Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing The Marginalian
A rare burst of billions of cicadas will rewire our ecosystems for years to come Vox
The Judgment Holder Problem in Sovereign Debt Workouts Credit Slips
Climate
Market-based schemes not reducing deforestation, poverty: Report Phys.org
Climate change: World’s oceans suffer from record-breaking year of heat BBC. Now that we know whales talk… WHALE 1: “It was hot today!” WHALE 2: “How hot was it?”
The Mega-Donor Who Colluded With OPEC Prospect. FTC hard at work. Donor to both parties….
Mycocycle uses mushrooms to upcycle old tires and construction waste TechCrunch
Pandemics
Does the public understand that “variant” means “vaccine resistant”? The Gauntlet
FDA postpones advisory committee meeting on next COVID vaccines Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
* * * The ‘Ruby Princess’ case and the future of COVID litigation Peter Vogel Legal. “The Plague Ship.”
A Fight About Viruses in the Air Is Finally Over. Now It’s Time for Healthy Venting Scientific American
Long Covid at Work: A Manager’s Guide Harvard Business Review. Under, I kid you not, the rubric of “Diversity And Inclusion.”
* * * Could bird flu become the next COVID? How worried should we be? Boston Globe
* * * Meet Dr. Sammy, the Colorado researcher trying to fend off the next honeybee pandemic Colorado Sun
Water
England’s rivers to remain in poor state as EU laws ignored post-Brexit, says watchdog Guardian
China?
Xi Skips Visit to Bombed Embassy After Vowing to ‘Never Forget’ Bloomberg
Embarking on a Golden Voyage in China-Hungary Relations Magyar Nemzet
* * * China’s Exports Rebound in April in Boost for Economy Bloomberg
China just sent a secret mini-rover to the far side of the moon on its Chang’e 6 sample-return probe Space.com
How food and chopstick skills are helping ease US-China tensions Al Jazeera
India
Brand New India Phenomenal World
Syraqistan
Biden: I won’t give Israel offensive weapons to attack in populated parts of Rafah Times of Israel. The deck: “Unprecedentedly blunt threat marks stunning shift from president, who long rejected conditioning aid to Israel; official says US still committed to freeing hostages. Commentary:
Yes, right after a Biden official quietly admitted that Israel already has all the US weaponry it needs to invade Rafah: https://t.co/HzCnqUYky7 https://t.co/92o6EujOMa pic.twitter.com/LVurjteHC1
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 8, 2024
Israel Commits to Limit Rafah Operation, Grant Control of Crossing With Egypt to Private U.S. Firm Haaretz. The security firm is not named.
* * * Benjamin Netanyahu’s dilemma: save the hostages or his government FT
* * * What Went Wrong in Yemen: Q&A with Alexandra Stark RAND
Letter by US politicians to ICC undermines international law South China Morning Post (Furzy Mouse).
European Disunion
Eurovision Song Contest kicks off in Sweden amid Gaza protests France24
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine Warns Of Outages After “Massive” Attack On Power Plants NDTV
Power import cannot completely cover deficit after Russian attack Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Ukraine parliament passes bill for prisoners to join army Al Jazeera. Barrel-scraping.
Ukraine SitRep: Eating The Seed Corn – Intervention Threats And Responses Moon of Alabama
EU agrees to arm Ukraine using profits from Russian state assets FOX
* * * Ukrainian-made satellite systems may end up being used by Russian army – Slidstvo.info investigation Ukrainska Pravda. “These systems are manufactured in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, by a plant owned by American outsourcing company Jabil Circuit for the Israeli corporation Gilat Satellite Networks.” So, back doors?
Russia’s stealth tanker fleet refueling in European waters as EU mulls new curbs S&P Global
* * * Nobody could have predicted:
One evening in the biting winter cold of 2014, I went down to Maidan with my Ukrainian translator and her mother. It was packed, lively like a festival. "What do you think of all this?" My translator asked me as her mother waved a large Ukrianian flag above her head.
"It won't… pic.twitter.com/7HnPHoolh3
— Johnny miller (@johnnyjmils) May 7, 2024
The Caribbean
Transitional council in Haiti embraces new changes following turmoil as gang violence grips country AP
Global Elections
‘My vote snatched’: How to win India’s election without a single vote Al Jazeera
‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event Past & Present. From 2020, still germane.
BRICS: The Gold Rush Has Gripped the Union InfoBrics. Let me know how that works out.
Biden Administration
US chip production capacity may treble by 2032, says industry group Business Standard
Groves of Academe
UCLA encampment:
Under the Jumbotron London Review of Books
A Year Under the Palestine Exception at Columbia University The Nation
* * * Ghosts of ’68 Sidecar. A must-read.
No One Knows What Universities Are For The Atlantic
* * * Sullivan & Cromwell Plans Vigilant Hiring Checks After Protests Bloomberg. Exceptionally nasty.
The crackdown on campus protests has gone way too far Perry Bacon, WaPo
Editorial: Amid campus chaos, frat bros step up for American values Boston Herald
Police State Watch
NYPD union sues Adams administration over new ‘zero tolerance’ policy on steroid use among cops New York Daily News
Florida deputies who fatally shot US airman burst into wrong apartment, attorney says Orlando Sentinel
Digital Watch
Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT Tom’s Hardware. Open theft. As usual. Just like Reddit. Training sets = looting.
Writers and publishers in Singapore reject a government plan to train AI on their work Rest of World
Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content Simon Willison’s Weblog
* * * Big brains divided over training AI with more AI: Is model collapse inevitable? The Register. The deck: “Gosh, here’s us thinking recursion was a solved problem.”
AI, Reducing Internalities and Externalities Cass Sunstein, SSRN. “AI-powered Choice Engines might also take account of externalities, and they might nudge or require consumers to do so as well. Different consumers care about different things, of course, which is a reason to insist on a high degree of freedom of choice, even in the presence of internalities and (to some extent) externalities. But it is important to emphasize that AI might be enlisted by insufficiently informed or self-interested actors, who might exploit inadequate information or behavioral biases, and thus reduce consumer welfare.” It’s a phishing equilibrium, so not “might” but “will,” indeed “already are.”
