

    1. Acacia

      Yeah, a Biden visit now almost seems like a provocation.

      I keep picturing him exiting Air Force One on the runway, and then the whole plane gets taken out by a Stinger that was supposed to be used in the Ukraine, with a giant cartoon explosion that blows away the rolling staircase…

      …leaving Ole Joe hanging there in the air for a moment, aviator shades blown away, eyes bugged out like Wile E. Coyote

      1. nippersdad

        He needs to take advice from Hillary. She has had a lot of experience in landing under fire and may have some good tips for him.

    2. Feral Finster

      How long will the world permit this?

      As long as might makes right. Believe me, I am not crowing.

        1. NotTimothyGeithner

          Logistics and distance still matter. There is a reason they are in the Mediterranean versus the Persian Gulf. Didn’t we just empty a base in Kuwait too? The Millennium games were based around a Persian Gulf conflict. Who is the US fighting? Also, don’t we have proper airbases? The second carrier is there to look cool and tough. It might be because the don’t trust local contractors, and we simply don’t have the troops to run bases the way we should.

          Moving into Syria begins WW3. There isn’t much for the carriers to do. Egypt and Turkey aren’t invading. They might be there to keep Hezbollah form fighting, knowing full well what the US does to civilians.

          1. ilsm

            The USN carriers an operate in the east Med, because the USAF is at a Turk base in Adana! But the F-16’s (probably have TDY F-22 and F-15 and a bunch of aerial refuelers) can’t handle hypersonic attack.

            Two carriers are good for about 40 attack sorties a day until the mag catapult on Gerry Ford fizzles…… I can point how little carrier contribute because I retired from USAF a couple of decades ago.

            The Ike may last a bit longer with older gear.

            The USN has submarines and targets…..

  20. Wukchumni

    I’d hitched up the 236 horses on the covered wagon and simultaneously yelled Giddyup! as I turned the ignition key in a clockwise manner, then off I went into the Big Smoke for vittles & sundries, and as I was en route to Visalia, about 15 fire engines-tenders and the like were in hot pursuit in the opposite direction, where in tarnation was the conflagration?

    The Sycamore Fire was discovered in Sequoia National Park, near the Ash Mountain Helibase and the Ash Mountain Entrance Station, on the afternoon of October 16. The fire spread uphill through grass and brushy fuels. Tulare County Fire and CALFIRE aided NPS resources in initial attack. Forward progress on the fire was stopped at approximately 25 acres. The fire currently poses no threats to NPS infrastructure or housing or to the adjacent community of Three Rivers. 1 crew and 2 engines will staff the fire overnight. Night resources will reinforce containment lines, secure any threats to control lines, and begin mop up.

    https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident-information/caknp-sycamore-fire

    1. Lexx

      We vacationed late and after all the news of wildfires since I last drove across the West, I was concerned it would be all burned up and a hellscape. We actually saw one old burn in Oregon on our way up to Sisters and one controlled burn near our RV park. The only active wildfire was just north of us on the Oregon coast – the Anvil fire. Never saw or smelled it but read at that time that it was less than 20% contained. Saw lots of officers type guys in the same restaurant with us, since it was one of the few open in Gold Beach. Clean, spiffy in their uniforms and seemed genuinely glad to be there.

      1. Wukchumni

        A little over 300k acres burnt in wildfires in Cali this year so far, versus 43 million acres in Canada.

  21. antidlc

    Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid

    A team of scientists is proposing a new explanation for some cases of long Covid, based on their findings that serotonin levels were lower in people with the complex condition.

    Oh, great. Let’s just prescribe more SSRis.

    –antidlc (not a fan of SSRIs — side effects and discontinuation syndrome)

    1. playon

      I had the same reaction and I am extremely skeptical that the answer to long COVID is more SSRIs. I tend to think that this is about control more than it is about some kind of “cure”. It seems patently obvious that prescribing more Prozac etc could not possibly undo the damage COVID-19 does to the body.

  22. TroyIA

    10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse

    I’m so old I remember when the goal was to keep the global temperature increase under 1.5 degrees

    El Nino Fizzles. Planet Earth Sizzles. Why?

