Link 7/7/2025

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1. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 7:22 am

   “This Is Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Needed Human Babysitters”

   ‘Onboard helpers, bad-weather suspensions, but no crashes.’

   Yeah, about that. “Tesla Robotaxi Hits Parked Car in First Recorded Accident” at

   https://au.pcmag.com/cars-auto/111902/tesla-robotaxi-hits-parked-car-in-first-recorded-accident

   To borrow a phrase from Ralph Nader, unsafe at any speed.

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2. Colonel Smithers July 7, 2025 at 7:35 am

   Thank you, Conor.

   Further to Blair’s involvement with Gaza, a bit of background:

   Firstly, BCG would be an obvious choice as Netanyahu used to work there. He became friends with former Republican governor, senator and presidential candidate Mitt Romney when the pair worked there. Former Democrat governor and presidential candidate Deval Patrick works at BCG. The firm is well connected.

   Blair’s influence on the Starmer government should not be underestimated. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s no such thing as Starmerism, as Starmer has pointed out. As professor David Edgerton said last week, Starmer is reheating tired and inappropriate Thatcherism and Blairism.

   Let’s go back a bit.

   As the pandemic receded, Blair began to hire civil servants, especially those with experience of the pandemic. He saw such emergency management as the next wave to ride and wanted to sell his firm’s services based on that knowledge. In addition, Blair foresaw the Tories losing, not Labour winning, as in 1997 and wanted his people in place. The Blair team is at all levels of the government, beginning with ministers and advisers like Jonathan Powell and officials like Peter Mandelson (ambassador to Washington and friend of Epstein). Those not seconded to Whitehall are at his office, conducting similar work.

   The team that put Starmer at the helm of Labour is really Blair’s team, but with some reporting to Mandelson, like Morgan McSweeney and Wes Streeting. McSweeney and his wife, Imogen Walker, also report to Gary Lubner, a triple citizen oligarch and sanctions buster.

   When Blair “retires to his country estate”, “ducal” Wotton in Buckinghamshire, red boxes, just like in Whitehall, are placed outside his Connaught Square (London) town house and office for matters requiring his attention. He had these boxes made a couple of years ago. Blair would like a more prominent role in government, but realises that would provoke Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch blames Blair for the break up of his marriage to Wendi Deng.

   Blair developed a taste for “squirearchy”* at Chequers, a dozen miles cross country from Wotton in my beloved Buckinghamshire, and the money that facilitates such a lifestyle and wanted his own estate. His elder sons, cashing in, have also bought country homes in Buckinghamshire. One country home, nearby, is owned by Blair, but occupied by his sister. *Being a squire meant, for example, not adhering to lock down and not scaling the hedge rows, so one could not see what the family got up to. Covid restrictions are for the little people, not the Blair family.

   As PM, Blair often complained about being the CEO of the UK (the late Queen being chairwoman), but not being paid like a business CEO. He’s obsessed with money. Apparently, that goes back to Oxford. Like many of his followers, he thought about the Tories as the vehicle for advancement, but Oxford and its Tory association were dominated by the Cameron types, so Labour made some sense and an idea that, by the late 1990s, the Tories would have exhausted themselves in office. Like Trump, Blair found it easier to get on and ahead with new money, including attracting Arab and other autocrats as investors, one reason why Starmer ditched the green new deal and screamed that he “hated tree huggers” at Ed Miliband at a shadow cabinet meeting last year.

   Blair’s association with Trump AND Kushner goes back to Trump’s first term, but may be even longer as an old deal for oil concessions in the occupied Golan Heights suggest. They have friends, donors and investors in common. Blair even thought he could mediate in the stand off between Trump and Biden in January 2021 and sought to fly to Washington.

   Blair is adviser to and client of JP Morgan. The royalties from the gas fields off Gaza are paid into an account for the Palestine Authority at JP Morgan. A panel, including Blair, oversees the account.

   Blair used to have his own investment funds. A master fund was fed by funds that included his family and others, often autocrats and donors, as beneficiaries. This became expensive, so the funds were wound up and Blair switched to JP Morgan.

   Journalist Michael Crick has tweeted about this sorry affair and asked if anyone at BCG and the Blair organisation considered the ethics. What a ridiculous question. The only issue for these people is getting caught. From Blair down, these people are, to quote William Dalrymple from yesterday, “pig ignorant”.