OpenAI offers a peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions TechCrunch
Boeing
Boeing whistleblower says he was pressured to hide defects The Hill. A new one, Santiago Paredes. “He said he would see hundreds of defects in parts on a regular basis, even earning the nickname ‘showstopper’ from higher-ups for how frequently he slowed production due to his inspections.”
Class Warfare
Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World — by Brett Christophers (review) Marx and Philosophy
When Employers Violate the NLRA, the Harm is Always Irreparable On Labor
The New Sundown Towns The New Republic
The Mystery of the Missing Multicellular Prokaryotes Quanta
Antidote du jour (via:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
NETANYAHU
(melody borrowed from Desperado by The Eagles)
On Monday, caucus99percenter suggested ‘Netanyahu’ to the tune of ‘Desperado’ by The Eagles. Here you go . . .
Netanyahu, you build those high walls and fences
There is no hidin’ expenses no way no how
You’ll have to start on another wild campaign season
They’ve accused you of treason you and your hausfrau
The contempt you show for Biden — Oy!
That crooked fool’s disabled
Upsetting apple carts might win this thing yet
All the ICC trial findings
You can call those findings fables
Be nonchalant you’re still outside their net
Netanyahu, what pathological hunger
What demons we wonder reside in your dome?
Your fiefdom, your fiefdom must do things that are shocking
The vision you’re hawking keeps you here on your throne
Killing Arab folk is a common crime
No place to go and they’re drinking brine
Will Egypt let them in some sunny day?
Their punishment is what they chose
Hamas tells them to oppose
And stay . . .
Netanyahu, why don’t you fear consequences?
How many offenses are on your plate?
There’s no explainin’ since there is no one who loves you
Israelis push and they shove you (push and they shove you)
Israelis push and they shove you but you’re their soul mate
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? Because they are twisted in an evil and twisted mind…excellent adaptation.
Your Ukraine flag decal won’t get you
Into Heaven anymore
It’s already overflowing
From your dirty proxy war
Now, Jesus don’t like killin’
No matter what the reason’s for
And your Ukrainian flag decal won’t get you
Into Heaven any more
I got my yard so filled
With Ukrainian flags so I didn’t notice
The Google trench
I didn’t think I’d just go splat
And it really irked me
When St. Peter told me that
Your Ukrainian flag decal won’t get you
Into Heaven any more
We’re already overcrowded
From your dirty proxy war
Now, Jesus don’t like killin’
No matter what the reason’s for
And your Ukrainian flag decal won’t get you
Into Heaven any more
Apologies to John Prine
If there is a Heaven, I hope he’s there smoking a cigarette 9 miles long.
Apologies not needed, I’m sure John would be honored
One thing we know for sure: John ain’t buried in the cold, cold ground.
Can’t beleve how perfectly Netanyahu scans with desperado, kudos.
“US chip production capacity may treble by 2032, says industry group”
If the US is experiencing all sorts of difficulties in ramping up production of simple 155mm artillery rounds, then how are they supposed to ramp up chip production which is several magnitudes of difficulty harder to accomplish? Where is the highly trained & skilled workforce supposed to come from to man those facilities? Do they plan on forcing Taiwan to move all their chip-making production facilities to the US then to accomplish this capacity?
This is, of course, supposing that the situation in the US will improve or remain as it is until 2032. Not exactly a sure bet. How long until institutional, if not generalized, collapse?
Honestly I expect collapse will help US industrial output. Wages will be crushed and it will be possible to profitably manufacture a whole suite of goods that can now only be produced in Asia.
That’s assuming we avoid the civil war and balkanization collapse scenarios of course.
Maybe. But that will depend on the cost of food, fuel, electricity etc. for a start. Nobody is going to take a job at a factory for peasant wages if it actually costs them money to go work there.
Yesterday in business news, there was a big announcement about Microsoft opening a designated campus for AI research or engineering…some sort of big hullabaloo which brought Scranton Joey out to give a speech. Convenient for the optics the site is located in Wisconsin, where once stood a deserted business plan from Foxconn to have a massive US office presence.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/tech/microsoft-ai-wisconsin/index.html
Moar chips so we can haz smart toilets with “powered by AI” emblazoned on the tank.
Beam me up, Scotty!
‘Beam me up, Scotty! No intelligent life to be found down here!
“US chip production capacity may treble by 2032, says industry group”
This increase in chip production capacity has long been wished for and may well happen, but manufacturing productivity has fallen now for 12 years and real earnings for manufacturing production line workers have not risen since 1980. Manufacturing capacity and production have not risen since 2007. Manufacturing employment has increased only 1% since 2020.
So, apart from significant government subsidies, I am not sure why to expect a dramatic increase in chip production capacity.
Yes, the type of workers that TSM wants is very “threading the needle” by American standards
….very talented and disciplined, but not so skilled-credentialed and wanted that they would rather work at a 9 to 5, semi-work-from-home white-coĺlar job.
They got that sort of loyalty because in Taiwan, they were the most prestigious and best paying jobs available by far. You can get similar levels of dedication and blind loyalty out of 5th year BigLaw associates, investment bankers, and McKinsey consultants as well, you just have to convince them that the job is*everything*.
Too bad all the helicopter money that the belief structure that supports US full faith and credit bucks is being spent on, you know, helicopters, and bombs, and stock buy-backs and CEObucks, and a lot of other incompetent and worthless sh!t. Instead of on, you know, a viable human-need-centered economy.
https://restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-arizona-expansion/
“In the past two years, the company has relocated hundreds of Taiwanese workers and their families to Arizona. Instead of a gleaming new facility, these workers found an active construction site, and a company struggling to bridge Taiwanese and American professional and cultural norms. ”
“The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company; Taiwanese TSMC veterans described their American counterparts as lacking the kind of dedication and obedience they believe to be the foundation of their company’s world-leading success.”
Sounds like a recipe for a new HBO show. Semicon Valley: Tower of Babel. Possible taglines include:
– When George Washington meets Confucius.
– Anything But Chips.
– Before The Water Ran Out
– etc
When a crisis really breaks out here in Taiwan, language barriers and differences in cultural norms would probably result in Americans shooting at Taiwanese soldiers. “They all look the same to me!!!”
Will the Taiwanese workers be subject to Trump’s deportation plan?
How many of these idiots yelling about Taiwan Independence even understand that it called itself Republic of China and continue to claim the entirety of Mainland China?
