Cute but lethal! World’s most dangerous CAT arrives at Utah zoo: Black-footed feline looks similar to a house cat – but is a killing machine that scores prey in six out of ten hunts Daily Mail (Li)
The Healing Power of Tango Counterpunch
Flipped coins found not to be as fair as thought PhysOrg (Dr. Kevin)
Almost Half of British Teens Feel Addicted To Social Media, Study Says Guardian
Reclaim Your Brain Guardian (Kevin W)
#COVID-19
A raging inferno of COVID is surging nationwide—35 states now report HIGH or VERY HIGH COVID levels… and this doesn’t even include the new post-holiday gathering wave from Xmas/NYE. And even if many are mild—Long COVID is not and affects 10-33% of milder cases. #CovidIsNotOver https://t.co/F2MNbO3kzJ
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 3, 2024
"[According to recent studies,] People who received 2 or more shots of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been reported to have unusually elevated concentrations of IgG4 antibodies.. which has been related to decreased protection against infections..
The described rise in IgG4…— Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) (@Yash25571056) January 3, 2024
Climate/Environment
A ship carrying 800 tonnes of Li-Ion batteries caught fire. What could possibly go wrong? The Register
China?
China’s Workers Suffer Biggest Drop in Hiring Salaries on Record Bloomberg
It's quite hilarious to see a man who founded the "Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China" (IPAC) whose entire mission statement is to organize foreign interference against China, claim complete innocence when he's accused of doing just that…
Plus just 2 years ago he was… https://t.co/lE7MAASJz6
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) January 3, 2024
If anyone tried this in the US, expect vandalism pronto:
Traffic lights in China.🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ZD7c1JsNdU
— ShanghaiPanda (@thinking_panda) January 3, 2024
Japan
Tokyo airplane crash probe to look into controllers’ instructions Nikkei
Japan Airlines collision: Transcripts show coast guard plane was not cleared for take-off Channel New
India
Why Are Western Influencers Fearmongering About Indian-Russian Ties? Andrew Korybko
European Disunion
What is the point of Nato? Yanis Varoufakis, Unherd
Diverse EU Energy Needs Complicate Complete Shift Away From Russian Gas OilPrice
Gaza
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 88: Israeli army kills 4,000 students in Gaza, detains hundreds in torture camps Mondoweiss (guurst)
Hamas deputy leader killed in Beirut blast DW
Washington’s Gaza Kabuki Responsible Statecraft
US rejects Gaza ethnic cleansing proposal RT
As Death Toll in Gaza Rises, Israeli Officials Fear Possible Genocide Charges at ICJ Common Dreams. One can hope.
Israel Prepares To Defend Itself Against Genocide Claims In First Hearing At The Hague HuffPost (furzy)
Legal Questions Answered and Unanswered in Israel’s Air War in Gaza Lawfare (David L)
New Not-So-Cold War
Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC: “Ukraine today is nothing but a private military company in the hands of Western countries” International Affairs (Micael T)
Turkey to Block Minehunter Ships Intended for Ukraine US News (Kevin W)
Even at the end of 2023, we must not forget: Russia has done what NATO had announced as necessary for itself. Eastern Angle (Micael T)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Meet ‘Link History,’ Facebook’s New Way To Track the Websites You Visit Gizmodo
Imperial Collapse Watch
Toward a shallower future Noah Smith (Dr. Kevin)
Ukraine and Palestine: A double threat to US hegemony MK Bhadrakumar, Cradle
The enabler of our two concurrent world wars: Washington Gilbert Doctorow
Is US helping to create new global jihadists? Responsible Statescraft (Kevin W)
Trump
Can Trump Save Democracy from Itself? American Conservative
Destroying Democracy to Save It: Maine Shows the Danger of Zealots in our Legal System Jonathan Turley
Trump’s lies about 2020 election undermine US democracy in 2024 USA Today (furzy)
‘Sick to my stomach’: Hear what changed state senator’s mind about Trump after voting for him twice CNN (MD)
2024 election: How death threats influence Republicans to follow Trump Vox (furzy)
Man breaks into Colorado Supreme Court overnight and opens fire, police say CNN (Kevin W). We warned a long time ago that the response to the stoking of political hostility would not be civil war but an increase in violence.
Democrats en déshabillé
Trouble with tha God Politico
Abortion
5th Circ. Backs Bar Of HHS’ Emergency Abortion Guidance Law360
Our No Longer Free Press
Larry Johnson: The Censorship/Industrial Complex Judge Napolitano, YouTube
These Rules About Platforming Nazis Sure Seem Arbitrary and Incoherent! Freddie deBoer (Userfriendly)
Claudine Gay resigns as Harvard University president BBC
Read Claudine Gay’s letter announcing her resignation as Harvard’s president Business Insider (Kevin W)
L’affaire Jeffrey Epstein
Epstein List Hangs Itself Moments Before Release Babylon Bee (Chuck L)
Epstein Documents Naming Prominent Figures Expected to Be Released Soon New York Times (furzy)
The Digital Epstein’s Little Black Book (Micael T)
Darwin Award
Man, 30, dies after climbing into plane engine at Salt Lake City airport in US Straits Times
AI
How the Federal Government Can Rein In A.I. in Law Enforcement New York Times (David L)
AI May Not Steal Your Job, but It Could Stop You Getting Hired Wired (Kevin W)
An AI Future Is Much Shakier Than You Think Foreign Policy
‘A Global Watermarking Standard Could Help Safeguard Elections In the ChatGPT Era’ The Hill
How the Federal Government Can Rein In A.I. in Law Enforcement New York Times (David L)
How machine learning might unlock earthquake prediction MIT Technology Review (David L). I recall reading a while back, in the book Ubiquity, that there were good mathematical reasons why earthquakes cannot be predicted.
US feeling the pain of slow-motion decoupling Asia Times (Kevin W)
What might global LNG trade look like in 2024? EnergyFlux (Micael T)
The Bezzle
Driverless Cars Immune From Traffic Tickets In California Under Current Laws NBC
Saving the Panama Canal Will Take Years and Cost Billions, If It’s Even Possible Bloomberg. Here because one of the leading “live overseas” newsletters has been pushing Panama hard for years, in part because they look to have serious conflicts of interest (they promote real estate projects). Panama is having to look at big-time desalination because there is not enough water for the canal and farming.
Class Warfare
CEOs Pay for Advanced Copies of Questions at Senate Hearings Lee Fang (UserFriendly)
Do you struggle getting out of bed in the morning? Marcus Aurelius can help Big Think. Micael T: “The world’s first Marxist as it seems defining humans by their work.”
UnitedHealth used secret rules to restrict rehab care for seriously ill Medicare Advantage patients STAT
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
143 comments
Comments are closed.
“Israel Prepares To Defend Itself Against Genocide Claims In First Hearing At The Hague’
Well this should be entertaining, especially if the Israelis use Alan Dershowitz to defend themselves in court. Thing is, the South Africans need only play a video showing Israeli officials boasting of the genocide that they are committing in Gaza from Netanyahu all the way down. At that point either the Israelis will storm out of court calling that video mere blood libel while ending all contact with the ICC or else they will do something stupid like slap yellow stars on their suits like the Israeli UN team has. Nuremberg it will not be but at least they will be under the gun trying to justify the unjustifiable.
Hey Dersh helped to save O.J. and Claus von Bulow and Epstein (for awhile). The guy has skilz.
OMFG at first I thought surely that’s just a play on words or something but then I duckduckgo’d it. Yellow stars, crazy.
Given the very long, deep relationship between South Africa and Israel [eg Israel helped with the South African atom bomb, back in the day] I wonder if this proceeding in the Hague is being set up as a fake trial, with Israel found “not guilty”, end of story, nothing to see here. Because of the risk of double jeopardy, there will not be a second trial.
That was the old apartheid South Africa and they have moved on from those dark days. They look at apartheid Israel and know exactly what they are looking at. In fact, back in the 90s a delegation went to Israel and when they saw how the Palestinians were being treated, got really uncomfortable as that was done to them only a few years earlier. They likely realize too that if the old apartheid regime was still in power in South Africa, that Israel would be selling them technology to keep the locals down.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/20/world/mandela-visits-israel-with-praise-but-rifts-linger.html
October 20, 1999
Mandela Visits Israel With Praise but Rifts Linger
By William A. Orme Jr.