   When briefed about the hand over of Hong Kong to China soon after becoming PM, Blair confessed to not knowing about how Hong Kong became British and the opium trade and British oligarchs (extant, not extinct) and asked why the Chinese can’t get over such matters. A dozen or so years ago, Blair was asked to make opening remarks at Cape Town’s annual mining “indaba”, held every January. He embarrassed the hosts and upset attendees by talking in cliches about religion, not political developments and risk as planned.

   Finally, let’s remind ourselves of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe said about Blair as Middle East mediator: “That’s like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.”

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   1. Carolinian July 7, 2025 at 9:47 am

      Thanks for the thorough indictment. Now if we could just find a prosecutor.

      The take over here was always that Blair was inspired by our Slick Willie and his Third Way. The Clintons also saw neoliberalism as the avenue to riches.

      Movie world has tiptoed around Blair’s image but I think Michael Sheen in Peter Morgan’s “Blair trilogy” may have been good casting–going by your description. Sheen’s portrayals often seem to have something shady about them.

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      1. Colonel Smithers July 7, 2025 at 10:12 am

         Thank you, C.

         Yes. That is correct. Clinton was the inspiration.

         Oxford, including the network of Rhodes scholars, facilitated initial contact. That blossomed into exchanges of staff etc. This transatlantic elite soon became deracinated.

         For example, Laura Tyson taught at LSE, Mrs Blair’s alma mater, and sat on the board of Morgan Stanley in NYC and London.

         Blair’s eldest and middle son sup at the same trough. The elder has brought in Sunak as an investor.

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3. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 7:44 am

   Summer Wants You Dead Life and Limb
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   That was a fun romp with no grievous injuries sustained, unlike many of the amusing stories therein.

   You’ll never catch me on an ATV, I know too many people that have broken bones, had to have their spleen removed, lacerations like you wouldn’t believe, and more.

   They’re the grown-up version of monkey bars in elementary school that were there to essentially weed out a small percentage of kids.

   My moment of stupidity came circa 1970 jumping off a whale @ Legg Lake and landing on my funny bone in the sand below-not funny breaking your elbow in that fashion…

   Scene of decline:

   https://www.laalmanac.com/arts/ar725.php

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   1. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 7:51 am

      Summer doesn’t want you dead. The South wants you dead-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po2RGPkXhIw (1:52 mins)

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      1. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 8:13 am

         That u-tube was worth the price of admission, ha.

         We don’t have any crocodile nasties nor feasting insects except for deer flies who had assembled in V-pack formation around yours truly over the weekend in Mineral King and stealthy little buggers-they’re like time bombs in that you have a good 45 seconds after they land on you before they do their worst and leave you with a sting that’ll smart for awhile-and i’m pretty good at swatting them away fairly promptly in my allotted time frame, here in the deep south, well barely south that is-the dividing line betwixt north & south being 10 miles north of Fresno.

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4. Jason Boxman July 7, 2025 at 8:27 am

   From To Understand the Economy, This Fed President Is Ditching His Desk

   It’s hard to believe, but for many people that Pandemic was either over by May or it never happened:

   Barkin remembers one with a real-estate developer on May 1, 2020, in Bristol, Va. The city sits on the state line with Tennessee, which had just lifted pandemic restrictions. “You’re not going to believe what the mall looked like” on the Tennessee side of the border, the developer told him. For Barkin, it was a lightbulb moment about the pent-up demand that became a feature of the pandemic recovery.

   A reckoning is coming regardless. The virus doesn’t care.

   On Thursday, the Labor Department reported the economy added a better-than-expected 147,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. The data validate the Fed’s current holding posture, Barkin said in an interview on Thursday. “In a market where the demand side seems relatively stable and the inflation side is quite unclear, I think you just wait for the fog to lift,” he said.

   Dead and disabled workers surely must play a role here, and now Trump’s immigration enforcements.

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5. DJG, Reality Czar July 7, 2025 at 8:30 am

   If I may nominate a must-read for today, it is Boston Consulting Group Modeled Plan [for a customized genocide program with bureaucratic deniability.]

   This paragaph of seeming banalities indicates the depth of evil: “BCG’s model provided assumptions for the costs of voluntary relocations of Gazans, rebuilding civilian housing and using innovative financing models such as “tokenisation” of real estate via blockchain technology. It also allowed calculation of possible GDP outcomes from reconstruction.”