They’ve had free and open elections for 3 decades. If they wanted to really discussion their Chinese-ness that much, you’d think they could at least change the name and flag.
From the founding of the WTO until the “Kung Flu,” all the politicians seemed to forget about all them “commonusts.”
> Sounds like a recipe for a new HBO show
They’ve already made it, its called “American Factory”: https://www.netflix.com/title/81090071
Working link for No One Knows What Universities Are For The Atlantic
can anyone post a link please that gets around the paywall?
https://web.archive.org/web/20240509043225/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/bureaucratic-bloat-eating-american-universities-inside/678324/
Try a search on archive[dot]ph
https://pastebin.com/nSQVBMaB
Brexit was inevitable once the EU surrounded Switzerland.
Tax havens are an industry in the UK and its Royal dependencies and peculiars.
Not merely a service for the savvy and connected, it is also a neat way to steal, by having accidents befall the dictators who own the yet to be laundered funds. Switzerland held onto ‘Nazi’ and refugee funds after WWII.
“Confessions of an Economic Hitman” can add an extra chapter?
To your point: this piece on tax havens from ?yesterday?
https://archive.ph/k76kB
One of the best documentaries out there on tax havens:
The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance
https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8?si=U229L1VzU4aDNOzr
See here ICC! Don’t you dare issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu et al. That the substance of a letter from some congress critters to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Let me get this straight. You, for whatever reason, do not like what that court is doing for political reasons so you issue a threat and yet the government of which you are a part has co-equal and independent branches, executive, legislative, and judicial. Do you threaten US courts? Preposterous, you reply, I only signed the letter to curry favor with important donors. Oh. That makes it okay?
The letter references the infamous Hague Invasion act as the vehicle by which the threat would be carried out. If, they say, foreign nationals are arrested for war crimes, the American military would come to their rescue. Can’t we investigate these senators for treason?
The Hague Invasion Act covers NATO allies and major non-NATO allies such as Israel. So, no, not treasonous.
Is it any wonder that in Global South (a.k.a. non-West world) ICC in Hague is know as International Colonial Court.
Unlawful? Probably. Outrageous? Yes, although John Bolton has form, issuing a thinly veiled threat to UN officials that the US knows where their children go to school.
So what does anyone propose to do about it? I ask this question over and over, because this is the only question that matters to predators such as the sociopaths who rule over us. They are indifferent to the things that persuade us, to our cute memes, our clever songs, our close readings of texts and our carefully crafted arguments, much less to their own roaring hypocrisy. They believe neither in God nor in an afterlife and fear no punishment from above or below.
They care only about this – what is going to stop me?
Nobody could have predicted:
“One evening in the biting winter cold of 2014, I went down to Maidan with my Ukrainian translator and her mother…Blame whoever you want. But it’s a hell of tragedy. Other nations beware.”
This account, mentioning Syria and Libya as probable templates, begs the question: So how will this be applied to Taiwan? We see Taiwan is next on the menu and commentators are already mentioning a ramping up of Western propaganda attacks on China signaling a shift to Taiwan. Is Taiwan sufficiently politically divided to push into a mini civil war like in Ukraine? Or formally announce severance from China – paving the way for construction of US military bases on Taiwan with long range missiles and all? Or will the US be able to manipulate others like the Philippines to smash against China and as pretext for forcing isolation of China among those willing to join a re-imaged coalition of the willing? Our coalitions seem to be getting smaller over time.
South East Asia might be too varied and frequently independent for the US to corral into a large enough monolith to do more than annoy China. Short of getting Japan and maybe South Korea to go to war against China, there seem to be too many problems for the US to do against China what it’s done to Russia. But the US can waste a lot of resources trying, which will likely be mostly ignored by most voters back in America.
The problem for the US is the difference between Europe and South East Asia. In Europe, those countries were locked down by either NATO or the European Union or both and so were easily kept it line. South East Asia is not like that with many different countries that chart their own course. That is why the US is trying to cobble organizations like AUKUS together too act as a sort of Asian NATO but not that many countries want to go there and give up their sovereignty just so that they can be sent to fight China. Frankly many countries just want to trade with China and enjoy the benefits in Chinese investments in their infrastructure development instead. Crazy, huh?
Rev Kev: South East Asia is not like that with many different countries that chart their own course. That is why the US is trying to cobble organizations like AUKUS together too act as a sort of Asian NATO
Sure.
But the other longstanding, quite effective method has been for the US simply to print dollars to buy and install local politicians, as with Tony Blair and Liz Truss in the UK, and hundreds — thousands — of others elsewhere.
In this respect, forex, Lai Ching‑te, Taiwan’s new President-elect, doesn’t have a good look.
I would say don’t miss “Question from a Russian soldier: in the comments below the Maidan tweet.
I’m curious, but not curious enough to join X/Twitter in order to read the comment.
It’s a video addressed to Russian speaking Ukrainians and is (quite liberally quoted)
Ukrainians are fighting for one thing and one thing only – admission to The Club.
Tell a Ukrainian that The Club is not all its cracked up to be and cares nothing about them and they look at you like you just told a human kitten in December that Christmas is cancelled.
Don’t you worry! Over 4.6 million Ukrainians are currently residing in The Club and gaining first person experiences. That’s already about 1/5 of them, and The Club looks to be ready to kick them out.
Yup. Those poor schlubs will get the same motivation that their dead comrades got. A gun at their backs.
They will get the same training that their dead comrades got. To soak up Russian munitions with their bodies.
NATO does not care. Non-sociopaths always have an inherent disadvantage when dealing with sociopaths, since non-sociopaths have scruples and sociopaths do not.
The question was for ethnic Russians in Ukraine… Not for Galicians…
They were very much on board. At least many of them. They would join The West and become True Europeans, while the retarded third-worlders east of the border would rot in their Third World sh-hole, that was the game.
It’s basically like immigration, but your new country was imposed on you without you actually moving anywhere. Somewhat like the East-West Germany dynamics. But the ethnocratic crazies just wanted it all and right now, they didn’t felt like waiting for some three or four generations.
Here:
https://twitter.com/simpatico771/status/1787734650858729677
PS Nitter still works. Just replace “twitter.com” with “nitter.poast.org”.
Thanks for that. I haven’t been able to find a working nitter link on many a moon. (Culturally appropriating Kat Williams with that turn of phrase.)