It was a trip intended to heal old wounds, and as Nelson Mandela concluded his first visit to Israel today, he took pains to praise ”my friends” — Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Ezer Weisman — for their regional peacemaking efforts and the ”warmth” of their reception.
The 81-year-old South African leader called Mr. Barak ”a man of vision” for his pursuit of a settlement with Syria. And Mr. Mandela made it clear that he understands Israel’s need ”for Arab recognition of its existence within secure boundaries.” Without such recognition a regional armistice would be ”foolhardy,” he said.
Yet the visit was marked by continuing undercurrents of distrust between Mr. Mandela, a staunch champion of the Palestinian cause, and a country that once helped arm the apartheid Government that Mr. Mandela drove out of power.
Before traveling on to Gaza for an afternoon meeting with another ”good friend” — Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader — Mr. Mandela reiterated his unwavering opposition to Israeli control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
”Talk of peace will remain hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab territories,” he said, sitting at a conference table in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, where such sentiments are rarely heard. ”I understand completely well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if there is going to be peace, there must be complete withdrawal from all of these areas.”
And, leaving little doubt about his lingering resentment of Israel’s diplomatic and military ties to his former jailers, he tartly noted that upon his release from prison in 1990, he received invitations to visit ”almost every country in the world, except Israel.” …
Re What is the point of Nato? Yanis Varoufakis
Varoufakis seems to think Russia launched its SMO (or war if you will) on a whim without viewing events since 2014.
However, the main point of Nato is surely to force member countries to buy overpriced and underperforming American weaponry.
One of the first things US military complex dealers did after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, was to head to Eastern Europe to ply their wares.
A side benefit of this war has been to completely clear out all ex-Soviet weaponry in eastern Europe and even older western weaponry in countries like the UK as the whole lot was shipped to the Ukraine where it was destroyed. Of course this means that all those countries will be looking to replenish their weapons stock which will take years to do so all those arms manufacturers are looking to cash in big time.
In particular as it has also devastated European access to cheap energy, and thus is far more dependent on big bro USA to provide the supplies (most of NATO’s heavier items used to be German made).
Freddie DeBoer: Give him a read. He’s on an insightful and amusing rant.
A highlight:
Gosh. Could “working the refs” be somehow linked to all of this stuff about petitioning of secretaries of state? I know that liberals have been busy “working the refs” to keep the Green Party off the ballot. Could I have spotted a connection?
Wondering in the Chocolate City…
‘working the refs’
Is that…is that anything like a Karen wanting to see the manager to get something changed not to their liking? But yes, that article is a very good read.
I am reminded of Mearsheimer’s observation that nation-states operate in an anarchic system in which there is no higher authority to which they might appeal or be held accountable. There are no refs, nor are there norms beyond getting away with whatever their might will allow. All references and appeals to some universally agreed upon rules based world order are, shall we say, premature, letting alone the question of whether or not such a thing were even desirable.
And as for our internal politics, that the refs are bought and the game is rigged in favor of monied interests at the expense of the great majority is becoming ever more apparent to an ever greater number. Unfortunately, both major parties, instead of addressing the growing material precarity of the population in any meaningful way, cough up a couple of bloviating hairballs from which to choose.
The elites, like nation states, have “only interests”? Given the antics of Hunter and others we are seeing a lot of that Leona Helmsley “only the little people pay taxes” mentality. If they do get caught out they can expect the runways to be comfortably “foamed.”
“I am reminded of Mearsheimer’s observation that nation-states operate in an anarchic system in which there is no higher authority to which they might appeal or be held accountable. There are no refs, nor are there norms beyond getting away with whatever their might will allow. All references and appeals to some universally agreed upon rules based world order are, shall we say, premature, letting alone the question of whether or not such a thing were even desirable.”
Of course. International affairs is simply a starker version of domestic affairs, in which the only thing that really matters is power.
This is why politics is so attractive to sociopaths.
“Unfortunately, both major parties, instead of addressing the growing material precarity of the population in any meaningful way, cough up a couple of bloviating hairballs from which to choose.”
And this we call “Democracy”.
No wonder various other systemic brands are doing better than “Democracy”.
It helps if they are the refs. And if some of the non Dem refs such as current Supreme Court strike down their ballot challenge they will immediately cry “partisanship.” This is why Turley says he hopes at least one of the liberals on the SC votes to strike down.
Whereas one might speculate that one purpose for the amendment 14 mania is not expectation that it will succeed but hope that it will provide fuel for the Dem drive to pack the court or otherwise discredit the Dem unfriendly court majority.
New Turley this morning. He says the SC doesn’t want to be dragged into serving as election refs.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/01/03/a-sad-day-how-the-colorado-disqualification-decision-is-bringing-back-some-bad-memories-for-the-supreme-court/
Which is no doubt why the Dems want to so drag them. It’ll be 2000 deja vu.
“The only thing liberals know how to do anymore is to work the refs – to beg someone in authority to run in and enforce some sort of rules that, they’d like to imagine, secretly run the universe.”
Because the liberals, in the form of the PMC, is the hegemonic class, the “working the refs” strategy works just fine most of the time.
DeBoer is such a bore. I actually read this one and regret it. Rehashing this kind of stuff every day is just boring. 1) It’s not just liberals that work the refs. Since this new phase of the war in Israel began it has been abundantly clear. 2) There are big social and psychological rewards for successfully working the refs while heretics are excommunicated. What on earth does DeBoer expect? Principled integrity?
So it seems to me that DeBoer is profiting from this noise too and that probably explains why he’s taking sides and contributing to it rather than explaining it.
The Healing Power of Tango Counterpunch
The article talks about the health benefits of Tango, perhaps Latin dance in general, as a form of exercise. It reminds me of the 1996 Japanese film Shall We Dance. There is another healing aspect of ballroom dancing that was not mentioned in the article but was part of Shall We Dance. Women have to let men have control.
In that type of dancing the man is ninety percent of the dance. The dance is not a fifty-fifty partnership. The man is in control. The woman follows the man’s lead. Dance instructors will tell you that American women (younger than Baby Boomers) have to learn how to let a man have control. The instructor will have to explain to the female dance student that she cannot dance if she cannot let the man have control. Women from other countries do not have this problem. The man is in control. Duh.
“The man is in control. Duh.”
Yeah, probably accounts for the immense popularity of line dancing and contra-dancing in the US. :-)
The article actually mentions just one anecdote of how low impact exercise reduced pain and stiffness. It really does not delve in the issue – it does disseminate a lot of tango myths, though. Rather disappointingly, really.
And I disagree completely about the control thing. The dancer in the role often called “lead” makes suggestions for the next step, direction, move or timing and the dancer in the role of “follow” either accepts or rejects the suggestion – it’s a dialog*, not a power relation. And actually the follower is the one in control of what actually happens, there’s no practical way of forcing the “follow” to do anything.
For most people therein lies the allure of these couple’s dances that don’t follow any pattern. Both dancers have to be able to listen, to communicate and to trust the other one. And that creates a certain level of (not directly sexual) intimacy for three minutes at a time that can really hook people.
* when I was in training to be an instructor, the message that was driven into our heads was that the only way to learn how to lead well is to follow a lot. And that we did. I can tell from personal experience that even very experienced male dancers can’t follow at all on their first try. Or second.
When it comes to the health benefits of dance, especially in staving off dementia, Square Dance or anything led by a caller and requiring cooperation by everyone on the floor leads the pack.
Also, can you Tango? Or Swing dance? Polka maybe? Because your insight here seems contra to everything I know.
Leading isn’t control. It’s a role in a collaboration. A shared frame.
I honestly thought it was about the soft drink on first scanning this page and had it mentally bookmarked for reading later alongside Onion/BoredPanda/other articles.
Now I feel really really dumb.
I will share my experience.
Argentine tango is how I met my wife. It was and is a vital part of our relationship. We met in a dance studio, joined a performance team and have been doing it since. It is quite frankly the most difficult ballroom dance there is. Just learning the stance and embrace takes months. “It takes a few moments to learn the steps, it takes decades to walk like an Argentine”.
Most Americans do not realize that what they think of as “tango” shares very little with actual Argentine tango. Other than the Yumba beat of the music and a few of the step flourishes, there is little in common. The rose in the mouth and Morticia and Gomez are NOT Argentine tango.