   “Voluntary” relocations with subsidies. Auctioning off the “real estate.” And the almighty GDP, of which country, one must wonder — U S of A and Israel, I’d venture.

   In case you were wondering what Hannah Arendt was writing about when she was writing about the banality of evil.

   Unlike Eichmann, there will be no trials. For years and years, the U.S. white-collar class has worked to limit its liability and to blunt its moral compass. Maybe one of these people choked on a slider at a Fourth of July barbecue, but that is likely the extent of divine retribution. These days, even God is a limited-liability corporation.

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   1. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 8:53 am

      I was noting the proposed scenarios like ‘Gazans would leave the enclave with “relocation packages” worth $9,000 per person’ and ‘Gazans would have been given a package to leave the enclave including $5,000, subsidised rent for four years and subsidised food for a year.’

      If you believe that would ever happen then I can get you a good price on the Sydney harbour bridge. So who comes up with the billions to pay for those schemes? It won’t be the US or Israel but both believe that it will be funded by countries full of people named Muhammad. But no doubt somebody like Tony Blair would get his grubby mitts involved so that Gazans would be charged from their money for things like transport fees, catering, accommodation, passport fees, exit fees, language lessons, management fees, security fees, etc. leaving them being sent to a place like the Sudan with zip.

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      1. Jason Boxman July 7, 2025 at 9:08 am

         On the contrary, by the time the Israelis are done with their work, there likely won’t be that many humans left in need of relocation.

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6. Henry Moon Pie July 7, 2025 at 8:39 am

   Climate disasters and degrowth–

   Degrowthers like me have been saying for some time that degrowth is coming; the question is whether we’ll plan for it in order to not let all the burden fall on the poor and Global South. Now the quite Establishment Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Britain commissioned a study from the University of Exeter examining climate risks as we shoot over 1.5 degrees C warming and head for 2.0 and beyond.

   This is what they found about our economic future if we don’t institute degrowth policies. (Context of graph) While even earlier projections showed a loss of 5% to GDP by 2040, the new model, amended based on the impact of storms and fires over the past couple of years, projects a 10% hit to global GDP by 2040 and a devastating hit of 20% by 2060. This compares to a drop of 4,3% in GDP in the USA in the Great Recession and a GDP drop of around 25% in the USA in the Great Depression.

   Degrowth is coming because our complex economic system cannot withstand the hits that Nature is delivering without incurring significant damage. We have changed the Earth. Now the Earth is going to change us, our children and our grandchildren.

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   1. GramSci July 7, 2025 at 8:59 am

      Heat Wave Hotspots (op cit) was also interesting. It should convince all but the wilfully ignorant. Unfortunately, they seem to be in the majority.

      The straightforward “heat index” is defined in the authors’s previous post.

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      1. Henry Moon Pie July 7, 2025 at 10:01 am

         And then we have fools/shills like Dore and Rogan using the 485 million year graph to claim it’s getting cooler. Someone with animation skills needs to take that graph and first zero in on the part of the graph that depicts the Pleistocene, showing the amplitude of climate swings, then down to the late, great Holocene. What it would show is like a plucked guitar string that gradually settles back to rest. The Earth has never seen a climate as stable as the Holocene, the period during which humans built their civilization. Then comes that big spike your graph shows.

         We have messed with the primal forces of Nature, ignorant of the truth that blowback does not necessarily impact those who did and continue to do the messing. While it’s put in the context of YHWH’s judgment rather than the reaction of Gaia’s systems to our tampering, the point Jesus makes about the collapse of the Tower of Siloam seems quite applicable:

         [A crowd around Jesus asked] Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? [Jesus replied] No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”

         Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’

         Luke 13

         Put those words in Gaia’s “mouth,” and you have our situation over the past decades. The warnings come from humans with the expertise to know, and it’s been backed up increasingly by “messages” from Gaia that the time grows short.

         And we just keep on keeping on like those in the days of Noah:

         But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,[h] but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man.

         Matthew 24:38-39

         Substitute the breaching of tipping points for the coming of the Son of Man, and you have our situation.

         Mass insanity.

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   2. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 9:11 am

      The Superintendent for Sequoia NP is the first one out of say 5 Superintendents here i’ve even had a conversation with in my 20 years here, and we text regularly and go out to dinner and chew the fat.

