The Hole Story: How Woodpeckers Make Homes For The Rest Of The Forest All About Birds
Climate/Environment
Closed nuclear power plant in N.J. on ‘round-the-clock watch’ as nearby wildfire rages NJ.com
Pure chaos as the Jones Fire in New Jersey rips through neighborhoods. The fire was last estimated at 3,200 acres. This is insane Fire behavior for New Jersey, or just about anywhere.
Good luck to anyone in there trying to fight that thing. This is just crazy. pic.twitter.com/XEFpDmyzpJ
— The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) April 23, 2025
Microplastics: What’s trapping the emerging threat in our streams? Phys.org
Pandemics
New agreement geared toward universal avian flu vaccine CIDRAP
MN Republicans introduce vaccine criminalization bill drafted by Florida hypnotist News from the States
Bhattacharya Discovers the Beetle’s Dilemma Pandemic Accountability Index
Water
Everyone cheering Klaus Schwab’s exit from the @wef should be careful what they wish for.
His replacement is none other than Peter Brabeck-Letmathe — ex-Nestlé CEO, supporter of the 4th Industrial Revolution, food supply poisoner, and the guy who said water isn’t a human right. pic.twitter.com/kyXR3Jk5Bb
— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) April 22, 2025
India
India Expels Pakistani Military Attachés, Downgrades Ties, Pauses Indus Water Treaty The Wire
China?
NETIZENS CHASTISE CHINESE STATE MEDIA FOR “MOCKING YOUR OWN PEOPLE” IN TRADE WAR RESPONSES China Digital Times
“DIFFERENT ARMIES, SAME HOLE”: HANGZHOU JOBSEEKERS COMPARED WITH TERRACOTTA WARRIORS China Digital Times
BYD Workers Lead Mass Strikes to Challenge Wage Cuts and Broken Promises China Labour Bulletin
China’s manufacturers feel the tariff pinch Seatrade Maritime
China to allow overseas investors access to more sectors Business Times
Old Blighty
Let Ed Run It Doomberg. “The British steel industry’s final days devolve into a cynical game of blamestorming.”
Syraqistan
After meeting with “senior Republicans” at Mar-a-Lago, Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed.” pic.twitter.com/51QGqxu28I
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) April 23, 2025
Bombing plants, severing pipelines: Israel pushes Gaza water crisis to the brink +972 Magazine
Israel’s Exports of Violence Séamus Malekafzali
Trump to stop research funding to anyone who boycotts Israel The New Arab
***
Rubio says Iran can pursue civilian nuclear program if it abandons enrichment Anadolu Agency
What Air Defenses Do The Houthis In Yemen Actually Have? The War Zone
Africa
Africa’s membership to the World Trade Organization has been a disaster Grieve Chelwa
European Disunion
EU won’t decouple from China as condition for reaching trade deal with Trump Euronews. But it will continue “de-risking” instead, and Commission spokesperson refuses to say China is “off the table” in negotiations with the US.
European Parliament in ‘final stages’ of talks with China to remove sanctions on lawmakers South China Morning Post
Europe hits Meta, Apple with €700M in fines for flouting DMA The Register
***
Banning Alternative für Deutschland eugyppius: a plague chronicle
Populist BSW contests German election result after missing 5% hurdle DPA
Springs of war — on memory, repetition and resistance Maike Gosch
Tensions rise in Bosnia after reports of failed arrest attempt of Serb separatist leader AP
New Not-So-Cold War
Setback For U.S. ‘Ceasefire’ Deal In Ukraine Moon of Alabama
Russia’s Response To Trump’s “Peace” Ultimatum The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (video). “Meet Our Demands Or We’ll Take Them On The Battlefield.”
THE REAL TRUMP DEFAULT IS EUROPEAN WAR WITH RUSSIA SO THE US CAN ESCALATE WAR WITH CHINA – THE CASE OF THE ARMS SUPPLY LINE FROM RZESZOW TO KIEV Dances with Bears
Kremlin warns NATO of response to Finland build-up RT
Estonia Plans Military Base in Narva – Just Steps Away From Russia Kyiv Post
The US cavalry isn’t coming: How Europe moves its armies without American assistance Politico
“Liberation Day(s)”
White House Considers Slashing China Tariffs to De-escalate Trade War WSJ. Building on previous day’s reporting on Bessent’s comments at a private investor summit in Washington hosted by JPMorgan Chase.
China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling ‘unilateral’ tariffs CNBC
How Monopolies Could Exploit the Tariff Shock BIG by Matt Stoller
Beyond Tariffs: What the U.S. Can Learn from China’s Industrial Playbook RAND
Trump 2.0
Trump’s Latest Executive Orders Target Accreditation, Foreign Gifts Inside Higher Ed
Scoop: Musk vs. Bessent dispute erupted into West Wing shouting match Axios
DOGE
DOGE preps to shutter Millennium Challenge Corporation The Hill
Elon Musk Cuts Funding for Internet Archive Futurism
On Take Your Child to Work Day, DOGE-led GSA is hosting an AI workshop for kids of federal employees threatened with layoffs Blood in the Machine
MAHA
FDA pauses milk quality testing amid Health and Human Services cuts; lab transfer planned USA Today
RFK Jr.’s autism study to amass medical records of many Americans CBS News
Democrats en Déshabillé
How Democrats Changed Their Social Base to Defend Their Neoliberal Program Left Notes
Immigration
‘It is time for you to leave’: DHS mistakenly sends notices to U.S. citizens Los Angeles Times
SignalGate
Hegseth had Signal messaging app installed on an office computer WaPo
Hegseth orders makeup studio installed at Pentagon CBS News
Is a Military Coup Unfolding at the Pentagon? Ken Klippenstein
Police State Watch
None of This Is a Distraction Discourse Blog
Imperial Collapse Watch
Bearing Witness In The Age Of Atrocity ¡Do Not Panic!
The End? Aurelien, Trying to Understand the World
AI
California Bar Reveals It Used AI For Exam Questions, Because Of Course It Did Above the Law
Healthcare?
Study Links Economic Hardship and Family Trauma to Teen Mental Health Issues Mad in America
UnitedHealth Group’s $9.1 Billion First Quarter Wasn’t Enough to Keep Wall Street Happy HEALTH CARE un-covered
Eli Lilly Sues 4 GLP-1 Telehealth Startups, Escalating War on Knockoff Drugs Wired
What It’s Like Being a Nurse in New Orleans How Things Work
Antitrust
“A Lot of Emotion”: The Rocky Marriage of Instagram and Facebook Big Tech on Trial
Groves of Academe
Yale pro-Palestinian group stripped of status after protesters pitch tents to oppose appearance by Israeli security minister New Haven Register
Our Famously Free Press
Class Warfare
What happens after a homeless person is arrested for camping? Often, not much Cal Matters
The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants National Bureau of Economic Research
Put Your Butt in the Chair: Inside the Simple Alchemy of Making Art Lit Hub
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Days Of Double Cross
(melody borrowed from Good King Wenceslas by John Mason Neale, 1853, based on the Finnish song Tempus Adest Floridum from 1582)
Israel will lose this bout, their troops can’t break even
All their soldiers so burnt out, half of them are leaving
Those who stay are neophytes looking for street duels
Hamas shoots from out of sight knocking down these fools
In a tank or a Humvee, under random shelling
Hamas plants an IED—won’t buy what they’re selling
When it blows the heat’s intense, soldiers die dismounting
Each one pays for their offense, drones must do the counting
Same ground for the umpteenth time, blood flows like a river
Troops no longer in their prime simply can’t deliver
They burn children in their tents for it brings them pleasure
This world sees these mad events, and they take your measure
Genocide this world allows, Bibi’s list grows longer
No red lines or sacred cows, he wants to warmonger
Rapt to lust and greedy rage, nation dying slowly
Killing in a wild rampage on land they call holy
Scratch another Merkava—latest model minted
This war moves to Syria, renewed wars of vintage
Turks have planned and launched this war, with nobody’s blessing
Conquest done through force majeure primed for more aggressing
Re Hegseth make-up studio.