Also of note, for the most part, all of the other Latin dances, salsa, Chacha, merengue, bachata, mambo, etc are accompanied by music that is modern and fluid. While there is some old hits played at times, the music for these change with the eras. It is the same in USA, not many folks do social dancing to Elvis Presley any more other than performances or occasional times in parties.
Argentine tango is very different. The music used at “milongas” or social dancing are recordings from the old masters from the early 20th century, ie Pugliese and Gardel, et al. Each composer has their own style and there are different dance steps and rules used with each composer. To be an Argentine Tango dancer, you must be very familiar with all of this very old music. Furthermore, there are different styles – romantic “salon”, folk style “milonga” and classy “Valz” or waltz. Each with its own timbre, steps, etc.
It does take two to tango. The embrace demands it. It takes years to really do it well. But there is no “in charge”. Good teachers will start with the men or leaders from the very beginning – “You are the ring setting, your lady is the diamond. You are there to support one another, but you have another job, you must make her shine and sparkle. No one is interested in watching the “setting” sparkle.”
Wife and I have the old music on our iPhones. When we are out at bars and dances, we often ask for one song to be played. Often Pugliese. Or the classic one everyone knows La Cumparsita. Literally, the onlookers often view us as alien beings, but warm appreciation comes eventually.
As a physician, I do believe that dance is one of the activities that can keep our brains in good shape. Argentine Tango is especially do. The steps are very very complicated and the music is just amazing.
This is real Argentine tango done “salon” style to La Cumparsita – the classic song of tango.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY0MLG-IrSU
As is said here often, the NC commentariat is the best!
Since you mention band leader Osvaldo Pugliese, readers of this site might be interested to know his political bona fides.
Pugliese was a very active member of the Argentine Communist Party and was imprisoned for his politics both by the left-of-centre Perón government and by the rightwing coup government de facto that overthrew Perón in 1956. An outspoken voice for the downtrodden, the monument to him in Villa Crespo (CABA) is still surrounded by communist clubs, radio stations, etc.
La Cumparsita is a classic! This is a long-time favourite of mine, Oblivion by Piazzolla, and a dance interpretation that catches something very deep. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oB-RS000NLs&pp=ygUPdGFuZ28gb2JsaXZpb24g
As someone who has dealt with physical limitations since my youth and a damaged spine since my late 30’s, dance has made it possible for me to move with less pain and some grace.
I made more progress studying ballet in two Months than I had in the prior two years of physical therapy while working with the late Jane Brown of Oakland.
And it’s a wonderful way to meet Women!
“recordings from the old masters from the early 20th century, ie Pugliese and Gardel, et al. Each composer has their own style and there are different dance steps and rules”
It seems as if Argentinian tango is a dead art then. Wouldn’t an art that is still alive generate at least some relevant composers 100 years later and not be so heavily codified regarding steps?
There is another entire type of music often referred to as “nuevo tango”. It is indeed new stuff, not usually with the classic instruments, heavy on synthesizers etc. It too is played during the milongas. However, for most people, this is an opportunity to sit down and relax or socialize.
One of the most famous of the groups doing Nuevo Tango is Bajofondo. They actually had a big international hit a few years ago that was used for a year or two on many commercials here in the USA. This music is meant to be in the “milonga” style – not “salon”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riuF_Ur3unc
This is explains why this is my favorite Doc. Happy New Year to you!
Like IM Doc, I met my wife in a tango hall, now a quarter century ago. I had always wanted to be able to ballroom dance, always envied and enjoyed those much older couples who could spontaneously rise somewhere and dance a lovely piece for a live band or piano, have always thought – and think still – that when you reach a certain age you should know how to dance properly. And so, divorced, miserable, all those years ago, I took up tango, on the suggestion of a colleague, in Seattle, where I lived, and which had then a very active local community, with several local teachers and always bringing in teachers from Argentina for workshops. I took a bunch of classes, felt like someone with wooden posts for feet, realized most of us in the hall were in one way or another deeply miserable and crazy, but after a month of lessons thought, I can do this, so I bought some proper shoes and actually took the ferry from my home on thge peninsula over to the Century Ballroom in Seattle for a real, actual dance, or milonga, and arrived there to see in the scattered people already present many fellow classmates. I pulled out my shoes and laced them on, bending over, then sat up and sat there and watched a few people dancing and I panicked, so I bent over again, removed the shoes, and went home. But I kept at it, all that fall, and a rather famous teacher, Fabian Salas, came to town for an eight week program and I went five nights a week, obsessed by then, crazed, after going the first night he arrived, thinking seriously that I was going to give this up, went through the class, thought, what is the big deal, here, and then when the class was over the lights were lowered and Fabian and his partner danced around the great hall and I can still see the moment, in the corner, as they turned, and a Voice said to me, You are going to learn how to do this.
Fabian’s series ended, and I still felt wooden, useless, and was told so, many time, by my momentary partners, but I am persistent if not bright, and a very hard worker, such a hard worker I had built up weeks of paid vacation tine after working 19 of 26 weekends building a new shipping terminal in Seattle, so I sold my vacation tine and went to Argentina that spring for three weeks, with this guy Daniel Trennor who took people down there to experience the real dance, and culture, and take lessons, and go to dances, and for three weeks, one week Trennor’s schedule and then two more alone, I danced, took lessons, danced, all over the city. Lessons started inb the early afternoon, there was a long dinner break, and then the dance halls opened at ten pm, and remained open until three or four, all packed, opacked, by midnight, and then after they closed you could go to others and dance until dawn. Oh, it was glorious, exhausting, frustrating, and wonderful. Daniel had been many years in Argentina and knew everyone, and one of his teachers was an old woman who had been, in the 1950s, the greatest dancer in the country. She was now shorter, stout, spoke no English, but Lord she could dance. She told me, “The man leads, but he must wait for the woman,” through a translator, and so I led, and learned to wait for her, and she told me, at the end, the most wonderful thing – “You can hear the music,” she said, and she smiled.
I came back north and shortly after met my wife, in a Seattle dance hall, astonished to find someone who also worked in construction, the only woman in color that evening, a good dancer, and we have been dancing ever since, though these days not so often due to other demands. When we moved from Seattle to Tacoma five years ago the main criteria for the house was a hardwood floor large enough to dance upon. She and I have been lucky enough to dance in Shanghai, Beijing, various airport lounges, and when I was working my big shot job before going back to sea as a geezer I traveled all over the place visiting shipping line customers and I took my dance shoes and a web site that then listed tango places everywhere, Ernestos Tango poage, and I danced, in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Hamburg, Marseilles, London, New York…..
An addiction, tango. This article has inspired me. Back to the halls, I say.
Great story, and congratulations on your persistence.
Couple decades ago my better half convinced me and my two left feet to go for swing dancing lessons. I was fine stumbling along as long as I could dance with my wife, but then the instructor had everyone switch partners, which was not fine. He then pointed to me as an example to the whole class of what NOT to do. I spent the rest of the class chain smoking on the front steps. Maybe I should give it another whirl…
Just leaving this here…
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8719C130879451E
Tango is very fluid and trading lead and follow can improve the partnership.
A number of years ago I was at a ballroom dance club and began dancing the waltz with a tall and attractive woman. After a few minutes she asked me if she could lead. I told her that would be fine. She was excellent at leading and I enjoyed dancing the waltz with her so much. I understood right then and there why good male ballroom dancers are so much in demand. Many are booked up for the entire evening as so many ladies wish to dance with them. Some of the female dancers are excellent at leading in their own right.
That’s actually a misunderstanding, based on a bias in favor of leaders and against followers. I’m a lead in salsa and bachata (and a man). It really helped me grow both in dance and in life when I recognized salsa for what it is: not just a group of techniques, but the interplay between leaders and followers. At a deeper level still, it’s the interplay between someone trusting (follow) and someone trustworthy (the lead).
Learning what it means to be deeply trustworthy – that is, to lead a beautiful lady in a way that we’re both having a blast, and she’s beaming all around the dance floor – this is what makes dance a great source of joy and personal growth for me. And to get here, I had to recognize the dance isn’t 90% me and 10% her, it really is 50% each of us. She has to trust/follow just as much as I have to lead/be trustworthy, or we really are just two people moving near each other.
This becomes clear when you notice how the ladies practice: they practice flowing, following, trusting. They have to learn to give up control, just as the men have to practice accepting that responsibility not just for their own movement, but for hers as well. When two partners dance together, each having practiced their part, they dance beautifully indeed.
