What a lovely Little Lady! Kent animal sanctuary announces birth of sweet snow leopard cub Daily Mail (Li)
Size Matters: Study Reveals Snow Leopards Hunt Like No Other Big Cat Snow Leopard Trust. They are the only big cats that prefer prey two to three times their size.
Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost) New York Tims (resilc). Brunswick! Nearest town to my ancestral home of Bailey Island! One of my brothers is vacationing there now.
How Europe’s oldest language ended up on US trees BBC (Kevin W)
The end of the cult of the wunderkind Engelsberg Ideas (Micael T)
Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Open Culture (Micael T)
Barry Eisler on Political Thrillers, AOC, and how “The System” Justifies War Current Affairs (Anthony L)
Scientists are building cyborg jellyfish to explore ocean depths ars technica
American at the grocery store shows that every single thing she picks up now says “Contains bioengineered ingredients”
“I'm here at Aldi, and almost everything they have contains bioengineered food ingredients.” This is all fake food, Americans are treated as lab rats pic.twitter.com/hk44M4jb18
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 22, 2025
The illusion of ‘safe’ marijuana Unherd
COVID-19/Pandemics
"Before the pandemic, mortality trends for 25-44 year-olds mirrored other adult age groups. Since COVID-19, the mortality is unique. 25-44 year-olds now have a 70% higher chance of dying than in 2010." https://t.co/MpPlhCtbeD
— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) August 22, 2025
Climate/Environment
Continents are drying out worldwide Tasseschau via machine translation (guurst). Underlying study is from July, and seems to have been underpublicized: Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise Science. Australia is less affected than I expected.
When water becomes war: The moral failure of global governance in the Middle East Middle East Monitor
Drought wilts Israeli agriculture, farmers face significant water cuts YNet
Brutal Monsoon Season Kills at Least 1,860 in India and Pakistan Bloomberg
Niger floods drive thousands from their homes with at least 47 dead TRT Global
A Debilitating Virus Surges Globally as Mosquitoes Move With Warming Climate New York Times
Energy Return and Systemic Exchange Value Warwick Powell
China?
China is a Rich Society. No Western Country Is. Ian Welsh
China’s lithium mining faces strict new regulatory era Asia Times (Kevin W)
Sri Lanka’s former president Ranil Wickremesinghe arrested BBC
South of the Border
🇲🇽🇺🇸 NORTHCOM openly preparing unilateral military strikes inside Mexico
The Trump administration has issued a Top Secret order directing the U.S. military to prepare lethal strikes on Mexican cartels, investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports. The planning order tasks… https://t.co/cq7zJjE6xg
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 22, 2025
Time is running out for the coup plotters Socialism and Democracy (Micael T). Brazil.
European Disunion
US Treasury Secretary boasts: This is how brazenly the US will plunder its “allies” Nachdenkseiten (Micael T)
The new alliance strategy German Foreign Policy. Micael T: “Uuuuuhh scary! Two resource-free vassals join forces. What mat they come up with?”
Denmark To Abolish VAT On Books To Get More People Reading Guardian
See the church move in Kiruna in 45 seconds SVT via machine translation (Micael T)
The cost of binge drinking in Finland? Maybe your job NZZ (Micael T)
Old Blighty
An IPSOS poll this week showed that a third (33%) of 16 to 34 year olds would consider voting for the new left wing party.
Its not hard to see why. pic.twitter.com/Btklswi2pO
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 22, 2025
Britain’s Mass Fatality Preparation: What Is the Government Preparing For? Jim Ferguson (Chuck L). The author is an alarmist on governments curbing rights. However, that does not make this find untrue. However, the tender amount is bupkis. So is this grifting even when the Government budget is under strain? Or Russia paranoia?
Israel v. The Resistance
The UN-backed IPC is set to declare famine in Gaza City for the first time in its history.
Since 2004, it’s only used that classification 4 times, all in besieged, war-torn regions.
Gaza is already at Phase 4 (“emergency”), meaning mass starvation, acute malnutrition, and… pic.twitter.com/GKegl2zwsP
— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) August 22, 2025
A sign of the times that this has to be spelled out:
A normal person would shudder at the thought of one hungry child who has nothing to eat for days.
If you are normal, this thought is unbearable to you.
Israel as a country, Zionism as a movement, Jews as a national group, and the West as a civilization, are intentionally…
— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) August 22, 2025
Israeli Denials of Gaza’s Starvation Echo Holocaust Denial Tactics Zaid Jilani
Israel Expanding Tank and APC Production to Rebuild After Major Losses in Gaza and Against Hezbollah Military Watch
The Loomering of Injured Gazan Children American Conservative
“Greater Israel,” a farce redolent of Nazism and with Netanyahu as the prophet of hate Rebelion via machine translation (Micael T)
Tensions Rise In The Middle East Mark Wauck
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia’s SHOCKING Breakthrough North of Pokrovsk History Legends, YouTube
Brief Frontline Report – August 22nd, 2025 Marat Khairullin
Trump ‘very angry’ at Ukraine hitting Russian pipeline feeding Orbán Politico (Kevin W)
US begins icebreaker race with Russia Vzglyad via machine translation (Micael T)
New images show a front-line NATO ally’s plan to blunt a Russian invasion at the border Business Insider. Lithuania.
European military stocks fall on Ukraine peace talks progress RT
Ukrainian Arrested in Italy for Nord Stream Pipeline Explosions OilPrice
Anchorage/Washington, D.C.: Can Trump force Europeans to make peace? Peter Haenseler. Generally good, but I beg to differ an why Witkoff was dispatched ot Moscow. Trump had been pressed hard by Lindsey Graham to implement those “bone crushing” secondary sanctions. He’d tried it with India and say they backfired. But Graham and the nutters were not backing down. So talking to Putin at a minimum to buy Trump maneuvering space and maybe even get something useful done.
Caucasus
Pashinyan-Pezeshkian meeting: what does Iran expect from opening transport routes in the Caucasus? JAM News
Whose oil is it that is burning in Odessa and Kremenchug? Top War (Micael T). Some YouTubers have mentioned this disciplining of Azerbaijan but there’s not been much in print.
Armenian Jeffrey Epstein: How Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan built a pedo-empire for high-ranking officials VT Foreign Policy (Dandre M)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
DNS Becomes a Tool of Digital Rebellion: From Internet Infrastructure to Privacy Weapon Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Ministry of Violence Buttondown (resilc). On evangelical child abuse.
Denmark ending letter deliveries is a sign of the digital times BBC (Kevin W). Bullshit. It’s a sign of neoliberalism, as in privatization of once public services that when they were implemented were seen as advances in civilization. Admittedly, in the US, the Internet did kill severely dent a key source of revenues for the Post Office, catalogue delivery.
Trump 2.0
FBI raids former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home: Reports Axios. Note as many pointed out during the document raid on Trump that this is not how things historically were done. Former officials regularly wind up with confidential docs in their possession. If a communication asking for them back is not honored, a subpoena follows. Sadly, even though this action is clearly abusive, so was the Mar a Lago raid (when Trump’s lawyers were in communication with DoJ and hence were cooperating).
US to take 10% stake in troubled chipmaker Intel Financial Times
How Many Federal Health Workers Have RFK Jr. and the Trump Administration Cut? ProPublica (Robin K)
🚨 NOW: The FBI is STILL conducting their raid at John Bolton’s DC area home and office, over FIVE HOURS after the operation began
These agents are tearing through absolutely EVERYTHING 😆
Bolton’s days of freedom are numbered. pic.twitter.com/hLYFY3LZOn
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 22, 2025
Tariffs
Treasury Secretary Bessent is “gaslighting” the American people on tariff revenue as government debt runs wild, analyst says Investors Observer
Trump says furniture tariffs are coming later this year CNBC (Kevin W). I wrote about this years ago, keying off a Wall Street Journal story on the loss of North Carolina’s furniture industry. As I recall, the Journal stressed the skill loss, not just at the factory floor but also the managerial level
Immigration
What the data says about immigrants in the U.S. Pew. “After more than 50 years of rapid growth, the nation’s immigrant population is now in decline.”
Trump administration is reviewing all 55 million foreigners with US visas for any violations Associated Press (Kevin W)
L’affaire Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’, transcript shows Guardian (Kevin W). Such a tortured formulation is suspect. So she saw him with sex trafficked women in bed? That would be an “appropriate setting.” A “massage setting” is a massage table, FFS. Prosecutors please pipe up. How conceivable is it that someone very compliant with the DoJ did a dry run and told Maxwell’s attorneys if and how her statements could be reformulated.
Democrats en déshabillé
The ‘woke’ words Democrats should cut from their vocabulary Politico
Fedwatch
The only place the Fed is "independent" is in the Economics classroom … the Fed has always been responsive to political pressure … https://t.co/i4ABGJMD2Y
— Richard Field (@tyillc) August 22, 2025
Economy
Class 8 Truck Orders Drop 35% from Year Ago, Medium Duty Down 40% Michael Shedlock
AI
OpenAI chairman says AI is destroying his sense of who he is Futurism
ChatGPT, you are so terribly stupid! Overton via machine translation (Micael T)
AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is ‘Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’ The Register
Hunger Games: AI’s Demand for Resources Poses Promise and Peril to Rural America Real Clear Investigations
Guillotine Watch
How SpaceX avoids paying taxes Musk Watch
Class Warfare
Why free movement of people is harmful Markskop via machine translation (Micael T)
Sentencing For Sale Speak Up! Silent No more (Robin K)
Cashing in without performance Multipolar via machine translation (Micael T)
“How can this happen?” Fight over sewage sludge on farms intensifies The New Lede
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (guurst):
Привет Этночка pic.twitter.com/U0nVAnieXI
— Sveta L (@SvetaRus3) August 21, 2025
A second bonus:
After losing his final saxophone in the car crash . We hunted all over eBay to find the exact same of his favorite toy…. Today it arrived pic.twitter.com/VqDSEQx5Di
— Unregistered HyperEm 2 (@warmaliens) August 22, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“New images show a front-line NATO ally’s plan to blunt a Russian invasion at the border”
If anything, Russia is saving the effort in fortifying their border as Lithuania is doing it for them. And at the same time Lithuania is raiding their diminishing budget to pay for all this and not Russia but there is still the problem of troop numbers. I heard today that the Lithuanian military is volunteering to send in troops to the Ukraine the minute that there is a ceasefire because that is what all the European countries agreed with each other to do. So how many troops will Lithuania send into the Ukraine. About a company of soldiers. That’s kinda sad.
