Killer whales make seaweed ‘tools’ to scratch each other’s backs Phys.org
Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder EurekAlert!
Climate/Environment
US heat wave exposes infrastructure, health vulnerabilities – and it’s not quite over yet CNN
Another warning about heat and crops Art Cullen’s Notebook
China?
China’s shipments of hi-tech goods to EU surge as its exports to US plunge South China Morning Post
Trade War scoreboard: Obesity drug imports balloon, China rare earth magnets plunge Inside China / Business
Southeast Asia Is Starting to Choose Foreign Affairs
Old Blighty
UK buys new F-35 fighter jets to carry nuclear warheads The Independent
PM vows to press on with welfare cuts as rebellion grows BBC
Syraqistan
Israel kills dozens in Gaza as aid runs dry, baby formula shortage puts babies at risk The New Arab
Washington green-lights $30m for Gaza aid scheme tied to mass killings of Palestinians The Cradle
Seven Israeli Soldiers Killed in APC Blast in Southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis Haaretz
“Waiting Mode”: After the Iran Ceasefire, Is a Gaza Deal on the Horizon? Drop Site
Israel not sending delegation for hostage deal talks to Qatar, Egypt for now, sources tell ‘Post’ Jerusalem Post
***
Mark Sleboda – What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask? Moon of Alabama
The War on Iran is Not Over Larry Johnson
Months are needed to assess damage, but Israel must prepare for another round with Iran Ynet
Israel will be in Iran for years to come, Mossad head David Barnea says Jerusalem Post
Senior Israeli source: Any scientist who joins Iran’s nuclear program will be eliminated. via @amirbarshalom
— Israel Radar (@IsraelRadar_com) June 25, 2025
‘This is a time to change the regime,’ @GhorbaniiNiyak says in the wake of the 12-day Israel-Iran war, calling for the son of the deposed shah to return to power pic.twitter.com/3AlgSrbVDO
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 25, 2025
Iran says 700 arrested for wartime ties with Israel; 3 alleged Mossad agents hanged Times of Israel
***
Trump says Israel sent agents into Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, saw ‘total obliteration’ Times of Israel
US didn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear programme: Here’s what new intel says Al Jazeera
Hegseth: So if you want to make an assessment of what happened.. you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated pic.twitter.com/o4ZLRuPOHL
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 25, 2025
THE BURIAL PLAN Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh, who correctly reported that the USA would strike Fordo last weekend (and has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s), reports that the bombing mission at Fordo was a success, despite other reports to the contrary: pic.twitter.com/IakKttIy2l
— Harold Bracy (@harold_bracy) June 25, 2025
***
Trump calls for Netanyahu to be pardoned, corruption trial canceled The Hill
CENTCOM Nominee: U.S. Military Presence in Syria Remains Crucial to Confront ISIS Threat Kurdistan24
How Turkey’s Erdogan navigated Trump ties and instability risks from Israel-Iran war Al Monitor
European Disunion
Germany’s dangerous submission Thomas Fazi
Digging Deeper. Aurelien
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump will look at giving Ukraine more Patriot missiles as he calls on Putin to end war The Independent
Europe wants Trump to sanction Russia. Rubio says not yet. Politico
NATO members’ leaders snubbing Zelensky at key summit – Orban RT
New Medvedev Note Karl Sanchez
***
Trump threatens tough trade deal for Spain after it refuses to meet NATO defense spending target CNBC
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte refers to Trump as “Daddy”
– European leaders are pushing us toward reckless militarism, economic decline, and political irrelevance – we should at least preserve some dignity pic.twitter.com/dPa6nnkVBc— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) June 25, 2025
Daniele Ganser: NATO’s Dirty Wars – The Legacy of Operation Gladio Glenn Diesen (Video)
URGENT MESSAGE TO ICC PROSECUTORS:
The world’s most dangerous terrorists and war criminals are meeting right now at The Hague, only steps away from the International Criminal Court.
This is likely to be your best chance to arrest them all in one fell swoop.#NATO pic.twitter.com/f00YaF7xUa
— Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris) June 25, 2025
BRICS
Putin to skip Rio BRICS summit over ICC warrant as Xi signals no-show Intellinews
Imperial Collapse Watch
U.S. Used Up 15-20 Percent of its Global THAAD Anti-Missile Arsenal in Just 11 Days of Mid-Intensity Combat: Cost Over $800 Million Military Watch Magazine
Trump 2.0
Justice Dept. whistleblower details senior officials’ efforts to stonewall judges, ignore decisions CBS News
Meet the D.C. Bigwigs Literally Profiting Off Trump’s Deportations The Bulwark
Scoop: Trump to limit sharing classified info with Congress after leak on Iran bombing damage Axios
Mike Johnson Suggests War Powers Act Is Unconstitutional Truthout
***
Voters Will “Get Over It,” McConnell Tells GOP Colleagues About Medicaid Cuts Truthout
People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands.… pic.twitter.com/UPF5oSVq3M
— Aaron Black (@ABlackPolitical) June 25, 2025
MAHA
CDC vaccine advisory committee to review long-approved immunizations STAT
This is a travesty and a nightmare. The US was a founder of @Gavi. It lowers vaccine costs for the world, has vaccinated 1B children, and averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children’s lives a year — and RFK Jr will be personally responsible. https://t.co/CGdtauhrOl
— Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) June 25, 2025
Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA Wired
How Fast Is Too Fast for FDA Drug Review? MedPage Today
Democrats en déshabillé
Correlates of the Mamdani Vote Policy Tensor
Mamdani won a higher % of votes from Jewish NYers than from many other ethnic or religious demographics, won the endorsement of Lander & Nadler. It seems the bourgeois press will not stop until Jews conform to their Zionist, Islamophobic narrative. This shit is tired. pic.twitter.com/rDuAWOydkU
— Benjamin Balthaser (@BL_Balthaser) June 25, 2025
Zohran’s Historic Win: 16 Takeaways Labor Politics
Folks, let’s be clear-eyed about Zohran Mamdani: No Democrat will fix what’s broken with our duopoly. Nevertheless, his win is a GIGANTIC middle finger to Zionist propaganda and to Democratic elites.
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) June 25, 2025
***
Lamont Vetoes Bill Allowing Unemployment For Striking Workers CT News Junkie
Gov. Mills again vetoes bill protecting farmworkers’ right to discuss work conditions Maine Morning Star
Wars Come Home
As I’ve said before: what we’re all experiencing is a cultural apartheid successfully exported by Zionists from the actual apartheid state and its attendant killing fields. Threats from various officials to expel protestors/strip visas/citizenship are forms of this, too. pic.twitter.com/alwHB60Pty
— Omar Sakr (@omarsakrpoet) June 26, 2025
Antitrust
A Democratic Socialist Smashes Wall Street in New York: What Zohran Mamdani Means for the Anti-Monopoly Movement BIG By Matt Stoller
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Computer-vision research is hiding its role in creating ‘Big Brother’ technologies Nature
AI
The Hot, New Plan to Bribe States Into Deregulating Artificial Intelligence Boondoggle
AI Killed My Job: Tech workers Blood in the Machine
Police State Watch
‘Who are these people?’ Masked immigration agents challenge local police, sow fear in L.A. Los Angeles Times
Alleged accomplice of Palm Springs bomber dies in Los Angeles prison KTLA
Our Famously Free Press
What Am I For? Matt Taibbi
The National Archives at College Park is about to go dark; effective July 7, it’s becoming a restricted-access federal facility, meaning everyday Americans will no longer have public access to the very records that hold our government accountable.
This is where the receipts… pic.twitter.com/5fDwMpttBb
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) June 24, 2025
Healthcare?
The Fox Guards the Hen House – Translating AHIP’s Commitments to Streamlining Prior Authorization HEALTH CARE un-covered
Guillotine Watch
The Bezzle
Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits The Guardian
Class Warfare
Federal judge finds LA failed to create enough shelter for unhoused people as required in agreement LAist
How Hotels, Once a Last Resort, Became New York’s Default Answer to Homelessness New York Focus
Guest Post: Can money buy happiness? Working Class Storytelling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
The Ballad Of Israeli Strays
(melody borrowed from The Ballad Of The Green Berets written and performed by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler way back in 1966)
War on Iran has gone awry
Our Iron Dome has gone bye bye
This place ain’t safe, and we won’t stay
We’re heading out without delay
Iran is East; we’re heading West
Driven by self interest
Our sneak attack, our power play
We thought Iran would melt away
It didn’t work like it was planned
Israel did not expand
Mossad worked with CIA
We don’t care; we leave today
For two weeks we have been oppressed
Victimized, and so distressed
We may strike back some distant day
Some dirty deeds, some foul play
Iran can close the Hormuz Straits
Watch the West as it deflates
With total chaos manifest
So much for the Collective West
Leave your bed and go get dressed
Brooklyn waits—you’ll be impressed
Those Hebrew words you’ve learned to say
Forget them all as of today
Trump calls for Netanyahu to be pardoned, corruption trial canceled The Hill
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benjamin, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I’ll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You’ve got a friend in me
(You’ve got a friend in me)
Benjamin, you’re always killing Palestinians here and there (here and there)
You feel you’re not wanted anywhere (anywhere)
If you ever look behind
And don’t like what you find
There’s something you should know
You’ve got a place to go
(You’ve got a place to go)
I used to say “I” and “me”
Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we”
(I used to say “I” and “me”)
(Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we”)
Benjamin, most people would turn you away (turn you away)
I don’t listen to a word they say (a word they say)
They don’t see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I’m sure they’d think again
If they had a friend like Benjamin
Like Benjamin
(Like Benjamin)
Like Benjamin
Ben, by Michael Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7TTSzfs2kw&list=RDi7TTSzfs2kw
Good job, Wuk. Trump calling for Netanyahu to be pardoned and the corruption trial to be canceled is not how it works. Here Biden could give him tips. Just threaten to withhold billions from Israel unless the chief prosecutor is fired and give them only a few hours to do it. Works like a charm.
