Snow Leopard review – enigmatic tale of man v beast is late Tibetan film-maker’s final word Guardian
Realtor.com Reports Active Inventory Up 26.5% YoY Calculated Risk
Thanksgiving Day
Comedy interlude:
Northern lights may be faintly visible across parts of the US this Thanksgiving AP
Preventing holiday illness and navigating an ‘Ozempic Thanksgiving’ FOX
Climate
COP-out 29: The Baku Betrayal Climate & Capitalism
COP-out 29 The Next Recession
After the Deluge Harpers
Exclusive: Exxon lobbyist investigated over hack-and-leak of environmentalist emails, sources say Reuters
Global emergence of regional heatwave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations PNAS
Water
How paying water users to use less of the Colorado River is working out Colorado Sun
China?
Top PLA general Miao Hua under investigation for ‘serious discipline violations South China Morning Post
Decoupling industrial and supply chains is not the solution CGTN
China’s market targets are ‘just psychological’, says former regulator FT
India
Charting the future of India’s carbon market S&P Global
Adani Group says it lost nearly US$55 billion as US charges sparked rout Channel News Asia
New Not-So-Cold-War
How The New Russian Missiles Are Changing The Game Moon of Alabama. “[Russia] now has non-nuclear weapons, (the Oreshnik will not be the only one), which allow it to apply the equivalent of nuclear strikes without the dirty side effects of actually going nuclear.”
Nuclear attack unlikely despite Putin’s warnings, US intelligence says Reuters
Putin’s game is hypersonic: Is that why we can’t see it? Responsible Statecraft
* * * Ukraine settlement ‘long way off’ – Lavrov RT
A Trump-Sized Hole Is Looming in Ukraine’s Defenses Against Putin Bloomberg
Biden administration won’t be able to send Ukraine all planned aid – WSJ Ukrainska Pravda
* * * US tells Ukraine to lower conscription age to 18 to stem manpower shortage FT
Russia advancing in Ukraine at fastest pace since start of war The Times
At least one million people without power in Ukraine after ‘massive’ Russian attack France24
Syraqistan
What we know about Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal BBC
Shaky Lebanon ceasefire rests on Netanyahu’s restraint and Hezbollah’s firepower Middle East Eye
Israeli army acknowledges killing Hezbollah operatives despite cease-fire agreement Anadolu Agency
Syrian opposition forces claim seizing 32 villages, areas in western Aleppo Anadolu Agency
Trump team says Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal brokered by Biden is actually Trump’s win Associated Press
* * * Israel to appeal International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant Anadolu Agency
* * * ‘I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This, but the Only One Who Can Save Them Is Donald Trump’ Haaretz
* * * Merkava IV Barak Down: How Israel’s Enhanced New Tank Was Designed to be Near Indestructible Before Being Taken Out Military Watch
South of the Border
Trump claims a win on immigration after a call with Mexico’s president. But she suggests no change AP. Commentary:
"I had an excellent conversation with President Donald Trump. We discussed Mexico's strategy on the migration phenomenon and I shared that caravans are not arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico." https://t.co/e6qS19pe6z
— Anthony LaMesa (@ajlamesa) November 28, 2024
Trump Transition
Slashing $2 Trillion from “The Swamp”–Three Things Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Florida’s takeover of the GOP is about to transform Washington Politico
* * * FBI confirms Trump cabinet picks targeted with bomb threats, ‘swatting’ Al Jazeera
Trump selects longtime adviser Keith Kellogg as special envoy for Ukraine and Russia AP. Commentary:
Trump has appointed Ret. Gen. Keith Kellogg, an ex-advisor to Mike Pence, as his special envoy on Ukraine. If Kellogg's previous views are any guide, that is a sign that Trump intends to continue the Biden policy of using Ukraine to fight Russia. pic.twitter.com/J9f3ipcYuM
In…— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 27, 2024
Trump turns to outsider to shake up Navy, but his lack of military experience raises concerns AP
Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager To Be America’s Top Censor TechDirt
* * * Marc Andreessen: Biden-Harris Administration Used ‘Raw Executive Power’ to Debank ‘Disfavored’ Tech Startups, Political Opponents Tennessee Star. Commentary:
2. Andreesen says the CFPB 'terrorizes' financial institutions and denies them access to the banking system, and says it is going after conservatives. But is that true? Well, as @dorajfacundo points out, the CFPB is doing the opposite. https://t.co/7zXyGMsC9E
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) November 27, 2024
Musk Wants to Abolish Consumer Agency That Has Been a ‘Model of Efficiency’ Common Dreams
Zuckerberg meets with Trump in Florida Politico
* * *
Democrats en déshabillé
Stoller on Greenwald:
.@matthewstoller on how the Democratic party transformed from the party of the working people to the party of the rich during the Obama administration: pic.twitter.com/BrERdTozHa
— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) November 27, 2024
Anti-trust
Texas, what?
🚨BREAKING: Texas Sues BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard for Illegally Conspiring to Manipulate Energy Markets, Driving Up Costs For Consumers
Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized… pic.twitter.com/WrpftEr0cJ
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 27, 2024
Digital Watch
Uber Faces FTC Consumer Protection Probe Over Subscriptions Bloomberg
Tesla Is Looking to Hire a Team to Remotely Control Its ‘Self-Driving’ Robotaxis Gizmodo
Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models The Register
Are Overemployed ‘Ghost Engineers’ Making Six Figures to Do Nothing? 404 Media
Healthcare
A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health 3 Quarks Daily
Health Equity Capture The New Inquiry
Boeing
Airbus struggles to capitalise on rival Boeing’s difficulties FT
Class Warfare
A Major Victory at the NMB for Airport Workers On Labor. NMB = National Mediation Board.
You’re Already On Strike. How to Turn Up the Heat? Labor Notes
Can businesses flourish in a world with a cap on personal wealth? Crooked Timber
Antidote du jour (© Frank Schulenburg CC BY-SA 4.0):
Bonus antidote:
Do your cats like to “help” in the kitchen too? 🤣#WednesdayWisdom #Thanksgiving #Cats pic.twitter.com/h6qLse3exW
— Cole & Marmalade (@ColeTheBlackCat) November 22, 2023
Double-bonus antidote:
Finally got his own room! pic.twitter.com/vcRYQQYMEY
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) November 27, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
‘Aaron Maté
@aaronjmate
Trump has appointed Ret. Gen. Keith Kellogg, an ex-advisor to Mike Pence, as his special envoy on Ukraine. If Kellogg’s previous views are any guide, that is a sign that Trump intends to continue the Biden policy of using Ukraine to fight Russia.’
No real surprise here. Putin himself has said that it does not matter which party is in power in the US as the bureaucrats will continue the same policies – pushing Russia on every front, trying to block China to its coastal waters and trying to financially strange Iran. You could have Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein as President and still the same policies would continue. And these policies are all variations of the same core aim – having American dominance throughout the world. It sounds like something that a James Bond villain would say and yet here we are.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world the Russians are winning the war and have no reason to compromise. So it may not matter who is negotiating if there’s nothing to negotiate. It seems like the only real question is whether Trump would want to escalate and that decision will be made in DC.
I’ve read that that Kellogg’s idea is to freeze the conflict in place. As that would be tantamount to a Russian defeat and a guarantee a new Ukrainian war in a coupla years time, there is no reason like you say of the Russians compromising here. But will Trump understand that?
I’m no mind reader but I don’t think Trump for all his bluster is interested in being a war leader. Just look at how he buttered up Noonan after being–her words–clubbed like a baby seal (???).
Battle of the trash talk.
Even if Trump wanted to make good on his promises of drawing down the wars, I do not think that the MIC or the Deep State would let him. Trump would either get “the talk” of various covert and overt threats behind the scenes, or it would seek to thwart or even “remove” him somehow (lawfare, or even “JFKed) if he proved to be disobedient to the foreign-policy establishment that runs our wars regardless of who sits in office.
Trump might have vowed to take on the “deep state”, but it will either subvert him to their side or get rid of him as they do with presidents who don’t play ball because he would be facing the might of a system that has decades worth of financial and extra-legal bureaucratic inertia behind it, and it will not let some mere elected official get in its way as they have ways of dealing with presidential figureheads that get too uppity.
Moscow won’t care. The GOP types operate from the assumption Team Blue types aren’t deranged thugs but DFHs. When Putin learns of American resolve, he’ll crumble is how they think. Trump like Biden is quite ignorant and might buy this for a time.
What happened to peace in 24 hours?
DOA?
My theory, such as it is, is that the “plan” is for Europe to eventually freak out at the Russian successes, and launch a tactical nuke. Because it’s the last thing left.
Europe and Russia nuke each other, and the US watches unscathed.
At least, I think that’s the plan. Dangerous as all get out.
Europe is a continent, and not an entity that can launch nukes. US nukes in the EU (and Turkey) are US nukes that only US has codes for (here’s a list). UK and France have their own, but I don’t think UK can launch them without US approval. That leaves us with France and its four submarines. Loudmouth Macron is dumb, but not that dumb.
not DOA but
https://raminajmi.dk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/homer-simpson-doh.gif
What a Russian analyst thinks:
Hopes for Trump are crumbling before our eyes: The “Caribbean crisis 2.0” was predicted by a political scientist. With one difference.
The difference with the Caribbean crisis: For many current politicians, war is, you know, a computer shooting game.
“For many current politicians, war is, you know, a computer shooting game.”
I rewatched the 2015 film Eye in the Sky last night, which is an excellent example of this: raining death from the skies in Africa controlled from computer command centers in the U.S. and U.K. (Thanks, Obama).
Much of the screen time was devoted to a depiction of heartrending concern by those in charge of the operation over a little African girl selling bread within the blast radius of the hellfire missile intended to take out a terrorist cell. This struck as quite quaint and hypocritically outrageous given our government’s enablement of current mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.
