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Links 9/14/2024

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British twins grow ‘monster’ pumpkin expected to weigh more than a rhino Telegraph

Investors raise bets on bumper half-point Fed rate cut FT

Climate

Scientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Scientifc American

Wildfires Threaten Nearly One Third of U.S Residents and Buildings Scientific American. From June, still germane.

650-foot tsunami in Greenland fjord made waves that lasted 9 days, scientists find NBC

Cave discovery in France may explain why Neanderthals disappeared, scientists say CNN

Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse Ars Technica

Water

Is climate change making the Colorado Trail a thirst trap? It’s complicated. Colorado Sun

Syndemics

Inquiry into unexplained bird flu case in Missouri broadens to a close contact STAT

CDC FluView Update On Missouri H5 Case Adds An Important Detail Avian Flu Diary

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Woman convicted for fatally infecting neighbour with Covid The Telegraph. Austria.

COVID futures: Social imaginaries of post-pandemic lives in Australia Futures

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What We Know About Covid’s Impact on Your Brain Bloomberg. Commentary:

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Canada Needs a National COVID-19 Inquiry Now (preprint) SocRxiv. Meanwhile in the UK:

China?

President Xi Jinping tones down focus on China’s growth targets as headwinds mount South China Morning Post

China committed to ‘peacemaker’ role, including on Ukraine, Xiangshan defence forum hears South China Morning Post

U.S. Navy’s Top SEALs Special Forces Team Simulating Attacks on China in Taiwan Strait War: How Effective Are They? Military Watch

Super Typhoon Yagi exposes China’s cashless society flaws as people flock to charge phones. Watch Hindustan Times

The Spellbinding Life of Koji Kashin: Japan’s Legendary Wandering Magician Tokyo Weekender

The cursed stone resists return Pearls and Irritations

Labour unrest shuts down 100 factories in Bangladesh BNE Intellinews

Syraqistan

Netanyahu asks for criminal probe into himself to evade ICC warrant Al Mayadeen

How a Single Jordanian Tribesman Put the ‘Cold Peace’ with Israel at Risk Internationalist 360°

Massachusetts man shot in scuffle with pro-Israel crowd as video emerges of another who self-immolated Middle East Eye

Africa

The cocoa connection: How ‘brown gold’ is smuggled between Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea France24

Russia Is Riding an Anti-Colonial Wave Across Africa Foreign Policy

Rewind and Reconnoiter: Does America Need an Africa Strategy? With Sam Wilkins War on the Rocks

New Not-So-Cold War

White House responds to Putin’s threats, calling it dangerous rhetoric but not a new one and US will not change its policy on Ukraine striking deep into Russian territory yet – White House Ukrainska Pravda. Commentary:

Biden indicates shift in Ukraine’s deployment of Storm Shadow missiles FT

Vladimir Putin Does Not Make Empty Threats Moon of Alabama

Raising the Stakes in Ukraine Consortium News

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The State of the War in Ukraine NYT. The deck: “We explain using maps.”

Zelensky’s Last Hail Mary Gets Off to Rocky Start Simplicius the Thinker

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Shoigu makes a comeback Gilbert Doctorow

Ukraine has highest mortality rate and lowest birth rate in the world Ukrainska Pravda

European DIsunion

The Gravedigger New Left Review. Barnier.

German chancellor, Polish premier discuss land border control decision Anadolu Agency

South of the Border

The Venezuela Elections of 28 July 2024: What and Whom to Believe? Venezuelanalysis

In a historic move, Colombia bypasses patent to access HIV drug Al Jazeera

Elon’s Brazilian Corporate Law Surprise Credit Slips

2024

‘It just exploded’: Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians NBC. The deck: “The woman behind an early Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets told NBC News that she feels for the immigrant community.”

So what IS the truth about the city where Trump claims migrants are eating the pet cats and dogs? GREG WOODFIELD visits Springfield, Ohio, to find neo-Nazis are marching, residents in utter despair – and even talk of gun battles breaking out… Daily Mail. Commentary:

Donald Trump re-election bid being derailed by far-right influencers, allies fear FT

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Trump appears to leave door open for second debate with Harris: ‘Maybe if I got in the right mood’ FOX

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Ready your bets: Election gambling is going mainstream in the US Politico

Appeals court puts U.S. election bets on hold mere hours after a judge allowed it PBS

Democrats en Déshabillé

Staffer for NYC mayor fired amid extortion reports after NYPD commissioner resigns FOX

The Supremes

Loper Bright and the Ascendancy of the Cost-Benefit State (PDF) SSRN

What is Original Public Meaning? (PDF) University of San Diego School of Public Law

Digital Watch

We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI watchTowr

Gunz

Keystone at Clearview football game canceled after threats to host school Cleveland.com

Health

Many mental-health conditions have bodily triggers The Economist

Groves of Academe

New University Rules Crack Down on Gaza Protests Mother Jones

Imperial Collapse Watch

US elections, China policy, Palestine-Israel and Russia-Ukraine: John Mearsheimer (video) ShanghaiEye, YouTube

Student Loans: Not Just About Attending College Conversable Economist

Class Warfare

Turning Peasants Into Pinions: At a Child’s Grave in Mousehold Heath, Near Norwich Literary Hub

The Gift of the Grange JSTOR

The Rise of Shot and Sail (excerpt) Big Serge Thought

Antidote du jour (Jérémie Silvestro):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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192 comments

    1. zach

      If I may piggyback, with words from another elder wordsmith since passed, loosely related to and in the spirit of those shared by Mr. Thompson.

      Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the original interview from which he is quoted.

      Fun fact, Thompson (Louisville KY) and Vonnegut (Indianapolis IN) were born pissing distance from each other. 15 years apart, but still.

      Let’s hear it for flyover country.

      1. GC54

        And Vonnegut said in the splendid 2021 documentary of his life “Unstuck in Time” when interviewed after 9/11 that “I never imagined that I’d still be living when the country is being run by a bush, a dick, and a colon.”

        1. Vandemonian

          Sorry, Zack this obviously isn’t the article you meant. I foolishly read the article after I posted here, rather than before. Some people aren’t as clever as they think they are.

          That said, it’s still an interesting read.

          1. zach

            It irks me to no end that I haven’t been able to find that full interview. The interview I linked is from 2005, and (if I recall correctly) internet reporting was still more or less in its infancy, so if I had come across it in a print publication, it stands to reason that it wouldn’t have been uploaded. Might also have been a Fox News talking point, “titan of American literature spins off the rails,” I really can’t remember and it bugs the beyeesus out of me.

            His “hot take” struck enough of a chord, that a (not excessively) pimplefaced sophomore latched on to the equivalence (if that’s the correct word), particularly since it was a sentiment that had managed to gurgleburble through the of swamp stew of my own adolescent mind – I took no small amount of private, self-righteous joy in the fact that my great hero was speaking my mind.

            I particularly like the closing metaphor to the article you linked, ta very much for sharing!

    2. Friendly

      While HST was still around I would on occasion visit Woody Creek Tavern outside of Aspen – but I never had the opportunity to meet him.

      1. juno mas

        HST was out here in Califonia (Big Sur) in his early writing career. He was a caretaker at what is now known as Esalen (Institute). He departed under some duress back to his native Kentucky.

        I guess Woody’s was yet another stopover.

    1. shinola

      Thanks for that flora. Very good discussion of the erosion of the right to privacy in America. If any of y’all can spare about a half hour, it’s definitely worth a listen.

    1. JohnA

      The Norwegians are not given to overdramatic titles for thrillers or disaster films. For example, the Norwegian title for Jaws was Kjempetorsken, (The Large Cod), [according to Swedish folklore].

      1. Ignacio

        The only Norwegian “catastrophe” film I have seen, if I recall correctly, was titled “The Tunnel” and it is about a sudden snow blocking some in one of those many longish tunnels that provide access to the fjords. Of course with the typical background of the main characters having their own problems now compounding with the catastrophe. Not that bad for that kind of film as far as I can recall.

    2. ChiGal

      a thrilling movie that effectively conveys the series of disasters such an event would entail, complete with the whole spectrum of human responses from selfless sacrifice to heedless agnosia, and with geology itself as one of the main characters—but no anthromorphizing.

    3. Cat Burglar

      Similar tsunamis have happened in Alaska.

      The 1958 Lituya Bay tsunami, in Glacier National Park, initiated by the collapse of a slope of morainal debris into the bay, stripped land and forest down to bedrock to a height of 1720 feet, and big trees next to the bay were snapped off and carried out into the Pacific, where they line the beaches today. The accounts of the crews of the two fishing boats in the bay that survived (another did not) are quite intense — one boat snapped an anchor chain, which whipped around the wheelhouse, and the crew watched in amazement as the wave raised up the boat above the level of the treetops on the forested spit enclosing the bay (they reported looking down on the forest) and swept them out into the Pacific.

      Another one, the Taan Fjord landslide caused a wave 633 feet high, and stripped slopes to bedrock way down Icy Bay. In 1995 a friend and I walked up the slope that slid in 2015. It felt a little eerie. The fjord has seen rapid glacial recession — the topo maps circa 1980 show ice 1000 feet deep at the spot where we took our kayak out at the base of the slope. The fjord has steep sides, either bare rock or steep morainal debris, a concrete-like conglomeration of everything from fine rock dust to boulders. We had to go up and down several times with our backpack loads, on an intricate route connecting the lowest-angled ramps and benches in the slope. Lots of the steep parts were like concrete, where you struggled to edge your boot in for traction, but the easy-angled ramps were often soft and sometimes wet — often there was a crack in the soil at the back where the flatter part met the main slope, and sometimes there was a big seep of water there. Things felt kind of unstable, but that is pretty normal for travel in that part of the world, so we didn’t think more about it.

      From across the fjord in 2019 (friends and I have a thing for trying to climb coastal mountains from the beach), I could see the huge scar that had replaced the thousand or so feet we had walked up in 1995. It was still having active rockfalls all day. The Daisy Glacier, above the scar, looked like it had retreated at least a mile since 1995. The face of the Tyndall Glacier that had once filled the fjord, only had a small part that looked capable of calving seracs into the water, as it did constantly 14 years before. This kind of thing is not exceptional in the glaciated mountains of North America.

  4. Ignacio

    Vladimir Putin Does Not Make Empty Threats Moon of Alabama

    It is apparently certain that Putin said “NATO” entering direct war with Russia and that would be incorrect if, for instance, the UK sends Storm Shadows into Russian territory. That would be UK’s trouble alone. I imagine that Putin knows this very well and when he says NATO he is trying to push the less belligerent members of the organization to help bringing the UK to its senses.

    1. Wukchumni

      I’m a big fan of the fourth turning and events repeating themselves, and we are fast approaching the 80th anniversary of the only time nuclear weapons were used in war, and most of my 62 years on this good orb, I never really gave that much thought to us blowing ourselves up real good, though born in the white heat of the cold war, by the time I was almost a teenager, the players had signed agreements and a modicum of moderation was in place.

      Joe is in an advantageous position of not really caring about anybody but himself and his family, he dredged up Beau once again the other day to defend his late son’s links to a transgender congressional candidate, of all things!

      This shooting off of our rockets red glare into Russia from Ukraine will not stand…

      We are really provoking nuclear war, for what?

      1. The Rev Kev

        Standard Neocon tactics. Whenever they do something stupid and it blows up in their faces, they always double down and maybe even triple down. I can only imagine what it would be like if the Neocons held a Convention in Las Vegas. It would be like all their Christmases coming at once for those gambling joints.