😉 Sometimes-you just have to let your hate-fueled enemy self-destruct.
The Rev Kev: As you may have noted, the first paragraph of the article over-eggs the pudding as we write here at Naked Capitalism:
Front-line NATO ally Lithuania shares a border with Russia. At risk, the country has plans for a fortified border aimed at severely hindering a potential Russian assault.
In fact, Lithuania borders the Kaliningrad exclave, which not likely to be a source of invading Russians with attitude.
https://mappemondo.com/europe/
Lithuania doesn’t share a border with the main part of the Russian Federation. So I am detecting a lot of posturing and hyperventilating, as the whooshing sound of panicked Lithuanians being sucked into a boondoggle by Poland, which now considers itself the epicenter of Europe, and scads of money being wasted to bivouac those Germans (whose last two or three invasive visits to Lithuania weren’t exactly friendly).
Further from the article: “Lithuania is one of the biggest defense spenders in NATO as a proportion of its GDP and is also one of Ukraine’s biggest supporters by the same measure, seeing Ukraine as a longtime partner that is now helping Europe by holding Russia back.”
Throwing money away, from a country that is still in demographic decline, has a population of three million, and is about as flat as Illinois.
What could possibly go wrong?
PS: New development. Canada has announced that it fears an invasion from speck-like French possession St. Pierre et Miquelon. Stockpile the poutine! Scramble the RAF planes at Akrotiri!
Stockpile the Poutine. Heh! :p
re: Nordstream arrest
German public and media reaction to this fake is most likely the most embarrassing story and worst act of cowardice, stupidity and dishonesty that I have ever encountered in this country.
The Armenian power-pedo-ring explains the way Armenia is destroyed by Pashinyan and nobody just shoots him. Now we are waiting for the results of the EU-power-pedo-ring explaining why they sell out Europe.
> “Trump ‘very angry’ at Ukraine hitting Russian pipeline feeding Orbán”
Anyone can see that Orbán isn’t as slim as he used to be but this is a bit extreme. Hungary is a fertile country quite capable of producing enough to fatten up Viktor. A Russian feeding pipeline indeed!
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, in the guise of Ghislaine
Trump and all his reindeer pulling on the reins
The internet is ringing, hard right signaling, all is merry and bright
So Ghislaine wear those fishnet stockings and say your prayers, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, in the guise of Ghislaine
She’s got a story about no malfeasance with young girls again
Hear those lie detector bells jingle jangle, oh what a pitiful sight
So jump in bed with her story, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus in the guise of Ghislaine
She’ll come around when chimes ring out that it’s Christmastime in August again
Peace on earth will come to all if we just follow the light
So let’s give thanks to Saint Jeffrey above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, in the guise of Ghislaine
Donald and all his reindeer pulling on the reins
The internet is ringing, hard right signaling, all is merry and bright
So jump in bed with her story, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
She is a miracle come to all if we just follow the light
So let’s give thanks to Saint Jeffrey above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
So let’s give thanks to Saint Jeffrey above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight
Caroling before Labor Day? Very Carolingian…
> Barry Eisler on Political Thrillers, AOC, and how “The System” Justifies War Current Affairs (Anthony L)
I’m only partially through the interview and it is ringing bells. Cordiality and rewards. They pinned a Precinct Captain on me for no other reason than I pulled votes as a third party.
He mentions the amygdala. Intimidation works against the agenda, one aversive moment can permanently buttress a position against. When I was running, I was conversed by several of the successful politicians. Some of them looked funny, wacky clothes or odd haircuts. But they were extremely persuasive. That was their special sauce. You can’t get somebody in alignment if they’re bent out of shape.
Although the discussion is largely about USA politics, I couldn’t help but think how in some ways it could apply to operations internationally with governments and officials when it comes to Genocide, Inc.
The Baltic states are turning on themselves. Lithuanians hate Poles. Poles hate Ukrainians. This will be a sublime drama to watch.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-lithuanian-language-chief-let
Starting at 14:25
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-H1oQXRAqgI
But, but what about those EU values of respecting the minorities in each member State? Well, maybe not Russian minorities but it does apply to Polish minorities, right?
Ukraine’s nationalists had the foresight to get rid of most of their Polish minority back during WW2, so there’s no need to worry about that anymore…
They still have those Hungarian and Romanian minorities in their west though. The fact that Ukrainian ultra-nationalists are a form of white supremacists does not bode well for them which is probably why the Hungarians and Romanians were issuing passports to those minorities in the Ukraine.
Yes. I think they survived back then because Hungary and Romania were still extant states allied with Germany during that rampage, while the Poles had absolutely no one willing to protect them. Otherwise they would’ve nipped this problem in the bud as well – the original Banderaists were nothing if not thorough in their approach to “nation-building”. Modern ones might be too, but they still have to avoid angering Ukraine’s western neighbours too much, too quickly, especially while locked in an actual struggle to the east. But of course those minorities aren’t quite safe.
During the present war, the Ukrainians have taken as many able-bodied men as they can from the Romanian and Hungarian areas of the Ukraine to be sent to the meat grinder in the east. I guess their idea is to drain those areas of military-aged men so that after the war, it will be much easier to crack down on those areas and make them toe the Ukrainian line in regards language, culture, religion, etc.
The Romanian minority in Ukraine was aquired after 1945. Northern Bukovina was taken in 1940, with Bassarabia following Molotov Ribentrop treaty, and retaken by Romanians in 1941. Prior to that Russians never controlled that piece of land. Same goes for Zacarpathia with Hungarians. The Rusyns/Ruthens were in minority in states allied with Germany. Sovietization started only after 1945.
Ditto Lithuanians, no? Although their, eh, ethnic “adjustment” applied particularly to the Jews…
Geographic Nazi: neither Poles nor Ukrainian, however numerous in Lithuania, are Baltic. Although Poland has longer Baltic coast than Lithuania, so it qualifies in some way. Actually, this article stimulated me to check Wiki:Demographics of Lithuania, and recently the population there is growing … because … of immigration! Mostly Ukrainian. Estonia may be like that too, and ethnic Estonians discovered, with dismay, that those Ukrainian speak Russian. But Russia is a “Baltic nation” too, although their Baltic coast is not that long…
But happy news are that in Lithuania, Poles and Russian go along well, and that may extend to Ukrainians.
Yea, but they hate Russians more. That’s the glue of NATO and the EU.
EU museum crumbling, angry docents most impacted.
Trees&Trunks. Well, at least the Lithuanians aren’t using the One-Drop Rule.
I note this from Korybko: “The nearly 200,000 people in Lithuania who self-identify as Poles are unofficially considered to be the remnants of supposed Polish colonialists from the 1385 Union of Krewo till the last Partition in 1795 and/or ethnic Lithuanians that were “Russified” since then but identify as Poles due to being Catholic. This false perception that dishonestly denies the by-now indigenous nature of the Polish minority fuels Lithuania’s discriminatory practices against them that Warsaw officially complained about in the past.”
The Gs that I am descended from were part of the remarkable ethno-flexo-bility of parts of Lithuania. My grandfather was from a village on the border with East Prussia (now Kaliningrad oblast). Some of his family spoke Lithuanian (his mother). Some spoke Polish (supposedly, his father). Some used the Lithuanian form of the G-name. Some used the “Polish form,” which according to Poles, who can be amazingly snobbish about such matters, isn’t a Polish surname.
And I read an anecdote once that the Proper Poles think that the Polish spoken in Lithuania isn’t even Polish, just some peasant patois.
PS Given the various absurdities about the above “facts,” you can imagine how much I enjoy listening to USanians blabbering about “race.”
Original opening line of Pan Tadeusz, “Lithuania, my homeland!”…in Polish. The author is either Adam Mickewicz or Adomas Mickevicius (both are probably correct, given the makeup of the Polish literary elite in early 19th century).
All of which is funny, since he was born and mostly lived in Zaodne, which is today part of Belarus. He is also considered a major son of that country as well.
But topping it all – at the time he lived, the whole area was part of the Russian Empire. I’m not aware of Russians considering him theirs too, though they might, I guess.
I understand that the “true” nationality of Tadeusz Kosciuszko is similarly questioned: I’m always surprised and amused how many Poles and Lithuanians are actually Belorussian, so to speak. In case of Kosciuszko, I wish we’d just call him an American instead.
Would you believe that Australia’s tallest mountain is named Mount Kosciuszko? By a Polish explorer back in 1840 and most people like the name-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kosciuszko
Lithuanians and Ukrainians hate Poles because local population is mostly of peasant origin whereas landowning aristocrats and nobility were polonised or Polish. Additionally there was a program of forced colonialisation of Ukraine by Polish state in the 20s with burning Orthodox churches etc.
Polish First “Republic” was one of the most societally backward states in Europe with peasant population living in extreme poverty as slaves bound to land, hence the hate. Quite similar to US Confederate South probably. Communism was a great equaliser and hugely underappreciated in this regard (and others). No lords, no aristocrats and nobles, imagine this!
re: abduction of Ukrainian children
To my knowledge this is the first piece in a larger German print outlet that would question the Western version – magazine EMMA.
(use google-translate)
Is Russia kidnapping children?
Were the children brought to Russia from contested Ukrainian territories “stolen”—or simply brought to safety? Helmut Scheben investigated the matter.
https://www.emma.de/artikel/raubt-russland-kinder-341985
The problem is that the author is not that well informed on the matter at hand. He does draw comparison e.g. to the US in Vietnam saving 50k children and no Western paper ever spoke about abduction at that time.
But if he knew the internet well, he could quote non-Russian outlets as they have been quoted here on NC or elsewhere. Or be it as simple as a former British diplomat like Ian Proud.
I am suggesting non-Russian sources because as below link shows that is regarded as a prerequisite for doing “real” investigation…Whether or not that is bullshit as a German author one should take truth within power structures into account and write and argue accordingly in today´s totalitarian media atmosphere. Otherwise no one will take you seriously.
So he relies much on RU sources.
Also he seems to not realize the beginnings of the “research” for this fairy-tale lay in the US with Yale. He does mention The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab but not their role in creating the fake “raw data” and in creating the ICC´s fake indictment and which should be at the heart of the matter.
To understand that this is a grave deficiency in a place like Germany where Russian=lies, see this stupid TELEPOLIS “review” of the EMMA text by Philip Fess who is out of his depths obviously.