(twofer Thursday)
The love between the two of them was dying
And it got so bad, I knew we had to leave
Halfway down that war highway when I turned around, I saw
A little Zionist leader running after he
Crying
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
Well, it broke his heart to tell his little Bibi
That his daddy had to run to catch a plane
He had no way of knowin’ he was leavin’ being leader for good
He turned around, there he was again
He cried and said
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
His darling Bibi cried, daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
If only for the sake of his sweet Zionist
He just had to turn back home right there and then
And try to start new lies after the leaker divulged the truth
He couldn’t bear to hear those words again
Bibi cried and said
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
His darling Bibi cried, daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast, by Wayne Newton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EESSLuzqA&list=RDU5EESSLuzqA
Of course this is not the first time Trump has attempted to interfere in the legal system of a foreign country. During his first term, Trump demanded that Sweden drop the assault trial of American rapper ASAP Rocky, despite video evidence of genuine assault. In the end, the rapper was found guilty but only given a suspended sentence. Apparently Trump was then annoyed Rocky did not grovellingly thank him.
In the case of Netanyahu, were the trial to be cancelled, no doubt any subsequent grovelling would be from Trump to Bibi. One has to wonder what the Epstein files hold on the Donald.
Alternative view, given Trump chastising and irritation with Ben N, especially after prior comments about how he was behind fomenting the various ME wars.
Publicizing the issue for all to see and to start more discussions. Now Ben is isolated in the spotlight.
Don’t have a song to offer but Trump obviously sees Crazy Corruption trials as something that might even land on his stable genius doorstep. If you can’t be corrupt what’s the point of being an oligarch, much less a politician? Fortunately Attorney General Pam Bondi is a lot more under control than the Israeli High Court. Don has it all worked out…for the moment.
He probably has written up his own Presidential pardon and it is waiting in his desk for when he leaves office.
Needs be sung by Streisand, since at the moment of Benjamin having wrought destruction on his own house, Donald reminds everyone about his corruption.
As for that song, Ben is the sequel to Willard, the more meaningful since it’s about the relationship tween rat and boy. Having grown up in rat labs, it hit my demographic just right. And I learned a squeak that would make all the rats in the room jump, maybe not so good for not stressing test subjects, but our local plague means I can run off the ‘Sumatran Long-Tailed Hamsters’ from the seed so the chipmunks and cardinals can clean up.
The idea that I chose a song about a rat, made the fit all the better.
‘Aaron Black
@ABlackPolitical
People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands.’
If you look really close, you can see those police getting ready to put small, Denver Boots on those wheel chairs.
Pity Tulsi Gabbard. She’s learning the old adage that reputation can take a lifetime to build, but it can be lost in a few moments. Her transformation from courageous truth-to-power speaker to Trump stooge is complete:
We need a laugh track for this
Is it really a surprise? She’s been migrating in that direction for years, and this is just the culmination of it.
As for pity, save it for those more deserving.
I guess not, but part of me is shocked at how fast she went from having morals and good character to basically becoming just another stooge.
At least Karoline Leavitt can say she’s doing her job, awful as it is to get up in front of a podium and lie to the world as your job description.
Larry Flynt had more honor than Tulsi.
What Gabbard has become is tragic. She should have resigned. She’ll never have a shred of credibility again. I wonder why it is that people don’t value their honor more these days – it’s priceless and you can’t get it back once you’ve sullied it. I guess its part of the gawdawful world we live in.
If you want someone talking truth to power, then you are going to have to listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0d6ILvkRkY (14:53 mins)
Who here had that on their bingo card at the beginning of this year?
We should probably pray for her as there is no doubt that someone is going to try to shut her up, either with promises of filthy lucre or threats to her family.
These apparatchicks of his are all the same, they crave power and acceptance within the fold and will do whatever it takes to appease him, the country itself being of little importance in the scheme of things.
They all took an oath to defend the constitution, not to defend a psychopath who belongs in an institution.
Thttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
What evidence was there of her morals and good character?
Judge Nap and some of his guests also seem to have gotten this impression and to be disappointed but I have no idea what it was based on.
Well, she’s got the looks, and she said few “anti war” things that still fall short of the average commenter here. That’s about it, as far as I know.
Judge Nap and some of his guests can be easily fooled. What’s worrying is that she almost got Mark Sleboda. I remember him saying that she almost give him hope (and that hope is bad for the good analysis). :)
All of Trump’s harem scare ‘um have the looks, as if he’d select some frumpy female to represent him, er us.
Does the name Sarah Huckabee ring a bell?
Yeah, she got smacked with the ugly stick, and that perma frown on her mug doesn’t help matters.
That said, she was a first term hire, completely different from the second crop, who were selected on account of their looks & obsequiousness.
Plus that time she dropped Harris in a debate. That was pretty bitchin’ to watch. She seemed bad a** for awhile, kinda like Bernie [sigh].
Trump has pretty much disproved this. Maybe it only applies to him and his unique ability to keep the loyalty of the rubiest 51% of the rubes, but you can’t expect other politicians to see it that way. Hell, the dems managed to rehabilitate Joe Brandon of all people.
Lie down with the dogs, get up with fleas.
I’d add this for priors adjustment about who Tulsi Gabbard is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/is-tulsi-gabbard-a-mystery/681398/
I should add, her soft corner for RSS/BJP ought to, but isn’t seen with enough raised eyebrows in the US.
She knew what she was trading in when she signed up to be a Trump sycophant.
Anyway, what reputation? She had shown competence at political opportunism and presents herself well but little else. The more charming and smooth the politician’s performance, the more we mistrust them, don’t we?
Tulsi is we thought she was …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz3Stx1N14Y
1) If you made it to be DNI you really are gonna give that up? Voluntarily?
2) Tulsi wants to run for POTUS.
Maybe, just maybe Gabbard is playing a longer game here. She has never struck me as a person who would willingly allow her moral compass to be diverted off what she sees as true north. She is no doubt aware that she is out of step with the clown show of the rest of the presidential advisors who surround her, and that they’re trying to get rid of her. And as the actions Trump takes based on their advice continue to backfire, she may believe the best way to do her duty is to do whatever it takes to still be standing nearby with the most reality-based intelligence her office can produce when the president with the glass ego finally realizes he is not being well served by the dominant ultra-Zionist, Russia & China-loathing rest of the crew. If she has to take a hit to her reputation in this process, so be it for the higher goal. It’s my understanding that although she issued that pro Iran bombing statement, there’s been no change to the language of the DI statement regarding Iran not being far down the path to nuclear weapons.
This situation reminds me of how the pathologist Thomas Noguchi handled the autopsies of both the “suicide” Marilyn Monroe by ingestion of an overdose of barbiturates and the murder of Robert F Kennedy “by Sirhan Sirhan.” While the executive summaries of the reports places the blames as was demanded by the powers that be, the fine print on subsequent pages in both cases contain detailed evidence that is incompatible with those statements.
If you look at the precise words that Gabbard used, and if you consider that Trump knows nothing about intelligence analysis, and that most of the reporting has been done by people who know nothing about intelligence analysis either, then there’s no necessary contradiction at the highest level. Intelligence analysts deal in nuances and qualifications whereas politicians deal in vague generalisations, Trump more so than most. At a political level, statements such as “we assess that Iran could move to producing a usable nuclear weapon in as little as three years (or some other figure) if a political decision is taken,” and “Iran has a nuclear weapons programme” are functionally equivalent. Most politicians can’t even spell “nuance”, and one thing that you get used to in government is that they detest it, and often refuse to listen to qualifications and on-the-one-hand-on-the-other. “Just give me the facts!” is a standard reply. And Trump might well have said “so if they want to they can have a nuclear weapon in three years. So they have a nuclear programme.” Likewise, as I read the AJ account of the “Top Secret” assessment, it is just saying that the raids delayed the programme for six months compared to what it would otherwise have taken which actually doesn’t mean very much, given that assessments of this kind are at best intelligent guesswork, based on shaky assumptions and guesses about how quickly nuclear weapon construction could be carried out, based on known engineering principles.