      2. Skip Intro

        I’m old enough to remember when nuclear war was seen as a bad fate for the planet, rather than its rescue from human ‘civilisation’.

          1. 123

            It would be a riot, Alice, a real riot, if sen. tom cotten(zionist, Bible Belt) could introduce the video, explain its hysterical significance, and then intone, once again, that it would only take two bombs to defeat Iran, a first one, and a last one. The Hill, 5-14-19.

      3. Lee

        After listening to Bill Maher’s interview with Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, last night I’m now more afraid of a Skynet terminator end of the world than I am of nukes. Karp is a current incarnation of Dr. Strangelove minus the humor. While Maher at moments seemed a bit discomfited by some of Karp’s enthusiastically neocon aggression coupled with high tech capabilities, Maher’s audience of howler monkeys expressed wild approval in a spirit of joyful lethality.

    2. rePiet

      Article 5 states that an attack on a NATO member allows for all other NATO members to join the fray. It would be stupid to accept that call to arms, but we live in the stupidest timeline.

      1. Aurelien

        Not quite: after all, states retain the sovereign right to join any fray they want to. What Art 5 does is to put an obligation on states to treat an attack on one of them, in certain geographical areas, as an attack on all, and then take whatever action they see fit. So if the Russians were to attack a target in the UK, or elsewhere in the NATO area as defined by Art 6, then Art 5 would apply. By contrast, for attacks on British forces outside the NATO area it would not.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Was just thinking today that although the US is trying to destroy Russia, for them it is only business – fueled of course by the greed of all those American oligarchs. But with the British, it is almost a passion verging on a frenzy going by some of the stunts that they have helped organize like the attacks on the Kersh bridge and the Kursk invasion. And because of this, the UK will eventually find themselves in the hurt locker big time.

            1. Revenant

              Our government’s apparent Russiaphobia is a mystery to me, particularly since yhee Great Fame ended but even while we held India and Iran, Russia was our ally in WW1 and WW2. It is baffling.

              I don’t subscribe to the view that the Lesser Satan is putting the Great Satan up to this war, though. I think it is something more specific. Perhaps MI6 etc is the soft underbelly of the Anglosphere for determined Russophobe and looters to get policy made…? Why that would be, I don’t know – no conflicting China faction in the UK to distract from poking the bear?

              1. rkka

                The book you want to read now is “The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain” by John Howes Gleason, Harvard University Press, 1950. Long story short, it was cultural & intellectual change in GB after Napoleonic Wars, really getting hot in the 1830s. It’s available on the internet archive.

                A similar process occurred in the US in the 1880s.

                2. Revenant

                  Thank you! Something for the reading list,, and it’s free (thank you, Lambert)!

                  What led you into that swamp, rkka? An interest in Russia or Britain or something else entirely?

            2. The Rev Kev

              I was reading an account of that era and it is plain that the royal family abandoned the whole Russian branch of their family and just cut them loose.

              1. GramSci

                Then there was George and Nicholas shivving cousin Wilhelm. IMHO. European nobility was short on family values and long on pretense.

          2. Es s Ce tera

            I was thinking something similar, but was also thinking the only thing that would stop these neocon sorts, as with any bully, is dominance, is losing in a catastrophically big way. So for example, the only way to stop Israel is to bring it to its knees, and only then will Israelis, when they have no other choice than submission, be amenable to compromise and discussion around things like return to the 1949 Green Line or Two-State Solution, only then will we achieve real peace, only then can Israel and Palestine thrive side-by-side, the family of Canaan reunited.

            I think the Russians are probably thinking the same with regard to NATO, that there needs to be very catastrophic level of defeat inflicted to solve this once and for all, there is no other way, and so Putin making this statement makes me think decisions have been made, course of action predetermined, they now have a plan and commitment to get there.

            1. steppenwolf fetchit

              Keeping in mind Pape’s distinction between “Israelis” and “Judeans”, creative diplomacy and politics might think in terms of finding wedges between the two groups and driving them apart.

              The only way to bring the “Judeans” to their knees enough to where they would surrender to the “Israelis” and tolerate the sort of pragmatism which Rabin and the Rabinists tried to apply through the Oslo Accords. . . . which the “Judean” Netanyahu agitated for the Rabin assassination in order to derail and prevent . . .
              would be to exterminate the Judeans into abject surrender to the Israelis or otherwise into thorough extinction, so that only Israelis survived and were able to chart a pragmatic survival policy course without having any Judeans left alive to interfere.

              The amount of Judeans requiring extermination would be “genocidal”, but it would not be “genocide” because it would not be ethnically based. It would be “politicide” because it would be politically based. it would be a necessary deletion of as many Judeans from existence as needed in order to delete their power to apply their politics from having any influence on events. Remember what Stalin said about when a person ( or group) is giving you problems.

              It doesn’t seem very likely or achievable. The “Israelis” don’t have the power to do it any more. They missed their one chance just after the Rabin assassination to exterminate the Judeans into abject submission or into beneficial extinction. They don’t have the strength or numbers to dare attempt it now.

              The only realistic approach to “Israeli” survival would be for all the Israelis to leave Israel and let the left-behind Judeans turn it into Judeastan. The Judeastanis would eventually then push a weary world into solving the Judeastan Problem one way or another.

              But if the Israelis decide to take the emigration way out, they had better do it quickly, before the Judeans seal the borders to keep the Israelis trapped along with themselves. And before the American Rapturanians and Armageddonites try to outlaw and ban Israelis from coming to America because, after all, the Fulfillment of Prophecy requires all the Jews to be ingathered into Israel, and getting all the Israelis out of Israel creates a re-Dispersion which makes Rapturaniac-Armageddonite Prophecy even harder to fulfill and makes the Return of Jesus in Triumph even more distant.

                1. Es s Ce tera

                  Thank you for that, it’s a good and important piece but there are some notable omissions. I only mention this because if someone were coming to it without some historical context they might get the impression Jews had historically “owned” Israel since biblical times, which is not the case.

                  A nomadic tribe known as Hebrews, from northern Mesopotamia, migrated south to an already populated area known as Canaan somewhere around 1200–1000 BCE. If the Hebrews are not considered to be the Canaanites, are distinct from the Canaanites, then the Canaanites are considered to be the Palestinians (which is what the Romans named them during the Roman conquest).

                  There was no such thing as a Yehuda (Jew) until at least the Kingdom of Judah (circa 930–722 BCE), here is where the first temple was created, to be destroyed in 586 BCE, but the Jewish religion and therefore identity was only forming during the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, and solidified around the time of Roman conquest, basically during the time of Christ. There are arguments the Jewish identity was formed as an allergic reaction to the Christ movement.

                  Authorship of Deuteronomy, where Moses supposedly brings his people out of Egyptian exile and delivers them to wherever, is dated around the 7th century BCE. However, historians and archeologists now think the exile never happened because there is no historical record of it happening, no artefacts anywhere, no writings or references to it by any neighbouring cultures and tribes. This is why earlier I said if Hebrews aren’t considered to be Canaanites – because if there never was an exile, no record of mass movement, then the Hebrews never left Canaan in order to “return” to it (or have it given them), they’ve instead been living alongside the Canaanites since they migrated there from the North, but the Canaanites were there first and had uninterrupted ownership until the Assyrian conquest. After all, the Hebrews failed in their attempted genocide of Canaan, for which god was vewyvewy angry with them, so were just still there alongside everyone else they had failed to genocide.

                  So technicaly we can’t really say Jews as such were ever in control of *any* land until the 1948 founding of Israel. And insofar as anyone believes the biblical stories, the genocide of the Palestinians is an attempt to complete the first genocide of the Canaanites per God’s orders.

                  1. kareninca

                    What sources are you using? These dates don’t match what I am seeing in reasonable publications. For instance, Britannica puts Abraham’s migration from Ur at about 2,000 BC. And further:

                    “Several theses were advanced to explain the narratives—e.g., that the patriarchs were mythical beings or the personifications of tribes or folkloric or etiological (explanatory) figures created to account for various social, juridical, or cultic patterns. However, after World War I, archaeological research made enormous strides with the discovery of monuments and documents, many of which date back to the period assigned to the patriarchs in the traditional account. The excavation of a royal palace at Mari, an ancient city on the Euphrates, for example, brought to light thousands of cuneiform tablets (official archives and correspondence and religious and juridical texts) and thereby offered exegesis a new basis, which specialists utilized to show that, in the biblical book of Genesis, narratives fit perfectly with what, from other sources, is known today of the early 2nd millennium BCE but imperfectly with a later period. A biblical scholar in the 1940s aptly termed this result “the rediscovery of the Old Testament.”

                    “After the migration from Ur (c. 2000 BCE), the reasons for which are unknown, the first important stopping place was Harran, where the caravan remained for some time. The city has been definitely located in upper Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, in the Balikh valley and can be found on the site of the modern Harran in Turkey. It has been shown that Harran was a pilgrimage city, for it was a centre of the Sin cult and consequently closely related to the moon-god cult of Ur. The Mari tablets have shed new light on the patriarchal period, specifically in terms of the city of Harran.

                    There have been many surprising items in the thousands of tablets found in the palace at Mari. Not only are the Ḫapiru (“Hebrews”) mentioned but so also remarkably are the Banu Yamina (“Benjaminites”). It is not that the latter are identical with the family of Benjamin, a son of Jacob, but rather that a name with such a biblical ring appears in these extrabiblical sources in the 18th century BCE. ”
                    https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham/The-Genesis-narrative-in-the-light-of-recent-scholarship

                    1. Es s Ce tera

                      I know it’s morning but I’m not seeing a contradiction here between anything I’ve written and what you’ve cited from Britannica. My comments are mainly about their arrival in Canaan, your citation is around when they left Ur and arrived in Mari and Harran, well north of Israel, but before they arrived in Canaan.

                      That said, to answer your question, most of what I know around the topic will be from New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (which comes with extensive theological, critical, historial, archeological context about whole books and also individual passages). Also, the History of the Bible, by John Barton, an Oxford scholar. Barton wrote many chapters on the OT and Judaism. I probably have more in my library but those two are my main resources, always at my side.

                      I hope I haven’t done either of them injustice.

        2. Kouros

          But what about the fact that a Russian attack on UK for instance, would have been triggered by an initial attack of UK on Russia, via the UK long range missiles coded in by UK specialists, fitted on UKR planes by UK specialists, and provided direction by UK specialists, with the only wrinkle that an UKR pilot pressed the launch button? After a long encouragement by UK to UKR to not settle for peace with Russia?

    3. JTMcPhee

      I believe all NATO states are contributing to varying degrees to the obvious war on Russia. Makes them co-belligerents, at least. Putin works, as far as I can tell, on the basis of a system of laws, and I’m sure his counselors have parsed the body of the law of war to provide very rational justification for letting the Fokkers know that if they continue to FA, they will assuredly FO.

      Not that this blunt statement of cause and effect will put an end, once for all, to the obscure, careerist, Rapture-seeking, slimy machinations of the death cult pipsqueaks that drive “policy” in the Fading West, and continually search for ways to sucker-punch Russia, China and any other polity that has the effrontery to say “NO!” instead of “Uncle!EEEEeeee…”

      So the “bio-labs” continue working on “Slav-killing” pathogens and other “game-changers, https://sputnikglobe.com/20240507/after-positioning-military-biolabs-around-the-globe-us-officials-urge-biodefense-buildup-1118314833.html, the IT corps looks for the magic combination of code assaults, the Space Cadets doodle Death Star orbital assets, and the effing heirs of LeMay and Teller rip off more trillions of real wealth to “modernize” the nuclear weapons about which every sane person knows the truth that the only way to win is not to play the game.

