Pedestrians now walk faster and linger less, researchers find MIT News
Where We Vacation Reveals What We’ve Lost The Transit Guy
Is Hitchhiking Dead? Hickman’s Hinterlands
How to run the world Aeon
Why one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded caused so little damage Los Angeles Times
Under the Sea: Submarines in the Great War Big Serge
Climate/Environment
World’s largest carbon sink at risk: 52 new oil blocks auctioned in DR Congo, threatening 124 million hectares Down to Earth
90 Billion Liters of Water Punched Through Greenland’s Ice Sheet – And Nobody Noticed Science Alert
Department of Defense Makes Eleventh Hour Decision to Maintain Critical Hurricane Satellites Eye on the Tropics
Row Away from the Rocks Balanced Weather
Pandemics
‘Sleeping’ cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVID and flu Nature
Great, we can now add a seventh pathway to list of to how SARS-CoV-2 is oncogenic: https://t.co/HgHOW2nTI2
— Lurking_Lethoceris (@LurkLethoceris) July 30, 2025
New York ends paid sick leave for COVID-19 five years after pandemic PIX11
A Eulogy for Vinay Prasad’s FDA Career Pandemic Accountability Index
The Koreas
Trump says U.S. agrees to impose 15 pct tariffs on S. Korea under ‘full, complete’ trade deal Yonhap
China?
Response to U.S. suggestion that it will significantly raise tariffs if China continues to purchase Russian oil:
China will always ensure its energy supply in ways that serve our national interests. Tariff wars have no winners. Coercion and pressuring will not achieve anything.… pic.twitter.com/MsvVMYNfv2— CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 (@MFA_China) July 30, 2025
In the race against China, the US is losing Politico
Top Republican lawmaker to lead congressional delegation to Taiwan FT
China Confirms 4th Plenum for October With Growth Constraints Front of Mind The Asia Cable
Africa
Breakaway Africa Region Seeks US Recognition With Base, Minerals Bloomberg
Old Blighty
Peter Kyle receives £66,000 donation from tech firm, then hands them £5m government contract The Canary (IH)
O Canada
Canada’s Bill C-2 Opens The Floodgates To U.S. Surveillance Tech Dirt
Syraqistan
In Gaza, Hunger Has Overtaken Bombs as Israel’s Cruelest Weapon Drop Site
Not providing consular visitation to a US citizen who is requesting it is an insane move. It the core duty of a consular section. The US diplomatic mission to Israel has made it very clear that there are some American citizens the United States government doesn’t care about. https://t.co/SZDXx1rGfY
— A-100 gecs (@PinstripeBungle) July 30, 2025
***
The Mathematics of Starvation: Why Aid Can’t Fix the Lethal Shortage of Food in Gaza Haaretz
Canada will recognise Palestinian state at UN General Assembly: Carney Al Jazeera
Report suggests arms still flow from Canada to Israel despite denials CBC
What all the suddenly-concerned Western governments could be doing instead of virtue signaling:
Col. Larry Wilkerson:
Put a damn British regiment on the ground. Put it on the ground right there in the Philadelphi Corridor. Put it on the ground in Egypt. Put it somewhere with food and go in there and tell the IDF, “I’ll shoot your goddamn ass if you try to stop me.”
Do… pic.twitter.com/AlWvLIVxYK
— 🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉 (@apocalypseos) July 30, 2025
***
I don’t think I’ve ever read a genocidal editor’s note before. Added purely to appease Israel and the lobby.
“Pre-existing health conditions” don’t lead to children being reduced to skeletons.
Israel’s holocaust is deliberately starving Palestinians to death. https://t.co/BXE3N7a9Qd
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) July 30, 2025
Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation FAIR
The Information Warfare Consortium Shaping GHF’s PR Offensive Drop Site
Evangelical Gaza aid partner endorsed Hitler, referred to Muslims as rapists and Palestine as a ‘shit hole’ All-Source Intelligence
Israel And Christian Nationalism: An Unreliable Alliance 3 Quarks Daily
***
U.S. Launches Largest Sanction Package Targeting Iranian Trade Since 2018 Maritime Executive
European Disunion
US Stablecoin Regulation Increases Pressure on Europe German Institute for International and Security Affairs
German hard coal-fired power generation jumps 23% in H1 – Ageb Montel News
Bright and Dark Sides of Energy Transition in Europe Pluralia
The Heights of Darkness Unevenly Combined Thoughts
New Not-So-Cold War
HAS THE KREMLIN CROSSED THE S-400 THRESHOLD TO FIRE ON ISRAELI, US AIRCRAFT ATTACKING IRAN? John Helmer
Putin’s Guards Reequip with Handheld Anti-Drone Weapons After Multiple Major Security Breaches Military Watch
Ukraine to move military trainings underground, Syrskyi says Kyiv Independent
“A golden toilet is in one of the bathrooms of the apartment of Zelensky’s business partner Timur Mindich, where, according to media reports, NABU wiretapped the president himself. This was reported by MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who showed a photo, as he claims, from this apartment.… pic.twitter.com/LYtCFKlTcW
— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) July 30, 2025
Valeriy Zaluzhny — about the roots of identity, the power of unity, and the most important historical lessons for Ukrainians Vogue Ukraine (machine translation). Commentary:
https://t.co/B3aFTAIilM pic.twitter.com/206XxfLKLp
— Olga Bazova (@OlgaBazova) July 30, 2025
Living With Russia. Aurelien
South of the Border
U.S. Sanctions Brazilian Judge Who Set Precautionary Measures to Bolsonaro Telesur
“Liberation Day”
Ford slips as tariffs take an $800 million bite out of its earnings Sherwood
Trump ends de minimis exemption for global low-cost goods CNBC
Is Trump’s Tariff Tirade a Pyrrhic Victory? Larry Johnson
Trump 2.0
Bessent Admits Trump Tax Scam Offers ‘Backdoor for Privatizing Social Security’ Common Dreams
The Trump administration has just sent $10m worth of birth control to be burned – rather than donate it as aid The Independent
MAHA
A Las Vegas Festival Promised Ways to Cheat Death. Two Attendees Left Fighting for Their Lives. ProPublica
GOP Funhouse
Burchett kicked by horse, breaks rib The Hill
Democrats en déshabillé
Lmao this meltdown was over….New Jersey not getting extra funding for police lolol https://t.co/vWYdqm0WL4
— john teufel (@JohnTeufelNYC) July 29, 2025
Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman tells @JTLonsdale that he “sends everyone a copy of Abundance”, the @ezraklein / @DKThomp book, and is going to back Abundance-aligned Democratic candidates.https://t.co/GGSLEOBmwR
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) July 29, 2025
Mamdani
Lina Khan: A Secret to Zohran Mamdani’s Success New York Times
Kamala
RussiaGate
Patel found thousands of sensitive Trump–Russia probe docs inside ‘burn bags’ in secret room at FBI Fox News
AI
On AGI, mass automation, and what the Luddites really fought against Blood in the Machine
Accelerationists
Behemoth or Leviathan? Unpopular Front
The Acolyte Can We Still Govern?
Palantir’s valuation: Just how insane is it? Sherwood
Why tech billionaires want a ‘corporate dictatorship’ The Verge
Imperial Collapse Watch
Western Foreign Policy is Anti-Democratic Un-Diplomatic
Surveillance Pricing
Pluralistic: Delta’s AI-based price-gouging Cory Doctorow
Our Famously Free Press
TikTok has hired Erica Mindel, a former IOF soldier, to run “hate speech” enforcement. That means silencing Palestinians.
Her job was built by the ADL, pays up to $330K, and she openly flaunted her Zionist identity in an AJC video. pic.twitter.com/1w9WZEUKXj
— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) July 29, 2025
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Spotify Is Forcing Users to Undergo Face Scanning to Access Explicit Content 404 Media
Google is using AI age checks to lock down user accounts The Verge
Zeitgeist Watch
What humanity chose to launch as artifacts of the Space Age Interesting Engineering
Class Warfare
Chris Smalls’ Union Prez, Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien Silent on Beating by IDF – Goes on Vivek Ramaswany’s Right Wing Show Instead Payday Report
“If God Were Like Chekhov, I Would Be Consoled.” On the Privileges of Misery Lit Hub
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
180 comments
Comments are closed.