(use google-translate)
Emma report: Russian child abduction just propaganda?
https://www.telepolis.de/features/Emma-Bericht-Russische-Kindesentfuehrung-nur-Propaganda-10590428.html
The demise of TELEPOLIS is really a disaster in the history of German altern. online media (it is the oldest such news site. But that´s a different story.)
Alex Christoforou was talking about the subject of “kidnapped” children the other day. He was saying that the Ukraine claimed that Russia had taken a huge number of Ukrainian children. I think that it was about 19,000 children and this claim was repeated by the Neocons in DC. Russia demanded a list of this children so that they could find them and eventually the Ukrainians coughed up a list of these children. I think that there were about 319 names on that list.
Polar Socialist said 339, so more or less the same.
Also most (all??) were in orphanages.
He’s probably more correct as I am just going from memory. Still remember how with the original list, many of those “kidnapped” children turned out to be safe and living in Germany.
> “many of those “kidnapped” children turned out to be safe and living in Germany.”
161 children, April 2024
The little number is the reason why so little evidence has shown up. Instead hiding 19.000 Ukrainian kids who have been kidnapped with the West looking for them all over??? Good luck…
The horrible fact that the numbers of those kids who are being trafficked – by Ukrainians with knowledge of Western intelligence services – for huge sums to Western elites is most likely the real figure and the REAL SCANDAL – is still totally muted in the FR of G….Seriously I could throw up over this clusterfuck of Europe….
Indict Scholz and Baerbock now for kidnapping! (/s)
Yeah, 339 children moved to safety from orphanages in a war zone, vs one million children being starved in a death camp. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to stay on this world.
Regardless of the validity of the allegations supporting the ICC’s arrest warrant, I have another question. How do the recent and highly publicized entreaties from Melania Trump to Putin and from UvdL to Donald Trump to think about the children relate to arguments about what should happen next in Ukraine? Is the proposal that war should be fought to liberate kidnapped children? What exactly is being asked for and how would the existence of kidnapped children justify it?
The letter from Melania was NOT about the ICC warrant issue. Lindsey Graham abjectly misrepresented that and the press ran with his spin. Her letter was more of the “Mr. Putin, war is bad for children” sort.
I did read a translated version on Patrick Lawrence’s The Floutist. At least I think it’s the same article.
I think Scheben does well to point out that the International Red Cross, government of Qatar and several UN organisations are collaborating with Russians to return children to where they should be. And none of these non-Russian actors involved and aware of the actual situation has raised any doubts or suspicions regarding “abduction” or “deportation” of children.
And that ICC arrest warrants are possible only because Ukraine joined in 2024, and yet Ukraine does not accept ICC’s jurisdiction over Ukrainian military or paramilitary organizations. And that they are based on unproven claims by government funded “non-governmental” organisations.
“I think Scheben does well to point out that”….
That is correct.
I have to say I came across the Scheben text only due to reading the secondly listed TELEPOLIS critique. And that focused very much on the provenance of the news sources quoted by Scheben which TELEPOLIS explicitely questioned as being Russian (which is insane in itself).
And since this is an important subject I would have welcomed had Scheben made it more bulletproof for its German jingoist media environment. So Scheben´s text main quality is in the secondary issue of international organisations. But that in Germany would be still regarded as an argumentative detour.
And if Scheben chooses that other way around via Red Cross et al. he should have made a more comprehensive effort and e.g. point out what you do with ICC and Ukrainian double standard. But that would have asked for a bigger article.
So either way, it falls a bit short of what should have been accomplished in light of the stakes. After all EMMA has been under attack for its more conservative views re: woke culture, Russia, Ukraine. So scrutiny is harsher on them by design.
The American Conservative ran an article more than a year ago by a lady, cannot find it and the lady is not part of the staff any longer, on the same issue kind of saying that there is nothing to see here.
Right. Didn´t Yves link to that…?
Truth hardly matters. What does matter is that the Eurocrets have to grab hold of every issue so that they can keep the war talk going because that is the only justification most of them have to stay in power and not let more rational actors, whether of right or left, gain power and begin to break down existing political structures and build something more relevant to the needs of each country.
The problem is that they’re too stupid to see that they are talking themselves, and their countries, into a war they do not have the capacity to fight, let alone win. Looking at the tank, etc, barriers Lithuania plans to create over the next ten years, possibly at the EU/NATO’s expense, the Eurocrets seem to think that the next war will be the same model as the SMO.
Financially bankrupt, morally bankrupt, politically bankrupt, intellectually bankrupt, and committed to paying Danegeld to the good old USA like any good collection of vassals. It would be better if the Europeans were to break away from each other and do what they managed to do so well for the last thousand or so years and just make war on each other. That way one of the buggers might have a chance of winning every now and then and it will keep them busy for the next thousand years giving BRICS and the rest of the non-Western world an opportunity to prosper in a climate of relative stability.
An article in Alice Schwarzer’s EMMA is likely to have the opposite effect rather than the desired one …
“Israel Expanding Tank and APC Production to Rebuild After Major Losses in Gaza and Against Hezbollah’
Just as well that it takes some time to build those tanks and heavy APCs. They will need the time to train the new crews to replace those that have been killed, wounded or crippled in Gaza and Lebanon. How many would be a closely kept secret in Israel as is the amount of equipment that has been lost.
They must be counting on the ex Ukrainians to join them after Ukraine goes kaput, like the former Nazi foreign legionnaires in SE Asia, circa 1950s. After all, these guys are already practiced in IDF MO.
The version of the saga of the captured German troops after WW-2 was, at least in the French Zone of Occupation, any German soldiers from the Soviet occupied east of the old Germany were given the choice by their French captors of either being sent back to where they came from, which meant almost certain internment in the ‘Gulag,’ or that they could sign up in the French Foreign Legion. Thus, thousands of Germans “volunteered” to serve France. Many ended up in Indochina.
The late Pat Lang wrote about his encountering one of those German French Foreign Legionnaires when Lang served in the American Army in Indochina.
The Ukrainians might soon be facing a similar choice.
I think that you will find that the US and the West will use these Ukrainians as mercs in places where they do not want to send their own soldiers. They have been fighting in North Africa for years now and I bet that you will see them turning up all around the world.
I read this when I was a boy and my reading tastes were a little more bloodthirsty than they are now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Guard
I did not realise then, as this article discusses, that there was a big debate over the truthfullness or not of the book. It came across as pretty real to me back then.
In any case, the fact that a book like this was written at least hints that there was some truth to this idea.
If it said: ‘Contains Soylent Green’
Instead of Contains Bioengineered Ingredients… would anybody even notice?
Available soon at that restaurant where the motto is To Serve Man.
I understand that they do great finger food before the main course of long pig and all washed down with a great Chianti.
Then: Taking out an ARM loan
Now: Taking out an arm loan
Have you ever seen the Donnor Party Memorial?
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/1hj7nyy/donner_party_memorial/
ha ha, that’s funny.
Donner Pass and Death Valley are named after fvckups, the latter not having to resort to raw ribs and the like, but in theory they were going to the goldfields, how’d they get so very far off course?
There’s a neat museum @ Donner Pass, and one day about 40 years ago I walk in and look around and at the cash register, they are selling the cutest little square shaped glass bottle you ever saw, with red wax and a statement that the contents within came from a Donner Party cabin.
About 600 of them had been found in an attic in nearby Grass Valley, and had been donated to the museum, who was selling them for $15. I bought 6 of them, got back to LA and promptly sold or gave as gifts to friends, and I think I got $50 a piece, and visions of sugar plum profits danced in my head, and I was going to Tahoe to go skiing in a couple weeks, why not buy some more, but alas they had sold them all in a fortnight.
Here’s what they look like, they were sold in 1893 for a buck, to raise funds to build the museum.
https://annexauctions.com/lot/glass-vial-relic-from-the-donner-partys-murphy-cabin-c-f-mcglashan-1889-28675
How about the Donner Party Cookbook?
I don’t know if I have the stomach to read through Ghislaine’s Appetizer Compendium, an appendix to Epstein’s “Appetites and How to Sate Them for Fun and Profit.” I’m told it has a chapter on Whore d’Oeuvres.
Young adult lit is already normalizing it, no? (Ref to the literal cannibal heroines in fiction lately, per yesterday’s links.)
One of the cabin owners in our community in Mineral King is named Mignon, nice lady and i’d hate for her to have to be a filet.
Well, at least she doesn’t have to worry about being a jeune filet anymore. That would be the unkindest cut of all.
Think if it as a jejune bug instead.
I wonder if she rides a horse and if she does, if it’s a mare…
Re: Raid on Bolton/Mar a Lago. While it is true that this is not the way things are normally done (vis a vis Mar a Lago), normally, people cooperate, do not have their lawyers lie, and do not use their chauffer to shuffle the boxes of confidential papers around the property.
I don’t have time to relitigate this now and you need to provide links for your claims. But if you get a subpoena or even a nastygram, getting lawyers involved is pretty common. The salacious contention is that Trump had cameras on the doc storage area and then the DoJ added to charges and alleged Trump asked a staffer to delete some footage. The supplemental indictment did not say the footage was actually destroyed. And the matter was never finally adjudicated, so we don’t know where the facts lie.
There may have been very good reasons why it wasn’t full adjucated.
As an addendum, if I were a billionaire (not), I believe in a year and a half of litigation, I could have hired someone to scan every last one of the documents onto a thumb drive, and then returned the documents.
These are paper documents. They can be scanned.
So political theater.
Forgive me if I am misunderstanding, but are you suggesting that the Mar a Lago raid actually had anything to do with national security or objective enforcement of “the law”? Or that it was Trump’s uniquely shady response to this mere attempt by the DOJ to uphold “the law” that made his case unique? I certainly hope not.
Of course the Bolton raid is clearly politically motivated as well. In principle I find this extremely dangerous, as is the Trump administration itself. But I admit that in this case it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy (well, maybe Dick Cheney). I wish they would have perp-walked Bolton out handcuffed and shackled, in his underwear, and banged his head on the door while shoving him into a squad car. I know this is simply payback for his disloyalty to Trump. But it triggers a fantasy I have where all the cancerous neocons are dragged out of their comfortable homes to be tried for treason and crimes against humanity. Just a dream, I know.
If one considers it in the national interest to go to war with Russia (for which there are rational justifications, however bankrupt), and/or preserve continuity of the status quo (for which there are rational justifications, however personal), it is easy to frame Donald Trump and his policies as visceral threats to the body politic of the United States, and thereby the Union itself.
Potato, potahto.
Democracy: 7.62 or 5.56?
A Pole sounds like a cheap knockoff of The Axis.