Re: Turkiye fouling up the works on Old Blighty’s plan to replace Ukrainian ships
There he goes again. That sultan, showing Old Blighty to be the impotent little bunch of clowns that they really are!
Yet they manage to help UKRNATO find weaknesses in Russian forces to slip the NATO cruise missiles and MLRS munitions through, and keep the UKR private military company onside and operate sabotage and assassination “assets” in Russia, and keep the fires of Gehenna raining down on Palestine, and lots of other sh$t-stirring in the world.
Credit where credit is due: https://www.voltairenet.org/article216406.html
Oh, they’re still dangerous clowns, but they’re who we thought they were™
> … they’re who we thought they were™
You brought back that banger smooth like butta …
c.f. via YouTube
Give it a couple of days, a combination of carrot and stick, and Erdogan will be made come around. (The carrot is mostly for domestic consumption, so that Erdogan can claim a “win”.)
Does he really want to hand over part control of the Black Sea to NATO? NATO would very quickly push aside Turkish interests to push for their own, no matter how detrimental they would be to Turkiye.
He will not be given a choice.
He won’t be given a choice? US nukes are chilling in Turkey, it’s a NATO member with recent successful military engagements, noone is really in a position to make Erdogan do anything.
Gilbert Doctorow:
I think that this observation is worth imprinting on one’s brain: “The outstanding commonality between these two world wars is the position of the United States as their enabler in terms of delivery of essential military and financial support to one side, as well as real-time military intelligence, tactical and strategic counseling by high level officers positioned on the ground and in nearby seas. From the perspective of Washington, these are proxy wars which put at risk very few of its own men at arms, though some do come home in body bags without word to the press, while preparations proceed apace for the launch of a third proxy war in the South China Sea.”
Yep. If one wants peace in Palestine, it also means peace in Russia/Ukraine. Which means de-fanging the Biden Administration and its many D.C.-type hangers-on.
The on-the-ground report about Feodosia at the end is worth reading. Truly interesting and anecdotal: As a writer, I enjoy anecdotes about writers.
Also note: Special cameo appearances by Sister Death. Doctorow mentions more than once fatalities among Western troops who supposedly aren’t even in the Ukraine. Mirabile dictu!
<Trump’s lies about 2020 election undermine US democracy in 2024 USA Today (furzy)
Concluding paragraph:
A better use of time, money and energy would be to address systemic weaknesses in our election systems – such as the distressing lack of national election infrastructure to enforce election integrity, destructive practices to our elections such as gerrymandering, and leveling the playing field so that our elections become fairer and more competitive.
I would say a better use of time, money and energy would be to ask why Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin Page concluded that election don’t correlate with voter preferences. I’d also question, why almost half don’t bother to vote. I’d ask what good are elections if the President goes around Congress to send weapons to a country committing genocide when majority of the people are sickened by it. I would ask about the funding mechanism of electing representatives that make them prey to donors and leds researchers to write books like Whitney Webb’s “One Nation Under Blackmail.”
I am currently reading Whitney Webb’s “One Nation Under Blackmail volume 1. Incredible book in many ways.
Genocide Joe’s unflinching support of Israel is largely due to his racism, he was the Man Strom Thurmond chose to deliver his eulogy and he was asshole buddies with Jesse Helms.
To the “New FDR” Palestinians are not Human.
Nor are they to Israel’s Defense Minister who has described them as “Human Animals”…which raises a question in my mind.
If Palestinians are “Human Animals” and Israeli’s are not, what ARE Israeli’s?
Not Minerals, not Vegetables, not Animals, perhaps Fungi?
That doesn’t make sense because that Defense Minister looks like anything but a Fun Guy.
Where I grew up there were lots of Jews. Many of them used the Yiddish term “schvartze” to describe black people. It is the Yiddish version of “nigger”. Nobody should be surprised by Israeli Jews treatment of Palestinians, who are darker complected. The racism runs deep.
Because the United States is in no wise neither a “democracy” nor a “democratic republic” but an oligarchy with vestigial trappings of democracy and featuring unlimited political bribery for those who can afford pricey lawyers.
A plutocratic cosmetic democracy.
Charlamagne tha God profile at Poltico. Worth a read indeed.
Noting Charlamagne proving his divinity: “It’s almost like Democrats are doing this purity test. America is not pure. The people of America are not pure. We’re flawed,” he said. “I’m not looking for my politicians to be pure, … I’m looking for my politicians to be effective.”
Yep. Democracy is about getting flawed people to take action collectively, not about testifying to one’s purity.
Purity is highly overrated as a virture.
It’s interesting in that he’s really close to getting it. He gripes about the messaging of the 31 tech hubs and not listing how it helps people, but read the release, Biden is basically shouting “computers!” and $75 million in grants. Then it combines with existing programs, but it’s a nothing burger.
Then we don’t have an educational structure where this is going to help people in Baltimore get those promised paying jobs. Charlamagne is growing cynical, but he’s not quite experienced enough to see what the 31 tech hubs announcement is. It’s designed to sound good, but it’s not a real program. He is probably still grappling with the idea friendly people might not be good.
The real problem is Team Blue elites are divorced from their voters. Ed Rendell had his famed line. He was quite clear Team Blue types want to get rid of the riff raff and have friendlier republicans, hence the embrace of the Cheney spawn.
23 of Baltimore’s public high schools had a student test proficient on math. Those standards are jokes already. A tech hub sign isn’t going to inspire people who can’t handle change. Charlamagna gets this is a problem, but he lacks the experience to get a check written to an existing company isn’t attempt to fix it but con locals Biden cares.
Writing that check serves three purposes – it is a payoff to favored contractors, as well as a PMC jobs program that creates the optics of Doing Something.
Aurelien’s latest on “Doing Something” is pretty brilliant. Not sure how to link it here. It’s on his substack.
DJG, Reality Czar
Something about Charlamagne Tha God – henceforth #CTG – really irks me. My best effort to pin down the source of my tingling spider senses would be to carve out a new left moniker (via NC) for him and his ilk – The Clout Chasing Left – an erstwhile subset of the the Podcast Left and/or the Influencer Left. TL;DR – at the end of the day, #CTG is mostly concerned about #CTG.
Sooooo … he thinks that the problem is the messaging?! As Lamberts often reminds, Biden owes a lot of people $600!
Hol’ up … does anyone remember the genesis of “purity test” in the last three election cycles?! It was an anti-Sanders establishment trope. Yes, it was … all the #CTR (Correct The Record) trolls would be out in force on #Twitter accusing those of us advocating to #M4A, #FreeTuition and #FightForFifteen of being “purity bros”! “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good” was one the bullsh** statements you’d see pop up like weeds online. So when #CTG says he’s not looking for his politicians to be pure, he’s being nothing short of an establishment sheepdog – peddling the same old “we got to compromise” because no one is going to be the “perfect” candidate. What a load of horse sh**! I don’t have time to pick apart all the BS takes in the article, but I’ll leave this as the coda:
LOL … nice influence, you got there, bruh. It’d be shame if something were to happen to it.
Maybe, don’t get behind crap candidates next time.
ChrisRUEcon:
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good”
Of course, I recall that trope. It was why we were all meant to vote for Hillary “Libya as Résumé-Builder” Clinton.
It was the excuse given against any criticism of Obamacare. And I had gone from an insurance plan with a deductible of $500 (sponsored by the esteemed Japanese American Citizens League (don’t ask)) into the “marketplace” and then into a job offer. My deductible a couple of years later was something like 7500 USD.
Perfection!
Okay: So maybe CTG isn’t as politically astute as Cardi B…
> Okay: So maybe CTG isn’t as politically astute as Cardi B…
::CardiBLaughing:: (via TikTok) 😂
We warned a long time ago that the response to the stoking of political hostility would not be civil war but an increase in stochastic terrorism.
FTFY
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/god-guns-and-sedition/9780231558808
Look at the background of those two authors-
‘Bruce Hoffman is the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service; professor emeritus of terrorism studies at the University of St Andrews; and the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. His Columbia University Press books include Inside Terrorism (third edition, 2017).
Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. He serves on the editorial boards for the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and the Irregular Warfare Initiative at the Modern War Institute at West Point.’
You can bet that among their ideas to counter these ‘threats’ will be far more censorship, silencing dissenters so that they have no voice on the net, more government control of people, novel interpretations of the US Constitution, etc. America has been through troubled times before and I would suggest reviewing what was happening in the late 60s and the early 70s for a comparison to what is happening now.