‘Asa Winstanley
@AsaWinstanley
Jul 30
I don’t think I’ve ever read a genocidal editor’s note before. Added purely to appease Israel and the lobby.
“Pre-existing health conditions” don’t lead to children being reduced to skeletons.
Israel’s holocaust is deliberately starving Palestinians to death.’
One person’s reply really nailed it-
‘j o’reilly-fynne
@JFynne77756
2h
Replying to @AsaWinstanley
“The gassed victims were already bronchial”‘
Boy the way Glenn Frey played
Songs that made the hit parade
Guys like us we had it made
Those were the days
And you know where you were then
There were no financial foibles aside from Pet Rocks, man
Mister we could use a Fed Chief
Like Paul Volcker again
Didn’t need no upside down interest rates
Every country pulled their weight
Gee our old Pacer ran great
Those were the days
Kamala will not run as even in a controlled environment she’s in danger of losing losing value in the recycle market
Maybe she is saving herself for the Presidential run in 2028, unburdened by what she was.
When she got beaten to a pulp at the polls, I half expected her to announce ‘I’m going to Disneyland!’
She’s merely emulating Alf Landon, who never sought public office again after getting creamed by FDR.
Coffee alert!
She also has a new book coming out. Harris releasing book on presidential run: ‘107 Days’
Also, just read on Twitter, she is one of the front runners for 2028, along with Mayo Pete, Newsome, AOC and a couple of others I can’t remember.
I’ll bet those books will fly off the shelf. /s
…would that be a coloring book?
If it was, it would have to be one of those numbered colouring books so she could know which colour to use.
Introducing Summer’s new idiot must-have: Kolor with Kamala
1488 pages of salad, benzos, wine- boxes, and genocide. Features an all lime Brat page, as well as a trick all-blank “ideas to improve the material conditions of the citizenry” page.
Warning: color description may change depending on audience.
See also the first publication in our 18+ range: “JD’s Sofa (and other zingers that failed)”.
I doubt it. It didn’t work for Warren.
no, a cookbook/how to for budding entertainers
What wine is the best pair with word salad? Chardonnay or pinot grigio?
NYT review states “A comprehensive breakdown that will have you filling your glass all day long!, and don’t worry, it will make a lot more sense at the end of he day, than it did at the beginning…”
Is there room in the warehouse where HRC stories copies of her own books purchased by the Foundation?
What kind of bot army is needed to inflate sales for audio and ebooks?
Her book “Hillary Clinton – What happened?” should be the shortest read in history. The answer is right on the cover.
My grandmother used to say there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch them happen; those who say “what happened?”
As a resident of California, I welcome the news that Ms. Harris will not run. Not that others will pursue better policies but at least we will be spared seeing her in campaign ads.
Her withdrawal is a body blow to whoever the rep contender turns out to be.
And now I’m gonna have to look at the dem field.
“Controlled environment”…never make that assumption about Cali.
“Canada will recognise Palestinian state at UN General Assembly: Carney”
When Trump heard about this, he threatened Canada and ended it with an insult-
“Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/31/trump-threatens-trade-deal-after-canada-moves-towards-recognising-palestine
Trump is more and more resembling grandpa Biden in raging against countries and people. He just went on a rant against India and said that not only was he going to slam them with 25% tariffs but that he was also going to hit them with penalties for trading with Russia and buying Russian weapons instead of US weapons. Then he said-
‘I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world.’
https://www.rt.com/india/622305-russia-and-india-trump/
In other words,India is not making themselves dependent on US energy, US weapons and US foods and are not opening up their country to Wall Street. And he will probably continue to punish India until they get in line with their “offerings” to him. You wonder if India will start to gravitate more to China rather than let themselves be set up as a missile-sponge on behalf of the US.
That sort of rage usually comes from feelings of impotence.
Trump is a schmeckel.
I had the sense during Trump’s campaign that he didn’t realize how much power the USA had lost even with respect to 2016.
For example he kept stating that the Ukraine war would have never happened if he had been President. That might be true but it doesn’t matter, because it has happened and the underlying situation is one where Russia is winning.
I was thinking earlier today that Trump has basically become Biden on the Ukraine. The weapons, the intelligence, the money, etc. continues to flow to the Ukraine. And just like Biden, he seems to be refusing to talk to the Russians while making continual threats. How is this any different to when Biden was Prez? Thing is, the money is running out and sooner or later he is going to have to go to Congress and ask for another $60 billion for the Ukraine – although that county is demanding over $120 billion. His MAGA base is going to love that though for Trump it will be more a case of MUGA for his mugs.
Worse yet, just like under Biden, we don’t know who the real president is. Is Lindsay Graham new Jake Sullivan, or was it Tony Blinken or Jill Biden? I suppose the old Confederate lady resembles Jill the most….
Is it just me, or has Trump’s cast of villains surpassed Biden’s?
Tony “ceasefire any day now” Blinken was despicable, but I think Bessent has him beaten.
Rubio doesn’t seem to move the villain needle, but then there is “Leavitt to Beaver”, as Wukchumi calls here, Tatooed love boy (Hegseth) and they just took Newt Gingrinch out of a 90’s deep freeze … can we at least get the Internet pre-enshittification era, airports with no TSA and Michael Jordan back if we’ve got to endure Newt again?
Blinken posse were villains from a Netflix neo noir movie (low testosterone, high malice), while Trumpies are from 80s action movie remake (all pumped up, and dumb as f**k).
I’d also consider the hit series “Despicable Me” – the Trumpies have an opportunity to do more evil … as in when Dr. Nefario leaves to work for a rival.
It’s a great opportunity for me … full dental
It was hard to villainize Blinken as he had perhaps a redeeming feature if one searched hard and long, while the current crop are more akin to being in a Marvel movie with their superpower being that no matter what lies they are putting forth, nothing will ping their conscience in the bargain.
One can find a redeeming feature in Blinken (and Nuland & co.), only after successfully completing the search for the Holy Grail. Both him and the Marvels would sing and dance, and play the guitar, on your (mass) grave. The difference is that the second bunch would be sharp dressed, and also pose for the camera better.
I saw recently someone refer to him as President Duck.
That seems to be more and more apt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoLdlmr-v2w
One thing about people like TACO – they lack the capacity for self-examination.
Trump’s errors are compounding. Bad choices lead to bad outcomes, which lead to more bad choices.
As NFL Coach Bill Parcells famously said, after a losing season, “You are what your record is.
And Trump is now a loser.
The man is off his rocker and an internationally known cheat (thanks to the golf video). Best to avoid if possible.
India can’t muster up the diplomacy to shore up relations in her own yard. I’m having my doubts about closer relations with China happening there.
Grown man cheating whacking off repeatedly, while attempting to squeeze a little ball into a hole, is about par for the coarse.
Coffee Waning, Please!!
BTW, your coffee must have been very good today!!! Thank you!
He’s also been sucked into tit for tatting with Medvedev lately.
I guess Trump won’t be getting one of the new “Assembled in India” iPhones.
But if he drops it on the bathroom floor again, maybe he can tape the cracked screen with a “Made in USA” ArmorSuit MilitaryShield thingy. ;)
Everything said in this thread is true but unfortunately people’s like or dislike for Trump and his cheating, crazy ways makes no difference to all of the people profiting off of war and eased regulation. As long as these things keep happening, Trump is not going anywhere except along his current path. Certainly, the dislike doesn’t matter to him. I truly can’t imagine what needs to happen to get us off the current track that the world is on – a huge simultaneous world wide rebellion, of the sort that seems impossible to organize. Cops and security turning on the elites and armed forces refusing to fight would be a good place to start and perhaps encourage working stiffs and those of us living in comfort (I count myself here) to rise up too.
A general strike would be a good way to start. They can’t arrest every worker in the country.
We’ll never get rid of the military brass that way in a general strike, but it would be nice to see them do something useful.
“They” won’t even try and arrest every worker. “They” will round up the main ‘leaders’ of the strike and shoot them in public. We have entered the phase of the Decline of Empire where the ruling elites try raw force to reverse the tide of History.
I thought once before that the reason that there is no modern day Martin Luther King is because Joe Biden’s 1995 Crime Bill was used to lock up such people before they could get a following. You don’t need all those assassinations of people like Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X and all the rest that we saw in the 60s. You identify them, bust them on some charge and send them away for years if not decades where they are no – future – threat to the establishment.