I’m guessing he is following examples of Trump and especially Vance ;)
Could it be that SecDef Pete is dating Noem?
China is promising not to put tariffs on eyeliner! LOL
He looked more like a tattoo-studio-at-Pentagon guy to me.
The fictional Ron Burgundy, now coming to a TV set near you. Stay Classy! I’m sure there are just a few cads running the halls of power in DoD that likely resemble the San Diego news team.
Hegseth to no one in particular, “I’m kind of a big deal.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzx8KHjQD6c&pp=ygUVcm9uIGJ1cmd1bmR5IGJpZyBkZWFs
gonna take a lot of lipstick to pretty up this pig…
“Rubio says Iran can pursue civilian nuclear program if it abandons enrichment”
Another bait and switch. Rubio says that Iran can have a civilian nuclear program so long as it abandons enrichment. So they must forget about the uranium mines that they have in their own country but import enriched material instead for who knows how many millions of dollars annually. That is the bait. The switch will be that after they have signed such a treaty that they will do their damnedest to make importing enriched material into Iran all but impossible. It will just be a way to make sure that Iran has a zero capacity to have a native civilian nuclear program. If I was an Iranian negotiator, I would look at Rubio and ask myself whether I would buy a used car from this man.
Nope.
With regard to the continuing fictions from the Israeli government about bringing back the hostages (and various bloviations about what happened on 7 October, that convenient casus belli), I did a little bit of research. This is the latest figure for “detained” Palestinians that I can come with:
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/149560
Over 10,900 Palestinians detained in occupied West Bank since October 7, says prisoners institutions
When was the last time you saw any mention of this astounding number in a U.S. mainstream news source?
As ever in U.S. culture, some suffering is more important than other suffering.
In early days of the SGO (special genocide operation) I caught a figure of 20,000 Palestinians caught in the sites. Lately the figure of 9,000 has been regularly appearing. I thought it would be a low ball. This fresh 10,900 captives would be what I am expecting.
I’m going to throw a wrench into the works, because something has happened that dents the “Readiness” plan so valued by Ursula von der Leyen and her vassals. Strangely, I find this news story only in Italian sources:
https://euractiv.it/section/mondo/news/il-parlamento-europeo-boccia-liter-accelerato-richiesto-dalla-commissione-ue-per-il-piano-rearm-europe/
The legal committee, JURI, of the Europarliament just found UvdL’s handling of the allocation of an initial 150 or so billion for bombs, body bags, and sparklers to violate the rules. Evoking a provision to claim an emergency doesn’t fly.
The Europarliament is a toothless institution, so I am not sure how much hindrance this finding will be. Yet during mass hysteria, any hindrance to untoward behavior is welcome.
The kicker ‘graph, in Italian: La commissione per gli Affari legali del Parlamento europeo (JURI) ha bocciato il ricorso dell’esecutivo UE all’iter accelerato per approvare lo strumento comune di prestito da 150 miliardi di euro per il piano Rearm Europe.
https://euractiv.it/section/mondo/news/il-parlamento-europeo-boccia-liter-accelerato-richiesto-dalla-commissione-ue-per-il-piano-rearm-europe/
More doubts, with many details:
https://euractiv.it/section/mondo/news/il-piano-rearm-europe-di-von-der-leyen-e-le-sue-lacune/
My computer defaults to Italian, but you likely can reset the language to English or French for ease of reading. See menu bar up top in the articles.
What does that article on Finland say (RT is blocked in Finland)? Next week there will be a Mighty Arrow training with UK, Germany and Lithuania participating.
https://maavoimat.fi/-/mighty-arrow-25-vahvistaa-liittouman-mekanisoitujen-joukkojen-valitonta-toimeenpanokykya?languageId=en_US
Trade war and tariff efforts by the Trump administration….caught an interesting bit of this interview yesterday on CNBC. I haven’t delved further into the facts but this business sounds like companies like this are very much up against a brick wall.
Not sure if this guy goes into the “complaining loser” club as Trump does like to brand such executives and leaders. FWIW these are the companies who could likely go out of the business for good given the reported impact. If these little gadgets could be manufactured here in the US, that would take a period of years to transition.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/04/23/learning-resources-ceo-on-trumps-tariffs-im-rapidly-being-liberated-from-my-money.html
The CEO’s for both Target and Walmart had to point out to Trump that this tariff war will soon lead to empty shelves-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-target-trump-tariff-supply-chains/
But is there anyone in the Trump Cabinet that shops at Target and Walmart at all? Good thing that Christmas is a long time off.
Safe to say Kristi Noem didn’t get her watch at Target or Walmart…
https://www.businessinsider.com/kristi-noem-wore-rolex-watch-to-salvadoran-prison-2025-3
I think in general most presidential cabinet members are a not even in the same planetary system as your average US citizen.
Beholden only to the donor class, the Oligarchs of America.
They are not from around here for sure. Why is Kristri Noem in the cabinet? What does she know about the department she heads? By the way a department which (1) should never have been created and (2) is moving in the direction I thought it would at the time of creation. It is becoming the secret police.
>By the way a department which (1) should never have been created and (2) is moving in the direction I thought it would at the time of creation. It is becoming the secret police.
Well said.
I’m guessing that the organization chart and procedures of the famous Stasi is being dusted off, reviewed and updated to use all our modern communication technologies.
I mean really, isn’t the mantra, ” If you see something, say something.” , while good for unusual circumstances, after a while doesn’t everything become ” unusual “? Or shady, or weird, or I just don’t like the looks of that guy, or, I’m going to screw this guy, lie and make his life difficult. I know he has some guns at home. Look at those guys he’s hanging with, all those tattoos. Etc., etc.
Maybe this tinfoil hat is too tight…
I always do a double take whenever I hear that ad. What are we? North Korea?
I hope that the Walmart CEO also explained how prior Walmart CEOs going all the way back to Sam Walton were instrumental in FORCING American companies to move manufacturing to China:
Wal-Mart & China: A Joint Venture
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh//pages//frontline/shows/walmart/secrets/wmchina.html
China did not TAKE American jobs, American CEOs moved them there. You can blame China for being smart about it,but be sure to blame American oligarchs for being stupid and greedy.
I don’t see any scenario where Trump doesn’t end up caving. But not before doing a lot of damage. These small businesses can’t afford lobbyists to carve out exclusions for themselves, like Apple can.
BTW, I don’t see these lawsuits going anywhere. To convince a court to weigh in on the merits of a claim, you have to show standing. And these small businesses don’t have a constitutional right to a fair economy or set of governing authorities that aren’t loony-tunes.