      Anyone doubt that there’s an AI Algorithm or whatever these can be called, toting up all the assets of death and dominion of the West, with the aiming point of being able to assure that FUKUS can release the Kraken of total war with the “assurance” that what’s left of the failed FUKUS hegemon will dominate the glowing ashes? https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/us-defense-to-its-workforce-nuclear-war-can-be-won/

      1. neutrino23

        Putin could stop the fighting tomorrow. Stop the war of aggression against Ukraine and withdraw his army from their sovereign territory. Easy peasy.

        1. The Rev Kev

          That is exactly what Starmer said a day or so ago because, you know, he is such a deep thinker. Washington could also stop the fighting tomorrow. They could commit to not placing nuclear-tipped missiles in the Ukraine as was the plan and to keep them honest, allowing the Russians to place nuclear-tipped missiles in Canada. Easy peasy.

        2. Kilgore Trout

          I don’t see the sarcasm tag at the end of your post, so I’m assuming readers are to take your post seriously. Ukraine started the war in 2014, by attacking the restive Russian-speaking oblasts in its east, whose citizens were unhappy with the Russo-phobia and far-right nationalism (putting it mildly) of those who brought the coup to fruition. The coup was bought and paid for by the US, to the tune of a $5 billion dollar investment. Vicki Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt were there to hand out cookies to the participants. Between 2014 and 2022, 10-12,000 were killed in fighting in the east, in what amounted to a civil war, while Russia in 2014 “annexed” Crimea to preserve its naval base and protect Crimea’s Russian-speaking (and leaning) population. It’s worth noting Crimea had been part of Russia or the Soviet Union since the time of Catherine the Great, and Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia after the coup. Russia’s SMO was in large part precipitated by Ukraine’s preparing to launch a new assault on the eastern oblasts, using the same UN “Duty to Protect” justification NATO and the US had used in Kosovo/Yugoslavia. The rest, as they say, is history. George Kennan and other far-sighted foreign policy types had warned that NATO expansion, begun under Clinton, would lead to conflict with Russia if not stopped. But the depraved NeoCons in control of US FP have no reverse gear, as Mercouris says. Thus giving an air of inevitability to the present moment. While ostensibly Russia is the aggressor, having invaded, seen in full context the real aggressor is the Russophobic US and our European minions, especially the UK.

        3. chris

          Mrs. Clinton, I enjoy your continued participation in these discussions!

          If you have time in your busy schedule of repeating popular platitudes, perhaps you can opine on whether or not Russia should be allowed the same concept of a “sphere of influence” in their geographic area as we enjoy in the United States? Because clearly, we believe they are not owed any sense of control in their region and they disagree. I understand that this is a frustrating concept for many people in the US. We’re still not sure how all that oil ended up under other people’s sand and why they argue with giving it to us.

          But, if you do not have time for that, please tell me, in your proposal, would Zelensky also relent and stop trying to murder the Separatists in Ukraine who wanted to secede in 2014 and suffered under a hostile regime until 2022, when Russia stepped into to prevent what was going to be a slaughter? And should we continue with the goal of de-Nazification in Ukraine? Or should the US continue to arm neo-Nazi military organizations in Ukraine… which now includes the Armed Forces of Ukraine? And who should pay for the restitution owed from the destruction of NordStream2? Is there a plan you could support when the war ends under these pretenses?

          And, of course, will NATO back off and stop attempting to draw Russia into various proxy conflicts? Because it is obvious that if Ukraine collapses we will shift to Armenia, Georgia, or any number of other states next.

        4. OnceWere

          Incredibly naive ! With the USA’s neocons saying over and over again that America must achieve total and permanent full-spectrum world dominance there’s no reason to disbelieve their stated intent. Such a display of weakness from Russia would be incredibly emboldening and encourage their dreams of achieving just that. I don’t think it at all unlikely that Ukraine would continue to press the attack against Russia and for the West to continue to support them in doing so.

    4. ilsm

      With Haris is more of the same: Quoted from ABC transcript from the debate the other night.

      “I actually met with Zelenskyy a few days before Russia invaded, tried through force to change territorial boundaries to defy one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity. ”

      She would enter hydrogen bomb Armageddon for “rules and norms”!

      “Most important” defined by neocons to make war!

    5. LawnDart

      Russia’s response to long-range weapons supplies to Kiev will be brutal — MFA

      “The opponents in Washington, London, and other places clearly underestimate the degree of danger of the game they continue to play,” Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov said.

      “The Russian President has said everything on this topic. The decision [to allow Kiev to strike] is there, all the carte blanche, indulgences have been issued to Kiev’s clients. Therefore, we will respond in a brutal way. There is an element of serious risk here, because the opponents in Washington, London, and other places clearly underestimate the degree of danger of the game they continue to play,” Ryabkov said.
      https://tass.com/politics/1843249

      I’m of the camp that Russia will not strike a NATO country (yet) in terms of retaliation for a long-range attack on Russia. But NATO country soldiers in non-NATO country? I would not want to be in their shoes when Russia makes an example.

      My bet is Syria.

  5. Wukchumni

    Duck, duck, goose

    A gourmet 3 course meal in Springfield where a group of Presidential aspirants sit in a circle, facing inward, while the junior partner player, who is “it”, walks around tapping or pointing to each eaten animal in turn, on X.

  6. Ignacio

    Antidote: the brute force needed to take that enormous body almost wholly outside the water must be huge. What a show!!!

    1. pjay

      Thanks for this, and the accompanying video above. I imagine most Americans have no idea that we have been in a continued state of “emergency” since 9/11, and what that means.

      Taibbi: “Putting a Trump lie in a class with one of Cheney’s is like comparing a flatus and a methane planet.”

      The current insanity is illustrated every time some “liberal” academic pronounces Trump “the most dangerous President in history” or some such crap. Of course Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala was also quite symbolic of where we are today.

    2. Carolinian

      Some of us are so old we can remember when Dems called Cheney/Bush a flirtation or outright implementation of fascism. Now Harris is “honored” to be endorsed by dirty Dick.

      Of course she’s pitching to those who may not have even been born in the year 2001. But then there’s all the rest of us who remember. The truth is of course that Kamala likely doesn’t even herself realize what she is saying but thinks she can slide into power by being ingratiating with everyone except of course Trump and Putin. All the politesse is there to mask what’s really going on inside that brain of hers and it’s hard to know what that is. It may be nothing.

  8. The Rev Kev

    “Super Typhoon Yagi exposes China’s cashless society flaws as people flock to charge phones. Watch”

    You saw this a coupla years ago how after a US hurricane some homes that had power generators were running out power-boards down to the street to let people recharge their mobiles so that they could get back in contact with friends and family. This article makes the point that-

    ‘The X account that posted the video explained that China’s bid for a cash-free society has meant that people don’t carry banknotes. Instead, all their money is in their mobile phones – and any disruption to power supply exposes huge flaws in this cashless society.’

    Funny that. You never hear about this being a problem for the Swedes when the power for their cashless society goes down. I wonder why?

  9. diptherio

    Flint Dibble recently had a Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) archeologist on to discuss the current state of the scholarship ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMcg37d4UDc ). tl;dw, the Jared Diamond ecological collapse story is a myth. Turns out, it wasn’t the people who had lived on the island for centuries who wreaked havoc on the ecology, it was the Euros who showed up and did their typical European-abroad stuff (i.e. pillage the place).

    2. Charles Schultz

      I recently listened to this engaging podcast on Easter Island.

      Summary: On one of the world’s most isolated islands, hundreds of vast stone statues lie mouldering in the grass. In this episode, we take a look at one of archaeology’s most enduring puzzles: the mystery of Easter Island. Find out how this unique community grew up in complete isolation, severed from the rest of the world by a vast expanse of ocean. Discover the incredible story of how it survived for so many centuries, and examine the evidence about what happened to finally bring this society, and its statues, crashing down

      https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fall-of-civilizations-podcast/id1449884495?i=1000443157865

  10. sarmaT

    U.S. Navy’s Top SEALs Special Forces Team Simulating Attacks on China in Taiwan Strait War: How Effective Are They? Military Watch

    One of the U.S. Armed Forces’ most capable special forces units, SEAL Team Six, has reported been training for over a year for possible attacks on Chinese targets as part of a Taiwan Strait war scenario.

    That will scare the Chinese.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Are they also being trained to write their biographies to blab to everybody what they did in Taiwan? Like after what happened after when Osama bin laden was killed?

      1. Chris Cosmos

        I don’t think OBL was killed then–probably a double of which there were several. I’ve known a few special op military guys and they are trained to lie.

    2. CA

      “One of the U.S. Armed Forces’ most capable special forces units, SEAL Team Six, has reportedly been training for over a year for possible attacks on Chinese targets…”

      The Biden-Harris administration has been attacking China continually, from the beginning. We have a 5,000 year old wonderful civilization of 1.4 billion that in spite of a fruitful partnership that began with the Nixon-Kissinger visit to Beijing in 1972 has been continually threatened by the Biden-Harris administration.

      The Biden-Harris attacks extended even to the Beijing Olympics in 2002, and continued and continued.

      I find this appalling; a denial of what should be a benign American heritage.

    3. ilsm

      Are the battalions of regular soldiers/marines training to bail them out?

      Are the two squadrons of A-10’s also training to save their bacon?

  11. CA

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-09-14/China-s-super-microscope-expands-insights-of-mammal-cell-interactions-1wTdiXVO9Ow/p.html

    September 14, 2024

    China’s super microscope expands insights of mammal cell interactions

    A team of Chinese scientists crafted a super intravital microscope that is capable of seeing clearly the entire three-dimensional (3D) interactions of a large-scale cell’s network at the mammalian organ level.

    The instrument, developed by Tsinghua University, is designed to enhance innovative research in oncology, immunology and neuroscience, in order to provide a systemic understanding on how organs are organized and functioning at the single cell resolution.

    This microscope called the RUSH3D system offers a centimeter-scale field of view and subcellular resolution. It is capable of high-speed 3D imaging at a rate of 20 frames per second, while also enabling continuous observation for dozens of hours with low toxicity, according to the study * published on Friday in the journal Cell.

    In neuroscience, for instance, the intricate interactions among a large population of neurons are responsible for complex functions like intelligence and consciousness. Understanding the architecture and operational dynamics of neural circuits is crucial for deciphering the inner workings of the brain.

    The research team utilized the system to achieve high-speed 3D observation covering layers of the cerebral cortex in live mice at single-cell resolution.

    They captured the distinct response patterns of various cortical regions under multi-sensory stimulation and tracked large-scale neural responses with single-neuron precision across several consecutive days, according to the study.

    “The traditional fluorescence microscopy allowed us to observe only part of an organ, such as a specific brain region in a mouse,” said Dai Qionghai, the paper’s corresponding author from Tsinghua University.

    “The RUSH3D system, however, is akin to using 100 microscopes simultaneously, providing complete coverage of the mouse cortex and capturing the dynamic interactions of hundreds of thousands of neurons,” said Dai.

    * https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00917-6

    1. Kilgore Trout

      A well-written paper. This from the intro:
      “The grandeur of life is intricately woven by an orchestration of millions of cells, interconnected through a complex network of signaling pathways within their native environment. Observing these intercellular interactions broadens our understanding of the enigma of life at the mesoscale….”