All of them (mostly non working) are listed here:
https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
Last time I checked, the other working one was nitter.esmailelbob.xyz, and nitter.privacydev.net was “half-working”.
Speaking of Kat Williams, he was right about not going to P Diddy parties. :-)
” Is Taiwan sufficiently politically divided…”
Anecdote about that – we recently invoiced a Taiwanese company, and Taiwan is still officially at least part of China according to the US. You would expect the province and country part of the address on the invoice to read “Taiwan, China”, but I suspect something was programmed into the software we use somehow, so that the address actually read “Taiwan (province of China)”, making it very explicit.
The business owner contacted us and refused to pay the bill until “(province of China)” was removed from the invoice. So yes, the propaganda the US is promoting (despite the US’ current official position) is working to some extent.
It’s ISO 3166 and typically programs use the ISO 3166 and 639 standards in dealing with internationalization.
To me, Boeing is the perfect embodiment of Neoliberalism in practice.
– Enrich shareholders and executives as job 1, and maybe the only job.
– Let the marketplace sort out plane construction and safety issues. Regulators be damned. So what if a few planes crash as long as job 1 is maintained.
After all, the heavy hand of regulation is producing inefficiency.
Flying in a Boeing airplane in 2024 is a bit too close to the Libertarian ideal of ” risk selection is an individual choice “…much too close for my comfort. It’s a long way from Kitty Hawk and the sandy dunes, ” let’s hope and cross our fingers this will work “!
It’s a new take one supposes…Free Markets and all.
Decades ago, when a fellow callow youth was attempting to persuade me of the virtues of what self-describes as “Objectivism”, the argument was made that we don’t need safety regulations because profit-maximizing corporations can be relied on to produce safe products and services in order to avoid litigation risk. All pro-social functions of government regulation would be imposed through tort law.
Perhaps we’ll get to see how well that works in practice.
So if flying Boeing is an individual choice, how many airlines flying out of the US don’t operate Boeings?
Santiago Paredes. “He said he would see hundreds of defects in parts on a regular basis, even earning the nickname ‘showstopper’ from higher-ups for how frequently he slowed production due to his inspections.”
Such people get called to meet with management or human resources about their “negative attitude” and “not being a team player.”
Never been a Boeing employee (please don’t “staph me”, Mr. Hitman) but I’ve had some dealings with the company and did get to peek at the inner, office-politics there. They’re only suspicions, but there may be even weirder stuff going on than just usual MBA-brain: strings being pulled by politicians, foreign influence, that sort of thing.
I actually had an overwhelmingly positive opinion of the workers and lower-level managers I directly interacted with. There were definitely whispers about some decisions pushed down from on high though, along with a pretty widespread sense of gallows-humor.
Re Ghosts of ’68
“Võ Nyugên Giáp, architect of the Tet Offensive, famously remarked that the US could never have won in Vietnam regardless of its superior military strength. Why? Because ‘the human factor’ was decisive. It did not matter how many Vietnamese the US killed. There would always be enough willing to fight and die in defence of their country.”
This is likely the real reason Israel is relentlessly targetting women and children in Gaza. In this case such killings do matter, because ultimately there will be no future generations of Palestinians able, let alone willing, to fight and die in defence of Palestine.
That sounds like the logic of genocide in a nutshell. However, it occurs to me that it hasn’t worked since humanity has scattered all over the globe in millions and billions. There are too many anymore, there will always be survivors these days, not to mention other, untargeted groups that sympathize with the oppressed, that will decry such actions and perhaps enact their own revenge.
I guess big numbers are too hard to grasp for people blinded by hate and fear.
There were too many aware humans in the southern part of Vietnam that were seriously offended by the corruption of the crooks the US propped up!
Dismissing the Catholics was not enough.
Consumerism may work for a while in former Warsaw pact.
Remains to be seen how many will die for Levis blu jeans.
What do you think the Agent Orange was for?
The rest of the autocratic regimes in the middle east are going to increase the beat downs against their own populations as a result of the general population’s simmering outrage at what’s being done in Gaza boiling over. The threat of the USA either invoking a military or economic terrorism response is real. There are many unintended outcomes in store.
The beatings will continue until morale improves. At the end of the piece is a link to an old Ernest Mandel piece on an older Lessons on May (’68). He was a Belgian historian who in 1962 wrote the 2 Volume Marxist Economic Theory. He was another persecuted academic…but Trots always got a special thrashing then didn’t they.
Anyway, he was scheduled to do a U.S. university tour in ’68, but Nixon put the kibosh on him and denied his visa application. I was really looking forward to hearing him. To quote wiki…”In 1971, a Federal Court in New York voted to void (Attorney General John) Mitchell’s decision, stating that the United States could not bar a visitor, but on 29 June 1972, the Supreme Court ruled, 6 to 3, that Mitchell had acted within his job description in rejecting the visa. In 1972, his exclusion from the United States was upheld in the US Supreme Court case Kleindienst v. Mandel.”
Bloomberg’s speculation on the bombed US embassy visit looks like a spin job worthy of James Carville. They don’t actually have any proof that Xi didn’t visit the embassy; just saying.
Maybe he did visit it and the readout skipped it because markets. These financial people will do anything including kill puppies to prop up the Dow.
What Went Wrong in Yemen: Q&A with Alexandra Stark RAND
If the author’s motivation in writing the book was to stop “genocide and political violence” maybe she should have written a book on Israel and the U.S.
Your work at RAND has also looked at how to avoid escalation in Ukraine and how climate change could drive conflict throughout the Middle East. What motivates you to do the research you do?
I’m Jewish on my dad’s side and Armenian on my mom’s side. So stories about genocide and political violence and how that shapes people were just part of my life growing up. I’ve been interested ever since in thinking about how U.S. policy can mitigate, or even prevent, that kind of violence, and hopefully make people’s lives a little better. That’s the crosscutting theme that informs all of my research at RAND.
“What Went Wrong in Yemen: Q&A with Alexandra Stark”
Belatedly, it occurred to the Emperor that if the Harkonnen couldn’t defeat the Fremen over the course of years, how had he been foolish enough to think that his own men would fair any better over a shorter amount of time.
Also applies to Israel in Gaza. Can’t win the actual fight, so instead try to just starve everyone and make the problem go away.