Now, Congress most likely has standing, because the authority that Trump claims to impose unilateral tariffs without Congress’s input might encroach on their Article I powers. I haven’t seen any lawsuits from Congress, but there may be one out there.
What is this thing, this thing you call “Congress”?
They were last seen sometime during the Clinton Administration. Rumor has it that you might catch a sighting on the golf course, or posting on r/wallstreetbets.
Back in the olden days the thing called “Congress” made laws, the “judicial” branch interpreted laws and disputes and the “executive” branch enforced those laws.
But that was pretty wasteful so now the “executive” branch handles all the law stuff and the other two branches focus on performative theater.
“BYD Workers Lead Mass Strikes to Challenge Wage Cuts and Broken Promises”
That is well worth reading. Good to see that unions are independent enough to do that in China.
Quite surprising.
I wonder how much longer they’ll be allowed to do that here. Seems there’s a reversal going on.
The first big step will be to get us back to the Herbert (“Those Were the Days”) Hoover administration. From there the shores of McKinley territory will be well within reach. Then we can go all James Knox Polk on Canada.
“Beyond Tariffs: What the U.S. Can Learn from China’s Industrial Playbook”
Shorter version — China’s rise demonstrates that tariffs alone accomplish little to nothing absent a robust industrial policy.
But neoliberalism/market fundamentalism is allergic to industrial policy, and the FIRE sector (which has basically purchased the US government) in particular is virulently opposed to it, so the US will probably family-blog this up, and badly … 🤨
In the late 19th century the US used a well thought-out program of tariffs to protect new American industries until they had scaled up enough to take on foreign competition and not be nipped in the bud. The Trump tariffs on the other hand are just a mafia shake-down with the purpose of having foreign countries cut the US an annual check or give the US unfettered access to their markets to exploit them. Of course this will never backfire as after all, what could possibly go wrong. The Trump regime has decided to go it alone and have a financialized US take on industrial and resource rich countries around the world and turn them into vassal states. And they see China as the linchpin of that world. break them and everything flows to you.
Absolutely true! This is the future. But we did get the gulf of America out of the deal, LOL! What a clown.
” Gulf of America”? You must mean the Gulf of Canada, surely.
Sorry, but we here in the rancid underbelly of America consider the Gulf of America to be referring to the vast, empty space between the ears of the Washington Elites.
Imperial China didn’t let anything in other than opium in the early half of the 19th century and did that spark an industrial revolution? Besides the old Spanish Empire, we are doing a good job emulating late Qing China….
I am currently driving across the United States, next stop, Lincoln, NE, currently in Chilicothe, MO (The home of sliced bread!). This morning I find myself in a McDonald’s next to the Walmart I slept in last night. (Thinking right now that WalMart treats me, as a homeless person, better than most neoliberals.)
In front of me are two older men who I assume meet here every morning to talk. One was complaining about how his daughter is suffering at the VA with all the Trump chaos. He said they got rid of everybody with less than two years at the department, and anyone wanting to take severance now only gets three months instead of the six they offered last month. Spiteful much?
The man then remarked how he was a vet and said he did not think Trump was doing was what he voted for and they both went quite and changed the conversation.
Real boots on the ground disgruntled Trump supporters.
Yeah, Trumpster lied about everything just like the no good rotten
Democrats did. It’s time both parties were put out to permanent pasture. The worst thing done was the damage to the agencies that we all depend on for one reason or another. Musk is a complete jack ass. Deserves punishment to Tesla on a permanent basis. Unfortunately, he also gets our tax money for space x and starlink. Both awarded to him by by the democrats, who put us in this place of doge cuts and idiotic tariffs. So let’s give these democrats
A big round of applause.
By the way the woodpecker in photo is an awesome bird. Have two in my backyard. Awesome!
” It’s time both parties were put out to permanent pasture.”
Would that be above or below the turf?
yall know by now that i was thinking of the latter,lol.
but i would recommend adding crushed wood charcoal to whatever bipartisan slurry you end up with, to sequester the botox and whatnot.
since i first read tolkien at 8,and soon after all manner of arthurian esoterica, ive had a fetish for decline and fall stories, especially the real, historical, ones.
but man, oh, man…these people are really in hold-my-beer mode…i expected chaos and crazy to abound when our wheels finally fell off…but i didnt expect this level of chaos and crazy.
and, amidst this disaster, a handful of local leader guys want me to run for county commish,lol.
“cometh the hour…”?…or “hand it off to that guy”?
only reason im even considering it is it would almost triple my income(12k/per annum now=>+26k/per annum additional.)
4 years of that, and i can finish what i started out here…including solar/wind, etc(assuming functioning economy, etc)
ive got til november to decide.
If you can win the election then go for it.
>>>and, amidst this disaster, a handful of local leader guys want me to run for county commish,lol.
“cometh the hour…”?…or “hand it off to that guy”?
Why not both? If you knew of someone who would keep the lights on and would not steal everything, why wouldn’t you ask for him?
im attending a commissioners meeting monday mornig, to observe(and likely be introduced to the rest of them)
(Must Bathe, ere then…)
ill hopefully know more bout whats involved after that.
and they all wanna feel me out, im sure.
ive known 1/2 of them for 30 years, at some remove(i dont run in anybody’s circles, it turns out).
the one commish thats been pushing this started with asking for my support for his run at commish,lol…since he heard that i am influential…which was news to me.
now he’s a shoe in for county judge.
after he came out here for cajun and beer at the wilderness bar, and i gave him the armwaving visionary tour, he was even more hooked,lol.(on those kinds of tours, i am a firehose of systms-thinking, etc)
i sent him this link that afternoon, after he left:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus
since, he seems more excited than ever,lol…while i am more reticent.
i am a hermit king, after all.
i havent figgered out how to ask, but maybe this is a way to meet womyn, as well….
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’
But do County commissioners have groupies?
i shore as hell hope so!!!
lol.
ever the pragmatist.
just texted and asked the main driver of this(there have been others) the Cometh the Man vs Tarbaby question.
see how that goes.
felt him out about empire, and decline, and all that perfectly obvious shit that nobody IRL wants to speak of…like its a fart in church.
understand: these are rednecks.
and i am an autodidactic polymath redneck Hippie,lol.
thy gon be afraids of me.
but if i’m gonna do this, i refuse to hide my shining mind under a basket(oh, no, no…)
They may disagree with your lifestyle and your dress code, but I suspect that more than a few of them understand they you have a lock on the moving pieces behind the scenes. And maybe some of the older ones recognize that in a lot of ways you are like one of those old-timey New Deal Democrats.
and i think they might know that im a walk by and get it done guy, with whatever is to hand(see: my side of the place)
i really hope thats what theyre thinking.
again, ill know more after monday morning…bc ill be feeling them out, as well,lol
again, on the plus: i am so used to being in abject poverty(while eating really fukkin well) that 26k per year is a lot of jack, to me.
i can do a whole lot more than most with that bit of scratch.
(smart poverty lends itself to strategic thinking)
maybe im what they need
if, so, happy to be finally validated and all…
oh, and i really am incorruptible.
i just cant…and wont…play that shite game.
