20 injured after Mexican Navy training ship strikes Brooklyn Bridge, source says CNN
Beyond Hyperpolitics The Ideas Letter
Scientists May Have Found a Massive Ocean of Water Deep Beneath Mars’ Surface SciTechDaily
“Roman Engineering Lives On”: 1,700-Year-Old Wooden Water Pipe Unearthed in Belgium Stuns Archaeologists With Pristine Detail Sustainability Times
COVID-19/Pandemics
Study: Long COVID ‘brain fog’ linked to inflammation, stress markers The Hill
Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Truly Over? A 2025 Reality Check ETV Bharat
Climate/Environment
Top winemaker ‘may have to leave its Spanish vineyards due to climate crisis’ The Guardian
Trump wants to slash funding for climate adaptation—here’s what we’re going to lose because of it Fast Company
How Green Is Pope Leo XIV? Inside Climate News
China?
Container ship owners swamped as US-China trade detente revives demand Reuters
You won’t believe what they’re doing in China.
This is the Chinese port in Guangzhou.
People unload ships remotely with 5G, AND THEN, AI vehicles automatically drive the containers to trucks and load them, without human assistance.#WaytoModernization pic.twitter.com/BIA6aBwSay
— Jason Smith – 上官杰文 (@ShangguanJiewen) September 30, 2024
China Starts Building First Giant Supercomputer Network in Space Newsweek
OPINION | US prepares for long war with China that might hit its bases, homeland Baird Maritime
South of the Border
The 5% remittance tax threat: A new flashpoint between Mexico and the US El Pais
Why Larry Fink’s devilishly complicated Panama Canal deal may finally come good NY Post
Brazilian “Supercows” Reportedly Close to Achieving World Domination The Byte
European Disunion
Call for EU ban on anti-LGBTQ ‘conversion’ gets 1 million signatures Courthouse News Service
“The Attacks on Hungary Will Only Intensify”—Ministerial Commissioner Boglárka Bólya The European Conservative
European Commission sues five countries for not applying digital platform rules Euro News
Old Blighty
What is the UK’s future in Europe? Investing.com
UK Government Defends Supplying Fighter Jet Parts to Israel News Central
Israel v. The Resistance
The situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious & beyond inhumane.
A policy of siege & starvation makes a mockery of international law. The blockade against humanitarian aid must end immediately.
This is a moment for moral clarity & action. pic.twitter.com/ZsIzwo4tdp
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 17, 2025
UN chief condemns reported Israeli plans for Gaza ground operation Andolu Agency’
NYU takes brutal action after student rants about Gaza ‘genocide’ in graduation speech Daily Mail. So this is becoming an international scandal.
Israel launches major new offensive in Gaza after a wave of airstrikes kill hundreds NBC News
Seven European nations urge Israel to ‘reverse its current policy’ on Gaza Al Jazeera
Israel is in Moral Meltdown Conflict’s Forum Substack
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump says he will call Putin to discuss stopping Ukraine ‘bloodbath’ BBC
Ukraine War Talks Yield POW Swap, but No Truce Defense Post
As political theater took center stage in Turkey, the war went on in Ukraine. Kyiv has few options AP
Kremlin cites past wars as it threatens long conflict in Ukraine The Guardian
Europe’s sticks are a little limp Responsible Statecraft
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
California Expands Digital ID Programs for Public Services, Despite Privacy Concerns Reclaim the Net
Don’t fall for Sam Altman’s biometric booby trap The Hill
How Mark Zuckerberg Endangered U.S. Security in Pursuit of Profit The American Prospect
Imperial Collapse Watch
Downtown LA building blasts ‘Baby Shark’ on repeat to fend off homeless tents NBC Los Angeles
War and International Politics MIT International Security journal – John Mearsheimer states the realist case for the persistence of war
Trump 2.0
Qatar’s Gift to Trump Is Unsold Plane It’s Been Trying to Dump for Years Newsweek
Trump prepares to step into messy fight over GOP tax bill The Hill
Public Health experts share concerns about $715 million cut to Medicaid Dakota News Now
President Trump’s Military Parade Could Cost up to $45 Million WTOP News
US judges ruling against Trump barraged with abuse and threats, experts warn The Guardian
Real Men Steal Countries: Inside Trump’s Absurd Greenland Obsession The New Republic
DOGE
How DOGE has tried to embed beyond the executive branch NPR
GAO thwarts attempt by DOGE to set up a team within the watchdog Fedscoop
Explained: What’s Next for DOGE as Elon Musk Steps Back? NewsX
Democrat Death Watch
Exclusive: Listen to the full Biden-Hur special counsel interview Axios
James Carville dismisses Democratic Party’s record-low polling: ‘We’re winning elections’ Fox News
The reckoning that wasn’t The Ink
Immigration
Reality show will be ‘Hunger Games’ for immigration: Producer The Hill
US House Republicans propose fees on immigrants to fund Trump’s crackdown The Guardian
DHS asks for 20,000 National Guard troops for immigration roundups, Pentagon reviewing request AP
Our No Longer Free Press
A free people need a free press Seattle Times
Editorial: Brave judges hold the line on democracy Valley News
FCC commissioner blasts Trump administration censorship policies Cyberscoop
Mr. Market Is Moody
Trump berates Walmart over price hikes: ‘Eat the tariffs’ The hill
Does Moody’s US downgrade matter? FT
Wall Street Is Down on the Dollar as Trade Unease Lingers Bloomberg
AI
DeepMind unveils ‘spectacular’ general-purpose science AI Nature
AI Hallucination Stemming from Contract Lawyer’s Research Reason
The Coming A.I. Catastrophe for Middle America’s Gen Z Observer
Has AI exceeded human levels of intelligence? The answer is more complicated than you might think Tom’s Guide
The Bezzle
Elder fraud has reached epidemic proportions – a geriatrician explains what older Americans need to know The Conversation
FBI warns about AI scam using text messages and voicemails: What to watch for NBC New York
Why are scammers still thriving in Southeast Asia? The Times of India
Guillotine Watch
The 5 most expensive chocolate in the world #top5 #expensive #chocolate pic.twitter.com/XNT5n3pPd5
— Top5expensive (@top5expensive) April 28, 2025
World’s most expensive Perfume.
Can you pay $228,000 for 30ml bottle of perfume?
Clive Christian No. 1 Passant Guardant is the world’s priciest cologne, commemorating the Salon de Parfum boutique at Harrods. It’s the sole bottle allowed to feature Queen Victoria’s crown, a… pic.twitter.com/F66YQnsPbj
— MAGA Finest (@emeraldTEC) November 2, 2024
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Kremlin cites past wars as it threatens long conflict in Ukraine”
‘We don’t want war, but we are ready to fight for a year, two, three – as long as it takes. We fought with Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?’
Wait – did that Russian negotiator say that Russia will be in the Ukraine for as long as it takes? Sounds vaguely familiar that but I am not sure where I heard it before…
I waded through most of the 400 comments on the NYT article about Russian soldiers’ attitudes and discovered the following:
1) Ukraine is a model democracy and this is a fight for democracy.
2) Russia’s invasion was totally unprovoked.
3) We need to pull out all of the stops to ensure Putin suffers a crushing military defeat.
4) Russian soldiers who think Russia was provoked or justified in the invasion are sad people who are easily swayed by propaganda.
