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Links 4/19/2025

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Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See Nautilus (Dr. Kevin). More reasons to feel guilty.

Q-CTRL Unveils Jam-Proof Positioning System That’s 50x More Accurate Than GPS Interesting Engineering

Depleted Uranium Battery: Turning Nuclear Waste into Power IEEE Spectrum. Chuck L: “Still far to go to prime time. & when the electrolyte wears out you still have depleted uranium, albeit mostly U 238 with a half life of 4B years or so.”

Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds Guardian

The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing Asterisk (Micael T)

#COVID-19

US measles total climbs to 800 cases, 10 outbreaks CIDRAP

Climate/Environment

NASA satellite shows small ocean swirls may affect climate The Register

In Zacatecas, mining companies extract silver and leave the drought Rebelion via machine translation (Micael T)

China?

When Trump and Xi seek a war-ending trade deal Asia Times (Kevin W)

China Focus: Autonomous drones surpass human pilots in precision, revolutionizing aerial agility Xinhua (guurst)

Hu Bo on South China Sea and U.S. military activities in 2024 Pekingology

European Disunion

New German government wants to play bigger role in disciplining EU-member states International Affairs. Michael T: “Politicians of today offer only things that are unwanted. Some ‘democracy’ that.”

EU explores legal options for ending Russian gas deals Financial Times (Micael T)

JD Vance slammed after making bizarre ‘jerk’ comment during Italy visit Express (resilc)

Netherlands in Panic – “Russia Intends to Attack the Baltics!” Soldiers Take to the Streets International Affairs. (Michael T)

Israel v. The Resistance

US Massacres Civilian Workers and Paramedics in Attack on Yemen Fuel Port Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

Trump Is Changing the Rules in the Middle East, Netanyahu Is Left to Watch From the Stands Haaretz. Big if true.

Zionism, the Human Parasitoid Scott Ritter (Dr. Kevin)

A shameful ICJ ruling, the beginning of a split in the Jewish world, how Iran has already won this and other, domestic reason MAGA wants war Alon Mizrahi

Mohammad Marandi, Larry Wilkerson & Chas Freeman: Talks or Total War? Clock Ticks for Iran and U.S. Dialogue Works. I am heavy on links to videos today since it’s a long weekend and you might have time to listen.

Iran–Armenia joint drills warn off foreign-designed border changes The Cradle (Chuck L)

New Not-So-Cold War

Trump says US will ‘pass’ on Ukraine peace talks if no progress soon BBC

Rubio Warns US Readying to ‘Abandon’ Ukraine Peace Efforts Simplicius

Donald Trump to Europe — You Want to Fight Russia? Go Ahead, It’s All Yours Larry Johnson

US’ threats to abandon talks on Ukraine directed against Kiev rather than Moscow — Axios TASS

EUROFASCISM, LIKE 80 YEARS AGO, IS THE COMMON ENEMY OF MOSCOW AND WASHINGTON Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation via machine translation (Micael T)

Mark Sleboda: Putin Orders DEVASTATING New Offensive, Trump STUNNED by Russia, China & Iran Alliance Danny Haiphong, YouTube.

THE ANGELS OF DELIVERANCE – ARE TRUMP AND WITKOFF ROLLING THE STONE AWAY? John Helmer

Moldovan bishop blocked from flight for Easter ritual again RT (Kevin W)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional 404media

Palantir Founder: ‘They need to wake up scared and go to bed scared’ Thomas Neuburger

Imperial Collapse Watch

EU President Ursula von der Leyen: “The West as we knew it no longer exists” International Affairs (Micael T)

This is transaction volume, not dollar value. Dollar value is more important. Still not a good sign, particularly since it handles not just messaging a la SWIFT but also settlement:

Fateful errors: Why NATO leaders should have listened to George Kennan in 1997 Ian Proud (Chuck L)

Prof. Michael Hudson: End of Globalization & Return of Economic Nationalism? Glenn Diesen, YouTube

Trump 2.0

Survival Or Looting? What Trump’s Revolution Is Really About Moon of Alabama. Includes a nice shout out but with a typo infestation! Need to take more care when drafting, even in these “Too much news, too little time” periods.

How FDA cuts could make the food and drug supply less safe NPR (Kevin W)

The Fight Between Trump and Public Schools Over DEI Escalates New York Times (Dr Kevin)

Trump officials take control of Penn Station revamp from New York’s MTA Guardian (Kevin W)

Tariffs

DOGE

Judge temporarily blocks CFPB layoffs, probes potential violation of order The Hill

Judge Extends Ban on Musk’s DOGE Access to Private Social Security Data Reuters

Democrat Death Wish

NY settles sexual harassment lawsuit with former aide to Andrew Cuomo Gothamist

Immigration

Supreme Court blocks, for now, new deportations under 18th century wartime law NPR

US-China tensions impact visa issuance for Chinese students Asia Times (Kevin W)

Van Hollen recounts tearful exchange with mistakenly deported man The Hill

US citizen says he and his wife detained without explanation after returning from Canada CNN. Note it looks like the detention time was within the rule of thumb of 8 hours (US citizens can’t be denied entry but they can be detained) but this was over the top nasty.

Our No Longer Free Press

Trump Admin Orders Social Media Review on Gaza Ken Klippenstein< UK’s Nudge Unit and UNSW Launch “Prebunking” Framework to Counter Refugee, Migrant, and Pro-Trump Immigration Narratives Reclaim the Net (Micael T)

Courts weigh White House work-arounds to keep AP iced out The Hill

Groves of Academe

Trump administration threatens Harvard with foreign student ban BBC. resilc: “Escalation to an air strike next?”

Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard New York Times (Jason Boxman). So let me get this straight….they admit to error but are not using that to climb down? What sort of clown show is this?

Emails Show Mohsen Mahdawi Pleaded with Columbia for Protection for Months Before ICE Detained Him Zeteo

Mr. Market Has a Nervous Breakdown

Strange sell-off in the dollar raises the specter of investors losing trust in the US under Trump Associated Press (Kevin W)

Crapification

The death of customer service: why has it become so, so bad? Guardian (Kevin W). It’s called neoliberalism.

Fresh Tools That Keep Vintage Macs Online and Weirdly Alive The Register. For those who want to take a stand.

AI

Actors Who Sold AI Avatars Stuck In Black Mirror-Esque Dystopia ars technica

NoLiMa: Long-Context Evaluation Beyond Literal Matching Arxiv (Micael T)

Study Finds 50% of Workers Use Unapproved AI Tools Security Week

Antitrust

Arkansas bans pharmacy benefit managers from owning pharmacies in state Associated Press (Kevin W). Wowsers.

The Bezzle

Tesla accused of messing with odometers to get out of repair bills EndGadget (Kevin W)

Guillotine Watch

The fury at ‘America’s Most Powerful’ Blood in the Machine (Randy K)

The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers Wall Street Journal (Micael T)

Antidote du jour (via):

And a bonus (Chuck L):

A second bonus (Chuck L):

And a third (Chuck L):

A fourth (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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164 comments

  1. Antifa

    There’s the Insurrection Act
    And the tariffs he has stacked
    There’s the Middle East attacks
    That must come to a climax
    So we hear

    There’s his war on global trade
    Although Xi’s been throwin’ shade
    There’s Iran we might invade
    Donald’s rogue and renegade
    That is clear

    As for kissing Donald’s bottom
    No such tributes have they brought him
    But success has never sought him
    Just that AIPAC crew who bought him
    Like a steer

    All the economic pain
    Of this moron’s dismal reign
    Will be harsh and inhumane
    Only billionaires will gain
    Every year

    You’ll pay more at every store
    Wonder what you’re working for
    While the headlines tell of war
    Counting scars as you keep score
    New frontier

    Reply ↓
  2. The Rev Kev

    “Van Hollen recounts tearful exchange with mistakenly deported man”

    When Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia sat down, they each had a glass of water. But as that article mentioned, a government worker then brought them two Margaritas. Of course then you had these Richard Craniums back in the States tweeting how he was supposed to be in a hell hole but here he was sitting around with a Margarita. Point is, they weren’t given those Margaritas for the purposes of Salvadoran propaganda. They were given them for the purposes of American propaganda so likely it was a Trump official which thought to stage it like this.

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    1. Neutrino

      Still not a good look when a US Senator appears to care more about, let alone even acknowledge, a foreign criminal than a dead American.

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      1. The Rev Kev

        Doesn’t matter if he is a foreign crim or not. Either everybody gets due process or in the end nobody gets due process.

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          1. Bill B

            Morin undoubtedly deserves compassion, but I suspect it’s because he didn’t want to fuel Trump’s heinous anti-immigrant rhetoric. It’s a bit dated (10/24) but here’s an example: ‘“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.’ https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/12/trump-racist-rhetoric-immigrants-00183537

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      2. IEL

        “Criminal” implies a conviction. Which this case lacks. Administration assertions are hardly due process, and “innocent until proven guilty” also still holds.

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      3. Alice X

        Huh?

        Abrego Garcia has not been charged with any crime, let alone convicted. He was given Protection from Removal by an immigration judge. The present administration has admitted they made a mistake in deporting him.

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  3. Terry Flynn

    Plants feel pain…. Congrats on reminding me of one of the scariest things I ever watched on TV as a kid. The Sound Machine, an episode of Tales of the Unexpected (the Black Mirror of its day).

    Unsurprisingly that was one of the episodes (co)written by Roald Dahl and the TV episode really stayed true to the horrific nature of so much of his story-telling, rather than the sanitised rubbish that Hollywood has produced in its adaptations of his work.

    (I was a latch-key kid and my older sister also allowed me to watch a bootleg VHS copy of Alien looooong before I should ever have been watching that. Of course kids these days shrug at such anecdotes when they watch stuff involving girls and a cup – do not google/watch that.)

    Reply ↓
    2. Revenant

      I loved being allowed to stay up late and watch Tales of the Unexpected, with the wonky carousel music intro. Wasn’t it on ITV at 10pm?

      Other treats were M*A*S*H and Taxi and Cagney and Lacey.

      I never watched films rated 15 or 18 when I was younger. We didn’t have a video recorder so there waan’t much scope! But I read Roald Dahl’s adult oeuvre far too young (and Tom Sharpe, Jackie Collins, PD James). Adults were never really alert for what the quiet kid was reading….