  12. Wukchumni

    Sports Desk:

    It’s a brutal game at times, and Tua Tagovailoa running into Damar Hamlin of the Bills didn’t even seem like much at first glance, and Hamlin had suffered a cardiac arrest on the field in 2023, to add injury to injury.

    This was Tua’s 3rd concussion in the past couple years and he about looked helpless for a spell, no doubt wanting to join an astronomy club, as he was seeing stars.

    2-0 in the young season, fully cognizant that nope springs eternal for long suffering Bills fans.

    1. Mikex

      No, that hit did not seem noteworthy at all. From the cheap seats, I hope he retires for his own sake, but there’s the not-small-at-all matter of the contract he just signed in July. Not that I would know anything about it, but I would assume it is hard to walk away from $175 million or so (only a guess of what is left after this season). Hope he can negotiate a generous settlement.

      1. chuck roast

        Apparently, Tua is guaranteed $124M over the next three years. I don’t know if there are any clawbacks for non-performance, but NFL owners are among the world’s biggest skinflints. For years they went tooth and nail with the player’s association and the many retirees dealing with the effects of concussions. In the end, they signed a deal for $32M/year for the injured guys. That’s $1M/team/year over 30 years. In NFL terms…chump change.

    2. griffen

      The NFL has a difficult issue on their hands….but I would suggest that young Tua takes all the significant protocols before or even if he is cleared to play again. Also for any or all young quarterback whippersnappers please endeavor at the foot first slide!

      Head first anything, at least with the QB position in the NFL belongs on a VHS recording….long ago and from a different bygone era of somewhat dubious care for football pro players.

    3. ChrisFromGA

      I feel bad for Tua, he should have just slid or curled up in the fetal position like Peyton Manning used to do every time he got some pressure.

      The Bills are 2-0 on the season and have knocked out a division rival QBs for the season in consecutive years (Rodgers, now Tua with an asterisk as he could still play but we’ll see.) Perhaps Belichick was wise to retire? Or maybe he is just having too much fun on SnapFace.

  13. sarmaT

    Ukraine has highest mortality rate and lowest birth rate in the world Ukrainska Pravda

    According to the CIA’s data, Ukraine’s death rate is currently 18.6 per 1,000 inhabitants, the highest in the world. Lithuania comes second, with a mortality rate of 15.02 fatalities per 1,000 people. Serbia ranks third, with 14.9 deaths per 1,000 people.

    According to the CIA’s data, population of Ukraine is 35,661,826.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Obviously the CIA has not updated their figures since about January of 2022. These days it may only be about 20 million but as the last census as not been done in yonks, who can say?

      1. sarmaT

        It says:
        total: 35,661,826
        male: 17,510,149
        female: 18,151,677 (2024 est.)

        Mortality is also 2024 est. I guess the CIA math works like the US government math (in regards to inflation, unemployment, and everything else, for that matter). People still buy it though, so it’s working as intended.

  14. Jester

    In a historic move, Colombia bypasses patent to access HIV drug Al Jazeera

    Historically, USA never cared much about patents when accessing Colombian drugs.

  15. Wukchumni

    Growing food has always been about tolerances, and our fortnight of furiously far out fahrenheit has apparently laid waste to a fair piece of the 3 billion pounds in the guise of what is termed ‘almond shrivel’. It was a hundred and hell in all growing areas, with very high overnight temps as an added bonus.

    I had to look it up, shrivel in my mind being associated with a male jumping into cold water.

    https://www.almonds.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/AlmondShrivel_R%26I_September2023.pdf

    The almond biz was already on the ropes thanks to rampant overgrowing and tariffs which lowered the price per pound by 2/3rds, and this blow will send many to the poorhouse, and climate change is speaking loud and clear to the 400 million upright standing citizenry…

    Fresno: We have a problem

    I noticed native oak trees here dumped half of their leaves in mid July in a defensive posture move against unheard of duration high heat, when they properly should fall in the fall.

    1. steppenwolf fetchit

      If the native oak trees survive this heat spell and half leaf drop and recover in the several years to come, that would indicate that they are descended from the survivors of oak trees who have seen this before. If those oaks keep bearing acorns when not one almond tree can live in California, the smart thing for Californians to do would be to develop a taste for acorn meal and acorn mush.

      Of course if they would rather die than eat acorns, they can do that too. And the California Indians of tomorrow might say: ” Good! More acorns for us.”

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        Acorn meal becomes the staple food of California in Octavia Butler’s Parable series written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s.

  16. The Rev Kev

    “German chancellor, Polish premier discuss land border control decision”

    Bye, bye Shengen Zone, one of the few main reasons to stay in the EU. Was reading that ‘Germany has a 3,700km long land border with Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. All are members of the EU Schengen Zone.’ and that there has been a 33% rise in illegal border crossings last year. Sounds like a tipping point has been reached and, with the recent elections in mind, the Scholz regime is trying to pander to people who dislike all these illegal emigrants going to Germany over other EU countries to try to avoid more electoral losses-

    https://www.rt.com/news/603972-poland-germany-border-control-migrants/

    1. Ken Murphy

      I always remember my experiences with border crossings in Europe with a sense of strangeness. I was familiar with the Canadian/U.S. crossing from my college days when we’d go get Molson Brador to sneak back for parties. I distinctly remember one time I was rollerblading in Strasbourg and had wandered south and ended up at the bridge over the Rhine leading to Kehl in Germany. I went into the checkpoint for clearance and there was no one. At all. I could just wander into Germany, and did, seeing a delightful parade in Kehl while I was there.
      Schengen was a terrific idea, but as with the U.S., when the external borders are porous, unsavory elements will take advantage of such things as freedom of internal travel. Sometimes it’s relatively harmless [cough, trips to Amsterdam or Christiana, cough], often it is not. And so we inevitably can’t have nice things. If only there was some good way to deal with the people who suck and screw it up for everyone else…

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        Well, seal the external borders. And endure the howls of hatred emanating from all the would-be tresspasser nations and peoples outside the sealed external borders.

        After all, if the American Indians could have successfully done that and kept it done, I think they would have done so. And while I would never have come into existence to begin with if the Indian Nations had been able to seal the borders of Turtle Island against European and other Settler Colonialists, would it have been so wrong to do so in the Eyes of God?

        1. Revenant

          The EU’s problem is that it is built not on an bill of rights bit a declaration of four freedoms of neoliberalism:
          – freedom of movement of capital
          – freedom of movement of people
          – freedom of movement of goods
          – freedom of movement of [I forget, services?]

          That’s it. No higher rallying vision unless “eveer-closer union” counts as something other than definiendo in circulo.

          Restoring borders chops the legs out of free movement of goods and people.

          This is course is the ultimate dream of neo liberalism, a world safe for capital where people are trapped and must consume what you sell them and produce what you assign them. (The socialist dream would be the opposite, people and goods move freely but capital is everywhere in chains and is only created domestically in pursuit of material concrete nenefitss (goods) for the people).

          It is hard to see the EU surviving this kind of behaviour. We did try to warn them but the preferred Brexit…. :-)

    2. Acacia

      The recent Polish film Green Border (2023) follows a family of Syrian refugees together with a teacher from Afghanistan, as they fall afoul of police on both sides of the Poland-Belarus border. It was recommended and got a bunch of prizes, so I watched it. Beautifully photographed, it explores the hell that can await those who try to enter at night, bringing in local activists and along the way answering the question of why all the migrants have cell phones.

      However, as far as a “geopolitical” treatment of the problem goes, the most the film can muster is that the crisis is all the fault of that Putin-loving “dictator” in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, for allows refugees to enter Europe in the first place. In 147 minutes, there is never once a question raised about why all of these migrants might give everything up for this perilous trip, and what the US and its EU lackeys have been doing in the Middle-East to compel millions to flee for their lives. Evidently, many members of the Polish govt and the national union of border guards attacked the film, though essentially for its lack of patriotism.

  17. Katniss Everdeen

    RE: So what IS the truth about the city where Trump claims migrants are eating the pet cats and dogs? GREG WOODFIELD visits Springfield, Ohio, to find neo-Nazis are marching, residents in utter despair – and even talk of gun battles breaking out… Daily Mail.

    Ya gotta admit, this whole thing is pretty strange, and I’m not talking about the eating pets aspect.

    First off, who makes a “decision” to “resettle” 15,000 “immigrants,” flush with federal cash, in a seeming backwater berg like Springfield, OH of 50,000 rust belt residents, “recovering” from long-standing economic disaster courtesy of an amazon distribution center? Such a “decision” is guaranteed to overwhelm the resources and sensibilities of the locals, regardless of their feelings about “immigration.”

    And where are the social media disinformation police? Why hasn’t this pet-eating hysteria been shut down as fast as, say, the hunter biden laptop story was, “inflammatory” and “destabilizing” as it is?

    What I’m wondering is whether this cat-eating nuttiness is considered “useful” by those always on the lookout for ways to discredit the MAGA degenerates and the Trump horse they’re trying to ride in on prior to the “election.”

    Whatever is going on here, the injection of such a large number of foreigners at one time into a community ill-prepared to cope with the situation should be the focus. These local conflagrations have a way of being amplified and nationalized whether warranted or not. By all rights, the failed “border czar” should want this story quashed poste haste, and we all know she gets what she wants. So why hasn’t it been?

    The people of Eagle Pass, TX or El Paso have been complaining about this for years and the silence has been deafening. So why OH and why now?

    I really can’t help wondering what the angle is, and what’s comin’ down the pike as a result.

    1. Wukchumni

      Until you’ve had Siamese food, or Shih Tzu by the seashore in a nice oceanfront eatery, is it really fare to cast judgment on what goes down the gullet?

      1. JBird4049

        With the caveat that I think we should have mass deportations, I really sympathize with people such as the Haitians as the minimum wage, depending on the industry, is between $2.9 to $5.85 per day.

        Europeans, in particular the French and the Americans, have been economically despoiling the whole country for centuries; people blame the Haitians for being poor; however, when you have the examples such as the various American coups, the US marines stealing seizing of the Haitian national gold reserves, the French blockades to forcing the Haitians to pay for the loss of French property, meaning the slaves, aka the Haitian citizens, by logging out their entire forest, the support of various dictators such as François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier and their pet murder goons, the Tonton Macoutes, and so on, and so forth, what does anyone expect to happen?

        Haitian prosperity?

        1. Cassandra

          …Haitian prosperity…

          So in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in 2010, there was a significant amount of international humanitarian relief funds sent to Haiti to help the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless and without food and clean water. Guess who ended up managing the funds? Bill and Hill, with “Build Back Better 1.0”. It seems Bill felt guilty for screwing over the beleaguered Haitian economy when he was president… so instead of building infrastructure, they decided to replace good farmland (in an environmentally sensitive area not devastated by the earthquake) with a giant industrial park for a dodgy South Korean firm to make cheap t-shirts for MalWart. In the meantime, a cholera epidemic roared through…

          https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/world/americas/earthquake-relief-where-haiti-wasnt-broken.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

          Grifting off of Haiti is the lowest of the low. In my opinion.

          Oops. Just saw this was discussed lower down. Sorry, my bad.

          1. The Rev Kev

            Millions were given to Bill and Hillary to build back home for the Haitians to replace all those destroyed in the earthquake and in the end I think that only half a dozen were built.