I don’t know if the best adjective for this is sad, pathetic, or disturbing.
I think the correct question here is whether it’s a total media failure or success that so many people are so misinformed?
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
Personally, I don’t find the belief in the media narrative that surprising. I’ve recently heard a litany from a family member — a liberal local elite businessmen working in publishing, considering himself well-read on the Russia topic (meaning, Orlando Figes, Timothy Snyder and NYT) — how the Baltic countries really have it figured out: they already “know” what other parts of Europe denies, that Putin is definitely going to attack Europe. I didn’t counter: how to even go about piercing such a bubble?
Interestingly, in the next sentence he denounced all the populist masses who are going completely “insane” voting right-wing “Putin-lovers” — aka. Romania.
One could argue that the background to Russia demonization is a good example of a moral economy of truth, where so many “historians” and other social actors with private or state-funding (Institute for the Study of War and the likes) are pushing the same narrative, that an “educated”, “well-read” person cannot doubt that it is the truth. Yet, apart from all the truth-factories churning out the same story, hammering it into people’s mind, there’s also another side to it from the elite perspective. The reason why elites and much of the middle class really believe in their own propaganda about Russia is probably the same as the reason they believe the “masses” are insane — both beliefs strengthen not only their claim to power (which is perhaps an unconscious motive) but also their moral self-image as the “good” leaders, preventing the world from sliding into Russian or authoritarian hands. They need the external Russian threat as well as the internal “right-wing” threat to justify their own position not only from the perspective of the “lower classes” but also from their own standpoint.
Good luck piercing that bubble…
This”. “One could argue that the background to Russia demonization is a good example of a moral economy of truth, where so many “historians” and other social actors with private or state-funding (Institute for the Study of War and the likes) are pushing the same narrative, that an “educated”, “well-read” person cannot doubt that it is the truth.”
That is a variation of Goebells’ statement that if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it. It is is also interesting how Iraq was viewed by Ds for what it was, but the DNC-adjacent Project Ukraine is swallowed hook, line and sinker by PMC-types while some Rs can think critically on that issue.
Seems to me that the American public had been trained to believe that Russians are evil at least until the 90s.
I remember a blackout in the entire Northeast in 64 during which there was speculation that the Russians did it.
Well, if we all turn to AI companions, we’ll learn to take the comforts of misinformation over the ugliness of information.
The isolation of neoliberal society will soothingly cull the heard.
Success? Failures? Who’s?
Are we sure all those commenters are actually people?
According to “The Coming AI Catastrophe” article in today’s links, 60% of news articles are now composed by AI. So why not the comments too?
@lyman alpha blob at 11:41 am
Excellent point. Western security forces employ thousands of people that respond to media posts. This is no secret. In the UK the security forces posted a job search for four thousand such people half a dozen years ago or so. I no longer read the comments on mainstream media.
NC is one of the few places where those comments are filtered out or at least where the anonymous MI6, etc. commenters must justify what they write.
I had this realization recently too about police using AI to help with threadjacking. We might look back on the present times as an era of relatively easy moderation!
Actually, using the NYT as a valid source of information from is sad, pathetic and disturbing all at the same time. Those who disagree with an article are probably filtered out of comments hence resulting in what you saw. It’s just Pravda on the Hudson.
I remember a reader’s comment that was disappeared from the New York Times.
At the time, maybe 10 years ago, I read a rather content free Tom Friedman column, and another reader, who was a “trusted commenter” responded with a comment that there were a number of fellow journalists who could do what Friedman does for a lot less money.
Trusted commenters have their comments pass through without NY Times moderation.
The comment was recommended, and replied to,
by a number of readers.
Then the initial comment disappeared from the comments section.
The initial commenter used the same username in another forum, which provided an email address to use to ask if they were the same person.
They responded that they were indeed the original Times commenter and were a small time journalist in the New York metro area.
They suggested the disappearance of the original comment was a Times website issue, not something done intentionally.
I viewed the original comment as innocuous, but it did criticize the great bloviator Friedman.
However, after that time, I’ve treated the Times comments as “managed information”.
Sad, pathetic, but not so much disturbing as we in the USA have witnessed incredible advancements in propaganda over the course of our lives. Heck, still today there are those who believe Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction in 2001.
Move aside, Orwell: the USA is the undisputable world-heavyweight champion of bullshit and fabrications.
Obama has got a lot to answer for in gutting the Smith–Mundt Act. That and Habeas Corpus. But that was the sort of guy he was.
Umm, no one else having commented, I have to say that I read Wikipedia’s description to say that Smith-Mundt established the State Department’s mission to continue war propaganda into peacetime.
From the official U.S. Agency for Global Media website I understand that Obama did not “gut” Smith-Mundt, but rather extended that propaganda mission to the World Wide Web.
By the time Obama showed up, U.S. citizens had already been thoroughly propagandized by their own foreign propaganda. Think Desert Storm, Kosovo, and Operation Iraqi Liberation.
And, yes, Obama has got a lot to answer for. Allowing U.S. citizens to FOIA U.S. global propaganda under Smith-Mundt is for me only a fig leaf of transparency.
Just as our overall reality has shifted to match very badly written fiction, the online reality that even real people are now mostly acting like bots.
Menschliche, allzu menshliches. Like LLMs, we are creatures of habit, esp. habits of language that go unquestioned almost everywhere but here on NC.
The human mind rationalizes.
These attitudes present an example of mass population formation to rationalize sundering the Russia Federation and plundering it for the west.
Parallel to 1939.
To paraphrase a Soviet field marshal: Russia defeated the fascists and they will never be forgiven.
You may have missed the point that Vladimir Medinsky was pointing to a proven track record.
Spendy chocolate for the commoner…
Laid out $4.99 for a slim Dubai chocolate bar the other day, and i’m hooked. Darkie types might have disdain for milk chocolate layered with pistachio & kadiyif, especially since the last ingredient sounds like a headscarf, but I didn’t want the goodness to end, and am plotting my next move, which is a much larger $25 version.
Hah, I enjoyed my first Dubai style chocolate just yesterday, and I’m feeling your impulse to go long. Delicious.
For kadiyif and baklava, go to your nearest Turkish or Iranian or Bosnian shop, you’ll get the best real deal for a fraction of the price.
Hearing a repetitive song like BabyShark would drive any sane person to the brink. Especially in a loop for 24/7….what horrid drivel but I admit it’s catchy yet very evil overall. I can remember when my nephews were young and “Who Let the Dogs Out” was getting airplay, oh the humanity.
They use to use classic music to drive away homeless people. Maybe too many of them were taking a liking to it, hence BabyShark. You might have had arguments breaking out among the homeless on the merit of Brahms versus Beethoven and if Vivaldi was the epitome of Baroque music. I wonder what would happen if they put a Taylor Swift song on loop instead?
why not the beatles “when I’m 64”?
I think “Revolution 9” would work better.
oops, I missed the irony tag
As for revolution, I just don’t see the will. I think this crowd of grifters are the only ones capable of bringing themselves down, unfortunately they’ll drag as many people under with them as they can, as the drowning are known to do…
I want an industrial cover of the Sex Pistol’s “Anarchy in the USA!”
I’d die in a park rather than go along with idea that vivaldi is epitome of Baroque.