It’s a convention of democracy that officials don’t contradict elected politicians in public, although it should also be a convention that politicians don’t go off on flights of fancy. When you have someone like Trump who is a fantasist and just makes stuff up, there’s not a lot that you can actually do.
Except, if you read her latest fib, she used the words “totally destroyed” in reference to all three of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which contradicts the language of not only the the DIA but also the “severely damaged” assessment of the CIA chief, who I think reports to her?
This is aping Trump’s exaggeration that the facilities were “totally obliterated.”
She’s a tool. She could have resigned rather than accept her new job as a sock-puppet for a deranged liar.
I’m actually kind of fine with the (patently false) obliteration narrative prevailing for a while. Think of the bigger picture: It’s a decent opportunity to purge Zionists, neocons, and other warmongers for peddling disinformation and fomenting drama.
There’s a bigger game being played here. In order to de-escalate the crisis, it’s important that everyone should pretend that the US attacks were a roaring success. If Gabbard were to publicly contradict her boss and say “actually very little damage was done,” Netanyahu could easily find himself saying “well in that case we’ll have to nuke Iran,” which would not be helpful. Gabbard is simply supporting her political master in this pretence for wider political reasons. The internal view in the US government will be much more realistic. Anyway, Gabbard’s main priority is cleaning out the stables.
important point
I get it that she may be intentionally role-playing as part of “Team Kabuki.” So, it’s show time, put on the costume and the mascara, there are paying customers out there to be entertained.
My main beef with that theory is, first of all, it may not be true, and second, even if it is, playing games to deceive us all is not the way a transparent, honest official behaves. We’re constantly lied to at every level of politics, and while I am not naive about what a politician’s job is, she previously demonstrated a level of character and integrity that indicated she was different.
I still say resigning would have been better for her soul, and would have been better for the country, about which, as Wuk pointed out, none of these minions in Trump’s orbit could care less about.
Crisis de-escalation may indeed be the game.
But they better get everyone on the team. Since the strike,Trump has said that Iran must turn over any enriched uranium in their possession, which is about as much message discipline from him as you can expect. Was it destroyed or not? Better cover all the bases.
It may be that Israel is going off-side on the “total obliteration” meme as well, as some sources in Israel are saying that Trump will demand the Iranians hand over the goods.
I hope you’re right, my friend.
I hope all this Sound & Fury and distraction away from a number of YUGE issues like Ukraine will allow Trump to purge the warmongers out of DC.
Ms Gabbard needs to stop being Alice.
She needs to be like CJCS AF Gen Dan “raising” Caine!
Caine be like the Queen of Heart, saying 6 absurdities about MOP flying 1000 fps down vent shafts at precise vector with the shaft design, six times at Fordo…. How he covers for Daddy about shuttering Iran nukes.
If Iran nukes obliterated then U.S. can end sanctions etc…
Hersh can be taken with big grain or pounds of salt.
I respect Hersh’s achievements, learn from his scoops and subscribe to his blog, but he’s no better than his sources in the Pentagon. Sometimes they’re great whistleblowers (Nordstream 2), sometimes just spinning leakers (for Israel et al). I do pound the salt when I read him now.
I’d rather she be like the character Beth Dutton in “Yellowstone”
Resign, but first fire everyone who reports to her. Fire up a cigarette on the way out of the office, then put it out on the new carpet, while crushing it with $750 designer heels.
>>>Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits The Guardian
water is wet. film at 11.
FFS, US and global municipalities made a deliberate choice not to enforce pre-existing jitney laws…..cuz Uber was the “clean future” versus the vinyl seats and potluck driver of the primitive cabs. And riders loved shareholder-subsidized fares, like the first free hit from a dealer.
now shocker, Uber is exploiting its defacto monopoly. gee, it makes you wonder why taxis/jitneys were so heavily regulated in the first place.
PS, sometimes taxi regulations go too far too and are just as much of a racket. see the taxi system in Cancun, Tulum, lol.
‘Harold Bracy
@harold_bracy
Seymour Hersh, who correctly reported that the USA would strike Fordo last weekend (and has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s), reports that the bombing mission at Fordo was a success, despite other reports to the contrary:’
‘None of the US bombs was meant to strike the enriched-uranium storage
facility or the centrifuges spinning away. The measure of success came later
when American sensors reported no increase in the atmospheric radiation
levels after the attack. Iran’s uranium was intact and simply buried.’
Ummm. Of course there is the likelihood that the Iranians shipped out that material weeks ago and all that was hit was an empty facility and that was why there was no spike in radiation detected. In short, the Iranians baited the US and Israel. If Trump wants to find that enriched uranium, then maybe he should put a notice on the side of milk cartons.
I don’t know if Hersh is correct or not. But this claim that Hersh “has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s” really irritates me. Hersh has always been as good as his sources in the intelligence community, and that depends on what’s going on in the behind the scenes power struggles. He has been very good at times, exposing crucial information about important events. At other times, his exposes have been correct but limited hangouts. And sometimes he has been terrible (the worst example was his book on Kennedy, which was an atrocious CIA/mafia smear job universally panned by everyone – except those on the worshipful “left”). Again, this story may be true, but he is as good as his sources – and those sources always have their own agendas.
Indeed. Given that the latest generation of sensors can detect radiation from uranium for as far as 100 meters away, I wonder what American sensors he’s talking about? Maybe IAEA sensors, which are actually the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sensors, which would likely be on site.
Anyway, as you said, of the four possibilities – no destruction and no nuclear material, destruction but no nuclear material, destruction with leakage and destruction witho<ut leakage – the last one is the most unlikely.
This whole argument – total obliteration (Trump) vs. performative bouncing of dirt (leaked report) is being dismissed by pundits and substackers as a foolish debate, when in fact it is pretty important. In one case, total obliteration as fervently shouted by Hegseth and others means that the raid was a total success, Iran has been bombed back into the stone age, and nuclear fears from them are gone for a long damn time. In all other cases – partial destruction, or no destruction, really, movement of the enriched material, cetrifuges elsewhere – Iran can and will still build a bomb, or bombs; in fact, after this raid, their incentive to do so will be exponentially greater.
We are now, and will remain, in a battle of which narrative prevails. This is especially the case if the cease fire between Iran and Israel holds, which it will if, as some claim, Israeli agents have visited the site and confirmed everything is destroyed including the enriched uranium. However, if any doubt remains, chances are that Israel or Israel and the US will strike again, in which case the war such as it is continues. The Administration is right now in a full bore propaganda push to etch in their narrative – briefings, lawsuits against reporters, lionizing the pilots and military who undertook the raid (who should be lionized) – and hoping that for the next 1.5 years the whole issue stays moot so they can roll into the 2026 elections with this huge and defining success as a major election talking point. And it may be the case Seymour Hersch and the Administration are right, this raid did obliterate Iran’s program.
It also, however, may be the case that the nuclear material was hidden away and Iran is continuing in their efforts, just as it may be the case Iran might receive a nuclear bomb from someone else in an effort to rapidly counter and stalemate Israel, in which case the narrative will be damaging to Trump and the election. Right now all the fever and excited reporting seems embedded in one narrative or the other, and for the moment it seems the “obliteration” narrative seems to be gaining the upper hand.
It’s a pretext. Any country capable of building nuclear power is capable of building a bomb in short order. For some reason Trump has not yet proposed bombing Japan, Korea, Germany, Brazil, Canada, etc.
It has been noted that the Israelis have been hyperventilating about Iran’s alleged bomb program for thirty years. The fact is the only reason they don’t have a bomb already is that they haven’t been building one.
The distinction is important for Trump however. By giving the crazies what they asked for he can avoid giving them what they actually want. He must be seen to have destroyed the pretext.
Shooting paused truth has not been triaged.
If you think those Massive Ordnance Penetrators could get deep enough, close enough to anything of value in a large vault …..
To harm Fordo would require more MOP than US built!
“Raising” Caine talked about 6 MOP flying 1000 fps down 6 of Fordo vent shafts, infinitely improbable so much to be impossible.
There likely was no damage to deep vault. Satellite pix of 5 craters confirm nothing. IDF on site penetration is like IDF ground teams defeating TELs!
Daddy Trump needs victory, now he can let Iran sanction go, Iran nukes obliterated bombed…
BTW a possible excuse for Caine getting CJCS over a line of more “senior “ officers seems to be he will say what he is told.
“Raising” Caine talked about 6 MOP flying 1000 fps down 6 of Fordo vent shafts’
When asked more about this, “Raising” Caine said-
‘I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than two meters.’
Trump tried to explain that it is soooo dificult to move 400 kg from Fordow, 30 levels up in short time (a day or so) that there is no chance the material was not burried.
I, at my age, I would have been able to take the 400 kg up, by stairs, batch by batch, on stairs, nevermind elevators (albeit from blueprints provided, there aren’t many levels, but one, under 60-100 meters of rock) out.
So just from this discrepancy looks like Trump lied big time.