There is a number of people that you can kill as “collateral damage” when trying to take out a target and I think that it was seventeen people. But that number does not explain the “double tap” where you hit a target, wait till friends, family, neighbours, first responders go in to help survivors and then they are hit again killing them. After a place was hit in Afghanistan, people were afraid to go in and help any survivors.
Rest and vest is a real thing at many legacy tech companies, hence twitter doing just fine after losing thousands of engineers. But that’s an extreme case.
What I read this as is there is a glut of low-skill engineers from “code schools” sloshing around and therefore HR is getting cocky. People are still afraid of losing top talent but pretending like engineering is as fungible as sales is a stretch. The takeaway here is entry level tech jobs are going away. The ladder is being pulled up.
Analysing commits with “ai” gave me a chuckle. Talk about navel gazing…
Agreed, one of the more complex changes I committed this year ended up being a single comma in a batch file – that took weeks of debugging and testing to find and verify it as fixing the issue. OTOH I could crap out hundreds of lines of pretty code in a few hours (as could any moderately experienced developer). That’s without using AI, which I haven’t found to be very helpful, as it has a tendency to create ‘almost-correct’ code that needs to be carefully reviewed which eliminates any saved time and effort.
I’ve seen similar to this in accounting:
Entry level accounting jobs were once upon a time repetitive and boring (I suppose the ones that remain still are) but IT has automated away a lot of the repetitive tasks and what have not been possible to automate has been looked at to be off-shored.
What accountants have been told is that even though a lot of their tasks have been automated they will still have jobs as they will instead get to do more ‘value-add’ tasks. For some it might well be true, for others they see colleagues being made redundant and/or colleagues not being replaced if those colleagues have moved to other positions.
I believe that while farmworkers might have had a tough time but when mechanization removed their boring and repetitive tasks at least they did not have to hear: “Don’t worry you’ll still have a job, we’ll just have more value-add and creative tasks for you to do”….
It seems to be that companies are more and more moving towards rewarding efforts over results (at least for the lower ranks). Effort can be measured quickly and cheaply while results might be slow in appearing and at times also difficult to measure. What happens in the short term is therefore measured, what happens in the long term? I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone and situations might have changed so it is irrelevant.
In a better (socialist) timeline, we could have used the improvements in productivity to reduce work hours, have more jobs in the arts or teaching or wild land conservation, and spread the surplus amongst the population.
This is the future that the Chinese claim to want to build for themselves for 2049. Maybe they’ll get there if nuclear war and climate change doesn’t take us all out first.
Yeah, except no one knows what to do with the horrible abyss of empty time. So it gets filled with any diversion that is handy. Some are healthy and most are not. I prefer drinking myself.
Maybe the reason we do not live in a socialist timeline is that those (pure) socialist ambitions quickly peter out and certainly seem the opposite of heritable. It seems the only unifying principle is altruism. Altruism only really works when coupled with the rigors of survival, not with spare time.
I don’t believe the average Chinese has had to deal with a lot of spare time. We will see if it results in lots of art jobs. In my experience, any work you don’t love is a job and real artists, like real engineers, are born not made.
One cure to having the horrible abyss of empty time is to find a life-partner who hates seeing people doing nothing. I know people who have such life-partners, I have had them myself so I know they exist. Sitting down, enjoying quiet time, enjoying listening to music or enjoying watching something is sure to be interrupted by the life-partner who will have a task/job that needs to be done.
Having such life-partners does have both positive and negative impacts on life so it might not be suited for everyone. There are other solutions as well, that one was the first that came to mind.
As a naturally lazy and obstinate person married to another lazy and obstinate person, that fate sounds horrifying.
I disagree.
We do not live in a socialist timeline because the forces of capital control all the tools of oppression and do everything they can to undermine any movements towards socialism. And yet, despite all the oppression and assassinations and sanctions and wars, socialism reemerges everywhere periodically everywhere, even in the heart of the Metropole, amongst heavily indented and extraordinarily indoctrinated students, even as they’re beaten down by corrupt administrators and fascist cops.
I know a lot of people who are absorbed by hobbies that are far more socially useful than their day jobs. Very talented musicians who work for decades in obscurity. Gardeners who grow fantastic fruit and flowers but can’t make it pay enough. Historical researchers and pop culture enthusiasts who devoted huge amounts of time to their topics. People devoted to volunteer work not for their resume but because they truly want to help people. And kids would do better if they are able to spend more time with parents and extended family.
Also, the average Chinese retire by 60 and many semi-retired even younger. They seem to spend a lot of time socializing and doing group activities and taking care of their grand kid. So I don’t think most people will simply turn into an undifferentiated blob if not compelled to work by threat of starvation. And even if they do, that’s their choice and not a choice made by billionaires and high government bureaucrats for them.
You disagree but you said much the same thing. Socialism suits the 10 percent of self starters and reemergent if you will. The downtrodden are exactly those who struggle to survive. Music and gardening doesn’t pay. You have to love those kinds of things to pursue them. Taking care of grandchildren has always been one of the most compelling of human activities but has little to do with social values and everything to do with bloodline viability.
You are writing about the 10 percent not the average person. Walk through the inner city. What is the ratio of volunteers to homeless. Yes socialism hasn’t worked out because of the greedy but the greedy and self centered is the 90 percent be they the smart ones in control or the not so smart and addicted.
If you’re talking about the sort of “social advancement” that’s driven by an insatiable desire to “disrupt” and possess more money than any person can use in a lifetime, then no, most people are not driven to do that.
10 percent of a population who do whatever they do for love and not money is more than enough to create beautiful and innovative and socially good things for the rest of us. Meanwhile the people who with more time can still devote themselves to socializing with their neighbors, joining bookclubs, cooking meals from scratch, and whatever lets them live better lives.
I feel like you’re telling me I don’t exist.
Socialism — when you’re the only one doing it — has nothing to do with self-starting or reemergence. Socialism is about community. It comes from the grassroots. Imposing it from the top down is just as crazy as capitalists letting Wall Street run the country.
Socialism is not about feeding the homeless. Socialism is about eliminating homelessness through jobs. Socialism is not a #$@! charity, it’s a jobs program!
One problem with this country is that we allow opponents to define terms. How about you let ME define socialism, and you can explain capitalism to everyone?
Hardly, I’m telling you you belong to the community of the 10 percent. And because I fault socialism (your baby) you label me a capitalist? How simplistic. I’m not your opponent.
Maybe read how the discussion progressed. Feeding the homeless was about volunteer work not a definition of socialism. Nor do I think it is accurate to define socialism as a jobs program so no I will not accept your definition. So far any large attempts at (pure) socialism have failed. Socialism can be successful at a tribal level however and capitalism, as appalling as it is, seems to be a much closer model of overall human nature
You keep saying 10 percent are the self-starters, but I think it’s more likely 10 percent are the people who would get drunk or stoned for lack of any idea of what else to do if they had more money and more time. Most people with more money and more time would come up with a ton of other things to do. Admittedly not all those things would be benign (socially or health-wise), but having a 30 hour work week with better pay is not going to solve the problem of human nature having a nasty streak. But a healthier society would have ways of nudging people’s spare time pursuits in better directions. Capitalism as practiced in the current post-Fordist system is more about amplifying that nasty streak and making it seem like a virtue for those who are the very best at screwing over others.
Doesn’t pay?
Define pay.
The most financially lucrative jobs I’ve had were completely useless bullshit jobs (Graeber 2017). The most intellectually challenging jobs- music (writing, recording, and performing), gardening, repair, etc. pay little in terms of money but lavishly in other forms of compensation.
Some professional jobs straddle the middle ground, but the truly useful and interesting work (at least in my profession) isn’t billable and only gets done when public funding is made available, and then only begrudgingly. Graeber’s other theory presented in Bullshit Jobs, that gratification is inversely proportional to salary, has a larger body of evidence behind it than the thesis presented in the book. As an engineering firm CEO told us employees, innovation isn’t billable so only solve billable problems. That mindset will eventually be the death of us.
Walk into any home. Chances are that the woman in that home is doing most of the childcare and cleaning and cooking and errands and social logistics that sustain living day to day, whether or not they are also getting paid to work in a different venue. You are already well above 10% of the population in every country on Earth.
So, are you saying that some number below 0% of men are self-starters/re-emergent? Or are you saying that if women have more leisure time, 80%+ of women will devote their lives to being homeless? I’m confused.
. . . ” Gardeners who grow fantastic fruit and flowers but can’t make it pay enough.” . . .
I assume that ” make it pay enough” means ” pay enough to make a monetized living in the Forced Market Moneyconomy”. But could their fantastic fruit and flowers “pay enough” at the smaller and closer-to-home level of the Free Unmarket Countereconomy”? Could they grow enough food to prevent spending enough money on food that they could take that more-money and spend it on higher-priced treasure or repair of such treasure instead of spending the less-money left over after paying for food on self-destructing trash and replacing the self-destructing trash after it self-destructs? ( I used to buy self-destructing sneakers for “only” $120/pair or whatever, and when they began self-destructing, I would spend money getting them repaired over and over and over again, to spite the merchants of self-destructing trash-sneakers.)
Could they barter some of their fantastic food and flowers with neighbors or Barter Club Membership Societies or such things in order to exchange unmonetized goods and services and attributes in a Free UnMoney CounterEconomy?
It takes a lot of energy and trust to barter or even gift when there’s no pre-existing economy in place.
I used to take my bumper harvests into work (dozens or hundreds of employees). I couldn’t even give away all the tomatoes and winter squash I bring in even though people praise their taste and there’s no expectation of reciprocity. I practically have to beg anyone from taking my beautiful organic kale or spinach or lettuce, which takes work to harvest and transport properly. So much easier for them to just buy a 6 oz pack of prewashed lettuce and put it on their credit card.