Echoes of 1770s? Surely, in a real “democracy,” those insurrectionists and seditionists would never have been allowed to be elected a few decades later. (/S)
That is not at all what I said. The point of saying “violence” was to highlight the lack of organization that you would see in a civil war or terrorism.
I highly doubt the concept of “stochastic terrorism.” It seems to me to be an excuse for more censorship, more surveillance, and more ideological bullying in the form of stricter demands to parrot PMC talking points in the name of preventing some mope from going lone wolf. Because that is the idea of “stochastic terrorism” that some lone wolf will be inspired to violence bases on someone’s substack page. That’s a reach (to put it politely).
Notice how “stochastic terrorism” only goes one way? I was watching the new Chappelle comedy special, and he reminded me of the time he got assaulted on stage by a trans activist moved to violence by all the hateful rhetoric spewed against Chappelle. This would seem to be a prefrect example of “stochastic terrorism” in practice, yet the usual people bleating about “stochastic terrorism” were silent on the matter. Or how about Audrey Hale, the Nashville Shooter? When parts of her (alleged) manifesto were leaked, they spoke about her desire to murder school children on account of their white privilege. So where are the complaints that Robyn DiAngelo and Ibrahim Kendi have engaged (intentionally or not) in “stochastic terrorism.” Because if those manifesto pages are genuine, Audrey Hale looks like a prime example of actual “stochastic terrorism” yet I wee no calls to censor Drs Kendi and DiAngelo to prevent further outbursts of “stochastic terrorism.”
Again, that these accusations only ever run in one direction tells me they are bogus and made in bad faith.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the definition of stochastic terrorism. As I understand it, it’s more of a mass-media invitation to terrorize than it is the individual acts of terrorism themselves. Without the institutional power to encourage lone-wolves to act out, is stochastic terrorism even possible?
I spend a lot of time in trans spaces, and as much anger as there is toward Dave Chapelle, we don’t have a Tucker Carlson–like figure vaguely suggesting that somebody should attack Chappelle, or if we do, it’s not on any mass-media platform. We’d be quickly banned from any social media where we attempted it, and Rupert Murdoch won’t return our phone calls begging for a time slot
Well, but for a while the phrase “Trans Day of Vengeance” did make it into the news media and international public consciousness, irrespective of whether there was any intent to incite concrete acts behind it. So some organized group or other was pushing something there, for that to have happened.
Gosh, only the media considered to be more right, Carlson and Murdoch, engage in tactics that support your premise regarding mass media.
Oh I get it, reporting on groups “protesting” abortion with their flyers showing doctors photos with big Xs on them was merely a call to boycott them is subtle, Today’s calls for cancellation can now come with a underlying meaning whether people want to admit or not. And lord knows Maddow and Cooper and their networks have never supported anything that might silence Chappelle or Rowling or yes on other subjects Sanders or Sarandon, or worse make a more passionate but less grounded person or even persons who find their stands objectionable to consider it more than a boycott. Still isn’t the implied financial threat a form of control, it certainly is for sexual harassment.
‘Melissa Chan
@melissakchan
Hong Kong officials are accusing foreigners of masterminding the 2019 protests. @lukedepulford
gives a clear, eloquent response. This would be laughable except the false narrative is actually gaining traction, including among Chinese Americans.’
This guy is lying his face off and distracting from the history of foreign meddling in Hong Kong. Remember how the US was funneling all that money through the NED aka the CIA into Hong Kong? Or does anybody remember the young leaders of these protests were flying to Washington DC to meet with officials there? As soon as that happened, it was no longer a local home-grown movement but the front for a colour revolution which gave the Chinese all the justification they needed to crack down-
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/11/patrick-lawrence-us-meddling-in-hong-kong/
If there had been no foreign meddling, then a local protest movement stood a good chance of coming to a negotiated agreement with Beijing but all Washington saw was a great chance to provoke the Chinese and the rest is history. Tough luck if you lived in Hong Kong though.
Sorry, the US is not remotely that good. This is one of my big frustrations with Brian Berletic (in fairness, MoA was also on that bandwagon). He depicts any and every NED connection as proof of actual meddling, as opposed to NED successfully syphoning money out of State irrespective of whether it can actually accomplish anything.
We don’t even begin to have enough speakers of Cantonese with a Hong Kong accent. The West had absolutely NOTHING to do with all of those innovative protestor techniques, such as mass use of lasers, umbrellas, and using traffic cones to contain tear gas canisters. In fact, we would not want to see their widespread adoption. One must note despite those methods being shown repeatedly on video coverage of the protests, they have not been much taken up anywhere else.
On top of that, there was VERY deep societal support of the protests, again something beyond the reach of the West. Many accounts of protestors fleeing the cops running into nearby (often pretty poor) residential neighborhods, having residents whisk them into their houses, and then showing them how to continue to get away, via going on rooftops or through back yards to other streets.
HK may be more MI6’s turf.
That said, i get the impression that the HK social structure is “complicated” as many of the older families see themselves more British than Chinese. As seen with how they treat their live in maids that are coming from the Chinese interior.
I am not denying that there was a very strong local protest movement and their use of innovative tactics was quite good. But my point was that as soon as US money flowed into Hong Kong and protest leaders let themselves be filmed meeting with officials in Washington DC, then that movement was doomed. Washington would not have cared as what they really wanted was to put the Chinese under pressure and do something stupid.
Let me illustrate this on the flip side. So if it came out during the BLM riots that money was coming from Beijing into the US for that movement and that BLM leaders were flying to Beijing to meet with important government officials, you can imagine how hard the DHS would have cracked down on the BLM movement.
HK has a very long history of anti-colonial and pro-democracy protest, with a particular uptick of anti-British protests in the 1980’s. Its pretty much the same social and ethnic class who were central to the 2019 protests who started it in the 1980’s. They didn’t want the British ruling them, and they want Beijing ruling them even less.
Its not always pretty (its sometimes associated with a sort of Cantonese chauvinism against northerners and a belief that they (i.e ‘real’ HKers) are a hybrid the best cultural features of east and west), but HK nationalism is a very real thing and has been for much longer than the Chinese handover. Maybe only half HK’s population actually speaks Mandarin (more speak English) and they consider themselves culturally very different.
Anyone who thinks that its all down to outsider meddling knows nothing of HK’s history or people.
Thanks. But surely some of it can be suspected of foreign meddling given the “pivot to China”?
But surely some of it can be suspected of foreign meddling given the “pivot to China”?
[ The British had a century as Hong Kong colonists to belittle and demean the Chinese, which is an essential aspect of colonialism. As for the “pivot to China,” simply look to the cheering for Hong Kong separatists by Nancy Pelosi as a reflection of US policy. Look to separatist Nathan Law being brought to Yale. Look to the New York Times applauding the forbidding black clothing of Hong Kong separatists in a front page article. Look to the meeting of leading separatists with a principal US official in Hong Kong…
There is far more, but this immediately comes to mind. ]
It could of course have involved meddling by pretty much anyone, but there isn’t an iota of evidence that this is the case outside of the fantasies of some people who seem incapable of accepting that small countries/ethic groups/nationalist movements have agency and their own agendas which have nothing to do with Great Power manoeuvring.
The fact that a few young activists in HK unwisely accepted verbal support from US politicians is irrelevant – pretty much every independence or radical anti-colonialist movement in history has looked for allies or support from wherever they could get it. At various times, Irish nationalists over 2 centuries or more sought, and often received, help and aid and encouragement from Spain, France, Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, France and Spain. This doesn’t mean that any of these countries were ‘meddling’, although no doubt London thought otherwise.
there’s photographic evidence of protest leaders meeting with US officials. It doesn’t prove that the US organized the protests, but it does prove that protest leaders welcomed US intervention and that the US definitely tried.
I wonder if this is a variation of the TDS (sorry!) showing up in other realms.
The situation in Iran after World War 2 and Chile during 1960s were, eh, complicated. Mossadegh and Allende we’re both controversial leaders who made a lot of powerful enemies and were not able to keep things under wraps. The role of CIA was to just nudge things by feeding the already existing instability a bit. Would things have taken the paths they did without the CIA? Who knows? But whatever the case is, these were not universally believed figures that some people critical of the outside meddling imagine them to be.