Roads are buckling from the heat all over the country. There are power outages, and affects on transit.
https://www.nj.com/news/2025/06/part-of-i-287-closed-down-again-as-heat-causes-pavement-to-buckle.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/roads-buckling-extreme-heat-grips-005912717.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/25/weather/heat-wave-infrastructure-health-global-warming-climate
Asphalt buckling due to The Big Heat® wasn’t on my list of probabilities although it should have been.
The only scorecard of humanity in written form we really have for sudden change in the climate is the Little Ice Age*, and it was amazing what went down with just -.5C from the norms we were used to.
We’re already at 3x the other direction, and growing food was problematic in the Little Ice Age, but its gonna be awful when Hades hangs around for a long spell.
Perhaps a better gauge might be the Grindelwald Fluctuation in a period (in a wider cooling phenomenon) when glaciers in Grindelwald, Switzerland, expanded significantly. Temperatures were 1-2 degrees Celsius lower than twentieth-century averages during this period, which is thought to have lasted from the 1560s to the 1630s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindelwald_Fluctuation
* coined by imminent Sierra geologist and an expert in topographic mapping, glaciers, and climate change: François E. Matthes
That CNN article missed our little outage in Cleveland. A battery overheated and burned up a substation about 1/2 a mile from us. It knocked out our power for 18 hours, but we weren’t alone. A lot of downtown, including the county jail, were out along with the federal building, the county courthouse, and somewhat ironically, the Science Center on Lake Erie.
Our back-fence neighbor ran a generator to keep our friend with COPD alive. We hung out with our granddaughter at our daughter’s house during the day, but her power went out after we went home.
Life in a shithole country. What’s good for Generac is good for GDP?
I’ve known since 2004 that I’ll be cooked alive in my lifetime. This timeline is going just great!
Amusingly, even if this were taken seriously by the elite, we could turn off capitalism today and this is all baked (hah) in. The situation will continue to deteriorate.
You’d think by now perhaps we’d have massive geo-engineering projects underway, to save capitalism from itself and maintain the status quo. But literally it is all just gonna burn up. All of us.
Instead we’re building bigger data centers for the AI scam than have ever existed, and fantasizing about bringing back nuclear to provide enough power!
There are those who actually believe they have to do is create an AGI and ask it the question, “How do we solve our climate problem?,” and it will churn out a solution.
I saw this phenomena on the east side of the Hudson river on NY Highway 9 heading south on a motorcycle in the summer of 1986. The day was very hot and there was an approximate one foot buckle in the highway.
Very surprising to see.
‘Dimitri Lascaris
@dimitrilascaris
URGENT MESSAGE TO ICC PROSECUTORS:
The world’s most dangerous terrorists and war criminals are meeting right now at The Hague, only steps away from the International Criminal Court. This is likely to be your best chance to arrest them all in one fell swoop.’
If you look, you cannot miss the woman in a colourful dress front and center in that photo. Alex Christoforou says that that woman is actually Zelensky’s wife while he himself is stuck in the second row. If true, then why is she in a photo shoot of all those world leaders? And why in the front row with people like Trump and Macron? Most mysterious.
Zelensky put on a suit of some sort. If he dropped his pyjama, something must be going on.
Otherwise, if you look at the picture, the empty, bovine eyes in the heads of these war criminals is what strikes me the most.
She’s the queen of the Netherlands (along with the king).
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/nato-ukraine-zelenskyy-trump-iran-israel-rutte-966e958e2722510ccec0fe356c8e97ed
Thanks. Since the Netherlands is hosting this meeting, it would explain why they get the right to be front and center. And my respect to her for being stunningly dressed to the point that all those world leaders just became her own personal wallpaper. :)
Sorry for going off-topic, but Dimitri Lascaris looks a lot like actor Slavko Labovic. :)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425379/mediaviewer/rm1961110016/?ref_=ttmi_mi_23
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425379/mediaviewer/rm133809921/?ref_=ttmi_mi_13
Between this and the Bezos wedding get-together, darn! Times when you really wish you had a couple of Oreshniks of your own ready to launch…
Bah da bing, bah da bop!!
NYC mayoral race: Mamdani actually won the financial district and was endorsed by Lina Khan. Took all of NYC except Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan. Weak with older African Americans who went for Cuomo. If you would like to feel some joy and hope I recommend watching any of the videos put out by fans and his campaign. When was the last time you laughed watching anything political? Anyway, he looks like a real one and I hope he can stand up to the haters in November. I recommend that people outside of NYC get to know Zohran Mamdani—for the positive vibes now and possible national presence later.
Do we know if he’s built an organizing team like Bernie did in 2016?
That’s gonna be needed to push his agenda through I’d imagine!
The takes on Mamdani’s primary win (which make many good points) seem to ignore the own goal aspect of this for the establishment.
They annointed Cuomo in spite (because?) of his repeated demonstrations of both executive incompetence and manifest moral and ethical unfitness for any office of public trust whatsoever. And not way back in the dim and misty past, either.
The leading candidate not named Andrew Cuomo was going to have a decent shot.
Harris was under 1% in California back in 2020. New Democrat style candidates are going to face more scrutiny even from the MSDNC zombies than names from the Glorious Past.
The “reasoning” behind New Democrats has largely been exposed. They don’t win. They don’t accomplish anything. There will be places where trash will be around for a while, but the loss of the Kennedy spawn a few years ago was the first step. Kennedy trash failed to win in Massachusetts, largely due to the under 40 vote. There are less people alive who saw Clinton on Arsenio today than a week ago.
Thanks, this is the most hopeful thought I have seen on the internet recently.
Which, unfortunately, brings us back to the inherent contradiction between the humanitarian goal of providing a decent retirement for people and the practical necessity of not letting moderately demented people control everything.
Re Taibbi “What Am I For?”–he calls himself a good government moderate but the preceding partly paywalled Racket piece perhaps tells us more.
https://www.racket.news/p/socialism-wins-its-american-normandy
This is the flip side of Trumpism, inevitable for similar reasons, and absent full catastrophe in coming Mamdani-ruled Gotham (not impossible), the electoral mainstreaming of dingbat campus socialism has only begun
“Dingbat socialism” sounds more like Walter Kirn or the Wall Street adjacent ZH. What Taibbi fails to realize is that it was the threat of Soviet socialism–whatever it’s very many flaws–that kept capitalism under control through much of the 20th. FDR gave us the New Deal to keep out the Reds and once the Soviet Union went down–the great capitalist goal–the oligarchs of the 90s felt free to let their freak flag fly. We have TINA because the alternative was defeated. Now that our society has been morally wrecked even High Broderism moderates may have to admit their fence sitting doesn’t work. The powerful are never going to reform themselves.
Carolinian: Thanks for this. I have a comment below on my take of what a U.S. moderate would favor these days.
Your last paragraph in fact is an explanation and indication of how far U.S. politics have shifted to the right. Taibbi’s protestations of being a moderate mean that he places himself exactly among those white moderates whom Martin Luther King criticized in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Yet because of the rightward drift of U.S. politics, Taibbi would find Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society somehow not acceptable — it sought to solve more than the “one or two” problems that Taibbi recognizes.
My only quibble with you would be to call it fence sitting, What Broder was, and what Taibbi now seems to aspire to, is gate keeping. Which is part of the current wreckage of U.S. culture and the U.S. economy.
I believed Taibbi was a lefty disgusted by Democratic neoliberalism up until the summer of 2023, when he and Kirn ridiculed the concern over the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. So concern over climate change and its effects was just an example of liberal hysteria to them. It was true he had spent most of his time criticizing the Democrats but I told myself this was because at the time they had most of the power. I was wrong. He might have valid points to make here and there and he can coin a phrase, but you can get better analysis in a lot of places.
In short I’m what used to be called a moderate, and believe society isn’t that far from being in great shape, if we could just calm down, find fixes for a problem or two, and learn to appreciate what we have.
Well said by someone doing well. Taibbi seems moderately confused. Learning to “appreciate what we have” ignores at whose expense we have what we have and the consequences flowing from the carnage. Consider US management of the worldwide petroleum concession. Cheap gasolune for US, pricey bombing for Iranians. Lucrative trade agreements, as it were, in the western hemisphere accompanied by political instability and economic chaos everywhere south of the Rio Grande. Such is what US moderates appreciate excessively.
I’ll also contribute to the dogpile. I held out for long after the “What Happened to Taibbi?” pieces, thinking that he was a principled journalist who was making some unseemly alliances in trying to appeal to the supposed anti-authoritarian right à la Greenwald. It was later revealed through everything he put out on Substack that his entire worldview has settled into a very boring, reflexive, anti-liberal heuristic that was clearly driven by audience capture and his new cohost (and femme fatale) in Walter Kirn. If history is any indicator – see his partnerships with Alex Pareene, Greenwald, and Katie Halper – there’s probably another breakup and heel turn in the offing. I doubt he’ll ever go back to speaking to issues of power and class like he did in Rolling Stone in the aftermath of the 08 crisis though.
I wrote in a comment to the Taibbi Article that he literally helped turn me into a Marxist because of his book, Griftopia, which I read while deployed to Afghanistan in 2013.
I was hoping Taibbi would help Unite the Populist Left & Right, but it looks like he’s found great wealth among the Right with 500,000k subscribers.