That points to two tracks. Either they want somebody that can get things done that is not beholden to any of the local power blocks. Or else they are looking for a fall guy when things fall apart. That happens too. It’s all Game of Thrones, man.
>Unfortunately, he also gets our tax money for space x and starlink. Both awarded to him by by the democrats, who put us in this place of doge cuts and idiotic tariffs.
Would this be why we haven’t seen DOGE go into the big, fat, target rich environment of the Pentagon budget to eliminate waste and fraud?
I mean, think of how Musk’s companies must be tied into the DoD
Chinese officials as a “truth detector”:
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5264774-china-us-tariff-negotations/
So they aren’t going to let Trump’s bloviating and blathering lies go unanswered.
It’s more than that as of an announcement by China’s Ministry of Commerce:
China Says No Talks with US Until Tariffs Are Gone! https://usnewsper.com/2025/04/china-says-no-talks-with-us-until-tariffs-are-gone/
I’m trying to find confirmation of this in the MSM, but so far nothing.
Looks like China is not going to give Trump any room to claim a win:
Wall Street wobbles: Futures drop after China confirms no talks with U.S., demands total tariff rollback now
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/wall-street-wobbles-futures-drop-after-china-confirms-no-talks-with-u-s-demands-total-tariff-rollback-now/articleshow/120587094.cms
Thanks – that’s big. It means no negotiating with “tariffists” as Wukchumni so aptly put it.
Travel and CBP notes… we flew to Marseilles France from Montreal April 13-21 to visit our daughter and grandchildren. Cheap flights, nonstops to multiple cities and only a 4 hour drive from Central NYS. Dorval is not a great airport, but hey…
On return we used our NEXUS cards to enter Canada and got though arrivals quickly. NEXUS is like Global Entry, but is recognised by Canada. We had to walk past the check-in area for US bound flights around 4PM and the place was a near ghost town. There must be 40 check-in counters for the US big 3, Air Canada and Porter.
We left the city and followed 401 to the Thousand Islands Bridge. A couple years ago a massive US entry facility was constructed. Being 6PM Monday after a holiday there was only one other car in the other queue. NEXUS is supposed to speed crossings (we used it scores of times since 2014-18 when our son attended university in Ontario and multiple times since). Well, the interrogation and brusqueness of the officer was unlike anything I’ve experienced in 50+ years when I crossed as a hitchhiker with a backpack. Any possible question and minutiae was asked; we were there several minutes, which should have been a very brief declaration.
Let it suffice to say if this is how we greet neighbors it will really kill cross-border tourism.
Thanks for that report even if somewhat disturbing. After reading it I realized something that was missing. Having American journalists visit all the major US-Canadian border points and report what they see and any trouble that they had crossing the border and returning back again. Report too on the state of the economies on both sides of the border as well as typical attitudes by the people living there. It would make a very interesting read but I do not think that any of the main stream media companies will ever do something like that as it would have the White House come down on them for spreading “fake news.”
They might have been hassling you because they had too little to do, and needed to look like they were doing something. Border guards, unlike traffic cops, can’t just find a quiet spot and eat doughnuts.
Facing an election, and needing to distract voters from their own miserable performance, the current Canadian gov’t, along with a friendly establishment media, has been running an ardent anti-USA campaign. It’s an old tactic, and transparent, but a lot of people here seem to be falling for it.
It is pretty funny to watch an arch-globalist such as Mark Carney wrap himself in a flag, but the sad fact is that Canadians have become by now too Americanized to understand the joke. All the silly flag-waving is quite un-Canadian. It’s the sort of behaviour Canadians used to disdain in both the Americans and the British.
The further irony is that all this supposed nationalism has been conjured in defense of the free trade agreement, which has done more to subordinate Canada to the United States, than anything else in our history.
I for one am not crossing that border anytime soon (I’m adjacent to Hamilton). I haven’t been over since 2019 and I don’t foresee any reason to break the streak.
Its hard to keep up with Doombergs complete absence of understanding about how the UK energy system works, or for that matter, how to make steel. I’ve no idea where he sources his ‘facts’ this isn’t the first Doomberg article on the UK where he gets almost everything factually wrong.
The UK does not have expensive electricity because of renewables. It has expensive electricity because in the 1990’s it allowed its thermal plants to run down and replaced them with natural gas. The UK now has little in the way of domestic coal production and the new nuclear power plants are contracted to produce some of the most expensive electricity in the world. European countries which have invested heavily in renewables, such as Portugal and Spain, have significantly cheaper power than the UK. An island nation is always likely to have more expensive electricity than continental neighbours, its a matter of grid scale. And if you base your load on natural gas, its not exactly a surprise that prices will go up when your gas reserves are rapidly being depleted.
His comments on Chinese steel production using thermal coal are also way off the mark. Chinese steel production is overwhelmingly virgin metal – the proposed electro arc furnaces in the UK are for primarily recycled metal (China also uses electro arc manufacture for recycling – its about 10% of the total production). They are different markets, with different production and cost requirements. Electro arc production actually benefits enormously from renewables, as they can use surplus ‘cheap’ power, so allowing for an element of overbuilding.
In any event, nearly all steel production worldwide is lossmaking – numerous countries essentially subsidise it directly or indirectly for national security/development reasons. Some are just better at hiding the subsidies than others.
Thank you, PlutoniumKun. Clarifying the whine. As always.
I’ll second that sentiment. Very clarifying.
80 year old Peter Brabeck-Letmathe in at WEF. —> dude looks like AI slop-output for: “70s Bond-villain, post plastic surgery”
Either that or a damaged Terminator like from that old movie poster. I can image his first statement after taking control of the WEF-
‘Eat ze bugs!’
Two of my favorite for now Bond villain names are General Petraeus and his sidekick General Magic Crystals. With the follow up to that movie the arch-OBummer and the Thug (Brennan).
General Betrayus?
Yup, Betrayus, Chief of Stafff of the BJ Squad for our security.
General Jack Ing (Off)?
In the Alien film franchise reboot once Ridley Scott got back into it, the central theme of Prometheus was to find these engineers or so-called creators. Once nearing the climactic ending and some pivotal scenes the audience is aghast to find founder visionary CEO Peter Weyland onboard the space travel ship ( like a cut scene from cartoon stalwart Futurama, but Director Scott did have him there on purpose, nearly dead ).
That future WEF dipstick leader could totally stand in for a walking zombie, near dead appearance much like that Peter Weyland role. Sadly I can regret seeing this film several times….waiting for the disappointment in the movie finish and end to somehow adjust.
“Bhattacharya Discovers the Beetle’s Dilemma”
‘Jay Bhattacharya (is) turning the world’s leading hub for medical and scientific research into an irrelevant, politicized sham in a mere matter of weeks.’
By the time the 2028 election comes rocking around, the damage would have been done here. As I said in another comment, the US will end up becoming a scientific backwater. Well, except for military and surveillance research that is. Nobody that voted for Trump voted for that to happen I’m sure. I suppose that many Americans with a scientific background will travel to other countries to conduct their research and China may pick up a lot of them. But I suppose that as it becomes obvious the damage done, that the Trump regime will do the only thing that they can. No, not give Bhattacharya the boot and invest in basic research again. That would mean admitting that they made a mistake. No, they will start to cancel the passports of those scientific researchers to stop them leaving the country or force those overseas to return.