A Pole of its own? Like the Churchillian hyena?
Chihuahuan hyena?
Define safe.
Alcohol kills hundreds of thousands every year, close to 20k in driving accidents. How many fights and other things? Cigarettes, how many there?
How many driving deaths by pot, zero. Going to slow ok. Too fast, nope.
Ive never seen anyone get in a fight just stoned. As far as I know there has never been an OD on pot.
Ive seen kids be almost cured of seizures by pot/cbd cocktails. As well as adults.
It’s a drug and yes someone is going to have some kind of adverse reaction.
I guess we are back to just say no.
I’m of two minds on the subject in that its really too easy to obtain now, and back in the days of illegality, typically your connection would have 1 varietal and that was it. Was in a pot shoppe yesterday and its more akin to a Baskin & Robbins-but with 310 flavors now.
One thing it can be is a motivation killer for many (segues into the tale of a prominent numismatist who would ‘drug test’ potential hires, as he was looking for stoners with a work ethic-like him) and you don’t want to have a bunch of young adults with the munchies sofa surfing on the next, not that it doesn’t happen all the time sans sensimilla.
Also, the price of admission is so on the down low now, yours truly paid 8x the current going rate per ounce around the turn of the century, so most anybody can indulge-that ain’t no bueno.
But many states have very stringent testing standards for molds and chemicals, pesticides etc which is really good. While not necessarily organic much safer.
Also many are now required to have thc concentrations marked. Certainly for eatables.
All of which does improve safety.
As to the often discussed higher concentrations, yeah well just use less. To me I just go to sleep if I use to much, which sort of defeats the purpose. Doesn’t take long to find the middle ground. Way easier than 1 too many drinks.
To me a bunch of stoners on the couch is way better than drunks out driving.
Don’t get me wrong in that I’m pleased at the developments in becoming a more diversified wastrel and helping the community along by paying highfalutin taxes, Weedlake, er Woodlake has certainly benefited from my attempts.
There is one thing that I wonder about: driving while sleepy or drowsy, without any chemical involved. While one could get snarky about sleep breng addictive etc, this really has to be the single biggest cause of accidents out there. However, I would be concerned if anyone tries to pass legislation about this. (However, I do find it disturbing when my car tells me to take a break because it can sense I’m getting sleepy–it’s usually right, and I worry that, soon, it’ll be snitching on me for driving while sleepy.)
Maybe person was on so called mental health drugs with the addition
Of another drug being heavily advertised to help a person with TD a disorder which is an involuntary movement of hands and face due to taking the so called mental health drugs. This article is complete nonsense. Far more likely it was a mental breakdown or a big Pharma drug cocktail. After I suffered a heart issue, I was taken to emergency
After testing positive for marijuana use as I had used it for 40 years on a daily basis. The emergency doctor told me to stop using pot, it could lead to seizures! Yet I’ve heard it is dispensed to many people that suffer seizures. I was there because the heart issue is genetic and brought on by stress.
There is a recent local case of a distracted stoner driver killing a child. Yes, it is true cannabis does not impair motor or perception to the same extent as alcohol. But would you get on an airliner knowing the pilot is stoned? Or a bus or train? Cannabis does impact motor and perception skills and it is ridiculous to claim otherwise. Do you have data to back up you claims? NHTSA shows documents:
And in the Unherd article:
As I posted last week, most cannabis (or alcohol) users don’t have dangerous or serious adverse reactions. But more than a few do. The fact that heavy use is tied to schizophrenia is not trivial. Psychotic disorders have an enormous social cost. And they don’t simply go away through abstinence, unlike alcoholism. Just because YOU haven’t had problems doesn’t mean EVERYBODY is problem-free. High test weed gave me AFIB.
Maybe if IM Doc is around he can comment.
To add to this, cannabis use alone is a risk factor for developing psychosis, but the risk increases with higher doses, THC concentrations and frequency of use.
Cannabis impedes normal brain development so it really shouldn’t be used by teens or technically adults under 25. It does impair concentration and short term memory as mentioned. It is unfortunately also damaging to your heart and the 18-23 year olds I admitted to rehab almost always had abnormal electrocardiograms suggesting enlargement of their left ventricle/the part of the heart that pumps blood to most of the rest of you, which is not something you’d expect in that age group.
It also impairs your immune system and though not toxic like cigarattes, any form of inhaled smoke is an irritant to your respiratory system.
I don’t mean to suggest that Cannabis should be demonized. However, I do hope more people, especially kids, are made aware of the health risks – as with any other substance we consume. Even more than alcoholics, my young Cannabis ‘addicts’ that come in for the first time are vehemently opposed to the idea that any physical/psychiatric/social problem they developed has resulted from their Cannabis use because “everybody else uses it and they’re fine.”
I agree with some other comments that there is probably no way that driving under the influence of MJ results in 0 fatalities. But the article is a bit ridiculous in many places… most of all the opening paragraph’s scare tactics and then this little doozy:
“marijuana poses a significant risk of dependency: addiction rates are around 30% of all users and rising. Addiction in this case means exactly what it does for other substances: inability to quit, a need for ever more of the drug to achieve the same effect, and even withdrawal symptoms.”
I know what dependency feels like as should nearly any cigarette smoker. There could by a psychological dependence to MJ but rarely any physical dependency which is 100% present in most cigarette smokers. Skipping days/weeks of MJ is doable. If you’re a cigarette smoker, skipping 4-5 hours is nerve wracking.
When I was quitting cigarettes, I created a little mantra to remember: “The devil is going to tempt you many times a day.” Each time those feelings of dependency came over me, I had to remind myself to fight through those feelings, and often it didn’t work as evidenced by some unseemly dumpster diving. But eventually it worked.
There is a withdrawal syndrome for Cannabis but even when working at a rehab unit for about six months where upwards of half the patients were addicted to it, the cases of withdrawal were rare. I have had several patients tell me that the cravings were intense so I wouldn’t say skipping days is necessarily easy.
I had a highly strung college roommate who freaked out on his first MJ experience with the old stuff. If you’re so inclined, a little dab ‘ll do ya. I recommend first time users do what my initiators did, play Firesign Theater’s “A Child’s Garden of Grass” album.
Cannabis has been a big help to me through cancer treatment. It works well against nausea, and when combined with Tylenol, did enough against pain for me to do without opioids after my surgeries.
it potentiates my hydrocodone, as best as i can tell(hard to get away from subjectivity in pain-things)>
but, yeah…they’re casting around for scapegoats and distractions, and rummaging around in the reagan and nixon archives, and throwing noodles against the wall.
this is yer brain on the evil weed!
invade mexico!
invade venezuela!
forget about ukraine, forget about how we got run out of the red sea by sandal wearing tribesmen…forget about how iran proved much more formidable that we told you…and above all…forget about all that epstien stuff…silly nonsense.
lets talks about hillary and adenochrome, instead!
empire in the last phase of terminal decline lashes out.
film at 11.
buy seeds…put them in labeled jars.
keep them in a dark, cool place.
might get you access to enclaves and refugia like ive been trying to build.
black pepper in bulk is also a good investment, as is salt…whatever kind…and frelling bic lighters and matches(the kind in a bigger box that says “strike anywhere”…).
I heard all that straight from Cassandra’s ghost some 30 years ago, and have been doing my best to do whats necessary.
i have fallen short, sadly.
but im still gonna be better off than most of you,lol.
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon”
but the Bedouin are still here.
8-23-2025
yesterday is the day Don Townsend died.
I had no jack until today, so i’m toasting him tonight.
“so fill to me the parting glass”, and all.
The sourdough thing looks to be a go.
Last batch I made, I ran out of white flour, so I made whole wheat sourdough bread.
Took forever to rise, both times.
About 12 hours for the sponge, and a good 6 or 7 for the loafs.
I suspise/know that rye or(shudder) Pumpernickle sourdough will be even more of a long term thing.
But I’ll get there.
I’m a quick study.
I’ve eaten no bread but my own for two weeks, now.
Toasted, open faced PB&H(ask Elijah or Ben)…magnifique.
Or bruschetta w goat cheese and peppers onions tomatoes and hard salami…
or just as soppy for whatever pastathing I do.
Too hot for the heavier braised roast things(like osso bucco, or lancashire hotpot), but i’m certain it would pair well with those kinda things, too.
I’m quite pleased with how this wild caught sourdough starter turned out.
Still needs to mature.
But good enough for me.
I would, however, love some feedback.
If you’ve had avacado toast in mason texas in the last 2 days, it was probably on my bread,lol.
30 years ago in Germany there was this thing to serve at parties strawberries with avocado-curd cream. It´s reputation got ruined once everyone seemed to know how harmful to the environment avocados were (But now everyone not only owns a car but an e-bike too. No idea where those batteries come from and where they will end up. But 2024 we already had almost 16M. And nobody seems to care.)
The avocado-garlic-pepper-salt creme on a hot bruscetta however was great, no matter how much water gets wasted 😉.
My golden rule: decent bread, good tomatoes, hard cheese and hard salami (France, Italy, Hungary) and for those who want a simple red wine. You got everything you need.
p.s. Are you acquainted with Dziugas Lithuanian hard cheese? It´s very seldom. But I found it a very appealing mixture in taste and consistency of Parmigiano and Pecorino. If you can, get the aged for 36 months.
https://dziugashouse.lt/en/about-us/
A particularly expensive deli-chain for professional customers used to have it until it did not. I asked them what had happened and they said German customers thought it did not look pretty enough.
I never quite believed that explanation…
8-23-2025
Surely there’s a gal out there
who digs Poetry.
Literature.
History.
Philosophy.
And who likes to talk about such things.
Maybe even likes Jazz, and big band and Bach.
And red dirt Americana and blues.
And who can tolerate a bit of anomalousness…
weirdness, even.
Call it idiosyncrasy, if you like.
Surely.
There can’t have been only one.
She’s out there, Amfortas, and you will find each other. I found my guy (a younger man of 58) when I was 59. We had dated in high school, then had a 42-break.
@Amfortas – a 42-year break
Re:Aldi video. I, too, have noticed the bioengineered ingredients label. But look at the products: all highly processed, i.e. stuff I don’t buy. Another Aldi video could show the range of organic + non-GMO items available at very reasonable prices. I used to consider Aldi a “scratch and dent” type of retailer until friends convinced me to look at all the OG products. It’s now one of my favorite grocery stores. Bonus: in the world of self-checkout, they still have humans at the cash register and one can actually build a casual/cordial relationship with them.