He’s a cynical triangulator who stands for nothing except his career and the number in his bank account. Many such cases, especially from his milieu. His writing has become embarrassing and meagre.
At the end, Taibbi simply could no longer keep his narcissism in check.
This has been so evident for me for decades and I keep saying that the pendulumn has not finished swinging right. Look at Europe how is just starting to dismantle its social safety structures. So much more to go.
Britain is leading the pack there. But the British elites forget that due to their “liberalism” from late 1700s to early 1900s ended up with a debilitated population unfit to be sent to war…
I cancelled my Taibbi subscription and went off on him in the comments of both of those articles.
Taibbi writes about his love of “free markets.”
Not the Marxian/Adam Smith ones, but the more modern “Vampire Squid” sucking ones so beloved by the Libertarians and Monopoly Capitalists.
If even I, JHB – simple retard from the South, can understand where Taibbis writing was leading too (classical economics) why didn’t Taibbi???
Tulsi and Taibbi.
At least we still have NC and Dore!
From Benjamin Balthaser on X; “Jewish Democrats suggested that concerns about their community’s safety are being dismissed…”
I think their concerns about safety is not true and I think there is an explanation why it’s not true.
Almost immediately after Oct 7, and beginning with Israel’s assault on Gaza, there was a tsunami of anti-Israel protests like I have not seen in my lifetime, and I think Israel supporters were stunned.
The peaceful protestors were labeled pro-Hamas, pro-terrorists, and students were arrested, university presidents ousted, people deported, and as Israel supporters tried to label anything anti-Israel as anti-semitic, it still didn’t work because there was no rise in anti-semitism after Oct 7, and many protestors were Jewish Americans.
If I were Jewish, I would be shocked too. This anti-Israel public protest rose rapidly and I’m not surprised some Jews would interpret this as anti-semitic, but it’s not.
The problem, imo, is that the US is a nation that tolerates and permits the expression of views that differs from other views. But, in this case, it was different. It was a seemingly overnight wave of anti-Israel views and some Jewish Americans, imo, misinterpreted it as anti-semitic and, in many cases, they still do.
Victor Sciamarelli: You brought up this quote:
From Benjamin Balthaser on X; “Jewish Democrats suggested that concerns about their community’s safety are being dismissed…”
I would add that this argument of “not feeling safe” is a constant in U.S. society. As you write, there have been no anti-semitic outbursts. No one is burning down synagogues in the U.S. of A.
Here in Italy, the right-wing leaders of the Jewish communities in Roma and Milano keep trotting out similar accusations. They don’t wash either. Sure there was pushing and shoving and flinging of insults at some demonstrations. But anti-semitism? No. Italians are acutely conscious of anti-semitism, given the moral disaster of fascism, but the Italian Jewish community is highly integrated and very successful.
But this “uncomfortable” argument is a staple of upper-middle-class feminism and of the woke. It is starting to sound awfully whiny to me.
Thanks for the Italian information. As to “not feeling safe” is a constant in American society, that’s true but it’s a different thing and quite real: people and robbed, bikes stolen, and their cars are broken into etc.
The rise in anti-semitism fear is not real and I think it may be used to block Mamdani in the general election. Like maybe he needs to answer 100x a day if Israel has a right to defend itself and does Israel have a right to exist?
And besides, I think nearly all fear is irrational; it’s an archaic emotion.
The MAGA right has their dog whistles. The PMC brunch crowd that passes for the left in the US has an equally broad set. Safe spaces, Ally, Fighting For, Lived Experience, it goes on and on…. Unfortunately, while the MAGA ones are almost imperceptible if you’re not listening for them, the woke ones get shoved in your face.
The problem is that the full power of the State was turned on all those that protested against Israel’s actions, even if it meant gutting the First Amendment. Foreign students were banished back to their home countries, the US is ready now to examine the social media of all people entering the US to see if they criticize Israel and in fact tourists have already been turned back at airports for precisely that. University presidents have been fired for not being radical enough to crack down on staff and students. The America First movement is now being twisted to become the Israel First movement. The list goes on. Wanna know the worse thing about this? It may long term make antisemitism acceptable again through resentment which would be a horrible outcome. And worse of all it would be all Jewish people that would get tar brushed by this. There is a reason why people should be all treated equally because when you treat any group as ‘special’, you can be guaranteed of blowback.
One possible silver lining? Zionism used to be a bipartisan issue. Perhaps it will now become a tribal one. I’ll take half a cookie if that’s all that’s on offer.
I wish they would have dared come against John Meiersheimer as being anti-semitic with his accusations of genocide and support for genocide…. To see the public debate and the trials…
I hesitate to pick on Matt Taibbi, for whom I have a good deal of respect. He has uncovered many stories and has been dogged in pursuing stories.
What is he for?
Not much: “In short I’m what used to be called a moderate, and believe society isn’t that far from being in great shape, if we could just calm down, find fixes for a problem or two, and learn to appreciate what we have.”
Let’s all hold hands, make s’mores, sing the seventy-three verses of Amazing Grace, avoid talking about politics, religion, and sex, not mention the cost of health insurance, not mention the disaster that is the murderous U.S. foreign policy, particularly since the passage of the Patriot Act, and not examine the Gini Quotient or the decline in life expectancy.
Lime jello with canned pears for all!
PS: What was that line about “Not with a bang but with a whimper”?
PPS: Like Curro Jimenez and Nat Wilson Turner, I have been preoccupied with the upsurge of nihilism, the desire to destroy things simply to destroy. What we are seeing is widespread collapse of the moral authority of institutions and individuals — even their figleaves have shredded — and Taibbi’s maundering is an admission of defeat.
I started reading Taibbi around Griftopa, read the books since and his posts on Rolling Stone, subbed to his substack when that started, and cancelled the sub after he did two podcast episodes equivocating about the Palestinian holocaust and a cheap, sarcastic smear review of Stephanie Kelton’s book. He made clear then what he is for: himself. Scratch a American civil libertarian and what do you find?
On Youtube interviews with people like Carlson Taibbi is uniformly sharp when talking about the journalism biz. So in that sense it doesn’t matter what he is “for” ideologically.
So why take shots at Mamdani? The popular Kirn, Montana populist when not hanging out in Vegas or LA, pulls Matt to the right. Presumably this helps with his subscriptions but their rambling shtick has gotten old for some of us.
Agreed Carolinian. The America this week podcast was indispensable in last year’s election, but the last 6 months or so it’s become more and more useless and is now unbearable for me.
Taibbi’s fist podcast, the Tarfu Report with Alex Pareene, seemed like an attempt to do something like Chapo Trap House. Involved reading fatuous op-eds in helium voice and giggling a lot. Wasn’t very funny and died suddenly when Jessa Crispin accused Taibbi. I remember enjoying the interview with Jesse Ventura.
Second attempt was Useful Idiots with Katie Halper. It’s also not very funny and really showed how Taibbi is a much better writer than he is podcaster. After a lot of dick jokes I guess he and Halper we politically incompatible and he quit. She’s solidly (and courageously) left while he’s conservative libertarian.
ATW, his third effort seems to have hit a market and Taibbi’s true nature. It came after he had been doing substack for years, receiving huge volumes of praise for his more-and-more conservative articles in comments and new subs and he started to drop the progressive pretense. He chose an overtly conservative podcast partner and finally seemed comfortable in his company. At first, given the toxic background radiation of Biden’s hard-core centrism, I welcomed their independent critique. But there’s only so far superior sarcastic takes on everyday stupid politics goes. It was getting old when I quit listening after its second “Israel-Palestine: It’s complicated” episode and I didn’t get far into that one.
The transition from Useful Idiots to ATW is interesting. I think it represents his liberation from having to pretend to be progressive for social reasons.
Taibbi was a good writer and would be today too if he took enough time away from the rapid reward cycle of feeding the substack hoards and doing the podcast. And he’s better at investigating and explaining than he is at being a pundit. In my opinion he’s not a good podcaster, broadcaster or talk show guest.
“…there’s only so far superior sarcastic takes on everyday stupid politics goes.”
Thank you. That sums it up for me in addition to to the fact that after all this time he’s still not a good broadcaster.
Well put.
Have been about to unsub from Racket for weeks.
I hadn’t picked up on Taibbi’s complacency before, and gave him some grace
though I was disappointed in some of his takes.
I’m finding him increasingly distasteful
I didn’t renew my subscription when it expired. I agree with the comments. I think Kirn is a bad influence: smug, self-satisfied, loves to take pot shots, and lazy. It’s trivial, but it annoyed me that he didn’t even read the stories they’d discuss on This Week. And the way Taibbi hesitates and defers to him is uncomfortable (does Taibbi have Daddy issues?).
I think Taibbi is a great writer, and recommend Hate, Inc. to friends and family as a great explanation of what happened to MSM and the societal consequences. He was a great investigative reporter, too, but those days are over, I’m afraid.