Seems to me that in the case of Chris Smalls noted in the links, the u.s. is using its cats paw, Israel, to do the dirty work of rounding up a labor leader and, potentially, having him taken out…by accident, of course, or perhaps by Epstein-like “suicide.” Or maybe I didn’t have enough or had too much coffee this morning.
He was released and is in Jordan.
God bless him.
Thank you, Jessica!. I didn’t see this yet.
This is excellent news. Thanks.
Agreed, but I would like to also point out that raw force might appear to work, until it doesn’t. I’m sure there are other examples, but the easy ones that come to mind are the French & Russian Revolutions. You probably could also toss in the Irish War of Independence.
There are limits to what force can do, especially when the current elite are not necessarily doing anything to protect their officer class (that 15-20% right below the top 1%) from their exploitations. Their greed will come back to bite them, eventually.
Rev Kev. You’re talking about Americans.
As my sainted mother used to say, using an expression common in Chicago, about this jamoke or that jamoke:
She [insert jamoke’s name] could screw up a two-car funeral.
And then there’s that problem with narcissism, which isn’t confined to Trump and Bill Clinton.
Also, too, a general strike would disrupt brunch. Protests must never bother the top 8 percent.
It would disrupt brunch if all the restaurant staff and grocery store workers were part of the strike. What I am imaging is highly unlikely for so many reasons but TPTB are a minority, I can’t help but feel the same as Adam1 – they’re doomed somehow someway sooner or later. Fingers crossed it is sooner.
He knows not what is true as usual. One word, “pharmaceuticals”. We import a lot.
Have a look at the time the worst of these rants come out. The nurses in the memory care homes call it sundowning.
Housing Bubble numero dos is looking awfully tippy toppy with oodles of inventory on the market everywhere, and yet no mechanism such as liars loans to plunge it into the abyss.
On the surface it all seems like prudent lending actions since housing bubble numero uno fizzled, but lets take the way back machine to the early 90’s in LA, where it was one of a handful of regional housing bubble busts that played out, and it wasn’t as if Boise was noisy in that regard-nobody really cared in regards to second tier Big Smokes. In contrast, every city of size in these not so united states is pretty frothy currently.
A friend was a newly minted realtor learning the ropes during the LA 90’s downturn and he lasted about a year, and hardly anything was selling, a husband-wife team who had been #2 and @5 in terms of sales, were now doing the maid work around the office-as having somebody else clean cost money.
Interest rates were around 8-9%, much higher than currently, and nobody knew about interest rates in the low single digits-as they hadn’t happened yet.
There was also no AirBnB in the oughts, only traditional landlords who were vastly fewer in number.
So what pushes it down, this go round?
LA’s early 90s downturn was regional. It was caused by the collapse of aerospace production because of the end of the Cold War.
I have often wondered what happens if the financial powers that be are willing to endlessly put more air into the bubble. If they have the once-vast resources of the American hegemony to burn through, they can (and right now are) go on for quite a while. So in this case, the problem arises not in the cooked books of the financial system, but in the real world. Because of massive, prolonged misallocation of capital. Investment all flows into Ponzi schemes and necessary real world investment is neglected. So plant and infrastructure decay and supply chain inflation ensues and quality of life declines in ways that can not be monetized (and are generally not measured).
Yes it is not just housing. Bubbles everywhere means too much loose money and Trump wants to goose the business cycle even harder. Real world investment is so yesterday.
Very good link here on the crypto bubble from Ritholtz:
https://annpettifor.substack.com/p/capitalism-devours-crypto
Crypto scam now underwritten by the tax payer! What happens when crypto linked treasuries take out social security?
“Living With Russia.”
This is a really excellent post. It lays out a lot of ground truths and if we had a real, functioning media they would be quoting whole chunks of it. The thing is that win lose or draw, Russia is still going to be there in all its vastness and won’t be going away. Aurilien did say this-
‘When that last hope disappears, the most likely result is not a grim collective determination to survive, but rather a feeding frenzy in which nation will turn on nation, politician upon politician and pundit upon pundit, all seeking to exculpate themselves and find someone to blame.’
Oh, I think that we know who will be blamed – China! And the process has started already, especially in the EU. The legend will be that the Collective West had Russia on the ropes bleeding & battered and ready to sign Minsk 3 when dagnabit, the Chinese open up a spigot of all the supplies and equipment that the Russians needed to carry on. So what is to be done between Russia and the West? I would suggest Bismarck’s idea on that – ‘Make a good treaty with Russia.’ It’s that simple.
Problems were identified that are real.
But it was all a bit too much Nostradamus for me.
Best that Aurelian has written IMO. I do think he may be unduly optimistic in thinking Russia will want anything to do with the rest of Europe post Ukraine.
My only criticism is that he attempts to anticipate the future without considering the cause of the conflict, a fundamental flaw but perhaps necessary given his intended audience.
Other strong points are his recognition of Russia as a continental power, with all that entails, versus the US as a naval power, and the deindustrialization of the West.
Oddly enough, Russia has a bigger “operational” navy than USA does. Of course US Navy is still often ranked as the “most powerful” navy of the world, because US ships are bigger and better.
There are some occasional murmurs about the Russian vessels having much, much more CIWS per length of hull and apparently top-notch air-defense systems. And that’s not yet including Martyanov’s opinion…
Yes, but Ukraine exposed any pretensions to continental power projection and the air force is untested in highly contested air space.
Martyanov had said that the US still had the best submarine fleet, for now. He views the US surface fleet as targets for the new Russian ships that carry intermediate range hypersonic missiles. I think he would say that delivery systems now trump platform, basically.
Not sure what is meant by “operational”, but in the context of the SMO it doesn’t appear that Russian naval assets in the Baltic or Black Seas can influence the battle operationally in any significant way. Of course, the idea the the US Navy could operate successfully in those waters (at least on the surface side and assuming no subs in the Black Sea) is pretty doubtful as well.
Not that much use for naval assets along the 1200 or so kilometer front line. Although I think some of the missiles targeting Ukraine have come from ships in the Black Sea. More broadly, I think the development of Eurasian pipelines and transit routes is aimed at minimizing the potential for US interdiction.
Where naval power could become more relevant would be if the US attempted a sea lift of military assets to join the fight. The Atlantic might prove to be highly contested.
A fine essay. And there’s this:
‘But the reality is that “join the Bundeswehr, get trained and spend the rest of your engagement sitting in a field in Poland, getting drunk in the evening and fighting gangs of Polish skinheads,” is not going to play well as a recruiting slogan.’
As it turns out, Aurelien has a sense of humor, and it’s on the dry side. Monty Python meets Vladimir Putin.
If the spin fairies can’t save it, NATO is done. It also doesn’t help that the golden haired troll seems to go out of his way in knocking NATO allies… annex Canada, annex Greenland, no trade deal with Canada, punish Canada for recognizing Palestinian state, demand NATO counties spend more on armies AND buy from the US even though our tariffs might cause them a recession… we’re only 6 months in, what else is he going to do to strain/destroy NATO relations over the next 3.5 years?!?!?
My personal suspicion is that whether Trump realizes it or not, he’d very much being used in his 2nd term. Yes, he’s brought in all sorts of crazies to his administration but things like the war in Ukraine really point to a departure of independence relative to his first term. He’s made lots of moves and comments (particularly in his first couple months) that would hint that he wants out on Ukraine, but he never seems to take that next step. Why?
Many people commenting here have drawn comparisons to Biden. I don’t think any of us know the details to Biden’s actual medical mental health diagnosis; however both men are or were responsible for one of the most powerful countries in the world while being very OLD! It’s probably fine for an 80 year old person to be a significant or even a senior advisor to a US president, but should he be president of the USA (or any major country)?
Using ones mental faculties requires energy regardless of the presence of dementia or not. So here we have an 80 year old man who wants to remake the world (while lining his pockets) doing a job people 20-40 years his junior have struggled to do well. He can’t possibly be making sound decision all of the time, it would seem physiologically impossible.
I think NATO can coast by on sheer inertia for quite some time so long as no one bothers to kick it over. If we don’t actually attack the Baltic States or Finland, then NATO can exist for as long as member country politicians find it to be too much trouble politically to tear it down. It would be ever more irrelevant, of course, but it’s already not as relevant as many take it to be, given how little NATO members are actually obliged to do in each other’s defence.
