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Links 5/3/2025

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Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary Open Culture (Micael T). News you can use!

Tolkien Against the Grain Dissent (Anthony L)

Avoid one-night stands to prevent drug contamination, athletes told The Times (Micael T)

Global health funding faces worst crisis ‘in memory’, WHO chief says Aljazeera

#COVID-19/Pandemics

Discovery Explains Long COVID Breathing Problems UVA Health

Kennedy Orders Search for New Measles Treatments Instead of Urging Vaccination New York Times

Climate/Environment

Bank of England watchdog tells banks and insurers to fix climate risk ‘gaps’ Financial Times

Study Finds Synergistic Convergence of Global Warming, Pesticide Toxicity, and Antibiotic Resistance Beyond Pesticides

Bees, fish and plants show how climate change’s accelerating pace is disrupting nature in 2 key ways The Conversation

Dying satellites can drive climate change and ozone depletion, study finds Guardian

China?

Trump’s Trade War Is Helping Unite Chinese People Around Xi Bloomberg. As we predicted, but this was a very easy call. More important, this will enable the government to depict poor economic performance solely to the tariffs, when there may well be other contributing factors, like continuing unwind of the housing bubble.

Trump Tops Tariffs On China With Sanctions Moon of Alabama

The US has begun sharing rare intelligence on Chinese space weapons with British military chiefs Telegraph

It’s not just Greenland: Inside the fight the U.S. faces to keep a tiny Pacific island out of China’s grasp Independent. Headline gets a “Department of “huh?” notice.

India-Pakistan Row

India-Pakistan tensions show signs of easing Indian Punchline

India Makes Diplomatic Push for Military Action Against Pakistan Foreign Policy

India

India is Paying $288 Million Per Fighter For New Rafales: They Are Already a Generation Behind Military Watch

Africa

Tipping points: South Sudan on the brink of collapse? IISS

European Disunion

How the EU wants to channel its savings into armaments Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T)

Drought fears for grains growing season mount in Central Europe EurActiv

European Union prepares new sanctions on Russia over Ukraine war France24

Macron attempts to interfere with papal conclave – media RT (Kevin W)

Larvae in wounds – management makes millions of cuts Aftonbladet via machine translation (Micael T)

Old Blighty

The Reform revolution has begun Telegraph

Reform has put the two traditional parties on notice – and we don’t know where this ends. Sky

Terminal Decline Sam Freedman

UK exports in worst slump since Covid: Bank of England tipped to cut rates to 3.25% this year This Is Money

Britain Is Toast, Period Ian Welsh (Micael T)

Israel v. the Resistance

“Deprivation by Design:” Israel Intensifies Mass Killing Campaign in Gaza with Starvation and Daily Strikes Drop Site (Robin K)

Egyptian official: US bet that Israel can force more concessions from Hamas ‘a mistake’ Times of Israel

The Vach brothers: Israel’s first family of genocide The Electronic Intifada (guurst)

Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza Antiwar.com. We reported on this incident but it’s important not to miss. Kevin W: “Bunch of fuckwits. Don’t they realize that by doing so, it has given other actors the license to do the same to Israeli ships?”

I was a nuclear weapons inspector – Iran could have a bomb in six months iPaper

More Israeli strikes on Syria reported after Damascus warns of escalation Aljazeera

New Not-So-Cold War

War in Ukraine not ending ‘any time soon’, Vance says BBC

Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine Andrew Korybko (Micael T)

EU to tap frozen Russian funds – Reuters RT (Kevin W)

US and Ukraine sign minerals deal that solidifies investment in Kyiv’s defense against Russia Guardian. Indicating that Ukraine allies anticipate the minerals pact will work out in the manner that we warned…that it would re-anchor the US to Ukraine, even if we aren’t in practice able to do all that much.

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Irish Privacy Watchdog Fines TikTok $600 Million For China Data Transfers Associated Press

Imperial Collapse Watch

The helicopter, symbol of American hubris Engelsberg Ideas. On the fall of Saigon.

Dangerous Chimera – Colin Kidd London Review of Books (Anthony L). Important.

How Russia’s navy became bigger than Britain’s Ian Proud

China muscling in on US Egyptian ally Asia Times (Kevin W)

The UN could run out of cash within months Economist

Trump 2.0

US army plans for a potential parade of 6,600 soldiers on Trump’s birthday Guardian (Kevin W)

Trump budget proposes $1 trillion for defense, slashes education, foreign aid, environment, health and public assistance CNN (Kevin W)

On the Day He Was Fired as National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz Used an Israeli App to Archive Signal Messages Drop Site

Trump says short-term recession OK: “This is a transition period” Axios. Lordie. Things are darkest before they go completely black.

Trump’s Policies Are Creating Uncertainty for Fossil Fuel Companies Wired (Robin K)

Vilsack says farms, not farmers, should work harder to grow rural communities Iowa Capital Dispatch

Tariffs

Trump ends duty-free for low-value Chinese imports in trade war escalation Anadolu Agency

Trump hints at tariff reprieve for pharma companies that bring operations back to US Guardian (Kevin W)

Temu To Stop Selling Goods From China Directly To US Customers BBC

DOGE

ELON MUSK ADMITS HE FAILED TO CUT $2 TRILLION IN FEDERAL FAT, BUT SAYS AT LEAST HE ENJOYED HIS TRUMP SLEEPOVERS WITH ICE CREAM Futurism (Micael T)

Immigration

Trump’s immigration ‘shock and awe’ is losing in the court of law Politico

Texas Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans New York Times (Robin K)

Our No Longer Free Press

Mr. Market Is Moody

Fear of gas market price shocks spreading among energy traders Energy Watch

Antitrust

US Asks Judge To Break Up Google’s Ad Tech Business Guardian

AI

AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals The Register

First Driverless Semis Have Started Running Regular Longhaul Routes CNN

The Bezzle

Credit Bubble Bulletin : Weekly Commentary: The Typical and Atypical. resilc hoists this section:

May 2 – Bloomberg (Sonali Basak): Private credit fund investors are offloading stakes at significant discounts ahead of more potential pain for the US economy, Oaktree Capital Management Co-Chief Executive Officer Robert O’Leary said. Oaktree sees more chances to buy marked-down assets…, where private asset holders sell stakes in relatively illiquid funds to bring returns to their own investors. That activity has been building in private equity for some time, but credit investors are now putting up bigger trades… Discounts are starting at about 90 cents on the dollar and going as low as the ‘50 cent range,’ he said… Limited partners are taking matters into their own hands given a desire ‘to get out of this before a fall.’ He said the current discounts don’t include a lot of deterioration in credit quality, and as the economic outlook worsens, those discounts will get bigger. ‘To date, we haven’t seen forced selling, there haven’t been really dire liquidity situations that people need to address… I think we’re going to get into more sort of anxious points in time where LPs will want to trade…’ Private credit has grown rapidly in recent years to become a $1.6 trillion industry… High-yield debt markets could see high-single-digit default rates, he said. Other markets are even more vulnerable. ‘If loans are going to see double-digit defaults, I see no reason why ultimately private credit couldn’t end up there,’ he said. ‘It’s poorly underwritten, in the main. I’m not saying everybody is’… Many companies with too much debt are simply limping along… O’Leary said this week that investors have not opened up to idea that we might be facing a recession or are already in one. O’Leary said a downturn could be as serious as the dot-com bubble. ‘That was traumatic, that was pretty V-shaped, so we came out of it pretty quickly… The problem here is you’re starting to put in place barriers that will shape the behavior of our counterparties.’

UK Preparing To Ban Consumers From Buying Crypto With Borrowed Funds Guardian

Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry The Verge (Kevin W)

Antidote du jour (via):

A bonus:

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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214 comments

    1. ilsm

      The US is installing an OTH (over the horizon) radar on one of the island that comprise Palau. This is a technology applied since the 1960’s, USAF had one in upper Maine. It allows tracking “air” targets beyond horizon. I do not know but it could operate in frequencies and at angles of perspective that could “see” stealth.

      Complementing the radar could be interceptors with refuelers. The combo could make it safer to bring CVN’s with 1000 miles of Taiwan.

      How that fits with China expanding out of the nearest island chains to its shores……

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  2. oliverks

    I’m having trouble understanding the write speed claims made by Poxiao. They claim a speed of 25 billion bits per second, which translates to approximately 3 GB/s (or 3000 MB/s). In comparison, a good hard drive can achieve around 200 MB/s, making the Poxiao’s speed about 15 times faster. However, this is nowhere near the 100,000 times faster claim. Additionally, when compared to a good off-the-shelf flash drive, the Poxiao is only about 5 times faster.

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    1. Alice X

      Well, what’s missing is describing linear vs random writes. A spindle drive can do 200 MB/s linear but for random its speed plummets to a crawl. Still, the 100k times claim needs some more careful explanation.

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    2. Polar Socialist

      It’s not 25 billion bits, but 25 billion access operations per second. They don’t really define the operation anywhere I can find. So, the actual bandwidth depends on if the thing operates on bits, bytes, words, pages, strings, sectors or who knows what.

      I think the current NAND flashes, to which this is compared, uses pages between 4 kilobytes and 16 kilobytes in read/write operations. So, assuming the lower boundary this invention would be hitting around 12 TB/s speeds.

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    3. neutrino23

      Calling it a hard drive is a mistake. This is a flash drive. Plus, it is not clear that maybe it is writing words so the individual cell write speed might be slower. Nevertheless, this is impressive.

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    4. Rick

      It actually isn’t a hard drive. “It is a revolutionary flash drive device” per the attached image.

      I guess people don’t remember what mechanically rotating magnetic disk memory is (was?)…

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  4. DJG, Reality Czar

    Tolkien against the Grain.

    Yes, it is true that Giorgia Meloni went to Hobbit camps and that the yearly Fratelli d’Italia gabfest is called Atreju. Undesirable alien Peter Thiel and Crisco-fed V.P. J.D. Vance use Tolkien characters and elements for their shysterish businesses.

    Is this a rightwing revolution? Or is it a signal of how little serious political thinking is going on in the right wing?

    The argument that Tolkien is a “pre-Vatican II Catholic” doesn’t hold water because there are no appreciable religious / spiritual themes in the The Hobbit or in the Lord of the Ring trilogy. No churches, not even a shrine. No saints. No ethic, and an inciting incident that is the theft of a ring by the amoral Bilbo Baggins. Sorta like carrying off Helen of Troy.

    I am reminded that the King Arthur cycle was wildly popular in the US of A and U.K. during much of the nineteenth century and up till WW I. Idylls of the King and all that. PreRaphaelite painters and even William Morris (who should have known better):

    https://museumcrush.org/the-pre-raphaelite-obsession-with-the-legend-of-king-arthur/

    I’d argue that the obsession with the Arthur cycle and the current obsession with Tolkien as political source represent a kind of stagnation.

    Contrariwise, the leftwing writers’ group, Wu Ming, has maintained that Tolkien should be historicized (as does Canavan at Dissent). For Wu Ming, a collective that advocated a new Italian epic — and wrote the astounding Q, an epic of the dark side of the Reformation, Tolkien is accessible and available to the left. In fact, Wu Ming sponsored a new translation into Italian to do so.

    Some info from Wu Ming for the Italian readership:

    https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2024/05/lunga-difendere-la-terra-di-mezzo/

    https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2011/03/il-tolkien-immaginario-dei-fascisti-italiani/

    My inclination is not to search for a specific kind of politics too deeply in most artwork. That doesn’t mean that art isn’t political — artworks are, because good art offers opposition to the prevailing platitudes and received wisdoms.

    But great art isn’t partisan, which means that Lady Galadriel Meloni and Tom Bombadil Vance truly should read more widely. Try: Albert Camus.