I just went looking for an image of Musk riding in a flaming dumpster fire through floodwaters with the quote “This is Fine”. Eventually I found it. But first I got long lists of people selling the image on Etsy and etc. Kind of like Taibbi. Maybe it does seem fine if you make a really nice living describing the dumpster fire.
Earl McKee was the old man of the mountain here, born in 1931 and had a fabulous memory which I liked to pick as if his brain was a combination safe…
The flood of record here happened in 1955, and 3x as many cubic feet per second came down from on high, compared to the impressive 2023 flood, boy howdy!
About a decade ago we’re eating lunch at the Mexican restaurant in town and I ask him: ‘Earl tell me about the ’55 flood’ and out pours enough words to submerge the table…
My favorite was Mr. Jenkins who owned a small cabin and was able to flee just in time as the Kaweah River decided to take over ownership and down the river it went, and to add insult to injury it caught fire en route. I have a visual of that in my mind.
Pity it wasn’t a crisis clinic rather than just a cabin-
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson–432134526740400890/
Kunstler is another one I’ve quit clicking on. Twenty years ago, he was making good points about Happy Motoring, the ‘burbs and societal complexity. Now he’s just another MAGA-ite yelling for people to get off his suburban lawn.
Yeah, seeing the deterioration over the past coupla years has been jarring. Some of his recent posts make him sound demented which is a shame for a man who was once a good thinker.
Yeah, he had a good run. I greatly appreciate him as a world-class urbanist, and he worked it during Russiagate and beyond. I lost interest a couple of years ago. Also, as a self-proclaimed ‘artist’ he is a world-class schlockmeister.
Taibbi has always been a professional skeptic than anything else. That makes him a “moderate” only to the degree that the prevailing elite views no longer hold credibility to the middle America.
He made a short remark several months ago about, how, recently, he became a skeptic of climate change. This fits with the recent post here about whether MAGA has a point about “science.” Taibbi is not exactly a first rate “mind,” but he is very good at both sensing and making sense of just what it is that people have trouble believing (possibly, because he is not a first rate “mind.” It takes a lot of learning to believe in and rationalize what is not “obvious.”). I don’t agree with him a whole lot, but if you lost Taibbi, thst is likely a sign that you lost the middle America or will soon.
Updated Sinclair Lewis:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his consumption patterns depend upon his not understanding it!
I was a huge Taibbi fan for a long time, but no longer. My take is that the IRS agents showing up at his door—which was horrible—seems to have traumatized him into becoming an anti-Democrat crank. The final straw for me was when he mused, in the middle of a description of his family’s outing to Disneyland, that he preferred not to contemplate climate change on such wholesome occasions because, after all, they’ll think of something and all will be well in the end.
Um, no.
He actually recently mentioned the murderous U.S. foreign policy and seemed to ultimately be in favor of bombing Iran. He didn’t like Trump’s bombing but “as an American” he feels like he should be in favor of it bcz Iranians want Death to America.
The Democratic leadership likely agrees with his scathing ridicule of Mamdani and his programs.
In general I’m pretty much on board with comments made here about Taibbi. And, I personally don’t have much use for his “analysis” anymore.
Blinded by Righteous Outrage: From the 1994 Crime Act to Trump 2.0
by Touré F. Reed
June 14, 2025
https://nonsite.org/blinded-by-righteous-outrage-from-the-1994-crime-act-to-trump-2-0/
Nothing short of a full military intervention is going to prevent the Gaza holocaust.
Re baby formula, not only would any lactating mothers be unable to provide sufficient milk being on a starvation diet themselves, I suspect clean uncontaminated water to mix any baby formula that beat the blockade would also be in short supply too. It is increasingly clear that babies, young children and women are the biggest targets of the Israeli genocide to destroy the possibility of a future generation of Palestinians, let alone generations. And western world politicians look on and sit on their hands, feigning impotence while miming ‘sorry guys, nothing to see and nothing we can or wish to do’.
Agreed — forgot who said this recently: “Israelis only understand force”
https://www.change.org/p/sign-the-sarajevo-declaration-of-the-gaza-people-s-tribunal?recruited_by_id=57f00000-4f80-11f0-a2bc-9de4de4e39ab
It is far too late to prevent the Gaza holocaust because it already happened. At best it may be possible to mitigate by preventing it from getting worse, but I don’t think that will happen either.
Re: Hersh. I think Hersh is currently being used, maybe unwittingly, as a limited hangout vendor. His name and apparent exile status lend weight to his reporting. But there are some glaring flaws here.
Firstly, bunker busters were not used in the attack. The B2s would have been unable to enter Iranian airspace, and most assessments put the strike down to submarine launched missiles which are large, but not bunker buster types.
Secondly, released satellite evidence is highly unconvincing that any deep installations have been affected. The hits are dispersed and imprecise, far from tunnel entrances, and the entrances were revealed to have been plugged with earth beforehand suggesting extensive Iranian preparation for the attack. We would have to believe that the individual bomb dropped were enough to collapse facilities likely +100m underground.
I don’t think Hersh is getting good information or accurate information from his sources anymore. Unironically, I will have to stick to twitter users.
It’s obvious or at least suspicious that Hersh keeps getting these scoops. It would be naive to think that his sources aren’t demanding a price in exchange for the juicy information they leak to him.
The price is likely fealty.
The price is likely fealty.
No price is even necessary. They have only to hand him the narrative with such elements as they select, framed as they frame them. What else is Hersh going to run with?
Isn’t Hersh one of those old-school guy who cultivates retirees and their spouses as sources? Who talks to a lot of people and and makes maps of the things no one will comment on?
Hersh is 88.
Let’s be charitable to our brothers and sisters. By that age most of us have entirely aged out and many are below ground. Hersh is still in the game using such resources as he can muster.
On the other hand, of course, if his substack were being produced by a CIA expert system programmed to play Seymour Hersh, how would we know?
I mentioned the other day that we must have brought back Phantoms back jnto service….
What is astonishing is that high govt officials are so baldly telling ridiculous untruths–I don’t want to dignify them by calling them lies or BS–s**t deserves more respect than compared to them. I wonder what to make of them.
There is a F-4 Phantom and a B-17 right next to Highway 99 (Pearl Harbor Survivors Memorial Highway) or at least there used to be a Phantom there…
https://www.ruudleeuw.com/usa08-mefford.htm
Yes, Hersh is another one I stopped subscribing to. I think he is being used by his sources, they go back decades. It reminds me of something I read about great athletes who can’t retire–it’s their identity and they can’t give it up–so they continue to the point where they embarrass themselves. Hersh was one of the greatest investigative reports of our time. He is very old and should have retired after his excellent autobiography, Reporter. (Well, I’m glad he reported on the NordStream 2 sabotage.)
This is presented as a known fact, it is not:
Firstly, bunker busters were not used in the attack. The B2s would have been unable to enter Iranian airspace,
How could you possibly know this? You may want it to be true, but stating it this way makes it merely propaganda. The fog of lies is bad enough without amplifying them.
Because I haven’t believed in “stealth aircraft” since Serbia shot one down in 1999. With antiquated soviet radar systems. The Iranians can build and launch hypersonic ballistic missiles, so it’s a safe bet their radar systems are up to snuff enough to detect the even older B2 as well, and that their missiles are up to snuff it hit it as well.
I am not prepared to believe in weapons vendor marketing material or NYT reports, or magic. If you call that “amplifying” lies then I don’t know what you consider the truth.
Trump, Hegseth, Caine, Herschel all selling snake oil.
“O for Obliteration is Sesemi at word of the day. We let Elmo run this one.
According to Dima’s Military Summary Channel, the Russian army took control of the town of Svevchenko in the Donbas. The significance of this is that the town includes the largest lithium mine in Europe. One that undoubtedly had been pledged as part of the “rare erfs” deal that Orange Julius was blathering about back in March.
Unconfirmed reports state that Larry Fink (Blackrock Chairman) was seen kicking his dog and punching holes in the walls of his mansion in the Hampton’s.
“U.S. Used Up 15-20 Percent of its Global THAAD Anti-Missile Arsenal in Just 11 Days of Mid-Intensity Combat: Cost Over $800 Million”
I heard on a video a different twist to this article. They talk about 15-20% of global THAAD missile supply used up but the video I heard said that the THAAD battery in Israel itself was about to run on empty. Fortunately Iran was out of missiles which was why they quit. /sarc
I think these ancestors are a good fit for the Knesset Assassination Bureau, and what an endgame!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii
“Trump says Israel sent agents into Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, saw ‘total obliteration”
Well that can’t be right. Iran isn’t letting in any IAEA inspectors at all right now or for the foreseeable future. And what could they have possibly seen on the surface? ‘Yes sir, we definitely saw a lot of blackened rocks. Mission accomplished!’
This seems like a high level agreement among all sides to walk back starting a potential WW3. Good. The face saving talk is expected.
In other news from NBC:
Trump’s team launches group to unseat GOP Rep. Thomas Massie
Trump has heavily criticized Massie, of Kentucky, who has opposed his strikes on Iran and his “big, beautiful bill” in Congress.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-thomas-massie-criticism-us-strikes-iran-kentucky-maga-rcna214387
Masse is only one of two Congress people who doesn’t have an AIPAC handler, if I recall correctly. / ;)
Mearshiemer thinks Isr’s latest ‘excellent adventure’ is causing problems for AIPAC. Too many in the US now wonder just what the heck supporting Isr is supposed to mean in reality and don’t like what they’re seeing.