The only real utility NATO has for my baltic state is in letting the rulership deflect any questions or criticism by playing the “strong, independent resistance” card. If it wasn’t for the fact that NATO empowers them to pretend we are even so much as a speedbump, push comes to it, they’d get laughed out of their offices and right down the road if they tried talking the way they do.
That said, when the geopolitical turn passes through here, and the hot air deflates, we people will readily remember who our neighbors (to the east and the west) are. Russian tourists are as bad as American tourists (прощу прощение, браток, but you know it’s true). But as colleagues-next-door, you’re pretty alright.
No offense taken. I’m well aware of how disagreeable Russian tourists often are, though I thought the worst behaviour was in various points along the Mediterranean and now in South-East Asia, mass destinations whose tourist-oriented economies bring out the worst in middle-class travellers. As for the rest, I certainly hope that’s how it goes.
Trump is executing a plan. He did not author it. He is just there to bully it through. No need to give him credit for actual malice of forethought.
He’s become a transparent front man for a coterie of oligarchs who are shaping things for themselves behind the floorshow.
That they’re not particularly bright and somehow all managed to befriend Epstein doesn’t bode well for them.
The best that can be said is they all need the dollar economy to keep turning over, but they can’t think more than three months out.
Is Hitchhiking Dead? Hickman’s Hinterlands
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My mom thought that hitchhiking went away in the USA with the Manson murders looming large as a catalyst in that regard, so I never really got much of a chance to stop a 4,000 pound vehicle by merely using my thumb, although when I lived in Lake Tahoe in the 80’s, it was still very much a thing and i’d do long 1-way hikes and then get a lift back.
Hitchhiking is still very common in New Zealand, and when I’d go there, i’d hitchhike mainly because I could-with slim chance of running into any scary characters-such as those in Hickman’s tale.
Hitchhiking took a downturn in the late fifties with the Charles Starkweather murders. After killing her parents, he and a fourteen year old girlfriend made their way down the midwest, murdering those who picked them up. Headlines every day, people afraid of anyone on the side of the road.
I misread Pedestrians as Palestinians, and thought WTF. I need to turn off the computer and go outside more often.
Re; NYT correction where the child had a precondition.ffs – Does not this make Israeli behaviour much worse?
Plenty of bots and MAGA diehards willing to add that greedy parents are keeping food from their kids.
Well this is the kind of information published by The Times (London) a zionist hotbed
“The situation for many thousands of civilians in Gaza is clearly dire and the Israeli relief effort, such as it is, at best chaotic and inadequate. Online, time-stamped videos of recently opened cafés in Gaza City serving crepes with chocolate sauce and cream jumble alongside desperate crowds of civilians facing tear gas and shrapnel as they mob aid distribution centres, showing seemingly contradictory realities.”
I confess I have never seen any such footage of crepes smothered in chocolate and cream from Gaza, but there we are. I guess if you want to believe in likely faked images supporting the zionist horror show, you will.
I’m sure they exist, to serve IDF officers. There was luxury food beibg served at Auschwitz, too–for the Nazi commandant and his family.
O say can you see
By the Gaza dawn’s early light
What so proudly was hailed
As the Zionists last gleaning?
Whose broad stripes and blue star
Through the perilous fight
O’er the embargo we watched
They weren’t so gallantly, streaming
And the rockets’ red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That dead bodies lie still there
O say, does that six pointed star banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
“SARS-CoV-2 is oncogenic:”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/rfk-jr-to-oust-advisory-panel-on-cancer-screenings-hiv-prevention-drugs/ar-AA1JjcNt
RFK Jr. to Oust Advisory Panel on Cancer Screenings, HIV Prevention Drugs
Gee, it sure would have been nice if we had data from the control group of Operation Warp Speed … oh wait, they nuked it.
Yolka have been seen in the hands of security personnel earlier. There are a few videos of it being used on the frontline. Simplicius also wrote about it.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-52125-trump-distances-us-from
What Col Larry says about Gaza is something that just isn’t talked about.
Biden/Harris and now Trump ( and Congress and the media) are 100% complicit in the crime of Gaza.
But to his point, if Biden had been serious about helping Gaza, yes you bring in the marine corps with tanks and helicopters and you guard the aid getting in from the southern border with Egypt. You park an aircraft carrier in the Med to support it and the list goes on. And while there would lots of other ways to make Israel to allow the trucks in, force is one of them.
A staggeringly disgusting immoral and illegal event that I am powerless to stop.
You don’t have to send in the Marines or the carriers and put them at risk of a false-flag attack. All you have to do is stop all the military supplies going to Israel and within a fortnight they will fold, not that that will ever happen.
Is the colonel, with his country-fried wit, suggesting an infantry regiment from The Rifles, guys who lost the city of Basra to an untrained militia less than 1/6 its size in Sept 2007, fly into Ben Gurion to attack Israelis? Or does the SAS want to fight through Gazans on the beach first? As if the UK hasn’t bollix’d that part of the world enough. If I need to learn how to lose to a terror group in my own country, I’ll take the Trouble to ask, thanks. No wonder that guy was never given command over anything larger than Colin Powell’s mailbox.
What Hamas really does not care for is their food packaging’s serial numbers going though Israeli spreadsheets first. You track people through their garbage. And barium meals. Can’t burn either in the tunnels. Hamas also craves contraband. They never thought Israel was willing to fight a total war with a proper blockade of a Hamas-designed malformed economy and just bulldozing their sanctuary.
The world was trying to fade Israel when it drop-kicked the much stronger of the two princelings, Hezbollah, into the fires. Settling scores for the US Marines and State Dept buys goodwill. Hamas missed the boat. Then the Iranian deep state vanished into the void, so forget it now.
The U.S military has a patchy record the past couple of decades but I would take them over the IDF, after all the latter are constantly begging the former for help and seem to only excel at murdering and now starving children.
Yes, Scott Ritter has gone on at some length about how pathetically weak the IDF is. And it can’t run on brand fumes any more.
IDF operates in a manner a first world army should against insurgent. Find target bring down 155 mm arty with appropriate cluster or explosive or call in 2000 pound guided bomb.
If U.S. turned off the spigot…….
Great handle. Too bad I’ve established myself here, “Barack Bush” would be another great one.
Bark at Bush
A possible Ozzie tribute?
I was thinking more of Snoop Dogg (bonus sexual innuendo included). :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_Album_Cover.jpg
love when the hasbara makes an effort to be entertaining but in all seriousness this is not the correct audience for your fictions
The Brits were there before, several times (on different (more than two) sides). None of those ended well for them.
Oh poor man. This is a limited scope objective.
Send in the Second Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles and the IDF won’t know what hit them. Plus, as an added bonus, Hamas would probably watch those Gurkhas like a hawk and learn new tactics.
MicaT
> … you bring in the marine corps with tanks and helicopters …
If you mean the US marines, well, sorry, but they don’t have any tanks.
You are correct sir, no tanks in the US Marine Corps.
My take from Col Wilkerson is that the only way to save gaza is to actually invade it because whether Biden/harris or trump they chose Israel vs Gaza.
Even if Trump were to say to BiBI it ends now and as many have said correctly all the things the US can do to stop Israel, at this point I’m not sure Israel wouldn’t keep going to complete the destruction of the physical place and all the inhabitants of it, every last person.
This does not count as Volkssturm, because they were 16-60. This is beyond Volkssturm, which sounds a bit like Beyond Meat.
it’s vegan Volksstum
Opasturm…. or however you say “get off my lawn” auf Deutsch.
“Achtung! Minen!”
>Bessent Admits Trump Tax Scam Offers ‘Backdoor for Privatizing Social Security’
We are in a pre-revolutionary moment.
Take away Social Security and you’ll get Social Insecurity, with the over 62 year old set out in the streets protesting. (before bedtime of 8 PM, please)
Taking away Social Security from people in their 60s means that they have literally nothing to lose and the urgency to act immediately. It will be Gray Dawn-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEZW_mepTlQ 922 secs)
How so? What makes you think the people who rely on SS are capable of mounting any revolution? People younger than 60 have been conditioned for years that no SS is going to be available because the fund will be “bankrupt”. If you told them that their current holdings would be released and that their future earnings wouldn’t be reduced by the traditional SS contribution, they’d probably be thrilled. It wouldn’t help them to save for retirement and it would inflate the stock market to ridiculous levels, but our temporarily embarrassed millionaires wouldn’t care.