JS Bach or nobody. Musician and mathematician extraordinaire. I rant on here on certain subjects, my dad rants elsewhere about equal temperament and how we now know 99% of pop singers use auto tune etc. Ironically equal temperament is often a tell as to whether the singer is auto tuned.
Dad played pedal steel guitar in 1970s and knows all the tricks.
Yeah, but after 25 years of building his reputation while teaching violin to orphans at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, Charles VI seduced Vivaldi to Vienna, where he died homeless.
When I’m feeling homeless, it’s Vivaldi I want to hear.
If I may jest a bit, I’d say we have different meaning for either “baroque” or “epitome”, for obviously the title goes to Georg Philipp Telemann. Without him there would be no “Baroque music” and if you go by the opinion of the contemporary people he towers over everyone else.
Bach, a basically unknown cantor from central Germany, respected him so much he asked Telemann to be his son’s (Carl Philipp) godfather. While modern day audiences prefer Bach and Handel, they both studied Telemann’s work (from the copies they bought).
Telemann was held in highest regard of the Baroque composers until mid-18th century, when Bach scholars started, for some unknown reason, attacking him especially for being too prolific. So, while Bach may have more gravitas today, Telemann is the quintessential Baroque era composer.
From the article, Around the corner, Shalom Styles owns the barbershop Styles Barber Lounge. It’s one of the only businesses in the building and in the area, which is full of empty store fronts and “For Lease” signs.
Oh. An encampment of homeless abuts a block of mostly empty buildings. Ain’t that America.
Shalom Styles?
That both explains the tactics used and convinces me that I’m living in a virtual reality written by very very malfunctioning generative AI.
“Ah but ain’t that America
Something to See baby
Ain’t that America
…Little pink houses for you and me…”
I don’t quote John Mellencamp all too often but that’s a memorable line…
That song is full of em and such a great tune. A Whole verse
Well, there’s people and more people
What do they know, know, know?
Go to work in some high-rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico, ooh, yeah
And there’s winners and there’s losers
But they ain’t no big deal
‘Cause the simple man, baby, pays for the thrills, the bills
The pills that kill
Reminds me of The Walking Dead where they are playing “Easy Street”, a upbeat joyful song, on repeat in the jail cell as a form of psychological torture.
“A free people need a free press” – Seattle Times
Such a lack of self-awareness, if not outright hypocrisy – the Times is STILL recommending MRNA boosters for healthy children 6 months and older. Still repeating the canard “Putin invaded Ukraine for no reason”. Ignored Biden’s dementia for years.
The Seattle Times is not free- it’s very expensive, and paid for by the same entities that profit from keeping the citizenry ignorant and compliant and disinformed.
In my Emerald City days, I was a Seattle Post-Intelligencer subscriber and always considered the Times to be a subpar rag. Somehow it has survived while the print version of the P-I has gone the way of the dodo.
Guillotine Watch–
I applaud absurdly expensive chocolates and perfumes. That’s a way for the too-rich to compete for status that’s easier on the Earth than who can go on the most safaris or fly the furthest to their favorite ashram.
NFTs would be even better. Not much carbon footprint with them.
NFTs are all carbon footprint, that’s all they are.
Thanks for the correction, and I found this article that explains how an NFT’s carbon footprint is much larger than I thought.
There are perfumes/colognes going back centuries that are actually good and though 4x the price of the average EDT at an airport, last all day and give you value for money whilst tend not to inflame problems amongst those with allergies.
I discovered CREED when living in Sydney…. though the ONLY local supplier enabling me to test smells was a women’s lingerie shop so I got funny looks…..
After discovering 3 men’s colognes I loved, I bought online. Still expensive but the proof of the pudding was in the eating (note the correct expression). A female friend at a 4pm seminar (knowing full well im gay) said “you smell gorgeous, what have you just put on? ” I told her it was Green Irish Tweed and I applied it at 8am. The rumour is it’s George Clooney’s fave but I worked with marketing academics…..CREED is a French/Anglo company. Most of their signature scents have been copied as EDTs by multinationals so when a stupid shop assistant thought one day I was wearing Davidoff I exited immediately. Yeah I’m a snob. Sue me. But I smell nice and won’t drive you into anaphylaxis. Plus the assistant was same one who couldn’t tell the time from analogue clock.
There was a wonderful A-Z of perfumes written by a husband and wife team and I remember Green Irish Tweed was held up as an exemplar. I just cannot remember of what! Moss and vetiver?
Ah, found the book.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumes:_The_Guide
I don’t wear scent but I do cook and enjoy wine so I found the descriptions delicious, I could imagine the scents without having to endure them (I find scent over-powering, you can stop eating a peach or shut a book or turn away from a picture or even exit a room with music playing but you can’t escape scent!).
AI Girlfriend, an actual existential threat. Get ready for a self-inflicted Children of Men scenario! But don’t worry, once the robots become consumers the economy will still be chugging along.
Bladerunner 2049 was a work of genius on so many levels.
Damn right. A future where loneliness becomes a commodity–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCsgZytKPv8 (59 secs)
Makes me consider Brave New World… which thematically in the initial chapters emphasized the truism that everyone belongs to everyone. No bonds or relationship ties, just daily zest for living from one pinnacle to the next.
As to Children of Men, such a well done but overall depressing movie, or should I say instead a bleak future moreso than depressed.
Many lonely men might think twice about an AI robot girlfriend if the prospect was a sympathetic Ana de Armas in a metallic mini skirt…
On the other hand…. that’s one way to reduce the surplus population.
AI and intelligence–
Our problem is not a lack of intelligence as it’s usually defined. We’re a clever bunch of funky monkeys. It’s a lack of wisdom that’s the problem.
And AI, just another human-created machine, will never have the slightest clue what wisdom even is, much less possess it.
I can no longer find the reference, but I read something intriguing regarding AI and intelligence some time ago:
Competence means being efficient at carrying out some task or solving some problem. Intelligence means being efficient at acquiring new competences.
Google AlphaZero is extremely competent at playing chess. It required playing 44 million chess games to acquire that competence; it therefore exhibits an extremely low level of intelligence — a human being requires 3 or 4 orders of magnitude less effort to become a grand chess master. Of course, human beings play much slower than computers (whose speed depends on the availability of massive supercomputing capacity), but it is complexity that counts (I would like to see a complete energy cost breakdown in both cases; it might be surprising), and there the verdict is unequivocal.
Same thing for the current breed of LLM and neural network machines, with require tens to thousands of millions cases or examples to acquire their much-touted competence at generating or classifying digital artefacts (images, texts, etc).
Wake me up when an AI system manages to identify trees, cars, or dogs after just a couple dozen examples, like toddlers manage to do.
Menschliches, allzu menschliches. Toddler speech is rife with misclassifications: ‘cow’ for “horse”, ‘cat’ for “squirrel”, etc. Eventually, most children grow up and learn that they are not alone in the playpen of language.
AI hallucinations and Viola Brand, bicyclist
Back in the day, I taught a class some called ‘Artificial Intelligence’. In the classroom, I called it “stupid computer tricks”.
In the parlance of the day, Ms. Brand “definitely was something”.
I never knew there were so many wrong ways to ride a bicycle!
Skills like that suggest a strong healthcare system.
Amazing dexterity, she’d be a natural in Cirque de Soleil.