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      1. Terry Flynn

        If it was 10pm that’s even later than I thought! Mind you my parents worked evenings due to being in a band and older sister was past the unofficial “age that a teenager can babysit younger kids” so we got to watch all sorts of stuff.

        We only got the VCR because my younger sister got on national TV as part of the BBC Nationwide/Pebble Mill Christmas Carol competition.

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  4. Henry Moon Pie

    I can’t believe I’m linking to an Atlantic article, but here it is. The author’s contention is that the primary explanation for DOGE is that it’s an attack on the PMC class and that this hatred for bureaucrats and experts has a long history on the right:

    Thanks to the Baby Boom, universities were exploding by the late 1960s, creating a huge new professoriate. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the federal bureaucracy was expanding too, creating an army of social workers, government lawyers, and economists. Society showed the influence of what Irving Kristol described as “the new class.” To Kristol, an intellectual who had followed Burnham’s trajectory from Trotskyism to conservatism, this new class seemed nefarious because it showed little interest in making money. Instead, it craved power and exploited progressive ideas as a guise for achieving it. By Kristol’s account, the new class leveraged its control of the media, the academy, and the government to implant its self-serving ideas in the nation.

    So if the Atlantic is right that the Rs are out to destroy the PMC, and the Atlantic is a PMC rag of the first order, should people on the genuine Left lift a finger to stop them?

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    1. Alt Delete

      Makes me think of Vivek Chibber’s recent chat on Doom Scrolling (YouTube) and his dismissal of the woke left vs the labour left as a cancer in the universities.

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    2. Matthew

      … almost everyone who reads Naked Capitalism is PMC, as is almost everyone who has ever written about it.

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      1. .human

        LOL. I do not resemble that remark. I am an auto-didact. One of my pet peeves is the loss of news print. Seeking information these days involves actively using electronic devices, streaming, online news, search engines. Where in the recent past one could find print news at street corners, park benches, train seats, top of trash containers, thrown on empty desk….you get the idea. This is partly why the PMC is more easily attuned to current events. They have the time and means.

        There was a famous rant in Congress during the early 20th century decrying the consolidation of news corporations during the late 19th century. It is in the Congressional Record, though I can no longer find a link and my own copy is lost on a hard drive long past.

        I throw sand in the gears every chance I get.

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        1. judy2shoes

          >>>I throw sand in the gears every chance I get.

          I doff my hat to you, .human. Keep the sand flowing…

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        2. Giovanni Barca

          High school diplpma, lifelong (I dare not say “career”) musician, raiser of well above average number of children. Not professional, not management, and I suppose my class would be lumpenprole.

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      2. Lee

        “… almost everyone who reads Naked Capitalism is PMC, as is almost everyone who has ever written about it.”

        Well then they’re PMC class traitors, blessings be upon them. Didn’t someone once observe that revolutions are lead by under-employed intellectuals? There’s going to be quite a few of them about in coming days experiencing their first bitter taste of precarity, which causes me to wonder, are they reachable and are they useful.

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      4. Jason Boxman

        I don’t gate keep anything, so I don’t really think I qualify. By this logic adjunct professors are PMC, too, and their situation is rather precarious.

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      5. eg

        I was unquestionably PMC by education and employment (I am now retired) but entirely NOT so by upbringing, my father having been born into rural idiocy in the St John River valley and my mother into the notoriously unfashionable North End of Halifax.

        A profound commitment to fairness is burnt into my character — nothing about either my education nor employment can alter that fundamental fact of my upbringing.

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    4. Tom Stone

      Rev, I highly recommend Musa Al-Gharbi’s “We have never been Woke”.
      It explained quite a few things to me, including the varieties of virtue signalling and the highly varied costs of obtaining a concealed weapons permit in those States which are not “Constitutional Carry” States.
      I live in Sonoma County, the cost is an order of magnitude greater than it is in neighboring Lake County.

      Reply ↓
  5. Wukchumni

    Bookends dept:

    Today is the 250th anniversary of the shot heard round the world and the first major military campaign of the fledgling USA, and today might mark the last major military campaign of the USA when we stop supplying Ukraine with weaponry, in a shock heard round the world.

    Seeing as probably 98% of my countrymen couldn’t locate Ukraine on a delineated map of the world-we’ll act as if nothing happened, just like when we left Kabul with our tales between our legs.

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    1. Neutrino

      How many readers can remember standing, nervously, in front of a class reciting that famous poem? One memory is of trying not to have a cadence too much like the clippity clop of Revere’s horse while getting caught up in the excitement of the message.

      Reply ↓
  7. The Rev Kev

    ‘DK🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸
    @1Nicdar
    Amazing! 🙏🏼
    A 2-year-old boy who spent the night alone in remote Arizona wilderness and walked 7 miles through mountain lion territory was led to safety by a rancher’s dog, authorities say.’

    Somebody needs to get Buford the dog a coupla steak dinners. He is a very good boy.

    We don’t deserve our dogs.

    Reply ↓
    1. dougie

      Buford is an Anatolian Pyrenees, cousin to Great Pyrenees. I discovered Pyrs about a year ago, when I rescued a 3 yo male off a euthanize list at a shelter. I have since rescued 2 more, and have become heavily involved in Pyr rescue transport. Gentle Giants, indeed! What a 71 yo guy needs with a house full of 125 lb dogs is a question for the ages, and one my spousal unit asks often. I tell her Pyr slobber kisses are a healthier alternative than “self-medication”, given the state of current events.

      Reply ↓
      3. ArcadiaMommy

        We had an Anatolian Shepard. They are supposed to be terrible pets but he was very gentle and calm and very watchful of the kids. Looks very similar to Buford, but not as fluffy.

        Reply ↓
  8. The Rev Kev

    “JD Vance slammed after making bizarre ‘jerk’ comment during Italy visit”

    One of the old ancient Roman virtues was Gravitas-

    ‘It…translated variously as weight, dignity, and importance and connotes restraint and moral rigor. It also conveys a sense of responsibility and commitment to the task. Along with pietas (regard for discipline and authority), severitas, gloria, simplicitas (lucidity), integritas, dignitas, and virtus, gravitas was particularly appreciated as an ideal characteristic in leaders. Gravitas and virtus are considered more canonical virtues than the others.’

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitas

    With Vance I’m not getting that vibe. Certainly not Trump either. When you listen to them and watch them, it is like they are putting on a show for their base and are acting as entertainers. It may play well in Peoria but outside American’s borders the effect kinda falls flat.

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    1. Harold

      It can be a little much — Lord Chesterfield told his son that a gentleman should never be seen to laugh, and apparently the late Queen Elizabeth’s mother instructed her never to smile in public — but one kind of misses it when it’s gone.

      Reply ↓
  9. Alice X

    >Still browsing like it’s 1999

    The interfaces to connect my still solid old scanners (and other stuff, a laser printer etc) with my later (less old) computers is one of my problems. How to keep the working techno rubble out of the landfills is the mission.

    Contra planned obsolescence 101.

    Reply ↓
    1. Jason Boxman

      For what it’s worth, you can also install newer OS releases on some unsupported Macs: How to Install the Latest macOS on an Unsupported Mac

      I have an old MBP 2015 I might one day try this on, but honestly OS X 12 is fine. I haven’t seen anything introduced since then that I really miss. Most of the stuff requires newer hardware, too, I think, like “hand-off” or whatever.

      Reply ↓
      1. Alice X

        Thanks, I’ve known about that since someone came up with installing 10.12 on earlier machines. I have installed Monterey on a 2009 Macbook. There are problems, migration assistant doesn’t work correctly for one big one. I use 10.12 on my main machine, it’s very stable. But for my music stuff I need 10.15 which I have on another machine. Already that is nearing the fringe. I have yet another machine with 10.6 for Omnipage, which left the Mac market in 2001. It does superb OCR and exceeds anything else I have seen. It is still available in the Windows arena and I have Windows 10 in bootcamp, but not the $500 for the Windows Omnipage (same as I paid 25 years ago). Besides, I hate Microsoft and Windows. Well, I hate Apple too, just not as much.

        So that’s where I’m at, with a pile of old hardware and software. Some of which I paid dearly for but very little money

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        1. Alice X

          Edit:

          …Some of which I paid dearly for long ago but there is very little money today.

          Edit window closed before I did…

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        2. Jason Boxman

          I only hopped on the Apple train in 2016, when I realized tinkering with Linux on my laptop to fix X or Y when it random stops working or otherwise isn’t working the way it might have been before. It got stale.

          Of course I still get that a bit with Apple, but no recompiling kernels for Nvidia driver support, or whatever. On my MBP I have to periodically kill bluetoothd when it wakes up from sleep for it to recognize any BT devices, and so on.

          But the hardware is solid, at least. Picked up an second hand Mac Mini 2018 as well, the last one that’s RAM upgradable. Slapped in 64GB of RAM, which is mostly empty all the time. Maybe a bit overkill.

          I’m hoping these continue to last for years to come. The newer MBPs I don’t like the screen. The 15″ is perfect, the 16″ has text that is just a bit too small, and the 13″ absolutely doesn’t have enough screen size. Sigh.

          Oh well, at least they brought back MagSafe.

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          1. Alice X

            I hitched a ride on the train Mac in the waning days of 1984 when I grabbed a 128mb (MegaByte, Hey Zeus!, just imagine all those ones and zeroes!). That from a South Asian student (in an affluent Detroit suburb), for eight hundred dollars (the retail was 2K$), cash and carry. I’ve been on that train every since.

            My latest machines are from a dozen years ago though I did get one for another that was later. Birds of a feather flock together.

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    1. IM Doc

      I guess I would say with such issues abounding in my patients who are increasingly unable to afford medicine and health care and even food, yes, I would say particularly so in those who have “access” to health care via Obamacare plans —— that even contemplating diverting one dime from taxpayers accounts to fund places like Harvard is a grave sin. Asking people like the above patients to fund Harvard with their tax dollars while they are skimping on essentials all to graduate PMC types who view them as vermin – has got to be one of the worst examples of how our entire society has gone off the rails.