This is telling, it’s just such an overt lie that it would have been more believable if Trump said that the Guardians of the Galaxy were sent into Fordow and Rocket burrowed into the ground to assess the damage 100 meters below the surface.
Saban’s Power Rangers do have teleporters.
– ‘CENTCOM Nominee: U.S. Military Presence in Syria Remains Crucial to Confront ISIS Threat’ – Kurdistan24
Presidents and CENTCOM commanders come and go. But nothing fundamentally changes. Ever.
Yes, that headline seems like a prime example of the self-licking ice cream cone phenomenon.
Nope. It’s to avoid having mysterious airplane-falling-into-the-ocean incident, that USA/UK/etc. would have nothing to do with, and no prior knowledge of.
Yeah, they just tried to kill him a few weeks ago which would have been catastrophic – for the west. I don’t think that he considered that they would have been so stupid as to try but try they did.
Does this make Trump eligible for Noballs Prize?
Plans by the Department of Government Efficiency to terminate the lease of a building the National Park Service uses in Moab, Utah, as headquarters for Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Hovenweep and Natural Bridges national monuments apparently have been scrapped.
The National Park Service won’t lose its Southeast Utah Group headquarters building in Utah/NPS fileClick to view entire image
The National Park Service apparently won’t lose its Southeast Utah Group headquarters building in Utah/NPS file
Earlier this year DOGE had calculated the savings from canceling the lease the Park Service’s Southeast Utah Group holds on the 35,358-square-foot facility at $805,408 over ten years, although there was no mention of the cost of relocating the staff and operations to another facility.
The Moab Sun News reported that a decision was recently reached not to end the lease, a decision confirmed by a Park Service communications staffer.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/06/doge-wont-terminate-nps-lease-moab-headquarters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can almost sense some 21 year old wunderkind @ DOGE going, ‘I just saved us $805k, bro!’ without any inkling of the repercussions and the idea that you’d need to find somewhere else for the facility.
“Trump will look at giving Ukraine more Patriot missiles as he calls on Putin to end war”
More Trump bluster. Sure he can send those Patriot batteries back to the Ukraine but what about missiles for them? Most of them got used up over Israel. And you can’t print the out like you can dollars.It will take the US years to get back to pre-war stocks and that is assuming that they don’t keep on being sent to places like the Ukraine.
…you’ll know we are getting desperate when fireworks show supplies are requisitioned by the Feds
What Patriot missiles? The one that failed to intercept anything in Qatar and ended up on a highway?
Maybe superglue can come to the rescue.
Greenwald and Mearsheimer, utube, ~8+ minutes.
Prof. John Mearsheimer: The Israel Lobby LOSING GROUND?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Hu8BaGIcg
We’re approaching the end zone on our Bizarro World mutual collapses, the USSR & USA.
It took a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall to put paid to Soviet Communism, while it has taken a few years in propping up the Israel wall for American Capitalism to go the way of the Dodo.
The Ruble was in theory worth a buck fifty, but in practice worth nothing…
…while the Dollar in practice is worth nothing, but trades for a buck fifty
Yeltsin was a raging drunk, while Trump is a teetotaler.
Will we at least get one of those cool NFL end zone celebrations when the USA collapses?
Maybe the Ayatollah, Putin, and Xi can do a choreographed dance, or sign an autograph with a pen like Terrell Owens did a few years ago.
Back in the 80’s there was the “Fun Bunch” with the Redskins WR’s, and who can forget “The Ickey Shuffle?”
Vlad and Xi better limber up! Those footballs won’t spike themselves.
LOL
New Data Clarifies a Lingering Question on 2024 Turnout
Original headline
If Everyone Had Voted, Harris Still Would Have Lost
Further repression in the USA seems inevitable, Martial Law is the most likely avenue at the moment but a domestic terrorism bill with asset forfeiture provisions is very likely.
The Trump administration has been overtly lawless, from Doge’s violation of the APA, the CFAA and the Privacy act and their likely violations of the espionage act to physical assaults on a US Senator and violation of the Posse Comitatus act, for a start.
Either they succeed in establishing an overt tyranny or they go to prison and at this point it seems very likely that they will succeed.
I do not believe that things will go according to plan, chaos seems more likely because these people are not competent in any sense.
Stay safe and enjoy the show.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but masked agents in unmarked cars descending upon people in American cities seems rather a recent occurrence. Which isn’t to say that we haven’t had horrors before this, like asset forfeiture and non-Constitution zones at every border in America. Trump’s taken what W. Bush created and Obama blessed and expanded and molded it into what in some other country would look like a paramilitary force unanswerable to the populace at large, rampaging through cities.
What was unleashed abroad has, as many suggested was likely, been visited upon us in the “Homeland”.
It’s kind of comical that liberal Democrats were actually right about something, sort of, but so far have little to offer in terms of material opposition to this. If they truly believed their own pitch, would they have run Harris and her campaign of massive grift that offered nothing to the masses except BitCoin and a small business tax credit?
There have been some videos showing agents unmasked and many if not most looked Latinx. Maybe it’s time for the ice agents to be investigated as to their immigration status?
Then it might be a good idea to raid all Trump properties and check the immigration status of all his employees including upper management and their families.
re: no longer free press Germany
Those who are in Berlin: July 3rd, 7pm, there is a panel discussing the suppression of free speech on the occasion of the latest sanctioning of Thomas Röper and Alina Lipp, who will join online and Red Media and Hüseyin Doğru, who will be present.
It is a noteworthy event because 4 outlets partnered: NACHDENKSEITEN, OVERTON MAGAZIN, JUNGE WELT (print daily), HINTERGRUND (online and print monthly).
info:
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=135097
For those who want to go write to:
maigalerie@jungewelt.de
Guest Post: Can money buy happiness? Working Class Storytelling
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About the only thing I regularly spend money on to be happy, is my skiing addiction, and happy comes with having a posse of like minded friends on which money plays no part whatsoever.
Some of the resorts we ski at have chalets right on the slopes, and at Deer Valley a few years ago curiosity got the best of me, and found a 6 bedroom 10 bathroom Goliath for sale @ $18 million, i’m more than content with being one of 9 in our rental townhouse that costs $800 a night.
If I owned the $18 million chalet, i’d be worried sick about not using it enough, upkeep, insurance, all the worries that come with the deal.
Most of my adventures in the wilderness wont even allow you to spend money anywhere, its just ballast. Maybe bring along a Nickel to open a bear canister, yeah that’s the ticket.
Per the bearded one, money is a command on labor. I find a want when there are things I cannot do, such as do my roof. I am, and I have survived, so far without much command, but I am old.
Feral hog watch:
Meanwhile, another dimension of the polycrisis hasn’t gone away: New campaign encourages B.C. to ‘squeal’ on invasive pigs
Looks like the BBC paywall for its US readership has gone live.
Digging Deeper — Aurelien
Read it. This essay is his best since the superlative ‘The Wheels of History Creak’ way back in June 2022, which I re-read every now and then to maintain my sanity.
‘Western politics is essentially a gigantic echo-chamber on the subject.’ — This is painfully true. Emmanuel Todd in ‘The Defeat of the West’ (an outstanding book, written with breathtaking clarity) describes the Western PMC as essentially a big village. The key players all know each other, and they really don’t care what goes on outside their village. What matters most is to maintain one’s social status (hence political influence) amongst the inhabitants of said village. My RU wife recently asked me why Merkel (a fluent RU speaker, for what it’s worth) bragged post-24/2/22 about misleading Putin re the Minsk agreements (i.e., just a ruse to buy time to arm UKR to the teeth). To which I explained to her (channeling Todd) that Merkel doesn’t care about the fate of Germany or its relations with RU; she cares exclusively about how she is viewed by the other members of her village. Bragging that she pulled the wool over Putin’s eyes gained her brownie points inside her little village; the fact that Germany is going down the tubes because of its anti-RU policy is of no consequence, as Frau Merkel personally is set for life.
At some point in the distant future, European countries will come to terms with the new reality of their relations with RU and things will start to normalize. But an entire generation of European political leadership will have to be shuffled off the stage before that can happen. Possibly two generations. So maybe in 20-40 years, things will normalize. Something for my offspring to hope for; I will probably still be here in 2045, but 2065 is a stretch.
NATO SecGen’s Mark Rutte’s fawning over Trump is fun to watch. This level of raw unadulturated servility is seldom witnessed outside of royalty or corporations. I don’t understand why Rutte is behaving this way; his career in Dutch politics is over, is he angling to replace Ursula VdL (and counting on The Donald’s support)? I trust he is being generously compensated for his efforts.