She almost prompted me to start training for the Tour de Burn, a weeklong ride where you can wear a yellow jersey if that suits you, and what sort of training do you need for an e-StingRay on a dead flat dried lakebed anyway?
Indeed, at the very beginning I jokingly laughed as I said, “haha, she doesn’t even know how to get on the bike right!” I knew I was about to be impressed, but I’ve never seen so many ways to turn a bicycle into a unicycle. Extremely impressive.
And, I imagine it took her a few less than 44 million tries to become so skilled.
Kiev fights with US aid and targeting coordinates…..
If Trump cared about dead soldiers?
Had Trump kept his word the war would have ended on 21 Jan 2025
I assume that Trump was given incorrect information, he didn’t realize the extent to which Russia was winning the war, and thus that they would need actual concessions.
To be honest I’m even skeptical of the Russian position — that they’d end the war for the four oblasts. I think they want more, but they offered that to look good, under the assumption that it will be rejected.
I don’t think the Russians were ever willing to end the war for four oblasts: for example, they’ve had a long-standing demand for “denazification”, a demand the West and its press continue to ignore, treating it as a joke.
Originally, they did not even want any. They wanted semi-independence for Lugansk and Donetsk, essentially a better Minsk plus some civil rights for Russian speakers in all of Ukraine plus a few other things I am too lazy to go back and check.
Incorporating even Lugansk and Donetsk into the Russian Federation and bringing it up to Russian Federation standards in things like infrastructure was too costly—Russia had Crimea as an example—and way, way, too much trouble internationally. NATO intransigence keeps making things worse.
As an aside, I’m Canadian. Immediately after the Maidan coup, the new government removed the status of the Russian language as an official language. It was immediately obvious that Ukraine was heading into a civil war.
I remember wondering at the time if the USA had pressured them into this.
Well the US did not spend $5 billion to get that regime change just to walk away and say mission accomplished. And Blinken told Lavrov that there were going to be US nuclear-tipped missiles based in Ukraine and the only question up for negotiation was how many.
Their position is that withdrawal of UAF forces from the 4 oblasts is a precondition for a ceasefire, which is not quite the same thing. They also told the Ukrainian delegation that next time, that number will be 8.
The Russians have even told them not long ago that if the Ukrainian army withdraws from the remainder of those four Oblasts, that they will guarantee their safety and they will not be attacked but can withdraw in peace. No dice.
Seems Trump is locked onto the neocon Atlantic council sphere of reality, formed to justify breaking up and colonizing Russia.
Ukraine SSR is what the U.S. wants to secure. It is a fictitious country birthed by Lenin and added to by Stalin in 1945. There were too many west Ukraine speakers who filled the Waffen SS units. RF should have the 8 mostly Russian speakers oblasts.
The Ruthenian and Polish Ukrainian speakers should go back to 1939 affiliations.
Rump Kiev should be neutral and unarmed.
Why is Stalin’s legacy important?
I always got the sense that the territorial demands are just “punitive damages.”. No NATO, in one gorm or another, or “denazification” and “demilitarization,” and ultimately, restructuring the security architecture, remain the only goals. They are not achievable credibly in the short to medium term and, likely, never. So in lieu of that, they’ll take what they can that can be turned into security assets.
There was a pretty good argument in the Russian Telegram that the point of the four oblasts (or five, counting Crimea) is that in the end, the Ukrainian population is supposed to realize that they lost over a million men fighting for oblasts that were pretty much Russian anyway.
And then they will hate the Banderistas for several generations and reject that version of Ukraine, goes the logic. Meanwhile, Ukraine as it will be after the war is economically a disaster zone (each pays for it’s own reconstruction is the Russian demand) and as the EU has become too weary of the Ukrainian refugees already, many Ukrainians will have no other place to go than Russia to have half a change of decent life.
And that’s allegedly the path to restoring the Brotherly Slavic People theme. Or how one eventually wins the peace, too.
That strikes me as every bit as naive as the US position – not so much the idea that the four oblasts and Crimea are pretty much Russian (which is true) but that western Ukrainians will come round to the idea and blame the Banderites. Shades of GW Bush’s comments that Iraqis would welcome the US as liberators.
They already knew about the eastern oblasts. There are quotes from all of the key figures to that effect, dating back decades. They thought it meant that they were victims of Russian ‘propaganda’ and needed reeducating. Should Ukraine ever by some miracle regain control of them, I think we would see ‘reeducation’ of a particularly vicious and punitive nature.
We already saw some of that with Kherson when it was recaptured, with stories on the hunt for ‘collaborators’ along with some disturbing photos of rows of blindfolded and bound men. Some of them were scrubbed shortly after publishing, but there are still stories out there showing them, like this one for example (the photo is above the fold and you can see it without paying for access).
I think Trump does not understand what Putin means by security. Moreover, Putin’s background stands in stark contrast to American politicians like Trump or Biden.
During WW2, Putin’s mother nearly starved to death, his father was severely wounded and numerous relatives were killed or murdered by Nazis. His two older brothers died before he was born and starvation was a contributing cause of one death. In contrast, Trump’s family was rich and Biden’s early life was middle class comfortable.
Furthermore, the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded Russia in 1941, however, Romania, Hungary, Finland, and Italy also declared war on the Soviet Union. From the SU’s point of view this was a European invasion of Russia. And, of course, the UK and France invaded Russia in the Crimean War. Thus, when Putin talks about security it’s far more important than people realize.
I think Putin’s KGB training was valuable and he rose in rank. Moreover, unlike the US where people fail upwards all the time, the SU was not widely known for tolerating mistakes.
I also think Putin is more patriotic Russian than self serving deal maker. With his innate intelligence and political instincts, he will prioritize the modernization of Russia, prepare a roadmap for the next Russian president, and secure a new security architecture for Europe. Trump should make a effort to understand Putin’s goals.
Best joke I’ve heard all day.
Yeah, when I read “might hit its bases, homeland” I was like whose, the US or China? People are so sure such a war could be confined to asia!
“Trump says he will call Putin to discuss stopping Ukraine ‘bloodbath'”
According to Trump, he is the only person in the world who can stop this war and nobody else can do it which is why he wants to call Putin to tell him to stop the war immediately. He had better be careful of what he asks for though-
Trump: ‘Vladimir, I think that it is time to stop this war. Too many people are dying needlessly each day’
Putin: ‘I agree with you, Donald. The loss of life is terrible.’
Trump: ‘And so much destruction. All that property going to waste.’
Putin: ‘Yes, it is terrible to see. I see that every day and it causes me anguish.’
Trump: ‘So I think that we should declare an immediate unconditional ceasefire.’
Putin: ‘I agree. it’s the only way forward. I am calling in my press officers right now as we talk.’
Trump: ‘And of course we will have to talk about financial compensation over all that death and destruction.’
Putin: ‘I agree. It’s the only fair thing to do. I will ready our joint statement on Gaza now and release it on the Kremlin website straight away.’
Trump; ‘Thank you, Vladimir.I…wait! What? No, no, no. That’s not what I meant.’
Putin: ‘And Dobroy nochi to you then, Comrade.’
Some of us are growing weary of the Trump psychodrama. He’s like a two year old constantly demanding attention. With summer coming up a nice three month presidential vacation may be in order.
These days I hardly ever pay attention to what he says – since it is mostly psychobabble anyway – and watch what he does instead. Trying to keep up with Trump’s utterances is a mug’s game.