In most countries undergoing some sort of political upheaval, which is what “democratic movements” wind up being, there are serious social or economic problems bubbling underneath, whether it is Ukraine, Georgia, Israel, Myanmar, or United States. To pretend that these problems are unimportant and attribute the “troubles” only to a desire for “democracy” (or “anti-democracy,” which is functionally the same thing really) is dangerous, IMHO. Yet, that seems something that many people are prone to, when they are out to make a “moral” point: Nelson Mandela good, because he is a convicted criminal, Donald Trump bad because he is a (unconvicted/alleged) criminal? Certainly, people can (and should) argue that they are different, but that argument is ultimately based on one’s moral viewpoint–that the government that Mandela was opposing was immoral and illegitimate while the regime Trump is opposing is moral and legitimate. I suppose they also believe that America is already great, too, while at least a plurality of Americans, iirc, don’t think “American Dream” is real.
Texans think of themselves different as well. Should Texas be allowed to secede from the union? If you answer yes then Hong Kong should be able to become an independent city-state. if you answer no then Hong Kong should be fully a part of China regardless of what some HKers prefer. This applies to Taiwan as well.
They did secede and we did sort of settle that issue a while ago, y’know… I suspect that modern HR types would have called for Lincoln to be indicted for war crimes had they been around back then.
After the recent Haley and Civil War bit, I mused to myself that the Civil War happened because the Southerners were fighting for freedom–freedom to deprive rights of, to enslave, to murder, and to dehumanize fellow people, but hey, any fight for feedom is great, eh?
Hong Kong was never in a Union with China. it was for various periods of time occupied as part of Chinese or Manchurian empires. It was also part of the British empire. By your logic, any HKers opposing British occupation were the same as Texan secessionists. Taiwan was also at various points part of Chinese, Manchurian, Portuguese, Dutch and Japanese empires and was later forcibly occupied by Chinese secessionists. On what basis is one of those former imperialist powers entitled to insist their ownership is permanent?
The indigenous peoples of Taiwan are Austronesian, related genetically and linguistically to the Polynesians of Tahiti, Hawai‘i, New Caledonia, New Zealand, etc.
And like said Polynesians, somehow the talks and squabbles among imperialists and colonizers never get around to returning Polynesians’ sovereignty to them.
And most “Taiwanese” are Chinese colonialists who came over from Zhejiang and Fujian over past half a dozen centuries, who drove the native “barbarians” to the mountainous interior. I’m guessing this is what you meant, but context seemed necessary for those who don’t know the background.
Even calling them ‘Chinese colonialists’ is a bit of an open question – the Fujianese at the time were quite a distinct people linguistically and culturally, variously part of a number of expansionist Han and Manchurian empires or local kingdoms over the centuries. The modern form of China only really took shape under the Qing Dynasty (and yes, I know its a complex subject).
Chinese nationalists tend to conveniently identify the ‘real’ extent of China as being that of the maximum geographical extent of the late Qing. Needless to say, the Russians and Vietnamese, among others, disagree as this included chunks of what is now their territory.
At least some of those techniques have been adopted at BLM protests. I saw them in use myself while wating livestreams hosted on Unicorn Riot, and Vice has reported as much as well
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5pq5j/traffic-cones-leaf-blowers-and-other-brilliant-tactics-us-protesters-are-taking-from-hong-kongs-playbook
The CIA could just do some recruiting in Markham, a suburb north of Toronto, to find as many Cantonese speaking with a Hong Kong accent as they would need. If they didn’t have enough there, then there is always Richmond British Columbia.
“What is the point of Nato? Yanis Varoufakis, Unherd”
To keep Russia out, USA in, and Germany down?
Germany is so far down that it looks like the economy of the UK is set to surpass it according to The Duran. I would never have had that on my bingo card for this year – and we are only three days in.
Even if one exclude the London branch of Wall Street?
Ye deities, i knew Germany was hurting but something will have to give soon if this continues.
Explains why VW had moved its EV production to China…
Actually, the People’s Car being produced in the People’s Republic of ….
I’ll get m’coat.
I don’t think it’s a joke. The PRC has been responsible for every person lifted out of poverty that free traders like to claim credit for. The US conversely has a superhero actress hawking giant trucks made in south korea and destroying the environment in the ads while droning on about freedumb.
My brain is seizing up, feeling that part of that is a Ron DeSantis “I hate Disney, Love US workers” campaign ad whilst the rest is a Democrat talking point…. ;-)
VW have been making cars in China since 1984, their first plant was in Shanghai.
Its the no.1 car brand in China (including its sub brands such as Audi and Skoda) – they sell over 3 million cars a year in the country. Its actually their biggest market, bigger even than Europe.
I find this hard to believe. Whether on a nominal basis or a PPP basis, Germany’s economy is far larger than the UK’s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Germany certainly is struggling without cheap Russian energy, but it will take some doing for post-Brexit UK to overtake Germany. And statistics aside, much of the German economy is based on actual manufacturing, while much of the UK economy is based on financial flimflammery in London.
“And statistics aside, much of the German economy is based on actual manufacturing, while much of the UK economy is based on financial flimflammery in London.”
An important insight:
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=193,122,124,156,924,128,172,132,134,174,532,178,436,136,158,542,137,546,138,196,142,182,576,184,144,146,112,111,&s=PPPPC,&sy=2007&ey=2022&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
October 15, 2023
Gross Domestic Product per capita based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP), 2022
France ( 56,305)
Germany ( 64,086)
Italy ( 51,827)
United Kingdom ( 54,824)
United States ( 76,343)
Germany is not at all close to being overtaken economically by the United Kingdom:
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=223,924,132,134,532,534,536,158,546,922,112,111,&s=PPPGDP,&sy=2007&ey=2022&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
October 15, 2023
Gross Domestic Product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States, 2007-2022
2022
Brazil ( 3,837)
China ( 30,762)
France ( 3,696)
Germany ( 5,370)
India ( 11,901)
Indonesia ( 4,037)
Japan ( 6,145)
Russia ( 4,770)
United Kingdom ( 3,717)
United States ( 25,463)
I’m certainly not arguing that those figures are wrong. But they may be little better than metrics like PPP-adjusted GDP-per-capita. So much comes down to burrowing into key sectors. (FWIW I, living in UK, don’t think we’re about to reach or pass Germany but I’ve seen interesting sectoral issues illustrating why Germany ain’t the bees’ knees).
In my 3 decades of holidaying in the Med (mostly Spain), and taking the trouble to talk to locals about what they thought of us Brits, I all too often found that although they (quite rightly) regarded too many of us as drunken gits, they MUCH preferred more UK holidaymakers than German ones. Why? Because Germans disproportionately “ate in” and self-catered, buying cheap raw ingredients from local supermarkets. Brits, if self-catering, ate out. EVERY NIGHT. Cash for local restaurant owners (and those who in turn depended on them) was boosted far more if the tourists were British rather than German.
Brits moaned about supermarkets “catering so much to those Germans”. Duh! It’s the economy, stupid! Supermarkets were vastly frequented by Germans, not Brits. Restaurant owners catered to *their* big spenders – Brits (and, to an extent, Irish).
Tourism began to be disproportionately skewed towards “British consumers”. When German giants like TUI were buying all the UK Tour Operators and by rights should have “the economic heft”.
Fast forward to 2010ish. Another of my many trips to the Netherlands to give courses and collaborate with academic colleagues. They really didn’t need to see me onto the train I’d get to Schiphol. However on several occasions they did. First time I expressed puzzlement at a train being over a minute late they laughed their heads off. They explained that for years now the Dutch had become exasperated at late trains which originated in…….Germany! I was given a rather pointed rant about how awful the German public sector had become…..why trains originating in Germany were always late or non-existent etc. Colleagues old enough to remember British Rail regarded Germany as now being akin to 1970s Britain. I didn’t take it all too seriously……until seeing objective statistics more recently…..now I realise my anecdotal evidence did in fact show the early rot setting in.
I just say this as a warning to Germany. Don’t do what we did. You’ve got the warning signs! Becoming a currency user has been a singularly bad first step however……
I just say this as a warning to Germany. Don’t do what we did. You’ve got the warning signs! Becoming a currency user has been a singularly bad first step however…
[ Fascinating comment. ]
Yes, its notoriously difficult to compare real per person ‘wealth’ between countries, even in fairly similar type economies. Median income may be a better guide than GDP in its various forms – Germany still comes ahead in this, by about 10% higher, but actual median wages are lower.