Just for the record: the very idea that any EU nation is going to spend 5% of its GDP on ‘defense’ is absurd. Even the USA, with its grossly bloated MIC, only manages about 3.5%:
https://asiatimes.com/2025/06/nato-5-defense-pledge-wont-make-the-kremlin-shake-in-its-boots/
Oh, EU has a cunning plan, if you read the small print: that 5% also covers all the support to Ukraine and any investment in the infrastructure, “preparedness” and “innovation”. In other words, they just add unrelated govt. expenses as “defense” and everyone is happy.
Also, NATO has no mechanism to actually force any member to do anything at all. Not even defend another member militarily or diplomatically.
My years in business (and MBA school) have enabled me to make the numbers on a spreadsheet dance and sing and even play the ukulele if need be; still, cranking them up to 5% will be a challenge, even for the numerically dexterous.
This entire NATO summit has a whiff of the latter days of the USSR: a big sprawling conference with all the attendees mouthing the obligatory phrases (Marxism-Leninism back then, Atlantic Solidarity! and Slava Ukraini! nowadays), with few actually believing in any of it. But the USSR ended quite abruptly in December 1991, with no warning and no fanfare. I suspect NATO’s eventual demise will be similar.
Only in Korean present and historical dramas I have seen such levels of servility. The past odes to Ceausescu were monuments of virile admiration and appreciation compared to what the western sycophants seem to be capable of.
A “Have I got news for you” episode (UK version) a few weeks back commented that a Trump colonoscopy had revealed Keir Starmer. Obviously, they meant to say Mark Rutte. /s
The duty officers in both organisations are indeed hard to tell apart, so forgive those who have to look at arseholes all day, every day.
Can money buy happiness? Hell yes! Anyone says otherwise is full of it.
I’m amongst the poors but I’m generally very content, though not at all happy with the motherfuckers (sic) who take more than their quota and act as if that gives them license to kick down. I take it as Sociopathy. So there.
There is self delusion, and its many states.
Why should anyone be happier than they need to be?
The finacially obese seem far from happy with their current share.
The samurai measured their wealth by what they could do without.
A case of beer and a few good friends is cheap, and serves to make me happy.
BBPoS in serious trouble:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5371828-zinke-senate-gop-bill-public-land/
Senate Parliamentarian goes medieval on bill:
https://thehill.com/homenews/5371186-hardline-house-conservatives-senate-parliamentarian-ruling/
But wait! There’s more!
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/26/congress/bessent-asks-lawmakers-to-kill-revenge-tax-calling-it-unnecessary-00428238
Act now, and for the low, low price of $39.99, we’ll also throw in a disemboweled moratorium on AI regulations!
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/26/congress/parliamentarian-requests-cruz-rewrite-ai-moratorium-00427371
The BBPoS has more issues than a red-headed step-child raised by wolves in a meth trailer.
NYT:
Bill Moyers, Presidential Aide and Veteran of Public TV, Dies at 91
A decent man in a world of the indecent, imho.
Moyers & Company provided great information during the GFC. The shows are worth watching if you have not seen them:
Moyers & Company
https://billmoyers.com/series/moyers-and-company/
Thank you. I had hoped to link to his The Secret Government- Bill Moyers – Constitution in Crisis – YouTube – YouTube.webloc – very good piece from 1988, but alas the vid has been taken private. Telling perhaps that it wasn’t just deleted, or…
Well, the info had been about for some years qv the parallel construction vs the above ground Government. Still, it was aired, and it heralded much that we intuit today.
Is this it?
The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
https://billmoyers.com/content/secret-government-constitution-crisis/
That’s it, thank you.
Mike Johnson Suggests War Powers Act Is Unconstitutional Truthout
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In retrospect having a dolt the likes of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker doesn’t seem so bad compared to the alternative & the dominionism factor~
Oh for the days when Kev would sort out Starburst candies for the Donald, knowing his favorites…
I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
I’ve got you all deep in doodoo with me
So deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me
I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
I’d tried so not to give in
I said to myself, “This SecDef affair never will go so well”
But why should I try to resist when, baby, I know so well
I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
I’d sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of havin’ war near
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats, repeats in my ear
“Don’t you know, illustrated fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality”
But each time that I do just the thought of peace makes me stop
Before I begin ’cause I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
I would sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of havin’ war near
In spite of the warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats, how it yells in my ear
“Don’t you know, little fool, you never can win?
Why not use your mentality, step up, wake up to reality”
But each time I do just the thought of peace makes me stop
Just before I begin ’cause I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
Yes, I’ve got tattoos all over my skin
I’ve Got You Under my Skin, performed by Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AHec7sfZ8
Bro’Mio
re: German police conduct coordinated nationwide raids for the pseudo-crime of “hate posting” in their ongoing battle against freedom of expression
A stellar example for what today fares as “left” – Germany´s once most important left daily, TAZ, loves the police action.
It´s a bit like The Village Voice would have endorsed The Patriot Act (now lets hope I did not choose the wrong comparison here…)
original:
https://taz.de/Aktion-gegen-Hass-im-Netz/!6093104/
“(…)
Action against online hate
Welcome to the Internet, dear BKA
The police are conducting house searches to combat online hate speech. That’s a good thing! Hate is not an opinion.
W Anyone who takes a quick look at tech fascist Elon Musk ‘s Platform X will grasp the problem within minutes: It’s like the Wild West online, only without the revolvers and guns, but with all the more hate. This applies not only to the hate platform X, which has been turned right-wing by tech oligarch Musk, but also to numerous other supposedly social media platforms owned by Meta, Google, and ByteDance.
The hatred comes primarily from the right and can also escalate into real violence, as everyone should have known after the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke in 2019 by a neo-Nazi associated with the AfD. Prior to this, Lübcke had been repeatedly pilloried online by AfD politicians and other right-wing extremists – in the comment sections under such posts, there were calls for murder and threats of violence that remained unaddressed for a long time.
On Wednesday, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) launched a nationwide day of action against online hate speech. In numerous raids on YouTube rooms across the country, the agency executed 65 search warrants approved by independent judges and questioned numerous suspects in 140 investigations. A good thing!
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the number of punishable hate posts has quadrupled since 2021. Two-thirds of all posts come from the right-wing spectrum, and the agency links individual cases to left-wing, religious, or other ideologies. These include incitement to hatred, the use of banned Nazi symbols, incitement to or approval of criminal offenses, and insults.
First they simulated discourse power, finally they got it
Excitement with foam at the mouth.
For a long time, security authorities were more or less helpless in the face of the mobs swarming into the comment sections . Investigations into criminal statements were often uncoordinated or even nonexistent. Operators also inadequately fulfilled their responsibilities or, like Musk, even fueled the right-wing online witch hunt. Over the past decade, large swathes of the online space have become a resonating ground for right-wing extremists and their troll armies, who have campaigned to shift discourse, mob people, and thus gain power. At first, they simulated discourse power, but eventually, they achieved it with considerable support from the increasingly authoritarian mainstream of society.
How successful this is is demonstrated, for example, in the editorial of a “chief” commentator at Die Welt . He does mention in passing in the article about the “idiot verdict” that the hate commentator wasn’t convicted for an idiot meme about Robert Habeck, but rather for Hitler pictures and images of Hitler salutes. But he still foams at the mouth about the alleged threat to freedom of expression and a turning point in legal history.
But comment sections are not a vacuum, and words are not without consequences. The racist dehumanization by angry citizens in comment sections and the online hate speech of AfD politicians result in actual crimes – see Walter Lübcke. Right-wing violence in Germany is higher than ever since systematic recording of figures began in 2001 .
Extremely young people, as well as media-incompetent boomers, are radicalizing online in record time. In 2024, the police in Germany recorded a right-wing extremist crime every 12 minutes.
The Internet is not a lawless space
That’s why it’s absolutely welcome if the authorities finally get their act together when it comes to prosecuting criminal statements on the internet and make it clear that the internet is not a lawless space. Welcome to the internet, dear Federal Criminal Police Office.
When the authors of hate speech are held accountable, they are not harmless and unsuspecting victims whose freedom of expression is being restricted, as right-wing hate portals or AfD politicians would have us believe. They are perpetrators who want to harass others online, use racist insults, incite crimes, or even commit them. They want to systematically intimidate people into backing down. And the boundaries between militancy and right-wing violence are sometimes blurred.
This was also evident during the 12th Day of Action Against Online Hate: In Saarland, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) stopped three 19-year-olds from the skinhead scene, who had been under investigation by the State Security Service for some time. They are alleged to have posted hate messages and posted Reich war flags, SS badges, and Hitler salutes in internal Snapchat chat groups. At a Saarbahn bus stop, they are said to have insulted people with the words “Shitty foreigners.” However, pictures of weapons and a hand grenade were also apparently exchanged in the chats. Which brings us back to the Wild West, revolvers, and rifles.
(…)”
by Gareth Joswig
Domestic Editor
Has worked as a reporter and editor at taz since 2016. Initially in the local editorial offices in Bremen and Berlin, and since 2021 also in the domestic editorial offices and parliamentary office. Prior to that, he studied history and sociology. His main topics are: the extreme right, the AfD, social movements, rent policy, this, that, and other miscellaneous topics.