      And the thing is – with just basic conversations with friends, colleagues, neighbors and patients in the past few weeks, the feelings I have are far from isolated with me. Negative and hostile encounters and experiences with these Ivy League scolds is really becoming commonplace. I had yet another encounter this week ( this is probably the 4th or 5th time – I have lost count ) of an Ivy League student refusing to see Jewish patients – they make them “uncomfortable”. I am not sure how to get through to their pointy little heads that the 95 year old Jewish man in the patient room who worked all of his life as a mechanic in flyover land – has nothing to do with the Gaza situation. I do not know what else to say other than that this behavior on the part of these people is not a good look – and it does nothing to help the Gaza people. Indeed, it is making the situation much much worse.

      Say what you will about Trump – he at least understands optics and communication. It may be good – it may be bad – but it is working on so many of these issues. He is doing rings around the Dems – and I am just ashamed of my party that they are looking like such incompetents.

      Reply ↓
      1. Yves Smith Post author

        I’m shocked to see you engage in precisely the sort of group scapegoating that offends you about the students who refused to see Jews. It is exactly the same process at work.

        What I find even more baffling is that you are blaming the schools for the bigotry, when all unis and most of all the elite ones are in full bore crackdowns against anti-Semitism. So how are they to blame for students who engage in the conduct they are aggressively trying to root out

        On top of that, you are seeing grad students. I can tell you from HBS and I assume it’s true for the med schools that most were not from elite undergrad programs. There was a big ratchet down in terms of the general level of critical thinking and well-roundedness among the Bschool students, and I was told that was true at the law school too. My perception from my student days, and I assume it is still true, that the ungrad programs made a great difference in influencing how kids approached the world, and grad programs, not very much.

        You recounted one incident where a student behaved badly and it bothered you that no one called her out. But young people are trained to be conflict averse. This is not a function of the Ivies; Lambert was telling me this when he was asked to judge debate at a state university. The students (10 years ago) were extremely uncomfortable being confronted with a not-heated disagreement. And they’d be even less likely to rock the boat in a formal setting.

        In addition, for the most part, the worst sort of well-off people will wind up in your enclave (as in the private jet or wannabe crowd due to the remoteness) so your sample is probably not representative.

        You even told me the reason that med school prized sending students to your hospital was not your hospital but the beenie of hanging out in your resort-ish area.

        What of the kids at Columbia, for instance, including many Jews ,who protested against the genocide in Gaza. to the degree that Zionist squillionaires threatened the university to force a crackdown. Precisely because so many Jews are shoulder to shoulder with them, the real activists make the clear distinction between Zionists and Jews.

        A lot of that “taxpayer money” goes to fund science, particularly medical research. So you are in favor of the DOGE destruction of research that helps the medical profession advance? KLG has been in despair at the gutting he has seen of important initiatives.

        The undergrad tuition comes nearly entirely from payments by parents, loans, work-study, endowment, alumni gifts (some alumni stipulate that their donations go solely to tuition), and these government grants:

        If you are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, you may be eligible for a Federal Pell Grant or a Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG). Your eligibility is determined by the information you provide in your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

        Pell Grants and SEOG are awarded by the federal government and administered by our office, based on financial need. Within 10 days of filing your FAFSA, you will receive a Student Aid Report indicating your eligibility for a Pell Grant.

        If you are a Massachusetts resident, you may also be eligible for a state Gilbert Grant, which is awarded on the basis of need. These awards do not affect your term-time work expectation.

        What is not discussed much in polite company is that the fiction at Harvard that “every tub is on its own bottom” as in every school pays for itself, the B and Law schools make a profit and so kick money over to the University, some of which may wind up supporting the College.

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        1. flora

          Yves, If I may, Kirn (Princeton) and Taibbi pointed out in the latest paywall ATW that the point of the Ivies is to educate the next generation of American and World elites, who are increasingly neoliberal and contemptuous of the middle and working classes in the US and other countries. / my two cents

          It’s now a long way from the TV show M.A.S.H. where Haavaad grad Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester the Third traded semi-friendly barbs with Hawkeye and BJ traded semi-friendly barb, but all came together in the moment.

          Reply ↓
          1. Yves Smith Post author

            Kim and Taibbi have warped perspectives because they cover politics, which attracts the worst sort generally. If you want to go into politics, you major in Government at Harvard and even then only a few get tracked. Going to an elite law school is another way in. As you can see, DC is run by lawyers. Those are both subsets of the undergrads.

            The biggest major at Harvard is economics. Majoring in economics creates the impression you are numerate and sorta serious and that (or applied math) are fields of concentration corporate employers like.

            Among the kids I know who went to Ivies (and they are kids of Ivy parents, and presumably even more advantaged in climbing the status ladder), one makes videos. One is a PhD in fine arts. One works for an environmental research firm. One is an anthropologist who turned himself into a negotiator. One got a law degree and is working in international law. One is doing marketing for a big financial firm.

            Are any of the “elites” in the sense Kim and Taibbi mean? They are making (save the PhD in fine arts) decent to good incomes, but none wield any power. And I have not seen any of them manifest the class hatred you impute to them. Perhaps that’s also because I worked in elite financial and professional service firms, and there are plenty of very lucrative clients who came from the wrong side of the tracks, so being a class snob is a fast track to turning off clients and doing poorly at your firm. In fact, one of the guys in my cohort at Goldman came from a lower class Italian background, even had a bit of the wrong sort of accent. Clients adored him and as a result, so did the firm. He made partner super fast.

            I am not saying these young grads are paragons of virtue, but if you tried this sort of cheap stereotyping with Hispanics, you’d get catcalls.

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            1. flora

              Yves, with great respect, I think we are approaching this question from two different perspectives. I can only say if I sound like I impute any class “hatred” it is not to the Harvard students who, I imagine, are doing their very best to succeed and rise in society in their chosen fields, and why not. Ambitious students are expected to do their very best to succeed at the highest level they can attain in the society and culture they inhabit. Of course.

              It is to the administration and the board who have their own reasons to which I direct my ire.

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            2. judy2shoes

              Thank you for your illuminating perspective, Yves. I admit that I’m just as guilty as anyone else who is painting with an overly broad brush with respect to the graduates of elite universities.

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        2. IM Doc

          Well, what can I say?

          There are quite a few of these students – usually racial minorities and working-class whites – who hang their head in shame when this goes on….often kids from our big state schools but I have had on 2 occasions, Ivy students come up to me later and try to explain to me that this racist behavior is just widespread among the student body. One of whom, Jewish, told me that they are very concerned about Gaza but the anti-Jewish sentiment on campus is overwhelming and many of the Jewish students have nothing to do with it, they may be very supportive of the Gazans, but they are targeted nonetheless.

          When this has happened, and the offending students are asked to stay home and reflect for a day or two, when they return, I typically address the whole group – and we talk about the difference between Jewish people, the State of Israel and also Zionism. One of the constant retorts from the offending students is “I guarantee that patient that I refused to see has invested in State of Israel bonds all their life”. Literally, everything in this country somehow comes down to money. My answer – “Look at me. Please tell me how I have invested for my life. Furthermore, has your squillionaire family invested in USA T bonds? Then, in your calculus, you are just as guilty – both American political parties for generations have supported this behavior..”. We then spend quite a bit of time talking about racism. That when we walk into a patient room, colors and creeds mean nothing. The relationship we have with one another transcends all. One thing is for sure – in my youth – I would never have dreamed that as an older person I would be having discussions about frank racism on rounds. It has been an eye opener. I know of no other way to deal with this other than direct confrontation. Are the kids in their home campuses getting the same pushback from their faculty there?

          Am I just supposed to let this racism ride? When I have notified the admin in charge at the schools, at times they are helpful – at other times they seem to be supportive of the students and their egregious behavior. What would you do if you saw this happening right in front of you? What would other commenters here say or do?

          It would have made quite the statement if the Harvard leaders would have said – we will fight you on the other aspects of the letter you sent us – but the anti-Semitism – will be addressed right away.
          A stance like that would have made people like me who at times are dealing with this firsthand take notice that they were taking this seriously. Maybe the leaders have put out such statements, I have not seen them. It just makes me very uncomfortable thinking that taxpayer funds, provided by everyone, are being used in institutions that will not take such steps with regard to racism.

          I have not even mentioned how many times I have heard from Jewish parents at these schools and other situations how afraid their kids are. And the thing is that many of these people are actually very anti-genocide. It does not matter.

          Reply ↓
          1. IM Doc

            As far as the medical research coming out of Harvard specifically.

            As a physician far away from Harvard all of my life, the research priorities and product coming from there have been very easy to gauge. That institution for all intents and purposes has their very own journal organ. The New England Journal of Medicine. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Society but whose pages are edited by and filled with articles, missives and research done by Harvard faculty and Harvard graduates elsewhere. Certainly by no means all Harvard related, but I would call it an adequate barometer of what is going on in Boston. The columns still bear the Harvard brand – ie Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital ( the Harvard teaching hospital ), etc.

            This journal, NEJM, was a mainstay for American physicians for many decades. Full of review articles, case studies, acute health alerts, algorithms, and all kinds of research articles – all of which were read by physicians the world over for generations. The articles for these years were many times the initial documentation of new physical exam issues, new tests, new procedures, new medications. The review articles and case studies were detailed surveys of particular medical problems. There were pages of book reviews of textbooks and literary “medicine” books. With a few exceptions, there was very little if any politics. Only big huge overarching society-wide political issues ever showed up. And on all of these that I remember, there were extensive discussions by all sides. Things on the order of Medicare, abortion, Agent Orange, Obamacare. Things like that were vigorously discussed but that type of thing appeared 1-2 times a year. The NEJM in its current iteration for the past decade or so seems to have only one side.

            Fast forward to the past 10 years or so. Long gone are the erudite review articles. The case records have become very protracted and not very helpful. I would dare say that 90% or so of the actual research is all new Big Pharma things – for example – the ones this week are coming out to the market priced at 32,000 dollars, so well beyond a good chunk of my patients. We have one article after the other, week after week, all about equity, diversity etc. This past 12 months or so alone, the physicians of America have been helped to articles about “equity-and-diversity-appropriate” statuary and portraiture in medical school campuses, not once but twice. We have been helped to several articles about equity in our textbooks. On and on and on. These issues are somehow deemed to be of such vital importance as to dominate the editions I read every week.