Germans are notoriously stingy tourists, although I suspect that’s as much a cultural thing as an economic one. They have longer holidays so they may also just spread out the money a bit more. They are also a lot more conservative that Brits when it comes to sampling ‘foreign’ food and drink, hence their habit of bringing lots of food with them (the Dutch are similar, I’ve heard French complain regularly about Dutch campers insisting on bringing their horrible bland vegetables in their campervans to France).
The German train issue is definitely a ‘thing’ – they seem to have pretty much stopped investing in any infrastructure for 3 decades or so and are free riding on the investment boom of the post war years. They will come to regret this deeply once everything starts seriously crumbling.
It does seem a little ironic given that for many decades both Anglos and Germanics have regularly mocked the irresponsibility of the French in economic management, but I wouldn’t mind betting that in a decade or two France will have outgrown them both in relative terms. The French seem to be the last ones left in Europe who truly believe in focused managed investment.
Germany is inflicting the standard privatization death to Deutsche Bahn. Suffocating the delivery to argue the case for privatization.
I agree. The irony is that the early ideas of the then Common Market were that it would have German Economics and French Politics. It may show that French Economics was in fact the winner (but it is anyone’s guess who the winner will be in terms of politics with the way things are!)
Unfortunately, it looks more like an Italian win when it comes to politics….
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dC7R
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, 2007-2022
(Indexed to 2007)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dCba
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and China, 2007-2022
(Indexed to 2007)
“Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC: “Ukraine today is nothing but a private military company in the hands of Western countries” International Affairs (Micael T)”
So basically what South Korea and South Vietnam was?
“Do you struggle getting out of bed in the morning? Marcus Aurelius can help Big Think. Micael T: “The world’s first Marxist as it seems defining humans by their work.””
Ah yes, silly valley’s favorite emperor. His take on stoicism, along with mindfulness meditation, seems like their go to method for staving off doubt as they continue to wreck the world in the name of quarterly earnings.
Katie and Aaron at Useful Idiots, podcast w/transcript. No paywall.
Gideon Levy on Israel’s Nazi Proposals – Full interview unpaywalled
Israeli watchdog journalist calls on the U.S. to “punish” Israel
“Award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is such a scathing critic of Israel’s policies and outspoken defender of Palestinian human rights that he’s only narrowly escaped physical attacks, even needing to have a bodyguard. But the Haaretz columnist and author wasn’t always like this.”
https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/gideon-levy-on-israels-nazi-proposals
Re: L’affaire Jeffrey Epstein: so what’s in the other hand that they’re trying to divert attention away from? Our bottomless proxy wars? The Hunter affair? Biden’s tanking numbers? The general malaise? I can’t believe the powers that be are letting this info out because it’s the right thing to do. (Of course, I’m still highly skeptical we will be getting anything more than a few token sacrificial lambs, if even that.)
The diversion tactic jumped to my mind on another *ahem* British establishment person in potential trouble story. So the UK Home Secretary made a really horrid joke.
However, I’ve seen little in the MSM about the fact the US Feds are hot on the heels of someone with strong connection to his family because of a Nigerian fraud that makes the oldest email scam in the world look positively clever (pun fully intended). Oh, and it even has an Israel angle. I think this story might just cover every possible entry on an annual bingo card thingy.
Combine the Epstein list news with the Whitney Webb book and you will see that ‘everyone does it’.
I’m all for flushing out the Augean Stables on the Potomac, the annex on Wall Street and the outposts in Hollywood. The remaining problem is to see just how far and deep the rot goes. Langley, Vauxhall Cross, Ft. Meade, Cheltenham, Tel Aviv, and say Hi to Jeffrey now that his surgeries are healing.
“Tokyo airplane crash probe to look into controllers’ instructions”
I suppose that we will have to wait to see the results of the investigation to see what went wrong. By now the black boxes on both planes would have been retrieved and will soon be sent for analysis. I suspect that it may have been the fault of the Coast Guard aircraft for going too early onto an active runway but that is just a hunch. Japan seems to be getting a flogging between this crash and those earthquakes and they can’t seem to catch a break.
They don’t need the black boxes because they have active tracking of both planes via radar and all audio transmissions between the planes and the controllers.
This wasn’t an issue of aircraft failure but of human error.
Yes it appears the CC plane was lined up on the runway for take off. And yes ground to CC doesn’t appear to give it clearance to enter the active runway.
Here is a site I follow and he does the best job so far of explaining what happened. But for those how don’t want to watch the CC plane lined up exactly at the spot the airbus was touching down.
Amazing that everyone got out.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_sQ1L_xPmo&pp=ygUKQnJvY29sYXJpbw%3D%3D
The audio from the tower was almost unintelligible, and seemed to miss the important bit “Hold at Charlie 5”
Its early days yet, but all indications seem to be that there was human error either in the air traffic control or the pilots of the Coast Guard plane.
While it was a terrible accident, its a tribute to the crew of the aircraft that nobody on board died – its noticeable that there doesn’t seem to have been a panic among the passengers, with is either down to the actions of the cabin crew or Japanese stoicism and obedience.
We need the CVR to understand if the JAL pilots ever saw the CG aircraft and if not, try to understand why not. We will also have the pilot testimony.
Blancolirio at Uttoob shows a vid of what the pilot might see on approach at night. He would never have seen the CC plane.
http://avherald.com/h?article=5132b9fe&opt=0
Detailed reporting.
“What might global LNG trade look like in 2024?”
At the moment the US is the leading exporter of LNG followed by Australia and Qatar-
‘The US emerged as the globe’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the global market in 2023, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing tanker tracking and government data. Australia came in second, while Qatar, which ranked first in 2022, saw its output drop by 1.9% and slid to third place.
According to the report, US LNG exports hit monthly and annual records last month, with the country exporting 8.6 million metric tons in December alone to total 88.9 million metric tons in 2023, up 14.7% compared to 2022.
According to US government data, Europe remained the foremost destination for US LNG exports last month, accounting for 5.43 million metric tons, or more than 60% of overall shipments. Nearly 70% of US LNG exports were destined for the region in November. The EU significantly increased its LNG imports last year, following the drop in pipeline gas flows from Russia, once its major supplier. This occurred amid Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow and a sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, which made them inoperable.’
https://www.rt.com/business/590059-us-top-lng-exporter/
Europe may be the leading destination for LNG gas but there is a reason why that is so (cough*NS2*cough). Of course it should be kept in mind that there is a number of black swans in a holding pattern over us at the moment that could cause chaos. War with Iran, a hurricane hitting those LNG terminals in the Gulf, a severe recession causing demand to be cut back, an explosion of LNG in a port, etc. So we will have to wait and see.
Hypothetical – black swans – St. of Hormuz – war – America’s strategic petroleum reserve at it’s lowest level since the early 80s?
Just thinking out loud…
Conclusion = these people are nuts.
Don’t forget Venezuela. The US remains committed to obtaining Venezuela’s oil reserves as its own.
For sure. If war starts and oil goes to $200 bbl who benefits? Oil companies and their subsidiaries, and of course the pols they pay off with campaign money. DC won’t care, they will rake in the war money along with all the right people.
The US citizens will become the very same people Vicky Nuland was talking about when she said F the EU. We will feel the pain because they don’t give one good $hit about us. Of course that is already obvious for anyone paying attention.
Who did Claudine Gay crib the resignation letter from?
ChatGPT
Haha. I hope so because then we would have a big public example of AI performing a top administrative duty. Hmmm
ROFL!!! Watching the PBS yesterday I was a little surprised to see the only story they have come up with to cover for her plagiarism was “Her opponents are the ones who discovered it so we don’t think we should have to care. Most of them are racist anyway so they don’t count as people.” I’ve obviously added snark. Then I watched the democracynow! this morning and could not believe they were pumping the same excuse, with the addition of “There’s one person who she is accused of plagiarizing that doesn’t have a problem with it so it’s just inadequate citation. Oh, and her accusers are all racist so they don’t count as people.” No mention whatsoever of the other people she plagiarized that are super pissed. And today is the first time I have heard about the refusal to release data related to her research. https://www.reddit.com/r/academia/comments/18wywu7/how_bad_was_claudine_gays_plagiarism/ This whole situation plays right into the right’s hands, she clearly got the job because she’s a WOC with a love of DEI. Reminds me of when a certain woman got the democrat nomination because she’s a woman and it was ‘her turn’. Welcome to the panderverse.