Bruce Springsteen felt the lash of little Anthony Fremont-all grown up now.
He is not only a bad man, but a very overrated bad man!
It’s amusing in a sordid sort of way, I think i’m good for another year of monkeyshines from Teetotalitarian Leader before I tire of it all.
The Great Gaslighter attacked not only the Boss, but Taylor Swift.
Orange Julius really never progressed past Junior HS, emotionally.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-tells-bruce-springsteen-keep-161351847.html
In a way it was brilliant in its stupidity. He only missed Aretha Franklin. Let’s attack the most beloved American rock pop artists of their generation. I would have included the Beatles, but British, you know.
I mean even if you consider them over hyped, they are iconic. This is not a response that is going to win over anyone, and might lessen support in a few cases.
Trump wants a Minsk 3 so that prez 48 can go after breaking up Russia.
Trump should act on his humanitarian feelings, and cut off both Zelensky and Bibi from all U.S. military assets. That is what he promised for Kiev.
Waiting since Jan 2025!
Actually, Trump has the power to call Netanyahu and stop the bloodbath in Gaza within 24 hours.
Re: Reuters piece on container ships
I have started using a mental trick to decode overhyped headlines about AI.
When I read something like this:
I simply remove the modifier “AI” and then it becomes much clearer. As in,
Realizing that autonomous vehicles have been around for at least 10-15 years, and nobody called them “AI” until recently. This is another example of outrageous over-selling of what artificial intelligence is, and misclassifying things to mislead people.
Correct, also the 5G would be required for accurate guidance of the vehicles.
Real 5G means line of sight from what I can tell.
Unloading n ships with m cranes, l carts and k trucks is a dynamic optimization problem well suited to computer applications. I doubt that all of this is happening under direct human control. If AI can do more of it it faster and cheaper, it will.
But a computer algorithm doesn’t equal artificial intelligence.
These sort of blustery headlines deceive us.
Re; Elder fraud has reached epidemic proportions…
Survival-mode, or fear-based thinking, seems to make some people cross the line to engage in anti-social or predatory behaviors– extreme and even irrational acquisitiveness at the expense or to the detriment of others.
At the time of the pandemic, exclusive self-interest appeared to quickly overwhelm any moral or ethical self-restraint that some persons had held pre-pandemic that prevented them from engaging in socially-destructive or even criminal behaviors: many people had never faced death as more than a remote abstraction or had exlerienced an immediate fear of dying prior to this: it freaked them out.
I believe that most readers here can cite examples of this, and likely from first-hand experience.
Bottom line: the pandemic appears to have been more than a catalyst for disease, and it’s no surprise that seniors are bearing the brunt of this.
Before the internet, fraud for the most part had to take place in person, you couldn’t pull it off from afar.
My favorite attempt was circa 1990, and a new Mercedes 500 SL sportscar had just come out, and our trading desk gets a call, some guy on the phone wants to buy bullion, and needs our wiring instructions and tells us he’ll wire money 3 or 4 times over the next week. He mentioned that a courier would pick up the PM’s, which was always a telltale sign of a scammer, regular people don’t do that.
The scammer had put an advert in the WSJ, selling a 1990 500 SL with say 1,436 miles for about 10% less than they were selling for on the market, with the reason given that he’d been relocated overseas for his job.
3 interested parties called him and wanted the car, so he told each of them that if they wanted it, to wire $58k to ‘his’ bank account, which was our account. The weirdness of receiving 3 wires from different sources put the kibosh to it happening, but really a stellar effort back in the day, before the internet made it so easy to rip people off.
“I can kill one-half the woking class to kill the other half.” — J. Gould
The haves have so many halves to halve: Ober vs Unter, white vs black, male vs female vs indeterminate, young vs old. An embarrassment of riches, but it’s not.
Make America Wild West Again.
‘No Country for Old Men’ – or Women for that matter.
starting about 200 years ago and said and done by the end of the Civil War, the method to rip people off was ingenious and fairly widespread. After the fiasco of Continental Currency in the 1770’s and 80’s, no Federal currency was issued until 1861… which left the door open for banks to issue their own banknotes.
In the business, we called them ‘Broken Bank Notes’ and information flowed like molasses back in the day, so a sharpie would print banknotes of high quality from say the Bank of Bangor, or wherever, and let the tyranny of distance enable it to pass in NYC, even if said bank didn’t exist.
There were many banknotes from reputable banks, to add to the intrigue of what’s genuine?
It was a confidence game, passing money.
A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States by Stephen Mihm, is a fine read on the subject.
Here’s what typical Broken Bank Notes looked like:
https://uspapermoney.org/broken_bank.php
Reminds me of a scam from the 80s before computer communication came about. So they would deposit a coupla thousand dollars into a bank here in Oz and wait until that account had been updated in the London branch. They then withdrew that money, jumped on a jet to London, and then withdrew the same amount from the London branch before it was updated that that account was empty.
Now that’s arbitrage!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
>>>The 5 most expensive chocolate in the world
To paraphrase a an internet comment that I read on a car channel….milling about and eating $300 boxes of expensive chocolate is what plebs think that the ultra rich do on the weekend.
My nephew has been besties with a literal oligarch scion (complete with professional ball team) since kindergarten. They sometimes hang out at my brother’s house, eat Costco chicken nuggets and play Roblox.
Where oligarch money goes is experiences and property. It cracked me up to listen to my niece who lives in a pretty ho-hum $3 million house (yes, such a thing exists in the bizarro world real estate of old homes; cue violins) rave about the one time she tagged along to pick up her brother at the $$$$$ compound (which still isn’t the most expensive house in the area).
It was like listening to a Mr. Beast video, lol
PS. Mom prominately donates $$$$$ to the DNC and “liberal” cultural non-profits, another half of the exyended family prominately donates $$$$$ to the GOP.
Heads they win, tajls they win; and they keep the coin
I find that once you get above a certain amount of wealth, money is always about controlling other people and compelling them to do what you want them to do. Some of this benign but a lot of it is absolutely not. Going through this now in a small way and it’s ugly.
The gluttonously greedy really crave exclusivity, there’s no Andrew Carnegie types among them, that would go against the grain, giving back a zealously sought gain.
My uncle-in-law was the city manager for a town in CT. He said new money occupied their time suing each other.
https://x.com/EyeonPalestine/status/1923992785822142856
“Standing ovation for Cecilia Culver, a George Washington University’s student, that calls out administration at graduation to divest from Israel and end its complicity.”
Another fine young grad meeting the moment — gives me hope — as does her warm reception
I hope this becomes a trend
Compare to the equally stirring speech at NYU last week…and the total failure by NYU admin, who leaned into censorship and repression – yanking the student’s diploma instead of supporting his freedom of speech
Thank you, Haig.
You forgot to mention Crystal Palace’s FA Cup victory yesterday. The PM will be happy. Starmer grew up in Oxted, Surrey, and supports Palace, not Arsenal.
António Guterres @antonioguterres says, “The situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious & beyond inhumane.”
Where has he been for the past year?
Hanging out with the editorial board of the The Financial Times or BBC, evidently.
He has been one of the few world leaders consistently speaking out against and condemning the violence in Gaza. Here are just a few links:
Secretary-General’s remarks to the Security Council – on the Middle East – 24 October 2023
UN chief denounces Israel for ‘utterly unacceptable’ killings as Gaza death toll soars – 21 January 2024
UN responds to Israel banning its chief Antonio Guterres and declaring him ‘persona non grata’- 3 October 2024
‘Jason Smith – ????