IMO, we’ve had so many things occur which were “revolution worthy” pass by with barely a blip from the populace that I’m not sure what it would take to set something off. The only real revoltutionary acts seem to come from the professionals. The rest of us are too tired, addled, and broke to care.
I think the time will come when any pretense of democratic representation will be dropped but I don’t think we’re there yet. Over 65 group votes and have free time, and the AARP does an effective job organizing them to fight these sorts of policies.
The biggest risk IMO is anything that is strongly bipartisan. I’d think the best chance would be a bipartisan change that only affects people below a certain age, say 50.
aux AARP barricades!
Hence the idea of the “Vanguard.”
Lenin, Trotsky, indeed any half competent revolutionary would state that a cadre of movement managers was needed to ‘guide’ the movement. Most revolutions that I have read about come about when some core interest group seizes an opportunity to lead popular discontent in some specific direction.
So, let us look more for a bloody minded group of “True Believers” to lead the popular mood into the paths of righteousness. Do note that this “Leadership Cadre” can be of any ideology, Left or Right.
At present, America’s Right wing “crazies” are better organized and led than the Left. Thus, we get Trump.
Heaven help us. Stay safe.
re: China – Politico
That´s how a former NATO guy copes:
-“Let’s take partnerships: The biggest advantage for the U.S. is that it has allies, while China has clients. Collectively, the U.S. and its allies can outcompete, outspend, out-innovate, out-trade, out-finance and out-attract others to its side”
-“In the competition between China and the U.S., China is winning.
That isn’t a conclusion many would have drawn six months ago, but now it’s inescapable.”
😂
Yesterday John Helmer was being interviewed by Nima of Dialogue Works, and almost as an aside said the following with regard to Russia’s reaction to Trump and the EU’s recent behavior on his trip to Scotland:
It’s funny how the MSM is now finally catching on to the end of the unipolar world, and the rise of China. China must certainly be given it’s due for it’s incredible achievements, but the fact that American elites have spent forty years wrecking America is not yet something that can be discussed truthfully in the MSM. And the fact that Trump is leaning in to do even more of the same auguring in to America in the Big Beautiful Bustout rather than, you know, actually make America great again is as John Helmer mentions, a real relief to Russia.
Here’s the link to that part of the interview, but the whole interview is worth a listen:
John Helmer: Iran Beefing Up Defense System (S-400) , Zelensky Faces Total Meltdown
https://www.youtube.com/live/GSxmkCNxk0Q?si=p02Jw0tukWVo4QTN&t=1933
I think there are a lot of different ideas about what “multipolar” will be like or should be like.
Stay tuned..
thanks!
I had the same initial reaction, But I think if you filter for boilerplate US neoliberalism, he is making the point that US policy is a loser.
“How to Run the World”
Our climate disaster is itself the clearest argument for global socialism, and the impediments to adequately addressing it show as clearly why, within an inter-national framework, this will not happen. The historical part of essay is much appreciated, but I have to take issue with some of the thinking in the latter half. In the first place, the risks to our species from nuclear war and genocide are too quickly dealt with; not only does this feel immoral in the current global context, but this lack of emphasis allows for a state-based, multilateral model for addressing climate change, with modest attempts at democratization in the form of the Global Assembly. In the second place, entrenched interests are dealt with almost as if they are nautral forces, and the point is never made that the diplomatic corps arises from the same class of people destroying our environment. In the end, it settles for a moral appeal to current rulers, to which I say good luck.
WSJ recently reported Reid Hoffman visited Epstein Island and had other travel plans with Epstein. Hoffman say he was misled by MIT or something and it was all very innocent.
Like I’ve said: He blinded them with science.
Should Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld laid side?
For auld laid side, my dear
For auld laid side
We’ll drink of discovery yet
For the take down of auld laid side
And surely they will plead ignorance
And surely it’ll buy time
They’ll make a mea culpa yet
For the take down of auld laid side
When two have partied on the island
From morning sun till night
The age between them tends to swell
Back in the days of auld laid side
For old Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
For the sake of auld laid side?
For old Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old Epstein Island acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld laid side?
And surely they will plead ignorance
And surely it’ll buy time
They’ll make a mea culpa yet
For the take down of auld laid side
Auld Lang Syne, performed by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adwni-Jt8qQ&list=RDadwni-Jt8qQ
Hey, politician, let me give you some advice
The Chinese are about to pulverize us
In our sleep tonight
That is, if the crazy Russians
Or the brown people don’t get us first
And our fire will rain down from the sky
Our fire will rain down from the sky
Gazans will die, Chinese will die
Russians will die, People will die
But go ahead sleep tight in your beds
Remember what the wise man said:
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
And the temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top
The temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top (top)
Hey, little girl, won’t you come this way
Won’t you let me buy you candy
Just follow Ms. Ghislaine
Or perhaps some nice cocaine, or perhaps a little kiss
Or perhaps a ride in my Express, perhaps a ride in my Express
Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid
Won’t you make some old men happy?
Won’t you make the cameras happy?
Won’t you let me show you Little St. James Isle?
It will only take a little while
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
And the temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top
The temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top (top)
If they don’t turn you into a fentanyl zombie on the street
If they don’t turn you into a Tuber or a grinning Zionist freak
If they don’t take away your brains or turn your body inside out
If they don’t take away your passion with the f%@king internet
They’ll take away your heart and soul
They’ll take away your heart and soul
They’ll take away your heart and soul
Don’t let them take away your heart and soul
But remember what the wise man said:
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing to fear but fear itself
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
There’s nothing to fear (but fear itself)
And the temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top
The temperature’s starting to top now
The temperature’s starting to top (top)
Nothing To Fear (But Fear Itself)
Oingo Boingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PMjsY1MACU
…a worthy effort!
“U.S. Sanctions Brazilian Judge Who Set Precautionary Measures to Bolsonaro”
‘Bessent also warned that the U.S. “will continue to hold accountable those who threaten American interests and the freedoms of our citizens.” ‘
Wait, what? Bolsonaro is an American interest? Really? And ‘the freedoms of our citizens’? Is Bolsonaro an American citizen now? Did Trump send him a passport or something? I must have missed the memo. So sanctions now are no longer an instrument of national policy but a way to get your buddy a “get out of jail for free” card. Noted.
RE: US Stablecoin Regulation Increases Pressure on Europe
The key point, stated without context –
“The requirement to back stablecoins 1:1 creates strong incentives to purchase short-term US Treasuries….”
And for some added context, I thought this Breaking Points interview with a former crypto humper turned critic was excellent. Definitely worth listening to the whole thing, but they part that turned the little light bulb on in my head Ryan’s discussion of how this was basically a way to do some shadow QE at a time when demand for US Treasuries around the world might not be at its most robust. I get the grift aspect for Trump and the cryptobros, and I get the willingness of Congress to go along if it means bigger donations (Sam Banking Fraud did make it rain in the halls of DC before heading to the big house) but I couldn’t wrap my head around why the traditional financial authorities didn’t put up more of a stink about it. Now it makes more sense. The more crypto valuations increase, the more stablecoins can be created. Stablecoins are (allegedly) backed 1:1 by US dollars, and they get those dollars by purchasing Treasuries. The more stable coins out there, the more the demand for Treasuries increases. So basically increasing crypto valuations allows the government to flood the zone with money, and I believe it allows them to affect bind yields without having to officially change interest rates. Do listen to the video since it gives a much more detailed (and probably more coherent) explanation than mine.
This is what passes for economic policy in the US today? No wonder we are falling quickly past second world status into third world status. One of the hallmarks of which is an insanely gigantic wealth gap. We are already there, check. Then we are losing the ability to manufacture our own strategic items, such as medicines and electronic sub-assemblies, check. The domestic police are a militarized force imposing conformity to elite rules, check. Politics becomes a “pay to play” marketplace, check. All speech is monitored and ‘policed,’ check.
See you at the FEMA Re-education camp!
Thanks for the response, despite the numerous typos in my initial comment. Among other mistakes, “bind yields” was supposed to be “bond yields”.
Off for another clearly needed coffee, and hopefully I won’t be snatched off the street when I step outside.
Just wear your Illuminati lapel pin and you’ll be safe as First Tranche House Mortgages.