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    1. hemeantwell

      Good to bring in the pull of the Arthur legend. It highlights how moral-political philosophical impulses can get highjacked by sentimental yearnings grounded in familialism (usually paternalism) and family romance. The sort of difficult and essential philosophical effort that the linked LRB article on Skinner discusses goes poof, yielding to family values discourse. At the end of the day it’s the backbone of most religion, afaict.

      You can play around with this and argue that libertarianism is little more than an adolescent rejection of those family values.

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    2. ambrit

      I’d suspect that Signora Meloni’s and “Vannevar” Vance’s more appropriate “literary master” would be Evola. Otherwise, to encourage “enlightenment,” I’d suggest Malraux. A politician who served “in the trenches” of the World Struggle.
      What is generally “forgotten” in the discussions over Tolkien and his class is that he, and many of them, served in the trenches of World War One. Their entire world and culture was destroyed and “rebuilt” before their eyes. They can be forgiven a strain of nostalgia for Lost Times.
      Going deeper, I would suggest that what we are still living through is the reorganization of the Terran human social “psyche.” The old social organization of the Middle Ages and Early Industrial Revolution has been replaced with, nothing. The spiritual comforts of the “Olde Ways” are now replaced with anxiety, emptiness, and the “transactional imperative.”
      Reflect a moment on the commonly observed “cure” for depression proposed by many today; buy more stuff. Here, the formerly prized function of social and personal balance has been replaced by a philosophy of “maximization of shareholder equity.” Society has been hijacked wholesale in service to narrow and “proprietary” policies. Is it any wonder then that the “upgraded” society ceases to function?
      Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
      Stay safe.

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      1. Retired Carpenter

        Nice! Reminds me of Jeremiah 6:16:
        “…Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”
        Pax

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      2. Henry Moon Pie

        Your story and mine are pretty much the same. The Enlightenment was a cul de sac. Everything quantified. Everything broken down to its components. The concept of the whole or the collective has been lost. Nature has been pinned down and tortured–but only temporarily.

        We’ve reached peak hubris. We’ve changed the Earth. Now it’s about to change us, our institutions. our children, our grandchildren. Like Jensen said to Beale, we’ve messed with the primal forces. Now we must atone.

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        1. hemeantwell

          I don’t think it was the Enlightenment in itself. I’d add a dash or two of capitalism, which usually isn’t seen as springing from the brow of the Enlightenment.

          A global distrust of the Enlightenment was something Adorno and Horkheimer fell into in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, but you can argue that Adorno’s work, e.g. in Negative Dialectics, itself expressed the sort of critical tendencies that would support affirmations of social solidarity.

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          1. jsn

            Capitalism is the problem, agreed.

            Greed, “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

            Money is a social construct that when idolized consumes society.

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        2. Taner Edis

          The classic romantic charge that the Enlightenment (science?) quantifies and thereby deadens everything is still alive, I see.

          No. I’m a physicist, and we’re notoriously obsessed with measurement and mathematical models. But math isn’t about number and quantity in the crude sense: it’s about relationships and structure and even the lack of structure if you want to talk about such things properly rather than just waving your hands.

          And if you mostly encounter runaway quantification in the context of idiot management metrics and bureaucratic pseudo-objectivity, well, people with a scientific background are very likely to agree with any complaints you have. It’s precisely because we are intimate with math and proper quantification that we readily recognize and resent the bullshit versions that show up in the administrative realm.

          I can acknowledge that scientific institutions have their obnoxious sides. But I plead not guilty to the charge that we’re behind some push toward mindless “quantification” of everything.

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      3. Socal Rhino

        Greer had a great series on his Ecosophia blog covering Wagner’s Ring cycle that describes Wagner’s approach to the same issue: the commodification of everything and ensuing despair. I recommend it to those that like that sort of thing.

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      4. Ann

        The best book I have found regardinng what happened to men in WW1 is “Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and The Conquest of Everest” by Wade Davis. He does a masterful job of research, exposition and analysis of the day-by-day experiences that the 1920-1924 climbers had in the war. How those men managed to remain relatively sane after what they went through is a miracle. How it affected their attempts to scale the mountain is a tragedy. Reads like a movie script. I read it every year when it’s -25C or worse outside and the woodstove is hot. Extremely highly recommended.

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    3. Carolinian

      Au contraire. Tolkien’s Manichaean world of innocence versus ultimate evil is a natural home for the rightwing point of view which is why the Rings movies were in vogue during the reign of George “we’re an empire now” Jr. Of course that doesn’t mean that those who merely enjoyed the stories were rightwing. But fear of “evil empires” are the stuff of power apologists.

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      1. Aurelien

        Tolkien explicitly rejected the idea of absolute good and absolute evil. LoTR is about the corrupting effect of power, and the desire for power. Power is really the only force that the Ring has, and so has to be given to an anti-hero who does not want power. Sauron is totally corrupted by the lust for power, other characters are tempted, and Boromir dies because, as he recognises, he gave way briefly to that temptation. Tolkien was in effect an anarchist and, whilst I don’t think he ever visited the US, it’s pretty obvious he would have hated it.

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        1. Polar Socialist

          The movies, of course, left out Tom Bombadil, to whom the Ring has no effect at all, and did skipped over that Faramir was also able to resist it, even though he felt it’s lure.

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        2. Daniil Adamov

          For some reason I was sure he did visit and hated it, but apparently not.

          Here is an interesting selection of Tolkien quotes on America and some related topics.

          As for his political identity, Christian traditionalist anarchist with very idiosyncratic monarchist leanings just about describes it. I don’t think he would’ve wanted to have much to do with today’s left or right, any more than his own time’s. (Although his militant opposition to the “State-God” is worth noting.)

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        3. Carolinian

          Fair enough and I’ll confess that Tolkien’s not my thing and that I don’t know that much about him.

          Still that doesn’t mean that some people don’t, black box style, see this in his story and take it as the message. Plus separating “power” from the susceptible humans who are built to wield or resist it may be a distinction without a difference.

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          1. Carolinian

            As a little more evidence for my above point the Ukrainian fighters refer to the Russians as “Orcs.”

            Whether or not Tolkien believed in “evil” the good vs evil crowd sure seem to like him.

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            1. Daniil Adamov

              Tolkien was very popular in late Soviet and post-Soviet subcultures, possibly more so than even in Western ones. This leaks over into politics, especially grassroots politics. There are also Russian nationalists who refer to themselves as Orcs (semi-ironically) and I once found a Belarusian national-monarchist online whose English-language motto was “Belarus is my Mirkwood”. So this is also an example of Ukrainian nationalists being part of greater Russophone culture.

              Of course the good vs. evil line is a big part of it too. In Russophone popular culture (fanfiction, online essays, etc.), there is a schism between White Tolkienism and Black Tolkienism. White Tolkienists, many of them Ukrainian or Russian liberal, accept Tolkien’s moral judgements completely. Black Tolkienists take his works and invert the judgements, putting Melkor, the orcs, etc. in the right and elves, wizards and their cronies in the wrong. Unsurprisingly, this position often corresponds to Russian patriotism (though not always, sometimes it’s just Satanism or pure contrarian edginess). I liked the somewhat relativist Gray Tolkienist take that damns both Eru and Melkor but holds up Sauron and the orcs as temporarily aligned with the latter to defend their freedom from the former.

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    4. Anonymous 2

      Given when Lord of the Rings was written, I am surprised no-one makes the obvious reference.

      Sauron = Hitler?

      I have Tolkien down as a moderate conservative of the old sort (i.e. anti-fascist).

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          1. Terry Flynn

            I don’t. I think he liked to think he was immune to allegory but you don’t have all your mates killed in WW1 and not have stuff seep into your work.

            There’s allegory all over the place.

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              1. Cervantes

                Tolkien the English professor must be rolling in his grave with the lack of precision here in describing the interaction between his work and political or religious themes.

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              2. Anonymous 2

                Fair comment. But I have known fictional writers claim that their works are not based on real life when subsequently it becomes clear that there were real-life characters partly inspiring some of their creations.

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    6. Cervantes

      > The argument that Tolkien is a “pre-Vatican II Catholic” doesn’t hold water because there are no appreciable religious / spiritual themes in the The Hobbit or in the Lord of the Ring trilogy. No churches, not even a shrine. No saints. No ethic, and an inciting incident that is the theft of a ring by the amoral Bilbo Baggins. Sorta like carrying off Helen of Troy.

      There are a lot of Christian themes in Lord of the Rings, although they’re not particularly relevant to liturgical disputes and are also geared toward European Christian history.

      First, many members of the Fellowship have a relation to a Christian archetype. Frodo is a suffering servant bearing his burden like Christ going to the passion or like the archetypical Christian bearing his cross and following Jesus. The ring is the lure of the flesh (Greek sarx) that drives humans to selfish ambition, jealousy, dissension, etc. (Gal. 5:19-21). Gollum, as a “fallen” halfling so to speak, in contrast to Frodo is the darker nature of every person who will die in the fire of Mt. Doom due to their attachment to the flesh. Sam is a helper and advocate who aids the Christian in their journey akin to the Holy Spirit. Gandalf is a kind of incarnate supernatural being who teaches the hobbits important truths and who dies and rises again victoriously against demonic powers. Aragorn is a not-quite-human long-promised messianic king who must restore his people and sacred city after their long decline; he even journeys to the place of death to loose the chains of a long-dead army; Denethor is Aragorn’s Herodian pretender. Pippin and Merry compare to the character growth of the disciples like Peter; they start brash, arrogant, ignorant, but by the end they are mature.

      From a literary perspective, you might even compare the Lord of the Rings as a journey story to the archetypical English journey story Pilgrim’s Progress. Instead of imagining the Christian as going to the Celestial City and having the almost-surprise obstacle of the river of death at the end, Frodo knows full well he must contest the hellish experience of death (as a more Christlike figure than the pilgrim Christian).

      In comparison to European Christian history, Gondor is like Byzantium or the Hapsburgs and Rohan is like Hungary or Poland or some other suitable newly baptized kingdom of the Middle Ages. The sieges of Helm’s Deep or Minas Tirith compare generally to Christian struggles against Muslim states but especially to the struggles between largely Roman Catholic Europe and the Ottoman empire. The eventual victory at Minas Tirith is like the victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when the charge of the Polish winged hussars helped end the siege. We might say the Minas Tirith battle is more like Tolkien fantasizing that something like the winged hussar charge had happened in 1453 instead of Constantinople falling to the Ottomans.

      It gets even more clear if you read Silmarillion and understand the LotR cosmology involves a monotheistic creator God acting through full-fleshed supernatural/spiritual angel-like beings with a rebel Melkor who tries to undo creation…

      In other words, there are significant layers of religious allusion in Lord of the Rings. I would even suggest that LotR has the most Christian-inflected storyline and cosmology of any major fantasy franchise that exists, considering that the Chronicles of Narnia aren’t a real fantasy franchise but steer too far into straightforward theological allegory.

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      1. Birch

        Thank you for the thorough takedown, Cervantes. That paragraph bothered me too.

        Tolkien’s writing is very Christian. For me, where he differs from his peers is that he doesn’t demonize the forest. Unlike Harry Potter or Little Red Riding Hood, Tolkien’s evil doesn’t hide in the forest with wolves – it resides in a post-industrial wasteland more reminiscent of Fort McMurray. There are very few fantasy worlds created from a capitalist-era Christian worldview that include anything like Tom Bombadil and Ents. (Notice the movies left Tom Bombadil out altogether.)

        Put another way, Tolkien’s ‘good’ characters live symbiotically with the natural world while his ‘bad’ characters go about destroying it.

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        1. Cervantes

          Yep, not unlike C.S. Lewis’s pseudo-science fiction Out of the Silent Planet which raises the question whether humans conquering foreign worlds would actually be good for those worlds or their inhabitants.