    The September global temperature anomaly leaped to more than +1.7°C relative to the 1880-1920 mean (Fig. 1). Public discussion has focused on the remarkable magnitude of this monthly anomaly, which exceeds the prior warmest September in the period of instrumental data by about +0.5°C; we will comment on this extreme September anomaly below. However, the average anomaly of the past 4 months (+0.44°C relative to the same months in 2015, the origin year of the 2015-16 El Nino) is probably more important. If this relative anomaly is maintained through this El Nino (through Northern Hemisphere 2024 spring) the peak 12-month mean global warming will reach +1.6-1.7°C relative to 1880-1920. Decline of global temperature following an El Nino peak is 0.2-0.3°C. Thus, if this El Nino peak is as high as we project it will be, global temperature will oscillate about the yellow region in Fig. 2. The 1.5°C global warming level will have been reached, for all practical purposes. There will be no need to ruminate for 20 years about whether the 1.5°C level has been reached, as IPCC proposes. On the contrary, Earth’s enormous energy imbalance (references 8, 13, 14 below) assures that global temperature will be rising still higher for the foreseeable future.

    1. Alice X

      >10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse

      At 11k words it is a long read and I’m only halfway through.

      The #1 reason given is overshoot. We’re using 175% of the planets yearly resource capability. A lot stems from that and it is not good.

      I have to go catch a bus. I’ll be back.

      1. lyman alpha blob

        I was glad to see that article hit the nail squarely on the head as to the #1 problem being overpopulation.

        It isn’t burning fossils fuels per se that’s a problem – it’s a few billion people all doing it at once.

        Hopefully human beings will turn out to be collectively smarter than bacteria in a petri dish, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

        2. pell grant kid

          Stopped reading the article for this exact reason — the problem has never been overpopulation since per capita use of resources is obviously determined by the economic system in which these subjects exist (how can a person write 11,000 words on the subject without understanding that truism?). The fallacy is identical to the Hobbesian or libertarian essentialization of material conditions to ‘human nature.’ It’s funny that he put overpopulation as the top problem and just rebranded it to something more specific to try and squeeze some novelty out of it though.

          Recommended reading is Marx’s footnotes pertaining to Malthus in the first volume of Capital. They’re entertaining with the obvious contempt he has for the stupid concept of overpopulation and also still relevant since the concept hasn’t evolved in the slightest in the past two centuries (in spite of the global population growing since then, against all Malthusian odds).

          1. Jeremy Grimm

            You do need to read the rest of the article, and make some allowance for the difficulties in describing interactions between a large number of interrelated, interconnected problems. What you say in your comment is correct. There is enough food and fresh water — today — to feed and quench the almost 8 billion humans … were the food and fresh water made available to all according to their need. The per capita use of resources is obviously strongly influenced by the economic system. However the present situation of multi-crisis — also a consequence of the economic system — changes things. The economic system to blame for all these problems is also to blame for the broad declines in the amounts of key resources — that remain; the rapid extinction of those remaining resources including resources critical to agriculture and fresh water production and distribution fair or otherwise; and the epochal increases in the greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere which are altering the climate to conditions inimical to Industrial agriculture and driving the shifting patterns of rain. There may be adequate food and water for per capita sufficiency — today — and perhaps enough other resources for all to enjoy a good life, or at least a better life, but what is true today will be very different within a few decades, perhaps as soon within this decade.

      2. Alice X

        I’m back. I picked up a library book. I started to read it in July but couldn’t really until I got my eyes fixed in August. I’m looking forward to it with some trepidation, it should be really depressing.

        Cobalt Red – This is a NYT review:

        How Is Your Phone Powered? Problematically.

        Siddharth Kara’s “Cobalt Red” takes a deep dive into the horrors of mining the valuable mineral — and the many who benefit from others’ suffering.