    3. flora

      You ask why Ohio and why now? It’s an election year. Ohio has always been an important state for the national elections and usually goes for the GOP. It’s one way to demonize likely T voters in general, and especially those who may be old enough to remember when the manufacturing went away thanks to NAFTA. / my 2 cents

      1. tegnost

        aaron and katie interviewed a guy who wrote a book about open borders I listened to yesterday, I wasn’t impressed but kudos to U.I. for providing the forum. The short version is that it’s a morality tale but with little sympathy for workers and plenty too much for billionaires and corps., nothing I recall about unrestricted capital flows, saw nafta as a closed border flaw. Don’t have the link at hand but probably easy to track down…

        1. flora

          And yet… the US is still in a state of emergency with govt emergency powers because terrierists might be coming into the country. So… open borders. riiight. The story doesn’t add up, unless the emergency powers still in effect since 2001 aren’t really about what they claim. / my 2 cents

          1. procopius

            There are currently 40 “states of national emergency” open in the United States. Most of them are connected with imposing sanctions on somebody. I do not know of any are still open from before 1976. I know we did not close the “national emergency” from World War II for decades.

    4. failed pote

      As for why this story hasn’t been quashed it could be any number of things but I would say confusion and conditioning is at the heart of it. As for the other questions, Ockham’s Razor cuts toward malicious replacement migration. All other explanations lead into a maze of wall text.

      My theory is that Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he brought Springfield up. It may be that the only reason he agreed to debate was in order to bring Springfield up. I think a lot of people who should know better by now continue to underestimate the man.

      Harris may have baited Trump. Trump baited the globalist media apparatus.

      The media probably expected to still be talking about K’s post-debate bounce, how she shattered expectations, etc. Instead they are talking about the GOP’s top issue and talking about it in the middle of the rustbelt. And they are racializing the issue when their standard-bearer is a woman of mixed, non-white extraction.

      It’s a savvy twist on the old make-them-deny-it bit that LBJ pulled with the pig: provoke your opponent into amplifying your message.

      1. kareninca

        I agree that Trump did this intentionally. It has become a country-wide brain worm. I find myself oddly disappointed when I open up X and don’t find a cat/duck meme, despite not actually wanting to see one.

      2. Acacia

        Good points.

        Is anybody in the media (social or otherwise) talking about anything KH said during the debate?

        Empty suits gonna empty suit.

    5. Ranger Rick

      I’m not sure what the appropriate level of cynicism is. On one hand, you get about $3000 from the refugee resettlement agency in the US to host a refugee for 90 days. That really isn’t enough to encourage massive fraud. On the other is the mythical coalition of the ascendant and the persistent belief that all immigrants will vote for the Democrats. (Biden has also raised refugee admittance numbers independent of the increase in asylum grants.) The US has a very checkered past with internal migration being used to influence elections, and people have extremely easy access to district-level voting patterns. No one has yet correlated refugee resettlement with a location’s voting history, and I doubt the government would publish (or return a FOIA request for) information about where it is resettling refugees to that degree of detail. That’s a lot of words to say it isn’t tickling my CT hindbrain yet. The humanitarian need is enormous, and there’s no ignoring that either.

      1. albrt

        I used to work with refugees, and in my experience the vast majority decide for themselves where to go based on information from family, friends, or even networks formed in immigration detention. If your cousin says he can get you a job in Springfield, you go to Springfield. This does tend to produce conglomerations of people from specific countries.

    6. Giovanni Barca

      There was no war in which Ohio was wrested from Haiti. Eagle Pass and El Paso have rather a different history. If the immigrants in Springfield were largely Shawnee and Miami, the comparison might be more direct

      1. flora

        an aside: There was the Clinton Foundation’s work in Haiti while Mrs. C was the US Secretary of State.
        https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2016/11/what-the-clintons-did-to-haiti

        “So when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009, she consciously made the redevelopment of Haiti one of her top priorities. The country, she announced, would be a laboratory where the United States could “road-test new approaches to development,” taking advantage of what she termed “the power of proximity.” She intended to “make Haiti the proving ground for her vision of American power.” Hillary Clinton selected her own chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to run the Haiti project.

        … The project was heavily focused on increasing Haiti’s appeal to foreign corporations. As Politico reported, Clinton’s experiment “had business at its center: Aid would be replaced by investment, the growth of which would in turn benefit the United States.”

        One of the first acts in the new “business-centered” Haiti policy involved suppressing Haiti’s minimum wage. … “

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          And this was after President Clinton made the agricultural destruction and utter destitution of the Haitian countryside into a priority by exterminating rice-growing Haiti in order to turn it into a dumping ground for Arkansas rice, and after launching a program to exterminate the self-sustainable Haitian creole pig from existence in order to turn Haiti into a playground-dumping ground for corporate cancer-juice American-Agribusiness hog-raising methods. ( I wonder if a single one of those Creole Pigs survived. I wonder if any similar pigs survive elsewhere in the Caribbean from which a fresh-start re-introduction might be attempted in Haiti).

          https://canada-haiti.ca/content/how-clintons-robbed-and-destroyed-haiti

          https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-clinton-foundations-legacy-in-haiti-haitians_b_57f604f9e4b087a29a5486fd

          https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2016/11/what-the-clintons-did-to-haiti

          When the Clintons are finally dead and buried, I wonder whether Haitian-Americans will make annual Date-of-Death pilgrimages to the Clinton graves to pee and poo on their headstones and dance on their graves.

          1. MFB

            I don’t think there’s enough excrement in Haiti to do them justice.

            Let alone justice for all the other people working to destroy Haiti/Hispaniola for the last five hundred years.

    7. Phenix

      For whatever it’s worth a lady I work with is from a small town outside Pittsburgh. Her home town received 2,000 or 4,000 Haitian refugees. The towns population was 4,000 people but I hope she meant 40k. She didn’t know about the pet eating thing but she did confirm that Haitian drivers have been causing issues on the road.

      As for me, I live outside Philly. We have had a huge wave of Haitians come over and they are coming to work at my facility. A lot of the Haitians I have (I am a manager) can understand some English but enough know a combination of English, French, Creole, and Spanish that I can figure out a way to direct them. The vast majority are hard workers but we have already lost several to the welfare state and I see that they have caught on to asking me about hours worked so not to go over wage thresholds.

      We have a standard starting rate for everyone and it’s too low for my area.

      This wave is also stressing the welfare network. One of my workers is unhoused and she was put to the back of the line due to the influx of Haitians. She may just be venting to me but I can see how a federal mandate could make the Haitians a top priority.

      A UBI would help alleviate a lot of her issues. We could have a Bureau of Refugees for the Haitians but get rid of the rest of the welfare state while focusing on mental health and addiction services.

      1. Mark Gisleson

        When Somalian refugees (hello Ilhan!) arrived in Minnesota their driving became legendary almost overnight. Freeway traffic jams exacerbated by the inability of Somali drivers to pass by an accident without slowing way down and literally sticking their heads out of the window to get a better view.

        I visited Springfield about 20 years ago. They’d always had a lot of former Appalachians there and for some economic reason there had been a flood of new arrivals and the impact on Springfield was quite visible. While going down a major street we saw a residential garage with a piece of cardboard in a window that said “BAR.” I do wonder if there would have been an uproar had Dave Chappelle joked that Springfield’s squirrel population had gone down?

        Those transplants have had two decades plus to settle in, still I can’t help but think Springfield was already culturally complicated enough without this new influx.

        Personally I think Haitians should be relocated to cities where the Clintons own a home.

        1. chuck roast

          I remember the Somalis in Portland, Maine being bad drivers. Catholic Charities sponsored many of them, and would give them crappy old vans to get around in…none of the locals would buy them. The women were particularly bad drivers. Anyway, the lot of them were good neighbors, and they fit in pretty well. I admired their beautiful teeth.

      1. LawnDart

        Yes, I can personally verify cat-eating in Pittsburgh, PA.

        My next-door neighbor was an immigrant, and he hated cats, but loved their taste: “their meat is very sweet” he would say, with a bit of a sneer.

        Of course, he was from Siscily, and the cats were pooping on his porch furniture, so there’s that…

      2. IM Doc

        Just as I was sure would happen earlier this week, the sermons from the elites have now morphed from “This is not happening, and anyone who even brings it up is a racist pig” to what I am now seeing on Twitter this afternoon – “We need to be more tolerant and appreciate the cuisine of other cultures” – this is of course after I have now seen no less than 10-12 videos today on my feed of all kinds of various animals being BBQd. It is turning into a mini-tsunami of pixels. The first position is now dust in the wind – so the narrative must change.

        And now we have entered the phase of the mainstream press stating the most imbecile things. Things that are obvious fabrications. It is now reported that the man carrying the 2 dead geese by the legs was actually just cleaning up “roadkill”. Unfortunately for the media, there are likely millions of Americans just like me who live in an area that is chock full of wild life and Canadian geese are one of our most plentiful species. And unfortunately, I see roadkill of all kinds – almost always multiple times daily. The first problem – that is NOT what roadkill waterfowl look like after the incident. The second problem – it is being reported that he had 2 roadkill geese in tow. I guess that could be true in the same way that I can be 20 years old again. Geese are extremely agile animals. I cannot even remember the last time I saw that species being roadkill. I can remember in my entire life only one goose roadkill. Two in one day in incredibly intact condition like that photo seems a very large stretch to me.

        I think this entire operation seems to be 4D chess on the part of Trump. I guess I would say this is a variant of the Streisand Syndrome. It has focused the attention of the entire country in a laser sharp manner on the problems that these communities where these massive numbers of immigrants are placed are facing. And as I said before – the main issues to me and those other independent voters I have talked to the past few days have nothing to do at all with geese and swans and cats. It has everything to do with schools, public health, etc. And I can tell – eyes are being opened.

        And of course – the whole thing could not be complete without a nice scouring lecture from one of the elites. Nausea inducing is not enough to describe the John Legend sermon from today – as usual – straight from the great room of his Beverly Hills mansion. These people have absolutely no comprehension of their own hypocrisy. They have lost the ability to hear themselves through the prism of those who truly have to live with the consequences of the elites’ decision. It is often unintentionally very illuminating to hear the claptrap.

        So all will know – my wife is a legal immigrant. My wife busted her ass for almost 20 years to earn her citizenship. Before we were married, one of the highlight days of my life was to witness her being sworn in as an American. And before that day and since that day, she has contributed mightily to this country and one of its big cities. She registered as a Dem the very first chance she had. One of her most prized possessions is a picture of us with the Obamas. She will be voting for Trump. She simply cannot abide not only this immigration fiasco – but she is now convinced that a vote for Harris is a vote for WWIII. I have absolutely no counter arguments to her position. What an amazingly uncomfortable position for me, a Dem my entire adult life.

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          A way to make your position less uncomfortable might be to realize that the DemParty label has been used as a cover under which a whole new group of people have carefully purged and burned and exterminated almost all the actual legacy New Deal Democrats from out of the DemParty.

          If we picture the Democratic Party as being a beehive, then the New Deal Democrats were the bees and the Clinton Democrats and the Obama Democrats are the wax moths and foul brood disease germs and varroa mites who live inside the DemParty-labeled beehive and who feed off of what Legacy New Deal Democratic bees still survive inside the hive. The wax moths and foul brood germs and varroa mites inside the New Deal Democratic Beehive are not the New Deal Democratic bees of yesterday, but people still allow them to call themselves ” Democrats”, even though they are not really Democrats. They are really foul brood germs, wax moths and varroa mites.

          If people with a memory of the Legacy Democrats of the old days have abundant spare time, they might figure out how to create and entrench a New Deal Revival Party. But their time is probably better spent on building Survivalism first.