In reference to Digital Finance in all it’s myriad fabulous forms, one motto of the Prepper Polis is “If you don’t hold it in your hands, you don’t own it.”
Stay safe.
That saying goes all the way back to the Depression. Guess it refers to how many lost their savings to the banks and stock market.
Yes. If I remember correctly, even our esteemed hostess once let drop the information that she had some gold in her portfolio.
A barbarous relic might be of great importance when the society devolves into full blown barbarism.
Stay safe over there in the Antipodes.
Article misstates the reason digital currency was outlawed in the US as too risky. As it replaces paper currency, all transactions are a matter of record. This eviscerates the oldest business and speaking of hookers it means anyone with a bank balance doesn’t need credit cards anymore. This leaves the card industry with only financially unstable customers. It is not risky for consumers or the gov’t it is risky for Visa.
Color revolution alert: “Breakaway Africa Region Seeks US Recognition With Base, Minerals”. Predictable. Next one will likely be in northern Iran.
Expect to see Wagner and Spetsnaz operatives plying their trades around the Caspian Sea. They might already be doing so now. Russia will not just lie down and play dead for something so dangerous to their strategic interests. They might just have to do it “on the sly” as it were.
Unrest in the Caucasus can also disrupt Western plans concerning the Turanian Corridor, not just Iran.
re: victims of Western sanctions
GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY-BLOG
https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10076
“(…)
Mass murder through sanctions policy
According to a recent study, more than half a million people die each year as a result of Western sanctions – about five times as many as die on average in combat operations in wars.
28 Jul 2025
LONDON/BERLIN (Own report) – The sanctions regimes of the transatlantic powers, including Germany and the EU, claim over half a million lives in the affected countries each year. This is the result of a new study reported last week by the renowned medical journal The Lancet. According to the study, on average, more than 564,000 people die each year from the consequences of sanctions, such as hunger, lack of medical care, and lack of aid. Children and the elderly are affected far more than average. The number of victims of sanctions is a good five times higher than the number of people who die annually in combat operations in wars. The study presented in The Lancet comprehensively confirms what has long been known based on case studies. For example, half a million children died in Iraq in the 1990s as a result of the sanctions imposed at the time. In 1996, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated that the political goals pursued with the sanctions were “worth this price.” The sanctions against Afghanistan, for example, are still causing dramatic damage to the population today.
Half a million deaths per year
The study on the consequences of sanctions, which the journal The Lancet reports on in its current issue, links the high number of deaths to a shortage of a wide range of essential goods. Sanctions mean that the affected countries have to reduce their supplies, the report states, this applies not least to health care.[1] Medical supplies, food and other essential products can also no longer be imported – often because targeted financial sanctions make it impossible to pay for imports. Furthermore, there is often a restriction on the activities of aid organizations: either because the sanctions objectively prevent their activities, or because the organizations do not feel able to take the risks associated with the usually completely opaque network of sanctions. The study calculates the average annual number of deaths at 564,258; This is more than five times the number of people who die on average in combat operations in wars – around 106,000 – and roughly the same number as the actual deaths in wars that occur each year – including civilian deaths and those who died as a result of war.
Political goals
The Lancet explicitly points out that 77 percent of fatalities are in the age groups up to 15 or between 60 and 80 years; children, adolescents, and seniors are thus affected far above average. 51 percent of fatalities are under five years old.[2] Today, 25 percent of all countries worldwide are affected by sanctions. In the 1960s, this share was just eight percent. The study concludes that there is a significant difference between sanctions imposed by the UN and those imposed by the USA or the EU states. Sanctions adopted by the United Nations – the only ones recognized by international law – therefore usually no longer lead to a measurable increase in fatalities, since they seek to keep the consequences for the population as minimal as possible, at least according to their claim. Sanctions imposed by the US – and EU states – are often explicitly aimed at forcing the overthrow of unpopular governments by worsening living conditions, or at least subjecting them to increasing pressure from the population to change their behavior. Furthermore, the US and EU, with their economic power and the weight of their currencies, are capable of causing economic damage through sanctions.
“You are worth this price”
The study, reported by The Lancet, comprehensively confirms what experts have long held to be certain based on case studies and individual research: that sanctions have devastating consequences for the populations of the affected countries, potentially even more devastating than war. For example, it is proven that the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 caused calorie consumption per capita per day to plummet from 3,120 in 1989 to 1,093 in 1995. Due to the sanctions, Iraq’s health budget had to be cut to a tenth of its original amount. The collapse of the drinking water supply favored the spread of diseases such as cholera. The then UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy stated in 1999: “If the substantial decline in child mortality in the 1980s had continued into the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths among children under five in the eight years from 1991 to 1998.”[3] In 1996, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when asked whether the policy goals were “worth” the deaths of half a million children (under and over five years old) at that time, stated: “We think they are worth that price.”[4]
“Necessity makes you brave”
The sanctions imposed by the US and EU on Syria during Bashar al-Assad’s rule also had catastrophic effects on the population. By hitting the financial and transport sectors, they effectively prevented the import of, among other things, food and medicine, which could neither be paid for nor brought into the country. As a study published in July 2022 at the renowned Tufts University in Boston found, the sanctions also damaged Syrian agriculture: neither fertilizers, pesticides, nor agricultural equipment were allowed to be imported into Syria.[5] The financial sanctions also significantly hampered remittances from Syrians living abroad to their relatives in the country – an important source of income. The sanctions contributed significantly to the fact that living conditions in some respects even worsened after the end of the open war. At the beginning of 2023, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that the price of a standard food basket had increased by a factor of 15 between October 2019 and October 2022; hunger in Syria was worse than ever since the war began.[6] Regarding the thrust of the sanctions, the public broadcaster Tagesschau stated in 2020, with a view to possible hunger riots, that “poverty and hardship make Syrians brave.”[7]
Before the famine
Following the overthrow of the government under President Al Assad, Western states have begun to lift their sanctions. Although the Islamist regime under Ahmed Al Sharaa is involved in massacres of more than 1,500 members of the Alawite minority and in murderous violence against Druze, which also claimed the lives of more than a thousand people, it is willing to subordinate itself to the West in foreign policy (german-foreign-policy.com reported [8]). Afghanistan, for example, remains subject to sanctions. As early as February 2023, Afghanistan expert Conrad Schetter explained the situation there, noting that the country’s economy had “come to a standstill due to international sanctions.”[9] Meanwhile, “97 percent of the people” in Afghanistan live “below the poverty line”; the majority of the population is “directly dependent on humanitarian aid.” “If this aid were to be withdrawn, a dramatic famine would threaten,” Schetter warned at the time. The Trump administration has now cut its humanitarian aid; EU states have also begun to do this. However, Western sanctions continue.
(…)”
Still reading some links and haven’t gotten to the most fun, the NC comments. But check this out in relation to the article about Zaluzhny in Vogue: Funny as Billy Heck.
re: Germany rearming/investors
Influx of investment:
https://www.imi-online.de/2025/07/30/ruestungskanzlei/
“(…)
Not only the arms industry and, increasingly, the previously civilian industry (see, for example, IMI-Aktuell 2025/426 ) want to profit from the “second turnaround” and the mobilized, debt-financed billions in defense spending, but apparently also PR companies (see, for example, IMI-Standpunkt 2025/032 ) – and apparently also law firms. We were thus referred to the law firm Noerr Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB, which has published a “briefing” on its website that “shows how the conversion of civilian production facilities to military manufacturing opens up exciting business opportunities.” The briefing states, among other things:
“In addition to the exponentially rising spending on security and defense goods, the quality and type of available technology are also increasing. The development in technological innovation cycles, in particular, is breathtaking: the industrial supply situation for the latest technologies is accelerating and improving to an unprecedented extent. The entire field of artificial intelligence, combined with unmanned systems and modern robotics, should serve as a case in point. The fields of cybersecurity and space technology are proving to be at least as innovation-friendly. All of this is triggering growth for the industry. This growth is partly self-financed, partly acquired through the capital market, and partly pre-financed through budgetary advances from the Bundeswehr – and, to an ever-increasing extent, represents a major opportunity for private
investors and venture capital.”
(…)”
Above mentioned brief by law firm Noerr
German-language
“Investments in the defense industry – challenges and opportunities in a highly regulated sector”
https://www.noerr.com/de/insights/briefing_investitionen-in-die-verteidigungsindustrie
Some things never change. The scene is set on the night of October 22, 1962, the night when Kennedy delivered his Cuban Missile Crisis speech. The female character is Joan Baez and the location is Greenwich Village:
“Masters of War” from A Complete Unknown
Thank you.