At a traditional village level, there are processes and relationships for processing and distributing extra produce. In this atomized political economy, it’s just a lot of unpaid physical and emotional labor and a lot of the recipients practically act like I’m putting a burden on them.
I’ll pass. Better to find a food bank or shelter that might make use of the excess than barter or gift with the typical American.
The reaction of your dozens-to-hundreds of fellow employees is disappointing to read about. I wonder what their reasons were or their inertia due to. Perhaps they were all raised with zero knowledge of how to make fruits and vegetables into finished meals? Perhaps buying a 6 oz pack of prewashed lettuce on credit really is easier for them, especially if they have been carefully skills-deprived or knowledge-deprived? Perhaps they were brought up and taught to be so dis-educated and dis-motivated that it really was a burden on them?
Better perhaps to study people over time to see which, if any, are food-preparation capable, barter-capable, etc. And in the meantime, the food you grow could certainly help your own personal household survival economy.
If I lived among the barter-incapable and the food-handling-incapable, I would not grow any food surplus to my own needs. I would redirect the spare food-growing capacity to maintaining and improving my soil in place, against the day when gas costs $10/gallon if available at all, beans are sold individually, etc. Then people might find themselves semi-starved into getting interested in barterism, survivalism, partial personal subsistence-ism, etc.
That’s their problem. If things get tough, I plan to get out ASAP.
It’s possible and maybe likely that poorer communities within the US are more capable on this front. But I have zero faith in the middle to upper-middle class in this country, of any political persuasion. Given the number of guns and delusional people in this country, I don’t want to be around when things get tough.
Try with Mexicans, or other non typicals. For processing just find a Slavic grandma. They can pickle any vegetable, and make jam of any fruit. If nothing else, USA deserves to collapse because of the industrial waste that people put on their buttered bread, while fruit is thrown away because it doesn’t look spotless.
I’m sure that less economically well off folks will not be so foolish as to turn down free food, but alas I am embedded amongst deskilled upper-middle class white folks. And it is economically reasonable for them to reject my offer of veggies. They make $50+/hour. Any washing or prepping of veggies that take more effort than the pristine prewashed bagged veggies they get from stores is costing them money.
Giving to soup kitchens and food pantries is fine by me. It gets to the people with the greatest need. Just don’t think that there’s this great barter/gift economy that you can tap into right now.
There were entry level tech jobs? Not that I saw, not for anyone not emerging from the uni CS/CE pipeline with one or more completed internships, at least. Not that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Outsourcing and H1Bs killed entry level jobs since early 2000s at least, if we’re talking about software engineering or systems administration (devops today).
And coding school graduates are widely panned as far as I know. Just bumps up the number of applicants per job to sift through. When LinkedIn used to show numbers, it was up in the hundreds within hours of being posted per tech job, thanks in part due to auto-apply bots that everyone is forced to use to try to even get an interview.
It’s a nuclear winter out there for over two years now.
There was a brief period from 2014-2019 where there were some quality code schools and lots of entry level work out there. Spend 10k and get a job paying 40k more than your current. I have two family members that went that route successfully but the grifters descended quickly and opened fake code schools by the hundreds. Same story on repeat for technical schools in the US since forever!
Re Comedy Interlude: Stan Freberg’s United STates of America is the best! Enjoy.
Marandi just had a really good discussion of the “ceasefire”, the attack in Syria, role of Turkey, and Iran/Russia in Nima’s channel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KhW6IDmGf3I
Going to listen to Justin Podur’s discussion (with Jon Elmer, who does the excellent Resistance recaps in the Wednesday Electronic Intifata broadcasts – probably the best English language source for what’s happening on the ground in Gaza) about Lebanon next.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQO6QgDPPg
In my opinion Justin is always worth a listen or two. Justin brings a deep amount of compassion and broad historical understanding of the region into his discussions.
Justin is a “Tankie” which means he unambiguously supports Hezbollah and Hamas as national liberation movements (just like most Arabs in the region) whereas Western “left” commentaries and Gulf supported channels are crypto/liberal Zionist and highly anti-Axis of Resistance.
Thanks for that recommendation.
I listen to a lot of Nima interviews, but they can get repetitive. I did listen to that one and it was really good.
“US tells Ukraine to lower conscription age to 18 to stem manpower shortage”
Now if i was – heaven forbid – a cynical person, I would put the reasons for this push to get Ukrainian teenagers into battle under general suspicion. Zelenski doesn’t want to do it because there would be enormous push back against this idea and it might be enough to make him lose power which would make him vulnerable to getting killed by one of the many factions in the Ukraine. But this push is coming from the US and not really from the Ukrainians. Sure, the reason might be to plug the many manpower holes at the front as the Ukrainians are losing tens of thousands of people each and every month. Saw a video the other day where this Ukrainian company had only three guys in it. Three! But I am thinking that the real reason is Biden. The Ukrainians are on the verge of collapsing and there is no way in the world that Biden wants this to happen over the next sixty odd days while he is still President. It cannot be allowed. It was bad enough to be called the President that lost Afghanistan but no way will Biden tolerate also being called the President that also lost the Ukraine. So if this means sending Ukrainian teens to their deaths in order to protect Biden’s reputation, then so be it. If Project Ukraine collapses, let it be then on Trump’s watch, not his.
In my more light-hearted moments, I think the Ukraine conflict is just a cynical plot by Western Incels to get access to Ukrainian war widows and girlfriends. In their own way the West is really annihilating Ukrainians every bit as thoroughly as the Zionists against Palestinians.
If humanity survives this turbulent era, the Ukraine situation may be up there with the War of Triple Alliance or the Thirty Years War in terms of destruction of a population and ultimate pointlessness of it all.
I have seen adds for Ukrainian women on YouTube in the side bar from time to time but alas I am married. But to tell you the truth, I wonder how many of those women are actually Nazis like the Azov women are when I see their images.
Don’t look. It’s sad.
Who cares–right now, I would jump at the chance of marrying a beautiful 20-year old and not being able to understand a single thing that my mother-in-law says
Colonel Smithers reports that the Ukraine refugees taken in in the UK have often proven to be white supremacist bigots, as in complaining if their hosts or their kids’ teachers are not white enough. Colonel Smithers is unfailingly polite, so he does not state the bottom line bluntly as I do, but has provided anecdotes that make the behavior clear.
So unless you look like a Viking, I would not assume that any Ukraine internet bride would stick with you.
I´ve met with other kinds of Ukrainian refugees in Spain. One is a woman, born in Russia, with two young sons (16 and 18). She was previously a technician in a nuclear plant and is now cleaning houses in Madrid while trying to enter the PV labour market. She prides on not wanting to rely on subsidies. The opposite to those bigots. I hope her the best (and admire her) and feel happy that she has almost certainly saved her sons from a tragic end in the war. I have tried my best to help her and her older son to find jobs.
I always read Colonel Smither’s insightful comments and find them to be exceptional from the ground observations about a certain segment of the South of England upper-middle/lower upper crust.
But my impression is that the Ukrainian refugees he and his mother encountered were largely rich West Ukrainian Eurotrash. Entitled people who bought their way through life with money, that exists in practically every population and do not necessarily reflect the Ukrainian population as a whole.
It’s possible that this Eurotrash contingent is overrepresented amongst the would-be internet bride population, or maybe they’re just desperate women of variable dispositions trying to escape a very bad situation.
“the Ukrainian refugees he and his mother encountered were largely rich West Ukrainian Eurotrash”
I think that’s an accurate impression. Typically the well off get out, maybe a macrocosm of Katrina where for varied reasons many couldn’t escape.
the difference here is obviously the US southern border, the desperate have land access.
Having a legitimate reason not to pay attention to anything your in-laws say is a wonderful thing for domestic tranquility. So says my white dude friend who has been married to a western educated Thai woman for over 2 decades.
Don’t know why but your comment reminded me of a true story. Back in the 19th century in Oz, a guy was brought to court on the charge of bigamy. The judge sternly asked him-
‘Do you know what the penalty for bigamy is?’
The guy replied-
‘Yes, your Honour. Two mother-in-laws!’
Fair skinned blonds, unless they have great bone structure, age badly.
Alas, not everyone can be lucky enough to marry Maria Zakharova ( yes, I know her blondness comes from a bottle).
I suspect that the men that get into transactional relationships like this aren’t the brightest. In countries with no fault, 50:50 split divorce it looks like a pig butchering scam to me, with some sex as the initial sweetener.
Sorry, not a cheery post.
Not cheery for the victim, the rest of us are entitled to our schadenfreude.
The West is not about annihilating Ukrainians, but Slavs in general. It has been an ongoing project for quite a while. There is nothing new under the Sun (except the nukes).
As my Bohemian ancestors said, “if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em”. Somehow, though, we’re never admitted to the club…
Or maybe the Chaco Wars.
Tabarnouche, it sounds believable.
Thanks for improving my nightmares.
Noun
stem (plural stems)
The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.
Verb
stem (third-person singular simple present stems, present participle stemming, simple past and past participle stemmed)
To remove the stem from.
to stem cherries; to stem tobacco leaves
To stem everything, and turn the jungle into EU garden.
Stoller misses the forest for the trees. William Jefferson Clinton broke whatever ties there were between the unions and the Democratic Party. Arguably the break started with Johnson, when Union workers migrate to the GOP and the Rockefeller Republicans started moving into the Democratic Party.
Or we can go even further with the coup that knocked out Wallace in 1944 and then quickly purging the New Deal Democrats from positions of power within the party apparatus.
Obama is a tool, not an instigator.
My thoughts exactly on reading the piece. Neoliberalism started with Carter in 1978, not Reagan. Then we got the “corporate democrats” and the Clinton 8 years which truly transformed the US into neoliberalism and uncontrolled financial looting.