        2. IM Doc

          I cannot post videos but was able to find this with a Twitter search.

          https://x.com/AnthonyScottTGP/status/1835053384862167196

          I know nothing about the account. But that video was just sent to me by a senior official of the Democratic Party of my state. With the following statement……..and a plea to donate 1000 dollars to Kamala Harris – WE MUST STAMP OUT THIS EVIL.

          “Even the better angels and those who demonstrate great morality eat dogs, pets, and cats at some point in their lives. Have mercy on those who do. Racism is an ugly thing.”

          Thus making my point to the T.

          The narrative in less than a week has gone from at the debate – “Immigrants eating dogs and cats is a lie and needs to be fact checked.”

          A few videos come out.

          “Well, it does not happen often and anyone who says anything negative about these people is a racist.”

          Then a tidal wave of videos begins to appear.

          “Well even Barack Obama ate dogs. How dare anyone say anything about eating pets.”

          We are all taking a trip down The Looking Glass. A very few of my patients over my life have been in cults. This kind of narrative flux and its description has been a common theme they all describe.
          I feel so sorry for the people trapped in this. I really do.

          1. hk

            What’s next? Honor killing is OK because of…culture and tolerance? (I vaguely remember that this has already become an issue in some contexts–I want to say the incident I think I remember was in Canada, though…) Yet, I’m old enough to remember that there was a big movement to outlaw “female circumcision” among self-described liberals a couple of decades ago. Is this still a thing among present day liberals?

          2. flora

            Ah yes, the moral crusade for cheap, exploitable labor.
            Isn’t that one of the Beatitudes?
            Blessed are the rich who exploit poor laborers in the name of heaven, ….

    9. Squawd Leader

      The point is to turn a purple state blue with new Democrat voters. Maybe even create a new Democrat House district?

      Who could have believed Minnesota would have a safe Somali House of Representitives district?

  18. The Rev Kev

    “Netanyahu asks for criminal probe into himself to evade ICC warrant”

    Tuesday. Netanyahu sets up a criminal probe to investigate himself headed up by S. Netanyahu, no wait, make that Sara N.

    Wednesday. The criminal probe ends as they find no evidence that Netanyahu has doe anything wrong and if he did, it was for the good of the country.

    Thursday. Bibi & Sarah set up lawn-deck chairs to watch from atop a hill the latest bombings in Gaza while staring wistfully at southern Lebanon.

  19. Es s Ce Tera

    re: Russia Is Riding an Anti-Colonial Wave Across Africa FP

    Basically, FP argues anti-colonial struggles for independence from Western colonial overlords, are really trojan horses, and not really colonial subjects wanting genuine independence. Riiiight. The plantation slaves don’t really want their freedom, it’s all a ruse!

  20. GramSci

    Google just sent me a notification: “You haven’t opened any of your emails from Jill Stein lately. Would you like us to unsubscribe you?”

    It didn’t make me that offer for any of the other dozens of senders who have sent me many, many more emails that I haven’t opened. (And Google shouldn’t know if I have or haven’t opened any emails, since I forward all my Gmail to posteo.de (as I have been doing since before Germany went crazy. Doesn’t look so smart anymore. (Does anybody know a good Chinese webmail service?))).

    So thoughtful of Google!

    1. MFB

      Every day I open a dozen websites to see what’s new. Google tells me that I “visit often” (We’re watching you, sucker!) to only a couple of them, mostly ones to do with China, oddly enough. Oddly enough. Oddly enough.

  22. Jason Boxman

    Today’s Parents: ‘Exhausted, Burned Out and Perpetually Behind’ (NYTimes via archive.ph)

    Parents’ stress has become a public health concern, the U.S. surgeon general warned.

    Not about COVID, lol. Not mentioned. Pandemic mentioned once in past tense. And this zinger:

    The advisory called on policymakers, employers and health care providers to better support parents, including through family policies like paid leave and child tax credits. These are ideas that have historically been supported by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, though certain Republicans have backed some of them. Donald J. Trump has said that as president he would expand the child tax credit.

    As we learned recently, under liberal Democrats, childhood poverty tripled. Tripled from Pandemic lows. So, no, Democrats do not credibly support policy initiatives to improve the lot of parents and their children. Full stop.

    If you care what the NY Times thinks, the culprit is actually:

    This parenting style is known as intensive parenting, as the sociologist Sharon Hays described it in the late 1990s. It involves “painstakingly and methodically cultivating children’s talents, academics and futures through everyday interactions and activities,” the sociologists Melissa Milkie and Kei Nomaguchi have written.

    And having children in neoliberal America is harrowing, so I have no doubt there is much stress, and this certainly predates the Pandemic. But encouraging parents to get their kids sick multiple times a year, including with a level 3 biohazard, while getting infected themselves, can’t do wonders for the stresses of parenting, either.

    1. Phenix

      So, I home school my kids now. We thought about doing it prior to the pandemic but we had to because of it. My wife is partially disabled so she is home with the kids otherwise this is not possible.

      What I have found is that kids in school have poor manners, inability to focus, and are behind my kids. They are also more aggressive and judgemental.

      The home school children I know are used to interacting with a wide range of age groups including adults since we have play groups etc. I am around both secular and religious homeschool families. Everything is usually respectful but I am sure I caused issues…I am an Aspy so I can get myself into social trouble.

      My oldest is behind me in math but ahead of me I’m reading and writing. We compared my old work I found in the attic.

      The reason for the above is that I do not send my kids to school and avoid COVID infections and general indoctrination.

      Unfortunately we recently went to the Franklin Institute and my entire family was sick. I wish I could afford my old COVID protocol FLCCC is a good resource but resources are tight and inflation sucks.

    2. Lina

      I’m the mother of a 10 (almost 11) year old. I saw this article and can vouch for parenting being extremely stressful. We had our daughter older (I was 42, my partner was 47). We’re tired all the time. The pandemic was horrible. We kept her home from school for 14 months (K and 1st grade).

      There is very little support (if any) in this country for raising kids. Being a mom is the biggest joy in my life but I’m glad we only have one child.

      The feel of overwhelm is real. So much so that now I’m reassessing my life and strongly considering an early retirement from my corporate job so I can parent the rest of these years in peace. It will be a sacrifice financially but I’m ok with simple living.

      Any other parent stories out there?

      1. Ignacio

        Parenthood has always been demanding at least for those parents that care. When the children are around you are in continuous alert mode and that is in itself exhausting specially when they are below 4yo. You then go to sleep crossing the fingers this is not one of those “funny nights” when you have to change bed linen several times enjoying the acid aroma of vomits. Those times passed for me long ago but I still remember.

        1. Jason Boxman

          And this doesn’t even get into atomization of social connections and the family unit in America, where two people (or one) alone are the sole guardians.

    3. chris

      There is certainly everything you’re mentioning, but what is neglected in that article are the forces behind the change in intensity. Here’s how it looks in my circle, which is what I had to explain to my MIL the other when she asked why we were doing something for the kids that she would have taken for granted years ago…

      Does your kid want to do sports in HS? Have they been on travel teams since 3rd grade? No? Oh, so sorry, I guess that means they shouldn’t even try out.

      Does your kid want to be in drama? Do they have a parent who works at home and can transport them to the theater group at 3 PM on weekdays? No? Oh, so sorry, I guess they can’t be in the play.

      Your kid made the team? Congratulations! Can you pick them up at 4:30 PM every week day? Remember, they’re not allowed to loiter and if observed hanging around too long because you get stuck in traffic, you will be fined. So… No? So sorry, we don’t provide busses and there’s no one who will offer to carpool with you. Too bad kid, maybe one of your parents will lose their job next year and then you try again.

      Is your kid in Scouts/FFA/4H/or any other organization? Wonderful. Now you as a parent have to volunteer and donate to that group which curiously includes many families who appear to neither donate nor volunteer. You will be considered unpaid child care for their offspring until your kid has accomplished what they want and can leave the organization with the terminal experience/credential. And remember, the parents of these kids are desperate because they work too much to parent their kids, so the kids have no manners and no sense of gratitude. But you are still expected to treat them well and teach them how to use sharp objects and start fires.

      And your kids are being tutored right? Kumon or something? Or you’re paying for a teacher who side hustles to teach your kids the fundamentals they missed out on from 2020 to 2022? Good. That’s 100$ per session, minimum.

      And, by the way, for those of you who want your kids to get opportunities at the local public schools, you are donating to the boosters right? And the PTA? And doing things like spending money for birthday signs? And providing all the supplies your kid and the class needs too? While saving for their education? Good. I’m so glad to hear. I guess that means your beloved child has a chance to get that part they want in the school play. But just a chance. There’s this other kid who’s been doing classes at the local theater since they were 3 and their parents have bookshelf and a bench dedicated to their family at the school, so, good luck! Don’t cry though. We understand. We know how stressful your financial failure to support your child in all those ways can be… but your bill to the boosters is due on Monday.

      All the padding, all the softness, all the free stuff, all the easy stuff, all the non-competitive options, all the opportunity, has been wrung out of middle America just as a slave is stretched on a rack. The wealthy who can afford for all this are setting the pace here. They are also defining the expectations. This is the Road to Wigham Pier on a massive scale. The middle class understands that they should be doing these things. But they’re too broke and stressed to afford it. So they fight bitterly, and intensely, for the scraps they can get.

      And while they’re doing that, crime and other issues fester in our communities. So their week gets thrown off because rats eat the cheap wiring harness in the car with soy extract in the insulation. Or they have to drive to work with a broken window or windshield because some one broke in to their car while it was parked over night. Or stole the tires off their car. Yet we’re told that you’re racist for suggesting the theft that requires grocery stores to put medicine behind locked cages is a problem. We’re also told that crime is at all time lows. Just like we’re told homelessness is a small problem that can be managed be destroying encampments. Just like we’re told that there aren’t millions of illegal immigrants entering the country and making stuff worse. Just like we’re told that we’re not at war with Russia.

      And these parents, caught between a society that has failed them, and a country that refuses to acknowledge the failure, are trying to protect their children from it as best they can. And the NYT has audacity to accuse the parents of being unnecessarily intense and stressed out. As if there was an option.

      1. Bruce F

        This resonated with me, as I’m going through this with a close friend of mine and her school aged son. It seems that whatever is done is never enough. I think many of the kids know they are in trouble and give up/become very passive in response to all the stress.

        1. Revenant

          Hi Chris, that was a great cri de coeur. I see the same tendency in the UK. It’s been extramural judo two nights a week, hockey one night, swimming two nights etc. for the past three years and our son’s only twelve!

          I believe that the assortative mating, the two working parent trap and the open immigration of the last forty years have led to mortal competition among the middle class to maintain their status. In essence, there is a national game of musical chairs, where a chair is removed every round (neo liberalism) AND new player added (immigration). Actually, a better metaphor for neo liberalism and the two income assortative mating is that two halves of two chairs are removed each round, so two players have to marry to stay in the game and then force a third player out.

          The result is that school and being a parent is high pressure. I went to a fee-paying school (not prestigious, former grammar school in the sticks, still using Nissen huts to teach in fifty years after the war ended) where twenty of the 120 or so leavers had Oxbridge offers. My son goes there now and only three people had Oxbridge offers.

          The decrease is only partly caused by the “positive” discrimination in Oxbridge against fee-paying schools: it is also because those Universities have the pick of anybody from the vast Chinese and even Indian middle class and because UK fee-paying schools now have the pick of the dual income parents. There are only so many elite school places to go round because there are only so many places in the elite.