Think anybody would be writing such song texts today?
God forbid.
Case in point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAP_(German_band)
https://www.rollingstone.de/wolfgang-niedecken-persoenliche-erinnerungen-an-die-kubakrise-die-er-mit-der-ukraine-krise-vergleicht-2417779/
These folks were once visiting the USSR and Cuba and the GDR.
Nowadays Mr. Niedecken is calling for “solidarity” with you know who…
“What humanity chose to launch as artifacts of the Space Age”
Saw this famous plate in that article-
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT ON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
Can you imagine what it would read if Trump was the President as US astronauts landed for the first time right now?
HERE MEN FROM THE US SPACE FORCE
FIRST SET FOOT ON THE MOON
JULY 2025 A.D.
WE TOOK IT. WE OWN IT. IT’S ALL OURS.
Just logging of for the night but important news The Russians have taken Chasov Yar. The media will say it was just an unimportant village but it was one of the last big fortifications in the east. Things are happening fast now-
https://www.rt.com/russia/622303-russia-liberates-key-donbass-stronghold/
yep!
Have a good night ;-)
There is an indirectly proportional relation between RU advances and Western media coverage.
Don’t know if accurate but a Twitter posts states the following:
Reports quoted on MoA say the RF army succeeded in engaging and defeating opposition drone efforts both FPV and logistics/mining/IED from a number of large multi purpose drones.
Also on MoA Germans sending 11IRIS T air defense systems, 5 launch vehicles per system, 2 short range 3 medium.
I am sure sheep dipped operators come with.
High cost to engage Geran 1s
There seems to be meat on the bone to a story (also from MoA) of British specialists captured in Odessa in a daring commando raid.
Looking dicey for the limey bastards.
The longer the SMO runs the US/EU ammunition stores are used up, and the military kit is demolished.
US (EU too) has sent complex systems that take many months to train soldiers who already have baselined knowledge skills and abilities.
The numbers of trained soldiers to operate a US Patriot (or German IRIS-T) battery would take several years to build.
US and EU have been operating most of the gifts.
Maintaining those things is largely beyond Kiev! So US sends “contractors”!
The $60 billion authorized for Kiev from US congress.Biden last year included $20 billion for US forces in Europe “support”…… A lot of bodies could be “hired”……
Does US have a plan to get all the “support manpower” out of Kiev like Saigon?
you got the exact MoA comment on the Odessa story source? (I assume commentariat there?)
MoA comment
It’s all over the latest thread on Ukraine, but the only source I found was the above. Where there is smoke, there is likely fire.
thanks!!
Let’s not mix Odessa with Ochakov. I would “press X to doubt”, because risks of such operation outweight the benefits. In drone saturated enviroment, boats out in the open are like sitting ducks. I don’t see much use in getting couple of grunts alive, compared to just sending them flowers (a bouquet of geraniums and gerberas). Since Ochakov have been targeted earlier, Brits surely won’t put anyone important there.
Wellie … this is what some pointed out for yonks, Rev Kev, Attrition doctrine. It is also called the Bankrupt Theory – not unlike a business running at a loss for a long time, piling on debt in hope things get better and … then bang … out of business and liquidated.
Which is pretty surreal when one considers how the US, for a over 10 years, tried to force a bankruptcy on Russia via economic sanctions. Of which, Trump now wants to impose a 100% tariff on anyone doing business with Russia, meanwhile Russia is making packet on the place it matters most – the battlefield. Meanwhile the only thing the West can claim any success on is gaslighting its populations via rank propaganda.
Everything has had the opposite effect intended, Russia finds new markets, new payment system, taxation overhaul, non profit MIC Mfg where lots of funds go back into R&D/plants et al.
On Chasov Yar its a classic case of cutting off logistics into the city, apply pressure everywhere, send in lots of zapper teams which sow confusion, of which then find weak points to apply more pressure, and increase fire control over the area. Rinse and repeat. Also its interesting to have watched many a youtube pundit slowly transform over the last few years. Per se like our own Willy OEM, who actually has a military background and was in Ukraine some years ago and has contacts on the front. Bit by bit he has increased his knowledge about the past and present, all the geopolitical/economic factors, sees the writing on the wall.
As it has been my view from the beginning of this SMO Russia will just slowly grind this out until the reality is undeniable regardless of all the Western propaganda. Which is going to have interesting political ramifications as economic factors deteriorate for them.
Archived version with full text
‘Sleeping’ cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVID and flu
We’ve suspected something like this for years, but there have been confounders like bowel cancers increasing long before 2020 in young people; Sadly, this study seems to confirm that SARS-CoV-2 infections can lead to cancers.
Stay safe out there!
This is my favorite, of course
(bold mine)
What. Are. Those. Extra. Precautions.
Kill me.
We do know that HPV (another virus) can cause cervical, oral, and anal cancers. So not a big leap to connect the coof to cancers that emerge 5, 10, or 20 years later.
2025: The year of Deagal.
A friend of mine, a vaxxed and relaxed HIV-negative gay man, has recently been diagnosed with Kaposi sarcoma. This is so exceedingly rare in the HIV negative, that you can’t help wonder whether it has something to do with his several Covid infections.
That is extremely worrisome.
Thank you for posting from Hickman’s Hinderlands! He is a wonderful writer with an interesting voice and subject that deserves a wider readership!
25 Hospitalized After Delta Flight Is Hit by Strong Turbulence (NY Times via archive.ph)
Climate is going to only make this more and more common. Fly the friendly skies, indeed!
Here in Silicon Valley we are yet again having giant influenza A spikes in the wastewater out of season. This is bird flu again; it has to be; but it is getting no coverage.
I know four people (one indirectly) in their late 50s to very early 60s who died over the past three months; all of their deaths were unexpected. One drowned in a hotel pool (despite being an excellent swimmer); one choked after developing early onset dementia two years ago, and the other two I don’t have the details about (but one was a healthy living fanatic and none used drugs or alcohol in excess). I don’t think either pandemic has gone away, and people are dying younger than they used to.
File under ‘European Disunion:’ “Greece is ready to send a troika of experts” to help Germany deal with its economic crisis.
Schadenfreude has rarely been more deserved.
Germany needs more Greeks in order to balance all the Turks.
Matt Taibbi has a story today on Sen. Grassley releasing the classified annex to the Durham report. I do not have an account but he was most helpful in providing a link to download the report on his page. For those interested in that the link is here if I stripped out the trace part right. It deals with the Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russia in March 2016, before the FBI investigation began.
The annex should provide some very interesting reading, especially since so much was documented and provided under oath. That would raise the level of confidence.
There is a chance for some catharsis to purge the excesses of the Hillary and Obama sulphur emanations from the party, with mixed metaphors galore due to the novelty and gravity of the situation.
Catherine Herridge is an investigative journalist and has a reputation as a straight shooter. Here is a link to her X account to follow along on thoughtful commentary about the annex, people and implications.
Reading the annex today was confusing at times due to the redactions. The blocked out text obscures the source of the following text: is it a Russian source being quoted, an e-mail from the DNC, or an analyst at the FBI? I think around page 19 it started being obvious analysis but earlier it is a bit obscure. I look forward to more information from others such as Catherine Herridge (above). Reading her tweets I was reminded of how Cato the Elder ended all his speeches with “Carthage must be destroyed.” Then I noticed she was posting or replying (to herself?) a segment of an earlier post where on the last line she says “The Russians” had, in fact, “hacked” the emails.
This release is like examining the bottom of a large rock. My personal favorite is on page three where Debbie Wasserman-Schultz wrote “(the) FBI, so far, does not have persuasive evidence against Hillary Clinton because of the timely deletion of relevant data from mail servers.” Whew! Maybe they could have asked the Russians for those missing emails?
I have seen You Tube videos where a multitude of news anchors all use exactly the same words in reporting a story. Page 15 has three members of the Clinton staff, Podesta, Sullivan, and Palmieri, all characterizing the idea that they conspired as “ridiculous.”
Good episode of the Duran today with Professor Sachs. Spoke about in some detail about how his policy suggestions for the newly independent Poland were adopted by the US government almost immediately, and the same suggestions were dismissed out of hand when made for the RF emerging from the defunct USSR. Sachs said the US was run by idiots then and ever since, across both parties.