Well, everything is relative. Many people (those who are vax injured, have long Covid, can’t afford insurance, etc.) would disagree that we have “the world’s leading hub for medical and scientific research”. Perhaps the world’s leading hub for euthanasia.
Good lord! He’s probably right! And not just about scientific research.
I can’t see the US that we know returning from this profoundly neurotic administration after 4 years of it. I can only hope that the trauma won’t utterly incapacitate us, that the US will emerge as a fairly decent state after a decade or two of recovering, not as decent, surely, as the EU or Scandinavia, but decent nonetheless.
Dammit, there’s so much uncertainty. Germany and Japan recovered morally, right? Maybe we’ll be able to, as well.
” Germany and Japan recovered morally, right?”
Wrong. Japan is making noises about remilitarizing while Germany is slavishly supporting the genocide of a religio-ethnic minority by another religio-ethnic minority in the Middle East. Neither has institutionalized the hard lessons their forebears learned.
What is happening today in America is a legitimate Counter Revolution. The old New Deal social contract has been torn up by predatory capitalism. It will take another generation to recover from this.
Stay safe. Prepare for a New Dark Ages.
Germany has recovered morally so well, that they wanted to do the whole thing yet again the moment they reunited (with US as ally now). It’s much like pregnancy, but with babies dying instead of being born.
They were warned. They were warned that Trump was a Trojan horse full of Republican 2025ers. But some people dismissed 2025 and other people denialized 2025.
So now they console themselves about how Harris would have been just as bad as Trump anyway so no difference has been made. And i suppose there are some puristocrats who really believe that.
America was well and truly screwed when Clinton and Gore weaponized the Democratic Leadership Council. After that, there was no viable pro social political party available for the public to support. Obama knifing Sanders in the back with the Night of Southern Long Knives just sealed the deal for the Neo-liberal Dispensation.
Harris would have been worse for America and the West than Trump is showing himself to be. She and her puppet masters would have lulled the public to sleep with a continuation of the There Is No Alternative con game.
Trump, love him or loath him is ripping the bandage off of the scabrous wounds that are sapping the vitality out of the West. This is a real shock doctrine. The patient may indeed die from the shock, but that was already in play with the “other side’s” stratagems.
Time to transition into “pick up the pieces” mode.
Can one love and loathe Trump simultaneously? Gilbert Doctorrow has been likening Trump to Gorbachev, for good and bad reasons. That seems increasingly apt.
I’ve said it previously and will say it again: a Harris victory would have been Biden II and kicked the can down the road. She would not have had a second term and Trump II or Vance I would have been far worse than what we have now as people would have been even more enraged at government.
If you want to blame someone, blame the DNC for anointing a candidate instead of having a primary.
And keep in mind there is no such thing as a lesser evil, only excuses for why evil should be voted for.
“If you want to blame someone, blame the DNC”
IMHO you can blame anyone or any thing you like and it won’t make any difference. The problems of the US (and the world) run much deeper. And just as the “arrow of time” points only one way so does US presidential politics. Each new (or re-elected) president has gone farther trying to change the world to their way of thinking while trying to undue their predecessor’s actions. Following Trump II each president will be successively worse, no matter which party they claim. And I would guess that leaders of other (mostly Western) nations will follow the same pattern.
I wish I could think of a solution but I believe the ‘gods have fixed our fate and we must endure our trials.’ While many will put their faith in their personal diety(s) I recommend that those who can prepare for many generations of tragedy.
The problem with Harris was it seemed very likely that she would continue Biden’s full throttle powerdrive to World War III with Russia. Trump may be on the same course, since he can’t seem to shake the Ukraine project in all his stumbling around, but one could bet (before the election) that he might try to avoid that and receive okay odds. Domestically, Harris would’ve been much better at continuing the slow degradation of the working class that has been the Democrats’ mission since 1992 (at least). Where the odds are much better that Trump will just break things fast, under the tutelage of Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al. If we could have had a replay of Trump 1, minus Musk and the other oligarchs, it probably would have been livable, assuming he can keep us out of World War III. However evil Trump has been, I think his first election averted the nuclear war that H. R. Clinton would have gotten us into. It’s just that the further on we go with this same set of horrible people as the choices come election day, the more and more livable futures are being cut out of the timeline and the more we’re being led to the self-destruction of the human race, one way or another.
“Trump to stop research funding to anyone who boycotts Israel”
Maybe the Trump regime should just cut to the chase and pass a 28th amendment and one based on the 18th Amendment-
Twenty Eight Amendment:
‘After one year from the ratification of this article the criticism, boycotting or any talk that brings the State if Israel into disrepute within the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof is hereby prohibited and this article shall have precedence over the First Amendment.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.’
Next step. Modify the Pledge of Allegiance for school kids.
Yuck! That is one constitutional amendment that probably would pass.
With bipartisan support even!
Kremlin warns NATO of response to Finland build-up RT
Just as America and The West is agreement incapable, Russia is warning incapable as a result of her long of empty redlines and warnings.
Then you have nothing to worry about.
Only because I am an American. And thats the point you completely missed. If I were Russian I could be because I could be struck down at any point because of empty Russian warnings. As you too could be if you were Russian.
As a fellow American I can only say your views on this have always perplexed me timbers. It seems cookie cutter and based on some simplistic game theory. Seemingly complaining that Russia is not acting like the West in how it handles the SMO on its boarders and not some far away nation.
Then again, since my time in the military circa mid 70s/early80s and advent of ME wars starting with Iran hostages, Afghanistan/USSR, onward, I have always been amazed at the general populations views on conflicts e.g. you seem to be projecting Westernized Ideas on Russia in this case. Firstly Russia’s military and geopolitical stance/conditions are very different than the US or its allies. Now throw China/BRICKS in for good measure, multipolarity, changes in Trade/FX flows.
Yet on the battlefield Russia is now picking up the pace, new/improved integrated combat systems, more troops, better more efficient MIC Mfg, tactics, etc, and yet you still wobble on about them not going for the whole “wipe them off the face of the earth” approch and that will teach them moment.
“Seemingly complaining that Russia is not acting like the West”. No. That is by your own addmission your personal interpretation and not what i said. The West attacks innocents. I am complaining that Russia is not attacking non-innocents in The West, not acting to protect her people by directly counter attacking those in The West who kill her people. I am complaining Russia is failing to address the Root Csuse. I am complaining Putin said he would hold The West responsible for killing Russians, and did not. I think you need to unconfuse yourself by reading what I wrote. Russian is not theat capable because she issues threats she does not honor and because of that, her people die.
Like I noted above you seem to use some simplistic game theory or linear rationalizations. Heck I have not been or lived in the US since the mid 90s, chillin in Oz.
Example A.
“Russian is not theat capable because she issues threats she does not honor and because of that, her people die.”
Russia as I noted above is engaged in a huge Geopolitical shift due to Multipolarity. Why would they act like the West has done for decades, totally putting everyone off. Where is the evidence that if they acted like you want that it would not result in even more deaths or provide cannon fodder for Western MSM and feral ideological political operatives. If fact, for all those observing, everything Russia has and is doing post 2014 and now is something to behold.
It seems you just don’t like/agree with the time line – mate.