Exactly. Plus the unnecessary capitulation (at least of that magnitude) by the 1974-1979 Labour govt to IMF policy and Chancellor Denis Healey’s followup witty but ill advised joke about the bond markets (which Labour promptly repeated in different form in 2010) put the UK firmly onto the neoliberalism path before Thatcher put things into overdrive.
perfect! 100% its almost all bill clintons polices. that’s why he is aiming the blame cannons at bernie.
“Obama is a tool, not an instigator.”
Yes, absolutely. I have not yet seen this podcast. But I do know that Obama’s fame and fortune stems from his being a dependable servant. This applies to Clinton even more blatantly; Obama just carried on the tradition. And following your comment, Carter, our first “neoliberal” President, was literally recruited and groomed by the Rockefeller folks. It’s a long and depressing history.
I’ve searched and searched and can’t find a link, but I recall Jesse Jackson calling Obama “that house n-word”. Maybe it was Adolphus Reed?
As I recall Harry Belafonte referred to Colin Powell that way.
Adolph Reed was dismissive of Obama, in a Village Voice January 16,1996 article, stating “I suspect his ilk is the future of Black politics”
But did not refer to O in that way.
Go to Reed’s Wikipedia entry for more.
Found this from NPR, 2008, as well as a slew of similar.
So Obama has form in talking down to the “brothers”, as if by the transitive power of melanin alone he is one of them.
I do know that Obama’s fame and fortune stems from his being a dependable servant.
Starting in 2006, as I recall, Obama received more money from the financial industry than any prior US presidential industry.
It was very clear that at institutions like Goldman Sachs they’d worked out the probable scenarios, foresaw a Great Crash II, and fixed on Obama as their tool to prevent a New Deal II as the consequence of that Great Crash II.
They were successful. And begat the 2016 US election results.
And this is what makes Obama unique in all of the leaders mentioned above that had a hand in implementing the current version of neoliberalism. By the time the wheels fell of the world economy in the GFC, everybody could see the system was fundamentally broken, and needed change. Many of us came to this very blog looking for help in understanding just what had gone wrong, and what would be required to fix it. Yves wrote a book about it.
But you’re right. Obama delivered, but not the hope and change that he ran on. He’s been called W 2.0, but even W let the Enron boys get tried in court and go to jail. Nobody went to jail under Obama, no significant financial regulation, no significant healthcare reform, no housing market reset. I’m not sure what the voters got.
To say the 2016 US election is the logical outcome of Obama’s Presidency is entirely proper, but I think you’ve underestimated Obama. He put the definitive stamp on wrecking the American middle class. China’s economy raced past America’s during his Presidency, and it marks the beginning of the end of American Empire because once you completed the gutting of America, it’s empire became nothing more than a rotten husk of a once great tree, ready to snap and fall in the next storm.
Also, one must not forget Obama’s Citigroup cabinet picks
“Citigroup chose Obama’s 2008 cabinet, WikiLeaks document reveals”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html
Here’s a link to the Wikileaks email + attachments (Woman.doc and Diversity List.doc)
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15560
in the Women.doc attachment:
Hillary Clinton was recommended for State or Health and Human Services.
Penny Pritzker for Commerce.
(Neocon) Jane Harman for DNI, CIA, DHS
Michelle Rhee for Education Department
But he was a happy tool and a volunteer tool who worked long and hard to get appointed and installed into Tool-In-Chief status.
You can’t go curling without a curling stone, and Obama was a desperately eager curling stone. A semi-autonomous curling stone as long as he excercised his semi-autonomy towards the ultimate goals of the curling team who owned him.
Oh, granted.
I actually flew to Chicago in early September that year before the election to interview Obama’s then-financial advisor Austin Goolsbee for a magazine profile.
I got taken around the election operation, then went out and got pizza for lunch with the guy and he was bitching, wondering why he couldn’t sell his house so he could buy one in Washington. I’d kept my opinions to myself till then, but at that point I asked, ‘you don’t think it could because people think there’s probably a big crash coming?’
He looked at me wide-eyed and said, Oh no, no way.’ And I think he genuinely hadn’t thought about it. Later on I recited some of the statistics on the 1972 recession and he was clueless about them too.
Anyway, he got edged out by Larry Summers almost as soon as Obama won. One of the many clueless elites I’ve encountered although as it turned out I was fairly clueless too about how big the crash really would be.
But sometimes I think how sweet it might be to march about 10,000 of these clowns into prison camps pour encourage les autres.
And yet still millions of American Black Americans think he is ” America’s first Black President” and revere him for it. it is the same sort of American Black Americans who think Harris lost because of “racism and misogyny.”
He learned very well how to play Black on TV.
Yes! The defenestration of Henry Wallace was a pivotal turning point in American history. And it can be pinned down to the hour of 10:00 PM July 20, 1944 when a cabal of Southern Democrats and big city machine bosses prevailed on the temporary chairman to adjourn the Democratic National Convention session that was about to renominate Wallace by acclamation.
Another turning point the significance of which is not well understood was the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council shortly after the 1984 Democratic Party electoral debacle. Its purpose was to push the party to be more “business friendly,” and it succeeded all too well.
the only problem is, wallace was a free trader, that would have let a W.T.O. form right after the war.
Truman wisely veoted any attempt at a corporate take over of the world, and we got Gatt instead, which provided some sort of stability for decades.
Mark Blyth has a good one on Truman, he says Truman saved the new deal.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/david-bazelon-2/the-faith-of-henry-wallacethe-populist-tradition-in-the-atomic-age/
“Wallace’s free-trade policy in economics is a clear example of his devious way with the essential meaning of populism. Like most liberals during the 30’s, he began, more or less consciously, to advocate the Keynesian program for a controlled economy.
A controlled capitalist economy in a democratic country must answer two major questions: how to insure capital investment, and how to maintain wage levels and not conscript labor.”
“High wages cut into profits, and without a high profit return the capitalist simply will not make risky investments. Without going into the economic details, it can be said that, fundamentally, there is only one capitalist resolution of this primary conflict: imperialism—exploitation of foreign markets through overlordship of other peoples. Imperialism is called “free trade” by liberals. In actual fact it is not, and cannot be, any more “free” than the conditions of labor in the colonies and dominated countries with which trade is being carried on.”
“Wallace is a free-trader of old. But he came to it by another path than did the usual sophisticated liberal. And therein lies our tale. The Iowan began his espousal of free trade as part of a farm program.
The farmer is forced to sell in a free market and buy in one protected by tariffs—Wallace tells us he realized this “quite early in life.” But it should be easy to see that free trade for the farmer is something very different from free trade as imperialism.
This first is in the genuine interest of the small proprietor and is the stuff of the traditional populist program in the United States. The second is a dangerous diversion of the progressive aims and program of farmers and labor, leading to the ever-increasing power of international cartels —and to war.
Though he advocates free trade in moral terms, Wallace’s morality actually justifies imperialism at the same time—which is typical of what happens when an old morality is applied to a new and inappropriate situation. “
Truman is the stooge that dropped the atom bomb, pulled up the iron curtain, started the Korean War, not make peace with Communist China, supported the founding of the Zionist regime, establish the CIA…
Free trade is a pretty silly argument in the context of 1945-1952. The US was the overwhelming hegemon and industrial Colossus. Free trade in that context is about whom the US is willing to trade with and whom they will prevent others (in Europe and East Asia) from trading with.
I haven’t looked closely into their positions in trade, but I suspect that the free trade of Wallace’s position is more about letting the USSR trade with the USA and Europe. Wallace wanted the century for the common man. Truman wanted Henry Luce’s American Century. Imagine if we got Wallace’s Century.
Truman also encouraged the French to do military actions in French Indochina, AKA Vietnam, after WWII.
Per Daniel Ellsberg, USA helped with French military expenses.
Truman’s “the buck stops here” has been followed by recent Presidents and USA policians, as many bucks stop inside their wallets.
But, to his credit, as far as I know, Truman didn’t mean it that way.
Truman was far from perfect. but most presidents are not good with foreign policy.
as far as the bomb. read up on what japan did to china’s cities.
as far as free trade is concerned, a bombed out country can really rapidly rebuild, to strip another country of their wealth.
germany was exporting V.W.’S by the early 1950’s.
I do not mean to defend Japan but to suggest your defense of the US is unwarranted.
Read up on the US firebombings in Japan.
And Japan underwent what was called the starving time in 1946-1947. Many attempted to subsist on seaweed because that was all they could find to eat.
The atom bombs weren’t dropped to punish the Japanese or force their surrender. They were going to surrender soon no matter what, and very likely to the Soviets given the proximity and the massive size of the Soviet Army. It was a threat to the USSR and prevent the Russians from liberating East Asia or getting too far into Europe.
I know Japanese depredations in its “Co- prosperity Sphere” pretty well. It was the Americans who ensured that most of their war criminals were not punished afterwards and in fact landed in control of the LDP. They did the same in South Korea where the collaborators were put in control while the left resistance were brutally crushed.
If you care about justice, then I would say that Truman’s actions ensured that Japan’s victims did not receive proper justice. Unless your idea of justice is just firebombing civilians including children who had minimal control over the war crimes of their government.
Punishing innocent and awarding war criminals is the US way of doing stuff, and it did well for The Empire. Things work, until they don’t.
US foreign policy isn’t just “not good”, it’s openly malevolent against any country or peoples who wish to gain control of their own economies and destinies. FDR and JFK are the only possible exceptions that I can even think of, and they were still forced to do a lot of questionable things to get along with the system that they’re saddled with.
The fact that this history and the harmful impacts on the rest of the world is largely unknown to Americans, and the very little that filter through is handwaved as “foreign policy” when it is at the heart of the American imperialist system…it fills me with shame and revulsion.
I believe this paper provides some of the “economic details” referred to but not gone into in the above: Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy from Nature Communications. The economic incentives involved are rather daunting for the prospect of enlisting Northern worker support for an anti-imperialist political movement.
Don’t forget Clinton’s masterpiece: the repeal of the Glass Steagal act, arguably the greatest gift ever given to the banksters class. Obama in my opinion is an amateur compared to Clinton.