@ShangguanJiewen
30 Sep 2024
You won’t believe what they’re doing in China.
This is the Chinese port in Guangzhou.
People unload ships remotely with 5G, AND THEN, AI vehicles automatically drive the containers to trucks and load them, without human assistance.’
The future is here. It’s just not evenly spread.
See my thoughts up the thread on how we’re being gaslit by “stories” like this.
Even authors who ought to know better, like Simplicius the Thinker, make logical errors by writing “AI shares its thoughts,” that misattributes intent to a statistical algorithm.
Sulzberger in the seattle times is pretty rich…anytime I want to see some ridiculous propaganda headline re the various global conflicts in which the us is mired to the waist I go to the seattle times.
Sulzbergers fishwrap has more panache but is equally committed to distributing pablum.Free. Well they’re definitely not talking about the the sunday paper which is around $5 for the ny rag and all you get is a dumbed down crossword…
When you see an article about Zuckerberg, it helps to substitute his name with CIA. The latter’s LifeLog ends just as FaceBook begins.
The robotic aspect to reinforce AI and the uncanny valley is a bonus of sorts.
When I saw him in the flesh i’d only previously seen him on the little screen from around the waist up, and in my mind he was a mogul’ish 6 foot 5, when reality was about 5 foot 6, and you could have landed an F-18 on his forehead, quite an expanse up top.
An unlikely courier of so much bad stuff, but there you have it.
Nice post from Eric Topol on the apparent success of in vivo gene therapy in an infant. I found this much easier to understand than any of the other write ups I’ve read so far.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-first-human-to-undergo-in-vivo
This is what these various RNA manipulation technologies were designed for, targeted gene therapies on a personalised basis. mRNA was never meant for broadcasting whatever it could to half the world.
Israel is in Moral Meltdown
**************************
Perhaps it is good to read that there is internal opposition in Israel. Maybe I’m cynical. But they’re entirely ineffective.
What I took home from the article is the estimate of emigration from Israel. They’ve lost, maybe, 100,000 people. I think that’s a lower number than I’ve seen elsewhere. It’s not the crippling blow I’ve seen it suggested. It’s sad to read but it may be that the long term damage to Israel is not as significant as some hope.
Imagine you’re an officer in the military and your small country is being overrun by ISIS/Al-Qaeda, who control 60% of your territory, the majority of your resources, and are threatening your capital city.
Unfortunately your democracy has been inept at providing your military with basic equipment and rations and your mates are getting killed left and right. There isn’t time for an election, only a military coup will save the country. It’s early 2022 and you are in Burkina Faso, the country determined to have been the most impacted by terrorism globally for the last two years by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP).
After 8 months the situation is still deteriorating, so a majority of the junta captains bloodlessly remove the leader and select a new leader, the young Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
But the narrative from the West is that Traoré is an *Junta* leader, brought into power by a *Coup*, who has decided to *Delay Elections* for another 5 years; and that *Human Rights Watch* has criticized his Military’s tactics.
That’s about all the nuance that you’re going to get from the Western narrative. I synthesized my analysis from the summary on page 22, and the more in-depth analysis on pages 46 – 59, of the Global Terrorism Index 2025 report: Measuring The Impact of Terrorism, as found under the heading “Publications Listed by Year” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Index and general Wikipedia articles.
Also, “A 2023 Afrobarometer report revealed that nearly two-thirds of Burkinabes believe military intervention is warranted when leaders abuse power, while 66% support military rule, a stark contrast to the 24% recorded in 2012.” https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/04/29/747066/new-dawn-sahel-president-traore-burkina-faso-anti-imperialist-rebirth
I’ve been studying this issue for about a week now and I believe that important things are starting up in Africa and that someone should bring it to the attention of this readership. But rather than assign work, I’ve taken it upon myself to start doing research and share my observations. If you found this analysis interesting, useful, or flawed then please comment, otherwise my motivation to continue this reporting *may* be diminished. Just trying to help, expat2uruguay.
saludos
I certainly took note that Ibrahim Traoré was one of the invited gusts to Moscow’s Victory Day celebrations recently. That tells me that something is up.
Something’s definitely up. Here’s an article from Business insider Africa:
https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/leaders/from-soldier-to-symbol-how-ibrahim-traore-is-becoming-africas-most-loved-and/0m9ysnw
What the article doesn’t tell you is how Captain Traoré is using the money from nationalizing resources to industrialize his Nation. And that makes him more than a symbol, the people love him as a respectful but firm Anti-Imperialist. He is inspiring people across the nation and I imagine that it’s going to slip over into an African-American culture as well. And it might cause them to start demanding more from Trump’s administration.
Thanks for doing the analysis. I hope Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire follow with similar moves to consolidate sovereignty.
However, the CFA franc, controlled by Paris, lives on.
You’re welcome Bugs, and thank you. I will keep an eye out for news on that front, it’s a critically important fact.
@The Rev Kev a Russian news show interviewed Captain Ibrahim Traoré about his extensive meetings with various representatives in Russia, basically a mini summit, during the Victory Day celebration visit. The Russian interviewer asks him great questions and Captain Traoré responds with humor, insight, and sharp criticism of imperialism. He’s classy though, he doesn’t name the French or the Americans, he demurs.
https://www.rt.com/shows/rt-interview/617399-ibrahim-traore-/
https://youtu.be/FEruBS_YZgM
Can anyone here help? I can no longer access RT in any form (I think for around 3 years) from either the UK or from Italy.However I continue to see links to RT on NC so people must be accessing it somehow. I used to get RT television but that too has long been banned, and in both countries.
If there is a trick to access RT on line I`d be really grateful to know what it is! Thanks
Get a vpn, especially one hosted in a country that is not yours.
Try VPN from Switzerland.
The trick is more deliciously simple than VPN!
Want to see an rt.com/linktext? Just go to http://www.swentr.site/linktext (you have to read the URL backwards, like a heavy metal record).
I don’t know who is providing the, er, mirror or if it works in all territories but it’s beautifully done. :-)
I applaud your work E2U. There is going to be a ton of propaganda expended on this subject. The French have every reason to want a compliant administrator back in power, to continue neoliberal resource extraction. No doubt the rest of the west will join them, though the US may try to get its own guy in and nudge the French out of place at the feed trough.
I wish the Africans luck in forwarding their own development, no doubt there are many hurdles to clear
Thanks localnocturnist, and I think that you’re right about the propaganda that’s coming. But I think the US propaganda battle is already lost in much of Africa, along with Russia, China, and the global South. General Langley recently slandered Traoré to a senate subcommittee, and social media in Africa was outraged. Africans are being inoculated against Western propaganda with every attack made on this leader.
But what I really have to watch out for is creative efforts at storytelling using AI on the pro Captain Traoré side. I recently saw a video where he is talking to the people out in a village about agriculture, and it sounds great, except the whole things in English. Not dubbed, as if he’s speaking English to these literal peasants. For YouTubers it’s not just promoting a dream, they’re also jumping on a click bandwagon.
I’d welcome any insights your research unearths. You might want to drop a line to our proprietor in case there are other considerations we’re not aware of. Also in the spirit of not assigning homework, I’d mention that local, on the ground observations from the Cono Sur would also be welcome.