Ingredients listings get more indecipherable all the time. From twtr-X:
There are at least six or seven companies… now using crickets—insects—to make flour.
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1955932618035216840
This ingredient will not be listed as what it is on the food package ingredients list. It might be listed as an alpha-numeric item that’s indecipherable to most readers. I know it’s already used by some companies in snack foods. “Organic” or not, I don’t want cricket flour in my food.
adding: one wonders if this is why beef, pork, and poultry have been demonized as protein sources. Enquiring minds…. / ;)
I use Aldi’s as a main source for food stuffs, mostly fruits and vegetables, and buy few processed items there. I shop the ring road so to speak. I wonder if the reason the bio-engineered label is common there is because they are supplied by European manufacturers and that label is a requirement in the EU. I doubt it would be required here. I will have to check for myself to see how it is labeled and then look at a Publix for similar labeling on American-sourced food. I have noticed a number of Aldi hit pieces lately on You tube and wonder if their chain is starting to affect the profits of the big boys.
I read in comments here last year about the short-sightedness of Starbucks’ customers treating each other to free drinks and ignoring the help that worked there. This prompted me to tip all the regulars at Aldis over Christmas. That in some small way helped to make up for all the bad jokes they have had to endure from me the previous year.
Aldi Germany used to be famous for fast cashiers.
I too use them for fish or certain packed products, or cookies, less fresh foodstuffs.
Also simple vitamin supplements or dentals and cosmetic products.
The best cheese however, outside expensive places (in Germany you can leave a month´s salary at the counter of a decent cheese shop) is with Lidl. Otherwise you choose Aldi.
During holiday season as Christmas or Easter both chains have certain luxury products that do make sense, like truffle cheese or fish or meat.
However after the Russian SMO started (yes!) I realized that the sea bass they had been selling for years and which was indeed excellent for that level suddenly tasted lame and shockingly empty. I looked up the origin and there it was: Until 2022 the sea bass came from Ukrainian Black Sea fishing. After that it was Turkish aquaculture. I stopped buying. Made no sense.
Hedges: Gaza is not just about genocide of people. The Israelis are flattening Gaza City and destroying history going back centuries.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/23/chris-hedges-israels-assassination-of-memory/
So presumably by destroying history they can kill not just the living but the long dead as well. But to what purpose? Will they ever find enough “Jews only” inhabitants to fill all that Lebensraum? This hatred of another culture bodes ill for those who claim to be building one of their own. Sociopathy is a poor foundation for a society.
I don’t think finding enough Jews will be a problem – those Orthodox families really are big. It would be their greatest virtue from a purely Lebensraum perspective, they may not take or hold the land themselves but they can certainly populate it.
Think of all the surfing possibilities for Orthodox Jews if the deal goes down…
Hang Ten!
Hava Nagila, by Dick Dale and the Del Tones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RCeaTjD4pg&list=RD4RCeaTjD4pg
Malibu-born ‘Shifty’ Shifrin, a.k.a. the ‘surf ‘n soul’ rabbi,
teaches kabbalah via surfing:
https://surfandsoul.org/my-story/
very kool and limber rebbe
I’m still picturing in my mind an Orthodox Jew fully dressed surfing the jheri curl, peyot forward!
Nazis systematically destroyed Jewish cemetaries in Europe.
…not in Prague
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Jewish_Cemetery,_Prague
Interesting: there are lots of tales of Nazis smashing up old gravestones at Jewish cemetaries and using them as gravel and the like, including in Prague, IIRC. I wonder what saved the main cemetary. I do vaguely recall the main Synanogue in Prague surviving also, come to think of it.
And I believe the Israelis have dug up Arab cemeteries. But Hedges says they are bulldozing buildings going back to the 13th century and older.
Turks did the same with Armenian cemeteries…
“An article by: Tobias Riegel”
‘US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently spoke out in outrageous detail about the vassal status of “allies” towards the US: As a result of agreements like the EU deal with the US, foreign assets could soon be indirectly treated like a US “sovereign wealth fund,” according to Bessent, and at the discretion of the US president.’
For the Trump regime, it is a twofer. Not only are they shaking down those EU countries for their money to invest in the US (in dodgy AI investments perhaps?) but in doing so, those EU countries no longer have the money to invest in their own countries anymore. Add in the 5% they are supposed to cough up for NATO annually along with having their goods being tariffed if sent to the US, then by the end of this decade you may very well see “Fire Sale Europe” – everything must go!
Dan Hollis: You monster, you. You dirty little monster. You murderer. You think about me. Go ahead, Anthony. You think bad thoughts about me. And maybe some man in this room, some man with guts, somebody who’s so sick to death of living in a place like this, and is willing to take a chance, will sneak up behind you and lay something heavy across your skull, and end this once and for all…
Anthony Fremont: You’re a bad man! You’re a very bad man!
Dan Hollis: You think that. Go ahead, Anthony. I’m a very bad man! Keep thinking that! Somebody sneak up behind him! Somebody end this now while he’s thinking about me! Won’t somebody take a lamp or a bottle or something and END THIS?
A good article on EROEI.
Finally one that explains well the important improvements with renewables vs predominantly oil and gas.
We’ve been in this Long Emergency for quite some time now, and if you were a neo-Rip Van Winkle who had slept for 5 years, you’d be shocked by how everything appears-not that present company isn’t hep to what’s what, but it being so gradual-the changes all for the worse-not better.
Can you imagine going back 5 years in time and explaining what has been happening since then to your earlier self? Too many news stories that you would tell them would sound like they are straight from The Onion or the Babylon Bee.
Or “Der Sturmer.” But now the Deplorables, worldwide, are the “Chosen Ones” slated for “adjustment.”
My personal preference is to date the beginning of the Long Emergency to 2008, when Bush the Lesser had to destroy capitalism in order to save it.
Then we had around 10 years of phony prosperity … beginning around 2010, thanks to ZIRP and a docile Fed. The late teens weren’t exactly the roaring twenties, but it seemed that most could find a job, unlike today when corporate America threatens workers with AI replacement stooges, and DOGE defenestrates the Feds.
Remember also that the iPhone came out in 2007 … the biggest shocker to our Rip would be the sight of humanoids walking hunched over, looking at screens, like some zombie flick.
Beam me up, Scotty!
“US begins icebreaker race with Russia”
Wellll, kinda? I mean that the US wants Finland to build a lot of those icebreakers as the US hasn’t built one in decades and you can’t build them like they are old Liberty ships or anything You have to get the design right. Certainly it is not easy building nuclear-powered ones either as they are a different sort of challenge altogether. But based on Trump’s actions and the problems that Oz is having getting those nuke boats, I would not be surprised to read that the Trump will demand that Finland and Canada hand over most of their ice breakers to the US as part of their contribution to NATO or something. It’s all part of that old saying – ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is me own.’
And in other icebreaker news-
‘Russia has appointed the world’s first-ever female captain of a nuclear-powered icebreaker, state operator Atomflot announced on Wednesday. Marina Starovoytova will take command of the icebreaker Yamal, where she previously served as chief mate. Equipped with two nuclear reactors, the Yamal has helped transport researchers to floating ice and in 2000 made a voyage to the North Pole. The vessel is also recognizable by the distinctive shark jaw painted on its hull.’
https://www.rt.com/russia/623345-first-female-icebreaker-captain/
I see the Times describing Bolton as “a prominent Trump critic”, and I’m wondering if this is indeed the case.
The title of “war mongering freak” would have been more appropriate, but I guess they’re trying to look at the glass as half-full.
Frankly the guy always reminds me of Yosemite Sam-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAwu30MWHH8 (43 secs)
Feral Hog Watch:
I was a sucker for the headline: Wild Pigs Are Turning Neon Blue in California
Fedwatch
A little info here on inflation data gathering methodology. Note the FRED chart “Personal Consumption Expenditures Excluding Food and Energy (Chain-Type Price Index). I don’t remember the switch to “chain price indexing”. Maybe that’s why it’s no longer controversial. Because it has been implemented. This was known by the aficionados as “the cat-food index”, whereby the consumer’s preference for tuna becomes so expensive that they switch to buying cheaper cat food for their luncheon repas.
Actually, not a very good description of consumer behavior because I’m now spending $4.75/can in order to provide three squares-a-day for my cat. Given the grumpy nature of the current shoppers on Aisle 5 you can probably double the 3% inflation rate and come to reasonable estimation. Kind of like doubling the unemployment rate and coming to another reasonable estimation. Even hedonic pricing might be an improvement over the current method…hell, it’s no less subjective. Or is that what they have been doing all along?
In the USSR nobody believed their leaders inflated words-in the USA nobody believes their leaders numbers.
US is in trouble with “ZIRP Trump” anointing the next Chm of the Federal Reserve!
Before his cooked books BLS announces the recessin.
Armenian Jeffrey Epstein: How Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan built a pedo-empire for high-ranking officials – VT Foreign Policy
Well then…is somebody just seeing the heat that can be generated by an Epstein-like scandal? Time will tell.
Just a side note: In that pic with the guy on the yacht with three young girls, they all seem so posed. And the guy doesn’t seem to have the “gut” that appears in so many other pics of Simonyan. But I don’t know the exact date of all the pics of Simonyan.
Anyway…I went down another rabbit hole. A brief overview:
Lucas Leiroz – Brazilian journalist, geopolitical analyst. Graduated from the Cultural Extension Program of the Brazilian War College. Researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. Professionally, he works as a journalist and geopolitical analyst. Researcher in the “Crisis, Development and International Relations” research group at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. At the invitation of the Russian Delegation in Geneva, he presented a report on the use of chemical weapons by the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the 52nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council and at the OSCE’s “Supplementary Discussions”.
“CENTER FOR GEOSTRATEGIC STUDIES is a non-governmental and non-profit association, established for an indefinite period of time, in order to achieve the goals in the field of scientific research of geostrategic relations and preparation of strategic documents, analyses and research. The association develops and supports projects and activities aimed at the state and national interests of Serbia, has the status of a legal entity and is registered in the register in accordance with the law…”
https://geostrategy.rs/en/%d0%be-%d0%bd%d0%b0%d0%bc%d0%b0/
https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/NK-REWhNrUYssEN4MUsUgpuEH/
Descriptions
Date of creation: 23.3.2021
— EU Financial Sanctions Files (FSF), 2025-08-01
The Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI) is a fake human-rights defence NGO created in March 2021 by Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
— EU Financial Sanctions Files (FSF), 2025-08-01
The Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI) is a fake human-rights defence NGO created in March 2021 by Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. The R-FBI has been involved in numerous information operations targeting France and Ukraine, including a campaign accusing French soldiers of having kidnapped children from Niger just after the military coup d’état in 2023. Since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023, the R-FBI has been involved in the amplification of numerous Storm-1516’s information operations. Therefore, the R-FBI is responsible for, implementing and supporting actions and policies attributable to the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten democracy, the rule of law, stability or security in the Union, or in one or several of its Member States, or in third countries, by planning, directing, engaging in, directly or indirectly, supporting or otherwise facilitating the use of coordinated information manipulation and interference.