    2. Jabura Basaidai

      i remember the first Earth Day because was first year i could vote, just turned 21 – congressional elections that year – interesting this from TIA is the only post about the obvious – whistling past the graveyard – and #11 The Curve Ball – a CME equal to or greater than the Carrington Event hits earth – could get very interesting – or how about one of those ancient viruses written about in one of the links yesterday cutting loose as the permafrost melts which of course is tied to the loss of ice and the albedo effect in the artic – the comments about EV’s should consider #2 & 3 – Jevons Paradox has been pointed out a few times in comments – the extractive policies of capitalism insures that #4 is right on schedule – #5-6-7 are guaranteed with agribusiness also driven by capitalism – #8 is so obvious if you are old enough to remember taking a drive in the country when a kid and the front of the car and windshield covered by dead insects – where are the pollywog ponds anymore – slaughter of small critters by the side of the road – etc., etc., etc., – #8 has been the boogeyman to the wealthier nations for 10-15 years and in the news used as a political football – #10 DUH!! ya think?? for me this was the most important link today – i know the other threads have their importance and place, but this is what rattles me the most, with the exception of the possibility of nuclear warfare – considering to change is dependent on our species, well an ice cube has a better chance in hell – technology ain’t going to save us – and here we are –

      1. Alice X

        #10 – the authors state that Ukraine has huge oil and gas resources and Russia wants to take them over.

        I think the authors are way out over their skis on that one.

  23. Mikel

    Looking at the various reports from Palestine. Have to wonder if what is being discussed in media as “imminent” destruction or invasion isn’t already happening in many ways.

    It wouldn’t be the first time a narrative revolved around something that’s happening like it hasn’t happened yet.

  24. Lex

    I’m interested by OldSovietologist’s take above that US diplomacy is working. I’m not ready to disagree with it yet. Clearly the US is trying to keep a lid on things, though I suspect less to be a diplomatic peacemaker and more because the US cannot handle this escalating while balancing its unwavering support for Israel. We’re only a little over a week in and the US is already running huge resupply ops. There are too many vulnerable US forward bases in the region and globally to protect.

    But things aren’t working very well. The Sinai Plan was nixed by Egypt. The Rafah humanitarian convoy was nixed by Israel. Public opinion in Europe is all wrong. Too many national leaders are talking about the unworkable two state solution. Netanyahu can’t agree to that, but he’a already made promises he almost certainly can’t keep. Israeli society has not galvanized behind him.

    Blinken gets left waiting by the Saudis. Biden wasn’t going to go, but after a six hour meeting between Netanyahu and Blinken he’s on a plane. My take is that the US is desperately trying to put a lid on this so it doesn’t get dragged into a war for Israel that it likely loses. The flip side to campaigning on bringing peace to the Middle East is having to campaign on how US bases in Syria and Iraq were overrun with significant casualties.

    Biden’s admin is playing a bad hand and they’re terrible players. Bluffing might not cut it this time.

      1. .human

        Whatever Biden accomplishes, short of all out war. he will be hailed as a hero with a likely bump in the polls. Nobel prize anyone?

        1. albrt

          I’m sorry monsieur, but “short of all out war” is no longer on the menu.

          Would you like to try the “entire middle east turned into radioactive glass” with a side of sunken aircraft carriers?

      2. Acacia

        I think somebody on the forum here yesterday pointed out that the NYT “Gaza operation delayed due to bad weather” story was nonsense, and that the weather there was actually very clear. Implication: some excuses were being made to buy time for behind the scenes negotiations.

      3. Lex

        That’s the problem. Biden and Netanyahu are trapped in the same bind but don’t have the same way out. The way out for either is a disaster for the other.

    2. NotTimothyGeithner

      The White House learned the old Arab vassals aren’t jumping anymore. The other side is the domestic polling. Basically half of millennials and Gen z support Palestine. Biden can only stand out lose voters over this and his other betrayals especially with genocide in the cards. Until then, he was perfectly content to kill some brown people.

      Biden reacted like be usually does and found events had moved beyond him. To be fair, he may even be learning about the open air prison camp in Gaza for the first time much less the power structure of the West Bank. His description of Hezbollah is on a level I would expect from Shrub.

      Biden may be trying to backtrack now, but he won’t want to look like he is losing face as half his potential electorate supports Israel. Do they support genocide? I don’t know, but Biden won’t be blunt and won’t restrain Netanyahu. Bibi thinks of little of Biden he put him on the he spot to visit Israel. Biden wants to be portrayed as a tough guy.

      His other problem is his team is composed of the dimwitted. As Rev Kev noted, Blinken made sure he can’t be seen as an arbiter. “I didn’t know language mattered in diplomacy” won’t help his case either. Not that the general constitutes his team, but mold? A functional White House would have told the general he no longer serves at the pleasure of the president. If the troops have a discipline problem, what has the general been doing? Patton thought the army in North Africa had a discipline problem. He replaced the officers.