          Another interesting tidbit–Tolkien embeds a clear anti-colonialist message in the appendices describing the Numenorean fall (although it is modeled a bit on the myth of Atlantis). The Numenoreans inherited great things from the elves, but their greed in making colonies overseas and invading other countries led to their downfall.

          And, don’t get me wrong, I don’t take Tolkien to be the final word on interpreting Christian ideas in a fantasy lens. He has a notable emphasis on “blood” and lineage, the concept of the “west,” and so on that reflect a specifically European Christian heritage but which may not reflect more global conceptions of Christianity or even recent scholarship on medieval Christianity that acknowledges the tradition of Syriac, Coptic, Russian, Armenian and Greek Christianity often living under Muslim rule. The point is just to say that Tolkien has clearly filled LotR with allusions to a version of Christianity.

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          1. Ann

            The most in-depth analyst of Tolkien is Dr. Tom Shippey, who held the same position as Tolkien did at Oxford and had met him personally. His two books on the history, development and meaning of Tolkien’s writing are comprehensive.

            “JRR Tolkien, Author of the Century” has the following chapters:

            Author of the Century
            Re-Inventing Middle Earth
            Mapping Out A Plot
            Concepts of Evil
            The Mythic Demension
            The Work of His Heart
            Doubts, Fears, Autobiographies
            The Followers and the Critics

            BTW, he does not mean Tolkien is “THE” Author of the Century. He explains that he means that Tolkien is the author of THAT century, or, explains that century.

            “The Road To Middle Earth” Revised Edition, has the following chapters:

            Lit. and Lang.
            Philological Inquiries
            The Bourgeois Burglar
            A Cartographic Plot
            Interlacements and the Ring
            “When All Our Fathers Worshipped Stocks and Stones”
            Visions and Revisions
            “On the Cold Hill’s Side”
            “The Course of Actual Composition”

            Both of these books are highly recommended. He writes that Tolkien admitted in a letter to a friend that the books were, “very Catholic.”

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    7. amfortas the hippie

      LOTR was just as foundational to my formation as Zarathustra.(enough so that i can read and sorta speak (and mostly understand, in the films) Quendi,lol..it was my first non-english language.)
      and im pretty far to the Left, when it comes to social things/natural monopolies, etc.
      and yes, Tolkien included lots and lots of somewhat hidden xtian ideals and morals and allusions, throughout…as someone said, especially in the Silmarillion.
      I had previously immersed myself in Arthurian Things, so was perhaps primed…and a few years later, found Campbell’s vol 4 of Masks of God(Creative Mythology), wherein he goes on and on about how Parsifal and the Grail Cycle in general, is the foundation mythos of what we call Western Civ.
      That had a huge effect on my development, as well(Knight Errant, etc…which got me in a whole world of trouble, in the end)
      and its also from whence i derive my online handle.

      Tolkien has always struck me as one of those old school small-c conservative types(like Russel Kirk and Wendell Berry), who i likely would have got along with, so long as we didnt preach at each other overmuch about the “Right” religion.
      His numerous ruminations,usually by proxy(Frodo, etc) about woods and fields echoes a bunch of the ur-texts of environmentalism and ecology…”How Green Was My Valley”, comes to mind.
      and several of the stories within Silmarillion, are just fantastic tragedies(Turin, Lay of Luthien, etc)
      Outside of Middle Earth, Leaf by Niggle is prolly my fave.

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        1. amfortas the hippie

          whomever linked to bret devareaux(sp-2), thank you.
          ive been in the weeds with that guy all day since…helms deep and the siege of gondor.
          a welcome distraction(sans a nubile farmhand) from the news of the day, which is always bad, these days, it seems.

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  5. RookieEMT

    The first factoid with the falcon gave me a funny feeling. Its fake. The image is a hypothetical migration map of the barn swallow that do sometimes travel from Finland to South Africa posted by a random person on Facebook.

    Then another random jack wagon slapped a picture of a falcon atop of it and claimed it was GPS tracked.

    Reply ↓
    1. JohnA

      Some years ago, migrating birds were tracked between Siberia and western Europe. it turned out many were shot by hunters in Hungary. Maybe the falcon has learned to avoid Hungary.

      Reply ↓
  6. The Rev Kev

    “I was a nuclear weapons inspector – Iran could have a bomb in six months”

    I had to check the link to make sure that this article was not from the Wayback Machine showing an article from the 1990s. In spite of the fact that Iran has no intention of building a nuke and does not have the nuclear material refined to a sufficient percentage, maybe they could do it. But I doubt it. The aim of this article seems to be to panic people about the whole thing and throwing out possibilities of Israeli nukes flying.

    Yeah, nah. Trump could get an Iranian deal tomorrow with the Russians supervising everything but Bibi keeps on giving him impossible demands for Trump to give the Iranians to kill any deal so that the US will go to war with Iran for him. It’s all about trust here and Iran has zero trust in Trump as he killed the first deal. And Iran has zero trust in the IAEA as well, especially with it being run by Grossi who just can’t work out who is attacking the Zaporizhzhia nuke plant. Here is another reason why.

    Years ago nuke inspectors came to check out facilities in Iran. Having been bitten before, the Iranians ran a geiger counter over them before they entered the buildings and one inspector gave off a reading. She excused herself to go to the toilets and when she came back, there was no more radiation being detected. How about that.

    Reply ↓
    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Scott Ritter, who was also a weapons inspector, points out an Iranian official recently put the time at 2 weeks, so six months is generous. Ritter (I think independently) puts the time as weeks also.

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      2. Peter Steckel

        My recollection from one of his Dialogue Works’ interviews. Of course, having a nuclear “bomb” (how big?) and having a means to deliver the nuclear “bomb” to the target are two different matters. And that’s before one considers the missile defense systems over the likely target, the very real and almost guaranteed overwhelming response from the US/Israelis, and the fact that Iranian clerics consider the nuclear bomb haram, i.e. a no go.

        Madness, madness all around. Please make it stop.

        Reply ↓
        1. Yves Smith Post author

          Iran is WAY ahead of the game in delivery.

          On an earlier thread, some experts argued about the supposed difficulty of designing a cone for the missile that could withstand the compressive forces (I forget how that would be bad for the payload otherwise).

          One reader cheerily pointed out that Iran had already mastered those issues in designing and launching hypersonic missiles.

          Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        It’s like the supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction for Iraq – which also did not exist. It’s just a crock that is being used to gin up an attack on Iran. It is also used to distract from the country in that region that actually does have nukes. Thing is, if the US military did not have the capability to invade Iran after 2003, then how can it do it with the US military of 2025?

        Reply ↓
        1. ChrisFromGA

          Just think of all the US military equipment that’s been destroyed in a pointless proxy war. Literally billions and billions of dollars worth, with some of it recovered intact and now Russian property.

          We couldn’t even take down Assad, for Chrissakes, Turkey had to do the job.

          And these clowns seriously think they’d have a chance at a ground war in the ME?

          Reply ↓
          1. The Rev Kev

            I thought I heard the other day that the Russians now have more Javelins in storage than the UK has in their arsenals. More than enough to equip their own proxy wars.

            Reply ↓
            1. ChrisFromGA

              I heard on Dima’s report a few weeks back that several intact Abrams tanks were recovered in the Kursk region, along with Himars shells.

              If nothing else, good for reverse engineering and discovering vulnerabilities. And passing those along to the Iranians.

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    3. Aurelien

      There’s an important confusion, which the article does nothing to dispel, between four separate things. One is a stockpile of fissile material, uranium enriched to at least 90%. The second is a manufactured warhead using this material. The third is a guidance system to get the warhead where you want to go, remembering that in principle a nuclear warhead separates from the launch vehicle before impact, classically outside the atmosphere. And the fourth is the delivery system itself, to which the warhead and the guidance system need to be married.

      It’s known that Iran has enriched uranium to 60%+ Going to 90% is a quick process, and it’s probably this that Ritter is referring to. It’s possible that there is a small quantity of fissile material in existence already. For the rest, I doubt if anyone outside Iran actually knows. There are certainly delivery systems available, but whether they can be or have been modified to carry a nuclear payload is not known. Nor is it known whether the Iranians have been working separately on warhead design and guidance technology.

      There are three ways in which it could be accurate to say that Iran could have “nuclear weapons” in six months. One, and the least probable, is that there are already separate and mature programmes for warhead and guidance system development and integration, and everything could be brought together rapidly. This would put Iran in the same category as countries like Germany and Japan, which have dormant nuclear capabilities. The second is that a single system could be developed with a crude nuclear charge which could be launched more-or-less straight up, in the event of an attack. This would produce a massive EMP effect across the whole region, frying not just military electronics but civilian systems as well. The third, and by far the most probable, is that the Iranians could rig a crude device, not a warhead, and explode it demonstratively, perhaps underground, to gain the cachet of being a “nuclear power.” If the North Koreans have been passing them nuclear technology, which seems to be the case, this would be well within their grasp.

      Reply ↓
      1. Michaelmas

        Aurelien: The third, and by far the most probable, is that the Iranians could rig a crude device, not a warhead, and explode it demonstratively, perhaps underground, to gain the cachet of being a “nuclear power.”

        In the case of an A-bomb — a Hiroshima-Nagasaki-type device — this is so easy, relatively speaking, that Iran doesn’t need any nuclear assist from North Korea and Ritter’s comment about two weeks seems quite realistic.

        BUT given Iran’s general technological advancement and putting aside Khamenei’s statement that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic — which may indeed reflect deeply-felt beliefs in Tehran — there are two practical strategic scenarios that may so far have given Iran’s leaders pause before they proceeded to ‘nuclear breakout’ —

        Firstly: Iran’s demonstration of an atomic bomb in an underground test might prove precisely the trigger point that could drives Israel to attack Iran with its thermonuclear weapons, with US support, on the basis that Israel must flatten Iran while the Chosen People still possess nuclear superiority and the capability to “blot out “the Amalek from under heaven.”

        Secondly: one country getting nukes historically has triggered a regional chain reaction—in the 1960s, for instance, China going nuclear made India follow, leading Pakistan to do the same. In the 2020s, Iran building its first nukes might lead the Saudis and Egypt to do likewise. Most of Earth’s land surface would then become one continuous zone of nuclear states—all neighbors with histories of mutual hostility—extending from Israel and Egypt in the west, on through Iran, Pakistan, and India, all the way to China, Russia and North Korea, in the east.

        That latter thought could have given Tehran pause. It certainly does me.

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      2. TimH

        I don’t see any reason why problems 2,3,4 haven’t been resolved satisfactorily years ago by Iran. The engineering is independent, in the sense that one doesn’t need 90%+ material first to start solving the other issues.

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    4. urdsama

      Why would Russia have anything to do with a US-Iran deal?

      Makes no sense to tie yourself to a drowning man.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        Well I’m sure that the US does not feel that way. You were talking about the US, weren’t you?

        Reply ↓
        1. urdsama

          Based on Trump going after Putin now that he has seen the light of Slava Ukraini, I think that ship has sailed.

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          1. Peter Steckel

            A twitter thread reports that Russia is dropping their SMO against the Ukraine and will move to declare war after the Kerch bridge incident…

            Reply ↓
            1. ambrit

              Oh boy. If this is true, expect there not to be very much functioning infrastructure left in the soon to be former Ukraine in a few months.

              Reply ↓
    5. Mikel

      It’s quaint that the USA and associates are going through the motions of presenting a justification for hostilities. They will always have some reason to sell.
      The idea is to remove Iran as a competitor for any influence in the region.
      With or without nuke capabilities, regime change in Iran will be sought.

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    6. Darthbobber

      I imagine they could have had a bomb in six months many years ago, had that been their desire. Which it apparently wasn’t and even in these circumstances probably isn’t.

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    7. ilsm

      Suppose DPRK decides it can put its nukes around the world like the USA? How about find the pea under the shell mobiles in Iran>is

      Suppose it decided that “it is okay for USA to put nukes on German fighters” then DPRK can put nukes in Iran and let Iranians control them?