“Russia is failing to address the Root Csuse”
It seems you would prefer them to go OT/Israel like and not like informed knowledgeable people/humans. This is a border conflict with UKN as a proxy, SMO is explicit in its goals, your ideas/demands fall outside of that legal position.
Years from now people will be using this event as a pivotal moment in history. How the West white anted itself and its people, resorted to ludicrous propaganda, threw ad hoc weapon systems and failed basic military anything for media optics, and not military functionality.
At the end of the day Western political systems are imploding whilst Russia/China are getting stronger by the day. Yet your argument is Russia is at fault for being more spastic in response the machinations of the West based on some near term body count. Strange since UKN is really copping it hard now and will only increase.
That is not the point I missed, but the point I made.
Thanks, always good to start the day with a laugh.
I suspect this is no laughing matter in Russia, that it is a view held by a substantial portion of Russian population. But after you factor in I suspect Russian government media suppression of this view plus Western Media total and complete disappearing of this view…your comment might make sense to some. But not to me.
NATO fighting Russia reminds me of a very old story of a King who decided to fight his army like a chessboard. Thus he set up his command tent and refused to go outside to see the actual battle. He had the pieces laid out on a board and as reports came to his tent, would make counter moves to that of the enemy and sent the orders out to his commanders reflecting this. At the end of the battle he took great satisfaction in declaring checkmate having won the battle. Just then there was a noise and he looked up to see enemy soldiers who came into the tent and cut his head off.
King Brzezinski?
You sound like someone who wants to make a point. Perhaps if you tell me what it is, I could help you make it?
That NATO lives in a make believe world where they think that they can actually fight Russia but the truth is that they don’t have the capabilities needed or the industrial production to last longer than a month. They just play chessboard games where they think that they will do things like block Russia from the Baltic and dominate the Black Sea and overawe them.
So you suggest that a weak coyote that steals and eats your chickens, should not be addressed, because it is weak, even as it kills your flock? You might want to rethink that.
A century ago you had the mentality of ‘This is a minor incursion. This means war!’ We have moved on from there and mostly because nukes have changed the rues of the game. By rights the Russian Federation could attack NATO bases in Germany as it is the US that is running this war, not the Ukrainians. But that would mean WW3 and nobody wants to go there. Well, maybe Biden did. So Russia will settle on winning this war which will be a huge defeat for the US and the EU by extension. The effect of that? Hard to tell but there will be major repercussions around the world over this and re-alignments. The US, NATO and the Collective West through everything that they could against Russia, got themselves into debt big time, wrecked their own countries, stripped their armouries – and they failed. There will be consequences of that you can be certain.
Its so much more Kev …. on so many levels mate …
Russia has not only survived all the economic warfare, for yonks, it is flourishing in spite of it. This makes a mockery of the Western Orthodox economic theory which informed these decisions – FX was a big one on par with Monetarism/Friedmans ideological opines, just gets worse from there.
On the debt thingy … its not how much in numerical terms, its about its social function e.g. how it stimulates an economy and the distribution of it – see Keynes et al. Russia and China are now were the West was post WWII without all the devastation and only untouched nation by it, just the opposite.
A new chapter in history is unfolding and the West is all rear view mirror liberal globalism black mirror whilst the rest move forward …
Yet for today in our confines its – Lest We Forget Day – and pubs are now open … not long ago female pub staff were like here it comes … old boys reverting to a past … groped and boy trash talked like they thought it was fine perfume to them – ha
Do you know how this reflects on the old economic law[tm] of the IS-LM and how Hudson/Warren pointed out the economic fallacy of orthodox for yonks.
Too make it simple it was like Nicaea on roids, empire had a buffet [see davos], just to kettle all the empires factious regions and how that effected its financial flows ….
PS we could have had bancor … naw empire and liberalism …
Sometimes I wonder how things would have turned out if Keynes was not over-ruled and Bancor had been adopted at the end of WW2. It might have made for a more stable world. Maybe-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor
Hence why some are pushing for stable[tm] coins to put a floor under rents market crypto, same thing without sovereignty and rights for citizans …. just markets … numerology … Hellhotelcalif style …
Heck if I was young I would be off to China in a heart beat, not to get rich/successful, but, just too see it all happen.
I disagree. Today’s Russia has been pretty credible in its threats. They made it clear WRT both Ukraine and Georgia that further NATO expansion in former USSR would mean a war with Russia. And Russia, indeed, went to war to try to prevent such expansion.
Russia threatened war, then went to war. How much more credible can you get?
Russian credibility isn’t the problem. The real problem is that among Occidental elites, rationalism has given way to mysticism.
Today’s Western mind is infatuated with the notion that the Self has not only the power to shape its own understanding of reality, but through its own will, actually shape reality. Liberal individualism, professedly secular and rational, has in our time become an outright religion of self-deification. The financialist bourgeoisie have at last erected their proper superstructure.
The nightmare scenario has always been nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics. Well, that’s what we got. The nightmare scenario is named, “the modern Western globalist elite.” Deep down, those people think they’re gods, creating worlds.
At the same time, these bourgeois self-made gods panic easily. Infantile wish-fulfillment is their sincerest belief, but it’s prone to infantile terrors. Sublime self-confidence, paired with fragility.
If Western elites were simply o’erweening, you could puncture their arrogance with a harsh lesson. But their belief in their own power to make reality is not evidence-based. It’s a true religion, beliefs held without evidence, or in spite of evidence.
How do you deter people who are like that? You can try to kill them, of course, and perish in turn, but how do you deter them?
Putin is handling things as best he can. He fights only as he thinks he must, and plays for time. In reality, some things must be endured. The West has gone mad. You can’t fix it. Hang in there.
Gnosticism rather than mysticism?
Almost like the Dark Side of Japanese Zen. (Several people had written things with titles like “Zen and the Art of Suicide Bombing (that’s kamikaze, not ME terrorism.)) (While this went particularly far in Japan, stories like this are found in other places in Asia aplenty…and there was Masada, too–granted, they didn’t try to take Romans with them… )
reading The Imperial Cruise right now and although only a couple of chapters in it is horrifying the self-sustaining myth the anglo-saxon use to justify their progress of (white)civilization following the sun from east to west – the clothing of the scarecrow may change as time passes but the frame upon which it has been built has not – although not as erudite as most in the commentariat, easy to discern a fear or perhaps a pragmatic acceptance leading to an outcome that does not bode well for the future for many reasons – this unraveling has been in progress for quite a while and like water circling a drain, the swirl accelerates the closer it gets to the drain – the arrogance of our species seems built in –
You all ignore Russian threats on countless occasions against America and Europe to respond to their war against Russia and blatant acts of war and killing of her peopke. You are cherry picking and mirepresting reality. Every single instance mentioned is a picked cherry, as you ignore even now the US and Europe assist and execute the death of Russian civilians despite explicit Russian statements these acts would be responded to
If this is not the very core definition of Russia being not threat capable, please explain what is. You can’t. Because the truth is as I stated – Russia is warning incapable just as The West is agreement incapable.
How many of those threats came from the Russian government as opposed to from Western media and bureaucrats saying what they thought Russia would do? Or from random Duma members or other Russian political figures not authorized to speak for the government? I’m sure there were some, but I’d like to see some citations of when and what the exact wording of the “threat” was. I have read too many postings of the “Putin is weak”/”Russia is losing” type coming from anonymous commenters who represent themselves as angry patriotic Russians when they might just as likely be NAFO trolls. MoA is regularly deluged by people like that who just repeat the same claims over and over (and change names every few weeks).