But then:
About Open Sanctions:
Team
The development and maintenance of OpenSanctions is coordinated by a for-profit entity (OpenSanctions Datenbanken GmbH) that offers bulk data subscriptions and API access to the data. Its goal is to produce financial sustainability that allows us to keep the data available and reliable on an ongoing basis. Our team handles the maintenance of the database, and its commercial licensing.
We also want to thank the many contributors that have had an impact on OpenSanctions:
Funding
From September 2021 to Feburary 2022, the project received financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) under the grant identifier 01IS21S48. The full responsibility for the content of this publication remains with its authors.
Acknowledgements:
We’re grateful for the many ideas, suggestions, and improvements contributed by people from our community. Some of the main contributors are named below.
• From 2017 to 2019, maintenance of the crawlers was assumed by Tarashish Mishra at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
• We’d also like to thank Marc da Costa and Tony Bowden for their tireless advice on the project.
You can see a full list of those who have contributed crawlers on Github.
I have to come up from the rabbit hole for air. So many sources to click about and so little time.
Jeez…
Lucas Leiroz regularly appears at Strategic Culture which does come out of Russia but features mostly Western writers including Alastair Crooke. Of course DC and London are pockmarked with their own rabbit holes. Believe nothing until it has been officially denied by them.
Or believe writers who have a track record of credibility. The web is more an information research library than headline news. This can be head spinning?
‘Drop Site
@DropSiteNews
🇲🇽🇺🇸 NORTHCOM openly preparing unilateral military strikes inside Mexico
The Trump administration has issued a Top Secret order directing the U.S. military to prepare lethal strikes on Mexican cartels, investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports.’
I ask you. What can possibly go wrong in Trump launching a military attack against a neighbouring country? Trump has talked about bombing places like Iran and it is OK because they US has two great big beautiful oceans to protect them from retaliation. It’s great. But Mexico has a very long border with the US and it would not be hard for the Cartels to retaliate against the US. What would they do? Who knows? They would have an extremely long menu of options that they could choose from. This idea of attacking the Cartels is one taken direct from one of the Tom Clancy novels and though Mexico may be forced to permit an attack in their territory, they will never tolerate a land incursion like has been suggested.
Talkin’ Mexican cartels… they discovered the first chancy gardeners of Sequoia NP in 2001 just off of Mineral King road where a creek runs by it. Over the next decade, there were at least a dozen more gardens discovered all over the NP and raided, all with 5 or 6 campesinos typically all from Michoacán-who were spirited past the border and never saw much of the country aside from their 6 month stint in the back of beyond, off-trail near enough to a water source that if need be, you can run many hundreds of feet of poly pipe to bring it to fruition.
It was a real problem in a lot of ways, worst of which was the bad chemicals they were using that ended up back in our forest for the trees or creeks, contaminating the soil.
We’re talking huge scale ops, and to give you an idea, there was a public ‘Sequoia Speaks’ presentation many years ago in town, where NPS employees would discuss about what the did in Sequoia NP, and one time the clean-up crew had their say, and NPS had flown out something like 10,000 pounds of fertilizer (native soil isn’t up to snuff) and 6,500 1 pound propane canisters in cleaning up cartel gardens in the park.
They say price fixes everything, and one can buy an ounce of everyday 420 for $50 at the Rxspencery, and you would have thought, why bother going to all the effort to grow it on Federal land, in that you need to coyote everything needed when nobody was around, I.e. during the night, and when I say off-trail, typically it would start from a trailhead and then deviate at some point-these fellows were so clever in leaving no spoor, it took a sharp eye to see where they went. They would take advantage of natural places that presented themselves, a friend who was the narc in the park, showed me this location just a few hundred feet away from a well used trail, that had a few huge boulders leaving up against one another, creating the perfect rain proof A-frame shelter, and he related when he found it, nobody was there, but there was 300 pounds of fertilizer in bags-and no food, as that would attract bears. There was enough sleeping space for 4 people.
They’re back…
https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/news/rangers-remove-illegal-marijuana-cultivation-site-from-sequoia-national-park.htm
Wow. So does this mean there’s a black market for Marijuana that is cheaper? Of course even after the repeal of Prohibition my Southern hillbilies continued to operate stills to defeat the “revenuers.” It’s how Robert Mitchum met his doom in Thunder Road.
But that was friendly hillbillies not at all like the ones in Deliverance–not scary Breaking Bad style gangs. Maybe Trump does need to go after the cartels if they are visiting our Parks without paying the entrance fee. Then he can take on the clear cutting cartels in the National Forests.
They grow pot marjoram and sell it for less than a buck an ounce, so maybe $50 an ounce for pot is still plenty?
Isra-no, no,- the u.s., the u.s. has a right to upen-no,no- to defend itself, Bub. The u.s. has a right to defend itself, and mexico will pay for it. How do you like those tacos now, with icbms or not?
He needs to start a war in order to stop it, and win another piece of the prize. It’s like collecting I-stopped-a-war coupons in order to get a discount on a set of butcher’s knves.
Can Trump (he does not want to) force the EU to peace…….?
The image of “security guarantees” for Kiev reminds me: someone should have asked for security guarantees for Belgrade over Yugoslavia…..!
We won’t get peace. Trump put a 10% surcharge on all the US arms to be sold to EU to give to Kiev. The 10% is to keep US command in Ramstein filling up Kiev’s kill chain with US intelligence.
Stalin’s borders are sacrosanct!
Pashinyan-Pezeshkian meeting: what does Iran expect from opening transport routes in the Caucasus? – JAM News
It’s a sign of the times that I read this and wonder about the next, if any, decapitation strikes.
a request from the well-read commentariat – presently rereading “The Power Elite” by C.W. Wright Mills – it is a very good book in understanding the structure and progression of the consolidation and application of oligarchical system we have here in this country, but it lacks a similar granular breakdown of the next step by the oligarchs in controlling and advocating for their further consolidation and exercise of beating down the lower classes – which is due only to the fact of the book being written in the 50’s and published in 1956 – in chapter 6, The Chief Executives, an example of this lack of understanding :
“What the old guard represents is the outlook, if not always the intelligent interests, of the more narrow economic concerns. What the business liberals represent is the outlook and the interests of the newer propertied class as a whole. They are ‘sophisticated’ because they are more flexible in adjusting to such political facts as the New Deal and big labor, because they have taken over and used the dominant liberal rhetoric for their own purposes, and because they have, in general, attempted to get on top of, of even slightly ahead of, the trend of these developments, rather than to fight it as practical conservatives are wont to do.”
my request and question would be a good author and book to follow on with Mills’s granular, well-outlined and cited observations, and the further development of the oligarchs control – there appears to be an arrogance and ignorance of the ‘sophistication’ and flexibility used in the past to placate the lower classes – thanks in advance for any suggestions y’all may provide –
The Powell Memo picks up pretty well where Mills leaves off.
To approach the problem from a different direction, Witney Webb’s “One Nation Under Blackmail” combined with Talbot’s “Devils Chessboard” and Baker’s “Family of Secrets” form a narrative of power into which one can embed most of what’s transpired since Polk was murdered in Greece and Operation Gladio engaged organized crime formally with the incipient Blob.
To your last point, Wieners’ “The Human Use of Human Beings” combines nicely with various descriptions of Frank Wisner’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” to outline how Bayesian probability can feedback to centrally controlled narrative systems to steer popular discourse.
Although one might note that, conservatives took the long road, and despite Eisenhower writing:
In the end, the conservatives certainly won on these by playing the long game. Lack of numeracy wasn’t an issue. (Destruction of anti-trust, acceptance of deregulation as the only path forward by all participants, that the market is its own animal that must be left to roam freely, ect.) But having not read the book, I’m probably misunderstanding what Mills was getting at in the context of inter-elite struggles in the 1950s.
Hunger Games: AI’s Demand for Resources Poses Promise and Peril to Rural America – Real Clear Investigations
Anybody else tired of the demented not giving a damn about the consequences of some technology approach in society that is met the claim that all will be fixed with more technology and a shrug about subsequent negative consequences?
Oh, I forget…the problem always ends up to being attributed to people not being “productive” or “efficient” enough.
Or the hippies. Thiel blames Woodstock for the fact he doesn’t have a flying car. (It must piss him off he has to pay a helicopter pilot.)
“Thiel blames Woodstock for the fact he doesn’t have a flying car.”🤣
It’s true and part of Thiel’s oft-repeated (and recycled by Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey etc) “Tech Stagnation” thesis.
“You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country.
…Where we’ve had progress in the world of bits but not in the world of atoms, and this world of bits, we’ve had progress in computers, Internet, mobile Internet. Technology just means information technology. It’s all about bits, but the world of atoms, space travel, energy like nuclear power, biotech, new medical devices, that’s been much slower, and there’s been much less progress in those areas in the last forty years.” (Glen Beck interview, transcript)
I have not searched, but would bet good money that JD Vance will have also used this exact formulation (Woodstock, hippies took over, end of progress) in interviews.
This event happens right around the same time…
I get it-i’m still remorseful over missing out on the fun, I so wanted to go to Woodstock, but mom said ‘no way am I gonna let a 7 year old go to that, what do you think, i’m crazy?’ and that was all she wrote.
I didn’t make it either, Wuk. It took place a week after I got my driver’s license, and it was about 500 bridges too far from Missouri for me to get permission to take the family car. The closest I got was dating a NYC girl in college who went with her older sister.
Henry Moon Pie: Peter Thiel.
It still astounds me that Janis Joplin gave this performance at Woodstock — and she didn’t consider Woodstock her best performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz7x5pMdN0c
Joplin would be 82 if she had lived. I’d rather have her around, showing off in a boa, than Peter Thiel’s well-rehearsed and malign mediocrity.
I drove through Sebastopol early yesterday afternoon and passed the usual Friday demonstration at the intersection of Hwy 116 and Hwy 12.