‘I think Bill Clinton was the pivotal figure of our times. Before he came along, the market-based reforms of Reaganism were controversial; after Clinton, they were accepted consensus wisdom. Clinton was the leader of the group that promised to end the Democrats’ old-style Rooseveltian politics, that hoped to make the Democrats into a party of white-collar winners, and he actually pulled that revolution off. He completed the Reagan agenda in a way the Republicans could not have dreamed of doing—signing trade agreements, deregulating Wall Street, getting the balanced budget, the ’94 crime bill, welfare reform. He almost got Social Security partially privatized, too. A near miss [Miss Lewinsky that is] on that one.
He remade our party of the left (such as it is) so that it was no longer really identified with the economic fortunes of working people. Instead it was about highly educated professional-class winners, people whose good fortunes the Clintonized Democratic Party now regarded as a reflection of their merit. Now it was possible for the Democratic Party to reach out to Wall Street, to Silicon Valley, and so on. This was something relatively new for a left party in the industrialized world, and it was quickly adopted by other left parties in other countries, most notably ‘New Labour’ in the UK. Unfortunately, this strategy has little to offer the people who used to be the Democratic Party’s main constituents except scolding. It merely assumes that they have, as the ’90s saying went, nowhere else to go.’
Seymour Hersh, A Conversation on US Politics with Thomas Frank, July 13, 2023
Or as he put it just this week, “people like you and me, who wear ties”.
He just can’t keep from gloating.
Similarly in Britain where Thatcher described Blair as her greatest achievement.
Thank you so much, Rev. I greatly appreciate this! Although I instinctively loathed Clinton, I voted for him twice (wanted healthcare), voted for Obama once (wanted healthcare), didn’t vote for Trump or H. Clinton (wanted healthcare), didn’t vote for Trump or Biden (wanted healthcare), didn’t vote for Trump or Harris (still want healthcare).
I wonder how many of those Union workers were culturally offended and repelled by the anti-war demonstrators and the college leftists and so on. If so, then Johnson would be indirectly responsible for that shift in a two-cushion-carom-shot sense in that by inventing his fake Gulf of Tonkin Incident and creating a real war for America in Vietnam, he called forth the anti-war movement which so offended the Union workers that some of them moved in a Nixon direction.
Because a lot of these Union worker citizens kept voting for Democratic Senators and Representatives and that didn’t totally stop until Clinton stopped it by achieving the Forcey-FreeTrade of Republican dreams.
“WSJ’s Peggy Noonan shares recent encounter with Trump after avoiding him for 8 years: ‘He was hilarious’”
I don’t think the link given is correct. She said nothing about meeting with Trump.
The link I am reading is describing in detail the meeting, along with others, that she had with Trump a coupla weeks ago. But seriously, is Peggy Noonan a school girl? She avoided him for 8 years because she was afraid that she might be charmed by him and have her judgment clouded? That’s not how the real world works. In her job she is supposed to show some form of judgment but she is admitting that she can be easily swayed by meeting somebody she is suppose to be writing about authoritatively. Does she live in a mental safe space or something?
My bad. I watched the video instead of reading the text. Comes from waking up (or apparently not quite) with NC.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!
Yes. DC adjacent msm is largely Hollywood trade magazines. Trump didn’t tell them how great they were, and they hated him. They just want a red carpet event and to have the big celeb pretend they are stars too. Joe and Mika scored an invite to magro large or whatever and they want to slurp Trump now.
I don’t know. I think the reverse problem is far more common: people who think they can remain impartial and are wrong. Cognitive capture is a thing.
I would rather read someone who is cautious about it than someone who is blissfully unaware it’s happened.
Quoting noonan:
Like she was a 5-year-old who’d just been told to eat her broccoli.
And this scathingly brilliant “journalistic” insight:
That nooners is a “journalist” on any conceivable level is finally “debunked” IMNSHO.
The second one seems pretty insightful to me, and I don’t think Trump would be offended by it either. You are probably correct that it doesn’t qualify as journalism, but I think it comes pretty close to capturing the mood of the electorate this year. Working people have lots of reasons to be pissed about the status quo, but I see no evidence that very many people have thought through potential solutions or that Trump is likely to deliver any solutions.
There’s a longer interview with Noonan (18 minutes with transcript provided) on Amanpour & Company. She’s not wrong about everything.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/reagan-insider-peggy-noonan-on-trump-covid-19-and-masculinity-gh2xhf/
Thanks
What I found extremely important and revealing in the light of how politics as a way to get things done via manipulation is regarded appropriate today in the West in contrast to RU:
Noonan on Trump (she expresses this as criticism and suggests Reagan as a stellar counterpoint):
” HE IS A MAN WITH A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BACKGROUND, WHO NOW AND THEN SHOWED AN INTEREST IN POLITICS, AND NOW AND THEN WOULD GO MAKE A SPEECH, BUT HE WAS NOT THE VOICE OF A REAL PHILOSOPHICAL THING, AND MOSTLY, HIS SOUND –I MEAN, YOU HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE, HIS SOUND IS UTTERLY GENUINE TO HIM.
HE DOESN’T TRY TO HIDE MUCH, IN A WAY, YOU KNOW?”
Not hide much!
Would Putin – sorry for dragging this in here – do that? Trying to hide much? No. That´s the very point and reason of where we are now in the world. Putin doesn´t try to sell you a broken car. Reagan tried to and frankly Trump too, but he makes a joke out of it. Like romantic comedy is not what it once was since taboos have disappeared so have certain forms of rhetoric in politics like the elegant lie.
With that Trump is more like a slapstick by Adam Sandler (his clumsier ones). Instead of Elaine May…
But both are lies still. Russians would argue neither Sandler nor May have a place in politics.
> A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health 3 Quarks Daily
>> The most intriguing interpretation, though, is a hopeful one. If a diverse microbiome is good for your health, we may be able to boost our well-being by simply breaking bread with people we don’t know. That is a wonderful message to take into the upcoming holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving!
What shite.
> Understanding the link between long COVID and mental health conditions
>> “Depression is the most prominent symptom we see,” said Dr. Jordan Anderson, a neuropsychiatrist and assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and neurology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
“What shite.”
Truly, not only currently but historically as well.The great replacement of indigenous New World populations by European social rejects and violent adventurers would likely have been impossible absent the deadly effects of microbial sharing between the two immunologically diverse populations.
True regarding microbial sharing. Many tribes were hit long before they encountered Europeans. Your comment elicited a memory regarding the Mandan’s, their society in collapse when Jesuits “discovered” them.
Yup. 90% mortality rate. Imagine the utter devastation when all that remained of a functioning village was a grandmother and a couple of kids. The same process happened in Europe with the black death, although the mortality rate was lower at 40% or so. It appears that the population was well in excess of the carrying capacity of the land prior to the black death. There are still remains of run-and-rig fields at high altitudes from the 1300’s in Scotland that were so marginal they have never been reused.
We saw a falcon here in Boston this morning while walking the dogs. It was on top of a residential building and then flew to perch on a church steeple. Peregrines have been in the news and for a while I believe there were nest live cams including in Boston last year. The city used to be strict about trash storage but that all changed during covid so now there are lots of rats, which I suppose is what the falcons eat.
Urban Peregrines typically feed on rats with wings (pigeons). We’ve got several breeding pairs nesting on buildings in the area and if you see a flock of pigeons swirling, keep an eye out for a nearby raptor.
I will. I’m looking forward to J. A. Bakeresque drama.
While Peregrines prefer diving from above, knocking birds from the sky, I as once saw a Peregrine and a squirrel play a life and death game of hide and seek both leaping about among the limbs of a tree. Very strange behavior for a falcon. The squirrel prevailed.
As well as fat squirrels and pigeons roaming the Boston Common in the daylight hours.
Where I live in Madrid (high rise area) we had a couple of kestrels nesting. The most elegant flying bird IMO. One day I saw a female peregrine falcon on top of a 16 storey binding. Hu ho! Then, one day a few months later, i went up to the terrace of the 16 storey building where I live, and what i saw? The remains of a kestrel (blood and feathers) in the cornice of the terrace. The Sherlock Holmes in me thought that the Peregrine was to be blamed. Falcons do not share skies with smaller birds of prey.
My favorite bird poem –
Birds
The fierce musical cries of a couple of sparrowhawks hunting
on the headland,
Hovering and darting, their heads northwestward,
Prick like silver arrows shot through a curtain the noise of the
ocean
Trampling its granite; their red backs gleam
Under my window around the stone corners; nothing gracefuller,
nothing
Nimbler in the wind. Westward the wave-gleaners,
The old gray sea-going gulls are gathered together, the northwest
wind wakening
Their wings to the wild spirals of the wind-dance.
Fresh as the air, salt as the foam, play birds in the bright wind,
fly falcons
Forgetting the oak and the pinewood, come gulls
From the Carmel sands and the sands at the river-mouth, from
Lobos and out of the limitless
Power of the mass of the sea, for a poem
Needs multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all flesh-eaters,
musically clamorous
Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly
Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed
beaks, from the sharp
Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.
Robinson Jeffers
Moon
“As there is no defense possible against Oreshnik type weapons Russia could announce a strike on the U.S. controlled Redzikow base in Poland days or hours before it would take place. As the strike would be announced, conventional in type and would cause few if any casualties it seems unlikely that NATO would apply Article 5 to it and to hit back with force.
Such would become a moment where the boiling of the frog would start again but this time with the U.S. being the frog inside of the vessel. Russia, by hitting U.S. bases in Europe by conventional means, would increase the temperature day after day.”
The frog boils the boiler–what a concept. Switching metaphors it maybe the US deep state that is stuck to a tar baby.
The frog turned out to be a dragon.