Who says things are going wrong in Yemen? First the Saudis and now the US have been resoundingly defeated by a country that objectively would be far better off if it was simply left alone.
It’s interesting how sometimes a piece of art will come along that is absolutely appropriately timed. Long live the fighters.
Dept. of Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice A day, I guess —
“You are the official spokesperson for the Israeli government and you have no idea how many civilians you’ve killed, and yet you want me to believe that you’re being incredibly careful not to kill civilians?”
— Piers Morgan quite aggressively going after Israeli spokesperson.
https://twitter.com/zeithistoriker/status/1788164379046744456
>US rapper Macklemore releases anthem for anti-Israel occupation at Columbia – The Times of Israel
Never liked rap music, but it’s starting to grow on me…especially since Rock and Roll has lost its soul, and post mandatory vaccination enthusiast position of my erstwhile favorite music artist Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
https://youtu.be/fgDQyFeBBIo?si=eYlR5pI4udHk6mIe
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-rapper-macklemore-releases-anthem-for-anti-israel-occupation-at-columbia/
great anthem (and vid) by Macklemore
up there w/Public Enemy back in the day
I’m not much of a rap fan either, with few exceptions like PE, Two Live Jews (yes you read that right), ok, the Beastie Boys…and now Macklemore ;-)
Check out an artist called ‘Immortal Technique’… Peruvian-American, with some truly graphic and gruesome imagery that would make any suburbanite squirm, but also anti-imperialist themes.
An interlude from his first album, ‘Revolutionary: Vol 1’ circa 2001:
Immortal Technique – The Poverty of Philosophy
Hip hop was parasitized by politics in the early 90s, and a specific sub-genre coming out of cracked out Los Angeles (also a result of much political intrigue, think Iran/Contra), ‘gangster-rap’ popularized by the powers that be to justify Clinton’s crime bill, etc.
For a true representation of the Black American spirit, you’d have to listen to KRS-One, universally acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the genre, and universally ignored by the mainstream due to his conscious messages. He was recently invited to receive one of those lifetime achievement awards at the Grammys. He declined.
You beat me to all the good recommendations! Not a huge fan of hip-hop in general, but I do like the more politically oriented acts. Immortal Technique is great, and I wish he had put out more stuff. Not really sure why he stopped.
Hadn’t heard about KRS-One declining a grammy – kudos to him! Here he is speaking directly to your last paragraph – My Philosophy.
Another act I like is Blackalicious. Looking this one up made me feel really old – song is from 1999(!), where did those last two decades go? Deception (Don’t Let Money Change Ya) The whole album, Nia, is quite good.
Same here with not liking hip-hop much, but when I was forced to listen to it, I did like the spirit or soul of the best of it. It is interesting that misogynistic, violence infused music was promoted instead. It is like how empty music of whatever genre is pushed by music industry over good, but then good art of whatever type truly informs often with an emotional gut punch that encourages understanding and change. That is something those in charge do not like. Hence the garbage that is too common.
Lots of people, maybe especially older ones, decry the lack of protest music these days. It’s there, but you just have to look for it – they aren’t going to play it on the radio voluntarily.
When they did play lots of protest music on the radio back in the 60s and 70s, FM radio was still fairly new. I’m hard pressed to think of popular acts from that period who didn’t have at least a few protest songs in their playlist, and they all got airtime. Pretty strong argument that the protest music helped end the Vietnam war. Powers that be learned their lesson and they won’t make that mistake again.
One more that I really love, but that is very difficult to get a copy of. The Coup – The Guillotine
I just listened to The Guillotine and is most definitely a protest song. And it is a good one. Yes, it’s unsurprising that it might be hard to find (or buy) regardless of the format.
Now, if I could just get it on a vinyl single… ;-)
Try “The Ongoing History of Protest Music” website to find both new and old protest songs from many genres.
There is no lack of current protest songs. Every month, the above website has a blog post about new protest music from a variety of artists. They also have posts on the history of protest songs. Recent ones were devoted to Johnny Cash and Nina Simone.
Pro-Palestinian protesters say they won’t move unless Syracuse University meets their demands archive syracuse.com
Asking students to move off the quad to the edge of campus… outta sight, outta mind. At least no robo cops… yet
Now that flamethrowing robot dogs are available for purchase, how long before some of those “patriotic” frat bros take up a collection to get one?
“The ‘Ruby Princess’ case and the future of COVID litigation”
The whole saga of this ship was a cluster-*** from start to finish. When they left Sydney for New Zealand they knew that they had cases aboard but the cruise line would hardly cancel that voyage. They stopped long enough in New Zealand to cause an outbreak there before cutting their trip short to return to Sydney. By the time they returned to Sydney they had cases galore so the State Government in it wisdom let everybody off that ship – all 2,700 passengers. It is reckoned that 10% of Covid case in Australia were traced to this ship and they had contact teams chasing the passengers as they scattered across the entire country. In the end 28 people died that were associated with that ship and 900 were infected. Sydney has a very long history of quarantine practices and could have had that ship anchored in the harbour while they evacuated the sick and infected but I guess that that was too hard or something-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Princess#COVID-19_pandemic
MTG deserves at least a golf clap for giving it the old college try.
By my math there were 349 Congress Cretins who voted to table her motion to vacate, and with 213 democrats that means over 100 Dems chose the MIC and slaughter over a popcorn fest of elephant humiliation.
Good to know.
Good to know that the Democrats regard Johnson as their man and will do everything in their power to protect him. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
And knowing that his recent speech to House Republicans about his religious goals had REPUBLICANS cringing, it’s interesting to see that Establishment Democrats are more than willing to abandon any principles their base hold in order to keep the wars going and Wall Street flowing.
The Donkey Show knows how important the evang vote is, and by going long on Johnson, they’ve extended their reach, is probably the thinking.
It wasn’t just M T-G getting crushed in the vote, but the Freedom Caucus by extension.
When they ousted My Kevin, it was their high point~
According to the CTers I follow, this wasn’t Freedom Caucus rather MTG has been compromised/co-opted by deep state and this was a move to stop Trump.
I could have told you that her efforts were futile. The War Machine is thoroughly in control.
The same congressmen who claimed to be protecting the American taxpayer a few months ago are back to waiving Ukrainian flags and babbling on about Winston Churchill and they neither see the contradiction nor do they care.
So where is the Weather Underground now that we could really use them?