      The interesting thing for me is that no one had thought to use DPRK as USA uses Ukraine!

      Reply ↓
  7. DJG, Reality Czar

    Britain Is Toast, Ian Welsh. Well, that article is quite the summing up of decline into insignificance. Pretty soon, King William and Queen Kate will be presiding over the Home Counties and Guernsey and not much else.

    Or is there another way to interpret the victories in local elections by Reform?

    As an ex-Chicagoan, now in the Chocolate City of the Undisclosed Region of Italy, I don’t have the background to critique U.K. politics. But I have noticed a few commenters here who do…

    What is to be done? Is it true that the last steel mill is shutting down? Can U.K. agriculture subsist on the export of Cadbury creme eggs, smoked salmon, and Aero Bars (which are starting to look rather metaphorical indeed)?

    Some people are opining that it is the end of the U.K. two-party system, but any system that is first past the post will always tend toward two parties. It isn’t as if the Liberal Democrats stand a chance, is it?

    Please advise.

    Reply ↓
    1. JohnA

      Certainly in the south of England, the ranch is being bet on climate warming making the area ideal for wine production. Geologically, it has the same chalk soil as the Champagne area of France.

      And as an added dose of Brexit idiocy, legislation was recently passed allowing wine to be packaged in pint size bottles, rather than in the Reform party hated metric system standard of 75 cl.

      Many elderly Reform supporters live in Spain where the cost of living is cheaper and the weather more favourable. Although they do no consider themselves immigrants, no they are ‘ex-pats’.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        Lemme guess – and they can still vote in UK elections in spite of having abandoned it?

        Reply ↓
        1. Revenant

          Why shouldn’t they? Britain is a global state of mind. Only half sarcastic, there was something admirable in the freedom to travel within the Empire, for those who had it…

          Remember, Rev, you can reside in the UK and vote as a Commonwealth citizen in parliamentary elections, which is something that was never permitted to EU nationals (other than the Irish, who left the Commonwealth but are “not foreign” by Act of Parliament).

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      2. AG

        “Although they do no consider themselves immigrants, no they are ‘ex-pats’”
        Love the hypocrisy.

        Reply ↓
        1. Yves Smith Post author

          No, there is a difference.

          1. Ex pats generally are only contingent residents, unlike those who get citizenship or permanent residence. The “ex pat” implies they might repatriate.

          2. An immigrant aspires to or has more permanent residence.

          Reply ↓
          1. JohnA

            You may well be correct Yves, strictly speaking, but Brits abroad generally label themselves ‘ex-pats’ rather than ‘immigrants’. I have seen many interviews with such Brits living in Spain who proudly proclaim they voted Brexit because there were too many immigrants in Britain, with literally no sense of irony.

            Reply ↓
            1. Ignacio

              British ex pats are now camouflaging very well or doing their best to be the least conspicuous, or moving to undisclosed zones. They are now less noticeable than let’s say 10 years ago. These days they are the Netherlanders the most conspicuous among Europeans, at least where I go in the Mediterranean coast.

              Reply ↓
          2. AG

            Yes, I am aware of the legal issue.

            I was rather alluding to an elite “attitude”.
            “Immigrants” being usually regarded rather poor and relying on the need to become citizens of the other country.

            While – at least in my experience – “expats” is almost exclusively an “elite” i.e. them being abroad is result of a privilege and not forced upon them.

            More in a colonial tradition (rich French in Indochina, Brits in India) or the interwar US-bohemian circles in Europe.

            It implies they can return whenever they wish and suffer under no economic hardship which would make that impossible.

            Expats know no borders only free choices and liberties. Immigrants are subject to those borders.

            Those Brits in the South, I assert, rely on that elite status. After all they can afford to live abroad. I don´t know any poor people who can do just that without working abroad (like countless Romanian working poor in Italy or Venezuelans in the US.)

            p.s. Lulus Wang made a TV-series recently, “Expats”, based on the novel “The Expatriates” by Janice Lee. Which I have not read. It´s about rich people in Hong Kong.
            The German synopsis says “emigrants”. The English original says “expatriates”.
            Immigrants, emigrants, migrants, expats. Interesting.

            Reply ↓
            1. Yves Smith Post author

              Not the case here. An American -born lawyer (who retained some of his US bar privileges, most importantly to plead IRS cases) got his Thai citizenship and gave up his US citizenship. He makes the distinction between being an expat (being able to go back) and becoming an immigrant (deciding or making moves to root yourself in your new country). He does not depict it as an elite issue.

              Expattery is also a function of visa rules. Malaysia has 10 year “second home” visa. The income threshold used to be ~$20,000 USD. You were allowed to buy property provided it was over a certain price level (as in so as not to crowd out ordinary and low income Malays).

              They changed the rules in 2022, increasing the required annual income to over $100,000. And they did not even grandfather in those who had gotten 10 year visas for the remaining life of that visa. So expattery is precarious.

              However, to your point, it is normally the elite or those who have elite connections who can be expats (as in return).

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              1. AG

                Interesting and instructive to a Europe-centric audience.
                (I assume it´s not unlike Switzerland then.)

                As to my point, if you hear people in Berlin speak French, Spanish, English, it´s at once an entirely different reality. They are treated as peers. And you won´t find them in certain quarters either. Which is funny because you get into trouble when it´s people either from India or Pakistan whose English might not sound Terry-Eagleton-ish but it´s their natural tongue.

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            2. Revenant

              British expats in the South of Spain are not wealthy, except in Sotogrande or parts of Marbella and the Sierra Nevada. They are retired people on modest UK pensions who gambled that they could downsize to a cheap apartment in the sun with cheap booze, food and fags and airmail copies of the Daily Mail. They mostly gambled correctly.

              Retired wealthy British expats are in the Dordogne, Nice/Antibes/Cannes, Balearics, Portugal and Tuscany/Umbria/Le Marche. And younger ones with family are in big, high functioning cities with major international business sectors (Barcelona, Madrid, Milan). Rome, Naples, Turin, Marseille etc. are all too local for their taste. Just look where the British Schools are.

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              1. AG

                “Just look where the British Schools are.”
                Is that a real indicator then? And are there so many of those schools?

                Reply ↓
                1. Revenant

                  Yes, it is a real indicator. As a gloss on Yves’s definition, that an expat husbands the option to go back, expats with young families create this optionality for their children by educating them in the British system but abroad. This is a good marker of exoat status rather than immigrant, of maintaining separate identity and being able to pay to do so.

                  Here they all are:

                  https://www.expatandoffshore.com/british-schools-abroad/

                  I gave up counting.

                  I think if you did this for different nationalities’ schools, you would see a very interesting pattern of which countries lie within the power projection of each other – and the trends might be even more interesting. The UK is perhaps over-represented here because of the Commonwealth, soft power rather than hard, and its schools being acceptable to its Commonwealth allies.

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          3. Michael Fiorillo

            Regarding Point #2, while I don’t know what the currrent numbers might be, during the huge immigration wave from 1880 to 1924, large numbers of immigrants repatriated. Contrary to the mythology, many people saw the US as a place to come, make money and then get out of. Italians in particular were apt to repatriate: estimates suggest that up to 45% of Italian immigrants between 1899 and 1924 returned to Italy for good.

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              1. Polar Socialist

                I’ve read a study (from the 1970’s) saying that a Dilingham Comission in 1911 divided the migrants to “old” (western and northern) Europe and “new” (central and eastern) Europe. From the first group about 15-20% returned to homeland, whereas from the latter significant number returned, many doing multiple trips back-an-forth.

                The exceptions to the rule were UK (western) to which many returned and Finland (eastern) to which few returned (permanently). My grandfathers uncle was one those who returned in the late 1920’s, trough Soviet Union!

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                1. The Rev Kev

                  In that era in England when somebody died people would say that they had ‘gone west.’ This was based on how people from England would emigrate west to the US and would just disappear and never be heard from again. It was a thing at the time.

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            2. AG

              As to Italy – for some reason in Germany Italians who stayed remained in typical immigrant spaces, such as the food and restaurant business. And naturally most are from the south. While you have the Turkish minority as a natural part of all strata of society even working for secret intelligence services and high level diplomacy or law enforcement, movie and publishing business and so on. Almost no Italians in public life. Or perhaps more accurately: The fact that they are of Italian origin is not a topic. Unlike with Turks.

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            3. ilsm

              My great Grandfather from Sligo came to US in 1902 worked established a pension and moved great Grandma back to Sligo, why I have to run The Quiet Man every St Patrick’s day.

              great Grandma decided outdoor plumbing was not the rage and my Dad was born in NYC……

              Reply ↓
      3. Revenant

        Churchill liked a pint of champagne. Starts the day well. Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my enemies and all….

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    2. Terry Flynn

      Didn’t wanna monopolise comments so have sent a couple of emails in case NC wants more granular thoughts than Ian’s correct(ish) but extremely superficial take.

      Provided there’s no need for VPN then a good starting point is here. You see where the pic-taker is focused? That new map of Nottinghamshire. That 45 degree line splits Reform (teal) in North-West from Conservative (Blue) in South-East. Our house is RIGHT on the line. Our District went from Labour straight to Reform. Just about ALL of that Teal part was Labour once upon a time (mines, steel, Lace and supporting manufacturing etc), then went blue when they felt betrayed by Labour first time round, particularly after accepting nice things during the 1980s miners’ strike, now are teal.

      The Tory blue in SW is dominated by (richer) people who liked “old school” Tory MPs (who voted against BREXIT and before that told Thatcher “time’s up”) – MPs like Kenneth Clarke who got purged. Ironically 2 of the remaining 4 (!) Labour councillors represent areas that were Clarke’s kind of territory. Derbyshire next door is arguably worse. Labour and the Conservatives got equal vote shares but the Tories as usual focused on seats so got 12 to Labour’s 3. So Ian should not be quoting percentages like that. Everyone knows FPTP penalises you if your vote is too thinly spread and Labour’s across the East Midlands is now EXACTLY like that. “How to destroy your party 101”.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        RT reports the following-

        ‘The right-wing Reform UK party has won 677 out of more than 1,600 seats in England’s local elections, while the Labour and the Conservative parties suffered heavy defeats across the country.

        As results began to trickle in on Friday, the party led by firebrand and Brexit proponent Nigel Farage emerged as the strongest performer in contests held in 23 local authorities across England, winning control of ten councils. These included eight taken from the Conservatives – Derbyshire, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire — along with Doncaster from Labour and Durham, where no party previously had a majority.’

        https://www.rt.com/news/616692-farages-party-big-gains-local-elections/

        How bad do Labour and the Tories have to be to make Nigel Farage look like a good candidate.

        Reply ↓
        1. Michaelmas

          As bad as Labour and Tories are.

          “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which”

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        2. Terry Flynn

          Things can get way worse believe me. In 2023 Labour won 51 out of 55 councillors in Nottingham City. Tories zero. Reform zero. However, with a city visibly looking more like Detroit, their 2027 local City election could be a bloodbath, especially North Nottingham (adjacent to all those new Reform Districts around here).

          Thatcher deliberately encouraged county towns/cities to secede from their county in the 1980s to “simplify layers of government” but which was really all about ensuring the counties didn’t have to subsidise pesky expensive cities anymore but got lovely big boosts to house prices and simultaneously ensure that those annoying left-leaning cities would one day become insolvent (which Nottingham now is) because they were starved of central funding and couldn’t raise enough property taxes.

          Trouble is, when the counties ALSO began to run out of money and desert the Tories, things went south for the Conservatives. This has been the culmination of a multi-decade destruction of society which is now backfiring on not just Labour but the Tories too. So far the “fracture line” broadly meanders along that 45 degree line I mentioned down to South Wales and then a little more shallowly up into the North. But councils adjacent to it are falling to Reform, just not quite as spectacularly as in the Midlands….yet.