      He had previously been Superintendent @ Great Smoky Mountains NP, and arrived here a week before the 2020 Castle Fire (174k acres) torched a fair amount of Sequoia NP, and then the 2021 KNP Fire (88k acres) was largely in Sequoia NP, followed by the winter of record for 125 years that did massive damage to roadways and infrastructure, followed by a perfectly average year and then the Coffeepot Fire (14k acres).

      We have public meetings here in town and during one in 2023 with Clay telling the assembled audience that the Generals Highway will be closed for 3 to 4 months due to damage from so much snow combined with barren moonscapes from the fires-incurring the wrath of a few AirBnB’ers in the audience-as if it was his fault a large part of the road was missing, resulting in their missing income for 3 to 4 months?

      I came up to him afterwards and whispered in his ear…

      ‘…can I call you Mr. Disaster?’

      Degrowth will be a challenge, from my mother and father came forth 11 of us currently in a little over 3 generations, 6 of them are under 30.

      Not one of us grows or raises food, and are wholly dependent on somebody else doing it, not unlike most everybody else in the country.

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      1. Randall Flagg July 7, 2025 at 10:21 am

         >Not one of us grows or raises food, and are wholly dependent on somebody else doing it, not unlike most everybody else in the country.

         That will be a rude awakening for so many that reside in this Nation’s metropolitan areas.

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   3. MicaT July 7, 2025 at 9:24 am

      If by de-growth you mean energy use I think it will go up. Climate change will drive up energy use as it already is.
      Higher temps will mean more AC as is already happening around the world. Also more heating due to the expanding extremes.
      Lower water availability will mean increased energy use for more pumping, pipelines, desalination etc. it’s easier and cheaper to move water than whole populations
      Agriculture changes will require new locations and greater shipping costs
      Indoor and other newer energy intensive agricultural products will supplement as is already happening around
      Data centers and AI are going forward at a fast rate and will continue to grow.
      The internet in general is growing and it’s already a pretty big % of the world’s energy use and not looking to go down.

      And the developing world is well developing which means more energy use whether for food choices or transportation or refrigeration and AC and Internet etc.

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      1. Bsn July 7, 2025 at 9:45 am

         Some of us are gardeners. Anyone else noticing an increase in scavengers and pests? More crows, scrub jays, rats, etc? In our med. small town, people all over are hiring pest controllers to deal with “vermin”. I’ve also noticed an uptick in white flies, cabbage moths (and their worms), stink bugs and squash bugs as well as ants – in the garden. Yields are becoming inconsistent as well. Curious times noticed by local experienced gardeners. I wonder how actual farmers (large scale gardeners) are doing.

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7. DJG, Reality Czar July 7, 2025 at 9:03 am

   Branko Milanovic: Pensioners for War.

   Milanovic is succinct and cool. Likely, Milanovic also is correct. Unfortunately.

   It has occurred to me lately that USanians going on about “our democracy” is also some form of learned-helpless boredom. None of the “our democracy” poeple that I know of have been to a demonstration. Their idea of political action is to sneer at their adversaries and hope that the deportations and kidnappings end before Black Friday.

   Just one height of boredom:

   What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?

   –Madeleine Albright

   Correct answer: “To protect your dumpy ass, Madame Secretary.”

   Read Milanovic.

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   1. AG July 7, 2025 at 9:15 am

      thanks

      Reply ↓
8. AG July 7, 2025 at 9:11 am

   re: Nazi Germany vs. Israel today

   fwiw by Nefarious Russians Blog:

   Israel vs Germany: Who Killed More?
   In this grim genocide numbers game, Israel doesn’t come out looking so good.
   Yasha Levine
   Jul 05, 2025

   https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/israel-vs-germany-who-killed-more

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   1. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 9:28 am

      Well there is a difference between the Nazis and the Israelis. The Nazis did their genocide wholesale while the Israelis are doing their genocide by retail.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 9:40 am

         Goose steppers were much nappier dressers, advantage 3rd Reich over tacky Israeli khaki.

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      2. Bsn July 7, 2025 at 9:47 am

         …. and with many more countries aiding them (Izra-Nazis).

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9. AG July 7, 2025 at 9:14 am

   re: Taibbi

   again by Nefarious Russians Blog:

   Matt Taibbi gobbled by the Vampire Squid in the Vampire Castle
   Matt’s political “convictions” were always tied to where the opportunity and adulation was coming from.
   Yasha Levine
   Jul 02, 2025

   https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/matt-taibbi-gobbled-by-the-vampire

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   1. flora July 7, 2025 at 9:46 am

      Now that’s just funny as heck. Probably not the reaction Mr. Levine was going for.