They got tenure and have been neutered. Something about “changing the system from within the system!”
You know that it is never the system that gets changed, it is the people in the system that get
change. Working with others, even compromising, is fine, but not at the cost of your soul, which almost all these politicians seem to do. They sell their souls to the system as soon as it is monetarily profitable to do so.
File this one under “dog bites mailman”… Democrats are bemoaning the path to a court date in the Trump classified documents trial. Hear their cries and lamentations, make known far and wide they are in favor of justice! Give me a damn break already.
Judge motions to delay start of the trial. Immediately it’s presumed, that this judge is unfit to preside over aforementioned trial.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4652538-democrats-cry-foul-over-judge-cannons-handling-of-trump-documents-case/
“Eurovision Song Contest kicks off in Sweden amid Gaza protests”
Eurovisio is in a way a preview of the Paris Olympics. Both Belarus and Russia have been banned from this competition because of the war so now too many people are wondering why Israel gets a pass while committing a real-time genocide. The Israelis tried to slip in a song about the October 7th attack but were forced to change the title and some of the lyrics. Does that count as antisemitism? Nonetheless the Israelis are coping some heavy flack. Israeli contestant Eden Golan was met with boos by some people in a rehearsal and he has been forced to stay in a motel and not mix with the other artists. At least two other contestants wore clothing to denote their support for Palestine much to the shock of the establishment while outside there are so many Palestine supporters that Sweden had to bring in police from Denmark and Norway to help out. So my prediction, based on what has happened in past Eurovisions, is that Israel will “win” this competition so next year it will be held in Israel itself.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/eden-golan-booed-at-eurovision-dress-rehearsal-vows-not-to-be-deterred/
When Ukraine won 2 years ago, via a jury fix, not by popular vote, the UK generously stepped in to host the next Eurovision. I am sure if Israel were to win, the UK would make the same offer, as both Sunak and Starmer are adamant that ‘the whole of Britain supports Israel’. The weekly mass protest march near Parliament falls under the category of Pinter’s Nobel Speech, “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”
Taibbi’s latest. Hope it’s visible to non subscribers. Remarkable revelations of WH calling in reporters to more than one training session on how to cover this campaign.
https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/is-journalism-back-new-york-times?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3ib01
Re Biden stamping his little foot–so basically he is admitting that he always had the power to deny Israel weapons and therefore is an accessory to genocide. Clarifying.
‘Complicit’ is understating the US involvement. From flat out ignoring laws to send weapons to breaking up large weapon shipments into a series of smaller ones to avoid oversight, Genocide Joe has been an active participant. Then there’s blocking international action at the UN and elsewhere, and the propagandizing to cover up and distract. America is as much a perpetrator of this genocide as Israel.
Democide at home and genocide abroad. America’s elite have made clear they’d much rather rule in hell then countenance any alternative.
You could also add threatening to punish any international institution that even thinks of bringing Netanyahu’s government to justice.
Though I’m not sure if senate runs US foreign policy, so it may not be an official stance. In which case, naturally, the part of government that decides on foreign policy should stomp heavily on those senators and maybe charge them with treason (as in endangering US interests and international standing for the benefit of a foreign country).
The whole exercise is a moral figleaf, that is, an attempt to have it both ways while making it clear whose side one is really on.
Doesn’t matter that Biden is a conscious (if he is conscious of anything), active, willing participant in an ongoing genocide. Who is going to do anything to bring him to justice?
“BRICS: The Gold Rush Has Gripped the Union InfoBrics”
Read all the way to the end of what at first appears to be garden-variety, gold bug marketing hype or an examination of and serious interest in a major geopolitcal event and see:
CryptoDnes
Source: cryptodnes.bg
(facepalm)
China was interesting monetarily as it was all about silver-not gold
In their long history of making money, there was only a handful of gold coins minted, completely different from the European take on things, but as they say, that was then and this is now.
There was quite a lively trade from Mexico to China after the discovery of the new world, with galleons full of pieces of 8 to purchase goods in the Middle Kingdom, whereas the gold always went back to Spain.
How important was the Chinese trade utilizing silver?
Great Britain, the USA and Japan all issued silver Trade Dollars in the 19th century specifically for the Chinese market.
“whereas the gold always went back to Spain”
And here they are now: the former Spanish empire.
Extra tidbit on USA Trade Dollars.
Trade Dollars weighed 420 grains versus 384 on a Morgan $, so despite containing almost 10% more silver than a Morgan, they were demonetized and couldn’t be used as money in the USA.
The idea was that the Chinese would turn the Trade Dollars into some other form of silver and a good many went away in that fashion, but the rest were utilized as money with most having ‘chop marks’ with metal punches to ascertain the silver content being up to par.
I’ve seen Trade Dollars with dozens of chop marks, so as to give the coin the look almost of a tiny dish.
I read about such things in Charles Mann’s “1493.”
And another fave: David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5000 Years.”
“Sullivan & Cromwell Plans Vigilant Hiring Checks After Protests” Bloomberg
Only the spooks, informants, and other agents infiltrating anti-genocide protests should be interested in working at Sullivan & Cromwell – if the college students have a deeper education or understanding of colonialism, imperialism, and a host of other ills.
“Devil’s Chessboard” …a more modern book of many touches on the organizations role in those ills. And many more sources out there.
And any anti-genocide protestor is fooling themself if they believe that they can change that organization from the inside.
Sullivan’s annual hiring needs are relatively tiny, compared to (say) McKinsey.
100% feasible to vet every hire for right-speak, if that is the will of the partnership. welcome to the Brave New Word, to mix dystopian metaphors
Reading about the latest Rafah maneuver elicited the comment that the US had been managed by a private unnamed firm since Roosevelt smoked his last Camel.
Then had a laugh to see Sullivan and Cromwell in headline further down.
Ethical appeals only provide a false moral subsidy to those who have already destroyed the former republic. Best of luck to any potential escapees out there.
There may be a difference between pro-Palestian protestors and anti-genocide protestors or that’s a division the media is helping to create.
It’s up to the protestors involved to decide.
There’s some commentary that the Camp David accords forbid Israel from stationing soldiers in the “Philadelphi Corridor”, a narrow strip in Gaza running the length of the Gaza-Egypt border. The “private contractor” managing Rafah may be a chutzpah attempt to get around this, by claiming these are not Israeli forces.
in my view, the master-servant rule means the contractor *is* Israel – the contractor clearly takes Israel’s orders – so this won’t wash.