    3. nippersdad

      Bluffing won’t cut it this time. The Arab states cannot back down lest they lose credibility with their own populations. I also wonder what those in the various militias are going to do; there is no real control that one can take over such as AQ or ISIS.

      Those bases are a problem, but an even larger one would be those battle attack groups just offshore. It wouldn’t take all that many Hezbollah precision guided munitions to make a statement, and short of an invasion there would be no way to stop them. Biden et al are definitely their own enemies in the sense that they have given every opportunity to those who will be engaging in asymmetric warfare at a time when we are stretched far too thin.

    4. Aurelien

      I think that US diplomacy is “working” to the extent that that is actually feasible, which is not much. The US does not want a conflict, which will rapidly spin out of anyone’s control, with results that are impossible to foresee.
      You can consider it as an engineering problem if you like: a build-up of pressure that needs to be bled off through valves, but not all valves are equal and not everybody has access to them. The US has no influence over Hamas, and has pretty much declined to have any interest over Iran, and through them Hezbollah. It has limited influence over Israel, but less than the influence of domestic politics in Israel and in the US. It has some influence over Saudi Arabia, but it’s hard to see how that could be used for de-escalation, and with whom. Threats are not likely to be productive, not least because the military power to back them up is not there. So they are out of options, which is what a policy of confrontation and bullying eventually results in. This is a crisis that nobody controls.

  25. Carolinian

    Tons of links today. Thanks.

    Just a tidbit on the Alaskan plane crash with Hale Boggs: Cokie Roberts is his daughter. When she married Steve Roberts LBJ was at her wedding. On NPR she used to talk about “inside the Beltway” all the time and she certainly was that. Funny how nobody says “inside the Beltway” any more. Are we all inside the Beltway whether we want to be or not?

    1. GramSci

      These days, Inside the Beltway is just a puppet show. When the music stops, it will be like Halloween.

  26. Jason Boxman

    The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

    This was just occurring to me last night, actually; this is an opportunity to completely expel everyone from Gaza. I don’t know where you put several million people, but if the humanitarian situation is dire enough, maybe getting people out of Gaza becomes the only remaining option. Never mind the fact that setting up shelter for a million people, just dealing with sanitation alone, is probably impossible. I’m not sure there’s any good ending to any of this.

    1. nippersdad

      They are hoping to move the Gaza “refugee camp” over into the Sinai, but Egypt is onto them. Wait for it; the new “Palestinian two state solution” is going to be in the Sinai peninsula.

    2. NotTimothyGeithner

      I kind of dismiss 48 as a driving force as people want a semblance of normalcy and to move on. Gaza was put under siege in 2007. No US President or Euro has given a flying eff in all that time. Some are retreating into pleas for are tow state solution that was a joke in the 90’s. This isn’t about the desecration of the mosque as much as a cruel and inhumane prison having a break out by the dangerous prisoners who were supported by the guards to keep Gaza separate from the West Bank and the International community.

      This isn’t a single event that happened in 2007 but an ongoing crime. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt have already taken in refugees from US aggression in the region. At one point, Norway had more Iraqi refugees than the US. Iraq was destroyed. The Likudniks and the US are running out of places to ship refugees. The Palestinian refugees from 48 were expelled from Jordan and sent to Lebanon. How did that work out?

      Much of the argument for Obama over Hillary was the need to break with the past to present a new America somewhat reformed so it could deal with these events. Obama decided to knock over regimes. Biden decided he needed to look tough and demand concessions from Iran because Trump broke the nuclear deal. Even if the US could restrain Israel (the only real option), Biden is the wrong person at the wrong time.

      There is no leadership with the credibility because the haven’t been banking accomplishments (you don’t run out of political power, you earn it) that can say what needs to be said which is ethnostates are deranged and a one state solution is required with a major New Deal project. China is too distant.

      1. The Rev Kev

        To add to that, I think that Biden has said that the US will not accept any Palestinian refugees which means the he thinks that they can all be off-loaded to other countries to deal with.

  27. britzklieg

    27 years in Manhattan and, personally, I took a big step toward happiness when I stopped reading The New Yorker…

    1. digi_owl

      Heh, yeah i glanced at the top of that and saw the punchline being to manage oneself like a firm. Nope, not having that.