The best part for me was when she said not to ask what your country can do for you but instead to ask what you can do for your country. (Not mine: a commenter on X.)
Well, considering that Norman Finkelstein proved beyond any doubt, decades ago, that Alan Dershowitz (big macher at Harvard Law School) was a blatant plagiarist, only for Harvard to do absolutely nothing, the hypocrisy of all involved in the Claudine Gay matter pins the meter. Dershowitz himself had the chutzpah to explain why Claudine Gay’s plagiarism was intolerable.
‘Gaza’
Saw a Tweet today that was quite intriguing and to do with what is happening-
‘Wyatt Reed
@wyattreed13
19h
When Russia intervened in Ukraine, there was nonstop news coverage. Nonstop appeals to our morality, and nonstop demands for Russia to be punished, were broadcast constantly from every phone, TV, laptop, and tablet for months.
Thousands of sanctions were placed on Russian citizens while goods from Russia, including seafood, vodka, and diamonds, were stripped from the shelves. Russian gas and oil were banned for import.
Meanwhile, Europe criminalized the export to Russia of chemicals, lithium batteries, thermostats, and electric motors. Western corporations were pressured to abandon Moscow, and those that didn’t were smeared as “pro-Putin” until they did.
Russian athletes were banned from archery, badminton, baseball, basketball, biathlons, canoeing, chess, curling, cycling, gymnastics, Formula One, field hockey, ice hockey, judo, pentathlons, rowing, rugby, sailing, skating, skiing, soccer, surfing, swimming, taekwondo, tennis, triathlons, and volleyball.
Russian planes were prohibited from flying over most of Europe and North America. Museums throughout the West renamed masterpieces by Degas to remove any reference to Russia. Moscow mules became “Kyiv mules.” When Russian restaurants were vandalized, there was no investigation.
Hundreds of billions in Russian government assets abroad were seized. Homes and boats belonging to Russian individuals were seized in countries throughout Europe. A Russian businessman was forced to sell the Chelsea Football club to an American.
Russian officials become persona non grata and contact with them became grounds for surveillance. Numerous countries pledged to arrest the president of Russia if he set foot on their territory.
Does anyone find it odd that not a single one of those things is happening to Israel?’
https://nitter.net/wyattreed13/status/1742271328164454649#m
But, but Israel has a right to defend itself…
(Sarcasm aside, the level of destruction is pushing my psyche. History will not be kind).
> Does anyone find it odd that not a single one of those things is happening to Israel?
It’s not so much odd as clarifying. Now anyone who cares to look can see clearly who has been trustworthy and sincere in their concern for human rights all along — and who has not, and is not.
You see this in all sorts of fields. Like when NS2 pipelines were blown up releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere in world record amounts. And yet organizations like Greenpeace and people like Greta Thunberg were as silent as the grave. Channeling my inner Sherlock Homes-
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.”
>>“live overseas” newsletters has been pushing Panama hard for years, in part because they look to have serious conflicts of interest (they promote real estate projects)
Everything associated with expat and digital nomad-world is what used to be called payola, even the Facebook groups. Insurance companies and real estate are the big sponsors. Very important questions about crime, climate resilience, and above all healthcare, especially emergency care, get swept aside.
Also someone gets married to a local who won’t move and then just promotes that location to death so as not to be lonely.
Just so you know, Panama does have pretty good health care. But other points well taken.
The Big Debt-berg
(In honor of US debt hitting $34 Trillion!)
Chorus:
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
Go, Big Debt-berg
Go, Big Debt-berg!
Dow sittin’ on a mountain top
Thirty thousand points to drop
Spot a TNX on a runaway horse
Ah-hah, that’s right, of course
Big debt-berg to the rescue
(Go, big debt-berg
Go, big debt-berg)
Big debt-berg met a girl named Sue
She was feelin’ little kinda blue
Big debt-berg he’s the kind of guy
Never liked to see a trader cry
Big debt-berg to the rescue
Go, big debt-berg
Go, big debt-berg
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
Big debt-berg to the rescue!
(Go, Big Debt-berg
Go, Big Debt-berg, go!)
Big debt-berg in a submarine
Got a message from a warlord queen
She was hangin’ with some MIC guys
Big debt-berg didn’t waste no time
Big debt-berg to the rescue
Go big debt-berg
Go, big debt-berg!
Big debt-berg just swallowed Maine
Got a ticket on a DC plane
Big debt-berg is here for a nice long stint
Cousin J-Pow’s ready to print!
Big debt-berg to the rescue
Go, Big debt-berg
Go, Big debt-berg
Go, go, go, big debt-berg 3x
So long, big debt-berg
Future’s gone
Melody from “Jim Dandy to the Rescue” by Black Oak Arkansas
Warning: 70’s excess may lead to strange wardrobe choices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJXM-ssg2Hg
I laughed at the coin-flipping article because the original research was done by Persi Diaconis. Diaconis has practiced coin flips, and can make them come up whichever way he desires.
“Meet ‘Link History,’ Facebook’s New Way To Track the Websites You Visit”
Troubleshooting my old Mac a systems report led me to a ‘private’ folder hidden within my OS. Several folders one of which contained 100s of URLs to all the sites I’d visited or interacted with (ads/etc) since my last reboot which had been less than 24 hours previous.
I took that folder out and my desktop turned to gibberish so I put it back but I got the point: Apple knows every site I visit, and knows about every site those sites contact when I visit. Also hammered home the fact that normal commercial websites flood your system with cookies and srsly who knows what all.
Just sayin’.
Of course the OS does, how else do you think the ‘auto-complete’ could possibly work? The important point is not if the OS is tracking you, it’s if the mothership is also snooping.
The news in that article isn’t that Facebook mobile is finally implementing something available in desktop browsers for decades (“history”, “bookmarks”, etc), it’s that they’re finally making it visible to the user after hiding that capability behind the curtain. And only because EU privacy pressure is forcing them to be more transparent.
-Driverless Cars Immune From Traffic Tickets In California Under Current Laws NBC-
There was a guy in Denver, or was it San Francisco? who attacked a driverless cab and hacked it with an ax.
Ha!
Zeina Khodr just now on Nasrallah’s speech today from Ajazeera live blog:
The whole north of Israel has had to be evacuated of its citizens which gives Hezbollah operation control of the north of Israel. But if Israel starts bombing Beirut, then Hezbollah would start bombing Tell Aviv and that is something that would cause the Netanyahu government to fall and that is something that he will not risk. That way lays prison for him for all his past crimes not to mention those of the past few months.
Why is political dominance of the Global South a risk to Western elites? Global South representatives aren’t susceptible to controlling narratives of ‘white guilt’ which leads to inconvenient disruptions in the ‘rules based order’. In the past Global South representatives have been controlled by their aspiration to be like the ‘white devils’ but now the devils are more like imps and no longer held in much regard.
Global South at the individual level within global institutions are breaking ranks with the accepted Global North narratives: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1742646543939703151
Hong Kong was never in a Union with China.
[ Actually Hong Kong was part of China for about 2,000 years before the coercive British modern colonization. Hong Kong fortunately is now again part of China, and will assuredly remain so. China is not about to ever again experience colonization or separation. ]
https://english.news.cn/20240102/e1a064d4c2584b5d9a809d1a94fc05a9/c.html
January 2, 2024
Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge welcomes over 16 mln passengers in 2023
GUANGZHOU — More than 16.3 million inbound and outbound passengers and 3.26 million vehicles passed through Zhuhai port of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) in 2023, 1.29 times and 3.8 times that of 2019, respectively, official data shows.
Tour groups drove the main passenger flow last year via the bridge, the longest bridge-and-tunnel sea crossing in the world, according to the bridge’s border inspection station on Tuesday.
Data shows that in 2023, more than 45,000 mainland tour groups traveled to and from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Macao SAR via the bridge. In the meantime, residents in Hong Kong and Macao paid a record high of almost 10 million visits to the mainland via the bridge….
“Cute but lethal! World’s most dangerous CAT arrives at Utah zoo: Black-footed feline looks similar to a house cat – but is a killing machine that scores prey in six out of ten hunts”
They are a most unusual hunter in how small but how robust they are. They only weigh about two pounds and can yet range up to 20 miles at night in their hunts? That’s amazing that and certainly their colouring is eye-striking-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-footed_cat