It’s hard to say what Russia is capable of doing to respond to all the attacks on it. They seem to be winning, but the pace is so slow I take it that, despite maybe having the best fighting force in the world, they still aren’t strong enough to make progress in this type of war any faster. And that they see the danger of hitting NATO bases in Romania or Poland or Germany as pulling NATO military forces directly into the fight (plus losing them diplomatic support of non-EU countries). Maybe it is that their leaders are weak sisters and their generals are too conservative, but I have a tough time buying that.
The term is concern troll. Internet is full of people concerned for Russia (none of them Russian).
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=concern%20troll
So, RAND gets half way there.
They recognize PLANNING is required for INDUSTRIAL POLICY which is necessary to outcompete your industrial rivals. Like Slaboda recognizing Trump has gotten to where Russia was in 2015, Crimea is part of Russia, RAND has gotten to where China was under Deng.
In addition to Industrial Policy, China has systematically hewed to the Classical Economic strategy of minimizing and eliminating rents wherever possible to create a low wage economy with a relatively high standard of living, the mirror image of our high wage low standard of living economy. Flat screens and cell phones don’t make a high standard of living, clean water, healthy food, housing, education, and actual health care do, none of which we get in any reasonable measure here in our high wage society.
“Bhattacharya Discovers the Beetle’s Dilemma Pandemic Accountability Index”
Similarly, a cri de coeur from a research virologist and an infectious diseases doctor who I started following during the Covid pandemic, and found quite helpful. Their critique of current hacking and hewing of scientific and medical institutions is quite unusual as for the last five years they have worked hard at tiptoeing around political comment.
TWiV 1210: Clinical update with Dr. Daniel Griffin (47 minute audio or video)
If anyone is wondering, his alleged crime is disrespecting illegitimate colonial governor Christian Schmidt*, and not following the orders of the rule-based order. The Germans just can’t give those guys a break, and then are shocked when someone with principles fights back.
*Even Wikipedia says that Schmidt “used his powers to change electoral and constitutional rules“.
Every day, in every way, this admin finds new ways to abuse privacy. Putting everyone with an autism diagnosis on list via data mining willing nilly with no concerns for HIPPA or other privacy standards. Let the lawsuits begin!
Meanwhile, no money for food inspections. Be sure to boil your lettuce!
“Be sure to boil your lettuce!” Better yet, grow your own. Reading Aurelian’s article this afternoon, I’d say, grow your own. If you live on the 20th floor in Chicago, save some rent, get out of there, and start a garden as you meet new friends.
Save some rent how? Get out of there how? And to where? The time for “getting out of there” has passed for most of us. The time for surviving in place, or failing to survive, is now here for most of us.
well,lol…i’m currently hiring nubile farmhands….
20-50 yo.
room and board.
and an education in everything from engineering for po folks to sustainable ag to philosophy and music appreciation.
daisy dukes are the dress code, such as it is.
the local crop of single gals is rather lacking, sadly….and none of them appear to be interested in this sort of …ummm.lifestyle.(yeoman farmerhood, etc)
Aurelean was very good today. The western political system is doomed to collapse, and there is nothing in line to replace it.
Indeed, it was. This point:
…reminded me of a song from the 60s about the environmental degradation of the farm country where I grew up:
“Tarkio Road” Brewer & Shipley
This point by Aurelian was so true it hurt:
I also enjoyed how Dylan lyrics wafted through the piece.
There are lots of good discussion of the polycrisis from a systems perspective on Nate Hagens’s Youtube channel, “The Great Simplification.” The multi-disciplinary Roundtables are especially good in this regard. The emphasis is on energy, debt, inherent human tendencies and culture. I’ve also recommended the three-way discussion among McGilchrist, Schmachtenberger and Vervaeke that explores the problem of culture and worldview that Aurelian brings up.
> the world “system” now resembles one of those software systems, used by banks…
Global COBOL?
In the novel, they (will have) killed Meurseult. Justice was/will have been done, regardless of what Meurseult might think (ok, so I’m going off on my own tangent.) Who will rid us of the meddlesome strangers who lord over us today?
Yes, that is a good piece of thinking put to paper. Forward we go, never back. Pretty sure growing lettuce is not going to save our sorry lot.
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/23/trump-eeoc-barnard-columbia-texts-jewish/
I hear the next text was: “Call your mother”
(I’ll see myself out…)
“The Hole Story: How Woodpeckers Make Homes for the Rest of the Forest’
This article is very much worth taking your time and reading. Who knew that Woody the Woodpecker was building ecosystems throughout the forest.
RE: Restaurant productivity.
I would say the rise of online and mobile ordering the past five years has caused much more business that you don’t need a person to take the order for. You have someone managing the orders and packing up the food for the customers, essentially cutting out the wait staff or register staff.
What if the next step is to have an AI take your order online – but when you open up your curried prawns and rice, discover it to be dim sims instead as the AI hallucinated your order.
I’ll add one of the funnier screens shown by a dining app.
No human around to clarify.
I’ll go a step further and suggest that AI itself is an order of Dim Sums.
In Korean, “Dim Sum” (well, same Chinese characters, pronounced differently) means lunch (just generic midday meal, which could be anything, basically.). I always thought what could go wrong with multilingual (but still utterly stupid) AI…
> The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship between productivity and customer dwell time, if applied to the aggregate decrease in dwell time, can explain almost all of the aggregate productivity increase in our sample.
I find this incredibly sad, indicating a perverse metric.
yeah. thats why some eating places are kept so cold…they rely on volume, so must encourage the customer to eat and hurry up and leave,lol.
theres a certain chain mexican food place in texas thats like that.
even in high summer, its frelling cold in there!
people shivering in their booths.(decent fare, for somewhat mass produced…and their veggie sides(pico, etc) are always super fresh(and likely helped to keep that way by the whole place being a walk in freezer))
at my place, i wanted them to hang around.
Chain restaurants is the key here … see PE … and MBA’s …
Your place, my place, is completely different, albeit all small start ups go broke in 3/5 yrs.
Wonder what you would make of a Mpa5 steak here you being Texan with my treatment of it and cooking.
Israel’s Exports of Violence included these rhetorical questions, “Inevitably, whenever we discuss Gaza and the war being waged against it, we are confronted with the argument: “What does this have to do with me? It’s on the other side of the world, two countries duking it out. It’s none of my business.” and the author’s answers to them. What does it have to do with me? I start with John Dunne, “No man is an island/ Entire of itself/ Every man is a piece of the continent/A part of the main.” The poem concludes with the well-known lines, “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls/ It tolls for thee.” Defeating a terrorist group that is an existential danger to the Israeli state and state of mind, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, genocide or clearing the land to create a great real estate opportunity: However you choose to describe it, the result is immoral and criminal. Governments have been notably restrained in their rhetoric opposing the obliteration of Gaza and its people. Only the Houthi have condemned it and taken action against it. It boggles the mind that the spectacle of a people being bombed, blasted, deprived of water, starved has not aroused the conscience of the world in opposition. Here, in the United states, the president and his administration, the majority within the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber proclaim that they are in “lock-step” with Israel. By their votes they are complicit as they supply the means to the destruction of Gaza the place and Gaza the people. Perhaps they do not see themselves as, ” a piece of the continent, a part of the main”, but as a separate and higher life form to whom such pedestrian notions of morality do not apply.
https://allpoetry.com/for-whom-the-bell-tolls
Zombie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ejga4kJUts
One awaits the re-surfacing of former Biden USAID administrator Samantha Power advocating for her “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) Doctrine for the Gazans.