            In brief, the research output of NEJM, or a huge part of it, has been reduced to the introduction of Big Pharma products that turn out to be often marginal at best but which are extremely lucrative, and then of course all the equity stuff. That is it.

            One has to assume that these type of things are what are being funded by research dollars. And from the very bottom of my heart, and I am being totally serious here, are “equity” and lucre-generating marginal drug products really our priority as a nation to support with our taxpayer money?

            I want nothing more than to have our old NEJM back – and I would assume by extension – our leading medical institution back. And all of the others. But that does not seem to be what is on order today. We desperately need it. Look at the last 5 years.

            So, I am truly in a dilemma. How do we get it back? Continuing to fund what is going on today with no accountability does not to me seem to be the best answer. I am open to all good faith answers – but the response from our big institutions like Harvard, our boards and our agencies is basically – “Shut up – it is our way or the highway.”

            Reply ↓
            1. flora

              Thanks much, IM Doc. This comment reminds me of my old family doc’s practice long ago.

              ” The review articles and case studies were detailed surveys of particular medical problems. There were pages of book reviews of textbooks and literary “medicine” books. With a few exceptions, there was very little if any politics.’

              Indeed, politics was nothing in my old doc’s practice. Politics was nothing. Everyone who needed care was given care. To heck with politics. This was a long time ago. My old family doc was a WWI , (yes, WWI), survivor and medico. Politics was unheard of in my old family doc’s thing. No politics. Politics was unimportant, irrelevant, and nonsensical.

              Reply ↓
              1. skippy

                Indeed flora …

                My Grandfather was a WWII air force trauma surgeon that relocated out of “the Chicago elite suburb”, after losing wife to MS and remarried a German heritage Lutheran [he was Jewish] to outside Phoenix, AZ in the 60s.

                He was a pillar of the community, on call trauma surgeon, gave free time to the community, well known through out the state, a Mason, all inclusive regardless of ethnicity or religion, Bashas’ were good family friends, Goldwater, the whole lot, including the crazy mob back in Chicago.

                This is juxtaposed by my time with my grandparents farm from Wapello, Iowa. and then Leslie, Missouri. Still remember the coon hunter decals on the back of pick ups with gun racks in the back window, V8 death machines, 6 odd HS age road deaths post cabin fever in spring, it goes on and on and on …

                Yet again I reference aforementioned book below which outlines the shift/s and the agency which has changed said society from then to now. Sometimes I reflect on all the old boys/ladies I have had the grace to know, over all my years, and watch them depart and with it there collective life experiences lost forever. Only to be replaced by the next gen of ideologically charged/indoctrinated cohort. It was the one thing with my kids that I was very admit about, even to my ex BPD wife’s protests. I wanted my kids to know early and be able to see through/navigate the social effects of neoliberalism and get on with life.

                Reply ↓
            2. skippy

              IM Doc … your umbrage at Ivy Uni’s, let alone any is miss placed.

              The entire Tertiary education system was overhauled decades ago thanks to neoliberalism, 60%/40% instate/out of state flipped. Classic case was CU Boulder where a once great state Uni was turned into a lifestyle resort for wealthy kids from out of state. I watched afar from Manhattan Bch, Calif in the 80s on ski trips and then my move to Boulder in the late 80s until 95 and my move to Oz.

              Rather than being a system of Ed for state kids with a influx of out of state bright minds it became a designation resort with a side of some good Dept, yet its all based on the Uni bringing in the money from investors/students as a first line item. Classic case back in the day was someone with a GPA of 3.2 out state beating out a 3.8 GPA instate student just based on money late in admissions as the ratios got close. I knew lots of Dept heads back then, even here in Oz I’ve known many including an old NC commenter that was in admissions at a top Sydney Uni at the time. He piped up here and I had private talks with him at the time, he saw the writing on the wall too.

              All this then reflects on your points about NEJM et al, all of which has been unpacked here on NC with a fine tooth deconstruction. Same reasons rating agencies failed so badly in the run up to the GFC = incentives mate.

              The other thing – is – how this has effected the entire communities surrounding Uni’s. In Boulders case the influx of money by rich out of state students was amazing. First year students parents would come along and see all the old rental homes and think wow I could buy that and then the kid would have a free place to live and then rent the rest out. Totally redlined so many in state non rich students and then to make the RE more attractive, to monied out of state students they did massive renos. It was MAD. RE prices just went through the roof, as did everything else, so much so that people that lived and worked in Boulder, for whatever reasons and renting were forced out to the next county.

              Again your umbrage is about the results baked in decades ago, via an Ideological agenda about social optimal organization – in some peoples minds. I have proffered more than once and has been presented on NC many times – Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science
              Philip Mirowski

              “This trenchant study analyzes the rise and decline in the quality and format of science in America since World War II.

              During the Cold War, the U.S. government amply funded basic research in science and medicine. Starting in the 1980s, however, this support began to decline and for-profit corporations became the largest funders of research. Philip Mirowski argues that a powerful neoliberal ideology promoted a radically different view of knowledge and discovery: the fruits of scientific investigation are not a public good that should be freely available to all, but are commodities that could be monetized.

              Consequently, patent and intellectual property laws were greatly strengthened, universities demanded patents on the discoveries of their faculty, information sharing among researchers was impeded, and the line between universities and corporations began to blur. At the same time, corporations shed their in-house research laboratories, contracting with independent firms both in the States and abroad to supply new products. Among such firms were AT&T and IBM, whose outstanding research laboratories during much of the twentieth century produced Nobel Prize–winning work in chemistry and physics, ranging from the transistor to superconductivity.

              Science-Mart offers a provocative, learned, and timely critique, of interest to anyone concerned that American science―once the envy of the world―must be more than just another way to make money.”

              I watched all happen IM Doc as I had the optics, even back then, discern what was going on and had contact with others to vindicate my observations. This is why I abandoned C-Corps and that entire life and came to Oz in the 90s. Just to keep ahead of the neoliberal wave consuming the world at the time. Cost me millions in lost income, total restart, 4 kids with a BPD wife, her stroke, divorce, restart all over again, at 63 just worked a month without a day off to help my mates [Canadian born] business and how it supports his wife and three kids [Wife is Japanese birth, Mensa but makes and sells homemade jewelry, 1st girl is in top Brisbane gifted school, 2nd girl is same but in music, son is still primary], and on top of all this I am dating a 39 year old half Chinese/German lass in Sydney – we just click.

              Her job is to format/edit/proof a private Uni text books in goggle docs format which are outsourced to individuals – which seem like AI just cobble together stuff off the web and submit it. So she is seeing the devolution in real time mate, drives her around the twist but its a job and as she has Crohn’s the WFH aspect is key.

              Phew sorry for all that mate, but, please check out the book, your umbrage should be at the rank ideology, those that funded it, supported it, and not anything else.

              Reply ↓
            3. Yves Smith Post author

              So you are telling me all the advances on the Harvard Med School site since 2005, save perhaps its role in the J&J Covid vaccine, were useless?

              https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/history-hms/timeline-discovery

              And regarding the Massachusetts Medical Society, it does not just sponsor the NEJM, it owns it.

              With 24,000 members, the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) is the Commonwealth’s largest physician-led organization and a leading voice in health care policy, public health, and clinical medical education.

              https://www.massmed.org/

              If you look at the site, it has corporate and other sponsorship program, as well as member dues, as sources of funds. Harvard is not a funder.

              Its editorial board from all over the world:

              Editorial Board

              Salim S. Abdool Karim, F.R.S., Durban and New York, David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., Boston, Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., Boston, Michele K. Evans, M.D., Bethesda, Sandy Feng, M.D., Ph.D., San Francisco, Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., San Francisco, Isaac S. Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., Boston, Thomas H. Lee, M.D., Boston, Joseph Loscalzo, M.D., Ph.D., Boston, John McMurray, M.D., Glasgow, Vlado Perkovic, M.B., B.S, Ph.D., Sydney, Sonja A. Rasmussen, M.D., Baltimore, Laura E. Riley, M.D, New York, Richard L. Schilsky, M.D., Chicago

              So whatever bias you depict it as having, that bias is endorsed by physicians from all over the world.

              Moreover, it does not appear that the NEJM has much of a Harvard publication bias. This is admittedly from 2017 but I can’t imagine it could have changed much:

              Recently, in the four top journals of humanities, an institutional bias towards publication of authors from Harvard and Yale was shown. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is today the highest ranked general medical journal. It is unknown if there exists institutional bias favoring publication of articles originating from Harvard University, since the NEJM is produced by the Massachusetts Medical Society with close connections to the Harvard University. We examined if studies originating from the Harvard University published in the NEJM were noninferior in terms of citation rates compared to articles with an origin outside Harvard University. We evaluated original research articles published in the NEJM in 2000 up until June 2001. A two-sample noninferiority test based on the primary endpoint of citations was performed. Twenty-two studies were affiliated to the Harvard University and 280 studies were not affiliated to the Harvard University. The mean number of citations for Harvard affiliated studies was 625 (95% CI 358–952, median 354) and for non–Harvard affiliated studies 493 (95% CI 421–569, median 303).

              https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5838120/

              So fewer than 10% of the studies were out of Harvard and they got a higher rate of citations, indicating their inclusion in the NEJM was warranted.

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          2. converger

            “It would have made quite the statement if the Harvard leaders would have said – we will fight you on the other aspects of the letter you sent us – but the anti-Semitism – will be addressed right away.”

            That was, in fact, the exact thing that the President of Harvard initially said in response to Trump’s attacks. Like the white-shoe law firms that foolishly took Trump at his word, it took a while for Harvard to understand that all of this has nothing to do with Trump’s twisted interpretation of anti-semitism (BTW, did I mention that Palestinians are also Semites?).

            Reply ↓
          3. Doubt

            Who knows whether and to what extent any of those anecdotes are true or even representative? No one can assess that beyond your say-so, and I’m inclined to doubt both without better evidence to the contrary.

            Regardless, the political intent of the “anti-Semitism” campaign has been clear enough, and it’s hard to understand how or why anyone who saw the “anti-Semitism” campaign against Corbyn thinks this is a serious attempt to address anti-Semitism anywhere.