One corner the anti war/antiviolence/evil orange man corner, one is the USA can do no wrong/more oppression/more wars corner and the third and fourth corners usually hold the overflow,if any.
Yesterday the “More Wars” corner had a group holding several large Israeli flags intermingled with US Flags about 1/3 the size.
Another Zionist group parades from the main Library to Courthouse Square on Sundays about 1 PM, this looks like several Family groups (2 or 3) aged Ten to perhaps 50.
BIG Israeli banners, small US Flags.
Their demonstration usually lasts less than an hour, walk to the Square, walk the perimeter of the square while waving flags, walk back to their cars.
They look smug.
Happy that the “Most Moral Army in the World” is committing Genocide and broadcasting it to the World with the full backing the US Elites.
In the West Protesting the most heinous crimes peacefully is supporting terrorism while actively enabling them is Patriotic, Because Freedom.
And Markets
Tensions Rise In The Middle East – Mark Wauck
Anybody else having trouble with the link?
I found it here:
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/tensions-rise-in-the-middle-east/
Who knows what will be confirmed or not in all of this, but what do we have here?
“Russia’s command-and-control bird touched down in Tel Aviv.
A Tupolev Tu-214SR, the Kremlin’s airborne nerve center, landed at Ben Gurion, the same platform used by Putin’s inner circle to coordinate operations and strategic comms.
When Moscow’s presidential squadron shows up in occupied Palestine, it’s not a courtesy call, it’s a signal that whatever is unfolding is being logged, recorded, and archived at the highest tier of Russian state memory.”
Or it is a sign that Russia doesn’t give a damn about Palestine and is more interested in building closer terms with Israeli. It is interesting how there is almost no condemnation of China and Russia continuing to trade with Israel. Especially China considering the huge volume and that it is likley to contain items that can be used for military equipment.
Putin has been pretty consistent over the years that the extremely large Russian-speaking population in Israel is the reason for the continued relations:
China generally doesn’t appear to get involved in the military affairs of nations that it does not share borders with.
The bit about the Tu-214SR is interesting. I’ve wondered if Russia provided Israel with an S-400 if it would calm things down in that part of the middle east for a while, but of course it would have to come with some sort of assurance it wouldn’t go straight to he US or to Rafael for reverse engineering.
If it means anything I would assume it means next round of hostilities between Iran/Israel is imminent. Maybe before the high holy day season after all. Maybe even before the Gaza mobilization is wrapped.
I won’t speak for China but Russia is already fighting a proxy war on one border while US/UK/NATO continue to interfere on its southern Caucasian flank. There’s also no indication that the Western powers will desist in trying to destabilise or overthrow the current Iranian government which is another important area of concern for Russia.
Yet you expect them to intervene in Israel.
Perhaps your ire might be better directed towards the Arab/Muslim nations of the region that are not only located close to Occupied Palestine, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the various Gulf kingdoms and Turkey, but whose actual trade flows (oil) are critical to the survival of Bibi’s regime.
I couldn’t get it either, thanks
Lots of great links today to which I’ll add an old favorite of mine…
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug25/fall-apart8-25.html
From Hunger Games: AI’s Demand for Resources Poses Promise and Peril to Rural America
LOL, so you’re a disinterested observer.
(bold mine)
Talk about talking your book.
I feel like AI data centers are the ultimately bridge to nowhere.
re: Russians hack UKR database on evidence for 1,7M lost soldiers
Do you think it´s legit (by now I do believe these sources but I am not an IT person.):
Ukraine lost 1.7 million servicemen during the SVO — these are killed and missing. The information is from the database of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was hacked by our hackers.
According to the digital card index of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, over three years of the SVO, the Ukrainian army lost 1,721,000 people killed and missing. 118.5 thousand — in 2022, 405.4 thousand — in 2023, 595 thousand — in 2024 and a record 621 thousand — in 2025. A total of 1.7 million files — with full names, description of circumstances and place of death/disappearance, personal data, contacts of next of kin and photos.
https://t.me/mash/67103
I’d be dubious about casualty figures released by either side to be honest. Or those calculated. It will probably be several years after the war before they get even relatively acurate values.
fwiw it has been picked up by various people in the US.
And eventually it corresponds with Russian Ministry of Defense, which is lower with 1.3M
But they don´t count certain cases on the battlefield. It also fits the kill ratio in relation to Russian casualty numbers such as 108.000 by Meduza (in May I believe).
What does bother me is the allegation at least in the brief coverages of this hack, that they have personal data on 1.7M citizens. Really?
Anyway if any of this were true it could theoretically be checked against the real Ukrainian registry of citizens, or could it not?
If we have allegedly real names it should be only a question of time to check…
https://x.com/mtracey/status/1958173136475558357
I think I’ve seen Mr. Tracey linked here from time to time but him defending the release of the Israeli official caught in that sting operation does not seem so good
I seem to recall him being an active defender of the now debunked babies killed on October 7
He’s also been baiting some clicks lately by suggesting the Epstein scandal overblown and the young girls were teenaged gold diggers. If you look him up on Wiki he doesn’t seem to have much of a resume other than as a kind of web contrarian. Perhaps others know more about him.
I think the Epstein “nothing to see here” sally is disgusting given the vast amount of sleaze that doesn’t depend on lawsuit depositions. Perhaps Dersh has been giving him impeach the witness tips to defeat our “lying eyes.”
And what does he mean ‘THERE WAS NO “CHILD”!’ That’s exactly what those men, including that Israeli guy, thought that they were talking to. Does Tracey then think that they should have used real children in that sting operation?
So, I’ve just been re-watching (after many years) the Thames TV 1973 World at War, narrated by Laurence Olivier (who could read a phone book and make it sound compelling). I’ve gotten through the first five episodes, not certain I will continue. Of course, one must also consider the Unknown War, a 1978 joint US-Soviet production, narrated by Burt Lancaster. I’ll turn to that, the Soviets won the war and the West forgot. The Nazis bit off more than they could chew.
Ditto on Olivier. And I don’t care for the doc either which makes WW2 all about the Brits. Of course we Yanks never do that.
So, I’ve continued on with episodes 5 & 6. Good information. I get to Guadalcanal and it is described as an Allied Campaign. Was it the tail wagging the sleeping dog? A dying empire summoning a new.
How did the Brits even participate? They had Intelligence though only otherwise stressed materiel assets.
Being an Aussie, it got to be a sore point in WW2 how the British would talk about a British victory here or there but soldiers knew that the only troops were involved were Aussies, New Zealanders, Canadians, etc. But being part of the British Empire at the time, Britain could technically claim that those troops were British.
Pretty sure there were Australians there. But could be wrong.
As for the soviets won the war. It is more nuanced than that. Manpower wise certainly. But the soviets would probably have crumbled without lend lease. It’s not even the weapons that were supplied. But pretty much all Soviet motorisation was based on US trucks. Without which they could not have performed the deep assaults of later years. Telecommunications equipment, food, oil products, clothing. A huge amount of it came from the US and Commonwealth.
And the western allies took on thr bulk of the Luftwaffe and destroyed it. If that had been fully available in the east that would have altered the balance.
Of course even if the soviets had surrenderedand the Germans occupied the European part, I’m not sire they could have ever pacified it.
Gustave Dore’s illustrations of Dante. Worth a look.
The first illustration, from canto X of the Inferno (a very spooky canto indeed) reminded me that here in the Chocolate City, I have seen “Hell’O Dante,” Saulo Lucci’s evenings of selected cantos from the Inferno. I managed to get to cantos III, X, and XXXIV — Lucci is doing some of the weirdest and more relevant.
His performance consists of an hour or so of “explanation” — in modern, slangy Italian, often very funny. He throws in songs, and his daughter, who has a better voice, joins him. Who knew that Dante sang Delta Blues?
Lucci then ends each evening with a recitation from memory of the canto. Thus I have learned the beauties of Italian (as if I didn’t already know).
An excerpt from the Cary translation from the early 1800s. Mandelbaum is better, but still under copyright.
This famous set of lines open canto III. Note what “abandon hope” really means. (There has been some drift!)
CANTO III
“THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
“All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
Such characters in colour dim I mark’d
Over a portal’s lofty arch inscrib’d:
Whereat I thus: “Master, these words import
Hard meaning.” He as one prepar’d replied:
“Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave;
Here be vile fear extinguish’d. We are come
Where I have told thee we shall see the souls
To misery doom’d, who intellectual good
Have lost.” And when his hand he had stretch’d forth
To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer’d,
Into that secret place he led me on.
The Inferno lives on…
Yes, I read that. Superb illustrations indeed.
Also, thank you Yves for posting that link.
That Open Culture website is amazing. Some fantastic stuff on there!
re: “Little Lady”
…is how allegedly Harry Truman called Austrian nuclear physicist Lise Meitner when he welcomed her to the WH alluding to her involvement with the discovery of fission, her small height and LITTLE BOY.
Watching the videos in this piece, it’s not obvious to me why the rearward curved horns of the ibex provide much value in a fight. Ibex males compete with each other by ramming, apparently, so the curved horns provide a bulldozer like surface that maybe useful for something like that. But when it comes to fighting off other predators they seem pretty useless (or maybe the proper word is “pointless”!).
Imagine if those huge horns pointed straight forward. They would be deadly as hell. I claim we need ibex v2.0 with one or two crucial improvements.
Have God give me a call if you see him.
Those huge horns pointed straight forward would be deadly as hell, and all those horny ibexes would end up killing each other. Not to mention losing the scratch-your-own-back ability.
I always figured rearward pointing horns make it harder for predators to attack the neck. Ibexes do seem to have a bit of oversized horns for that, though.
I don’t want to shock anyone in the US government, but the reason there are Mexican cartels to strike at is that the product they are trafficking in is illegal in the US (and in some cases in Mexico and elsewhere), creating the possibility of gigantic profits for illegal behavior.
Another big export from Mexico is alcoholic beverages, but notice this interesting fact: there are no “alcohol cartels” in Mexico, and no “Alcohol Enforcement Agency” in the US. Alcohol is certainly a dangerous and debilitating drug, probably one of the worst if not the worst, but somehow saner minds have concluded that keeping alcohol legal is the least-bad option.
Mexico, and even the US in some cases, are starting to see the light here and are gradually decriminalizing what were formerly illegal drugs. Doubtless these efforts will receive a lot of pushback, not only from the cartels, but from law enforcement agents whose careers are built around the useless activity of trying to stop the flow.
Like many other things these days, the War on Drugs is entirely self-inflicted.