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      2. Revenant

        Hi Terry! A different result down here in Devon.

        The true blue rural constituencies finally shed (one variant of) false consciousness and ditched the Tories and voted for Reform. And everybody else voted for the Liberal Democrats. The Tories have been wiped out and Devon County Council has been Tory since time immemorial but is now No Overall Control.

        What is more interesting is the geographic spread. First, some background. The transport hub of of Devon is Exeter, in its East: heading further East, out of the county and into England, the fast trains to London begin here (2h express) and the motorway begins here. Heading north, west and south, into the heart of the county, the major trunk roads and railway lines radiate from Exeter to the small number of other urban centres:
        – the A377 and Tarka line north to Barnstaple and the North Coast,
        – the A30 and old LSWR Atlantic line due West over the top of Dartmoor to West Cornwall and Land’s End,
        – the A38 and Great Western mainline southwest to Plymouth and East Cornwall
        – the A380 and A386 south, down the Exe and Teign Valleys to the sea.

        When you look at the vite, the county basically voted for Reform (light blue everywhere) except for a star of yellow constituencies radiating out of Exeter along these transport corridors. In these Lib Dem wins, Reform was second, often a very close second.

        So the county is now split, urban centres and their wealthy commuters along transport corrudirs have voted Lib Dem over Tory wet or Labour whereas the farmers have voted Reform over Tory, Lib Dem or Labour. Not a lot of love for Net Zero or land use change or inheritance tax etc etc.

        Ironically, in Exeter itself (the only urban area in the Devon County Council franchise that is large enough to have multiple constituencies, Torquay and Plymouth being self-governing), the Lib Dems have done very badly. One councillor, for the PMC 1% surburban constituency where the University is. The rest all went Reform (poorer parts of town, abandoning Labour) or Green (students and the urban village PMC 1% suburb where all the doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and private schools are). None for Labour! A single Tory in the retirement village of Topsham.

        Even the true blue retirement heartlands of East Devon returned Green, Lib Dem and Reform councillors plus independents and only one Tory (and that as the runner up in a multi member seat alongside Reform).

        So, the suburban PMC have voted Lib Dem, the urban PMC Green and the farmers and urban working class for Reform. I am very much looking forward to the General Election in 2029 because the dogs are no longer eating the dogfood….

        The dam has broken. Quite who will successfully ride the flood remains to be seen. Farage seems incapable of building a lasting political party or movement or policy base, despite being the best politician among them by a country mile and the only Russiaphile.

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      3. Not Qualified to Comment

        in 1996 New Zealand moved from a first-past-the-post electoral system, dominated by two parties as in the UK now, to Proportional Represenation. As a result there are now six parties represented in Parliament, with coalitions almost invitable and the smaller parties able to weild at least some power and rein in the more extreme inclinations of the big two.

        Understandably in a situation where one of two parties regularly swap power neither is, usually, going to want to change the rules, but the UK’s present situation where both parties face the prospect of being relegated to third place seems to offer both an incentive to change the system from FPTP to PR to secure their own survival.

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    3. Revenant

      Guernsey is not part of the UK, let alone Britain, it is a Crown dependency. The Queen or King rules there as Duke of Normandy, 1066 and all that.

      Duke William V of Normandy may end up there but don’t hold your breath. Did you know that after WW2, when the Channel Islands were liberated from 5 years of Nazi occupation, the British Government sent them… a bill for their defence? Lol.

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      1. Revenant

        PS I should add, the Islands didn’t pay!

        Part of the quiet settlement around compensation for wartime suffering and loyalty without actually laying over scarce Sterling was HMG acquiescing in the Islands positioning themselves as low tax jurisdictions despite the Labour government of 1945….

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    4. Alice X

      Reform is for small government. All those local positions will be wanting central government money, so the proof will be in the pudding, which will be laced with the same rocks as before. My 2¢.

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      1. Terry Flynn

        Oh we know they are. However, round here and across other under-funded places they promised Corbyn’s manifesto (nationalisation etc) (!) They had mopped up as many Tories and socially conservative Labour supporters as they could, so thought they’d seal the deal by peeling off some progressives (even though the things they promised are not within their remit anyway). Their task was made easier because left is riddled with in-fighting in Notts and basically anywhere that isn’t London. There were whole branches of Labour councillors who last year quit or were suspended by Starmer because they refused to follow orders.

        So by looking in two directions at once, Starmer lost it all. There were LOADS of “xyz borough Independence party” candidates until Thursday. Now all but a few are gone, replaced by Reform because Reform did divide and conquer.

        Captain Starmer thinks he has a cunning plan. Massive gerrymandering. in 4 years local government will be massively overhauled (again, they did it in 1970s and 1980s) and you bet they’re going to try to utilise the Nottingham City Labour voters to dilute the ability of Reform or the Conservatives to do anything. They’re arguing already about to what extent Nottingham City should be re-integrated in Nottinghamshire. Somehow I don’t think this will work out quite how he expects since residents of Nottingham are just as furious at him as everybody outside the city boundary.

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        1. bertl

          I find it very difficult, even when exploring the farthest reaches of my imagination, to believe that Starmer will be around for very much longer. After all, he probably has his eyes on a section of the Gaza coastline for a second home.

          I left Labour the minute he was elected, partly out of sheer visceral loathing for the man, partly because he had blown Labour’s Brexit negotiation with the May government quite deliberately, but mostly because a couple of Labour Party members I knew and trusted had observed him as a professional colleague over the years and expressed serious concerns about his proximity to spookdom and his integrity as a man.

          I think I made the right call although it did mean that a lot of political aquaintances stopped calling and I was uninvited (de-invited? disinvited? told to piss off out?) in no uncertain manner from one of my political discussion groups.

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      2. Anonymous 2

        ‘Reform is for small government.’

        Farage’s initiatives have a tendency to produce the opposite effect to those advertised. Brexit was supposed to lead to reduced immigration. In fact it increased. Brexit was supposed to lead to less bureaucracy. In fact it increased.

        Part of the problem is that in UK public discourse detail is studiously avoided. Glib, broad-brush solutions are far too readily accepted. I long for an interviewer to say ‘now Mr Farage (or any other significant British politician for that matter), can we go into this in detail about how exactly this would work?’. I reckon he would leave the studio at speed.

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        3. Ignacio

          I doubt Reform would bring indeed any kind of true Reform but an accelerated drift to the Middle Age. There is no alternative. Not in the political sphere which looks detached from the rest of the social spheres except the financial and the advertising/PR spheres. They cannot do anything but fail their electorates. Each and any of them. The big problem is that there are no alternatives and this is exactly what gives chances to Reform.

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          1. Terry Flynn

            Yep. I made a long answer to Revenant above but skynet ate it and I know you aren’t meant to refresh comments…..I lived in Bristol for 11 years so have insights into the SouthWest too (though not as recent).

            In the same way that USians in the know are looking at what’s about to happen re Trump’s tariffs, we’re looking to 2029 when Reform win. Shrug. Either my heart condition will have given up fighting the COVID repeated attacks or maybe I’ll have renewed my Aussie passport and gone back down under. No future here.

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              1. Alice X

                None, until I am crowned Beneficent Queen of the World. At which time I will rectify many ills, starting with Gaza, Sudan, Congo…cruelty, greed, privation — oh well, its a long list…

                I’m waiting, I have my work cut out for me but I’m ready…

                Reply ↓
                  1. tegnost

                    I Hereby Bestow Upon Alice X the Celestial Honor of
                    Beneficent Queen of the World!
                    All Hail Alice X Hereby known as Benefrice the Beneficent Queen!

                    Ok, that should get it all rolling
                    Whew! I thought we were in real trouble there for a minute
                    Thanks Alice X

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  8. The Rev Kev

    “India is Paying $288 Million Per Fighter For New Rafales: They Are Already a Generation Behind”

    The article does not go into it but India’s purchase of this fighter has a long murky history behind it involving lots of corruption. Why yes, Modi was heavily involved. Even the Wikipedia entry on this saga is a very, very long one-

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

    And now they are stuck with those fighters for the next coupla decades.

    Reply ↓
  9. upstater

    ICYMI, Fetterman NY magazine archive. The money quote:

    In opposing a cease-fire, he said, “Let’s get back to killing.” A person who heard the conversation told me, “He said, ‘Kill them all.’”

    Hoping for a one term wonder for this guy. Apparently better on meds than off.

    Reply ↓
    2. micat

      Where I go with these statements is that all of the Democratic party has supported the same thought if not so bluntly.

      What happened to morality? I get that politicians only seem to care about getting reelected, but where is the line they won’t cross? Is there a line?

      Reply ↓
      1. Expat2uruguay

        You would have to ask their blackmailers to get the answer to that question…

        where is the line they won’t cross? Is there a line?

        Reply ↓
    3. skippy

      Needs to be backed up by post stroke damage to the brain e.g. a stroke is not a stroke.

      My ex-wifes at 47 yrs old copped it to 3 regions of her brain, over lapping ICH. This is further complicated by previous psychological issues, she at least was in top physical shape whilst working as a clinical paramedic for 12 yrs.

      First thing with Fetterman that was obvious was motorskills, meaning stroke somewhere to the forward of the brain, bad part about that is next in line is higher mental functions. One of the big things that occur with the later is “Executive Functions” go right out the window – see late stage/life suffers of repetitive concussions.

      Its been 4 yrs now watching the ex do all kinds of silly stuff which has had blow back on the kids and with casual friends. Even under endless care of neuropsychologists/personal psychologist and other medical care. Its what I call it freerange medical care where if you are not a physical threat to others/self you are just reintroduced to society with some Gov funds/support and your own your own …

      The joke in the NY mag article was the quip about his eating habits and not taking meds … from medical professionals … fmd and they know his Executive functions are spastic. Probably just giving him some CBT like treatment – totally on the individual with a cracked head in applying it or not …. cackle …

      Reply ↓
  10. AG

    re: Germany AfD

    Domestic German secret intelligence BfV (German FBI) has now categorized AfD as extremist rightwing entity.
    (Of course this decision is entirely hermetic by nature and beyond serious independent control.)

    Why is that practical?

    1) It allows secret intelligence to infilitrate the party officially by its undercover agents and apply all sorts of surveillance.

    On the other hand some say infilitration of AfD has already been long the case.

    Be it as it may: There are strong parallels between the history of FBI sting operations into rightwing groups and their control and German BfV and German rightwing parties outside the usual elites. (CDU/CSU being rightwing parties themselves.)

    2) It provides leverage over AfD and could become a deal-breaker – AfD acts more complacent in regards of RU and NATO and in return is taken off the list.

    It´s like a perverse game everyone is aware of. The only variable in question being the rabble during elections.

    p.s. Scholz himself demanded ramping up deportations of immigrants Oct. 2023 in his huge SPIEGEL interview. SPIEGEL was celebrating him for that. Just a few months before hundreds of thousands demonstrated against AfD for voicing similar ideas as Scholz.

    This whole hypocrisy is just mind-boggling. Which might be another reason why I don´t like the quick use of the term “fascist” – I grew up with it and not a day it was not written somewhere or articulated by someone. One turns allergic to it after decades.

    And yes, between the exaggerated and permanent use of “fascist” in German day-to-day media life and the sick, insane treatment of the Gaza issue and the disgusting complicity with Isarel there are major connections. This might also explain my irritating reaction to the term´s overly use.

    Reply ↓
    1. AG

      p.s. Wouldn´t be surprised if in 30 years time (after declassification is possible in many cases) we have proof that CORRECTIV, the ridiculous “investigative” group looking into AfD actions, and German secret intelligence had some affiliations. This going back to something Wolfgang Streeck pointed out in his LRB 2024 review of a German history of the German domestic secret intelligence service:

      Under Merkel secret intelligence tilted towards the “left”, targetting increasingly rightwing groups/parties instead of leftwing. While however I would argue that in reality any group questioning seriously establishment power would be regarded as a threat regardless of party ideology. And of course since the 1950s manipulation of rightwing has been a bread-and-butter issue of the BfV. So any of this “change” is merely relative in relation to the needs of absolute power.