Thanks cfraenkel, and I don’t really mind work, I’m retired and I like to be useful. I like talking about Uruguay, but it is incredibly peaceful and stable, so there’s not really a lot to report here… And when I do talk about my wonderful life in Uruguay I feel like I’m bragging: it’s awkward…
Seconded. I really appreciate the regular features on South and Central America at NC and would welcome any updates on Africa too.
@lyman alpha blob Today I took a look at the Africa tag here on the NC site and I was surprised to see that there has been at least 15 articles in the last year. Given my new interest, I’m going to have to go back and read/reread those! And thank you for the encouragement.
What I have been wondering is whether the same fate will befall Ibrahim Traoré as Thomas Sankara. Those who try to break free from the shackles of neo-colonialism do so at great personal risk.
Regarding the security situation, the glimpses I get from X/Twitter seem to indicate that the Burkinabé forces have a seriously hard time with the various Al Qaeda / ISIS / whatever groups that are constantly attacking them.
Thank you vao, you have figured the greatest risk: assassination. I will study the issue and see what reliable info I can collect. I hope that he has people around him who can carry the torch forward if that happens, because that in itself provides some personal protection.
Thank you.
My parents are from Mauritius. We follow some of the mainland press, anglophone and francophone. One notices comments BTL in support of the Sahel trio and a lament that their own leaders are not emulating, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa in particular. Even Ghana’s president Mahama is having to pay lip service.
Former French executive, minister and EU commissioner Thierry Breton recently complained about Macron’s approach towards Africa and that, if he carries on like that, French people will have to emigrate to Africa for work.
Sorry for asking but what exactly did Breton mean by that?
p.s. fwiw via Martyanov (of course a military man) 2 clips from Burkina Faso´s Traoré public appearances
speech 5 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT1cCe8Bw6Y&t=2s
in Moscow 10min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnxpUXV46TY&t=5s
In German media African nations are remarkably absent even more than usually not by accident especially since some of those states don´t follow Europe´s rules any more. To say it with Craig Murray: It tells you something to learn where the media do not want you to look.
Thank you, AG.
Breton thinks Macron is putting at risk France’s access to raw materials, markets and even cheap labour. He did not say so, but implied. He suggested that France’s economy would struggle.
Thank you.
I forgot to mention that, in part due to technology, migration and new media outlets, Africans are increasingly seeing through the likes of the BBC and other western state media.
Thank you Colonel Smithers. I’m on the hunt for local news sources, which are generally in French. There are some news aggregators for the continent but those cost money, and sometimes quite a bit.
I’ve been following this and researching it as well. It appears Traore is looking to the Russians for security and weapons by giving them access to nationalized gold production. I watched a video from an African YouTuber who traveled there and it seems like the people there are in favour. They’re tried of being exploited and welcome the change. There’s a big rejection of Western culture and even democracy, citing the need to deal with African problems in an African way. It seems like there is a Pan-African sentiment growing as well. The video features a Burkinabe EV store as well, which claims to be 100% Burkinabe, though upon research they are rebranded Chinese EVs. There are massive infrastructure projects being done there in the capital with young people being employed to pave roads and operate nationalized tomato processing plants.
Here is the video: https://youtu.be/CKzM2x3ShYM?si=jr2BmkqT-1LPAkqG
There is a lot of fluff that I skipped through but I found it interesting nonetheless
Thank you alrhundi, I will check out the video
Sports Desk trivial entry. The shoe and brand that almost wasn’t …. segment from CBS news on Sunday morning regarding the 40th anniversary of the most successful launch of basketball sneakers ever envisaged, the Air Jordan. It wasn’t only the Nike shoe after all, but the feats of Michael Jeffrey Jordan weren’t all legendary * when first entering the NBA. Back in those ancient days a collegiate hoops player had to endure three years of college before an official entry into the league, the horror.
*Legendary dunks and monster “alley oop” slams notwithstanding! Dropping 63 against the mighty Boston Celtics in 1986 certainly heralded brighter days to come though.
As a very disappointed Celtics fan right now, I will just point out that the Bulls lost that game in ’86 despite Jordan’s efforts. Gotta relive the past glories since there won’t be any current ones for a while…
““Roman Engineering Lives On”: 1,700-Year-Old Wooden Water Pipe Unearthed in Belgium Stuns Archaeologists With Pristine Detail”
I suppose that 1700 years ago some grizzled Roman engineer looked at the tech specs for the water pipe system and how they called for either lead or baked-clay pipes. Realizing that neither was easily procurable that far north, he probably said bugger it, build them with hollowed out wooden logs instead he ordered. When we have the time, we will go back and replace them with the proper pipes. And here we are, 1700 years later.
A few years ago our septic tank said No Mas!, and we hired a honey dipper to come and claim the goods, and we had a nice talk and he mentioned that he knew of 2 Giant Sequoia wood lined septic tanks in Visalia, and this would have been done around 1900 in the heyday of the short-lived Sequoia wood industry.
Perfect use for it at the time, as Sequoia wood doesn’t rot, I’ve seen trees that fell hundreds of years ago where the bark is long gone, but the hardwood remains as sturdy as the day it fell.
Some environmental biologist here might chime in but I think that the biofilms formed on the preserved wood underground might actually help keep the water clear of some nasty toxins. So there may be even more than meets the eye to this engineering.
While there has been a lot of commentary about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, there hasn’t been much talk about the role of the FBI.
The FBI was in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop for Months before the election and had determined it was legit before the end of May 2020.
They actively suppressed reporting on it even after the NY Post articles in October 2020 and they ignored the evidence that the Biden Family had been compromised by both China and Ukraine.
The Fibbies have had the Hill wired since the 1930’s, they were well aware of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in 2019 or perhaps earlier.
There was also “The Plot to Kidnap Governor Whitmer” which was revealed in October 2020 and which proved to have been planned and financed by the FBI.
Whether these actions were enough to swing the election is an open question, the FBI’s role is not.
The spooks role in elections is nothing new, how overt it has become is new.
The reckoning that wasn’t brief review…
So many of the people and organizations that should be grappling hard in this moment instead seem consumed by the feeling that they have been getting it absolutely right in a world that fails to appreciate their good sense. We were promised a reckoning; instead, we got complexes of feeling misunderstood. Here we are — amazing political party or news organization or activist group — and people don’t get it. Everyone is crazy. But we’re sane!
This pandemic of incuriosity has spared few.
and…
In politics, if your ranks are fewer than you want them to be, the safe assumption is that it’s your own fault.
Giridharadas points the finger at incuriosity and defensiveness and ends with something like “fight a pig in it’s sty and get muddy”
Worth the time to read…
I suppose it is, but it annoyed me that he attributes superpowers to Trump. Somehow he’s making his enemies dumber! Well, maybe, but isn’t it at least as likely that they were always this dumb at heart, or at least prone to reverting to this sort of stupidity when frustrated? I don’t think that Trump made them what they are – though that may be a more pessimistic view if one hopes for Democrats to have a reckoning.
As is often the case nowadays I was reminded of this post: https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/smart-people-are-especially-prone
Good point…blaming it on incuriosity and defensiveness does have a hall pass quality to it.
The bias towards thinking that human “rationality” is predisposed towards “the truth” might be a Western thing, a legacy of Aquinas, rather than a universal thing.