            If it is serious, why is Elon Musk in Trump’s orbit at all? He has links to historically anti-Semitic far-right parties, and he has himself promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories suggesting Jews are trying to flood the US with immigrants. He was also willing to promote a white nationalist diatribe about “Jewish communities” pushing “dialectical hatred against whites,” in an obvious echo of the classic “Judeo-Bolshevism” conspiracy. Why believe this campaign has anything to do with anti-Semitism when having demonstrably anti-Semitic beliefs poses no barrier to a high level position in the Trump administration?

            Reply ↓
          4. Basil Pesto

            Has this been reported anywhere? A brief search just now turned up nothing. An apparent trend of Ivy League medical students refusing to treat Jews would be major news, and it is virtually inconceivable in the current media/propaganda environment that the likes of the NYT, The Free Press etc. wouldn’t report on a phenomenon like this to bolster their position that unalloyed anti-semitism is rife.

            Reply ↓
            1. Arkady Bogdanov

              I have a great deal of respect for Doc when he posts on medical-related issues, as I have been able to confirm many things he says, and I can often see the logic or the effects of the things he discusses with my own eyes. I have a great deal of respect for him when it comes to that subject. However, whenever he discusses politics, I cannot help but notice the distinct impression of reactionary anger.
              Many people see the nasty things that liberals (and conservatives, in other cases) do, and they then throw out the baby with the bath water as a result. DEI/Wokeism/Trans rights/anti-Semitism/etc were all initially based on for-real issues that needed to be addressed, but partisan liberals being who they are, corrupted these issues to serve their own ends and also to drive the “strategy of tension” aka divide and rule strategy to keep this society on a slow boil in order to distract from their accelerating push toward neo-feudalism, and partisan conservatives are happy to oblige in their push for the same ends and take what were initially, valid criticisms of how liberals twisted the original intents of the people and groups that first brought these issues to the fore, and attack the valid stuff right along with the corrupted stuff. It is reactionary outrage on both sides. It has become very clear that traditional corporate, as well as “alternative” media, right along with political elites, has nailed down their ability to create outrage in order to inculcate loyalty among their adherents, and man oh man are all of those adherents angry- even if they cannot properly articulate that anger, and are unable to properly argue with people that are able to pick apart and untangle these issues. The reactionaries will put themselves right back in front of that media to get their hit of fulfilling outrage.
              Am I angry- you bet. I get more angry by the day, but it is important to me that I find the correct targets for that anger. It’s hard work to follow the evidence to those correct targets. For many others, it is much easier to turn on the propaganda screen, and to simply let someone else tell them who to be angry at, and those targets are specifically formulated to keep people from going after those that are the true problems. Immigrants, Black people, trans people, anti-Zionists, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and Muslims are most definitely not the enemy- they are the victims of the enemy- right along with the rest of us- many who have been tricked into attacking a false enemy.

              Reply ↓
        3. converger

          And, any undergrad who gets accepted into Harvard who is from a family making less than ~$200k per year gets free tuition, straight-up – no loans, no government grants – and a full ride if they are from a family making less than $100k per year.

          Reply ↓
          1. IM Doc

            Good on them. I am glad to hear it. I guess Harvard can do that with their 50 billion dollar endowment. The small non-public liberal arts colleges in our neck of the woods and where I grew up have no such luck. They are literally struggling to survive especially the ones back home. One of them just closed. Putting all kinds of minority underprivileged students out on the street. It actually had a very large nursing school. I wonder if the million dollar salaries of the upper executives and foundation executives at Harvard for just one year would have been enough to cover that school so they would not close. I get a little depressed when I read that a plagiarist like their former President is still rolling in 1 million a year. It makes me wonder what all else is going on.

            Reply ↓
        4. Alice X

          The conflation of Zionism with Judaism is a subversive proposition. The purpose is to conflate the antithesis.

          Reply ↓
          1. Alice X

            Edit window closed so:

            Being anti-Zionism, and thus in opposition to its productions (apartheid, genocide of Arabs) is in no way being anti-Judaism, i.e. being opposed to Judaism’s exponents or those who identify with it ethnically.

            Conflating the two produces a corrosive moral dilemma placed on us by the Zionists. Widely corrosive.

            Most sadly, it could actually serve the real anti-semites.

            Who am I? Just an old girl with some diverse friends ethnically who are ashamed of the whole business.

            Reply ↓
          2. IM Doc

            That is exactly what I try to do. Zionism does not equal Judaism.

            The other aspect of the lecture that I grievously omitted above was from my own personal background. On one side of one side of the family are intense fundamentalist Christians. This theology is heretical to the other side of the family. But in particular their prosperity teaching and their end times eschatology are completely anathema to centuries of Christian thought and teaching. I feel very prepared to discuss this with these kids – it was taught to me from the time I could talk. Again, it is the very antithesis of traditional Orthodox Christian teaching. In my opinion, this religious backdrop in the USA especially the South has infected enough of our congress to really make a difference. And it is actually quite scary. They are all in on Israel – not because they give a crap about Israel, indeed only 144,000 Jews will be left standing in their worldview. Their insistence on Israel support is literally to bring on the end of time. I wish it was not true but it is. And the thing that is important in the context of this discussion, the vast majority of average Jewish people have nothing to do with this and are just bewildered. Trump’s appointment of a person like Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel made me heartsick. Trust me, I know how he thinks. But as I tell the students constantly – this aspect of the issue has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism. But it plays probably the biggest role in the American stance on Israel.

            And then I look at these students in the eye – and tell them their behavior in regards to these patients and how they are conducting themselves is really not helping. Real change is going to have to come from trusted people who know the truth and can explain it to their own people or groups. Jewish people who are anti-genocide are perfectly placed to do this. As am I. I spend much time on Facebook where just my family and close friends are involved – explaining the ins and outs of this heretical thinking – but doing so as a peer and with kindness. Over and over again. But I think over the years I have made a difference in at least some of them.

            It is the only way I know that any of this will get better.

            Reply ↓
      2. JP

        Wow, a second pejorative blanket use of the term PMC in comments this morning, You are obviously a member of the PMC, sometimes used to describe anyone with a sheepskin. Oh the horrors of higher education.

        I accidentally read a screed by Johnathan Turley this morning decrying the lack of qualified flat earthers among the Harvard faculty and student body. We need more ignorance at the university level. I mean we need more right leaning diversity. Did Turley say that? The important point to remember here is the original definition of PMC was an academic telling a labor leader how he should think. Maybe a better term then PMC would be ETA, elite thinking asshole.

        The reason I figured, 30 years ago, the Chinese were going to control the future is because they were educating their people. Now the question is whether an educated person is more or less likely to carry prejudicial reasoning then vermin, I mean flyover labor. Less likely to carry prejudicial reasoning could be characterized as liberal thinking. This objectionable trait is rampant on university campuses. Graduating PMC and funding universal health care is not a zero sum game. And please, it’s deplorables not vermin

        Reply ↓
  11. Alt Delete

    Speaking of Palantir, was quite shocking as a non US person to discover that James Carville does consulting work with Palantir. Makes sense I guess why his advice for Democrats a few weeks back was to “just play dead”.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mikel

      Palantir Founder: ‘They need to wake up scared and go to bed scared’- Thomas Neuburger

      So that’s the language and ideology Karp thinks is necessary to procure and to keep MIC contracts?
      Yes, it’s disturbing.
      It would be interesting to compare his speech to other speakers at the Reagan National Security Forum in 2024.

      Reply ↓
  12. Wukchumni

    You walk into the room with your laptop in your hand
    You see something on Naked Cap and you say, “What now!?”
    You try so hard but you don’t understand
    Just what you will say to tickle funny bones
    Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones*?

    You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
    And somebody points to Trump and says, “It’s his”
    And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
    And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
    But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    You suppress the urge to vomit and you go watch the geek
    Who immediately goes into Trump trance speak
    And says, “How wondrous it feels to be such a tariff freak!”
    And you say, “Impossible!” as he hands you inflation at home
    And something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    You have many contacts among the jacks of all tirades
    To get you facts when the mainstream media relies on imagination
    But nobody has any respect for the fourth estate anyway
    They already expect you not to believe them
    Or any other old school news organizations

    Ah, you’ve been with the economists and their dismal scientist looks
    With great joy you have discussed bankers and Wall*Street crooks
    You’ve been through all of their cooked books
    You’re very well-read, it’s well-known
    But something is happening here and you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    Well, the dog killer, she comes up to the border and then she kneels
    She crosses herself and then she clicks her high heels
    And without further notice, she asks you how it feels
    And she says, “Here is your country back, thanks to the DHS”
    And you know something is happening but you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    Now, you see this tall midget shouting the words “Fire Powell Now”
    And you say, “For what reason?” and he says, “How”
    And you say, “What does this mean?” and he screams back, “Don’t have a cow!
    Give me some low interest rates or else Jay goes home”
    And you know something’s happening but you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    Well, you log onto the blog after you wake up, and then you frown
    You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
    There ought to not be a law against the truth comin’ around
    You should not be made to wear a blindfold
    ‘Cause something is happening and you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Generation Jones?

    Ballad of a Thin Man, by Bob Dylan

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we37yX3zpKA

    * a nickname for those born from 1958-64, Baby Boomers in theory-but not really

    Reply ↓
    1. Patrick Lynch

      Thank you for the Generation Jones reference as I was born in that date range. Got none of the stereotypical benefits of being a boomer and was probably more of a canary in a coal mine in the Reagan years when it was becoming apparent we were not going to do as well as our parents did, and even they felt the impact of things turning to crap in the 1970’s.

      Your song parody is spot on with a great many of the people I went to college with in the early 80’s. What you said about their belief in the mainstream media is all too accurate. I wish every one of them would read Naked Capitalism. Can’t get any of them to.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni

        My over the hill ski group are reliable mainstream news watching lefties, and when I unloaded on Kamala last month, perhaps being a little harsh in terming her a total pile…

        They went on the offensive and practically yelled that the USA was not ready for a woman President being merely the reason for the loss, how dare I say such things!?

        Reply ↓
        1. The Rev Kev

          Shoulda asked your mates if they would have felt OK with Kamala having personal control over their life savings & financial affairs. (crickets)

          Reply ↓
    2. ChrisFromGA

      Bravo! That’s got some serious spirit. I really like this couplet:

      Well, the dog killer, she comes up to the border and then she kneels
      She crosses herself and then she clicks her high heels

      Seeing Noem in her pancake makeup and $50k Rolex makes me think she wears Christian Louboutins.
      That would make her quite the high-society wannabe.