>>>…but somehow saner minds have concluded that keeping alcohol legal is the least-bad option.
It was call Prohibition, which started with the Eighteen Amendment and ended with the Twenty-First. It enriched the Mafia, created a crime wave, and greatly increased corruption.
Truthfully, what drugs are deemed acceptable or not is culturally determined with the uses of different drugs becoming tribal or class signifiers. Good Americans drink beer and wine. “Bad foreigners, dirty hippies, and losers use weed and opioids.”
However, drug use is often very destructive, which was why Prohibition passed as the United States had a massive drinking problem. Perhaps worse than we have with other drugs currently. People were hoping to end it, but of course it got worse as the quality of the booze decreased, prices increased, it became hip to go to the speakeasy, and alcoholism increased along with the crime. The Great Depression might be thanked for ending Prohibition as revenue for state and local governments crashed, and taxes on alcohol sales was nice to get. Income from sales taxes on marijuana has also been used to justify legalizing weed.
Prohibition generally can be dated back to the “Maine Law” in 1851. It tended to be picked up by the political parties from time to time, and also served as an anti-immigrant weapon.
National prohibition of course was somewhat different, but the repeal didn’t open up the country to wide-spread consumption, at least not immediately.
Yes. Catholics were/are “wet.” I occasionally get a bit surprised every now and then that this still shows up as an issue sometimes.
You need more than alcohol for a proper party, so there’s ATF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Alcohol,_Tobacco,_Firearms_and_Explosives
When BATFE got moved out of Treasury, the alcohol taxing part of their job went to a new Treasury Bureau, TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau)
“The woke words Democrats should cut from their vocabulary”
Reading this article in Politico sent my heart soaring. Literally following such advice without any serious self-reflection on its inherent pomposity (the suggestion that it is fine to maintain such beliefs while lying to the public about them) will guarantee that the Democratic Party brand will become even more toxic and help boost its downhill slide toward extinction.
.
re: 2xCIA
USEFUL IDIOTS with Tim Weiner
CIA GETS CAUGHT Spying on the Senate During Torture Investigation
Aug. 15th
49 min.
https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/unpaywalled-cia-gets-caught-spying
Tom Griffin
Trump-Russia purge deepens in aftermath of Alaska summit
Aug. 23rd
https://intelligencehistory.substack.com/p/trump-russia-purge-deepens-in-aftermath
I would take anything Weiner or Griffin say about the CIA with a large pile of salt. Both of them are well-connected – which means that they can often reveal important “insider” information but that they also tend toward the limited hang-outs being pushed by their sources. Weiner in particular is considered the dean of journalistic “experts” on the CIA. But there are many examples of his contributing to disinformation or omitting relevant information to bolster particular CIA narratives. One of Weiner’s most irritating examples is his constant repetition (exemplified here) that the CIA “just follows orders,” and that it is the President who makes the decisions. And perhaps nowhere is this more of a distortion of history than when he repeats the Helms/Bissell/Halpern line about the CIA’s anti-Castro activities, especially the assassination plots. To hear them tell the tale, the Kennedy brothers were obsessed with killing Castro. They didn’t *want* to do it, but gosh, the President and his brother the AG insisted, so…
This was a very intentional distortion, constructed as part of their defense as the CIA’s covert activities were beginning to be revealed in the 1970s. Exactly contrary to what Weiner implies here, the Church and HSCA committees revealed just the opposite, though Weiner continues to push this story. A lot of the relevant records were only declassified in the 1990s thanks to the influence of Oliver Stone and his film JFK. Weiner has done his duty a number of times in smearing Stone, including his documentary of a few years back on which he wrote a disgustingly distorted review in Rolling Stone.
There are *many* historical examples where elements of the CIA have acted on their own without direct Presidential orders, or even knowledge. And this is not just to preserve “plausible deniability.” Sometimes these actions have directly undermined Presidential intentions. Weiner actually admits this with regard to Trump. Both Weiner and Griffin also continue to imply that Russia *did* interfere in the 2016 election, and that the intelligence community was only doing their duty in investigating the Trump campaign given the “evidence” available at the time. This, as should be crystal clear by now, is a lie. So are they witting assets of their “IC” sources, or useful idiots?
Sorry for the rant, but this topic really sets me off.
Er, I for once did NOT want to add a personal rant for a link I provide which I find “problematic”. (But then Maté makes this clear beforehand.)
So, thank you!
I am especially appalled by Weiner´s blunt jingoism and his frankly totally unnecessary, campy cursing sparsed in (“Oh I am one of you”). It´s so darn dishonest.
Griffin is not as bad (polite Brit?!)- but being in possession of certain info indeed comes with a price.
And thanks for some of the insider info on where Weiner was in fact smearing. I never really looked into his work beyond his CIA book (which for some reason has a bad German translation. I doubt the original is equally clumsy.)
Thank you for this enlightening “rant”. It’s helpful to have a better take on Weiner.
Denmark To Abolish VAT On Books To Get More People Reading Guardian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have to abolish connectivity to be able to read books these days. To get my wi-fi fix I have to walk 100 yards to the Silver City Resort, otherwise KNX news radio out of LA after dark is as good as it gets to having outside information flow in the cabin.
Can’t you discreetly install some repeaters?
I could, and many cabin owners have done so, but why wreck a good thing?
That 100 yard traipse is good for me, and the resort is very much akin to a Cheers type hangout where everybody knows your name, can’t get that sitting in a cabin staring at a laptop.
Open Banking and payments competition
File under “Mission Accomplished!” – job hugging is a new trend among gen Z. It’s almost as if taking away external supports, shredding the safety net, and pushing policies that cause relentless inflation in the cost of living makes people in the US scared about not having a job… How odd.
Perhaps the Democrats will do something about this? No, of course they won’t. The last guy was too busy telling them the awful economy was all in their mind. The new guy is telling them to be grateful they’re not in Gaza (yet!).
Americans aren’t drinking anymore. Alcohol giants are scrambling to manage the fallout.
COVID, checking in.
But it’s supposedly culture
Or is it?
I tend to think it’s more economically than medically induced. Booze is becoming very expensive. Decent whiskey costs about $40. Decent wine is also about that much. 2 buck chuck isn’t $2 anymore.
I will say from my experience Gen Z drinking is very 50/50 with half being sort of hick and the other being very health conscious. Decaf coffee is also on the rise among Gen Z. Coincidentally caffeine is a known issue for people with Long Covid, so who knows!
I suggest that legalizing marijuana is partly a reason for less drinking.
That Warwick Powell article on EROEI is well worth reading.
Has some reassuring figures on the efficiency of renewable energy.
This is welcome news: “ The findings from Sahin et al. decisively rebut the claim that 100% renewable systems are unworkable from a net energy standpoint.”
My reading lately has been tending to the reverse conclusion and was becoming quite depressing.
Kevin Sabet is an alarmist and shill for big pharma. Shame on you for not digging deeper. Cannabis has been a healing plant for thousands of years until Nixon’s War on Drugs. It should be legalized bc it’s safer than alcohol and tobacco re: HHS.
I hate to have to be so candid, but your remark is astonishing and not in a good way.
1. Featuring an item is not tantamount to endorsement. Did you miss that we occasionally run tweets with embedded videos of genocidal Zionist maniacs making horrible self-indicting statements?
2. The onus is on you, if you disagree, to make a reasoned rebuttal. Instead you went ad hominem. That is a violation of house rules, per our Policies.
3. The argument about marijuana being safer than alcohol and tobacco is tu quoue, aka whataboutism, another rhetorically invalid argument. The fact that marijuana likely is less bad is not a valid defense of another substance which does produce addiction and is net additive to alcohol and tobacco addiction. And marijuana addiction is harmful:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/30/health/marijuana-versus-alcohol-wellness
4. Marijuana is harder to study than alcohol due to the many molecules involved and the variability of concentration across growers. And study of it is also more recent, so there are more known unknown than your definitive claim acknowledges. For instance, re smoking either substance, while the compounds in marijuana are less harmful than tobacco, they are still harmful, and the fact that most marijuana smokers hold an inhalation in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers may make smoking marijuana more harmful.
5. You did not provide any links to substantiate your claim. See this also, which like the CNN piece, contains links to studies: https://archive.is/3O98d
re: US defense budget at $1T
Jeremy Kuzmarov among others is reporting on a July study on the subject
U.S. Military Budget Tops $1 Trillion
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
August 21, 2025
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/08/21/u-s-military-budget-tops-1-trillion/
“(…)
A new study issued by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, written by William Hartung and Stephen Semler, Profits of War: Top Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020-2024, found that the U.S. government invested more than twice as much money in five weapons companies in that period as in diplomacy and international assistance.
The five companies that received $771 billion between 2020 and 2024 were: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion).
(…)”
The study:
Profits of War: Top Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020 – 2024
William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler
Posted on July 8, 2025
https://quincyinst.org/research/profits-of-war-top-beneficiaries-of-pentagon-spending-2020-2024/#
Interesting link, thank you AG.
This caught my eye as I’ve noticed it myself. See for example Dan Caine himself
Today, the tools of influence used by the arms industry are consistent — lobbying, millions in campaign donations, the revolving door, and others — but they are also expanding. One of the latest trends, for instance, is that Pentagon officials are now going on to work for venture capital firms investing in new military tech.
VC firms like Shield Capital, a24z and our good friends Founders Fund.
I’m sure history has some examples of capital and military fusing with great results /s
thanks!
Deal to get ChatGPT Plus for whole of UK discussed by Open AI boss and minister (Guardian)
Exclusive: Deal that could have cost £2bn was floated at meeting between technology secretary Peter Kyle and Sam Altman…
…Kyle has been a vocal champion of AI within government and has also embraced its use in his own role. In March, it emerged that he had asked ChatGPT for advice on a range of work-related questions, including why British businesses were not adopting AI and what podcasts he should appear on.
The minister told PoliticsHome in January: “ChatGPT is fantastically good, and where there are things that you really struggle to understand in depth, ChatGPT can be a very good tutor for it.”
This man is an idiot
According to the BBC’s Matt Walker, a new study concludes that the closest living relatives of the tiger clan are snow leopards.
Re John Bolton’s house raid, I remember him doing videos for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq whilst they were still on the FBI’s list of terrorist organizations.
As a rich, white Neocon he obviously didn’t believe the law actually applied to him.
Proverbs 26:27 “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.” How you liking them apples, Johnny?
Imagine if there had ever actually been a progressive, law-abiding Dem POTUS who also did things like this?