      Happiness may be one of them vague words that each of such read different things in to, but a start may well be to find contentedness. but that will perhaps require the knowledge that one’s expenses can be handled both in the present and in the foreseeable future.

      1. wol

        p.s.– Wish I could find an article I read in the Village Voice (?) whilst living in Soho in the 80’s, ‘Why I Hate the Village Voice.’ IIRC, during a staff meeting about violence in Nicaragua, it devolved into a heated argument about the availability of dental dams for Nicaraguan prostitutes.

    2. Alice X

      It has become somewhat routine by the left, at least, to describe Israeli actions as apartheid. Chomsky says it is actually much worse. In apartheid S. Africa the program was the subjugation of the majority population, but not their elimination. They were the workers and thus required. In Israel the general intent is to eliminate the Palestinians. They could be killed outright but that wouldn’t look good, so they are treated so badly that, the hope is, they will just leave. Netanyahu recently held up a map of Israel that showed no Palestinian land at all. That is the intent, so maybe they are trying to expedite things now no matter how it looks. Why do I italicize Israel? It is Palestine.

    3. Lexx

      I’m with Chris, I’m more concerned about this war than any I’ve read reported in decades anywhere in the world. Netanyahu and his cabinet are insane.

      1. thump

        Most of my examples are from the Twitter, which I don’t look at anymore* now that you have to register, of disparaging comments from various immunologists, although most did not mention him by name so as to avoid getting attacked by his followers. I recall many describing his behavior more as a cult leader than as an honest participant in debates. I recall a comment, either from or re-tweeted by @wanderer_jasnah, that none of his theories had been shown to be true. An example of this is that subsequent Covid infections will be more severe because previous infections had made the immune system more susceptible. In particular, I recall a video of Danny Altman, discussing any long-term damage to the immune system from Covid infections, saying “We don’t see it. It’s not a thing.” And on a personal level, I think his personal attack on Akiko Iwasaki, accusing her of “sophistry” (as I recall), was a breaking point for me.

        *I do click through to the Twitter links posted here, since you are allowed to see an individual post if you have the link.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          Sorry, I see a lot of orthodoxy enforcement on Twitter, so it is projection to accuse someone not orthodox who is not an anti-vaxxer as a cult leader. I read Leonardi and that’s bogus.

          That kind of name-calling is an admission they can’t rebut him on the merits.

          And people are getting sicker over time. Look at the explosion in RSV. They try to explain it with “immunity debt” which is bogus.

          Covid mutated to not attack ACE receptors so much so victims no longer get that horrible pneumonia that wound up being fatal. The mutation obscured the impact of multiple Covid infections within variants of the same propensity towards very severe outcomes.

          And there is tons of evidence of immune system damage, starting with the marked increase in obscure cancers and the rise in cancers that are treated with immunosuppressive drugs. IM Doc and the extended circle of internal medicine doctor and other specialists at his old med school take Leonardi very seriously and depict him as early and right. This was the latest sighting along these lines by IM Doc but he and his colleagues have provided plenty of others of a big uptick in formerly very rare cancers:

          Melanoma, lymphoma, leukemia, and renal cell interestingly is the exact list of cancer types in which immune surveillance plays a critical role. These are all the tumors who so far have had the most success with immunotherapy.

          This has been known for a very long time. This is true of melanoma in particular. If you recall, and it is certainly cobweb territory, this is the exact scandal that torpedoed a researcher and brought down the entire Univerity of Oklahoma in 2000. Michael McGee was working on vaccine research for melanoma. The whistleblower in that case shared Time Magazine Person of the Year if I recall with the whistleblower from Enron. At a minimum they were front cover fodder for months. McGee was onto something , he just was egregiously cheating and risking people’s lives. Sound familiar?

          The colorectal situation he describes is what is now being referred to as turbo cancer. Interestingly, I thought I was not seeing enough to make that jump. It has seemed there has been an overall slight increase in cancer rates but nothing to write about. Unlike the blood clots, PE, strokes and heart issues. That unfortunately is obviously on the rise. I have been seeing a bit more cancer than usual, but nothing dramatic. and nothing like this turbo met issue.