On the same page about Russian escalation primacy is Ian Proud’s article on Responsible Statecraft. He believes that Russia has room to continue using the new missiles on Ukraine, where there are still appropriate objectives for this weapon: airfields and others. Western leaders being stunned, stunted and loosing again.
That RS article was illuminating – in being a great example of how divorced from the real world western strategic thought is. The whole article is about putting pieces on the board to one up the other side, with no thought about what effect the pieces have, how many, or what for? It’s as if they’re playing a game of chess, and reduced it to ‘you moved your knight after I moved a pawn, so now I’ll up the ante by moving my rook’; with no concept of the board position. So shallow – no wonder this timeline is so stupid. When you manage by powerpoint – you get powerpoint results.
It’s very hard to disengage from a tar baby you’ve been having sex with.
Next up is the hypersonic feathering.
Happy Thanksgiving to all and thank you Lambert for the generous helping of posts today!
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Peace.
RE: “A Major Victory at the NMB for Airport Workers On Labor.” NMB = National Mediation Board.
Further thanks to Lambert: Thank you Lambert for providing the translation for ‘NMB’! I appreciate not having to skim the link to find out what NMB stands for. Looking acronyms up in one of the online acronym libraries has become a frustrating and often fruitless task as the use and creation of ever more esoteric acronyms proliferates beyond all reason.
– ‘Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager To Be America’s Top Censor’ – TechDirt
Expect a lot of these types of stories now. All of the sudden liberal Democrats and their spokespersons will be *really* concerned about censorship and “free speech” issues. One person’s censor is another’s “free speech” champion. The fact that they are probably right doesn’t reduce the hypocrisy.
That’s a dumb article.
“First, we’ll detail an “easy” example around broadcast licenses, before getting into the much more thorny areas around content moderation and fact-checking. Carr has repeatedly claimed that he supports investigating and potentially pulling NBC’s “license” for having Kamala Harris show up on Saturday Night Live the weekend before the election. He claims that this violates the FCC’s “equal time rule.”
What he’s really doing: Telling broadcast channels not to platform candidates he doesn’t like or they will face expensive ‘investigations” and threats.'”
While it’s quite true that broadcast licenses aren’t what they used to be–once described as like winning the Irish Sweepstakes–they are still a highly privileged bit of status and income and while a couple of dozen NBC stations may not sound like much they are in cities like NY which makes them very profitable and privileged indeed. That Lorne Michaels gave Harris a platform a few days before the election was definitely worth a complaint. And of course Obama was tolerant of McCain being given a compensatory appearance. SNL had been lampooning Palin relentlessly.
We just had an election where all three of the traditional networks were clearly pulling for the Dems and that use of their exorbitant and legacy status was most certainly an issue of fairness and equal time. If the broadcast license now means so little then let them give them up. Here’s betting they won’t.
“Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models”
Microsoft really has an obsession with AI so I would not be surprised that they use people’s personal files to train their AIs with. But I was surprised to see another link on that age saying that Microsoft has also – get this – has also bolted on an AI to both Notepad and Paint. Who asked for that? Those programs used to be tiny in size-
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/07/microsoft_ai_notepad_paint/
If it’s in the cloud you don’t own that.
Including copyrighted works.
AI is just an excuse to spy on everything. They want to know who is drawing penises in Paint, and typing anti-semantic stuff in Notepad.
Re: Texas anti-trust what?
It’s anti-environment, that’s what. Texas plus ten other states, listed at the top of the filing:
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/press/States%20v%20BlackRock%20Complaint%20Filed.pdf
Happy Thanksgiving from Saline hot springs in Death Valley NP…
And from the southern Greens… Wuk, are there no hands tending the cat ranch today? Gonna be some brutal yelp reviews.
There are 17 of us gathered here camping out, and a couple brought their 50/50 orange bar looking cat they’ve trained to be on leash, and 6 month old 🐅 is quite a hit in camp.
The hair’m back home at the all cats and no cattle ranch gets a couple cans of Fancy Feast turkey pate today.
Give orange cat a treat from me ! Peace.
For those not familiar the Saline Valley warm springs:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Saline+Valley+Warm+Springs/@36.8128786,-117.7661246,15z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x80bf718a274ebd27:0x6e2995c75b7be5a!8m2!3d36.8128786!4d-117.7661246!16s%2Fg%2F11y8fl3kp?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTEyNC4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
The Saline warm springs were an iconoclast’s outpost 40 years past.
Still plenty iconoclast…
Just stay away from the brain eating amoebas.
Happy Thanksgiving from Miami Beach.
We’re avoiding the cold for one more day.
Happy Thanksgiving from Outer Pentagonia. Heading into Inner Pentagonia now, donning my flak jack, ready to face the blame cannons. (I voted for “that Jewish woman”, when I’m not even Jewish.)
When I mentioned that in Germany, I then had to explain that in the US, the Greens are an antiwar party….
Some leaders among German (and other European) Greens know that — and deplore it, and decry it, and tell us we shouldn’t be and most especially shouldn’t run candidates who are. . . .
Backtoya.
re: RU US Missiles 2018
Gilbert Doctorow re-linked to an old piece of his from 2018, in his most recent message. 6 years ago he poignantly wrote:
“It is a national scandal for the country to lose an arms race it was not even aware was occurring. Heads should roll”
Missile-gate: U.S. Intel Misses Russia’s Big Advances in Nuclear Parity
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Thursday of major technological advances in nuclear weapons delivery systems appears to have caught the U.S. intelligence community unawares, reports Gilbert Doctorow.
March 2, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/02/missile-gate-u-s-intel-misses-russias-big-advances-in-nuclear-parity/
p.s. remarkable how much longer those texts on CN were, too.
After the MX-Peacekeeper debacle US needs new suppliers.
What was the debacle over it exactly?
Too “expensive”, and Minuteman cheaper to meet treaty “warhead numbers”. Too expensive to keep on alert, imply sustainment problem?
First deployed 1986, retired 2005.
What not said is why it was beat by the 1960 missile.
New attempt going slow! Maybe Musk get into ICBM.
Thanks.
I should have asked Postol who I think was involved with MX when I had the opportunity. I wanted to but then we got caught up with other stuff so I refrained from mentioning MX and I reckoned it was my only chance to talk to him . Which so far has remained true.
The wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper matches my fuzzy memories from the time. A combination of endlessly changing, very expensive basing strategies (non of which ever got approved), coupled with development and production scandals doomed the system. (“Deployed” without an operational guidance unit?!?). Then the USSR dissolved and no one could stomach throwing more money after bad.
A foretaste of a decade or more of failed space system projects, the LCS mess, Ford carriers and the F-35.
I participated in a casual discussion about impediments posed by different basing suggestion……
I go back to the C-5 acquisition failures….
Recently they are talking new ICBM, and upgrade B-2.
More acquisition fails, more trillions wasted
It’s astounding how MSM has buried/ignored the implications of the new Russian hypersonic near nuke, and if the authorization/use of longer range NATO missiles. Guess WW3 isn’t newsworthy!
Hopefully it’s the weapon that will save us from a nuclear WWIII and a WW4 fought with sticks and stones.
Which is why Martyanov suggests we have to wait what will happen next week. Meaning – I assume – what will be hit. If Washington won´t budge I fear this will be serious. I have no idea. But what about UKR Ministry of Defense and/or SBU?
>”MSM has buried/ignored the implications of the new Russian hypersonic near nuke”
See my post on REUTERS (not) reporting below
What is interesting here, and not really being discussed in the sources I’ve been able to read, is the materials development required to support this. Russia having a missile with these characteristics implies they’ve solved problems of science and production that we haven’t. This is akin to the advanced welding and metallurgy Russians had on their tanks in WWII. If you take the worst case implication for this, Russia is out producing the US while also making better stuff. They also have a larger and better supplied and trained standing army. That should be game-set-match but I doubt anyone in NATO or the US will be smart enough to acknowledge reality before millions more are killed.
Naturally this scientific side of the matter is well kept under wraps.
(Actually I caught myself thinking about Klaus Fuchs and him providing RU with Manhattan Project info – if this were today I would not support such a move by a Russian helping the US.)
We have this Martyanov entry on engineering issues (sorry if this is old news to you):
The Creator Of Oreshnik…
Kovalchuk, the Director of Kurchatov Institute.
And if you have the nerve to sift through…360 comments for info…
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-creator-of-oreshnik.html
Martyanov has pinned this comment onto the top:
“I explained the difference between hypersonic and ICBMs so many times on this blog, that I am really tired repeating it, for the last time:
1. ICBM MIRVs are in the atmosphere for a very short time–seconds really;
2. Hypersonic weapons are weapons which are capable:
a) of flying IN the atmosphere, maneuver in it and be controlled, all that is for many minutes.
b) that is why Oreshnik, while being a ballistic missile (on the booster phase) delivers warheads (either inert, loaded with conventional explosives or 900 kT nuke) into their maneuver phase after which they maneuver at some atmospheric high elevation and then DIVE. Practically same routine as Kinzhal. Imagine 36 Kinzhals flying at you at once. The whole world saw it. Nobody in the world (except Russia) has a technology to intercept it. These weapons are called quasi ballistic weapons.
c) Other hypersonic weapons, such as 3M22 Zircon conduct fully powered flight within atmosphere for minutes and arrive to the target under own propulsion.
3. Russia already has MIRVs which are powered and also can maneuver for ICBMs such as RS-28 Sarmat. And then there are gliding maneuvering block such as Avangard which have unlimited range, fly with M=27+ and maneuver.
When I say that the US is not even the same league with Russia–I mean it. It us not hyperbole, it is not a figure of speech. That is why I had it with Ted Postol’s BS and next week you all will know why. The US lost the arms race not by falling behind but by a knockout.”
As I said before I totally disagree with him attacking Postol. I find that unacceptable and misplaceed and in fact counterintuitive. Postol is pro-RU! What on earth is Martyanov´s problem…
I postulate that Martyanov cares about getting it right, independently of sides” – even if, for obvious reasons, he has a side.