      Reply ↓
        1. AG

          wow!
          UK actually rose!
          Quite an accomplishment.
          (Is it a coincidence the only country more democratic now than 20 years ago is the home country of the outlet?)

          Reply ↓
      2. AG

        BERLINER ZEITUNG has a comment on the new status of AfD.

        Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution report on AfD: Why it reminds of conspiracy theories

        The author has access to thousands of pages of Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution material, including information on the AfD. The secrecy surrounding the AfD report serves to maintain the agency’s power.

        A guest article.
        by Mathias Brodkorb

        Mathias Brodkorb, a Cicero columnist, served as Minister of Culture and Finance in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the SPD. His book “Thought Police in a Constitutional State? The Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a Politician’s Agent. Six Case Studies” was published by zu Klampen in 2024.

        German-language version:
        https://archive.is/GvMbE

        Takeaways:

        -the 1000-page report is secret
        -the argument is the same as 2017, when it was argued that AfD was in favour of an ethnically legitimized citizenship, which would be based on “blood” (which is an odd argument since until 1998 this was the very nature of the German law regulating citizenship, based on the 1913 (!) law).
        -AfD is accused of “(…)basing people’s legal status solely on their biological ancestry, like the NPD, and of seeking to subject migrants to “unconstitutional unequal treatment.” The only problem is: to the author’s knowledge, unlike the NPD, there is not a single resolution by the federal party that could support such an accusation. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution therefore relies on isolated statements by elected officials and officials, which it interprets as unconstitutional.(…)”

        -„(…)An AfD member is accused of making the following statement: “Misguided migration policies and the abuse of asylum have led to the 100,000-fold importation of people from deeply backward and misogynistic cultures.”
        Objectively, this statement does not constitute a violation of the constitution. It is a robustly formulated expression of opinion. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution therefore resorts to a hermeneutic trick: If one already assumes that the AfD adheres to an unconstitutional ethnic concept of the people, constitutionally harmless statements can be interpreted as indicator plants for the supposedly underlying worldview.(…)“

        -„(…). There are undoubtedly statements from the ranks of the AfD that are unconstitutional – including regarding the concept of the people. However, the number of these indisputably unconstitutional statements is rather small.(…)“

        Conclusion:

        Either the proceed with banning the party which can fail. Or they will not „(…)because they do not want to expose themselves to (…) critical scrutiny (…)“, latter of which will be the case IMHO.

        Reply ↓
  11. The Rev Kev

    “How Russia’s navy became bigger than Britain’s”

    Once upon a time, the Royal Navy – like the British Army – was almost a force of nature. But through political incompetence and probably political admirals, they have been reduced to something that could not patrol the coastline of the UK. The Russians took a different approach I suspect. They saw who their opponents were, calculated what sort of fleet and weapons systems would be needed to counter it, and are now pumping both out according to their strategic plan. Does the UK even have a plan any more? From Mark Felton’s channel – whose video “The Army With More Horses Than Tanks” I linked to recently – now presents “The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships”-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9duwvipB0 (10:34 mins)

    Reply ↓
    1. urdsama

      I suspect the West’s love of wonder weapons hasn’t helped either. A main part of US military doctrine, which is essentially NATO’s as well, of “shock and awe” has helped lead to the outcomes we are seeing in Western militaries. Long discredited as it was only used against nations with far weaker armed forces, and even then failed to produce the promised results, still appears to be in place today.

      Meanwhile Russia’s military approach of grinding down the opponent, has held sway since it was last deployed against Germany in WWII to devastating effect. And when this tactic was not, or could not, be deployed you got Afghanistan.

      In practical terms, the US quickly depletes its weapon stockpiles with minimal effectiveness as these “amazing weapons” are poorly suited for modern warfare (ironic since their design and cost were justified as being necessary to fight modern wars). Alternatively, Russia produces massive amounts of more “conventional” munitions/weapons that can be readily replaced and are easy to distribute across the battlefield.

      The current war between the Ukraine and Russia just proves this point.

      Reply ↓
      1. ilsm

        The US experience since 1965 proves the conclusions of the WW II Strategic Bombing Survey were bogus, especially the part about blowing up civilian targets with no direct military value is not productive.

        The case of fire bombs (inaccurate bomb sites from safe altitude, burn 100,000 civilians to gut a small factory] and atomic bombs is special to the situation of 1945 Japan which was folding anyway!!

        Will blowing up apartment building of so called nuke scientists matter in Iran?

        Reply ↓
      2. XXYY

        What you are seeing in the US is what happens when military contractors become entirely for-profit entities run by MBAs. Weapons are sold to the government by sales people, and contracts are handed out according to who has the most compelling sales pitch and/or PowerPoint presentation. Since the weapons will never need to actually work, or at most will have to work against people wearing sandals, there is no actual test for fitness in the life of the program.

        The war in Ukraine has been quite remarkable since US weapons are for the first time going up against a peer country that is reasonably good at making weapons. The results have been quite risible as well as being quite predictable. The premier US weapons that have been sold to foreign countries for decades are now being demonstrated under realistic conditions, working quite poorly, and (I assume) engendering a lot of buyers’ remorse around the world.

        It will be interesting to see what happens to US foreign weapon sales once the Ukraine war is over.

        Reply ↓
    2. Mikel

      It seems that Russia has completed their assessment of NATO’s capabilities and see less of an issue with exposing larger numbers of troops across an expanding battlefield in Ukraine.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        Same here. I can’t see zip like that. It’s a shame for the Finns though in this post. They gave up a peaceful and profitable relationship with their big neighbour and let themselves be stampeded into joining NATO. Now the whole country will be turned into a battlefront with soldiers and bases everywhere and things like pensions and infrastructure cut to pay for it all. And instead of Russia come begging the Finns to come back they are just ‘ghosting’ Finland.

        Reply ↓
        1. Polar Socialist

          There were two threads where Finland was mentioned, though. Not that I saw any anti-semitism in either. I did not bother to look the one you refer to all the way trough, to be honest. It’s X, after all, and the noise-to-signal ratio gets pretty darn high the longer the thread.

          That said, the original poster starts from the false premises, it must be said. Finland currently has a right-wing, anti-migration government, and they did close the border precisely because Russia ceased (due to the worsening relations) stopping asylum seekers before they reached the Finnish border – as they had done for decades by the request of the Finnish authorities.

          As the many comments in the thread attest, not many Finns really know the real reason for closing the border (xenophobia, not russophobia), and that it’s not related to either EU, NATO or the war in Ukraine, just Finland being a lousy neighbor by choice.

          Also, worth mentioning for those interested in source evaluation, the journalist Matti Kuusela retired 5 years ago, was known for gonzo-style of “journalism” and later admitted he totally made up some of his articles – forcing the newspaper he had worked to pull over 500 articles from the internet, and restore them only after tedious validation and clearly marked as not following journalistic standards.

          That’s not to say he can’t be trusted, just that his style is exaggeration in the service of narrative. Some Finns would prefer better relations with Russia, some don’t. In the current “controlled media environment” it’s hard to say which way the majority leans, but for example the people pushing for the NATO membership did not dare to allow a referendum on the issue…

          Reply ↓
        3. XXYY

          Also, as Scott Ritter noted recently, all their cities and military bases have been added to Russian targeting packages and will be instantly obliterated in the first few minutes of world war III.

          This seems like it would give everyone a lot of sleepless nights.

          Reply ↓
          1. Polar Socialist

            With all due respect to Ritter, that’s just not how it works. Since Peter I founded Saint Petersburg, Finland has been a buffer zone. Finland alone can not really threaten Russia in a way it can’t easily handle with conventional troops in Leningrad Military District.

            And anyone with two neurons firing (except many people in Finland) can see that if there’s a WWIII, Finland will be alone. With the current state of NATO, even in case of direct Russian conventional aggression, Finland will be pretty much alone.

            There’s no realistic scenario in which Finland is worth more than a token strategic missile or two. It can be kept isolated and defensive with just a few salvos of cruise missiles from Northern and Baltic Fleets.

            In 1713 Russia took Finland in 6 months. In 1742 it happened in 4 months. In 1808 about 3 months. In the summer of 1944, it took about a month for the Red Army to convince Finland that capitulation was the best option.

            If one believes in stuff like “correlation of forces and means”, and according to Martyanov Russian General Stuff revels in it, Finland (alone) just is not really worth a second thought. Leningrad Oblast (including Saint Petersburg) has more law enforcement officers than Finnish Army has active duty personnel.

            Reply ↓
  13. The Rev Kev

    “Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary”

    Man, there are so many good scenes from that film that still impresses half a century later. But if I quickly had to choose a good scene, I might choose this one-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAA-G947ofg (3:10 mins)

    At the moment, watery tarts chucking swords at random people does kinda sound like a reasonable way to form a government.

    Reply ↓
    2. griffen

      Serves to remind if only to myself, while there is much I probably miss or skip over from the existing state of comedy and satire some of the best works from the past 50 plus years holds up quite well. Long live the right and the ability to poke fun at or towards those at the tippy top of our nation and the world.

      Instead of real life Bond villainy we’re more accustomed to our nation’s leading individuals to be more akin to Dr. Evil instead. Or since we’re going for a historical reference… Governor William Le Petomayne for the win.

      Reply ↓
      2. Trees&Trunks

        Does anybody have contact with the youth? I don’t. It would be interesting to know if the 20 something today also get it. Am I laughing just out of nostalgia?

        Reply ↓
        2. griffen

          Worthwhile to ask that, most of the youth I know directly are into country music but I couldn’t say about comedy or shows besides they watched Bridgerton ( or that was the nieces watching ). With all the myriad streaming options as well I just don’t bother keeping up with the shiny new, new thing to see…and I’m cheap (!)

          my personal comedy zone is more Adam Sandler, some Chris Farley or David Spade with a bit of Chris Rock or bits of Dave Chappelle doing SNL stuff….Last time I tried watching a newer act it was Nikkie Glaeser (?) and I wasn’t thoroughly into her comedy routine…

          Btw…stuff like Step Brothers isn’t high brow but it’s darn funny to watch it again.

          Reply ↓
    3. jefemt

      Today’s must see-link. That was a terrific high quality snippet. Allegory: Trump and The Butler Bullet?

      Reply ↓
  14. Geode

    US army plans for a potential parade of 6,600 soldiers on Trump’s birthday Guardian (Kevin W)

    Plans for a large military parade coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday would likely cost tens of millions

    For 80th birthday, they will clone Marilyn Monroe, and make her sing him Happy Birthday Mr President
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH3oOVKt0WI

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      Someone missed an obvious bit of fun here. Make it 6660 troops and do a Nero on the Potomac.
      The Nero analogy is too close to be funny. Donald fiddles while the West burns.
      I wonder how the late Peter Ustinov would have portrayed Trump?

      Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      And did Ericsson and Nokia’s shares increase in value when they cut those 20,000 jobs?

      Reply ↓
  17. Sbrown

    Thank you for posting Electronic Intifada’s article about the sadistic Vach brothers actions in Gaza. My heart goes out to the Palestinians. I hope that one day everyone of the US government officials that armed Israel and participated in this genocide will be tried and be saddled with the infamy they so rightly deserve.

    Reply ↓
  18. urdsama

    It appears as though the China trade “cool off period” narrative paraded by the Trump administration and the MSM, if it was ever real, only made things worse. Trump is acting like a heron addict who missed his fix for several days and now is going overboard. The question is will the US OD on Trump’s trade war insanity.