Probably it will happen after she exits the clinic treating her case of advanced hypocrisy.
It is a good time, as she no longer has any power, and it might help keep her newsworthy.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/responsibility-to-protect
The link mentions that the Houthis are justifying their actions as R2P in Gaza.
Good for them.
“The End”
I didn’t have time to read every word of this lengthy essay but I think Aurelien answered a question I asked myself yesterday. The are so many news topics (Ukraine, Iran China, etc) but these all seem to be individual, more-or-less unrelated issues and nothing I had read really put it altogether. Aurelien offers a glimpse of the underlying crises and the tectonic state of world politics and culture. All these news topics are not related to each other any more than individual buildings toppling over in an earthquake, rather they are all related to the quake itself. One might try to connect the tariff war and Ukraine to Trump but that would be confusing cause and effect. Had Harris won the election the world would still be in turmoil, just with slightly different details. Our leaders, government and non-, are merely dancing to the beat of the societal earthquake that is tearing everything apart.
“Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together.” The last three paragraphs seem to sum up this essay.
I would read Aurelian if he were more concise. He seems generally well received so it is probably me. I always give up before finishing.
Is a Military Coup Unfolding at the Pentagon?
The oath taken by US military officers is”
“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” – Wikipedia
Note that they do not swear alegience to the president or to the government. One can argue that their allegiance is to the constitution and if they believe that the government is a threat to that constitution then they have an obligation to overthrow that government. As I watch what Trump, Musk, and the rest do, like ignoring court orders, I always wonder if our military leaders are comparing those actions to the constitution. I do.
Yesterday’s SF Gate covered the surge of Influenza B in the SF Bay Area and the article closed with “It’s time to dig out the hand sanitizer”.
I’m watching the suicide of the USA in real time, unfortunately it’s a mass murder/suicide.
Based on what Elon’s Muskovites have already done I expect full blown chaos before the end of the year.
Yugoslavia writ large, with nukes.
It’s our only way to “degrowth” since the top 1% is not interested in cutting back their carbon emissions and contributing to reducing climate change. Sucks when most of us are on the wrong side of the equation.
I would like to say, sarcasm off but it seems like that really is the plan.
Maybe not suicide. I’ve been thinking that we are killing ourselves with a sort of auto-immune disease. MAGA is cheering on the destruction of government that helps them survive. Incredible.
Jackpot Design Engineering. And Jackpot accelerationism.
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the ex-CEO of Nestle, looks like he came straight out of the movie We Live.
Make sure to wear your special glasses at all times!
Everything I am reading here today reads like something that is purely made up and couldn’t possibly exist in reality except it is true and reality is actually a real mirage. I am no longer what I was….!
“Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” … Mercer Ellington
All four locks on the Indus River that run from India to Pakistan have been shut, Pakistan said yesterday that this would be regarded as an act of war. Water wars were inevitable with such population growth but this is about 10 years early.
Looks like more work for General Kellogg or Mr Witkoff
All that data DOGE and Musk
stole took acquired, ah whateverhas is worth a lot of money:DOGE-Trolling Ransomware Hackers Demand $1 Trillion https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2025/04/24/doge-ransomware-hackers-demand-1-trillion/
I wonder what happens when somebody sells it? All that Social Security data? Yikes!
The true purpose of crypt:
They Stole a Quarter-Billion in Crypto and Got Caught Within a Month
Far easier just to run for president and start a shatcoin. Profit!
re: Germany post-electon BSW
BERLINER ZEITUNG has a text on a second complaint filed by former local Berlin-MP Marcel Luthe
The article would be here:
Exclusive: Dead Voters, No ID Checks – This Document Reveals Gross Errors in the Federal Election
Marcel Luthe is challenging the federal election results – his points of criticism are numerous. The Berliner Zeitung has obtained the complaint exclusively.
https://archive.is/WHbBN
via copy&paste the text can be translated
(Don´t have the time to summarize it myself)
intro:
“The deadline for objections to the results of the federal election on February 23rd expires on Wednesday. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which narrowly failed to reach the five percent hurdle, is not the only party to file a complaint with the Bundestag’s Electoral Scrutiny Committee.
Marcel Luthe, a former member of the Berlin House of Representatives and current chairman of the Good Governance Union, has also submitted a detailed objection. The approximately 80-page document, which includes more than 200 pages of supporting documents, explains in detail where Luthe sees deficiencies in the conduct of the federal election and to what extent these could have decisively influenced the election outcome. The Berliner Zeitung was granted exclusive access to the document.”
How asinine can you get?
WWI: Rescue from Germany.
WWII: Rescue from Germany.
Ukraine: Rescue from NATO’s eastward expansion.
The piece talks as if there have been a succession of Russian invasions of Europe, but history only shows European states trying to invade each other (Russia did show up in WWII to help everyone stuff the Germans back in the bottle). The mythical “Russian invasion” exists strictly in the fevered minds of NATO war planners and military-industrial-complex salesmen (and apparently POLITICO staffers).
The article does suggest that Trump is actually right, and that European states have been free riding on the US for military defense since world war II. Now they seem to be in a snit that they might have to take over this responsibility for themselves.
Maybe try peace and save a few bucks?
Oh, come on. What do you call Russia’s unprovoked full scale invasion of France in 1814, or of Germany in 1944? (Obviously, sarcasm by me, but a Ukrainian minister or some other high official did refer to the events of 1944 as a “Russian invasion of Europe” in earnest a couple of years ago, I think)
You know its helpful to reconcile the machinations of generations of divine nobles running things in the past vs projecting it on the hear and now.
WWI started with bond holders and then the Black Hand showing his dislike for nobles ruining things.
WWII started with ludicrous/punitive war repayments which stripped Germany to repay and crashed its society.
Ukraine is a neoliberal project decades in the making, foist on the EU by geological proximity and nothing more.
US has in fact gained from its reserve currency without producing much for the rest of the world. Like GMO green revolution Corp rent extraction without all the labour for financial flows to boost WS earnings … head desk …
re: US documentary film director Frederick Wiseman
Critic’s Notebook: In Praise of Frederick Wiseman, America’s Greatest Living Filmmaker
As career-spanning retrospectives in three major cities come to a close, a THR critic reflects on the 95-year-old documentarian’s lasting importance and timelier-than-ever body of work.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/frederick-wiseman-greatest-living-american-filmmaker-1236166655/
Eric Trump trying to mess with people’s minds-
https://xcancel.com/EricTrump/status/1915486481512357923
Is that for Wrestlemania?
You know what kills more people than the Flu every year, and starts with a C?
They Caught the Flu, and Never Came Home
COVID immune damage play any role?
We’ll never know, of course, as the Flu killed quite a few people annually prior to 2020. But at this point, most people have probably been infected by SARS2 at least once. And we know it causes immune disregulation.
And,