          Now September has happened. TWICE this month, patients came in with vague abd pain and tenderness and eventually found to have massive Mets in their entire body everywhere. Very very small Mets by the thousands everywhere. Perspective….I have seen this before. Almost all untreated cancer patients will do this eventually. However, this is NOT how they present usually. Cancers are found on screening. Or incidentally or they cause pain, etc. They are found as solo lesions the vast majority of the time. They do not often “show up” this far advanced. It is a sign of massive and rapid failure of immune surveillance.

          As an internist for 30 years, I have had this PRESENTATION precisely 6 times. The last of these being in 2015. 3 ovarian CA, 1 colorectal CA, 1 pancreas CA, 1 primary peritoneal CA. That is it.

          And now 2 in September. Workups not complete so I do not know the source. And that is just it with these. You cannot know the source from anatomy and imaging – they are everywhere. Modern medicine can tell with tissue biopsy called brown staining. But it takes a while to get the path back. And it really does not matter much – this is assuredly terminal.

          in these patients, one had 6 vaccines and Five Covid infections. The other had 6 vaccines and 4 Covid infections. 11 Covid detonations. And 10 Covid detonations.

          This is my potential concern about this. The number of smacks being delivered to the immune system by Covid and/or vaccination. This has been my ongoing concern with what seems to be that the vaccines are causing or allowing people to be infected more often.

          It would be very nice to have the assurance that someone in authority was looking at this. By their behavior, they lost my trust long ago. This is data that is absolutely compiled in cancer registries everywhere. UNTIL THE RAW DATA IS RELEASED IN TOTO WE WILL HAVE NO ANSWERS. Releasing raw data will immediately silence the charlatans and put us on the path of truth. Why will they not do it? I have little faith in reviews, cutouts, and summaries at this point.

          2 times in September for me. Will let you know right away if/when this occurs going forward.

          1. thump

            Thanks for your long reply, and I do apologize for my initial ad hominem comment. I’m also sorry I don’t have more to reply with than my accumulation of vague memories of what I read on Twitter. Another example was an immunologist saying the upshot of a study was that “Your T-cells are fit and remain happy.” I’m pretty sure they had tried to engage him on merits, but found it to be pointless due to his evasions, distortions, and attacks. I believe I read the excerpt from IM Doc when you first posted it. While his experience is worrisome, it is not a peer-reviewed study.

    2. Yves Smith Post author

      Sorry, you just discredited yourself. Leonardi has been early and consistently right on what laypeople call T-cell exhaustion. He’s been regularly attacked because people, particularly the “Covid is over” types attack him relentlessly because they don’t like the implications of his findings.

      And ad hominem is a violation of our written site Policies. As are drive by shootings backed by no evidence (“Making Shit Up,” a separate violation).

      1. thump

        Ok, I do not keep all the links I have read available on hand, but I recall having read that his work on T-cell exhaustion was based on, and was valid only for, a few severely infected individuals early on (meaning, not previously infected or vaccinated).

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          As I indicated in my long response, a LOT of front-line MDs see significant changes in pathology in their patients that are very consistent with Leonardi’s position.

  32. Will

    In non-Israel/Hamas news, seems Biden approved long range ATACMS during Z’s visit in September. Ukrainian has announced their successful use this morning on Russian military targets in eastern Ukraine. Interesting detail is US concern re massing of Russian troops and equipment.

    Not mentioned in the article, but I guess no special training needed for Ukrainian troops to handle or use these new missiles?

    https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/17/ukraine-uses-secretly-shipped-u-s-missiles-to-launch-surprise-strike-00121932

    1. nippersdad

      I saw that, too. This will only mean that Russia will have to create an even deeper barrier by taking more land from Ukraine. If the US wanted out, this was not the way to do it gracefully. They need to start negotiating fast or the no mans land is just going to become enormous.

  33. Louis Fyne

    —[INSERT MILITARY UNIT] Struggling with [INSERT OUTDATED OR PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR] DuffelBlog (Li)—

    Anecdote not data.

    My cousin’s cousin is a reservist in a very specialized unit—which definitely would be activated if we were to fight Russians or even Iranians. He says readiness is in the pits—-local command and enlisted ranks don’t take their training seriously.

    Reminds me of anecdotes of the post-Vietnam US Army

    1. The Infamous Oregon Lawhobbit

      Small sample size, but:

      It wasn’t any better during my 6 year stint back in the 80s, other than the “feelgood” of getting away from the Vietnam “feelbads.”