      Here’s the public excerpt from Taibbi’s 4th of July article.
      In Spite of Everything, Celebrate this Fourth of July
      https://www.racket.news/p/america-is-more-than-a-political

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   2. Carolinian July 7, 2025 at 10:09 am

      I’m not that keen on Levine either and he throws around “corrupt” like a frisbee we are all supposedly eager to catch. Moralizing is a dubious self boost.

      But Taibbi/Kirn–and they do now seem to be joined at the hip–have put themselves in a box by trying to defend Trump as some natural alternative to the “corrupt” Dems. They should both stick to reporting rather than opinion spinning. Taibbi can still be a good reporter even if he makes “millions.” These days the left/right divide is very fuzzy indeed.

      Reply ↓
10. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 9:25 am

    “Exclusive: DOJ, FBI conclude Epstein had no “client list,” died by suicide’ ”

    This will be a slap in the face for his supporters and I bet most of them do not believe any pronouncement coming from the FBI or the DOJ. Not after the past coupla years seeing them in action. The conclusion is obvious – Trump made a deal. Probably for protecting and hiding all the identities of all those wealthy people, he will be able to use that as leverage of them and he will have all the cards that he needs. Trump wouldn’t even cough up the 60 year old JFK files but just fobbed off his supporters. And ‘died by suicide’? Anybody remember the joke going around at the time? Why are drapes like Epstein? They both don’t hang themselves.

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    1. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 10:03 am

       Epstein’s client list = Keysex*er Söze?

       * the x is silent

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11. hunkerdown July 7, 2025 at 9:30 am

    Two weeks off work is now “micro-retirements” and “threatening to one’s career”?

    Value is a mental illness.

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12. Wukchumni July 7, 2025 at 9:33 am

    Los Angeles to halt ‘disaster tourism’ buses through Palisades fire zone Los Angeles Times
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Tour bus operator:

    ‘On your left a celebrity you’ve kind of vaguely heard of is having a yard sale, $1.8 million for a 4,650 sq foot lot , it’s a ‘tear-up’.’

    ‘The hope is by the 2028 LA Olympics when they run the torch relay through here, that nothing can catch fire in the vicinity.’

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13. The Rev Kev July 7, 2025 at 9:58 am

    “Ukraine mess: finding a way forward”

    Stephen Bryan has been a supporter of the Ukraine but he can see the writing on the walls. Nonetheless he is still desperate for some kind of Ukrainian win. So he suggests going back to the Istanbul agreement of three years ago but far too much has changed on the ground for the Russians to go back to that agreement. For a start it would require them abandoning what is now Russian territory back to the Ukrainians. Not legally possible. The Russians want a deal that addresses root causes so that this war does not start up again in a few years. Putin has said it. Lavrov has said it. Peskov has said it but western leaders keep on pretending to be shocked by Russia’s terms although they have repeated them ad nauseam. ‘But Russia does not have either the resources or the money to do much on its own’ to rebuild Donetsk, Zaphorize, Kherson and Crimea? How about borrowing from China and using battalions of North Korean workers for reconstruction. There are already plans for the later. And a coalition government isn’t going to cut it as the Nazis will still be there threatening anybody that tries to make peace with Russia, even though they all have tickets booked out of the country in case of collapse.

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14. ZenBean July 7, 2025 at 10:06 am

    Poland to introduce border controls with Germany and Lithuania amid migration concerns

    Somewhere in Poland, there must a wormhole. Otherwise it would not be possible for migrants to materialize in Poland without having first crossed the Belorussian/ Ukrainian border (in which case Poland would have to grant asylum not Germany). Warsaw loves to both have its cake (EU-laundered German transfer payments) and eat it too (refusal to live up to any EU legislation it doesn’t like). I can’t really blame them though. If there’s one state you can bully like that without any consequences, it’s Germany.

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15. Mass Driver July 7, 2025 at 10:15 am

    Japan To Export Used Destroyers To Philippines To Deter China Reuters

    Also known as “giving them enough rope to hang themselves”. Also, they are not destroyers, but “destroyer escorts” (they are actually 2,000 ton frigates).

    The Philippine Navy does not have destroyers, only frigates and corvettes, which are typically smaller and lighter armed.

    So, no change there. :)

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