Yea, those idiots did not listen to the wise man, and now we have Russians crying because they did not end up like Poland, and Poles building monuments to Sachs.and naming their kids after him. /s
US have been run by the same group of people all along, and he was(/is) willingly an associate of the gang. He is trying to distance himself now when the whole project went pear shaped. If it succeeded, he would be getting medals and Nobel prizes (real and fake ones), instead of claiming innocence and “blaming the other guy”.
Charlie don’t surf, and Bibi doesn’t do ceasefires (except as a vehicle to lure his victims into a false sense of security):
Source: SouthFront
COVID, is that you?
County Emergency Official Says He Was Ill and Sleeping as Texas Floods Hit (NY Times via archive.ph)
Of course, it isn’t said, and people can be sick with all sorts of things; but given how unusual this is during summer, and the defeat of tropical diseases (mostly) with the massive eradication program (imagine that) for mosquitos, what could it possibly be? ’tis a curious thing.
Am I the only who can no longer open archive.ph links?
I noticed something odd the other day when trying to generate a link for a story in the local mullet wrapper (AJC.com)
The link was generated, but when I clicked, the text had been garbled, in a clumsy but unreadable way (rot13 is a possibility but I was too lazy to try to decipher it.)
Perhaps the Empire Strikes Back?
Me too.
I use archive.is; it is still working.
Tiny spiders.
I am overrun with little bitty spiders.
Had one tryin to build a web inside(!) my glasses a lil while ago…and now, i’m tryin to enter the cowboypool for to cool off, and theres this little green one who apparently wants to make a web on my hand…i tried to fob her off onto a nearby bean plant…but no…lil fucker hung on…spun webs to hang on to my hand.
Finally slung her, by her own web, onto that bean pole.
Protip: pretty much all the spiders you see are female…they eat their mates(make inappropriate jokes, ladies)…and(ladies) you are never further away than six feet from a spider, in yer whole life. Fuckers are everywhere.
Luckily I´m on the other side of the Atlantic
😅
Names/details omitted to protect the innocent.
Today, I witnessed another misuse case of Big Tech to enshittify, drive cloud lock-in, and take away options from small/medium-sized businesses.
Let’s just say I heard about an organization that has on-prem MS Exchange. It runs just fine. A recent security incident, however, revealed just how MS has these shops over a barrel.
Background:
https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/microsoft-end-of-support-for-exchange-2016-and-exchange-2019.html
This organization is cloud-hostile and sensitive to deplatforming risk. However, it looks like the only options are:
1. Continue with unsupported, not-security-patched Exchange Server on-prem and take the risk.
2. Go to a costlier “subscription-based model” where Gates and Co. turn your server into a rentier’s wet dream. Never mind that “you paid for that” and it’s your property. Gates and Evil, Inc. want you to pay up monthly to use their cruddy software.
3. Go to O365 or something in the cloud. Bye-bye, business. You don’t own it. You take the deplatforming risk, the security breach risk of handing over all your corporate email including sensitive stuff to Gates and Co.
M$ refuses to patch the security vulnerability for on-prem customers. This is:
#EnshittificationByIntentionalSecurityMalpractice
Go to the cloud, pay up, or eat shite, small and medium sized businesses*
* = Presumably, big time corporate players like AT&T or GM have the ability to play hardball and get carve-outs to keep on-prem Exchange going, maybe through consulting gigs handed out to MS employees.
I was told today that Microsoft is also trying the same trick with windows 10 — no more security patches so you have to switch to 11, and by the way, Microsoft minimum hardware requirements for 11 require purchase of a brand new computer.
Unbelievable. Think about the millions of tons of toxic e-waste that will be thrown into landfills worldwide – and the tremendous waste of resources — that will be caused by this tremendous corporate greed made possible only because they are a monopolist.
Only solution is to switch to Linux and open source software I guess.
What’s truly amazing to me is the gall of saying that a product released as recently as 5 or 10 years ago will “no longer be supported,” meaning they will leave it wide open to exploitation by hackers.
We are all fools to purchase anything from Microsoft given that Microsoft will force you to throw away your purchase in several years or whenever they decide.
Outlook email no longer works for me in … drumroll, Safari on iOS.
After a redirect-fest, it lands me on a generic O365 landing page and ignores my credentials. I refuse to waste my time installing a third-party reader client, as it would likely not work, as Acacia notes below.
Don’t you love M$?
This. My company outsourced email to Microsoft on the “subscription-based model”. My colleagues and I were happily using third-party email clients for years, and then Microsoft imposed a new authentication system via Exchange servers that kneecapped all of our email apps overnight.
Company IT services dept. just shrugged, as they no longer wanted to do email anyway. So now I have years and years of email with colleagues and clients in a bricked third-party app that can no longer do anything on the company network. It’s just an archive, that’s all.
Outlook has been forced on us and we all pretty much hate it. Company also started using Teams, which is constantly nagging me that it wants to control the apps on my desktop machine “EFF-NO!”
And I fully agree with Raymond Carter (above) about the “plan” for Windows 10. We shouldn’t be surprised.
I already get EOL nags about “upgrading” but also that the hardware doesn’t meet the requirements for Windows 11. This is just about selling tons and tons of new PCs and casting off slightly less shiny but perfectly serviceable machines.
Those machines will all run Linux, tho, and probably faster than they ran Windows 10. :)
Of course folks like my parents who never became really acquainted with computers are way too old to switch to a new OS like Linux. Naturally I cannot be around to solve their daily issues with a new OS. And there are millions of such “customers” who will have to follow MS for this reason. It´s just an incredible scandal…and it´s perpetuated with those phones, argh.😡
I disagree that the issue is “too old”. I had a top Wall Street CIO as a client, and his view was that if technology was not easy, it was bad. All consumer software sucks. I had a NeXT computer (proprietary Unix OS, later served as the guts for Mac OS 10, for over 10 years until it became too memory constrained) and that OS and GUI demonstrated how unacceptably shit-poor everything else was.
If you have a PC or Mac, you can get support, either from friends, family, or for a price. There aren’t enough Linux users much of anywhere for a not-well-skilled person, and/or someone who dislikes computer housekeeping to get by.
I did consider to at least suggest Ubuntu to my mother depending on how the Windows 11 business will play out. But that´s unclear yet. My Dad is a lost cause though, but that´s a novel of its own….(friends is a problem, since they are immigrant and pretty much isolated. Dad has knee issues and is far less mobile than he used.)
thanks also Huey for weighing in
OK, I did underweigh inertia, which is a powerful force….and the more you have on your machine (say a lot of pictures or writing), the more going to a new OS seems like a fraught event.
“inertia”, never was a term more true
I haven’t used it in a while but Ubuntu was pretty good for people migrating from Windows, though def still a change.
After the initial setup I think for most people they should be fine from what I’m remembering.
re: Russiagate
SLEUTHNEWS
live chat now
Sleuths Corner: Russiagate & Durham Annex
https://x.com/UndeadFoia/status/1950952227880718367
Trump 2025: The toy is broken
Trump Administration Live Updates: White House Announces Sweeping New Tariffs for Much of the World
Little Trump really is governing the country, and we’re just along for the ride with his hedonistic impulses, as he petulantly smashes his toys together. He seems to lack the capacity to understand that foreign polities aren’t even going to enact his demands, whatever is agreed to, and none of these agreements can be implemented simply by fiat. All the pledged investments in the US and dropping of non-tariff barriers, they’re all subject to the reality of politics in foreign countries, not Trump’s whims.
We really live in a post-reality society. And the chickens gonna come home to roost real soon.
2 months after she tried to save her sister in a river, woman found dead in California wilds (LA Times headline)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, that settles it, I live in the California Wilds-38 minutes away from Costco notwithstanding, according to the newspaper of record for Southern California.
This tragic event happened in Sequoia NP, with drowning being by far the most popular way to accidentally kill yourself around these parts.
While I am not blaming her swimming skills – (rivers for sure are easily underestimated) – lack thereof has become a serious problem at schools.
Scientists Are Learning to Rewrite the Code of Life (NY Times via archive.ph)
This might have been linked before, if so, apologies
How Health Care Remade the U.S. Economy (NY Times, free article with someone’s share code)
Many charts.