I always thought it funny that the “torture” thing in 1984 is 2+2=5. Even Orwell did not think about whether 2+2=4 might be imposed through torture. Did he think imposing “self evident truth” via torture is not possible, because people will automatically see it as the truth? Dostoevsky certainly didn’t see it thst way–“2×2=4 is mathematics. Try arguing with that,” per the Grand Inquisitor. I honestly believe that lot of elites, especially the more educated ones, really think that what they believe is 2+2=4 and that this truth must be stamped with hot iron on human face forever and that this is no torture, but “righteousness.” Another sign of the West joining the erstwhile Third World: I think most dictators were of this sort…
Might I suggest dipping into math psych literature?
2+2 does equal 4. However that’s not the point. The point is that humans are often probabilistic not deterministic. In which case you can’t assume that an observed 2 is half of an observed 4.
This is why the whole field of conjoint analysis is trash. Why happiness scales are trash. There are objective scales. It’s just that humans are notoriously bad at using them. Don’t confuse empirical observation with mathematical identities.
Fair point: we think that we are seeing 2 and 4, but who knows if we are, or worse, even if that is somewhat true, if that’s the whole story. The blind men and the elephant fable applies, it seems.
PS. this brings up a variation on an old stats joke: what is the probability that 2+2 = 5? Depends on their variances and covariances….(literally, in this case).
hk: apologies for brain-fog but were you the person who asked me for my exact book reference a while back?
I am, but since then, I have not only found the book, but also that I have had a physical copy for a while from my old teaching days. Thanks for remembering!
The League of Arab States has spoken:
>> “The people can elect their legitimate representatives only via democratic elections,” said in declaration [sic]
General elections in Palestine to take place within year — LAS
I am not holding my breath on this. How would the LAS have the authority to permit or organize such a thing? Furthermore, I wouldn’t necessarily call the member states of the LAS “democratic”.
Are they expecting conditions to change in Gaza which would allow such elections to transpire?
Then there is the wording of the above excerpt: “the people” — which people, the Palestinians, or the rulers of the states that comprise the LAS?
Rather fishy, if you ask me.
I’m happy to hear that some of these folks finally understand that their absolute monarchies are illegitimate..
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down those Wal*Mart prices!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trump berates Walmart over price hikes: ‘Eat the tariffs’ The hill
“let ’em eat tariffs” doesn’t have quite the same ring as Marie Antoinette’s famous line, but Bastille Day is just around the corner.
I predicted food riots by July 14th, but Trump’s Manila Folder act may have delayed the event.
War and International Politics
John J. Mearsheimer”
My point about the relationship between competition and cooperation highlights important differences between theories of international economics and realist theories of international politics.22″
“According to Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at the Financial Times, globalization is “the integration of economic activity across borders,” which can lead to “an unparalleled era of peace, partnership and prosperity” if done right.”
The general feeling I get is, and the fundumantal error in this paper in my view is: The maintaining of the artificial construct (my view) that the ‘economy’ both international and national is somehow a seperate entity from ‘Politics and War and international Politics’ —- “In particular, the aim is to create international institutions that can write and enforce rules that will facilitate free trade and govern economic intercourse among the member states.” My view is that all economics is political – it cannot be anything other because states war among themselves “To run its own policy at home and abroad, a state must control its domestic institutions, especially its executive, legislative, judicial, and administrative bodies.”
I argue that the many states no longer “control its domestic institutions, especially its executive, legislative, judicial, and administrative bodies.” It is the metastitis of international preditory finance capitalism that governs member states politics and thus war and war making internationaly. The ‘done wrong’ judged by “an unparalleled era of peace, partnership and prosperity” if done right.”
. “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” -George Orwell
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.” -Franklin Delano Roosevelt
European Commission sues five countries for not applying digital platform rules- Euro News
which ties in nicely with the how “old enemies of peace” have usurped and molded in their own image the institutions captured by this preditory finacial class “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.” who basicaly say that you ought to do what we say or bad things will come your way…The DSA – which aims to protect users against illegal content and products online- they fail to mention to include barriers against privacy rights, fraud and con jobs but lean on content (free speech) and products (what you can buy) – … should protest against genocide be illegal?? should buying a foriegn EV online be illegal ?………..
Enough of my venturing into questions purported vexatious
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” -James Madison
We have our first “Red Flag” fire warning in Northern California starting to day and in my two decades of living in Sonoma County I have never seen this much growth of brush and weeds.
It’s going to be a humdinger of a fire season, thank goodness the Trump administration has made FEMA and the Federal fire fighting system so much more efficient!
Oh, wait.
I loved this section of Guillotine Watch. Their heads seem to advance creakily and without making progress down the side of an urn.
From Study: Long COVID ‘brain fog’ linked to inflammation, stress markers
(bold mine)
And
(bold mine)
This implies that we ought to call it what it is: brain damage. An infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes brain damage in some (all?) victims.
As usual, given the severity of the ongoing Pandemic, it’s journalistic malpractice not to state that
– Infection with SARS-CoV-2 can cause long-COVID
– A respirator, ideally fit tested, can greatly reduce your risk of contracting COVID
– There is no immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and you can get infected repeatedly, for the rest of your entire life
– Each infection increases your odds of bad outcomes, including long-COVID, because of cumulative risk
But no, they don’t do that. I mean, why would you? It’s only a population level disabling event.
World’s most expensive perfume.
There are some nice people in the UAE (RVL Brands) who make lovely clones of expensive fragrances. I have two Clive Christian clones from them. You’ll be able to pick up a clone of this fragrance at TJMaxx or Marshalls next month for $14.99.
How Mark Zuckerberg Endangered U.S. Security in Pursuit of Profit —
The author certainly doesn’t like Zuck! Neither do I, but accusing him of criminal wrongdoing is absurd. Zuck isn’t forcing anyone to use his (free!) products. If you use Facebook (I don’t), then you should assume that the company is using your data in whatever way it pleases. I use WhatsApp and Gmail, and I’m OK with the idea of their corporate computers scouring my messages for nuggets of data (what they can possibly find of use is beyond me, especially as I never click on Internet ads, and anyway my correspondences are mind-numbingly dull); after all, both services are free and reliable.
If you don’t like Facebook, don’t use it. There, problem solved.
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Get over it.
According to German alternative site Anti-Spiegel its founder and main editor Thomas Röper will be added to the list of sanctioned individuals by the EU. We will soon learn if this turns out to be more than a rumour.
Fascinating? Terrifying, incredible, shocking, unsurprising for sure.
And insane.
I was thinking this would have happened sooner – after the SMO started, I figured that there would be a massive take-down of any sites that dared to publish non-NATO-approved propaganda in Europe.
Looks like it just took them awhile to get to it. Cross Europe off my travel list for the foreseeable future. I’ve written and said things that could get me tossed in the clink.
Biden has stage IV prostate cancer; spread to the bone:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5306632-biden-diagnosed-prostate-cancer/
I wish him well, despite writing many parodies mocking him. I hope he can manage it and live out some more years. I’m sure he’ll get the best medicine money can buy.
I can’t wait for the IMDoc take on this. My off the cuff reaction is that no way they didn’t know about this last year. Given how thoroughly scrutinized a President’s health is, I bet this didn’t just spring up in the past 4 months.