    Not that this is surprising to anyone reading NC, but I suspect this summer will be very interesting to say the least.

    Thanks to Yves and all the NC contributors for keeping us up to date and working to dispel the lies.

    Reply ↓
    1. vao

      Some ornithologists may be heron addicts, but I did not know they could react with as much petulance as Trump.

      Reply ↓
  19. The Rev Kev

    “Trump Tops Tariffs On China With Sanctions”

    Trump wants a divorce. No, not from Melania. From China. With this measure Trump could remove all sanctions from China that he put on them recently but he could still refuse all trade with China as they would still be importing Iranian oil. That’s the only reason he announced that secondary sanction. But I think this very soon now he will see how a US-China divorce would look like in practice. And it’s not going to be pretty. But Trump may think of it as like post-2008 America when people like his billionaire buddies could go around snapping up property and businesses on the cheap.

    Reply ↓
    1. urdsama

      Just re-watched the Big Short last night…and I think many people who didn’t pay attention back then are in for a very rude shock (which Yves recently alluded to). But as bad as that was, I’m thinking the current trade war impact will be a combination of the 2007-2008 economic crisis and first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. And as a bonus, we still have COVID and the avian flu running amuck, even if no one wants to talk about that…

      Reply ↓
      1. Jason Boxman

        This timeline is truly mind bending; We’re actually watching in real time a polity (and I don’t include American citizens/”consumers” in this, because as we know, American democracy is merely a show pony for the populace at large) is self immolating.

        We have magical thinking about the Pandemic, about Climate, why not magical thinking about trade policy and the political economy as well?

        The word insane comes to mind. As I’ve been saying since January, this year gonna be lit.

        Reply ↓
    2. Christopher Smith

      “But Trump may think of it as like post-2008 America when people like his billionaire buddies could go around snapping up property and businesses on the cheap.”

      My instinct is that this is the plan.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit

        Not so much a plan as an aspiration.
        Who could have known that the Neo-liberals were entranced by the Newminous? {Aka the “new and improved” Hidden Hand.}

        Reply ↓
      2. Mel

        For the whole War on China, I think. Everybody knows China supplies virtually all the goods America needs. The only end-game for the war is that the only entities to trade with China will be the ones that are too big to jail. So all USA retail will be controlled by Amazon and Walmart.

        Reply ↓
      3. griffen

        Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. To quote the pugilist with a mean left hook, Mike Tyson.

        I do think their plan was energy independence and drilling all the places they want….but I am not experiencing just yet this magical drop in the average price for gas. And on Thursday or Friday, Trump 47 was in the business headlines once again, arguing at the Fed to lower their key rate, with energy lower on generally UST yields trending down as well…I just disagree on being too forceful on the Fed myself. Real estate developer likes lower interest rate, shocking to see that.

        These policies and tariffs will perhaps face a cold truth. Moving factories and supply chains isn’t just gonna be a snap, no matter their talking points.

        Reply ↓
    3. Mikel

      I’m just waiting for people to be blamed for not being “productive” enough.
      That’s usually part of the boom-bust playbook.

      Reply ↓
    4. nyleta

      The ALP won power in Australia last night in its own right by the look of things. Nobody wanted a mini-Trump. The best word to describe Mr Albanese is earnest, but he is hopelessly in thrall to existing power structures.

      At no time during the election was any party asked about Australia and secondary sanctions, looking at the actions of Vukcic and Fico today I doubt we would stand out against the Empire in bully mode with all that means for the Australian economy. Of course China might throw Iran under the bus but they must know their turn is coming.

      Reply ↓
  20. Henry Moon Pie

    Re: Antidote–

    That’s not one of amfortas’s bobble-headed geese, is it? I would so much like to hang out in your bar this afternoon, amfortas.

    Reply ↓
    1. amfortas the hippie

      call first, so i can throw on a sarong.
      my geese look similar, mostly…altho i have one remaining black one(recessive gene-boys call thos satangeese)…and theyre all loose along the road to enjoy all the puddles from the recent rain event.
      5 duck hens are, as far as i know, nesting in hidden places.
      one is still definitely under the floor where my bed is…i hear her talking and poking around in th early am when i start movin around for coffee.
      brown duck hen is still out and about, hanging around with the 3 males.

      im to the stage in my doins(aside from things like pullin weeds) where i cant do anything without another person(like movin all the various tables and equipment into the bar kitchen)…so anyone who shows up out here is likely to be press-ganged.
      Eldest is supposed to make time for me next weekend, and bring one of his former linebacker buds.
      so we’ll see.
      moving the flat top grill is the task i look forward to the least, with just me and him,lol.
      all this and more was supposed to be done 2 years ago…but for the madness of my helper.
      instead its been 90% just me…but everybody who sees it has been impressed, especially if theyre aware of my physical limitations.
      since helper wigged out, his replacement has been a series of 8 penny nails holding up the other end of the board.
      talk about cheap and mostly compliant labor,lol….

      Reply ↓
      1. amfortas the hippie

        oh, and to be clear, its the muscovy ducks that are the head bobbers.
        the geese have a different, mostly vocal, language.
        with the ducks, its various poses struck(like an alien in start trek, next generation, who’s entire language is heavily dependent on various poses).
        …along with some beak clacking and huffing noises….which seems to involve various angles of head and other poses for nuance of meaning…ie: clacking the beak in a certain way while looking up, as opposed to clacking while looking down or to the side….or up or down and to the side.(and yes, i detect meaningful communication in all this,lol)
        they only quack, sorta, when alarmed, suddenly.

        the geese, variously, mutter, honk, hiss, crow/trumpet, etc.
        only real nonverbal aspects of their language is the wing spreading(at least 3 kinds) and wing spreading while snaking their necks close to the ground…very intimidating, to say the least.
        this latter is reserved for nesting season, as well as for when theyres babies to guard.
        (and yes, i spend far too much time with birds)

        Reply ↓
      2. Henry Moon Pie

        I’m of limited use these days with a bum left hand and a sore rear, but today I managed to help my spouse put up the strings for the hops. They’re already as tall as 8 feet.

        You’re a real ornithologist, amfortas.

        Reply ↓
  21. Carolinian

    Re Macron machinations–Conclave is an excellent movie and worth a look for those who are conclave curious. They didn’t have to rebuild the Sistine Chapel because Cinecitta had one in storage–go figure.

    Reply ↓
    1. Revenant

      Are you saying the Catholic Church faked the Pope *and* the Moon Landings?

      They’ve never forgiven Galileo, have they?

      Reply ↓
      1. AG

        “They’ve never forgiven Galileo, have they?”
        😂
        -Come on, don´t be a pussy and take a look through it.
        -Nope.

        p.s. “Cinecitta had one in storage–go figure.”
        I would be seriously surprised if they did not have one.
        After all, how often was that thing featured in movies….

        Reply ↓
      2. Birch

        The pardon of Galileo in 1992 is a formative part of my understanding of the Catholic church. I clearly remember where I was and the discussion I had with my dad when we heard it on the radio.

        https://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/cms/learning-from-the-vaticans-reversal-on-galileo/

        “I find the events ironic because we have the ones who did a man wrong telling the victim (long after his death) that he is forgiven. It is supposed to be the other way around. The wrong-doer receives the forgiveness of the ones he wronged.”

        Three years before ‘Jagged Little Pill’, Alanis Morissette could have used this as a verse in her ironic song.

        Reply ↓
      3. Carolinian

        I just think it’s funny that this famous Italian studio had one ready to go. Think it was only the walls, not the famous ceiling which is only shown in the movie from, probably, stock shots.

        Reply ↓
  22. The Rev Kev

    “Avoid one-night stands to prevent drug contamination, athletes told”

    Maybe athletes can be kept in hermetically-sealed containers to be shipped around from event to event and only opened just before a competition. Either that or give the male athletes a box of tissues. But the sting in this article comes about halfway down when they are talking about “cheating” Chinese athletes. Let’s not forget that the Norwegian winter athletic team are mostly on asthma medicines (cough! cough!). And 23 Chinese swimmers were found contaminated by drugs but it was found to be contamination from a hotel kitchen. Myself I would not put it past some people to try to dope their food to get those results. And I saw the extent to how the west will cheat Russian athletes in the last Winter Olympics. Point is, I would not be surprised to see an attempt to ban Chinese athletes from the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics using charges of cheating. The big tell will be next year when the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy kick off. And I am sure that Meloni would play ball here.

    Reply ↓
  23. Tom Stone

    Yes, Trump has lost it.
    He has surrounded himself with suck butts that tell him what he wants to hear in order to further their own agendas, however reality keeps intruding on his bubble.
    Which enrages him, so he doubles down with no regard for consequences.
    So we see the Cops at UCLA beating students, plainclothes cops in unmarked vans grabbing people off the street and disappearing them and the deliberate immiseration of the populace to teach them who is boss.
    All of which is largely about the Jollies, these are sadists who have found an excuse for their cruelty.
    It’s going to get very messy real soon, stay safe and enjoy the show.

    Reply ↓
  24. Mikel

    Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry – The Verge

    “Brand safety is a big issue still, so letting them make and also optimize creative is a scary concept,” one agency CEO told me, but that wasn’t even their first concern. “The promise of his vision — ‘just read the results they spit out’ is the problem,” they said. “No clients will trust what they spit out as they are basically checking their own homework.”

    Indeed…the plot thickens.

    In related content news:

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-future-of-streaming-television-is-starting-to-look-an-awful-lot-like-cable-tv-78de704a/
    The future of streaming television is starting to look an awful lot like cable TV

    “Streaming’s à la carte choices are starting to deliver less growth potential — and the best way forward may be to bundle programming like cable does, a TD Cowen analyst says.”

    Apparently, it’s looking like cable/satellite…but without the audit controls.

    Hey, cable and satellite companies, why not move into the à la carte space? And you have the audit controls the industry can live with.

    Reply ↓
    1. Zephyrum

      You’ll know that cable has taken over streaming when ESPN becomes mandatory. Perhaps they could put it in a little window in the lower-right corner. If you pay extra for premium then you can move the little window.

      Reply ↓
      1. Mikel

        The streaming services would move toward making it mandatory. No different. Their motto is “competition is for losers.”

        Reply ↓
      2. skippy

        It is informative that ESPN has now partnered with Disney+ … now one can watch WOKE offerings and then the UFC … yet Andor is gritty in its story line dealing with Empire.

        Reply ↓
  25. John Wright

    Note that the image about the PELOSI act has that the most recent action was January 24, 2023.

    Theater over substance.

    Reply ↓
  26. ambrit

    A quick Mini-Zeitgeist Report.
    I have noticed an increase in homeless beggars on the local streets compared to a month ago. Several family units in evidence at the “traditional” begging street corners. At the local emporia now, panhandlers will walk right up to you in the parking lots and go into their pitch.
    I was panhandled yesterday inside the payment office of the local electric utility. A “shabby chic” thirty-something woman approached multiple people in succession to ask for funds. Groomed and showing some tattoos, fairly soberly dressed, wearing a well worn backpack. The woman had the presence of mind to look you in the face while spieling the patter. Whoever she was, this was not her first time doing this.
    When I mentioned the fact of the “entrepreneurial” activity to the woman taking payments behind the wall to ceiling glass partition separating the customers from the employees, she claimed to have taken no notice of the situation. I did look and saw no “No Solicitation” signs anywhere on the premises.
    Perhaps some civic minded managers at the electric company are classifying the ignoring of panhandling within public places as a “Public Utility.”
    On another front, I just had the queer experience of having the “A- B—-er” I subscribe to try to ‘slam’ me into their Premium program. Being congenitally cheap, I subscribe to the basic service. Instead of simply renewing me at that level, the organization, or perhaps the third-party billing entity that they employ to manage their funds raising program, has decided to try and fool me into paying for the more expensive program.
    Per the above, not recognizing the third-party entity sending the billing notice, I contacted the “A- B—-er” to verify the legitimacy of the third-party. I received a reply fairly quickly affirming that the third-party was indeed empowered to act on behalf of the service provider. Doing some sleuthing concerning this third-party entity, I ran across numerous complaints concerning their lack of honesty and lack of customer service capacity. This is not a tiny, fly by night organization.
    The trajectory of our culture has assumed the aspects of a “controlled flight into terrain.”
    I have come to the conclusion that Neo-liberalism is a cancer and has begun to metastatize. Stage Four Neo-liberalism?
    Stay safe and question everything nowadays.