      Reply ↓
  14. The Rev Kev

    “Regrets: Actors who sold AI avatars stuck in Black Mirror-esque dystopia”

    Why would those AI corporations bother with real actors? Can’t they just make up a face and voice if they are so great? Or maybe just grab an image from a 19th century photograph and colour it to make it look real so you don’t have to bother with real actors and contracts and all that comes with it. Here is just a small example of somebody animating 19th century photographs as an example-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=019Kyex2qls (1:47 mins)

    Reply ↓
    1. Matthew

      They can, but it improves the quality of the simulation to be able to feed in training material including as diverse a collection of movements and angles etc. as possible.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        That’s the easy part and they have been doing something similar in movies for years. Have an actor in a total suit of green including the head train that AI on body movements and plaster that face on that actor in processing. In that 1993 film “Jurassic Park” in one scene, you had that young girl hang onto an open hatch with Raptors below her before she swung herself up. Well that was actually a female gymnast doing that stunt and when she looked up, they plastered on the face of the young actress playing that young girl. And that was with technology from 32 years ago.

        Reply ↓
  15. NotTimothyGeithner

    Carville is trash. Why any Democrat other than the most fervent Mother (Hillary) devotees tolerate him is baffling. He was feeding his wife, a Bush operative, details of the Kerry campaign. It was probably to clear the road for Mother in 2008.

    Reply ↓
  16. Eclair

    RE: today’s links being ‘heavy on videos.’ Yes! With my blue-tooth enabled headphones, these encourage me to do extensive spring cleaning! How else would the back recesses of the fridge get wiped down?

    Reply ↓
        1. vao

          If it’s green and glows in the dark, it’s physics.
          If it’s green and moves around, it’s biology.

          There were a couple others that I no longer remember.

          Reply ↓
          1. flora

            Ha! So far none of the ‘science experiments’ in the back of my fridge have moved around without my moving them. So far as I know… / ;)

            Reply ↓
    3. Alice X

      Oh boy, every time I look at my fridge I pledge to pull it out and clean the rear. So far no kinetics.

      First world problems.

      Reply ↓
  17. The Rev Kev

    “Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds”

    So let me get this straight. They purposely put in lead-contaminated ingredients into toothpaste and maybe lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic as well. Gimme a minute to try to work out why somebody thought that this would be a good idea-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73tGe3JE5IU (32 secs)

    Nope, got nothing. They have know since at least Roman times that lead will seriously screw over your health and yet they went out of their way to add it to toothpaste, including for children. You begin to wonder if those toothpaste manufacturers got contracts to dispose of toxic chemicals from factories and so are slipping it into their toothpaste as a way of disposing of it while making a profit.

    Reply ↓
    1. flora

      I may switch to plain old baking soda for a toothpaste.

      In other news you can use:
      Those biosolids in ‘organic’ home lawn and garden fertilizers you can buy in big bags in the big box stores? PFAS, heavy metals and other contaminates. From the AP:

      Chemicals in sewage sludge fertilizer pose cancer risk, EPA says

      https://apnews.com/article/sewage-sludge-pasture-farms-milk-beef-harmful-cancer-epa-42e084b6a41852fdafd199d355c7a890

      and from the Sierra Club via Archive:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20250323205216/https://www.sierraclub.org/sludge-garden-toxic-pfas-home-fertilizers-made-sewage-sludge

      Reply ↓
      1. heresey101

        My dad used baking soda for his teeth all his life. When he had a heart attack at 81, his teeth were in great shape.

        Reply ↓
    2. Es s Ce Tera

      I think this is a combination of people using “natural” raw ingredients not realizing that the whole world is contaminated, but probably especially the US.

      Lead is common in urban soil, period. A school near my old neighbourhood discovered the ground was heavily contaminated with lead and, on investigation, the reason was it was previously on the grounds of a coal collection and distribution point, then with the onset of automobiles it became a dumping ground for used oil. Decades passed, the land history forgotten, then someone in 1911 decided this long vacant plot of land would be perfect for building a school.

      So if someone is using clay for their “natural” toothpaste, they may not realize that clay has a history. Just as the folks who built the school didn’t realize what the land was previously used for, or they may have thought enough time had passed.

      Even in your seemingly organic chemical-free garden, if you don’t know where your earth came from, lead in particular can show up in lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets. The arsenic will be coming from anywhere where there is pressure treated wood or where arsenic pesticides were previously used (which at one point was pretty much everywhere) and that’ll be absorbed by your leafy greens and root veg. Cadmium is industrial pollution, and America was once industrial, right? It was also used in fertilizer. That’ll be absorbed by leafy greens, potatoes, sunflower seeds. And even if you know your soil history, are certified organic, your beautiful California organic lettuce farm is probably picking up perchlorate from NASA rocket activity.

      Reply ↓
      1. IM Doc

        “The whole world is contaminated, but probably especially the U.S.”

        I have repeatedly talked about growing food and raising chickens etc. It takes a lot out of me. A lot of work. I live in the middle of nowhere. An area that was once dairy farms, back in the day when the cows ate the grass off the land. When “hay season” was very important. There are still several dairy and grass fed beef ranches and farms all around, but not anything like what it was at one time.

        My house and farm area is built right on top of one of these old farms. When I first started working the land and even up until today, there is a particularly noxious weed that I have found literally impossible to really take care of. It will take over a bed in a day. I have learned from the old-timers around that this is a plant that was wildly used several years ago by the farmers around here. Genetically modified to be completely resistant to Roundup – and also modified to be ever more productive of grass blades for the cows to eat. It was planted all around in the alfalfa and hay – and unlike many of the other weeds was impervious to the constant Round Up spraying. The alfalfa and hay are long gone. But this thing is alive and well and appears to be evolving. It is constant unending effort to keep it from choking out all the other plants that we use for food. This plant in and of itself is a full time job.

        What am I trying to say? – If there ever is a national emergency – and we do not have the industrial farms and chemicals, etc – because of the very dubious practices of the past years of Big Farm – we the people are going to have a MUCH harder job of local food production than our elders ever did. There are time bombs everywhere that go off long after the original farming use of the land is over. I hope the Wonder Bread and Quarter Pounders were worth it. It was fun for awhile, was it not?

        Reply ↓
        1. Wukchumni

          I’m fortunate that i’m on the front porch of the back of beyond, and Sequoia NP being made the 2nd NP in 1890, means no industry ever made inroads other than sheep herders in the decades prior to it being a NP, and nothing since.

          That said, they use an awful lot of chemical applications on crops in the Central Valley, I know because aside from lawyers looking to win themselves some of your settlement money, its one of the commonest billboards you’ll see.

          Even though i’m 25 miles away from the nearest set of stop lights and the citrus belt, it isn’t as if them there chemicals don’t float my way and into the soil.

          The only ‘commercial’ Ag operations in Sequoia NP were Mexican drug cartels growing marijuana, first discovered in 2001 in Mineral King, and pretty much stopped by 2010. Legalization was the final straw, in that it demonstrably lowered the price per ounce so much that said cartels would never bother again.

          Around 2007 we were taking a hike on the Ladybug trail to the Cedar creek grove of Giant Sequoias, and driving there its a dirt road for about 4 miles and as we were driving down, a Visalia taxi with a couple of dolled up Hispanic women was going up, and most things needed for the 5 or 6 chancy gardeners was delivered in the wee hours, but this one was more like a 3 pm delivery of what I assumed to be ladies of the afternoon, yikes!

          A friend working for NPS was part of the clean-up crew of busted gardens, and he related that in one there was a stack 4 feet high of empty 48 egg cardboard, he reckoned around 7,000 eggs had been consumed by the campesinos, and keep in mind these gardens were always way off trail, and somebody had to deliver them, so as not to be seen by a hiker.

          They had huevos, that cartel.

          Reply ↓
        1. Es s Ce Tera

          1911, not a typo. Amazing to think the ground was already contaminated in 1911. And it was discovered to be contaminated around 2019 or so when they wanted to expand the playing field. That’s quite a few generations of kids.

          Reply ↓
    3. Stev_Rev

      The lead comes from the precipitated silica that is used as an abrasive and as a thickener. The silica, along with the lead and any other metals it may contain, will pass through you undigested. The test the authors use (XRF) is not the correct test to determine toxicity. TCLP (toxicity characteristic leaching procedure) is more appropriate.

      Reply ↓
  18. Neutrino

    Toothpaste contaminated? Who coulda knowed that in this time of cost cutting and prevarication?
    Dentists have told me that the act of brushing, and flossing, is more important than the choice of toothpaste, which seems to imply that the products are generally safe. Now that they aren’t, what to do?
    A regimen of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide may be the way to go, unless the baking soda is also contaminated. :(

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      Bad toothpaste isn’t a new thing…

      Chen Yaozu, general manager of Danyang Chengshi Household Chemical Co., said his firm had exported toothpaste to Panama containing diethylene glycol, a chemical blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in the Central American country after it was mixed into cough syrup.

      Chen said the chemical, a thickening agent often used as a low-cost substitute for glycerin, was permitted under Chinese rules and was safe in small amounts.

      “I can say I am very confident about our product’s quality,” Chen said in a telephone interview from his company’s headquarters in the eastern province of Jiangsu. He said company managers were cooperating with investigators.

      https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2007/05/22/china-investigating-exported-toothpaste-with/23861916007/

      Reply ↓
    3. Old Jake

      My dentists (an office full in a practice) reacted with horror when I told them that I was often using baking soda as a dentifrice. They say it is considerably more abrasive than tooth paste, and should be avoided. Then my wife came up with a notice that her preferred brand is contaminated with pfas. What are we to do? Spit.

      Reply ↓
  20. Es s Ce Tera

    re: Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard New York Times (Jason Boxman)

    Just checked the letter and, simply, wow. This is one of the demands:

    Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall
    commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its
    competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for
    viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually
    viewpoint diverse. This audit shall begin no later than the summer of 2025 and shall proceed
    on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as
    appropriate. The report of the external party shall be submitted to University leadership and
    preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and
    hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests. Every department or field found to
    lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within
    that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to
    lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will
    provide viewpoint diversity. If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant
    department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant
    teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints,
    hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the
    closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint
    diversity. This audit shall be performed and the same steps taken to establish viewpoint
    diversity every year during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall
    be at least until the end of 2028.