  34. Wukchumni

    No telling if ‘Err Jordan’ can beat My Kevin (since ’07) in attempts to become Speaker, he’s got one loss in the bag now with a paltry 200 votes, so there’s promise.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba noticed that there were no McDonalds operating in the Ukraine so he got in contact with US SecState Blinken to lean on MacDonalds to open up some of their stores again – which he did. They then had a meal together at MacDonalds to show that everything is back to normal in the Ukraine and it is – as you say – open for business-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jy8XRiukyA (1:19 mins)

  36. Lex

    So with Biden in Israel, or the region, the IDF decided to bomb an active hospital in Gaza. Hundreds of dead.

    Either Biden approves of these actions or the guy in charge of the most powerful country in history (according to Joe) has no real power. Those are the only two options. And as things spin out of control, his lack of actual power to affect the situation will only become more obvious.

    I’m not in the mood for a brave face. Biden is far too emotional and far too committed to the mythologies he relies on. He is the absolute wrong man for the moment.

    1. furnace

      I believe this guarantees war. Either the Muslim countries declare war, or their leaders will see themselves toppled by others who are more willing.

      This is horrific on a level which is impossible to describe.

      1. Snailslime

        Fitting with that Military Summary Channel’s very own Dima thinks that Putin is meeting Comrade Xi right now to deliver the Arab countries massive order for weapons.

      1. Lex

        Official sources in Israel and the US have given four different explanations. A Hamas misfire; except the video posted is old and shows Gaza lit up with electricity. An Islamic Jihad misfire (or perhaps insinuating a purposeful strike) with no evidence. And it should be noted that even MSNBC pointed out that Palestinian rockets just don’t have that kind of power. That Hamas was using the hospital as a base, agains with no evidence and as if there’s such a thing as offsetting war crimes. And that Hamas was firing rockets from the hospital, agains without evidence.

        The last two (the third one about the base comes from the US) are admitting the strike. At least one Israeli source has claimed that the IDF warned the hospital and told it to evacuate. The cover stories aren’t even any good or consistent.

          1. Daniil Adamov

            I was reminded of Ukrainian missiles hitting their own buildings. Friendly fire of this sort will happen – but maybe Palestinians really don’t have the right missiles to do that kind of damage.

  37. Matthew G. Saroff

    Some things about the crash that killed Hale Boggs, Nick Begich, and Don Jonz.

    First, my dad was in Governor Egan’s cabinet in the 1960s, so he knew Begich, and Don Jonz was a personal friend of his.

    Second, while Jonz was a supremely talented pilot, he was also a “Bold” pilot who had in his career attempted a non-stop flight from Florida to Alaska in a Piper Cherokee, and had to land on a highway while still in Florida. (He had is commercial pilot license suspended over that one, because he was about ½ ton overweight.)

    They did find Jonz’ emergency locator transmitter ……… In another one of his planes, IIRC. (It might have been his office desk)

    There is nothing mysterious about the plane vanishing. It was basically a bush pilot operation, flying in marginal weather, and there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of lost aircraft that were never found.

    Alaska is big and sparsely populated, and bush pilots are an essential service there, and plane crashes are relatively common as a result.

  38. hk

    The amazing thing (as pointed out by Mercouris and Christoforou on the latest Duran podcast): now that there is a big crisis in the Middle East, everyone talks to Putin and Xi, no one wants to talk to Biden, vdL, or whoever is in charge of Germany….. So much for the indispensable nation (and its allies).

    1. juno mas

      Most national leaders know Biden is incapable of cogent discussion. Biden is not making decisions and photo ops are useless now.

  39. Willow

    Observation about ME crisis:
    1) Don’t be surprised if Türkiye breaks with the West,
    2) where Türkiye goes, rest of Muslim leaders will follow,
    3) Xi seems to be exceedingly happy in his meeting with Putin,
    4) Widodo front and centre with Putin & Xi at Belt & Road summit,
    5) Expect Russia to return US a lot of ISR ‘favours’ in ME for what US has done in Ukraine,
    6) Things likely to get much much worse. No-one fears US in same way as they did in the past. Ukraine has cost US much more in reputation than in money or equipment.

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