Let’s see what Egypt does. Probably nothing because the Egyptian generals fear the IMF and World Bank withdrawing support. The Red Sea blockade is making Egypt’s current account crisis even worse. An optimist of an accelerationist bent might think this predicament would make Egypt go for broke and throw its lot in with Gaza but I suspect not. I think what would change the situation is an offer of free grain from Russia and financing from BRICS institutions – this would give Egypt fiscal space to defy US policy and risk IMF and World Bank excommunication.
A must read for those interested in S&C’s genesis and history, connections with OSS/CIA and Dulles brothers, etc… Also covered and read outloud at below Rumble Podcast.
A Law Unto Itself: The Untold Story of the Law Firm of Sullivan and Cromwell H
by Nancy Lisagor, Frank Ipsivs, and Lipsius
https://www.amazon.com/Law-Unto-Itself-Sullivan-Cromwell/dp/0688048889
https://rumble.com/v2a751o-a-law-unto-itself-sullivan-and-cromwell-part-10-reading-and-comments.html
Re Moon
But then the US wargamed a war with Russia several years ago and concluded that we would be defeated. It’s not like the professionals didn’t know this result in advance. It’s that we have an administration full of fools. Biden thought Putin was Corn Pop (if CornPop ever existed) and never had to take responsibility for his warmongering rhetoric (if he cares about responsibility).
Yeah, but in Biden’s mind he’s a successor of Washington while also remaining very stupid and being a coward. Biden fully expects statues to be erected to him.
First you mock Russians, then you copy them.
Yeah, but at least the Russian prisoners got a get out of jail card for their service.
For all Ukrainian soldiers, it is a life sentence right now in that they only way that they can leave the front is by getting killed or wounded too bad to be of further service.
“Xi Skips Visit to Bombed Embassy After Vowing to ‘Never Forget’”
At the time of the Chinese Embassy bombing, there were a lot of quiet cheers by some US officials and military officers. They had hit China on sacrosanct ground and there was not a thing that the Chinese could do about it. Fast forward 25 years and now there is a lot China could do about it if attacked in such a fashion again. After that Embassy bombing, China decided to do a massive upgrade and modernization of its military and the Chinese military that we can see today is a result of that attack. if I had to bet on a war between the US and China right now I would have to put my money on China for a very simple reason. They make their own spare parts.
A lot of loud cheers must have happened in the USA, after the 1990s Taiwan Strait crisis. That is when China decided to do a massive upgrade and modernization of its military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
Working link for “Benjamin Netanyahu’s dilemma: save the hostages or his government” article at-
https://www.ft.com/content/0b9f0cc6-daae-4727-9ce7-786de618b88f
Bibi Netanyahu’s first priority has always been Bibi Netanyahu. That being the case, he will choose to save the government so that he does not end up in prison. And he will be backed by the radical elements in his government. And the later have no sympathy at all with the families of the hostages but try to shout them down when they can. As far as they are concerned, those hostages can all just die. But the families of the hostages are not having a bar of it and are staging continuous demonstrations to have them released in a deal with Hamas. Such is Israeli politics.
Why do I do just as you say
Why must I just give you your way
Why do I sigh, why don’t I try to forget
It must have been that something Hasbara calls fate
Kept me saying I have to wait
I saw them all, just couldn’t fall, ’til we meet our mutual fate
It had to be Netanyahu
It had to be you
I wandered around, and I finally found
The somebody who
Could make me be true
And could make me be blue
And even be glad
Just to be sad – thinking of you
Some others I’ve seen
Might never be mean
Might never be cross, or try to be boss
But they wouldn’t do
For nobody else gave me an ironclad thrill
With all your faults, I love you still
It had to be you
Wonderful you
It had to be you
For nobody else gave me an ironclad thrill
With all your faults, I love you still
It had to be you
Wonderful you
It had to be you
It Had To Be You, performed by Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0w6StE9NFs
This was a response to Rev Kev.
The arch druid wrote a story about a limited beatdown in Kenya some years back. He had to place the fight there to give the US a chance. But the basic problem is the US is a terror based, and the Chinese aren’t overextended. In short, China could attack US over extended US bases largely at its leisure.
Re: Ruby Princess case from Australia
Many U.S. states have an analogue to Australia’s consumer protection law on the books. In Massachusetts, for instance, it’s M.G.L. ch. 93A. Perhaps this is the lever that will finally get businesses to protect their workers and customers from Covid?
The Judgment Holder Problem in Sovereign Debt Workouts Credit Slips
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{Overseen at the Sovereign Debt aerobics class}
‘Give me a dozen more debt burden lifts, feel the burn!’
Johnny miller tweet money quote:
Sounds familiar.
“Nobody could have predicted:”
This is basically what I have said all along. When I left Ukraine in May, 2012, nationalists were seen as freaks and losers.
What happened in the meantime was that it was made clear to Ukrainians that adopting the nationalist ideology, making war on their brothers and their own parents, was the price that the West, The Golden Billion, The Club, The Magical Land Where Institutions Basically Work was charging if Ukraine ever had a hope of joining.
One of Russia’s many fundamental problems is that it has nothing comparable that it can offer its own citizens, much less Ukrainians.
The irony is that, like the poor naive deluded girl who thinks her rich lover will marry her, Ukraine and Ukrainians are getting played, except that they are paying with their lives.
And following Alice X’s quote above, we are waving flags along with them:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/representatives-celebrate-wave-flags-congress-183409141.html
And let us not forget this uplifting picture:
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/12/22/zelensky-ukraine-flag-congress-address-sot-vpx.cnn
How can you suggest we don’t care?
RE: Haiti
Quite the neologism/newspeak in that article today!
According to the article, a transitional council has been appointed (presumably Western backed, although the article can’t be bothered to say) and the US military is delivering aid, including “oral hydration fluids” (now edited to be simply “hydration fluids”, but the word “oral” was there when I first took a look). I’m guessing that means water, but perhaps in this age of stupidity, they are delivering Brawndo instead.
Me, I’m still rooting for the “gangs”.
TechCrunch continues the myth that LLMs are human:
They don’t say things. They output data. They output words. They don’t hallucinate. They have bad or inaccurate models. Full stop.