Of course he does but so does Postol. And essentially they are on the same side.
And considering that the same people Martyanov is attacking every day have smeared Postol and disavowed him, in fact one of their own, makes it inappropriate that now Martyanov too is insulting him. He can do whatever he likes but this I find disappointing and not helpful.
If US and RU declare war tommorow, and he grabs a rifle, who would he be shooting at?
“Tesla Is Looking to Hire a Team to Remotely Control Its ‘Self-Driving’ Robotaxis”
What if in recruiting those teams, they they end up hiring a lot of kids that love nothing more than to play Grand Theft Auto?
In Muskspeak, self-driving is remotely controled, fully autonomous is not fully autonomous, and ignorance is strenght.
Wait until a team of Russian hackers decides to remotely control those taxis…
Nah, the Russians are having too much fun trolling the Wests’ taunts. Now the Chinese…
This all sounds suspiciously close to Theranos’s magic diagnostics box.
This is actually how the law in China requires robotaxi companies to operate: every taxi has to have a human supervisor at all times and no supervisor can have more than four taxi to keep an eye on.
I am not disputing that this is a good idea right now. Just remarking that Elon promised a lot more than his questionable tech can actually deliver, both on tech and financial returns to investors. And he’s nowhere near as easy on the eyes as Elizabeth Holmes.
The Chinese are far and away the leaders on autonomous driving, battery tech, and incorporating luxury features into their vehicles at a reasonable cost. Meanwhile Tesla is still delivering the same deathtrap and boring cars after over a decade and the Cyber truck (also a deathtrap and functions terribly as a truck).
‘And he’s nowhere near as easy on the eyes as Elizabeth Holmes.’
True. Though at least Elon does not have those crazy eyes like Holmes does.
Not as easy for any man that had experience with mentally-not-in-the-place ladies, because she will trigger some PTSD. One can tell that she is crazy from a mile away.
edit: I wrote this comment before seeing Rev’s one. He knows what I’m talking about. :)
You are spot on, here is a quote from the filing.
“But Defendants have not just acted alone and in isolation. In 2021, they went
further. In that year, Defendants each publicly announced their commitment to use their shares to
pressure the management of all the portfolio companies in which they held assets to align with netzero goals. Those goals included reducing carbon emissions from coal by over 50%. Rather than
individually wield their shareholdings to reduce coal output, therefore, Defendants effectively
formed a syndicate and agreed to use their collective holdings of publicly traded coal companies
to induce industry-wide output reductions.
Let’s sharpen those contradictions!
Having watched “Sustainability” manifest as almost pure greenwashing in the construction industry, I expect the same in the energy industries.
Not that I think the sharpening leads anywhere, the genius of neoliberalism has been to normalize Ulrich Becks Risk Society to the point that the system itself kills dissent through the Medical Industrial Complex and the Ag / Pharma nexus. I’m afraid now that humanity is seen as a legitimate input to “markets”, it’ll be a much smaller band of survivors, apparently mostly Chinese.
Consider that an attack outside Ukraine is what NATO wants. For the U.S. it means a fresh supply of European cannon fodder as the Mighty Wurlitzer cranks out by-jingo war tunes. Politicians get to beat their chests. Merchants of death add to their coffers. It becomes harder for the U.S. to, um, pull out of NATO. The EU gets to turn Russia into a invading enemy and demands further centralization, with expanded powers to tax and fund war here, there, everywhere. The bondholders asset-stripping Ukraine get a reprieve, and the warmongering propagandists get to say I told you so. So much winning!
Understanding what on earth leadership is up to in Ukraine with its continual escalation is like reading the ingredient list for an ultra-processed food. It’s lengthy, and much of the toxic content the general public never imagines is in there. Hubris plays a substantial role, as does fear of accountability, such as it is in the ostensibly democratic West, but the larger game isn’t announced, not least because if it were, to the extent the public has a say, it might be an emphatic no. It’s already getting there.
All the above may be why a Project for a New Euro-American Century actually wants escalation. People in charge think it’s the way to get their status back (baby).
In line with that train of thought, here is a guy named Alex Krainer on Dialogue Works who claims the West is planning a false flag attack on London. While his claim seems broadly plausible given the West’s proclivity for killing innocents to promote it’s aims, he is basing it specifically on the fact that the city’s web cams recently went out of commission for a period of time. He seems to think it was a kind of test of the system to set the stage for a self-inflicted attack on the city. I’ve never heard of this guy and I wonder what the commentariat thinks of his claim. You only have to listen to the first five to ten minutes of the show to get the gist of his arguments.
Alex Krainer: Russia’s SHOCKING Warning to the West: The Message They Can’t Ignore!
50 mins
https://www.youtube.com/live/HHicfFPdcnU?si=2VP5y4GIBpjK3MEP
Alex Krainer: an imaginative leap worthy of the Olympics!
For months Ray McGovern speculated on a last-resort loose-nuke false flag before the election to keep the collective Bamala in office and, more to the point, keep Trump out, since Tony-Jake & Co. might face prosecution on a number of plausible (as opposed to Trumped-up?) charges. The reasoning wasn’t all that persuasive, but does that mean we can rule out a false flag? If past is prelude, the answer must be … alas, no.
It comes to this: what comes across as irrational in a realist (but not really) international relations model, with its (idealized) notion of national interest, begins to look almost sensible when you look closely at incentives, some of them quite narrow. You then see that what looks crazy from the wrong side of the velvet rope can seem altogether rational to insiders. That, at any rate, is how I understand the ongoing double dog daring of Russia by the West. The way through the current percolating crises isn’t to pull back and reform but to intensify and distract, arrogating further powers at the moment of danger. That was openly stated PNAC doctrine. It isn’t anything new. It’s a variant of crisis capitalism. (On that note, how did I forget to mention above the billions skimmed by Ukraine and kicked back to influential friends?) To put it another way, it’s stupid and crazy, yes, but not only stupid and crazy. For some there’s an agenda. It’s just not what they say it is.
Until a better explanation comes around, that’s the view from this section of the cheap seats.
I listened and found Alex Krainer’s comments plausible. If any of his ideas hold merit, los diabolos are even worse than I had imagined.
I read Krainer’s blogpost on the same theme. He is an admirer of Alex Jones and thinks covid is a hoax. He imagines the British government (presumably) is planning to nuke London and blame it on the Russians so they can do… something.
It must be that because all the public webcams in London have been turned off. Nothing else makes sense.
@dingusansichat 10:22 am
I agree that NATO wants a Russian attack outside Ukraine. NATO could then rally its various peoples to fight the “Russian menace”. Few people care much about Ukraine now and are uninterested in sacrificing anything to oppose Russia. However a direct attack on an “innocent” NATO country would change that. Only a tiny minority follows foreign affairs in other than the simplistic way presented by their governments. A Russian attack outside Ukraine could be portrayed as completely unprovoked by the insane Putin seeking to conquer the world. Governments would be able to mobilise their countries to fight the Russians and label doubters as traitors.
I have been quite surprised by the otherwise intelligent and insightful people I know who believe the simple story of the insane Putin wanting to re-establish the Soviet Union and who have no interest in considering any other explanation.
One of the funniest of B. Kliban’s cartoon books is Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head and other drawings. Published in 1976 it is nearly fifty years old by now. It is Thanksgiving and I hope no one is stupid enough to try this ‘challenge’ but I am sure that some will. The prize is a refund, no medical bills are paid. Oh wait, you get a T-shirt. Play stupid games and win stupid prizes. From the Des Moines, Iowa news:
No wafer-thin mint?
Damnation. I have been a B. Kliban fan for years. A 2024 B. Kliban calendar is about 3 metres from my desk.
Now I need to tack down the book.
I once saw a letter to the editor in Rolling Stone signed “Buffalo Kliban”. I have no idea if it was him.
Yeah, I had all of his books back in the day.
Re: Cap on personal wealth.
“Limitarianism”. Funny, I like it. Foundations can be creepy, but maybe that’s a compromise worth making.
Re digital watch and US election….anyone keeping tabs on which UK Labour MPs have new Blue-sky accounts? MY MP has. I *helped* him by pasting the letter he buried on Twitter announcing he’d support the assisted dying Bill to my account, tagging him, thus being his first mention.
Betcha he’s annoyed. Plus betcha this means the Prime Minister will vote in favour. Because…..well….my MP got onto a select committee ASAP on election. Longstanding Labour MPs on record as not liking that. My MP is doing rather well…….any betting that it passes first reading YOU OWE ME MONEY lol
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/spain-busts-hashish-smugglers-using-ukrainian-drones/ar-AA1uVJI5
Spain busts hashish smugglers using Ukrainian drones
The devices were capable of transporting up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of drugs per trip with an autonomy of more than 50 kilometres (31 miles).
They were made by small-scale manufacturers in Ukraine and “transferred by road” to southern Spain, where they released the drugs and returned to Morocco without needing to land, they added.
re: Oreshnik not taken seriously by the US
This appears to be the narrative of negligence Washington has agreed on with the assitance of high-profile-academia as published by REUTERS today:
Enter ‘Oreshnik’
On Nov. 21, a new kind of Russian missile carrying six warheads struck Dnipro, Ukraine. Senior officials said it caused limited damage. But the first combat use of such a design — which Russian President Vladimir Putin called unstoppable — has drawn scrutiny from Western military experts.
By Gerry Doyle, Tom Balmforth and Mariano Zafra
Published Nov. 28, 2024
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/RUSSIA-MISSILE/gdpzknajgvw/
-“missile interceptors such as Israel’s Arrow 3 and the U.S. SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.”
-“This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed,” he said. “It’s a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way.” Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment for this story.” (no surprise)
-“Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means “to deliver not that much destruction”.”
-“Ukrainian officials told Reuters this week that the missile used to attack Dnipro carried no explosives and caused limited damage.” (seriously?!)