    So if, for example, the geology department is found to hold too close to the viewpoint that evolution is true, it must proceed to hire or enroll those of the opposite viewpoint, or something? Likewise, if anyone thinks the Civil Rights Act was a good thing, or that slavery was bad, or that women should have the vote, or that Hitler and concentration camps and gas chambers were bad, they must find admit folks who take the opposite view?

    This seems written by people who have no higher education background.

    Reply ↓
  21. judy2shoes

    Re: Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See

    Amazing bit of serendipity for me this morning as I saw first the article on apes crossing the language barrier and then the article I referenced above. I say serendipity because I just finished rereading Ishmael in the middle of the night when I couldn’t get back to sleep.

    Thank you, Yves, for both of these articles.

    Reply ↓
    1. judy2shoes

      Adding, it was more than a bit of surprise to find Donald Trump being mentioned in Ishmael towards the end of the book. Trump wasn’t on my radar during my first read years ago.

      Reply ↓
  22. Camelotkidd

    The decks of playing cards with the oligarchs information on them is a sign of the times, and not a good one.
    “Justin Caffier classifies his “America’s Most Powerful” cards as an art project. It’s a parody of the infamous playing card decks that the US military once handed out to soldiers in Iraq to help them identify top members of Saddam Hussein’s government during the war for capture and/or assassination.
    When I think about Mangione, and Ethel Cain’s #KillMoreCEOs posts, and Caffier’s America’s Most Powerful deck, I can’t help thinking of the work of Stanford historian Walter Scheidel, and his 2017 book The Great Leveler. The volume is a lengthy and in-depth examination of how extreme inequality has been “resolved” throughout history. Disturbingly, Scheidel found that so far the only thing that has undone such inequality—the only great leveler, so to speak—is violence. Plague, war, or violent revolutions. “It is almost universally true,” Scheidel writes, “that violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth at any point in time.”
    Our flight into terrain accelerates and the ground is coming up fast

    Reply ↓
  24. Mikel

    Trump Is Changing the Rules in the Middle East, Netanyahu Is Left to Watch From the Stands- Haaretz

    A one-sided nuke deal isn’t exactly “changing the rules”.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      This seems to be a new Johnson/Crooke video and I found it a lot more inside baseball than Crooke’s talks with Judge Nap–particularly from the 20 minute mark on.

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

      A couple of key takeaways would be that during the previous Israeli attack on Iran the F35s were painted by Iranian radar when still well over the horizon and they then called the attack off. Also that while Crooke has been told that while Russia would not intervene militarily that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t get involved if things get “messy.”

      So perhaps the real question is what happens if the B2s go in and fail or are shot down and it all turns into a choppers in the desert fiasco? Johnson says inside friends tell him that Trump is emotional and “not a chess player” (poker is his claimed game). But surely even chess newbies can think one move ahead. Right?…..

      Reply ↓
  26. Tom Stone

    I spent a few minutes this morning thinking about America’s incomparable Military and the tasks it is being assigned.
    At present there are 175,000 active members of the Marines and Army with a tail to tooth ratio of 9:1.
    So, 17,500 combat troops.
    If 1,000,000 reservists and National Guard are activated (Where will the boots come from, China?) that gives a total of 117,500 combat troops, since the brits will be all in on this add another 3,000 for a total of 120,500.
    With these troops the USA plans to bring China to its knees, conquer Greenland, Canada and Mexico and likely Venezuela as well.
    Perhaps if I ingested the right mix of Ketamine, LSD and Airplane Glue …

    Reply ↓
  27. Jeremy Grimm

    A small composite of today’s links sketches a most uncomfortable picture of Imperial decline with several indications of now as the beginning of a turning point and an acceleration of that decline:
    “China’s CIPS cleared more cross-border payments than SWIFT…” [Imperial Collapse Watch, X ref]

    “…dollar just lost a round in the global currency war…” [“Strange sell-off in the dollar…]

    “Trade coming to a halt right in front of your eyes.” [links in Tariffs]

    “Strange sell-off in the dollar raises the specter of investors losing trust in the US under Trump”
    “This is the first step down a slippery slope where international confidence in the U.S. dollar is lost.”[Strange sell-off in the dollar]

    If this is part of some plan, what is its intent? I cannot fathom who in the u.s. benefits and how.

    Reply ↓
    1. Jeremy Grimm

      It took a world war destroying competitors to u.s. power and to the u.s. economy, and decades for the u.s. to recover from the Great Depression. I can see how someone with money and advanced warning could gain great wealth buying tangible assets at fire-sale prices. I do not see how those assets would regain their value following a second Great Depression. Most u.s. equities appear to me, as remarkably inflated in price. Most u.s. Corporations appear as hollow shells eroded through decades of bad management, or I believe, management more accurately described as self-serving parasites devouring the flesh of diminishing value still nestled in the Corporate shells. Land has intrinsic value, but u.s. oil will play out in a perhaps a decade, most mines are played out or closed down, and the u.s. retail markets and wholesale markets are weak and diminishing right now as trade declines. Consumers are skint or skinned, and scared. Do the u.s. oligarchs really believe the u.s. will rise from its ashes like a Phoenix? Do they truly savor the possibility of ruling over a wasteland?

      Sometimes the u.s. after the present looming decline by design is suggested might mimic Russia under Yeltsin. Some Russian oligarchs grew very rich and the u.s. and Europe wallowed in the plunder. Do the u.s. oligarchs really truly believe the Chinese, the likely winners following the immolation of the u.s. will treat them any more kindly than will the angry u.s. Populace?

      Ignoring the many contradictions and ditherings within the supposed ‘plan’ — its consequences promise a black and bitter harvest. Nestled between the soon transition to a new climate and peak of resources, the u.s. self-destruction will most direly situate our children and grandchildren. As for our u.s. oligarchs … I think they need to watch the scene in the “Dark Knight” where the Joker burns his pile of cash. They should look at the top of the pile of cash for the oligarch Batman dragged home from his tower in Hong Kong.

      Reply ↓
      1. Antifa

        The next big industrial wave in our country will be digging up all our landfills to extract all the minerals we’ve tossed out with the trash.

        “There’s gold in them landfills!”

        Reply ↓
  28. Bob Tetrault

    Thank you, Yves, for all the animal links and antidotes. Humanity’s accelerated decline, with attendant sound & fury, is so tiring that sheltering amongst my sweet and loving animal friends is the only refuge.

    Reply ↓
  29. SteveW

    About the CIPS volume and the associated editorial, the message and the display both clearly show transaction values (12.8 Trillion yuan in cross border transaction). That makes sense as SWIFT clears approximately $5 Trillion overall. I am not saying that the message is authentic, but it clearly refers to transaction value.

    Reply ↓
  30. petal

    Thank you for the misophonia article “The unbearable loudness of chewing”. It helped things make sense. I’ve had it for a long time, along with sensory sensitivity(esp sound). The misophonia rage is instant and overwhelming. Instant boil. Hard to explain. Reckon a gold standard study would follow the brain using imaging as the brain develops, say, over 2 or 3 decades, but it would be difficult to find young people, kids, who are in an abusive situation to participate and follow. This article helped me put the pieces together and maybe explain my situation, and even my father’s. My theory is it’s combination of both genetics and environment, perhaps a proneness that the environment then takes advantage of.

    Reply ↓
  31. Culp Creek Curmudgeon

    Facebook is not allowing me to post the Ian Proud piece Fateful errors: Why NATO leaders should have listened to George Kennan in 1997. It tells me “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited.” I’m pretty sure I’ve posted commentaries by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture before, so this seems new.

    Reply ↓
  32. Revenant

    I think the CarlZha “Boycott China” tweet is AI generated. The Make America Great Again wording has the usual AI artefacts in portraying text but also the hands look off….

    Reply ↓
      1. PlutoniumKun

        Zha is real, but he has a long history of posting obvious fake material. He did this repeatedly during the HK protests and blocked anyone who pointed this out in his posts.

        Reply ↓
    3. timo maas

      Yea. It says “AMIRICA”. And the “A” in MAKE is wrong. And the size of letters is inconsistent. And the background guy looks like painted (instead of blurry, aka. bokeh). It’s AI slop trough and trough.

      Reply ↓
  33. Kouros

    Moldovan Bishop:

    I have never seen sooo much hysteria on RT as about this issue. Probably six seven articles in succession about the matter. And most of the comentariat is absolutely uneducated on the history of R of Moldova, of Moldova as a historical entity, and of Romania, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, as the autochephalic Church of Orthodox Romanians (the vast majority of Romanians are Orthodox, some, in the western part are Greek-Catholics, a change done under the Habsburgs for socio-economic benefits).

    Ultimately, what is the strongest ideology on the planet? It is nationalism, and it has been for quite some time.

    70% of Moldovans in R of Moldova (which officially includes Transdnitria, where the majority of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in R of Moldova reside) are ethnic Romanians belonging to the broader Moldovan region. And if one wants to find out more, there is double the number of Moldovan Romanians in Moldova than in R of Moldova. If R of Moldova ever Re-unites with Romania, Moldovans will likely be the most numerous group.

    From a nationalist soverignity perspective, it makes no sense to have the faithfull «belonging» to Moscow when by language, history, culture, aspirations, way of faith, they should join their brothers and sisters accros River Prut. Stephen the Great, the God like figure in Moldovan history, who reigned for 47 years over the ENTIRETY of Moldova, built 47 churches and endowed many monasteries all over the place. And Iasi, as a cultural and administrative capital of Moldova has much more to offer Moldovans in R of Moldova than Moscow ever did or could in the future. Romanian Orthodox Church is autochephalic, that means there is nobody above it in matters of faith and spirit, and that they serve God in Romanian Language, with all its distinctivness.

    The religiosity of Romanian is greater than that of Russians (as % of believers), and Moldovans (the ones from Romania) are the most religious among Romanians.

    It is impressive to see all this histeria on RT about the incident, which shows in fact how invested is Moscow in keeping Romanians separated. But ultimately, this historical injustice will be redressed. And that Moscow ultimately has no problem using its influence through the church.