          So a school that once taught the sons of doctors who married nurses now teaches the sons of two doctors, or rather it doesn’t: that couple pays to send their child somewhere eye-wateringly expensive and in their leaving, the whole ability range of the school is downshifted. And this effect spans the whole school system from Westminster School to the local comprehensive: everybody is investing as much as they can is trying to climb over the heads of their neighbours and push their child onto the diminishing high rungs because they see the ship of prosperity sailing away.

          The only temporary winners are parents in the state-funded grammar schools, which are rigorously selective but, as state schools, benefit from the positive discrimination: our son won a place to one and we thought it was the closest school to what we remember school being like but he would not go because it required a long bus ride across the county and his friends weren’t going. Already though, the house prices in the catchment areas of these school have shot up, so they equate to a fee-paying school., and parents at our sons current school talk.about tactically putting their children there in sixth form, like an inverse finishing school to game the pro-state school discrimination.

          The effect on the non-elite fee-paying schools has been profound. Some have chased Chinese money with elaborate boarding facilities but this boom is ending with UK university visas being restricted (not all plain sailing before: the one near us has been in the papers after an Chinese student attempted the murder of two fellow Chinese pupils and a housemaster). Others have corporatised and focus on churning out Russell Group university places (i.e. one rung down from Oxbridge / Ivy League) for smiling mediocrities. The sense of education is missing; the credential is the product.

          Our son can see it in his lessons and fellow pupils. But the Nissen huts are now a shiny building and the school has a £1200pp ski trip and the cricket team tours Barbados so that’s all right.

          I am now thinking of selling our family farm to send him to a school in the elite tier (half the pupils get Oxbridge offers). It gets its results because it is highly selective on entry and famously focused on individual development and genuinely educates its pupils so they achieve brilliant things in and out of the schoolroom. But positional goods don’t come cheap and five years of this will cost the same as a house.

          In the process, I will only be adding to the rat race. But what is a rat to do but run…?

          1. chris

            I agree with what you’ve said. The musical chairs analogy is accurate.

            We’re trying to walk a middle path with our kids but that’s mainly because they’re not athletic. We have friends who have kids that really could do great things. They have a much harder time. To give a bit of background, we have friends and family who spend between 15k$ and 30k$ on their kid’s travel team sport each year. Their kids go to public school but there’s this whole other part of their lives that disconnects them from the general population of families with school age children.

            1. Revenant

              Indeed. And a sad result is that none of our contemporary parents has any kind of social life other than on the touchlines at sports training and events (rural city, no practical public transport with a big kit bag, funny finishing times etc.) or, for son #2, choir and associated events.

              Everybody is too busy with their jobs, the children’s extracurricular commitments and, in the space left, their aging parents or long-distance close family. The one exception is the lovely Spanish dentist (you can’t take your work home with you!) who runs permanent open house for her sons’s friends and all their families. :-)

              Whereas I remember my parents having dinner parties every weekend, lunch parties for work colleagues, week night functions, running a charity appeal, having random people to stay (the whole Ballet Rambert, Count Potoski, the pretender to the Polish throne, Sue Ryder the philanthropist, some of my father’s patients moved in with us for months etc). In contrast, we’ve managed a literal handful of supper events in seven years in this house and zero formal dinners.

              I don’t know how they did it but I suspect a large part was, in comparison, by “neglecting” their children. I certainly remember my father going to the pub and leaving me outside with a packet of crisps and pint of lemonade for hours! But they weren’t neglectful: my father had set up the nursery school I attended for his children of his first marriage in our house.

              But we never really went anywhere after school, I did no after school clubs except ones school provided etc. The idea they would interrupt their adult lives to ferry me around never crossed their minds!

  23. Genocide Joe

    Ukraine has highest mortality rate and lowest birth rate in the world

    “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
    ― Henry Kissinger

    1. Roland

      There is a crucial difference between a “National Citizens’ Inquiry,” and a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

      If you look at the witness summons for the NCI, the difference is stated plainly:

      “The Inquiry is independent of government and operates without legal compulsion or coercion.”

      i.e. the NCI has no power of subpoena. Witnesses do not have to attend, documents do not have to be produced. No penalties apply, except a pro forma censure.

      Now, governments have long used Royal Commissions to postpone action, and to divert criticism. Nevertheless, Royal Commission reports are usually legitimate and valuable in themselves, and their recommendations often do end up becoming policy (it’s just that the process takes long enough to get a government safely through the next election.)

      Therefore, I think it’s quite telling that, in regard to this COVID crisis, the Canadian government found even the customary expedient of a Royal Commission to be something too threatening for them. So Trudeau resorted to a sham like the NCI.

      The government must really want to hide some bad things. However, the Conservative opposition party favours business-as-usual, and is lax on COVID, so the government is spared the scrutiny and criticism that the public interest demands.

      1. Roland

        Further, if you go to video of the initial hearing, the administator of the inquiry admits that he has, “no power based on statute.”

        And what archives, too. The stuff is officially posted: on Rumble!

    2. jrkrideau

      I have only taken 10 minutes to look at the report but it is clear that this was not a a formal inquiry by the the Government of Canada which was what was being called for.

      The National Citizens Inquiry organization may be very good or they could be whack jobs. At the moment I am leaning towards the latter but I could well be wrong

  25. AG

    Since I can´find the proper thread any more on the WWIII mongering, here this link:

    Mark Sleboda yesterday:

    “On the Precipice of Wider War as NATO Prepares Missile Strikes Deep Inside Russia, CNN Calls Kursk Fool’s Crusade a “Major Success”🤡”

    https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/on-the-precipice-of-wider-war-as
    First half.

    He quotes the British papers which claim GB and France possibly doing their own missile operation, without announcement (“just do it, Nike”), and limit what UKR may and may not attack in RU proper.

    And allegedly unlike the US both midgets appear to be all hot for escalation.

    The point being RU if at all would itself attack outside NATO territory, i.e. limited.

    The why makes little sense:

    They seem to believe inching closer to WWIII RU at some point would give up.

    Well, even I could tell them that will never happen. But may be my RU education is of higher value than that of those puppets in Whitehall.

      1. AG

        p.s. Agreed, despite the ABM reference intended as genuine it was way too cryptic a choice in this context. I felt uncomfortable with the quote myself. So your criticism is appropriate.

  26. steppenwolf fetchit

    I realize that many fellow commenters here are considering voting for Trump to teach the Democrats a lesson and so forth.

    They will be voting for revenge, lessons taught ( even if not learned or even learnable) , etc. But they will also be getting this as one of many side effects . . . ” ‘It just exploded’: Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians NBC. The deck: “The woman behind an early Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets told NBC News that she feels for the immigrant community.”

    So what IS the truth about the city where Trump claims migrants are eating the pet cats and dogs? GREG WOODFIELD visits Springfield, Ohio, to find neo-Nazis are marching, residents in utter despair – and even talk of gun battles breaking out… Daily Mail. Commentary:”

    It should be carefully thought about. It may be considered worth it, and that is a consideration people will have to make after weighing this, that and the other.

    1. Phenix

      In breaking news a politician lied….or a politician repeated a first person account that later was retracted?

      I am more concerned about Trump saying Kamala is a communist.

      Is it any worse than the Dems lying about Trump’s abortion stance?

      Is it worse than Dems lying about Trump’s connections to Russia?

      Is it worse than lying about Biden’s cognitive ability?

      Is it worse than not running a primary?

      Is it worse than lying about the Hunter Biden laptop?

      Trump is not a good person…neither is Kamala. One of them does not want to provide a nuclear exchange with Russia.

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        Well, these are things which require consideration. If it appears Kamala is committed to a nuclear ( or otherwise) war with Russia, one votes for Trump as being the lesser danger to survival. One then prepares to accept all the side effects which will follow.

        If one pretends that such side effects would not actually follow, one would be disappointed.

        1. sardonia

          Side effects:

          Trump – provoking a few neo-Nazis to have a march.

          Harris – provoking a hot war with Russia.

          Decisions, decisions….

          1. Jester

            Harris – provoking a hot war with Russia.

            Putin disagrees. He thinks that there is no difference between Pepsi and Coke (except for the label).

            As far as Nazis go, USA have been supporting them since WWII ended because they are anti-communists (and before WWII, for same reasons).

            Enjoy your kayfabe, and the illusion of choice.

          2. steppenwolf fetchit

            Well, no . . . . the side effects of a re-President Trump would be the attempted total abolition of any laws against pollution of any kind. That would probably be successfully accomplished.

            America would be firmly re-put on a coal, gas and oil path far above what Harris plans for under her support for mass-fracking. Meaning, America would be put on a path to much more carbon skyflooding much faster.

            If one wants make an informed choice between the different menus of offered side effects, one has to face up to what those side effects really would be.

            John L. King, author of How to Profit From the Next Depression and Chaos In America once said: ” Him that is not surprised when the future comes lives very close to the truth.”

            Decisions, decisions indeed . . .

            ( here’s a link to those two books that John L. King wrote . . .
            https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11903822-how-to-profit-in-the-next-depression

            and . . .
            https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2356329.Chaos_in_America )

    2. GramSci

      I did time near Springfield. It breeds racism like any of thousands of other dying Usian towns and cities.

      Witch hunts are an American tradition, just as they are a European tradition. Trump didn’t start them. It’s alarming to see him join this witch hunt, just as it’s alarming to see Kamalala and VDL join in the hunt for Russian and Palestinian witches.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Kamalala and VDL join in the hunt for Russian and Palestinian witches.

        It couldn’t be more clear that part of the “joy” highlighted by Harris campaign operatives is the joy of attacking a hated enemy. They really get into it!

    3. zach

      Tempting though it be, Mr/Ms Wolf of the Steppes, to put to digital copy the apologia festering in my mind, suffice it to say, the DT still has debts outstanding from living rent free in my head for the past 8 years… notwithstanding the fact that his campaign doesn’t pay me nearly enough (at all, to be clear).

      As a good red-blooded tax-paying American, I demand bloodsport, whether in my interactions with the DMV, on Sundays in autumn, or, and especially, between they who so covet the power and glory of the highest seat in the land.

      To pick up where Paul Thomas Anderson left off – I say, let there be blood.

    4. ilsm

      The one person at the ABC debate who seemed to know or care about nuclear war is trump!

      You can vote for your permanent war neocon progressives who never bothered to read Schilling or study game theory or talk to anyone who knows anything about the cold war tensions!

      All those joyful promises to buy votes are meaningless when the ICBMs are exchanging and US’ ICBMs do not perform any better than the stuff we sent to Ukraine.

      The war games do not show US would stop after losing London and Brussels!

    5. Kouros

      What if Jill Stein is also on the ballot? Why vote for Trump just as an act of revenge (whill he be better on Gaza, Iran, China, etc.) than the present lot?

        1. zach

          That’s an interesting idea, except for I voted for Jill Stein in 2016.

          Near as i can figure it didn’t get me much of anything, except for, to the extent that one follows the other… Well, got me, and the rest of us, to right here.

          Boycott is the best revenge, can’t win, also can’t lose, if you don’t play.

          They demand that we continue to legitimize their prerogative to immiserate not just the citizens, residents, those just passing through, and… pets, of this country, in addition to just about as many of our fellow passengers on spaceship Earth as they possibly can.

          A protest vote to the Greens doesn’t register, especially if a Republican is elected.

          A protest vote to the Libertarians doesn’t register, especially if a Democrat is elected.

          A voter turnout of say 3-5 percent, golly, i wonder what the neighbors will think… Federalist papers was all worried about “majority tyranny” – what do they call it when the opposite happens?