-“accuracy was less of a problem because: “it would distribute them over a wide area. It makes it useful for attacking large facilities” (they are not getting it. Or: not in front of the public)
The best one for last:
Jeffrey Lewis:
-“”If were inherently terrifying, (Putin) would just use it. But that’s not quite enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do a press conference and then do another press conference and say: ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.'”
Andrei Martyanov can pick on Postol as much as he wants to – (which by now makes zero sense and is totally unjustified the way he does it an inappropriate!) – but Postol is the only one understanding the grave implications. Regardless of possibles errors in details. (What did he get wrong, the launch site?)
https://x.com/airkatakana/status/1861502662124150928
it’s been almost 3 years now, and the sanctions against russia clearly haven’t stopped her ability to wage war. the west needs to do something that will really damage russia’s economy
let russia into the eu
I must admit I did laugh out loud when I saw that the first time.
It also seems that the best way for USA to destroy Russia militarily, would be to accept it into NATO and bring it “up” to NATO standards.
Heh! Heh! Heh! That would do it.
The broad spectrum of online-media reality of one day:
Katie DEBATES Alan Dershowitz on Piers Morgan
A special Thanksgiving Throwdown
(paywalled though)
https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/katie-debates-alan-dershowitz-on
“This week, be thankful that Katie made her debut on the Piers Morgan Show where she got to debate the ICC arrest warrants. On Katie’s side was journalist and former guest Matt Kennard; on the other side was lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former IDF soldier and spokesperson Jonathan Conricus.”
Lee Fang
In Gratitude to You
Wishing my readers an abundance of blessings, good health, and good times.
https://substack.com/@leefang/p-152290644
“Time moves slowly, then in other moments, all at once. Not that long ago, I was agonizing over the future of journalism and whether I had made all the wrong decisions by charting a path along the traditional media sphere.
Now I have the good fortune and community of readers to be fully independent, writing on a diverse range of topics with total editorial freedom.
That is all thanks to you, the subscriber. Thank you so much. “
Piers Morgan is boorish with his pandering for Israel and blowing smoke in Israel stooges. While he can mute the constant injuctions of Alen Dershowitz, who is a garbage human being, a bully and immensly rude, he is not doing it, allowing the old ghoul to always steal from the oponent’s time. Good for Katie that, knowing the characters bit back and forced Piers to intervene.
I have been informed by family members, (who will be visiting “the old folks at home,”) that I am considered as being a charter member in PETA, “People for an Ethical Turkey Apocalypse.”
Now if there was an equally strong movement for an ethical Terran human apocalypse. [Instead, we get the Jackpot.]
Considering Jackpots, I remember reading that, near the end of the Second World War, an argument was made that America should detonate the first military atomic bomb on the top of Mount Fuji, as an example to the Japanese of the wonders and terrors of modern technology. In that vein, I suggest that the Russians, in their ‘response’ to the West’s continued belligerence, should destroy Davos, Switzerland, with their real “wonderwaffen.” Not only would it be an example of “fire on high,” but also, if timed properly, a decapitation strike on the Globalist Elite.
One can hope, despite what Obama did to that idea.
I don’t think that Davos is the site of the Globalist Elite. It is the site of the Globalist Elite’s Head Butlers.
The Globalist Elite stay in touch with eachother and advance their plans from various undisclosed secure locations and over secured channels.
Now, it could be that the Globalist Elite would suffer some inconvenience if their Globalist Head Butlers were all decapitation struck at Davos.
How about demonstrative strike on Epstein Island?
Nah, Yellowstone would make a much better target. Kill the head, and the rest will fall.
EU demands more structural confrontation with Russia:
Joint Declaration by the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom in Warsaw
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/2685538-2685538
Baerbock, Sikorski, Lammy and Borrell enter a bar …
If they just did and got drunk. Fucking idiots.
Four horses of the apocalypse. 🦄 🐴 🦓 🐴
I am thankful today for this place and the many conversations I’ve enjoyed here in the last year. Best wishes to our hosts and the entire commentariat :)
RE: Tesla collision fireball
This topic was part of a recent NC comments repartee’.
Here’s the latest report: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-27/three-killed-in-fiery-tesla-cybertruck-crash-in-california-officials-say
i checked a local news source, first auto fatality(s) in Piedmont in 38 years. City speed limit is 25mph. Upscale area.
Piedmont is Italian for Oakland. And, Montclair is French for Oakland.
Piedmont and Montclair are two Swaziland-shaped towns engulfed by Greater Oakland. Oddly, there are no castle walls surrounding either.
Happy Thanksgiving, all. 6″ of heavy wet snow here today. Still coming down in big flakes.
Isle of Man dairy firms rule-out taking part in controversial new cow feed trial
“Two Manx dairy producers have spoken out to reassure customers that they will not be taking part in a controversial trial of a new cattle feed.
It comes after Arla Foods, Europe’s largest dairy company, recently announced it has begun trials with Bovaer.
Bovaer is a synthetic additive that can be added to cattle feed.
It has been developed to reduce methane emissions from cows.
Arla’s trial of the additive is being conducted in partnership with major UK retailers including as Morrisons, Tesco, and Aldi.
However, concerns have been raised about its safety, particularly regarding the ingredients used to create the additive—namely silicon dioxide, propylene glycol, and 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP).
A 2023 Food Standards Agency report found that 3-NOP could be harmful if inhaled, as well as an irritant to skin and eyes.
But other regulators have said there is no suggestion that the additive is not safe for consumers, adding that Bovaer poses ‘an acceptable’ risk to the environment, according to reports in the UK press.
The announcement by Arla Foods this week sparked a backlash on social media, with some shoppers raising concerns about the use of additives in their groceries.
Some went as far as to say they would no longer shop at supermarkets involved in the trial, while others urged the grocers to label any products which may have come from the farms using the additive.
In response, both the Isle of Man Creamery based in Tromode as well as Cooil’s Dairy have spoken out to confirm that Manx dairy producers are not using the additive and have no plans to participate in the trial.”
…
A little bit more at the link.
have read that red seaweed significantly reduces burps and farts in cattle
https://theconversation.com/feeding-cows-a-few-ounces-of-seaweed-daily-could-sharply-reduce-their-contribution-to-climate-change-157192
‘Why you should have a cat
@ShouldHaveCat
Finally got his own room!’
I’m not sure but I think that that is Harry Potter’s cat.
>Can businesses flourish in a world with a cap on personal wealth?
UK Novara Media recently interviewed the author.
No One Should Have More Than 10 Million Pounds | Ash Sarkar meets Ingrid Robeyns
Rather important topic.
Thank you.
Please correct me if I am doing injustice (I am not completely through yet) – is this a case where the moderator is smarter than the guest, or lets say more progressive?
Rowling being-transphobic-argument? The scholars I grew up with never would have digressed into such rainbow-press territory, 1st because they woulnd´t have known who Rowling is, because they have no time for that kind of shit, sorry; 2nd the issue would have been below their scholarship because it has nothing to do with it.
I’m a huge fan of Novara Media; Ash Sarkar, Aaron Bastani et al. They don’t wear their ideology on their sleeves but the bearded one is about and they are clever and astute.
re: RU /UKR
US NEWS reporting:
Russian Court Sentences Lawyer to Seven Years in Prison Over Ukraine War Comments
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-11-28/russian-court-sentences-defence-lawyer-to-seven-years-in-prison-over-ukraine-war-comments
While one need not address our double standards in the West in general I must oppose any of this.
Just because it´s the Russian State which I am sympathizing with their actions are not saintly.
Which makes it difficult to judge from afar.
p.s. Reminded me of the Pentagon Paper case. The court asked in 1971 the attorney whether the WaPo and the NYT would have published the plans for the Normandy Invasion in advance had they obtained them. Of course it was inadequate a comparison. But the question still stands. How would Assange e.g. answer that Normandy question? He would suggest to not publish I assume.
However under what circumstances should citizens stick to national security?
Which opens the case for an overwhelming array of moral issues.
If I am in favour of militant resistance is it therefore right to sabotage RU military logistics for a person opposed to the war? Is it right to sabotage German delivery routes for US arms to UKR? Do I have the right to protest the war in RU and be against US´s proxy war? I am willing go to the front in thise case although I am against armed forces?
All the left-Marxist tropes of state non-violence/violent resistance, internationalism, “workers´ solidarity” etc. collide.
“Land and Freedom” (1995) by Ken Loach, the film about the Spanish Civil War, was trying to discuss some of this.
Unlike Italy in Germany it would be unthinkabe for dock workers to sabotage shipments for NATO.
In fact for a non-RU it´s much easier. It would be hard if I were in RU.
Which is also why so many here don´t protest. Because they know that they are not willing to die in Ukraine and yet know that their country is under attack by NATO. So what do they do? They keep silent.
To argue, this is because of RU police suppression – is rather to be doubted.
In times of existential war, traitors are shot. The guy looks like fifth columnist to me (a term than ties nicely with the mention of the Spanish Civil War). If you let fifth columnist run amok, you may lose to faschist. What those judging from afair think, couldn’t matter less.
What is “a person opposed to the war”? Someone opposed to war as a concept, should not engage in any war related activity (including paying taxes that fund wars). Those that are opposed of specific wars, or of specific sides in specific wars, are engaged in wars by picking wars and sides.
edit: “Which is also why so many THERE don´t protest.”
I said this would happen (Germany will find a way too, be assured.)
France believes Israel’s Netanyahu has immunity from ICC arrest warrant
https://www.reuters.com/world/france-says-israels-netanyahu-has-immunity-will-continue-working-with-him-2024-11-27/
We had this in our post on the Lebanon ceasefire. But thanks for making sure it was not missed.
Yes.
I checked the wrong NC-posts before commenting (links of the day) where I didn´t see anything.
Usually trying to avoid duplicates.
In this case difficult to overlook it. But I did.