    I am also convinced that Moscow was quite happy that Calin Georgescu was not allowed to win the elections in Romania. And not only because it showed the corruption in Romania and Europe, but because Georgescu is such a nationalist that would have put much more resources for RE-Unification (3rd time).

    Reply ↓
      1. Kouros

        I consider myself a Romanian patriot and I don’t see that at the exclusion of other minorities in Romania. After all, I am 1/4 Hungarian by blood.

        Reply ↓
        1. user1234

          That’s what Ukrainians say for themselves. From the outside they look much different. I’ll leave it at that.

          Reply ↓
          1. Kouros

            Except that in Romania the rights of minorities are respected whereas in Ukraine they are not (see the Venice Convention report of 2019)

            Reply ↓
    2. The Rev Kev

      I noticed that the UN got involved right away but that the EU lay low. Stopping leaders of a religion doing their required duties by twice having the police hold them till their planes had left the ground? Must be more of those ‘European values’ that we keep on hearing about. The same ones that let Sandu become President of Moldova twice on some very dodgy elections. And didn’t Sandu have the regional leader of Gagauzia arrested recently because she did not like her? Obviously religious intolerance is wrong but as Moldova and the EU has shown-

      ‘It’s OK when we do it.’

      Reply ↓
      1. Kouros

        I am not on the principle that it is OK when we do it. However, Russia has mightily encouraged the “Transdnistrian” separatists (here I don’t give a rat’s ass for that territory, was never Romanian Moldovan but it became SSR Moldova in 1924 as a hook to claim Basarabia (R of Moldova) back, despite a national referendum at the end of 1917 to join Kingdom of Romania – but for the fact that Budjak, which is south or R of Moldova and was part of Basarabia/R of Moldova / Romania was given to Ukraine. So I rather see Transdnistria as compensation) since 1991 and kept insisting on creating problems and tensions there.

        Mr. Shor has defrauded (probably with some Moldovan politician help) some banks to the tune of 1 billion USD and found refuge in Russia, now going between Moscow and Tel Aviv. Money never recovered.

        The flock of ethnic Moldovan orthodox Christians in R of Moldova originally where sheperded from Iasi, in 1812. Moscow having the cheek to claim these sheep and that it is an infringment on their faith is bullshit. Orthodox Christians were mightily persecuted by the Soviets, but less so in Socialist Romania. Ceausescu burried his mother with 7 priests. The level of religiosity and the resurgence of religious spirit in Romania is far, far greater than in Russia and Ukraine.

        Having the flock loocking at Chisinau/Iasi/Bucharest for spiritual, religious counselling and guidance is not an infringment on the flock’s religious rights, but a rightful cockblocking of Moscow, which has cast its shadow on those people for far too long.

        It was only the Moldovans from SSR of Moldova that were gaslighted by the Soviets that they don’t speak Romanian and they are different… from their Moldovan brethren in Romania. No other SOviet Republic major ethnic group suffered this indingnity.

        As such, all this bruhahah and schicanery effectuated by Romanians to curtail Moscow’s influence in the project of national re-unification, spiritual and territorial is fair game. Russians have done far far worse to that people.

        But I would strenuously object to curtailing the rights of ethnic minorities like Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauzi, to not speak and use their language and be educated and have media in their language, etc. What Hungarians have in Romania, I would want these minorities to also have.

        Reply ↓
      2. Kouros

        I have replied but the message was not posted.

        ‘It’s OK when we do it.’

        No, I am not arguing for that and my point is not that.

        The Moldovan/Romanian flock put in the “care” of the Muscovy Patriarchate, was stolen in 1812. It was a steal, If Chisinau and Bucharest reclaim the flock to put it in the care of Romanian speaking priesthood, with religious and cultural sensibilities drawn from that place’s traditions, from Stephen the Great times and before, that it is fine by me.

        The faithfull Moldovan old lady or young will not be denied anything, it is just the change of the boss, who’s a rather local person, maybe educated in Iasi (the historical capital of the entire Moldova) and the monasteries around Suceava and not one that looks to Moscow and corresponds in Russian with his superiors (I have nothing against Russian language and such; heck, educated monks in Romania for sure lern old slavonic and read kirilic).

        This is not about religious tolerance and an intelligent and educated person like you, with a lot of breath and depth should understand that this is about control, that is taking the control on spiritual religious matters from the hands of Moscow and puting them back where they belong, to the autocephalic Romanian Orthodox Church, which provides for the spiritual needs of Romanians.

        If, among those Moldovans that are ethnic Russians or Ukrainians that insist to have their own priests speaking Russian and looking for guidance to Moscow, by all means, I have no problem with that.

        In Romania there are catholics and greek-catholics that look to Rome, and that is ok. If there were to be ethnic Russians and/or Ukrainian wanting/needing support to Moscow Patriarchy, by all means.

        Reply ↓
        1. The Rev Kev

          Seems to me that it should be the people of Moldova who should choose which church that they follow. But the Moldovan dictatorship is deliberately hindering that Moldovan Bishop from leaving the country to retrieve a Holy Fire from Jerusalem to bring back to his flock. That would be like the Italian government stopping the Pope from leaving the Vatican State to get to Rome’s airport and that’s why the UN is getting involved. Whatever happened in 1812 is irrelevant as all the people alive back then are long dead and it is the people alive today that have agency. You can’t tell them to choose to follow the Romanian Orthodox Church and not the one in Moscow and by the way, we are going to wreck your religious observances until you choose the ‘correct’ one. Look what happened in the Ukraine where a Ukrainian church was set up with lots of clandestine American help while they burned down those churches and harassed and arrested the priests. You don’t that that that could happen in Moldova under Sandu? You think that the EU would withhold membership if she did that? It is up to Orthodox believers in Moldova to choose which church they should follow and this sort of religious harassment is not the way to go about it. I can only guess that the idea is that if they get those Orthodox believers to switch to the Romanian one, then that would make it easier for Romania to annex Moldova down the track and you know as well as I that Sandu already has her Romanian passport ready to go. And by the way-

          ‘By contrast, the rival Metropolis of Bessarabia – a different Orthodox Christian church in Moldova, canonically under the Romanian Patriarchate – sent its own delegate, Bishop Filaret, on the same mission unmolested.’

          Reply ↓
          1. Kouros

            Yup, only the Metropolis of Bassarabia brought back the Holly Fire and likely shared with everyone… Chicanery, absolutely.

            For 70 years Moldovans were told that they don’t speak Romanian, really gaslighting there for generations and even recently Maria Zakharova, expert in Chinese affirmed this idea. So yeah, it is a cultural war going on here and from my part I think Moscow had its claws on that land and those people for far too long.

            And BTW, Sandu and other 50% of Moldovans have Romanian passport at this time. Grandmas from villages, not travelling anywhere don’t want/need/nor can easily get one due to logistics.

            If Moscow wants to retain spiritual control over the ethnic Russians and/or Ukrainians in Moldova, by all means. There is a mastery of assimilation in Romania… all carrots and no sticks.

            Reply ↓
              1. Kouros

                It was one way of distinguishing yourself from the invading muslem hords from the south and east and hypocritical grubby and haughty catholics from the west and north.

                And as soon as Russians showed up in the neighbourhood in early 1700, the alphabet was changed from kirilic to latin (400 years before that it was changed from Latin to Kirilic because of the grubby Hungarian and Polish Catholics…

                Reply ↓
            2. The Rev Kev

              My suspicious nature says that it would be better to be spiritually controlled by an church several hundred kilometers away rather than one right next door but that would just be me. :)

              Reply ↓
              1. Kouros

                Control is a too strong word used here. I have been at enough wedings, baptisms, funerals, and some religious masses and regular ones to realize that people’s individuality always comes first, and that as soon as they get out of the priest’s earshoot it is all fog removed by sunlight.

                It is just that religious meme is too deep in that part of the world, for too long being defined as christians/ortodox as opposed to the attaking Turkish hords or the doublefaced catholics that only want to steal your lands…

                Thus people are just religious touching on superstitious, and nationalism trumps it all. And this is why Moscow and RT are beyond hysterics on the issue now, because of the signs of entrenchment of Romanian nationalism via church there.

                Imagine services where there is no mixing of Russian and Romanian language and where here and there, discretely there is a red yellow blue without any distinguishing heraldry, and where, as the service demands, prayer for the health of countries high level officials is made, and includes Romanian counterparts, etc, etc, etc… The little things… It is these things that are scary for Moscow.

                I am simpathetic with the Russians and the present situation, but that sympathy ends very abruptly when they actually try to fuck with me and mine. And I don’t see a contradiction here.

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    1. Wukchumni

      I was in the beating heart of Godzone* and i’ll be charitable and claim they were a bakers dozen worth of protesters of solely the see me-dig me persuasion to be seen on Mooney Blvd in Visalia… we had twice that amount in Tiny Town. It ain’t the state’s red bastion for nothing, you know.

      * Caldwell Avenue is ground zero for Big Dogma

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  35. Henry Moon Pie

    I came across a Youtube video I’d never seen before and offer it here for your Saturday evening listening pleasure. It comes from 1992, and is a recording of Bonnie Raitt singing a duet with her Broadway musical star father, John Raitt at a Boston Pops concert. The song is Eric Kaz’s beautiful and heartbreaking “I’m Blowin’ Away:”

    I have searched this Earth and sailed these seas,
    but love is blind. It cannot find me.

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  37. Glen

    So for people that have “cut the cable” and are OTA for their TV fix. Here’s the latest and greatest on new TV tuners (the latest tuners, ATSC 3.0 have DRM encryption so OTA may not work all the time or at all):

    FCC Seeks Public Comment on ATSC 1.0 Shut Down – Take Action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp782nRIGDQ

    More here:

    The Team Behind NextGen ATSC 3.0 OTA TV Explains Why DRM is Needed For Free OTA TV
    https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0-ota-tv-explains-why-drm-is-needed-for-free-ota-tv/

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  38. skippy

    Just wanted to add on the currency issue that the political always proceeds the currency dramas, thus those that get the order wrong are unwittingly or not pushing a ideological barge. One that always ends in collapse of the aforementioned and then proclaim prophecy fulfilled … rim shot … rinse and repeat …

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