          1. Martin Oline

            I was raised to believe that I should vote and always have. Even when my candidate of choice is not going to win I vote. The records of who voted in the past is a public record. If you don’t vote then your absence is noted. I have read on conservative sites of a widespread belief that people who don’t vote are targeted by activist pols who fill out absentee votes for them. The thought of this happening is enough to get me off my butt and to the polls every two years.

            1. zach

              Friend, you will count me among the last voices to advocate against living anything other than Your truth. If the thought of “activist pols” motivates, follow that, 100%.

              You haven’t dealt with my issue – not that it is your responsibilty to do so – that in function, if perhaps not in form, there is no difference between an “activist pol” filling out my vote for me, and me casting a vote myself for a system or a candidate in which i have no faith and which fundamentally does not represent my views.

              This is just a thought experiment, not a prescription. I apologize if i took it too far – lead dust, paint fumes, and probably didn’t drink enough water this past week.

        2. Yves Smith

          We sent a stern note to readers strongly suggesting that we were seriously considering deleting comments that advocate for particular candidate. We mean it. Kouros is admittedly questionably close to the line, but your comment is clearly not on give the warning about needing avoid partisanship to keep discussions civil. Who someone votes for is a private matter and should be kept private.

    6. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians NBC

      51 intelligence officers claim they never meant to say Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian fake

      Oh, wait. That never happened, did it?

      Just to be clear, the Springfield woman has no real power. The 51 intelligence officers did and do (and at this point we recall that Kamala sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the spooks haven’t said they had any problems with her).

  27. LawnDart

    Quite recently Yves posted a link to a story published at the Drop Site News website, and I bookmarked the site as it seemed to offer both timely and relevent journalism… but for how long?

    Drop Site News is Under Attack From an Authoritarian Government
    And several others aren’t too pleased

    Barely two months into Drop Site’s tenure, we have made enemies of at least three governments, been banned in one country, and censored by the largest social-media platform in the world. Pakistan’s military government has banned Drop Site News from being read inside the country, following a sweeping series of investigative reports that have rocked the embattled leadership…
    https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/were-under-attack-from-an-authoritarian

    1. AG

      wouldn´t be surprised if it was a multiple effort in which the term “authoritarian” and “democratic” may come down to both render mass murder as a form of government

      Scahill featured a long conversation WITH Hamas back in July.
      Wonder who was not fond of that? ISI? or rather a different multi-letter agency.
      Which of course doesn´t mean ISI or the CIA or any such club is happy about it.

      stuff like this isn´t that radical but with Scahill associated it does have an impact. May be even with folks who you don´t wanna alienate, like foreign intelligence staff or simply US-officials who actually read the Constitution.

      A more recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, whose findings were released in mid-June, found that two-thirds of the Gaza population continued to express support for the October 7 attack on Israel, with more than 80 percent asserting that it put Palestine at the center of global attention. More than half of Gaza residents polled indicated that they hoped Hamas would return to power after the war. “They lost confidence in peace with Israel. People believe that the only way is now to fight against Israel, to struggle against Israel,” said Ghazi Hamad, the former Hamas deputy foreign minister and a longstanding member of its political bureau, in an interview. “We put the Palestinian cause on the table. I think that we have a new page of history.”

      1. zach

        Bro. And/or Sis. That hits on many levels.

        I reckon old Iron Mike could learn the DT a thing or two about picking up, dusting off, and the subtle art of lovemaking.

        Was gonna link but holy cow was he on one. NSFW don’t do it justice.

  29. GramSci

    The Uhuru “3” more Kafka:

    “Florida jury found four defendants guilty of conspiring to act as Russian agents but cleared them of actually doing so.” — Google subhead, not found in BBC original

    There was a September 12 AP story, but otherwise I’ve seen no MSM report on this. I’m not sure who wrote the above subhead from the Google search page, but it succinctly captures the disingenuity of the federal SLAPP suit.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      “Among the actions cited by prosecutors was the drafting by APSP in 2015 of a petition to the UN accusing the US of committing genocide against African people.”

      Holy moley!

  30. LawnDart

    A Farewell…

    I have been writing this column, off and on, mostly on, for–dear God, can it be nearly thirty years? Yet nothing lasts forever, neither columns nor columnists, and Fred on Everything, for unexpected reasons with which i will not bore the reader, has reached its end.

    https://fredoneverything.org/a-farewelll/#more-3150

    One of the good guys, and it’s sad to see him hang-up his spurs.

    1. steppenwolf fetchit

      Fred’s books may still be for sale for quite some time. Buy Fred’s books!
      https://fredoneverything.org/buy-freds-books/

      Fred may keep his columns up on the interwebs for some time to come. Some other blogs and sites have done that. Viridian Design is still up after all these years. Rigorous Intuition 2.0 is still up. And if Fred On Everything does not stay up on the active internets, it may still be up for a while on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, till that gets switched off or burned down. But of course it won’t be findable there unless one has the exact URL so one can type it in exactly correctly. Because so far as I know, the Wayback Machine still does not have a searchable index of the titles of preserved and archived sites. Meaning that if all you remember of the site is its verbal name, you will never ever ever never find it on the Wayback Machine. So get that URL totally utter transcribed in its entirety if you want to find it. Otherwise, too bad.

      One hopes some people will make desktop printer copies of all the entire body of all of Fred’s columns in desktop printer ink on acid free paper. And that some other people will record these columns on microfilm and microfiche, so that when all digital records are burned all the way down just like the Library of Alexandria, that some analog collections of these columns will yet remain.

  31. djrichard

    > Investors raise bets on bumper half-point Fed rate cut FT

    The 13 week yield is currently at 4.76%. A drop of 50 basis points from where it was 2 months ago. So yea, I’d say the Fed is going to cut 50 basis points.

  33. Glen

    Re: US elections, China policy, Palestine-Israel and Russia-Ukraine: John Mearsheimer (video) ShanghaiEye, YouTube, thanks for the link, an excellent interview!

    With the increasing ramping up of the conflict in Ukraine, we’re hearing rumbles of “winnable” nuclear war which is insanity, but here’s Ted Postal explaining what’s behind these rumbles:

    Does the U.S. Intend to Fight a Nuclear War? —Ted Postol addresses the International Peace Coalition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxk-3xdQIHs

    To level set a bit, and go over some history, America did not win the last Cold War by force of arms especially nuclear arms. It won by providing it’s citizens with a better life while the USSR experienced a period of political stalemate and economic backslide called the Era of Stagnation:

    Era of Stagnation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Stagnation

    1. CA

      Ted Postol, a professor at MIT, determined that Syria had not used gas on militia forces trying to overturn the government. Congressional Representative and military officer Tulsi Gabbard went to Syria and agreed with the Postal finding. For the determination, Democrat Gabbard was repeatedly attacked by fellow Democrats who were determined that the Syrian government be destroyed.

      Neera Tanden, who attacked Gabbard and pushed for attacking Syria, and even taking Syrian oil to pay for the attack, would become a chief advisor to President Biden.

      https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/850491598517481474

      Neera Tanden ✔@neeratanden

      People of Hawaii’s 2nd district – was it not enough for you that your representative met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?

      https://twitter.com/cnn/status/850477149895131136 …

      CNN‏ ✔@CNN

      Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: “Yes, I’m skeptical” of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack

      7:32 PM – 7 Apr 2017

  34. CA

    A few notes about Haiti, beginning with a per capita GDP in 2023 of $3,170 which is the lowest level in the Western hemisphere. That of Mexico is $24,980. Between 1977 and 2023, the per capita GDP of Haiti declined by 34.4%, while that of neighboring Dominican Republic increased by 246.5%. Dominican Republic has a per capita GDP of $25,255.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1tJli

    August 4, 2014

    Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico, 1977-2023

    (Indexed to 1977)

  36. SD

    I’m so glad I clicked on and read “Turning Peasants into Pinions” by Ben Ehrenreich. Fascinating, enraging, and heartbreaking.

  37. zach

    China committed to ‘peacemaker’ role, including on Ukraine, Xiangshan defence forum hears South China Morning Post

    We can thank our lucky stars that there is a China on this planet. Astonishing to my American mind that a defense forum should have seeking peaceful resolutions to conflicts as its top priority.

    Also, racistically speaking, is it any wonder that a culture that prioritizes exhausting every possible avenue of respectful coexistence before taking up arms should in this modern age have a native population of 1.4 billion?

  38. The Rev Kev

    “Cave discovery in France may explain why Neanderthals disappeared, scientists say”

    ‘We thus have 50 millennia during which two Neanderthal populations, living about ten days’ walk from each other, coexisted while completely ignoring each other.’

    Hard to account for this but it must have meant something to the Neanderthals to be important enough to keep it up for tens of thousands of years. Maybe through a mutation they had a different appearance that led to a taboo in mixing together. It can’t be geographical borders or religious or traditional as things like that do not last so long.

      1. The Rev Kev

        @kareninca

        Maybe that is why the Neanderthals are no longer with us. The Neanderthal elders and medicine men ordered the people out of their caves, to ignore the virus, and get back to work to support the Mammoth-hunting economy again.

  39. Pat

    One thing that strikes me about all the unavoidable moral indignation about Trump and people who might vote for him is how utterly and obviously it is posturing based on neither moral conviction or ethics and rarely reality.
    For instance the immigration uproar of the past week. Oh the inhumanity and racism of being anti immigration. And yet the record regarding treatment of immigrants, dealing with the fallout of unmanaged immigration and the stress of large immigrant clusters is not so glorious on the part of the Democrats either. Reminds me of abortion, neither side of the argument does anything to actually support the humans dealing with unwanted pregnancy or birth. How about war, where Republican and Democrats alike are willing to send people to fight and die with little or no support for them or their families during or in the aftermath. Almost every major issue facing this country is reduced to a talking point regardless of what flavor of major party and most of the media is spouting the point.
    But while I am mostly a pox on both their houses kind of person, I do have to admit that the sanctimonious self righteousness displayed by the Democrats the last few years is so overwhelming and so hypocritical anymore that the right almost comes off as honest and reasonable by comparison.
    I hope for common sense and reality to return, but it may be too much to ask for.

  40. Acacia

    Re: Vladimir Putin Does Not Make Empty Threats

    I’m trying to remember that quotation from one of the Roman historians(?), which reads something like:

    “He who leaves me no choice but to fight is an aggressor.”

      1. Acacia

        Yeah, nothing subtle about that report.

        I notice that 6 of their 8 “most-promising cost-imposing options” for toppling Russia are military.

        I still can’t track down that (I think Latin) saying.

  41. Jim Brown

    Brilliant fact based films like Ungentlemanly Warfare are the stuff dreams are made of. Why not forget about fictional agents like Bond and Bourne dashing to save the world from disaster and forget about CIA and MI6 officers reclining on their couches dreaming up espionage scenarios to thrill you. Check out what a real MI6 and CIA secret agent does nowadays. Why not browse through TheBurlingtonFiles website and read about Bill Fairclough’s escapades when he was an active MI6 and CIA agent? The website is rather like an espionage museum without an admission fee … and no adverts. You will soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit.

    After that experience you may not know who to trust so best read Beyond Enkription, the first novel in The Burlington Files series. It’s a noir fact based spy thriller that may shock you. What is interesting is that this book is apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why? Maybe because the book is not only realistic but has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. It is an enthralling read as long as you don’t expect fictional agents like Ian Fleming’s incredible 007 to save the world or John le Carré’s couch potato yet illustrious Smiley to send you to sleep with his delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots!

    See https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2023_06.07.php and https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2022.10.31.php and
    https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2024.08.31.php.

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