This world is imploding faster than I’d imagined, with all the content theft ongoing and the massive production of LLM garbage all over the Internet. Now Stack Overflow is going to be populated with LLM garbage as well. What use is that?
What percentage of knowledge people will simply stop sharing stuff outside of very private spaces because otherwise it’ll be appropriated by LLM thieves and associated companies? Ultimately, any content that is easily accessible on the Internet is at a risk, and any for-profit enterprise that hosts your content might stick in the shiv as well. Private, encrypted communities are all you’ve got left, and by definition that’s a huge loss of knowledge because it has to be hard to reach to have some measure of protection from theft.
Fun.
Not just the internet. All books, pirated. (Anna’s archive).
Since a good book takes years to write, but only needs to be ingested by an LLM once, expect more books, particularly textbooks, to become pay-walled websites, or print only.
I have not seen an analysis of this concept of “content theft”. IANAL, but I don’t think there is a common law property interest? Or is the claim infringement? If so is the claim that the “training data” is a “derivative work” of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression? And if so is not a fair use of a copyrighted work? I see that the Library Copyright Alliance thinks it is fair use LCA statement
That’s nice for the Library Copyright Alliance. It just demonstrates how incompetent they are in the matter. And it won’t matter one bit if people stop being able to survive by writing books though.
The argument is flawed because the assumption is that the infringement is “de minimis”, and therefore it’s fair use, as it would be if you read a book and then remembered a fact quoted in it. The problem with that argument is that you could not recite large chunks of the book without making a special effort to learn it. LLMs output their training materials verbatim if correctly prompted.
That’s why the NYTimes, among others, is suing.
What a truly NY Times article: The C.E.O.s Who Just Won’t Quit
Wait, what? We’re in the midst of historic retirement by people, and that’s actually not happening? Perhaps not among the well paid elite. But the working class? hah.
Re: Ghosts of ’68:
If the Biden regime and its flunkies at Columbia are ready to treat the children of the rich and connected this roughly, it merely shows how tied they are to Israel, and how tightly the PMC will hang on to power at any cost.
Israel is using its rabid-dog strategy in Gaza – aka we will butcher you so bad if you get in our way that there will be nothing left of you to identify.
Now, given the control they have over US politics and politicians, which politician is going to get in their way?
And the PMC are not running this Israel sh*tshow, they are just the handmaidens for the obscenely rich.
And why should the obscenely rich care about PMC children? They can always buy some more if one batch is damaged.
A real life David and Goliath story.
Lambert, please take a bow.
Taibbi’s latest. Public excerpt.
Is Journalism Back? New York Times Editor Goes Ballistic on Biden, “Safe Space” Era
Five years of bitterness between Joe Biden and the country’s most influential newspaper burst into the open this week, opening a door for a press comeback
https://www.racket.news/p/is-journalism-back-new-york-times
Is the NYT editor implying that they never left journalism?
hmm…
No one knows what universities are for? Just look at what they do, not what they say. You can’t be too cynical about this stuff.
I can make a few observations on the local university at least:
– Ideological cover factories for political maneuvers
– Boarding houses and activity centers for adult children
– Job guarantees for the politically-connected (“think tanks” are largely university-operated)
– Job guarantees for people with degrees
– A massive exploitative engine of wealth creation on the backs of students (literally in the case of athletics) and everyone else paying into university endowments. This extends to entrepreneurship and IP licensing schemes that give universities a cut of anything developed while attending, which only encourages people to drop out first
– Publicly funded research and development ultimately for the benefit of private industry
– Military training centers (beyond actual cadets and GI bill beneficiaries, they want STEM grads working on weapons — some of the more infamous national laboratories like Los Alamos are university-operated)
– Job training, mostly for engineers and technicians, some of which are explicitly intended for government service like Teach for America and the Peace Corps and some of which work for the government indirectly via university-operated institutions that exist to work as government contractors
Education is so far down the list it barely even register as a function of the institution.
In some of the comment threads earlier in the week, discussing the varied protests across campuses and how the protesters as a group, to a large degree were placing their future careers and any successful life in a profession at great risk. You know the whole “Bill Ackmann of Pershing Square will not hire you ” sort of thought. Which all sounds an absurd conclusion to draw, but private employers will do what they mostly wish ( within some confine of state or federal laws ).
The conversation also centered on the collective cost of the four year degree at some of the country’s more esteemed, prestigious universities. If an institution can reasonably charge upwards of $250,000 and above for a four year stint just what the heck does that great expense actually provide to the student?
Holy heck…a quarter million is a lot of dough.
The land grant college act provided for:
“the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one
college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other
scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to
teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and
the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States
may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and
practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits
and professions in life.” (emphasis mine)
And in our neck of the woods in Oz, looting the wealth of overseas families in hotter climes who send their kids here to be “educated” at eye-watering cost. That’s what the university gets, money.
While providing Oz with a flow of young casual workers to be looted in insecure casual work. That’s what business gets, cheap and quiescent, fearful workers. And usually business own the government which turns a blind eye, until some pesky journalist gets on the case.
The carrot for the families and students? Permanent residency.
Caitlin Johnstone’s latest.
Empire Managers Explain Why This New Protest Movement Scares Them
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-explain-why-this
Marx, in the German Ideology, wrote of this in 1844.
But now comes social media and the ruling class is losing its mind. Better hurry up and ban TikTok et al…
Blinken to Romney:
Except that now context, history, facts are not lost, but instead being corrected. And yes, images of slaughtered men, women and children does lead to an emotional response. At least in those with a human heart.
Marx:
Glenn Diesen interviews McGregor: Will we be saved from WW3 by a financial collapse? Pretty bleak…
From Seeking Alpha:
Pfizer plans direct-to-consumer platform to sell Covid, migraine drugs – report
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4097035-pfizer-plans-direct-to-consumer-platform-to-sell-covid-migraine-drugs-report
Edging out your local doctor and pharmacy. What could go wrong?
Regarding this link:
Israel Commits to Limit Rafah Operation, Grant Control of Crossing With Egypt to Private U.S. Firm Haaretz.
“The security firm is not named.”
Think Fogbow:
https://www.fogbow.com/
https://abcnews.go.com/International/private-us-firm-coordinate-aid-boats-gaza/story?id=108269685