    Reply ↓
    1. flora

      Maybe said service is trying out a new beta version AI that has the primary directive to up-sell the customers. I’ve noticed that.

      On another note, Paypal is now running a very terrible beta AI to handle online questions. I think of it as their beta Autistic Intelligence program. It cannot answer a simple, direct question. It’s happy to reprint the same unhelpful script over and over again. It’s worse than being stuck in a telephone menu maze. / ha

      Reply ↓
    2. flora

      Speaking of the trajectory of our culture, James Goldsmith saw this coming 30+ years ago. What would happen to a neoliberal society where society is supposed to serve the market instead of the market serving society? utube, The Charlie Rose Show clip from 30+ years ago. ~9+ minutes.

      1. A prophetic interview with Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 Pt1

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI

      Reply ↓
  28. Jason Boxman

    AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals

    Sigh. Models do not have goals. Models are not sentient.

    Temperature is one such parameter. A lower temperature makes model output more predictable; a higher temperature makes it more variable – which gets anthropomorphized as “more creative.”

    The optimal temperature setting for a model depends on the application. Medical assistant chatbots, for example, probably should not have a high temperature setting to avoid off-the-wall treatment suggestions.

    It’s an element of randomness. We don’t need more randomness in models. They’re stochastic. In software we want deterministic behavior. You certainly don’t want nondeterministic behavior in any software that’s involved in health care, research, law, and so on. Any serious use case. Sigh.

    Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan, and the Allen Institute for AI have looked at the trade-off AI models make between truthfulness and utility, using hypothetical scenarios where the two conflict.

    There is no truthfulness. A model does not know fact or fiction. It does not know right, or wrong. It has no morality.

    The “AI” bubble can’t burst fast enough. Maybe Trump blowing up the economy will deflate this stupid bubble. Too much money, too much credit, going into non-productive, speculative garbage.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      Thank you, Jason. I used to think that these silly headlines were due to the press simply not understanding what generative AI really is, and how it works. But then I realized that it is more than simple incompetence. It is a deliberate strategy to gaslight us.

      I am a bit worried that a real depression will accelerate organizations using AI for sheer cost-cutting as a survival mode. They have to accelerate it to stay out of bankruptcy court. That may have disastrous outcomes, like a hospital firing doctors and then killing all its patients with shoddy AI-based systems.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jason Boxman

        Definitely happening now. Canva nuked their entire user education department for “AI”, for example, just recently. I fear for the users of that product, with the kind of garbage documentation they’re gonna get in the future. I wonder when that company does a 180?

        Reply ↓
      2. skippy

        Imagine AI replacing MBA’s and dominate orthodox Economists … with some young 20s DOGE kid doing the programing … after they have been ideologically indoctrinated Libertarian/variants dogma …

        Reply ↓
    1. ilsm

      I have watched US Army acquisition from the outside (mostly) for decades between killing Comanche helicopters, the Future Combat System and now Booker 40 ton tank.I would trust Army acquisition over the kind that delivers CVN of Ford vintage, F-22, F-35 and V-22.

      Aside IIRC the main battle tank of FCS was limited to 38 tons……

      I heard this in 1992 from a DoD acquisition official: US Navy is “disdainful” the USAF is “deceitful” and the US Army is “dumb” when they deal with DoD.

      Dumb enough to kill bad equipment!

      Reply ↓
      2. scott s.

        Would agree as someone who worked in Navy acquisition that DoD was not viewed as a helpful overseer.

        Reply ↓
  31. ChrisFromGA

    Found this link in the MoA comments:

    https://investornews.com/critical-minerals-rare-earths/world-renowned-critical-minerals-expert-jack-lifton-says-there-are-no-rare-earth-deposits-in-the-ukraine/

    My best guess is that the entire thing is 100% political; there will never be a single ounce of dirt dug out of the ground and refined. This is Orange Julius’ way of creating a narrative that he “won” something in exchange for future ability to keep sending weapons … the next administration will likely repudiate the whole thing.

    Reply ↓
    1. Revenant

      It’s the gas pipelines.

      Russia has bought off the USA with Europe’s money by giving the USA a vig on the transit payments (don’t imagine this deal isn’t quietly approved of in Russia, indeed that may have been the hold up).

      Take that, Brussels for your sanctions and asset confiscation. Revenge is a dish best served cold – literally for poor Europeans in winter.

      Reply ↓
    2. The Rev Kev

      But now it is no longer Biden’s war. It is now Trump’s war. He actually went out of his way to hang that albatross around his neck. Idjut.

      Reply ↓
      1. ChrisFromGA

        Knowing Trump, it is a way to create the impression that he “won” something in exchange for the hundreds of billions blown on the war. I am not sure that he can’t still walk away. The element of time is important. The longer he goes without really walking away by cutting off all future aid, in terms of lethal aid, the more he owns it.

        The rubber is going to hit the road soon, I think. Biden left office with around $4B left in already authorized funds from last year’s bill. That’s bound to run out sooner, rather than later, and another trip to see the “Swamp Stooge” in the House to get him to roll over would be needed.

        BTW, M T-G surprised us and went off against Orangeman indirectly:

        https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1918675349837103379

        The Swamp Stooge is already a weak speaker … if M T-G starts a rebellion, he’s a goner.

        Reply ↓
      2. skippy

        The MICcrazzypants part about this is American MIC is incentivized by share holder profits via deep networks in the military/political class/oligarch so one can live the good life[tm] and have a seat on the life boat when it goes splat.

        Russia and China are just the opposite – non profit, state is the boss overseeing all of it, as the funder, all driven by a unified strategic/tactical defensive plan.

        Case in point. Russia has now paired the Iskander-M which was previously used for high value targets, in a one off, now backed with the new Tornado system and drones. So the target gets smashed by the Iskander, whilst people are dealing post strike the multi rocket Tornado smacks them, then drones are there to pick off any others coming or leaving the site of attack. They even have a new TOS 6 wheeled system that has a 15 klm stand off vs the 6-ish of the previous version and faster to move into position and then bug out, not to mention a fully digital operating system.

        Question begging is when will the unwashed back at home in the west understand they are no longer exceptional …

        PS Labour trounced the LNP with Dutton as leader … many ponder the Trump effect as ratings correlate too it. Meanwhile the Greens are making in roads in leafy inter city suburbs once they abandoned the woke stuff and provided an economic argument.

        Reply ↓
  32. AG

    re: Matt Taibbi on NPR

    Regardless of Taibbi referring to Flaubert – is it possible that he hails Trump for the wrong reasons, Trump by accident only achieving what Taibbi deems necessary? I somehow cannot get myself believing that Trump really cares about a decent culture of information and media.

    NPR Should Be Axed Because it’s Anti-Thought, Not Anti-Trump
    NPR is a small piece of a vast subsidized groupthink bureaucracy, which needs to be cut

    preview only
    https://www.racket.news/p/npr-should-be-axed-because-its-anti

    He links to this NPR piece

    “Trump has used government powers to target more than” 100 perceived enemies
    https://www.npr.org/2025/04/29/nx-s1-5327518/donald-trump-100-days-retribution-threats

    Reply ↓
  33. AG

    re: Germany inflation food prices

    German-language

    BERLINER ZEITUNG

    Food up to 70 percent more expensive: Why isn’t the government doing anything?

    Most Germans are concerned about drastically rising food prices. However, the issue is not a priority for the Merz-Kingbeil government.
    https://archive.is/tDFgf

    “(…)
    According to the Consumer Price Index, prices have skyrocketed over the past four years. Some examples: rice up 37.6 percent, wheat flour up 57 percent, ready-baked rolls up 54.2 percent, biscuits up 74.4 percent, rusks up 64.7 percent, pasta up 41.9 percent, beef up 41 percent, minced pork up 40 percent, condensed milk up 61 percent, margarine up 55.6 percent, olive oil up 98.6 percent, potatoes up 39.5 percent, sugar up 71.3 percent, orange juice up 55.7 percent, and cocoa powder up 41 percent. Fruit and vegetables are between 15 and 30 percent more expensive.

    The smallest price increases are for frozen seafood at eight percent and energy drinks at about 10 percent. On average, food costs around 30 percent more today than in 2021. Not a single food item in the index has become cheaper.
    (…)
    The situation is exacerbated for people because, contrary to popular clichés, poverty is no longer a marginal phenomenon in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, more than 20 percent of the population is at risk of poverty.
    (…)”

    Reply ↓
    1. Tom Stone

      Mayonnaise is on sale for $10 per quart and flank steak on sale for $11 per pound at the local grocer..
      Last year the sales price for Mayo was $5.99 and flank steak $6.99.
      Is breatharianism the answer?

      Reply ↓
  34. Expat2uruguay

    If there is nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, there’s a good chance it doesn’t stop there. Israel would see an opportunity to Nuke Iran and “get away with it”.

    Just a thought

    Reply ↓
    1. AG

      The most detailed study about nuclear winter so far was made based on a scenario India vs. Pakistan. Which I however always found racist to be honest. Which doesn´t mean it can´t happen. But do both nations act 100% sovereign in their decisions? I assume they do. No one nuclear power will get itself/the world destroyed just for the sake of another. Whatever leverage the US might have over Pakistan. And if so SoS will rather want to defuse the crisis before it really gets hot.

      Reply ↓
    2. ambrit

      Don’t forget Pakistan’s earlier ‘offer’ of some warheads to the Iranians. So, if Israel nukes Iran, Pakistan returns the favour. Why should Pakistan care if it has already been “degraded” by an exchange with India?

      Reply ↓
  35. upstater

    MAGA ideology invades the insurance industry. This is rather incredible!

    Southern Adirondack Audubon chapter gets surprise insurance cancellation Adirondack Explorer

    “It’s insane,” said Laurie Murphy, treasurer for the 600-member chapter. She received the notice from The Hartford stating that in July the company was discontinuing the Audubon chapter’s property and casualty coverage.

    “The reason for nonrenewal,” the terse notice stated, “is we have learned that you operate as an environmental protection organization.”

    Murphy was stunned: “I assumed it was some AI search that went bad with something we weren’t involved in.”

    As the society is a policyholder in good standing without any claims, the club reached out to its broker, Kristen Steinmiller. She pushed back on The Hartford, arguing that the society should be retained. The Hartford responded with a 98-word explanation with a few more details.

    It said the society’s website declares its “primary goal is to protect the environment by preserving natural habitats and promoting environmental education.” Further, the response said, the chapter said it is tied to National Audubon, whose website refers to political advocacy.

    Audobon is obviously subversive. All sorts of 501c3s are at risk. Next up, car insurance and homeowners cancellations based on voter registration.

    Reply ↓
  36. Jason Boxman

    The NY Times take on a dual legal system:

    The Frightening Precedents for Trump’s ‘Legal Abyss’

    The ‘dual-state theory’ explains how authoritarians bend the law to their will.

    There’s always a duality to any legal system, however. What laws get enforced, and how, upon whom. The duality in the US legal system, in favor of the wealthy and connected, has heretofore not been, and continues not to be, of much concern to the NY Times.

    Which isn’t to say that Trump’s authoritarian tendencies are not of grave concern. But it’s telling when the NY Times wakes up, and when it’s asleep, on any given issue.

    Reply ↓

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